cabulous rhymes with "fabulous"

Life Lessons

karnythia:

Had a conversation with kid #1 (12 years old), about how to handle himself if he’s been stopped by the cops, or someone like Zimmerman. Somewhere in the middle of explaining how to protect his head & neck if a cop decided to kick his ass (happened to my husband when he was 13), and how to respond if a cop calls him a nigger (happened to me at 12) I had this sudden ridiculous urge to start screaming. I didn’t.

I kept talking to him, and he mentioned racist kids at his school & how there’s one teacher who lets them get away with it, but who threatens to write him up if he says anything back. And I asked him if he wanted us to get involved & he said no because he’d already handled it. How did he handle it? He told the teacher to go ahead & write him up and then they could all talk to the principal about the things she lets kids say to him. She left him alone after that so he doesn’t want me to come wreck shit.

Which…says a lot about my kid & about our family I guess, but the reality is that it’s good that he’s learning to defend himself against the system. And shit like that is why we stay in cities & don’t live in suburbs. My parents moved me to burbs in high school, and it was a lot more than one teacher turning a blind eye to racism. I don’t have any answers for other parents of young black males. None. I’m muddling through & hoping that this can all be life lessons he never needs to use.

But, his 19 year old cousin is planning to come over & talk to him about dealing with the cops because he’s been there and done that. And I just…we’re passing down through the generations life lessons on how to handle/avoid police brutality because it’s just that necessary. And people want to claim that America is post racial, or racism isn’t widespread. How many individual acts does it take to make up a system? How many beatings, rapes, & deaths will it take for that system to be acknowledged by everyone?

karnythia:

5-Year-Old Handcuffed, Charged With Battery On Officer

strugglingtobeheard:

crankyskirt:

I was shaking with rage at one point watching the video. Fuck. Fuck.

And yet people are said to be overreacting when they say that there’s a war on against black and brown children.

Can’t even respond to this further, because all that’s coming to mind is a stream of cusswords and despair.

Your words are telling me this needs to be watched later. But shared nonetheless. 

The plan to straighten out a 5 year old with ADHD by having a police officer scare is horrible enough, but to then have the school lie to the mother about what happened & the cop zip tie the kid’s hands & feet? Yeah, tell me again about how post racial we are while a 5 year is treated like a criminal. I want this woman to sue & sue & sue because nothing about this was handled correctly. Special ed services are ot supposed to work this way & the school knows it. But, he’s black & male so I guess the fact that there are other, healthier, far more productive ways to intervene doesn’t matter. Also, do not read the comments on the article. Really, your blood pressure & your computer screen will thank you.

Anyone going to an OWS protest should take pepperspray with them.

karnythia:

velocicrafter:

malcolm-ecstasy:

If it’s used on you, use it on them.

considering how the police have treated people who were otherwise acting peacefully & unarmed, this is unequivocally the worst advice possible.

Let us be clear, anyone who does this runs the risk of dying. Because pepper spray is technically a chemical weapon & some cop will use that as an excuse to shoot. DO NOT DO THIS IF YOU WANT TO LIVE!

(Source: brobbablynot)

thinking about White people discovering police brutality via OWS

I think there’s a lot to be said for discussion of how the War on Drugs in the 1980s, and specifically how it replaced the War on Poverty (which was actually successfully lowering poverty rates in the US in the 60s and 70s), directly led to this mindless White trust in police.

When I was a little kid, I was afraid of the police, even though my parents never gave me (to my recollection) specific instructions on dealing with them, a luxury made possible by us being middle-class White people.  I do think I absorbed the attitude from them, though, and that it had a lot to do with them being former hippies.  My father frequently talks about how, living in Tucson, Arizona in the 1970s, the one thing you could count on unifying absolutely everyone was that they would side with you against the cops.

Even then, of course, POC had a lot more to fear from the police than White hippies, and brutality against White protesters was met with much more widespread shock and outrage; compare the national reaction to Kent State versus the lack thereof to Jackson State, less than two weeks later.

So this isn’t a new pattern, which makes it even more depressing how quickly the majority of White people lose the institutional memory that the police are not their friends.  For the most part, they can afford to.

A 14-year-old boy got into a fight at a school bus stop and the school district’s police officer responded by shooting him to death

karnythia:

maevele:

abaldwin360:

SAN ANTONIO (CN) - A 14-year-old boy got into a fight at a school bus stop and the school district’s police officer responded by shooting him to death, the boy’s mother says. She says the cop had been reprimanded 16 times in the previous 4 years, suspended without pay 5 times, and “recommended for termination for insubordination,” but the school kept him on the force “without remedial training.”

Denys Lopez Moreno sued the Northside Independent School District, of San Antonio, the district’s Chief of Police John Page and the alleged shooter, Daniel Alvarado, in Federal Court.

Lopez says her son, Derek, got into a fight with another boy at a school bus stop and punched the other boy once, in November 2010.

“Defendant, Alvarado, having responded to a call regarding a bus with a flat tire, witnessed Derek strike the other boy. He ordered Derek to ‘freeze.’ Derek hesitated and then ran from defendant Alvarado,” according to the complaint.

“In his patrol car, Alvarado began chasing Derek in the neighborhood across the street from the high school. Alvarado lost sight of the boy in the neighborhood and returned to the location of the school boy fight. At that time, he called dispatch. Dispatch recordings reflect that his supervisor directed Alvarado to stay with the other boy and to ‘not do any big search over there.’

“Ignoring his supervisor’s orders to ‘stay with the victim and get the information from him,’ Alvarado placed the second boy into the patrol car and sped into the neighborhood to search for Derek.”

Lopez says her son jumped over a fence and hid in a shed in the back yard of a house. The homeowner saw him, called 911, and alerted a neighbor, who pointed Alvarado in Derek’s direction. Lopez says her son never left the shed, never approached the house or threatened the homeowner or her daughters, and posed no threat to anyone.

Nonetheless, she says: “In violation of NISD police department procedures, Alvarado drew his weapon immediately after exiting the patrol car. With his gun drawn, he rushed through the gate and into the back yard. Within seconds from arriving at the residence, Alvarado shot and killed the unarmed boy hiding in the shed.”

[FULL STORY]

Jesus fucking christ. 

Two boys have a fist fight & a cop shoots one to death, but we’re supposed to teach our kids to trust authority? Yeah…no. Whether anyone wants to face it or not, police forces across the country contain some deeply flawed individuals who have no business with a badge or a gun. You cannot tell at a glance which one you’re dealing with & thus you cannot trust the police.