|
||||
|
|
||||
Freedom of the PressThursday, May 03, 2007 It Never Had a Soul. Now the LAPD Has Lost its Mind, Too by Nanette
Chief Bill Bratton was one of Rudy Guiliani's thugs in NYC, responsible for introducing the "zero tolerance" and "broken windows" policies to that city. Well, and normalizing excessive force, police brutality, unjustified shootings and leading to efficient polices practices like shoving broken broomsticks up people's rectums. I don't live in NY, and didn't then, but if you ask most any black or brown New Yorker about those times (or now), you'll get an earful. Why bring that up? Well, because now Bill Bratton is the LAPD Chief of police. Oh joy.
For me, that certainly brings a bit of understanding to the recent May Day immigrant march fiasco, where small children, old men and women and everyone in between (including the media) - the vast majority either just milling around talking, or peacefully protesting or walking away because the event was over - were suddenly confronted by a line of police in riot gear who were shooting rubber bullets, tear gas, hitting people who didn't move out of the way fast enough with batons or shoving them to the ground, and more. This was not some misunderstanding of orders or dereliction of duty, this was policy. Unlike the former mayor of New York, however, the mayor of LA (Antonio Villaraigosa) is not a deranged, narcissistic authoritarian (a far as I know) so .. who knows. Maybe he'll step up. Sadly, I haven't a clue how to embed YouTube yet, but to get the full flavor of normalcy turned to terror (which cannot be adequately shown on a short news broadcast), go here to Nezua's place and look at the first video (and read the excellent post itself, while you're at it. He makes some much needed points about the right to assemble... well, what we have left of it, and the far ramifications of these happenings). I'd only caught snippets of even what was shown on the news, and also still pictures... but they do not do the events justice. People were rightfully angry and at the same time terrified - which was, of course, the point. No doubt a mass of people peacefully protesting for their rights constitutes a really BIG broken window in LAPD philosophy now. It's easy for them to get away with it, of course... less so in the age of YouTube, but still... the populace has been well trained. Any large gathering of darker hued folks (from grandmas to infants) is "a riot". You know how it goes... a gathering of investors, a group of surfers, a mass of protesters and a riot of brown folks. And, of course (goes the mainstream thought), the police should be invested with the power to do whatever is necessary to quell a "riot". Simple, no?
Last year's protests were humongous, powerful, memorable, effective... and no doubt deeply frightening to some of those in power. In the time since then, raids by ICE have been stepped up dramatically, with men and women being arrested while at work, in many cases, and carted off who knows where (sometimes in "detention centers" thousands of miles away), leaving their children - some of them nursing infants - to pretty much fend for themselves and/or depend on the largess of strangers. It's no doubt those raids and other events that the marches were not nearly as well attended this year, as many who are undocumented may have been frightened out of coming. And, I imagine, next year some will look back at the LAPD's police terrorizing tactics and think twice about putting themselves and their families in harms way. Mission Accomplished. Or so they think.
Posted by Nanette on 05/03 at 06:25 PM
Civil Rights • Coalitions • Community • FreedomofthePress • HumanRights • Immigration • (0) Comments • Permalink • Tell-a-Friend
share this post! |
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
Wednesday, February 07, 2007 Edwards: Stand Up Guy? or Noodle-Necked Dood? by Nanette
Waiting to see if the Edwards campaign has the chops to go on the offensive or if they are going to stand down, back down, throw their hires to the dogs, and slink away with their tails between their legs. Stay tuned! A few days ago Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon and Melissa McEwan of Shakespeare’s Sister announced that they been hired by the John Edwards campaign, as Blogmaster (Blogatrix) and Netroots Coordinator respectively, in an effort to reach out to the leftiesh blogosphere. Both are well-known, well liked bloggers and the news of their hiring made quite a little splash among both political and feminist blogs and other sites. BUT… both also have a history, as all bloggers do. I’d imagine that the Edwards campaign would have taken that into account before hiring them - read through their archives, talk to people who read their sites and so on. That’s what I would do, anyway. And then decide how to face off right wing critics, because there always are some and sure enough, they’ve shown up. I have my own issues with Marcotte, sometimes disagreeing with her on various matters; I quite like Shakespeare’s Sister. I also have issues with bloggers becoming part of campaigns (although transparency deals with some of those) and I’ve not yet figured out how to like Edwards… but still. Not a lot of that matters in the long run. As of this writing, their fate is up in the air, with conflicting reports of the Edwards campaign caving in to the right wing and firing them, or not firing them, or firing them and rehiring them. On the one side you have the right wing attack dogs scenting blood in the water.. er… or wherever attack dogs scent blood, and on the other side you have any number of essentially uninvolved leftish bloggers (and voters) watching to see if the Edwards campaign has the chops to go on the offensive (because a good many of those who are screeching about Marcotte and McEwan have very offensive screeds under their own belts) or if they are going to stand down, back down, throw their hires to the dogs, and slink away with their tails between their legs. I’m not going to pretend that I’ll like the guy either way, but if he can’t stand up to right wing attacks even in a small instance like this, what good is he to anyone at all? Update: Liza Sabater of Culture Kitchen is collecting all (or all that she knows of) the posts on this matter. If one wants to know all the ins and outs, as well as join action campaigns about this, click on through. (via Jill/feministe)
Posted by Nanette on 02/07 at 02:37 PM
General • Coalitions • FreedomofthePress • Media • WorstPresidentEver • Politics • (0) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink • Tell-a-Friend
share this post! |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Saturday, April 29, 2006 by Nanette
Like Bushco loyalty. I think the media is learning a lesson in that.
I’m not really sure why the media decided to hook themselves to the Bush wagon in the run up to the 2000 election - maybe they were bored with Gore (or figured he wouldn’t provide nearly as much material as Bush); maybe they were leaning over backwards to show that they really weren’t the “Liberal media”. Whatever the reason, many seem to have decided to take a pass on real reporting, even before they entered into their post-9/11 prostration. After 9/11… gah! unspeakable. Still, even then there were some reporters who were going to do their jobs and hold power accountable, even if their corporate bosses weren’t too happy about it. Some, such as the New York Times, were perfectly willing to not only acquiesce to publishing total spin, through Judy Miller, but acceded to White House requests that they withhold stories that detailed this administrations illegal operations. (An exception to supine corporate bosses would be the Knight-Ridder corp - one of the few media organizations that pretty consistently did real investigative reporting and asked questions in the run-up to the war - but gosh, darn, for some reason it all of a sudden became imperative to the stockholders that this media organization be sold and broken up. And so it was.) I have a feeling that some of this was in the form of an attempted inoculation… no doubt the press corps, more than most, knew the type of people who are inhabiting the White House. The stories that have made it through - on Abu Ghraib tortures, “renditions”, illegal wiretapping, excessive secrecy, corruption and more, are appalling. One can’t help but wonder what things are going on that we don’t yet know about. What ever it is… the Bush admin really, really doesn’t want us to find out. So what, in the land of the free and the home of the brave, do you do when the press that you thought you had cowed and compliant, that knew their place, decides to start digging and keep digging? Why, you threaten to prosecute them as spies, of course, under the Espionage Law.
Adam Liptak reports, in The New York Times:
Continue Reading Some things only flow one way
Posted by Nanette on 04/29 at 08:35 PM
FreedomofthePress • Media • WorstPresidentEver • (0) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink • Tell-a-Friend |
||||
|
|
||||||||
|
|||||||||
