![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
solarbirdShit is, as they say, going down. Including at the White House. This stream at the White House is live as I post this.
- Police intentionally targeting WAVE Channel 3 journalists with pepper bullets in Louisville, Kentucky, live on the air.
- Police assault protester shooting video with phone
- Police assault woman on street, sending her to ER
- Portland Justice Centre trashed, set on fire, protest continuing [EDITOR: Portland police have been seen - IMO, correctly - as collaborating with Proud Boys violence.]
- Protesters break windows, clash with police in downtown Seattle
- George Floyd protests spread nationwide
- My fellow white women: reacting in the moment as an ally is deeply important. You need to PRACTICE. You need to have a mental check list in your head of what to do. [THREAD]
- I'm not saying Donald Trump got "When the looting starts, the shooting starts" directly from Walter Headley, a racist Miami police chief, but there's a well-above-zero chance he did.
- Minneapolis cop who knelt on man’s neck charged with murder
- WSU’s Noah Williams shares 2018 account of being held at gunpoint by King County sheriff deputy with O’Dea teammate Paolo Banchero
- Derek Chauvin’s wife wants a divorce: Her ‘utmost sympathy’ lies with George Floyd
- This livestream has some of the most violent clashes between protesters and Secret Service that I have seen in front of the White House tonight.
- Pentagon puts military police on alert to go to Minneapolis
- The Civil Rights Movement shattered white evangelical identity
- Don Lemon Lets Trump Have It On George Floyd: ‘That’s How Black People Feel’
- Police shoot at SUV that hit 2 people during lengthy, tense San Jose protest
----- 1 -----
Police intentionally targeting WAVE Channel 3 journalists with pepper bullets in Louisville, Kentucky, live on the air.
29 May 2020
https://twitter.com/ALT_uscis/status/1266557525094252544
----- 2 -----
"A fight broke out between a demonstrator and police" when overhead footage clearly shows a direct attack by first one officer than more on someone filming them. Double-handed baton to the jaw and throat, cop wasn't fucking around.
29 May 2020
https://twitter.com/ALT_uscis/status/1266547749627080705
----- 3 -----
You can see in this video of a woman assaulted by a police offer if you step through it that the officer grabs her arm first, initiating contact. She's saying something to him - probably yelling something at him - but the officer is the one getting violent.
Later updates from OP say that she got facetime contact with the woman the officer assaulted, and that she is okay.
29 May 2020
https://twitter.com/whitney_hu/status/1266540710188195843
----- 4 -----
Portland Justice Centre trashed, set on fire, protest continuing
29 May 2020
https://twitter.com/MrOlmos/status/1266612979669143553
[THREAD, many video elements]
[EDITOR: Portland police have been seen - IMO, correctly - as collaborating with Proud Boys violence.]
----- 5 -----
Protesters break windows, clash with police in downtown Seattle
By Amanda Snyder and Elise Takahama
Seattle Times staff reporters
May 29, 2020
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/protesters-break-windows-clash-with-police-in-downtown-seattle/
[EDITOR: This is on a dramatically smaller scale than most protests, but is ongoing as I type this at 11:48pm]
Crowds of protesters broke windows and clashed with police Friday night in downtown Seattle.
People began gathering at Hing Hay Park in Seattle’s Chinatown International District around 7 p.m. to speak out against police brutality in the first of several demonstrations this weekend, all sparked by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
The group then started marching toward downtown Seattle, chanting “Black Lives Matter” and “George Floyd,” who was killed during a confrontation with Minneapolis police Monday.
Protesters started using fireworks and pepper spray, while Seattle police blocked off several streets, including Fifth Avenue and Madison Street.
KOMO-TV reported people started smashing the windows of several buildings downtown, including an Amazon Go store.
----- 6 -----
George Floyd protests spread nationwide
By Melissa Macaya, Mike Hayes, Fernando Alfonso III, Daniella Diaz, Jessie Yeung, Steve George, Ivana Kottasová and Nick Thompson, CNN
Updated 12:38 a.m. ET, May 30, 2020
https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/george-floyd-protest-updates-05-28-20/index.html
[various]
----- 7 -----
Tess Sharpe
twitter.com/sharpegirl
28 May 2020
https://twitter.com/sharpegirl/status/1266062729011441666
[THREAD - go read it]
My fellow white women: reacting in the moment as an ally is deeply important. You need to PRACTICE. You need to have a mental check list in your head of what to do.
----- 8 -----
James Venes
twitter.com/jamesvenes
29 May 2020
https://twitter.com/jamesvenes/status/1266479227794124800
I'm not saying Donald Trump got "When the looting starts, the shooting starts" directly from Walter Headley, a racist Miami police chief, but there's a well-above-zero chance he did.
[EMBEDDED IMAGE WITH SOURCE]
----- 9 -----
Minneapolis cop who knelt on man’s neck charged with murder
By AMY FORLITI
and TIM SULLIVAN
May 28, 2020 at 10:58 pm
https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/nation/george-floyd-protesters-set-minneapolis-police-station-afire/
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The police officer who was seen on video kneeling on the neck of George Floyd, a handcuffed black man who died in custody after pleading that he could not breathe, was arrested Friday and charged with murder in a case that sparked protests across the United States and violence in Minneapolis.
Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman said Derek Chauvin was charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter. Freeman did not provide immediate details, but said a criminal complaint would be made available later Friday and that more charges were possible.
In the video, Chauvin is seen kneeling on Floyd’s neck as Floyd is on the ground. He gradually becomes motionless as Chauvin and three other officers ignore bystanders’ shouts to get off him. Freeman said the investigation continues into the other three officers, but that authorities “felt it appropriate to focus on the most dangerous perpetrator.”
Freeman highlighted the “extraordinary speed” in charging the case just four days after Floyd’s death, but also defended himself against questions about why it did not happen sooner. He said his office needed time to put together evidence, including what he called the “horrible” video by a bystander. He said he would not bring a case unless he had enough evidence to prove the charges beyond a reasonable doubt.
----- 10 -----
WSU’s Noah Williams shares 2018 account of being held at gunpoint by King County sheriff deputy with O’Dea teammate Paolo Banchero
By Theo Lawson
The Spokesman-Review
May 29, 2020
https://www.seattletimes.com/sports/wsus-noah-williams-shares-2018-account-of-being-held-at-gunpoint-by-police-officer-with-odea-teammate-paolo-banchero/
It took nearly two years for Noah Williams to open up, but three days after a viral video showing a white police officer in Minneapolis kneeling on the neck of a Black man, George Floyd, caused nationwide protests, the Washington State guard felt the time was finally appropriate.
“A lot of African Americans have a krazy story they have with the pigs,” Williams tweeted Thursday night. “I never really had the (courage) to really talk about my situation. But here’s a story that happen few summers back with my Lul brother P and I.”
----- 11 -----
Derek Chauvin’s wife wants a divorce: Her ‘utmost sympathy’ lies with George Floyd
May 29, 2020
By Bob Brigham
https://www.rawstory.com/2020/05/derek-chauvins-wife-wants-a-divorce-her-utmost-sympathy-lies-with-george-floyd/
The wife of former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin released a statement on Friday announcing she was seeking a divorce.
Kellie Chauvin released the statement through her lawyer, who spoke with her Friday evening.
“She is devastated by Mr. [George] Floyd’s death and her utmost sympathy lies with his family, with his loved ones and with everyone who is grieving tragedy.”
----- 12 -----
Hunter Walker
twitter.com/hunterw
30 May 2200
https://twitter.com/hunterw/status/1266616692446199808
This livestream has some of the most violent clashes between protesters and Secret Service that I have seen in front of the White House tonight. They were fighting with hands and riot shields all the way into Lafayette Park
[EMBEDDED VIDEO]
----- 13 -----
Pentagon puts military police on alert to go to Minneapolis
JAMES LAPORTA
https://apnews.com/cf9947a3ca9f3225f9645fd330403eae
DELRAY BEACH, Fla. (AP) — As unrest spread across dozens of American cities on Friday, the Pentagon took the rare step of ordering the Army to put several active-duty U.S. military police units on the ready to deploy to Minneapolis, where the police killing of George Floyd sparked the widespread protests.
Soldiers from Fort Bragg in North Carolina and Fort Drum in New York have been ordered to be ready to deploy within four hours if called, according to three people with direct knowledge of the orders. Soldiers in Fort Carson, in Colorado, and Fort Riley in Kansas have been told to be ready within 24 hours. The people did not want their names used because they were not authorized to discuss the preparations.
The get-ready orders were sent verbally on Friday, after President Donald Trump asked Defense Secretary Mark Esper for military options to help quell the unrest in Minneapolis after protests descended into looting and arson in some parts of the city.
Trump made the request on a phone call from the Oval Office on Thursday night that included Esper, National Security Advisor Robert O’ Brien and several others. The president asked Esper for rapid deployment options if the Minneapolis protests continued to spiral out of control, according to one of the people, senior Pentagon official who was on the call.
----- 14 -----
The Civil Rights Movement shattered white evangelical identity
May 28, 2020 by Fred Clark
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2020/05/28/the-civil-rights-movement-shattered-white-evangelical-identity/
Let’s go to the videotape. This goes back before my living memory, to several years before either I or David French was born. The religious right as we currently know it hadn’t been born yet either, since this video is from the summer of 1963, when Jerry Falwell was still just 30 years old, Sam Alito was barely a teenager, and The Liar Tony Perkins was still an infant.
Specifically, this video is from September 15, 1963, just after the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, which killed four young girls attending Sunday school. It’s a special edition of “Our Protestant Heritage” — a public television program produced by the Protestant Council of the City of New York. The host is Dr. Thomas C. Kilgore Jr., a black Baptist pastor and local civil rights leader. The guests are the Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr and the writer James Baldwin.
I can’t get the video to embed here, but click over to this page from the Presbyterian Historical Society — “The meaning of the Birmingham tragedy, 1963” — and watch the whole thing.
Baldwin and Niebuhr, as this video demonstrates, were exceptionally clear-sighted, insightful, thoughtful people. And, yes, they were ahead of the curve in understanding and articulating the great moral crisis that America was forced to confront during the period we now call the Civil Rights Movement. But over the years to follow, the vast majority of Americans came to understand that moral crisis — that moral test and moral crucible — in precisely the same way that Baldwin and Niebuhr describe it here. Almost everyone came, eventually, to understand the monumental stakes of that crisis, even if most of those people couldn’t do so with the comprehensive framework of Reinhold Niebuhr or the stark clarity and precision of James Baldwin.
The conclusion that Baldwin and Niebuhr present — a conclusion that was already undeniable by 1963 — is that white American Christianity had failed this moral test. On the greatest, most significant moral question of the day, white Christianity had proved itself to be morally incompetent. White Christianity was, at best, irrelevant and irresponsible. At worst, it was complicit.
----- 15 -----
Don Lemon Lets Trump Have It On George Floyd: ‘That’s How Black People Feel’
“No one wants to hear from the Birther-in-Chief,” the CNN host says.
headshot
By Ed Mazza
29 May 2020
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/don-lemon-donald-trump-george-floyd_n_5ed08738c5b600dfee30d144
CNN’s Don Lemon says President Donald Trump’s comments ring hollow when it comes to the death of George Floyd, a Black man killed during an arrest in Minneapolis, setting off days of unrest.
“Nobody wants to hear from the White House or the attorney general right now,” Lemon said.
Video of the arrest shows Floyd, in handcuffs and face-down on the street, saying “I can’t breathe” as an officer presses a knee into his neck. He was pronounced dead later.
Trump called the footage a “shocking sight” and said the FBI is investigating.
But Lemon pointed toward Trump’s long history of racist rhetoric as indirectly “contributing” to the situation with a brief recap of the president’s lowlights ― and said “no one wants to hear” from him right now.
Trump, he reminded viewers, called for the death penalty for the now-exonerated Central Park Five, claimed there were “very fine people on both sides” when white supremacists clashed with protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, and was a leader of the racist “birther” conspiracy that falsely claimed then-President Barack Obama wasn’t born in the U.S.
And Lemon pointed out that Trump attacked NFL players as “sons of bitches” for taking a knee in silent protest of police violence against Black Americans.
----- 16 -----
Police shoot at SUV that hit 2 people during lengthy, tense San Jose protest
San Jose police fired gas canisters at protesters, then county deputy shot at SUV that hit 2 demonstrators
By Fiona Kelliher, Kerry Crowley, Maggie Angst, Robert Salonga and Julia Prodis Sulek, Bay Area News Group
PUBLISHED: May 29, 2020 at 3:39 p.m. | UPDATED: May 30, 2020 at 1:33 a.m.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/05/29/protestors-gather-in-oakland-san-jose-to-decry-police-violence-george-floyds-death/
Protests in San Jose over the police killing of a Minnesota man escalated multiple times Friday afternoon and evening, including the shutdown of Highway 101, police lobbing canisters of tear gas at crowds and a deputy firing at an SUV that ran over protesters.
The vehicle was captured on video around 9:05 p.m. after it drove toward a group of demonstrators at Sixth and Santa Clara streets, then backed into the crowd, hitting at least two people before it sped away.
“The whole crowd started chasing the car but it got away,” said Saul Duarte, a protester that filmed the incident. “After that, everyone surrounded the two injured people and tried helping but the cops started tear-gassing us.”
