Monthly Archives: August 2022

OVER the past few years, the powerful Black Lives Matter movement has sprung up to protest police brutality against black people.

Thousands of Black Lives Matter protesters are set to take to the streets this week in response to the shocking death of George Floyd, who died in police custody in Minneapolis, Minnesota in May 2020.

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The civil rights group came about in response to extreme police brutality which culminated in the shooting dead of three African-American men in 2013.

Organisers say the movement's mission is to "eradicate white supremacy and build local power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities".

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Black Lives Matter regularly campaigns against institutional racism and violence towards black people, and speaks out against police brutality and racial inequality.

More than 1000 people were killed by police in the US in 2015, nearly a third of them black.

This is despite the fact that black people represent just 13 per cent of the population.

Against this background there was the fatal shootings of Philando Castile in Minnesota and Alton Sterling in Louisiana.

This sparked the Twitter slogan #blacklivesmatter.

Black Lives Matter was started seven years years ago in response to the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the shooting death of Trayvon Martin.

It began with a simple hashtag - #BlackLivesMatter - before people began taking to the streets to protest against inequality and violence.

The phrase had first been used in a Facebook post by Alicia Garza called 'A Love Letter to Black People' following Zimmerman's acquittal in 2013, before it was shared with the hashtag and a movement was borne online.

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The movement was founded by three community organisers and civil rights activists - Alica Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi.

The three women had first met through an organisation which trains community organisers.

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The Facebook post by Garza was picked up by Cullors, who shared the blog post online with the BLM hashtag, and supported by Tometi.

There are a number of different pages where people can donate and support Black Lives Matter.

AGoFundMe page for Floyd has already raised millions of dollars, while there is also the Minnesota Freedom Fund.

TheBail Project helps people post bail who cannot afford it, and all Black Lives Matter petitions can be found on the movement's website.

A Change.org petition isdemanding justice for Floyd.

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What is Black Lives Matter and how did it start? - The US Sun

In the days since the FBI raided former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate, many Trump supporters have pushed for the federal agency to be defunded. Black Lives Matter (BLM) has responded by insinuating such messaging is hypocritical given conservative backlash against calls made by progressive groups to defund the police.

One such instance came soon after Republican Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida threatened to give "not one more damn penny" to the FBI and other such agencies. BLM responded in a tweet to Gaetz that "you are corny AF. But we'll work with you to defund and dismantle the FBI. Welcome to #DefundThePolice."

For many people, BLM has become linked to the "defund the police" efforts. This happened after the groupwhich began as a grassroots, social justice movement but has also expanded into the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundationled protests around the world against police brutality. These protests grew in size and frequency in the wake of George Floyd's death in 2020, which is also when "defund the police" became a movement of its own.

On Thursday evening, BLM noted how Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Florida had also criticized the FBI. BLM tweeted out an illustration of a Black arm (labeled "abolitionists") joining hands with a white arm (with the phrase "Marjorie Taylor Greene's unhinged Twitter account" on it). "Defund the FBI" was written at the top.

"Y'all know that this is satire and we are WILDLY uninterested in partnering with her, right?" BLM wrote in a followup message. "We just thought it was funny how quickly they went from 'back the blue' to #DefundThePolice ..."

The BLM Twitter account also shared a tweet from conservative columnist Todd Starnes that read, "The FBI had been weaponized. Defund and Dismantle."

"Love this for us. Join us in our mission to divest federal resources from agencies like the FBI," the progressive group wrote in its caption above Starnes' message.

Similarly, after right-wing podcast host Liz Wheeler tweeted "Abolish the FBI," BLM shared her post with the comment: "Liz is an abolitionist girlie now."

BLM also retweeted various messages concerning the FBI's raid of Trump's estate, making it clear the group is by no means an ally of the former president.

Not everyone saw the same correlation between calls to defund the FBI and the movement to do the same with police departments. Investigative journalist Alex Rubinstein was among those who made the differentiation.

"Amazing to see so many braindead blue checks tweeting gotchas at Republicans for calling to defund the FBI, drawing false equivalencies between a federal domestic intelligence & law enforcement agency & local police departments," Rubinstein tweeted. "Yes, Republicans are hypocrites but this is dumb."

Newsweek has reached out to BLM for comment.

Read more here:

Black Lives Matter Calls Conservative Cry of 'Defund the FBI' Hypocritical - Newsweek

If you called yourself an anti-racist two years ago, show up, speak out, and keep pushing for change, now and in the future (Picture:Getty)

Living through a pandemic has done something strange to our perception of time. The summer of 2020 feels like it just happened, and it also feels like a lifetime ago.

It was a time of seismic change, as people took to the streets in their thousands to demand justice for the murder of George Floyd, and to protest against racial injustice in all its forms.

We may have been galvanised by the pressure cooker of nationwide lockdowns, but it was collective action on a scale that many of us have never seen in our lifetimes, and it felt transformational.

Racism was headline news for months, with every kind of institution as well as public and private companies facing unprecedented scrutiny over equality being forced to apologise for past racist behaviour, and pledging to make positive changes going forward.

Social media was awash with reading lists, graphics with information on how to do your part, and long, emotional captions about the importance of allyship.

Despite my skepticism about the flimsiness of social media activism and disdain for performative solidarity (shout out to the black squares on Instagram), I was hopeful. It really did feel as though this was a movement, not a moment as Keir Starmer was lambasted for saying and it was the focus on active anti-racism that made it feel genuinely sustainable.

For the first time, white people werent being allowed to simply hide behind a defence of not being racist more was being asked of them.

To be anti-racist is to oppose racism and promote racial tolerance, and that requires action.

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From speaking up when you encounter racism in public, to setting up initiatives to empower ethnic minority members of your workplace, or interacting with news, literature and campaigns that oppose racist ideologies, it was heartening to see colleagues, my wider friendship groups, and even high school friends on Facebook, engaging with this kind of behaviour.

But two years on, I can feel us hurtling backwards. Progress that was seemingly being made in the immediate aftermath of the BLM protests is now being undone, and I fear we will end up in an even worse position than where we started.

As the new season of the Premier League kicked off last week, it was announced that players would no longer take the knee in solidarity with Black Lives Matter before every game.

In July, the UKs first journalism prize for Black reporters, which was only launched in summer 2020, was scrapped in a push to improve overall diversity.

After sales of Black-authored titles soared up the charts in 2020, Black writers are still vastly underrepresented in publishing and there has been a23% drop in Black charactersin childrens bestsellers since 2020.

Admittedly, awards, book sales and anti-racist gestures like taking the knee, arent necessarily the most impactful elements of the movement, but there have been more significant examples of backwards steps too.

This week, new figures revealed that Black boys have been disproportionately targeted for strip searches by the Met Police. The Tory party leadership race has been riddled with dog-whistle language, including Rishi Sunak vowing to end woke nonsense, and both Sunak and Liz Truss ploughing ahead with plans to deport immigrants to Rwanda. The Forde Report revealed a hierarchy of racism, and discrimination against Black members of the Labour Party.

Its scary to think that in just two years after all the statue toppling, diversity initiatives, and fervent sharing of reading lists this is where we are now. Where are all the allies who pledged to push for change? Where are all the people who read the books, listened to the podcasts, and vowed to do the work? Where are all the anti-racistsprotesting these backpedals?

It could be argued that as other global crises unfold the rippling aftershocks of the pandemic, the cost of living, the growing impact of extreme weather now is not the time to focus on racial inequality. But now is exactly the time.

These crises are not single issues that exist in a vacuum, they intersect and overlap, and as each issue tightens its grip on society, it will be racially minoritised people who feel the compounded effects.

We need to acknowledge how the cost of living crisis and the climate emergency will disproportionately impact Black and brown people in this country, and we need people in power to take action to mitigate the looming catastrophesby recognising that we will not all be impacted equally, and providing funding and tangible support for the communities that will need it the most.

It simply isnt valid to suggest that we no longer need to push for racial equality, we need anti-racism more now than ever before.

As a Black mixed woman, it was painful to watch white people wake up to the realities of racism in 2020. But it is even more painful to watch them lose interest, to watch the plight of racial injustice fall off the agenda altogether.

We cant let the summer of 2020 be a moment, a fleeting trend that disappears into the archives when it is no longer headline-worthy. Now is not the time to revert to passive non-racism.

You dont get to pick up the anti-racist backpack and simply take it off because the load got too heavy.

If you called yourself an anti-racist two years ago, show up, speak out, and keep pushing for change, now and in the future. Being anti-racist has to be a lifelong philosophy, not just a hashtag.

Do you have a story youd like to share? Get in touch by emailing jess.austin@metro.co.uk.

Share your views in the comments below.

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Originally posted here:

What happened to all the anti-racists after Black Lives Matter? - Metro.co.uk

Defense attorney Shane Johnson said Provo police took only 26 minutes to look at evidence inside a car driven by Ken Dudley, a man who was shot during a Black Lives Matter protest on June 19, 2020, before giving the keys back.

Johnson, an attorney who represents the Salt Lake man accused of taking the shot, Jesse Taggart, said there is a chance that evidence in Dudleys Ford Excursion could have shown his client was justified in using deadly force during the Provo protest. Now, he said, they don't have that evidence to be able to show it to a jury.

"The investigators went in with a particular mindset. They were not going to entertain any evidence that would contravene that idea. But I think the evidence is actually more clear that it was an inherent bias on the part of the officers to essentially pick a winner between Mr. Dudley and Mr. Taggart," Johnson said Tuesday during a hearing on a motion to dismiss the charges against Taggart.

Taggart, 35, is charged with attempted aggravated murder, a first-degree felony, aggravated assault and discharge of a firearm with injury, second-degree felonies; and riot, a third-degree felony. Taggart pleaded not guilty to those charges and filed a motion in December to dismiss the case against him.

Fourth District Judge James Brady did not issue a decision Tuesday, but said he expects to make a ruling within the next two weeks after taking time to consider the arguments.

Johnson claimed that Dudley could have been charged with multiple crimes, according to an officer's testimony at a preliminary hearing in Taggart's case, but police or prosecutors chose not to file any charges against him.

Jesse Taggart, who is charged with shooting a man during a Black Lives Matter protest in Provo in 2020, is trying to get the charges against him dismissed.

Utah County Sheriffs Office

Taggart and others who were at the protest or viewed video of the incident have argued that he was attempting to use his car to force protesters to move by driving through them. Other reports say he simply was trying to get past the crowd and then hit the gas pedal to try to leave after being shot.

Johnson said he thinks there is "undeniable prejudice" in the case and says police acted more than negligently in not processing the crime scene inside Dudley's SUV thoroughly.

He listed multiple things that police said in previous court hearings that could be interpreted as bias, including one officer who said they had nightmares about Black Lives Matter protests coming to Provo, another officer who said Black Lives Matter protesters came to the community with "ill intent," and another who said Dudley was "shot and victimized."

Deputy Utah County attorney David Sturgill said he thinks Johnson is mischaracterizing the evidence and argued that there is no evidence that the items Johnson says he would like to investigate further would have helped Taggart's case.

"Whether it's exculpatory or even helpful or relevant is entirely based on speculation," the prosecutor said.

In his response to the motion to dismiss the case, Sturgill said Dudley was turning right onto Center Street in Provo when someone shot into his car, hitting his elbow and a second bullet hitting his steering wheel. Dudley then drove to the hospital where he was questioned by police.

Sturgill said the car was photographed thoroughly at that point. He argued that the motion to dismiss should not be granted and that the items sought by Taggart would not add significant evidentiary value to the case.

He also claimed that it is wrong for Johnson to say police were acting with bias and said officers could not have anticipated at the time each of the defenses that Taggart would bring to court, and should not be expected to.

"The issue, I believe, that has been raised by the defendant is without merit. It fails at the very beginning," he said.

The specific items Johnson said he thinks should have been documented by police more closely include:

Johnson argued that the police not collecting complete evidence should be grounds for Taggart's case to be dismissed and asked for the charges against his client to be dropped.

A man drives an SUV through a Black Lives Matter protest in Provo on June 19, 2020. The attorney for Jesse Taggart, who is charged with shooting a man in this vehicle, claimed Tuesday that the charges should be dismissed because police did not take sufficient evidence from the vehicle at the time.

"It was not for lack of resources that we did not collect and process this evidence forensically, it was lack of want," Johnson argued.

He said police not only had the vehicle in their possession, they had permission from Dudley to analyze the vehicle, but they returned the phone and the keys quickly.

Without evidence to show that Dudley brandished a gun or was not completely honest about where he was driving, Johnson said the only way to get that evidence before a jury would be to have his client testify on the stand making it almost necessary for Taggart to testify in his own trial and creating a "battle of believability." However, he said if the evidence were processed correctly they could simply rely on the evidence.

"Those investigators spent 26 minutes processing the crime scene that will play a heavy part in determining whether or not Mr. Taggart goes to prison for the rest of his life," Johnson said.

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Did Provo police show bias in their response to a shooting at a Black Lives Matter protest? - Deseret News

Plaintiff's poster was pasted on his office door for approximately two weeks without incident. On August 29, 2020, Brock Spack , Head Football Coach, asked Plaintiff to remove the poster from his door. Plaintiff removed the poster and Spack thanked him..

During this time, many players and students at ISU demanded that the Athletic Department publicly support the BLM Movement. This demand resulted in missed practices, and a boycott against ISU Athletics after Athletic Director Larry Lyons stated "All Redbird Lives Matter," to much public backlash from both players and students. On August 30, 2020, an image of the replacement poster on Plaintiff's door was shared with ISU football players. Players continued to boycott practices, and Plaintiff was informed by Spack that he was in trouble for his replacement poster. On September 2, 2020, Plaintiff was terminated from his position as the offensive coordinator because Spack didn't "like the direction of the offense." The decision to terminate Plaintiff was supported by AD Lyons. Plaintiff was placed in a different position where he received the single assignment of researching how other football coaches handled COVID-19. Plaintiff was replaced by two new coaches.

Plaintiff asserts that his termination by Spack and Lyons was direct retaliation for his expressing his viewpoint on the BLM Movement.

As both parties point out, the main issue in this case is whether Plaintiff was acting pursuant to his official duties when he put the replacement poster on his door, and thus, whether his speech was private speech or government speech. When a public employee makes a statement pursuant to their official job duties, he is not protected by the First Amendment, as he would if speaking as a private citizen. Garcetti v. Ceballos (2006). As pointed out by Plaintiff, speech can be considered part of one's official duties if it "owes its existence to a public employee's professional responsibilities"; is "commissioned or created" by the employer; "is part of what [the employee] was employed to do; is a task the employee "was paid to perform"; and "[has] no relevant analogue to speech by citizens who are not government employees." Coaches, like teachers or students, do not "shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate." Defendants argue that this District has specified that one's job duties are not limited to their formal job description, and the Court must evaluate "whether the speech is intimately connected with the speaker's job and to whom the speaker directed the speech."

The recent Supreme Court decision Kennedy v. Bremerton Sch. District further discusses this issue. Kennedy makes it clear that when a high school football coach engages in prayer after a high school football game, he is not engaged in speech that falls within his ordinary job duties. Just because a student or other staff members can see one exercising their freedom of speech does not transform private speech into government speech. During the football game, the coach's "prayers did not 'ow[e their] existence' to Mr. Kennedy's responsibilities as a public employee." The Court explained that while not everything a coach says in the workplace is considered government speech, one must evaluate the substance of the speech as well as the circumstances around the speech to determine whether or not the speech was within one's job duties. After such an evaluation, the Court held Mr. Kennedy's speech to be private speech outside of his official job duties, and concluded the school violated his rights under the First Amendment by terminating him.

The Court does not find that Plaintiff's actions were taken in furtherance of his official job duties. In putting up the replacement poster, Plaintiff was expressing his personal views, which in no way "owed their existence" to his responsibilities as a public employee. was not paid by the University to decorate his door or to use is to promote a particular viewpoint, he was employed to coach football. Further, ISU holds an Anti-Harassment and Non-Discrimination Policy, which states:

"Illinois State University is strongly committed to the ethical and legal principal that each member of the University Community enjoys the right to free speech. The right of free expression and the open exchange of ideas stimulates debate, promotes creativity, and is essential to a rich learning environment As members of the University Community, students and staff have a responsibility to respect others and show tolerance for opinions that differ from their own"

Under such a policy, Plaintiff should enjoy the right to express his personal viewpoint, within reason. While the opinion Plaintiff posted on his door may have been different than that of the majority, the BLM Movement was not a sanctioned school movement. Just as the ISU Athletic Department and staff were able to hang posters supporting the BLM Movement, Plaintiff had the protected right to create and hang his own poster, supporting his own message. There was no school policy prohibiting Plaintiff decorating his door in whichever fashion he might choose. Further, Plaintiff was not required, as a term of his employment, to either refrain from decorating his door or to decorate it in a certain way. Here, Plaintiff was not acting in his official job duties when he placed the poster on his door, and therefore, his was private speech protected by the First Amendment, satisfying the first of the two elements of a prima facie case of retaliation.

The second step in the [First Amendment retaliation test] is to evaluate [whether] " the protected speech caused, or at least played a substantial part in, the employer's decision to take adverse employment action against" [the employee]. The employer's stated reason for the termination was that Spack "didn't like the direction of the offense." However, in their Memorandum in Support of Motion to Dismiss, Defendants assert that the University was responding to the students' reactions to Plaintiff's speech, and not the speech itself. This termination is a motivating factor, as his speech "played a substantial part in" the decision to terminate him, thus satisfying the second element.

Both parties correctly state that if a public employee's speech is on a matter of public concern, and that employee is terminated because of that speech, that termination may be justified by the employer. Pickering v. Board of Education (1968). Pickering requires the Court to "balance between the interests of the teacher, as a citizen, in commenting upon matters of public concern and the interest of the State, as an employer, in promoting the efficiency of the public services it performs through its employees." [But]

Pickering contemplates a highly fact-specific inquiry into a number of interrelated factors Pickering balancing is not an exercise in judicial speculation. While it is true that in some cases the undisputed facts on summary judgment permit the resolution of a claim without a trial, that means only that the Pickering elements are assessed in light of a record free from material factual disputes This is precisely what the Supreme Court did in Connick, where its Pickering analysis looked to the actual testimony of the employee's supervisor regarding the potential impact of the employee's speech and then evaluated the other evidence in the record to determine whether it supported the employer's fears. We are not entitled to speculate as to what the employer might have considered the facts to be and what concerns about operational efficiencies it might have had, once the record shows what those concerns really were.

Because the parties have not yet had the opportunity to conduct discovery at this stage of the litigation, this Court cannot evaluate the facts under Pickering without engaging in speculation.

Congratulations toAdam W Ghrist (Finegan Rinker & Ghrist) andDouglas A. Churdar, who represent plaintiff.

Original post:

Football Coach's Display of "All Lives Matter" Poster May Have Been Protected by First Amendment - Reason

The March 2020 killing of Breonna Taylor, which caused widespread protest around the country, was the result of police lies to obtain a warrant and racist police violence after officers forced their way into her apartment.

On August 4, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced the federal grand jury indictments of four Louisville Metro Police officers involved in the raid that resulted in Taylors death.

Three of the officers were accused of violating Taylors Fourth Amendment rights to be free from unreasonable search and seizure by lying to secure a no-knock warrant. The officers who sought the warrant knew that the affidavit used to obtain the warrant to search Taylors home contained information that was false, misleading, and out-of-date; that the affidavit omitted material information; and that the officers lacked probable cause for the search, the indictment reads.

One of the defendants tried to get another officer to lie and say he had previously told him that a drug dealer (Taylors ex-boyfriend) had used her apartment to receive packages. An officer apparently broke the ubiquitous police code of silence and revealed to prosecutors that his fellow officer asked him to lie.

A judge issued a no-knock warrant based on the officers misrepresentations. The warrant specified that they did not have to knock and identify themselves as police before entering the apartment.

This case has widely been characterized as a no-knock warrant incident. But before police actually conducted the search, the court issued another warrant that required them to knock and announce their presence. The issue that led to their indictment is that the police officers lied to get the warrant.

Taylor and her boyfriend Kenneth Walker were in bed when they heard a loud banging on the door. They asked who was there, fearing it was Taylors ex trying to break in. But they never heard the police identify themselves. The officers claim that they knocked several times and identified themselves as police officers before entering.

The police used a battering ram to break down the door and Walker fired a gun (which he lawfully possessed) once, striking an officer in the thigh. Officers then fired several shots, hitting Taylor five times. Officer Brett Hankison shot 10 rounds into a bedroom and living room covered with blinds and a blackout curtain. No drugs were found in Taylors apartment.

Louisville Sgt. Kyle Meany and Detectives Joshua Jaynes and Kelly Hanna Goodlett were charged with making or adopting false statements in the affidavit to obtain the search warrant. Jaynes and Goodlett were accused of conspiring to falsify the affidavit. Hankison was charged with depriving Taylor, her boyfriend and neighbors of their Fourth Amendment rights by firing 10 bullets into a bedroom and living room. The only officer to be charged in state court, Hankison was acquitted of wanton endangerment of neighbors.

Tamika Palmer, Taylors mother, applauded the federal indictment of the officers, saying, Ive waited 874 days for today.

But those working to abolish the prison system did not celebrate the indictment. Chanelle Helm, co-founder of Louisville Black Lives Matter, said that she understands why people are calling for arresting the officers. But, she added, If were asking for the officers to be arrested thats contrary to abolition work.

Abolitionist group Critical Resistance points out that prosecuting police who have killed and abused civilians fails to reduce the scale of policing, and instead reinforces the prison industrial complex by portraying killer/corrupt cops as bad apples rather than part of a regular system of violence, and reinforces the idea that prosecution and prison serve real justice.

The bottom line is that real justice cannot come without a full reckoning with the system itself, which is grounded in centuries of oppression.

In March 2021, the International Commission of Inquiry on Systemic Racist Police Violence Against People of African Descent in the United States (for which I served as a rapporteur) found a pattern and practice of racist police violence in the U.S. in the context of a history of oppression dating back to the extermination of First Nations peoples, the enslavement of Africans, the militarization of U.S. society, and the continued perpetuation of structural racism.

The 188-page commission report details how Black people are targeted, surveilled, brutalized, maimed and killed by law enforcement officers, and concludes that the brutalization of Black people is compounded by the impunity afforded to offending police officers, most of whom are never charged with a crime. The overarching problem is structural racism embedded in the U.S. legal and policing systems.

If police knowingly or recklessly include false statements in an affidavit to obtain a search warrant, any evidence seized pursuant to the warrant will be suppressed. But that remedy provides no solace to people like Breonna Taylor who are killed as a result of systemic racist police violence.

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Police Lied to Get the Warrant to Search Breonna Taylors Home - Truthout