Archive for the ‘Black Lives Matter’ Category

Black Lives Matter protestors rally at home of officer involved in fatal shooting – Metro US

Calling for justice in the recent, police-involved shooting death of 30-year-old David Jones, a small group of Black Lives Matter protestors marched in the streets in front of the Bustleton home of the police officer who caused Jones untimely death.

The events unfolded at about 7 p.m. on Thursday, when a group of protestors began pasting wanted posters for Philadelphia Police officer Ryan Pownall on telephone poles near his home along Bridle Road in Northeast Philly.

The posters featured a photo of Pownall and claimed the officer was wanted by the people of Philadelphia for the murder of David Jones.

According to the police report on Jones death, he was fatally shot in the back by Pownall on June 8th after there was a scuffle over a gun in Jones' waistband.

Pownall had stopped Jones after seeing him riding a dirt bike near the intersection of Whitaker and Hunting Park Avenues in Juniata Park, notes the report. A witness to the shooting has said that he saw Jones' gun drop to the sidewalk and that Jones ran before Pownall shot the fleeing Jones fatally in the back.

On Thursday, Black Lives Matter organizer, Asa Khalif led a group of about ten protestors in chants of No justice, no peace, no racist police and We demand justice for David Jones, as police vehicles quickly filled the block.

It was mere moments after the protestors placed their first wanted poster before law enforcement officials arrived en masse, creating a line of officers along the sidewalk, separating protestors from the home they had targeted.

We want justice for his kids. We want justice for his family, shouted Khalif. We want justice or else we are going to keep going into your motherf***ing neighborhood.

During the protest, local residents emerged from their homes. Some confronted the protestors, with one man even attempting to throw several signs that read Black Lives Matter into a plastic garbage bag.

He shouted I saw trash and wanted to pick it up, when officers on the scene stopped him and walked the man back towards his home.

Though the event was mostly peaceful, at times protestors clashed with residents in prolonged shouting matches. Police on hand seemed content to monitor the situation and make sure to keep the parties separate.

When asked to discuss the police responce to the protest, officers on scene declined to comment to a Metro reporter.

At one point, someone in the crowd shouted that, if Khalif wanted to have his point heard, he should go directly to the mayors office.

Khalif replied that he had indeed done that.

In fact, he had, in recent weeks, stopped press conferences, marched on City Hall and stormed into the offices of the citys managing director, Michael DiBerardinis, calling for Pownall to be arrested for Jones shooting.

Khalif replied that they had decided to come to Pownalls home in a further effort to seek justice.

[Police] come into our communities and we are flipping the script. We are coming to your neighborhood, he said.

The investigation into Jones death is ongoing and is being handled by the Office of the Attorney General Josh Shapiro.

After about an hour, as the sun began to set, Khalif gathered his small group of activists and left for the evening.

Black lives matter also, said Khalif as he closed the rally. When you kill someone, you should go to jail.

No arrests were made.

Following the display, some locals seemed upset by the protest.

"This is a discgrace. Don't come to our neighborhood!" shounted one neighbor as Khalif's vehicle drove off. The man refused to share his name with a reporter.

Yet, others seemed to believe that it was everyones right to protest if they feel there has been an injustice.

Citing the fact that protestors promised to return to the neighborhood in the coming days, a neighbor of Pownalls asked to remain anonymous, but he said that he could understand the protestors motivations.

We live in a free country, so you should be able to voice your opinion, said the neighbor. But, my father was a cop and you show up at a guys house to express your opinion? I dont know Thats tough.

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Black Lives Matter protestors rally at home of officer involved in fatal shooting - Metro US

It just wakes you up. You can’t be complacent. Black Lives Matter Savannah planning protest following violence in … – WSAV-TV

SAVANNAH, Ga. After a deadly weekend of violence in Charlottesville, Savannahs Black Lives Matter chapter is currently preparing its response with sights sets on a local and national level.

The group says it is working on a six-week protest to affect change after what it says is injustice to society.

Anthony Smith is an Army veteran and member of BLM Savannah. He said Charlottesville was a turning point for action for himself and BLM.

It just wakes you up. You cant be complacent. You cant wait for good things to happen. You have to be the good things that happen, he said.

Sylvia Wells is a coordinator for the group. She says she is protesting to better her community and to be an example for her family. BLM Savannah, Wells says, is not a hate group but one that is based on understanding, conversation and education.

We dont want any violence, this is something that we stand for is peace, she said. [BLM Savannah] cant control who takes our name and they run with it with the things that they do but we are most certainly arent hateful. We love everybody.

Details are scarce on the protest, including a start date. The groups founder, Pastor Jomo Kenyatta Johnson is currently out-of-town conducting missions work. Johnson and Smith told WSAV there are plans to remove Confederate inspired monuments in Savannah, rename the Talmadge Memorial Bridge, and work towards to removal of President Trump and his cabinet.

The groups desire to remove the Confederate Memorial to the dead in Forsyth Park contradicts Mayor DeLoachs wishes to expand the story of memorial to be more inclusive.

Smith calls the memorial a slap in the face and says the call to preserve the monument is a way to romanticize history of the Civil War and the Confederacy.

BLM Savannah is currently working with other local organizations to organize and prepare for the protest. Smith told WSAV to expect BLM Savannah to be more visible while working peacefully to make a difference in the city and its criminal justice system, including working with law enforcement and elected city leaders.

Our goal is definitely to unify the city and to interface with our government in a way that creates long-lasting change from the top tiers of our government to the lowest individual in our society, he said.

Should law makers decide the statue stays in Forsyth Park, Smith says that while such a decision is not his intent, BLM members are not looking to respond by physically removing the memorial themselves.

Violence is violence. And that type of act enables violence, We cant use the tools of the enemy for our causes and pretend like the end justifies the means, he said.

Smith said anyone is welcome to join and converse with BLM Savannah. Ultimately, he is looking to make Savannah and the country a better place to call home for his children.

If were going to hand it to them in an as is fashion, then we maybe do a little bit more maintenance before the hand off, he said.

To learn more about the chapter, click here.

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It just wakes you up. You can't be complacent. Black Lives Matter Savannah planning protest following violence in ... - WSAV-TV

Whose Streets? Documents the Uprising That Birthed the Black Lives Matter Movement – TheStranger.com

In August 2014, a Ferguson, Missouri, police officer fired six shots into Michael Brown, killing him. Locals swarmed the residential street where the 18-year-old's body lay for more than four hours. Brown's mother wailed at an officer who told her to settle down. A vigil became a protest, which became a battleground, which became history.

In Whose Streets?, filmmakers Sabaah Folayan and Damon Davis offer a definitive timeline of Ferguson and the movement it birthed. Eschewing narration or commentary, the documentary relies on the perspectives of the young black men and women drawn to revolt on West Florissant Avenue. We watch in real time as a community subjected to years of civil-rights abuses rises up. We watch store clerks, factory workers, and unemployed Saint Louisans become activists. It's an important film that chronicles the birth of the modern police-accountability movement, giving voice and credit to local Saint Louis activists who played big roles but don't have the name recognition of, say, DeRay McKesson.

Whose Streets? also hits theaters as we recoil from the white-supremacist violence that struck Charlottesville. The timing, of course, is coincidental. But reliving the summer of Ferguson after the terror of Charlottesville, I could not help but to make connections.

The day after Brown's death, a QuikTrip went ablaze. Whose Streets? shows us nightly new programs glued to the flames. Reporters wonder just when will violence the violence end? Cut to activists asking why burning property triggers more outrage than the death of an unarmed black man. "A building is a building," a protester named Kayla tells us. Given the circumstances, setting one on fire is "a revolutionary act." How ironic that rage-ignited fire also appeared in Charlottesville, burning from the tiki torches of white men yelling Nazi incantations? But the flames in Charlottesville could not be confused for symbols of rebellion under oppression. They served as instruments of terrorism.

Around the one-year anniversary of Brown's death, we see protesters climb a grassy hill onto the interstate highway. They link arms before a line of vehicles. One motorist loses her patience and slowly rolls her SUV through the human barrier, forcing protesters to unclasp their hands before she speeds off. No one gets hurt in the confrontation, but it's not a stretch to imagine the episode ending in tragedy. Just a little more pressure on the gas pedal, and Saint Louis could have seen carnage similar to the scene after James Alex Fields Jr. rammed his car through a throng of counterprotesters in Charlottesville. Unlike the suspect Fields, who proudly expressed white-nationalist views on social media, we don't know what motivated this motorist to endanger lives.

Also unlike Ferguson, state agents did not inflict the deadly violence in Charlottesville. Still, our president effectively condoned the furious displays of white supremacy that led to the death of Heather Heyer, a 32-year-old paralegal. When Trump stood before the press in his Manhattan skyscraper and described the neo-Nazis who gathered in Charlottesville as "fine people," he explicitly took a side in direct opposition to the calls for racial justice that grew from Ferguson. When he derisively referred to counterprotesters as the "alt-left," he went one step further, villainizing citizens taking a stand against racism and hate.

Whose Streets? brings us intimate portrayals of activists who Trump might call "alt-left." Tory Russell, sitting in his living room, shows us his fingertip, still singed from a tear-gas canister. David Whitt, a Ferguson father and Copwatch recruiter, joins neighbors to release a flight of red balloons from the spot where Brown died. Brittany Ferrell and Alexis Templeton, who organized the highway action, get engaged at Saint Louis City Hall, their love born during the pursuit of justice.

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Whose Streets? Documents the Uprising That Birthed the Black Lives Matter Movement - TheStranger.com

Black Lives Matter signs vandalized at northeast Fresno church – Fresno Bee


Fresno Bee
Black Lives Matter signs vandalized at northeast Fresno church
Fresno Bee
Two Black Lives Matter banners hanging outside the Unitarian Universalist Church in northeast Fresno were vandalized either Tuesday night or early Wednesday, church officials say, but the church has banners ready to replace them. The word all was ...

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Black Lives Matter signs vandalized at northeast Fresno church - Fresno Bee

Idaho State Rep Calls Conspiracy Theory Claiming BLM Staged Charlottesville Violence ‘Plausible’ – Jezebel

Idaho State Rep. Bryan Zollinger is trolling the media pretty hard right now with a series of Faacebook posts in which hes been sharing a ridiculous conspiracy theory that progressive organizations and activists staged the violent rally in Charlottesville in order to undermine the Trump administration.

Zollinger posted a horribly written screed from conservative outlet the American Thinker, in which a writer named Patricia McCarthy calls [t]he ridiculous campaign by virtually every media outlet, every Democrat, and far too many squishy Republicans to label Trump some kind of racist and Nazi sympathizer an orchestrated smear by Black Lives Matter, Charlottesvilles mayor Michael Signer, and others on the left.

In the piece, McCarthy equates Black Lives Matter protesters with white supremacists and characterizes them as demented racists:

Since that day, the call to remove the statues on display that honor any members of the Confederacy has become shrill and frenzied. Erasing American history benefits no one and only condemns us to repeat past mistakes. The supremacist groups had a permit; they had applied months earlier. The Antifa and Black Lives Matter groups did not have a permit. The local police at some point, on whose order we do not know, turned the pro-statue groups toward the Antifa and BLM groups, many of whom were armed with lethal weapons - soda cans filled with cement, bottles filled with urine, baseball bats and boards with screws protruding to do maximum harm, and improvised flamethrowers. These are the people who initiated the violence. How was this not a planned melee? Pit groups of demented racists all of them on both sides are certainly that against each other and violence is sure to occur. (Certainly, there were decent people among the protestors and counter-protesters who had no affiliation with the supremacist groups or Antifa or BLM. Heather Heyer was among them.)

She argues that Trumps responsein which he blamed both sides for the violence perpetrated by neo-Nazis and insisted that some very fine people marched alongside themwas appropriate and accurate.

So were the events of Saturday the result of a despicable plan to further undermine Trump? the piece concludes. There was plenty of time and Charlottesville is the capital of resistance. If it was, it was evil and deadly and the people involved need to be prosecuted. Or is this a wild conspiracy theory? Perhaps. But the pieces fit.

This is some Alex Jones-level fuckery, but Zollinger found this theory so compelling that he shared it on his Facebook page and continued to defend it as plausible in the comments. Wow, I found this article to be interesting if not thought provoking. I found some of the theories to be plausible and others to be maybe somewhat far-fetched, he wrote.

In two follow-up posts, he called the removal of Confederate Monuments revealing of the broken college system we have and the breakdown of the family and, for some reason, paired this comment with a George Orwell quote.

He also posted a big Fuck You to the media for covering his innocuous facebook post, saying that its led to an outpouring of support from friends and fellow Idaho Falls residents. Sadly, I might believe him about that.

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Idaho State Rep Calls Conspiracy Theory Claiming BLM Staged Charlottesville Violence 'Plausible' - Jezebel