Archive for the ‘Oakland’ Tag
The Amazing Democrats – Editor’s comment: God Bless America – Everyone got it wrong and to a point, so did we. Leave a comment
Body cameras and more training for Police Officers doesn’t go far enough Mr. President. Leave a comment
Police forces around the country already have implemented the use of body cameras for their Police Officers on duty like the city of San Rafael in California so the President’s announcement yesterday doesn’t go anywhere far enough dealing with the issues we see in Ferguson and the shooting dead of Michael Brown by former Police Officer Wilson. Some Police forces around the country are blue in the face from training. We need a better plan Mr. President and a new code of conduct for our Police Officers. We need a whole new process of investigating citizens complaints against Police Officers. What of the many incidents around the country concerning Police Officers when off duty? Body cameras won’t be of much use in this case and the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice needs a total re-haul as it has proven most ineffective in dealing with citizens complaints against Police Officers. It’s time to take a stand Mr. President and show us how serious you really are as Jon Sopel of the BBC rightly asks: “The uncomfortable question for America is how many other towns and cities across the land have exactly the same cocktail of problems that one spark could ignite?”.
From Jon Sopel (BBC)
The news channels split the TV screen, as they often do. On one side, the president and commander-in-chief of the most powerful army in the world was appealing for calm from protesters and restraint from law enforcement. On the other side, the live shots showed the chaos unfold as Ferguson was blanketed in tear gas and fire. Since the shooting of Michael Brown, America has been enveloped in a wider debate.
Not new questions – anything but – but questions that were pushed into the background with the election of the United States’ first African-American president.
In 2008, those heady days when Mr Obama was first elected, there was the genius slogan that captured the trajectory and history of the civil rights struggle.
“Rosa sat, so that Martin could walk, so that Barack could fly” – to which might be added today -“but people like Michael Brown will still get shot by white police officers.”
The other phrase that was heard again and again was, “So what’s your excuse?”
It was a challenge to the black community from within the black community – to stop making excuses and seize the day, make the most of the myriad opportunities that were ripe for the picking. After all, if an African-American can go all the way to the highest office in the land, what’s stopping you?
America was gripped by the ‘Yes We Can” mantra – and perhaps myth.
For a while, “post-racial” was the watchword. And with it, the debate about disadvantage, discrimination, disaffection (and probably a whole pile of other good sociological words beginning with dis-) seemed to disappear.
Certainly at first, the issue of race was something that Mr Obama preferred not to talk about. His speeches on the topic usually came only after events forced him to address it.
In the last year, Mr Obama has become more vocal about issues facing the black community. His “Brother’s Keeper” initiative seeks to improve outcomes for young black men in America – outcomes like the fate of Michael Brown, shot dead in the street a few days before he was to start college.
Big questions that seemed to be swept under the post-racial rug are being asked once again: Why was an overwhelmingly black area policed by predominantly white officers? Why is there such mistrust among that community of the forces of law and order? Why, if you’re black, are you much more likely to be a victim of crime? Why, if you’re black, are you much more likely to end up in prison? Why are you more likely to be unemployed?
The president engaged in that debate on Monday night, saying that the situation in Ferguson spoke to broader challenges that the US faced. He acknowledged that some of this was the legacy of racial discrimination. He said violence could never be justified, but recognised that the legal system often felt as if it was being applied in a discriminatory fashion.
The violence in Ferguson was as awful as it was predictable. There were those in the crowd who had clearly come dressed for a fight, and would have been disappointed if they had gone home without one.
And there will be those politicians, who will use that violence by the mob as an excuse for inaction. There is nothing easier than to condemn the troublemakers and wilfully ignore the message that the angry but peaceful protesters are trying to send. And – boy – if you could sell anger, you would make a fortune in Ferguson. The fury is genuine.
Some are invoking the Selma marches and Martin Luther King, and saying that the civil rights movement is as relevant today as it was in the last century
Though an infamous race riot in St Louis left dozens of black Americans dead in 1917, modern-day Ferguson wasn’t on many radar screens as a potential flashpoint for racial violence – until the shooting of Michael Brown. It’s in one of the so-called flyover states: a place that many Americans travel above as they fly from east to west or the other way.
The uncomfortable question for America is how many other towns and cities across the land have exactly the same cocktail of problems that one spark could ignite?
In Memory of Michael Brown and Tamir Rice. Leave a comment
Last night we learned the faith of the Grand Jury decision on the shooting of Michael Brown and I for one for the first time ever was ashamed to be a US citizen. I did something I thought I would never do as someone who gave up twenty-eight weeks of my life seven days a week, sixteen hours a day free to have President Obama’s re-elected emailed The White House and asked the President to resign. For one reason and one reason only and it is well documented in my interviews so I could be involved in his re-election campaign and that was his lack of concern or action on the Civil Rights issues and banks. President Obama has done nothing whatsoever on both of these issues and as a Democrat this bugs me a lot.
I can speak with authority as my niece and nephew are African-American through adoption and also even though I served the President of the United States re-election campaign in 2012 I have provided proof to the FBI, the Department of Justice, The White House and Senator Dianne Feinstein that a Police force
within Marin County and the LAPD have an illegal murder squad and was anything ever done about this? No, is the answer. The Department of Justice in Washington DC practically abused me for even daring to try and bring this proof forward. Did the main stream media like CBS or CNN do anything? No, is the answer and the reason is we as Americans believe that our Police forces do serve and protect but that is our ignorance and we get what we deserve but did Michael Brown get what he deserved?
What ever about the rumors on line that Police Officer Wilson who shot Michael Brown was a Freemason and personally in the twenty-first century I find all these Freemason stuff so boring. In America (unlike Europe) we will never accept free education and free healthcare. We will never accept that a human being should have the right to have a roof over their heads or food in their stomachs without working for it and we don’t care if there are no jobs, that is who we are. But we should never accept what is going with our Police forces in the US as they are being paid to serve and protect all it’s citizens, black, white, Asian, homeless, rich, poor, mentally ill, disabled, elderly.
Tamir Rice, a twelve year boy who looked liked my adopted nephew was shot dead by Police this weekend in Cleveland, Ohio waving a fake gun. Does it ever end? No, is the answer. Our Police system in the US doesn’t work anymore in the twenty-first century and our President who I gave so much to get re-elected has done nothing in his six years of office but wheel Police Officers out in The White House for yet another award. Next time he does it, maybe he will contemplate on the pictures we all had to look at on line of Michael Brown’s body laying in the swelter sun for four hours for all passers by to see and record on their cellphones. Should not of President Obama spoke up then? Yes. But maybe it is our fault as the race issue is forever in the shadows of our society and we should just be honest and frank with ourselves that we are not doing a great job dealing with it.
The list is endless from Oscar Grant in 2009 and Charles Hill (a man I talked to regularly on my way to work at the Civic Centre/UN Plaza Muni and Bart Stations) in 2011, both San Francisco homeless men and both shot to death by Bart Police Officers. What really set off the protests to Hill’s death is that Police Officer who shot him dead was allowed to transfer the following week to the FBI as an FBI agent. And it is the job of the FBI to investigate Police Officers who commit serious crimes against the very people they are paid to serve and protect? See why it is all nonsense and none of these people’s families will ever see justice until the new Congress acts in January 2015 with new and very strong Police control laws to protect the rights of every citizen not just the wealthy or privileged.
My point of all this, is that Hilary Clinton must now come forward and speak out even if it will hurt Obama. My first girlfriend’s family live in Kirkwood, St. Louis and when I was dating her we drove through Ferguson. I am worried as I am sure she is, about her elderly parents during all this unrest the World is now witnessing and when you have the Secretary-General of the UN tonight calling on US law enforcement officials to protect the rights of people to demonstrate peacefully it is time the new Congress in January 2015 brought in new and strong Police control laws across the United States as their first order of business.
What will hurt Hillary Clinton is if she doesn’t come out and speak now with what is happening in Ferguson and what happened in Cleveland last weekend . If anyone deserves to win in 2016 it is Hillary and we all know why. She invented the proper Affordable Care Act back in the 1990s. She stood by her husband Bill
when many would have walked away and then in 2008 the Democrat Party shafting her with those super delegates votes giving the 2012 Democratic candidacy to Obama. But last night’s decision by the Grand Jury must of being very hard for her because if she doesn’t come out and rightly so attack President Obama on this issue, the Republicans will throw this at her during the 2016 Presidential campaign.
I also pointed out to President Obama that every time he uses Air Force One it costs the tax payers over five million dollars. These days must end as we see such a change in Europe on this every issue. I as a volunteer for Obama’s Organizing For America (OFA) had to acquire loans from my amazing bank Manager in San Francisco to pay from my own pocket for the Obama re-election campaign for ink and paper for the whole team during huge vote calling drives every week. Did any of my team ever get paid employment with OFA or in Obama’s White House as they were promised? No. And I received hundreds of insulting emails looking for donations (even tonight) from OFA? For what? A memorial fund for Michael Brown’s family? No. To keep paying OFA staff’s salaries even when it is past their exit date from their position. That’s it, isn’t it? About us Americans and politics, it is all about the green and nothing else.
To hear the President last night appealing for calm makes even the avert support want to scream. This is not about you Mr. President, this is about Michael Brown and the senseless end of his life over a few stolen cigars. I plead with you get angry and show us that emotion publicly and sign an Executive Order in the memory of Michael Brown and Tamir Rice for if you don’t and I don’t believe you will, you will really hurt Hillary Clinton chances in the 2016 Presidential Election.