Queen: "You're My Best Friend"
Quote of the Day
[Content Note: Racism.]
"Institutional racism doesn't require the enlisting of individual racists. The machine does the discriminating. ...Yet institutional racism's defenders—or more precisely, its concealers—demand an articulated proof for something that moves in silence. They demand to see chapter and verse for something that is unwritten. They demand to know the names of the individual architects of a structure built subconsciously over time by each member of the vast multitudes adding their own bit, like beavers adding branches to a dam. Institutional racism isn't so much a grand design as it is an accumulation of racial detritus. Symbols are important. Those Confederate flags must come down. That will be a spiritual victory. But we must not stop there. Institutional racism is the real prize on this hunt."—Charles M. Blow, in a terrific piece for the New York Times on how the removal of the Confederate flag from public spaces is just a starting point, not an endpoint.
Daily Dose of Cute
Matilda dares you to pet her belly.
(Don't do it!)
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today...
[Content Note: Racism; housing discrimination] In another important Supreme Court decision, Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. The Inclusive Community Project, Inc., the court found that "housing policies could be deemed discriminatory based on 'disparate impact.' This means that plaintiffs could prove discrimination by showing that the impact of a housing policy was discriminatory, even if there was no conscious attempt to discriminate." This is big news because: "At the most basic level, the Supreme Court recognized fight against discrimination is not over, concluding, 'The Court acknowledges the Fair Housing Act's continuing role in moving the Nation toward a more integrated society.' That's a very big deal." Yes, yes it is.
[CN: Transphobia; anti-immigrationism] Last night, during an LGBTQ event at the White House, trans immigration activist Jennicet Gutiérrez interrupted President Obama's address to request: "President Obama, release all LGBTQ immigrants from detention and stop all deportations!" There is video at the link. "As a transgender woman who is undocumented, Gutiérrez said she could not celebrate while some 75 transgender detainees were still being exposed to assault and abuse in ICE custody at this very moment." Gutiérrez was shushed by the room and dismissed by the President, and I have all kinds of thoughts about that, but instead I will just note: Lots of people are talking about Gutiérrez today and about the reason she interrupted the President. GOOD.
[CN: Terrorism; white supremacy] A Baptist church in Charlotte, North Carolina, which has a predominantly black congregation, was destroyed by a fire early Wednesday, and it is now being investigated as arson. "The church building sustained excessive damage to its back left wing, used as an education building. [Senior Fire Investigator David Williams] said it is close to a total loss. The rest of the property, including the sanctuary and gymnasium, has smoke damage. He said they estimate total damage is more than $250,000."
[CN: Racist violence] Today, funerals begin for some of the victims in the AME Shooting. "The services for Ethel Lee Lance and Sharonda Coleman-Singleton will both take place after viewings at Baptist churches in North Charleston. Ms Lance, 70, worked for the church for 30 years and was a mother of five. Ms Coleman-Singleton, 45, was a speech therapist, pastor and high school track coach, as well as a mother of three. Their funerals will be the first two of nine, with five more to take place on Friday and Saturday." State Senator Rev. Pinckney's funeral will be held tomorrow.
[CN: Terrorism] Government officials are, in the wake of the AME shooting, talking about what measures need to be taken to address the increasing threat from ideological terrorists who act alone (though not in a vacuum): "Security experts in and out of the Obama administration say this trend—which transcends national boundaries and even specific ideologies of violence—requires a major overhaul of their counter-terrorism strategies, not just debates about gun control or the Confederate flag flying over the South Carolina state house." Yep.
In honor of the two-year anniversary of the Wendy Davis filibuster, Ana Mardoll has created an automated twitter bot that will post curated tweets from the Texas transcript project: @StandWithWendy. Woot! (Shared with Ana's permission.)
To celebrate her 66th birthday, Meryl Streep "decided to send letters to every member of Congress asking them to revive the Equal Rights Amendment." Because of course she did!
[CN: Injury; plane crash] Wow: Maria Nelly Murillo, 18, and her one-year-old son Yudier have been found alive "five days after their plane crashed in the jungle of western Colombia. ...Ms Murillo had some injuries and burns while her baby appeared to be in good health." After the plane crash was located, the pilot was found dead and there was no sign of Maria or Yudier. "But according to Col Hector Carrascal of the Colombian Air Force, rescuers took hope when they noticed that the cabin door was ajar. ...'We didn't have a clue what had happened to them: they could be lost in the jungle trying to survive or they could have died already.' But then the rescuers found clues which led them to believe Ms Murillo and her baby could still be alive. Coconut shells near the plane and a discarded flip flop in the jungle lifted their hopes. They also found the baby's birth certificate near a tree, which convinced them that Ms Murillo was trying to leave a trace of her path through the jungle. ...Finally, on Wednesday, they located Ms Murillo about 500m from the site of the crash in a ravine on the banks of a river." Amazing.
WHUT! "New observations with ESO's Very Large Telescope have revealed that the giant elliptical galaxy Messier 87 has swallowed an entire medium-sized galaxy over the last billion years. ...'We are witnessing a single recent accretion event where a medium-sized galaxy fell through the centre of Messier 87, and as a consequence of the enormous gravitational tidal forces, its stars are now scattered over a region that is 100 times larger than the original galaxy!' adds Ortwin Gerhard, head of the dynamics group at the Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik, Garching, Germany, and a co-author of the new study." (I love the exclamation point at the end of Gerhard's comment.)
[CN: Image of critter at link] Neat: "It's white. It's hairy. It's elusive. It's a yeti…crab. Meet Kiwa tyleri, the newest member of the yeti crab family and the first to be found in the cold waters off Antarctica."
[CN: Pet hospice] This is an incredibly moving video about a sanctuary and hospice for elderly dogs in Gaithersburg, Maryland, which is run by a woman named Sher Polvinale and a team of volunteers. Major blubs.
And finally! "This Bunny Understands Short People Problems." YOU KNOW MY LIFE, LITTLE BUN!
WOOT! Supreme Court Upholds Affordable Care Act Subsidies
AMAZING NEWS! Reuters: "U.S. Supreme Court upholds key Obamacare insurance subsidies."
The U.S. Supreme Court handed President Barack Obama a major victory on Thursday by upholding tax subsidies crucial to his signature healthcare law, with Chief Justice John Roberts saying Congress clearly intended for them to be available in all 50 states.YES!
The court ruled on a 6-3 vote that the 2010 Affordable Care Act, widely known as Obamacare, did not restrict the subsidies to states that establish their own online healthcare exchanges. It marked the second time in three years that the high court ruled against a major challenge to the law brought by conservatives seeking to gut it.
"Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them," Roberts wrote in the court's decision, adding that nationwide availability of the credits is required to "avoid the type of calamitous result that Congress plainly meant to avoid."
Roberts was joined by fellow conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy and the court’s four liberal members in the majority.
...The decision means the subsidies will remain not just in the 13 states that have set up their own exchanges and the three states that have state-federal hybrid exchanges, but also in the 34 states that use the exchange run by the federal government.
...The question before the justices was whether a four-word phrase in the expansive law saying subsidies are available to those buying insurance on exchanges "established by the state" has been correctly interpreted by the administration to allow subsidies to be available nationwide
Roberts wrote that although the conservative challengers' arguments about the plain meaning of the statute were "strong," the "context and structure of the act compel us to depart from what would otherwise be the most natural reading of the pertinent statutory phrase."
Naturally, Scalia wrote the dissent, and WHO CARES. More than 6 million people who now have subsidized health insurance through Obamacare on the federal exchange will retain their coverage with federal subsidies.
One of the possible consequences of this decision is that more states will revert services back to the federal exchange. Currently, 34 states are already using healthcare.gov.
Now: On to socialized healthcare, so that the 26 million people who still lack health insurance can have meaningful access to healthcare, too!
RIP Reverend Pinckney
[Content Note: White supremacist violence. Video may autoplay at first link.]
Yesterday, the body of South Carolina State Senator the Reverend Clementa Pinckney was carried to the South Carolina State House for a public viewing ahead of his funeral tomorrow, at which President Obama will deliver the eulogy.
The casket was brought "by horse-drawn caisson Wednesday into the South Carolina State House, past a Confederate battle flag that flies outside. In the second-floor lobby of the Capitol, where the body of the Rev. Clementa Pinckney lay in honor, a black drape was placed over a window, blocking view of the rebel flag."
Rev. Pinckney may have been obliged to travel past symbols of hatred, but he was received inside by thousands of mourners with an outpouring of love and respect:
Thousands of mourners on Wednesday streamed past the open casket of Clementa Pinckney, the esteemed pastor and state senator who lay in state under the Capitol dome a week after he and eight others were slain at a historic black Charleston church.Sob.
Pinckney's widow, Jennifer, two young daughters, Eliana and Malana, other family members and lawmakers he served with during nearly two decades in the Legislature stood by the casket greeting those paying their respects. Portraits of Pinckney, who was dressed in a black suit and red tie, stood on either side of the casket.
As Pinckney's casket disappeared inside the Statehouse, mourners, including Edna Nesbit of Hollywood, called out, "God bless you."
"We were just so heartbroken that we had to come here," Nesbit, 67, said later. "It's just so nice to see the respect given to a man who died too early and for no reason — just racism."
...Pinckney made history as the youngest African-American elected to office when he won a House seat at age 23. On Wednesday, he made history again — he is the first African-American to lie under the dome since Reconstruction.
Some of the people who knew and loved Rev. Pinckney are saying that he will not have died in vain, that changes will come as a result of this heinous act of violence. Which is a thing that we say, to make sense of losing someone to hatred, to give a reason with which we can live to an entirely unreasonable death.
And we have to make sure that's true. We have to make sure that, for the people who survive Rev. Pinckney—and who survive Ethel Lance, Tywanza Sanders, Cynthia Hurd, Rev. Depayne Middleton Doctor, Susie Jackson, Myra Thompson, Rev. Daniel Simmons Sr., and Sharonda Coleman-Singleton—changes will come.
Among those changes must be this: That we elevate the voices of and listen to people like Rev. Pinckney. That it doesn't take death at the hands of a white supremacist to value what they had to say about social justice in life.
Take Action to Save Domain Privacy
[Content Note: Harassment; privilege.]
Right now, anyone who has registered a domain name (e.g. "Shakesville.com") must provide personal information—including name, address, telephone number, and email—which is collected in a publicly searchable database called WHOIS. If you pay an extra fee, your registration information will be kept private, only accessible via subpoena.
But, as the Electronic Frontier Foundation reports, ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the international domain name authority) is currently considering a proposal [PDF] in which "domains used for commercial purposes might no longer be eligible to use proxy registration services." And what constitutes a "commercial" site is as broad as simply running ads, even if only to cover the basic costs of running a personal site.
Thousands of responses have already been received by ICANN on this topic from others who are concerned about how the proposed policy change will affect them. Amongst them is a message from one user who wrote:WHOIS' default public database is a remnant of the early days of the internet, when it was being built by privileged people who thought it would be a great idea to be able to easily contact anyone behind another website, and never considered what it would mean for an open internet in which people, especially from marginalized populations, are routinely silenced via doxxing.
I'm a single female and live alone. I don't want my personal address available to every pervert/troll/angered citizen that wants it after visiting my small website. Seemingly innocent topics, like vegan cooking, can spark outrage in certain individuals.This change is being pushed by US entertainment companies, who told Congress in March that privacy for domain registration should be allowed only in "limited circumstances." These and other companies want new tools to discover the identities of website owners whom they want to accuse of copyright and trademark infringement, preferably without a court order. They don't need a new mechanism for this—subpoenas for discovery of the identities of website owners do regularly issue [PDF].
The limited value of this change is manifestly outweighed by the risks to website owners who will suffer a higher risk of harassment, intimidation and identity theft. The ability to speak anonymously protects people with unpopular or marginalized opinions, allowing them to speak and be heard without fear of harm. It also protects whistleblowers who expose crime, waste, and corruption.
At this point, we should be considering changing the default to private, instead of charging people more money to maintain their privacy, not moving in the other direction and making more people vulnerable to harassment, threats, and stalking.
This proposal is terrifying for anyone who has an online presence and tends to attract the attention of determined harassers, and it could be the death knell for communities doing social justice work and/or communities run by anyone who is a member of a disproportionately targeted population: Women of any description, people of color, queer folks, trans* people, people who do fat and/or disability advocacy, etc.
We need to take action and make our voices heard in opposition to this proposal.
1. Sign the petition at savedomainprivacy.org. You can also use the phone and email tool of another coalition at respectourprivacy.com.
2. Until July 7th, send your comments by email to comments-ppsai-initial-05may15@icann.org.
If you prefer to send an email, and would like a boilerplate, the text of the petition can help get you started with the basic points.
Teaspoons ahoy!
Question of the Day
Suggested by Shaker iwillbedamned: "What's your favorite part about getting older?"
Apart from the fact that it is, as they say, better than the alternative, my favorite part of getting older is the attendant perspective that grants the ability to give zero fucks about many of the things that wracked me with insecurities when I was younger.
Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime
[Content Note: There is a strobe-light effect in this video.]
Gloria Estefan: "Turn the Beat Around (Remix)"
Cat to Bear: Get Lost
A bear came wandering up to the back door of the home in which the cat in residence was none too pleased about the situation:
Video Description: A black bear is seen investigating around a glass door. On the other side of the door, inside the house, a brown tabby cat crouches low and watches. The bear looks through the glass and the cat raises its head. As the bear leans forward, the cat LEAPS at the glass, right at the bear's face, and the bear backs up quickly and wanders away.
LOL! Good cat.
[Via Stacey.]
The Wednesday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by footprints.
Recommended Reading:
TLC: Federal Employee Health Plans Eliminate Blanket Exclusions of Healthcare Services Related to Gender Transition
Sarah: [Content Note: War on agency; cissexism; possibly NSFW sexualized image at top of piece] These 15 States Got a Failing Grade for Reproductive Rights. Is Yours One of Them?
Stephanie: [CN: Terrorism; white supremacist patriarchy; racist violence] On Using White Womanhood to Justify Racism and White Terrorism
Michael: Harvard Student Becomes the First Trans Man to Compete on a U.S. College Men's Swimming Team
Jenn: [CN: Racism; racist slur and imagery] Don Lemon Is Literally Trolling Black Americans
Julia: [CN: Misogyny; film spoilers] Jurassic World Is Prehistorically Sexist
Timothy: The Talks: Stephen Dypiangco & Patrick Epino on "Awesome Asian Bad Guys"
George: The Best Weather Photos of the Year
Leave your links and recommendations in comments...
Jim Webb: The Worst.
[Content Note: White supremacy; slavery.]
Former Republican and current Democrat Jim Webb, who has been rumored to be considering a run for the presidency, weighed in on the Confederate flag issue today on Facebook, and it's quite a doozy:
Just to be clear: This dude just said that the Confederate flag, a symbol of the pro-slavery side of a Civil War that quite literally divided the country, should not be used as a "symbol that divides us."
All the mirthless laughter that the multiverse can fucking hold.
He also says that the Confederate flag has "been used for racist and other purposes in recent decades," as if there is any other purpose or ever has been in 150 years. Just because someone claims it's about "rebellion" or "heritage" or "pride" doesn't erase its profoundly racist origins, of which it continues to be a symbol today.
(And let us not pretend that every white person's claim of "rebellion" or "heritage" or "pride" isn't itself deeply embedded with white supremacy.)
He further urges us to "remember that honorable Americans fought on both sides in the Civil War, including slave holders in the Union Army." I'm sorry WHUT? Northern slave-holders were honorable?
Webb got lost deep in the weeds of his concern trolling on behalf of Southern White Men, which is one of his favorite pastimes.
And then he wraps this pile of garbage in a trash bow with a call for unity and the absurd claim that the US was "founded on the principle of mutual respect." SAYS WHO, white man?
There ain't enough shut up in the world for this guy.
Quote of the Day
[Content Note: Fat hatred; diet talk.]
"Weight Watchers: When your study showed that your average participant lost around about 10 pounds in six months and kept off half of that for two years, your chief scientist, Karen Miller-Kovach, said: 'It's nice to see this validation of what we've been doing.' If you are so comfortable with those numbers, why doesn't your advertising say 'Join Weight Watchers and maybe lose 5 pounds in two years' with before and after pictures of people who have lost 5 pounds?"—Ragen Chastain, asking some excellent questions of diet companies.
There is much more at the link, and please feel welcome and encouraged to leave your own questions for diet companies in comments.
Dear Diet Companies: Do you not find it absurd that you purport to care about fat people's health, but offer "weight loss" solutions that are incompatible with health for many, many fat people?
Daily Dose of Cute
Dudley, being his inimitable self.
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today...
[Content Note: Terrorism; death; death penalty] Victims are giving statements today at the sentencing hearing for Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who will be formally sentenced today. "The same federal jury that earlier this year found Tsarnaev, 21, guilty of killing four people and injuring 264 in the bombing and its aftermath voted in May to sentence him to death by lethal injection. U.S. District Judge George O'Toole on Wednesday will order the punishment."
[CN: Police brutality; racism; misogyny] In November of last year, Tanisha Anderson, a 37-year-old black woman from Ohio who was bipolar, died in police custody. Her death was ruled a homicide by the Cuyahoga County medical examiner, but no charges have been brought against the officers. Now, the prosecutor's office has asked the Cuyahoga County sheriff to begin an investigation into Anderson's death. Meanwhile, her family has filed a civil lawsuit against the city and against the officers, seeking damages and also something even looking a little bit like justice.
[CN: Terrorism; white supremacy] According to a study by the Washington-based research organization The New America Foundation, white USians are the biggest terror threat in the United States. NAF "did a review of 'terror' attacks on US soil since Sept. 11, 2001 and found that most of them were carried out by radical anti-government groups or white supremacists. Almost twice as many people have died in attacks by right-wing groups in America than have died in attacks by Muslim extremists. Of the 26 attacks since 9/11 that the group defined as terror, 19 were carried out by non-Muslims. Yet there are no white Americans languishing inside the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay. And there are no drones dropping bombs on gatherings of military-age males in the country's lawless border regions."
[CN: War on agency; misogyny; racism; class warfare] Goddammit: "Senate Republicans released a funding proposal on Tuesday that would significantly cut funding for women's health, including low-income family planning and teen pregnancy prevention. ...The spending bill proposed by the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on labor, education, and health and human services would cut Title X by 10 percent, or $28.7 million. A vulnerable population that is 90 percent women, about half Black or Latino, and mostly uninsured or young relies on Title X clinics for birth control, testing for HIV and sexually transmitted infections, and cancer screenings. Some recipients have no other contact with the health-care system except through Title X."
[CN: White supremacy] Amazon, eBay, and Etsy are among the retailers who have also announced an intention to stop selling merchandise emblazoned with the Confederate flag. And in Alabama: "On the order of Gov. Robert Bentley, the Confederate battle flag which stands at the foot of the confederate memorial on the state Capitol grounds was taken down this morning. Two workers came out of the Capitol building about 8:20 a.m. and with no fanfare quickly and quietly took the flag down. They declined to answer questions. Moments later Gov. Bentley emerged from the Capitol on his way to an appearance in Hackleburg. Asked if he had ordered the flag taken down, the governor said, 'Yes I did.'"
Dr. Jill Stein has announced that she is running for president again as a Green Party candidate. I honestly don't know a whole lot about her; I'm generally favorably disposed toward the Green Party platform, but I haven't always been a huge fan of their candidates. Still, I'll try to get up to speed on her platform and include news about her in the Primarily Speaking posts.
RIP Albert Evans, one of the most well-known black ballet dancers in the US and a star of the New York City Ballet. "All of us at New York City Ballet are heartbroken by Albert's passing," said NYCB's Ballet Master in Chief Peter Martins. "There was simply no one else like him. He was an absolute joy, beloved by dancers, staff and audiences members alike. The company will never be the same without him."
Something something white actor cast as the new Spider-Man, because of course.
All right then: "US military to develop Star Wars-style hoverbikes with British company."
And finally! A ridiculously adorable time-lapse video of two golden retriever puppies growing up from 11 weeks to 46 weeks old. Awwwww.
Primarily Speaking
[Content Note: Racism.]
The clown car is getting so packed that soon there won't be any room for any many clowns, and they'll have to relocate to a circus tent. Especially now that Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal is fixing to make it a baker's dozen later today:
Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal is poised to join the crowded race for the Republican presidential nomination with an announcement at a rally outside New Orleans on Wednesday.Sounds about right.
...Jindal would be the 13th Republican to enter the race, if he does so at the event at 4 p.m. local time. He is polling near the back of the pack: A May Bloomberg Politics/Des Moines Register Iowa Poll found him tied in second-to-last place behind former New York Governor George Pataki with 1 percent of the vote.
In other YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME news, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie will reportedly officially announce that he, too, is running for president as early as next week.
Terrific! I hope we get at least one new presidential candidate per week every week for the next year and that there are fully just sixty-eleven Republican candidates by the Republican convention! Come on, Louie Gohmert! Get busy, Jim Inhofe! What's your hesitation, Mitch Daniels? Get off your ass, George H.W. Bush—you only served one term! Let's get it together, Ghost of Ronald Reagan! EVERYONE MUST RUN!
*falls over*
Anyway. I'm sure all the Republican candidates are up to some fun and amazing garbage, but, ONCE AGAIN, Professor of Bible Bigotry Mike Huckabee is today's recipient of the WORST CLOWN IN THE CLOWN CAR AWARD.
Why? Because this fucking guy actually said these actual words from his actual filthy mouth: "I keep hearing people saying we need more conversations about race. Actually we don't need more conversations. What we need is conversions because the reconciliations that changes people is not a racial reconciliation, it's a spiritual reconciliation when people are reconciled to God. When I love God and I know that God created other people regardless of their color as much as he made me, I don't have a problem with racism. It's solved!"
Fuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhk youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu.
In other "what the shit did you just say?" news, Hillary Clinton used the occasion of speaking to a mostly black crowd at Christ the King United Church of Christ near Ferguson, Missouri, where Michael Brown was killed, to say that "all lives matter."
Clinton [said] 'America's struggles with race are far from finished."THUMBS ALL THE WAY DOWN. All the way the fuck down.
"We can't hide from hard truths about race and justice," she said. "We have to name them, own them, and change them."
...She said her mother, abandoned by her parents and forced to work as a teenager, taught her the importance of "kindness along the way from someone who believed she mattered.
"All lives matter," Clinton said.
So, here is a hard truth about race and justice that we have to name, own, and change: That all lives should matter, and matter equally, and wouldn't that be amazing, but they don't. I don't mean in some spiritual or philosophical way in which, yes, all lived human life is equally valuable (although plenty of terrible people disagree on that, too); I mean in the practical, real-world way in which black lives are routinely valued less than white lives.
"All lives matter" isn't a rallying cry for equality and justice; its context is very specific—pushback against black people and their allies saying BLACK LIVES MATTER. "All lives matter" is a silencing strategy to flatten the discourse and deemphasize the specific challenges and particular violent hatred faced by black USians.
If Clinton is using "all lives matter" that way, it's a problem. And if she doesn't understand that "all lives matter" is used that way, it's a problem. No matter how she was using it, it's a problem the end.
In other news, former Republican and current Democratic presidential candidate Lincoln Chafee says: "One of my dorm mates in 10th grade is running for president also, Jeb Bush. We had some spirited games of ping-pong and our paths have not crossed much since high school, but I think we still consider each other friends." Great quote! Spirited games of ping-pong. Boy, it sure is a small and amazing world when you're a rich white guy, huh?
Talk about these things! Or don't. Whatever makes you happy. Life is short.
Freddie Gray Autopsy: "High-Energy Injury"
[Content Note: Police brutality; racism; descriptions of violence; death.]
A month after six officers were indicted on various charges in the death of Freddie Gray, who was critically injured while in police custody and died a week later, the Baltimore Sun has obtained a copy of the medical examiner's autopsy report, which details that Gray "suffered a single 'high-energy injury' to his neck and spine—most likely caused when the police van in which he was riding suddenly decelerated."
Though Gray was loaded into the van on his belly, the medical examiner surmised that he may have gotten to his feet and was thrown into the wall during an abrupt change in direction. He was not belted in, but his wrists and ankles were shackled, putting him "at risk for an unsupported fall during acceleration or deceleration of the van."The suspicion has been that Gray was given a "rough ride" by police officers, and the autopsy report seems to support that theory.
...In concluding his death was a homicide, Assistant Medical Examiner Carol H. Allan wrote that it was "not an unforeseen event that a vulnerable individual was injured during operation of the vehicle, and that without prompt medical attention, the injury would prove fatal."
By way of reminder, Freddie Gray, a young black man, was arrested after Baltimore police saw him "[flee] unprovoked upon noticing police presence," according to court documents. He took off running when he saw police, so they gave chase, detained him, and searched him. Witnesses say they heard a Taser being used, but police say a Taser was never used. During the search, police found a small pocketknife of legal size. Nonetheless, Gray was arrested on a weapon charge, pressed into the sidewalk as he told police he needed his asthma inhaler, and was then thrown into the back of a police van where his larynx was crushed and his spine 80% severed at the neck.
Meanwhile, Dylann Roof, a young white man who admittedly murdered nine black women and men in cold blood and then evaded capture for 16 hours, was gently taken into custody, given a warm meal, placed in a bulletproof vest, and delivered safely to jail.
Freddie Gray had committed no crime. If he'd been treated as well as a white mass murderer, he'd still be alive.
Dash Cam Footage from Roof's Arrest
[Content Note: Violence; white supremacy; discussion of police brutality.]
Dash cam footage from Dylann Roof's arrest has been released. It shows several police cruisers pulling up to Roof's car, police officers calmly approaching his vehicle, taking him into custody, frisking him, cuffing him, searching his vehicle, and putting him into a cruiser, then high-fiving each other.
A couple of thoughts about the video and coverage of the video:
1. The video confirms reports that Roof was taken into custody in a very calm way. Despite the fact that he was presumed to be armed, and was, he is not roughly pulled from the vehicle and thrown to the ground or injured in any way. He is allowed to get out of his car on his own, while officers reholster their weapons and calmly take him into custody. Obviously this is a huge difference from video footage we have seen of police dealing with black people suspected of crimes far less serious than Roof's, or simply asking why they have been pulled over.
2. Many headlines about the video talk about police celebrating his capture, fist-bumping and high-fiving one another. Which, particularly alongside the news that the police report states police "pulled him over because he was driving too close to a tractor-trailer," seemingly ignoring the woman who identified Roof and followed him for a half hour before police arrived, stands to give the impression that the officers were simply being obnoxiously self-congratulatory. But what the video actually shows is a black officer on the scene turning to his white colleagues and high-fiving them. It feels a lot more personal than professionally celebratory.
Which is not to suggest police didn't have reason to be pleased for successfully taking a violent white supremacist mass murderer into custody. It's just that it's easy (at least it was for me) to lose a key aspect of that celebration beneath the legitimate anger at police treating a white suspect very differently than black suspects are often treated. And unless one watches the video, one won't know about it, because one doesn't find that aspect in the reporting.
Anyway.
I will say once more: If police are capable of taking an armed mass murderer into custody so calmly, I don't want to hear any goddamn excuses for police brutality against unarmed black women and men ever fucking again.
