Archive for the ‘Black Lives Matter’ Category

Guest Editorial: The Importance of Black Lives Matter | Opinion … – Dailyuw

Arguably no movement has been more controversial in recent years than the Black Lives Matter movement. Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, Sandra Bland, all African American victims of senseless killings. There are many more victims who did not receive national media attention. These tragic deaths all share a stunning commonality they are the direct result of discrimination against African Americans. Our former president is African American and the civil rights movement took place nearly 60 years ago. How is discrimination still an issue for African Americans? The continued prevalence of racial stereotypes is partially to blame. Black Lives Matter has been criticized by some who say All Lives Matter and claim the movement is racist.

This year, Ziad Ahmed made headlines when he was accepted into Stanford University after writing, #BlackLivesMatter one hundred times as his answer to What matters to you, and why? on his application. This is an example of the deep personal investment some people have in this polarizing movement. The (recently disgraced) news anchor Bill OReilly is a vocal critic of the movement and in 2016 commented, White Americans despise this crew. All Lives Matter critics argue that the movement is racist for emphasizing the value of African American lives only. These detractors see no evidence of structural racism in our society. They refuse to accept that our laws and criminal justice system demonstrate that black lives are valued less than white lives in our society. Black Lives Matter doesnt claim that African American people are superior; it advocates for racial equality and an end to discrimination. This hardly fits the definition of racism.

The unequivocally conservative position to oppose the Black Lives Matter movement is based off a misconception. The idea that affirmative action leads to reverse racism (discrimination by racial minorities against the racial majority) is entrenched within the logic behind the All Lives Matter stance on this issue. Affirmative action are policies in which an institution or organization actively engages in efforts to improve opportunities for historically excluded groups. The misconception is that these affirmative action policies discriminates against deserving whites in favor of their lesser qualified black peers. This logic is flawed. And racial quota systems are outlawed in most states. This is a manifestation of a stereotype that African Americans are less intelligent and comes from generations of discrimination which have embedded this bias into society.

Take the [hypothetical] situation, of a white police officer shooting an unarmed blackteenager. There is no video, the officer claims he was acting in self-defense, and there are only a few witnesses who are all African American. If this officer were put on trial for murder, what would the defense do? Attempt to discredit the witnesses? Try to portray the witnesses as anti-police, uneducated, incompetent, criminal, biased, and immoral? What is this doing besides trying to convince the jury that the voice of one white person is worth more than several black voices? If this police officer were found not guilty like other officers who have faced similar trials, what does that say about our society? Ironically, the justice system in this instance is leaving the African American community without justice.

African Americans currently face structural racism. The All Lives Matter movement discredits the notion that African Americans struggle with this on a daily basis. This viewpoint reflects white privilege and fails to acknowledge the everyday reality that African Americans face. When you say All Lives Matter, you deflect attention from racism in this country. That is because the point of All Lives Matter is to diminish the Black Lives Matter movement and black lives.

The cities Baltimore, Charleston, and New York have all payed out seven figure settlements to families of prominent victims. Despite this, none of these cities have admitted any wrong doing by officers. If All Lives Matter then why have the families of these victims not received justice? With the exception of the OJ Simpson trial it is hard to find another example of a publicized case that had a favorable outcome for the African American victim or defendant. Justice for these victims would be achieved in the form of the people behind these killings being held responsible. It would include recognition by elected officials that to this day African American people face discrimination. If all lives really do matter, than as former President Obama said, lets Not just dismiss these protests and these complaints as political correctness or as politics or attacks on police.

Jack Ryan

Class of 2020

Pre-major in college of arts & sciences

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Guest Editorial: The Importance of Black Lives Matter | Opinion ... - Dailyuw

Teen Wears Prom Dress Honoring Trayvon Martin, Black Lives …

Milan Morris talks to us about herprom dress that featuresimages of Trayvon Martin, Sandra Bland, Michael Brown, and more

Its prom season! And as one Florida teen showed,great style can also have a great message.

Seventeen-year-old Milan Morris prom dress is gorgeous. But her outfit is getting particular attention because of the Black Lives Matter message it conveyed.

RELATED: Tracey Reese and Model Damaris Lewis Help Teens Get Fabulous For Prom

Morris' floor-length gown, designed by Florida-based Terrance Torrence, featured black and white images of Trayvon Martin, Sandra Bland, Michael Brown, and more of the liveswe have lost in recent years to police brutality. She shared a photo of the dress on Instagram. And from her caption, she is utterly unapologetic for it! YES!

RELATED: Toya Wrights Daughter Reginaes Prom Photos Were So Sweet!

Yes I'm Black. Yes I'm 17. Yes GOD is using me to convey a message that's bigger than me, she captioned a photo of the demure dress, which she complemented with black lace.

Torrence, a West Palm Beach based designer who also works in Miami and Atlanta, was the dressmakerwho brought the whole look together, Morris told ESSENCE.com.

"He was the mastermind behind this whole thing honestly," said Morris adding that Torrence's "message is a huge issue in America today."

Torrence, who is knee-deep in designing forprom season, told ESSENCE.comthat he knew he wanted to create a dress inspired by Black Lives Matter last year, but it all finally came together in 2017. The dress took four days to make.

"It was powerful," Torrence said of finishing the dress. "It was art. It was surreal. It spoke volumes."

He added: "It was powerful and a movement and I knew people would respond to it."

And respond they have!

As for Morris, the Palm Beachsenior is also a basketball star at Cardinal Newman High School, having been recently recognized as an all-area playerby the Palm Beach Post.She will be taking her talents to Boston College this fall.

What do you think of Milans dress?

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Donald Trump If Black Lives Dont Matter, Then Go Back to …

Donald Trump continues to alienate everyone but rich white men in a press conference held today while speaking about the protests from groups holding up signs that say, Black Lives Matter in South Carolina where racially-motivated violence continues after several black churches have been burned to the ground after Dylan Roof shot up another church.

Many of the activists have since urged the state to remove its confederate flags from all state buildings. When asked what he would do about the protests and the issue of racially-motivated violence, Trump simply stated:

theres no such thing as racism anymore. Weve had a black president so its not a question anymore. Are they saying black lives should matter more than white lives or Asian lives? If black lives matter, then go back to Africa? Well see how much they matter there.

Afterwards, the normally calm and collected Oprah Winfrey, who Donald Trump said he would run beside in the election if given the opportunity, stated, the die from that toupee must have seeped into this crackers brain and driven him crazy.

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Donald Trump If Black Lives Dont Matter, Then Go Back to ...

Black Lives Matter Activists Protest ‘Stop and Fondle’ Searches by Giving Cops Underwear – Heat Street

Officersat the Philadelphia Police Department got an unexpected delivery earlier this week.

Two members of the Pennsylvania chapter of Black Lives Matter showed up at the precinct on Tuesday and handed police officers pairs of mens underwear to protest a little known, yet unlawful, practice dubbed stop and fondle.

According a recent expose in the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News, for yearsblack and brown men in Philly havehad their pants lowered, patted down and rifled through during t pedestrian stops.

Yet, these searches, when conducted in public, are strictly prohibited by Police Department policy and state laws.

Invasive searches are only lawful if police officershave a reasonable suspicion that the suspect is hiding drugs or contraband and must beconducted in a police or medical building after the person has been arrested, NBC 10 reported. In addition, cops must seek approval from their superintendent.

Outraged by last weeks report of the illegal, and according to several courts, racially-driven searches, Philadelphia activist Asa Khalif delivered a loud and clear message outside the police precinct in Center City:

It is illegal to stop and frisk. It is illegal to go into someones underwear and touch their penis. Touch their buttocks. You think its common practice and its legal, but its not, he yelled in a megaphone, broadcasting the direct action on Facebook Live.

Questioned by the Daily News about lower ranking officers using these tactics, Capt. Sekou Kinebrew they were unknownto him and encouraged victims to file a complaint.

Not surprising for Khalif, who told NBC10 strip searches are so common, many people including higher ranking cops think they are legal.

Its standard police culture in black and brown neighborhoods, he said,likening the practice to sexual assault.

Its humiliating. Dehumanizing, he said. I understand the feeling of hopelessness. It brings up all types of issues with black youth especially.

One of the men interviewed by the Daily News told him that being strip searched by police forno apparent reason and without his consent, while he was dropping off his daughter at a relatives house felt likebeing raped:

Theyre out here, basically, going around sexually harassing people. Theyre doing what they want, he said.

While overall instances of stop-and-frisk have decreased in recent years,saystheAmerican Civil Liberties Union which has been monitoring illegal searches since 2011, the group issued arecent reportshowing that,when they do, Philadelphia police overwhelmingly stop people based on race.

In the second half of 2016, 77 percent of the people stopped and frisked were black or Latino, a group that makes up half of the citys population, the report says.

To address the issue, Khalif toldNBC 10he and other activists were volunteering to fund trauma counseling for the young men who have endured such an ordeal.He also said that he plans to disruptMayor Jim Kenney and Police Commissioner Richard Ross until the department changes its policies.

This is why we continue to fight in the Black Lives Matter movement, he said in the video. We do not accept the s**t that is happening in our communities. Were not going to tolerate racist ass police officers attacking black and brown people.

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Black Lives Matter Activists Protest 'Stop and Fondle' Searches by Giving Cops Underwear - Heat Street

In Trump’s America, Black Lives Matter activists grow wary of their … – Chicago Tribune

As a long-time political activist, Malkia Cyril knows how smartphones helped fuel Black Lives Matter protests with outraged tweets and viral video. But now Cyril is having second thoughts about her iPhone.

Is it a friend or a foe?

For all of the power of smartphones as organizing tools, the many streams of data they emit also are a boon to police wielding high-tech surveillance gear, allowing them to potentially track movements and communications that activists such as Cyril would rather keep private.

Such worries are driving a nationwide push by Cyril and other activists to train members of their movement in the tactics of digital defense - something they say is crucial with an aggressive new president who has displayed little sympathy for their causes.

Even as a leader in this drive, Cyril found found herself startled one recent evening in a class called "Digital Security in the Age of Trump," one of dozens such sessions held since the November election. With the help of an app, she was able to see voluminous data recorded with the snapshot of a chocolate cupcake from an office birthday celebration earlier that day.

Among other information, the app showed Cyril's exact location - marked by a giant red pin atop her downtown Oakland office -- the moment she snapped that picture. It was the same information authorities could extract from the device or potentially even from the image itself if it were texted, emailed or posted on a social-media platform.

"That is crazy," said Cyril, executive director of the Center for Media Justice and a member of the Black Lives Matter Network, as she shook her head at the eerie precision of the data, which included even her altitude. Had the picture been taken at a clandestine meeting of protest organizers rather than a birthday celebration, their cover could have been blown.

Such concerns have fueled the nationwide spread of sessions such as this one in a fluorescent-lit classroom in downtown Oakland, where political activists over four hours learned how to encrypt messages, browse the Web anonymously and guard against accidentally revealing their locations when they want to operate in secrecy.

Their fears go beyond the change in the White House. The Justice Department's announcement in April that it wouldreview a series of police reform agreements reached during the Obama administration has heightened concerns that the federal government is sharply curtailing its oversight of state and local police forces. Many departments in recent years have expanded their capacity to track cellphones, collect massive troves of video and analyze social-media postings, yet these police forces often operate with fewer restrictions than those in effect at the federal level.

Federal officials have warned for years that the spread of encryption and other defensive measures increasingly is thwarting legal surveillance of crucial targets, such as terrorists, criminals and child pornographers, making it harder to solve cases and prevent crimes. Officials also have lamented the rioting and other violence that has accompanied some political protests sparked by police killings, saying that the potential for spontaneous criminal activity can justify monitoring of some large gatherings, even when the leaders intend only peaceful political protest.

The perception among political activists that they are being targeted unfairly has fueled a new wave of technical training intended to blunt what they consider government overreach that threatens their constitutional rights to free expression.

But it remains unclear whether such a big, diffuse movement born on social media - Black Lives Matter began as the Twitter hashtag #BlackLivesMatter in 2013 - can maintain its spontaneous energy while curbing the use of technologies that expose activists to government surveillance.

"Now that this massive infrastructure has been handed to the Republicans and Trump, people are freaking out," said Chinyere Tutashinda, national organizer for the Center for Media Justice. "People have this big scary thought in their heads, but they don't know what they can do. What can the local cops do? What can the feds do?"

Fear that authorities use digital tools to aggressively monitor political demonstrations began before Trump's election. Two activist groups, the Color of Change and the Center for Constitutional Rights, sued the FBI and Department of Homeland Security in October to obtain records on the surveillance of Black Lives Matters protests and its leaders in recent years.

The lawsuit points to reported incidents in 11 cities, arguing that government monitoring of political protests with surveillance technologies undermined free speech while serving to "chill valuable public debate about police violence, including the use of deadly force, criminal justice and racial inequities."

Federal officials, the suit notes, used social-media tracking to monitor demonstrators after the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., on Aug. 9, 2014. Baltimore County police used similar technology during the protests that followed the 2015 death of Freddie Gray from an injury he suffered while in police custody; the FBI also conducted overhead surveillance flights as those demonstrations were overtaken by rioting.

The Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security declined to comment for this article. The FBI issued a statement saying: "The FBI investigates activity which may constitute a federal crime or pose a threat to national security. Our focus is not on membership in particular groups but on criminal activity. As part of its work, the FBI uses a wide array of lawful investigative methods, each used only under appropriate circumstances, and always in accordance with applicable Attorney General's Guidelines, the Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide, and the U.S. Constitution."

Yet law enforcement officers faced with demonstrations in volatile political climates often struggle to assess when rioting or other violence might break out, said Ronald Hosko, a former assistant director of the FBI who is now president of the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund, which raises money to defend officers accused of misconduct. Intelligence-gathering through digital and other tools allows authorities to evaluate threats and possible criminal activity, even when political leaders intend only to lead peaceful, legal protests.

"That's what law enforcement needs to be vigilant about, to find the way in," Hosko said.

But activists recount a long history of authorities' overstepping constitutional bounds because of fears of violence. Federal officials extensively surveilled the civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s, wiretapping the phones of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and other leaders of the movement.

Many activists say that, despite reforms, similar tactics continue to this day. As recently as 2015, the Department of Homeland Security monitored a funk-music parade and an unrelated community parade in historically African American neighborhoods in Washington, D.C., according to a report in the Intercept based on government records.

"The apparatus that has been handed over to Trump is something that has been around for 50, 60, 70 years," said Cyril, whose mother was a member of the Black Panthers, a black nationalist group that once was the focus of intense FBI surveillance and disruption efforts.

The Center for Media Justice, for which Cyril is now executive director, sponsored the class in Oakland and plans similar sessions in Detroit, Atlanta, Minneapolis and several other cities in the coming months. As Cyril pushes fellow activists to improve their digital defenses, she considers the effort long overdue.

"Part of me is, 'Why are we starting now?' " she said. "I've never felt safe."

The simple answer is: Trump. Or rather, the fear of Trump.

Although he has at times expressed worry about government overreach - including his unsubstantiated allegation in March that the Obama administration wiretapped Trump Tower during the presidential campaign - activists say they have little hope that the administration will move to curb its own capabilities. The president's impassioned support of law enforcement, meanwhile, has convinced activists that he is not sympathetic to their concerns about questionable police shootings and other possible misconduct.

In August 2015, when Trump was a candidate for president, he was asked on "Meet the Press" about Black Lives Matter protests. Trump responded by invoking high crime rates in Baltimore and Chicago, saying, "We have to give strength and power back to the police. And you're always going to have mistakes made. And you're always going to have bad apples. But you can't let that stop the fact that police have to regain some control of this tremendous crime wave and killing wave that's happening in this country."

Trump's conservative Cabinet appointments, especially of Jeff Sessions as attorney general, have deepened concerns, as has the Justice Department's apparent moves to retreat from aggressive monitoring of state and local police departments - which political activists fear could embolden police departments to employ surveillance more aggressively.

Such worries run especially strong among African Americans, Latinos and others who call themselves "activists of color" working to resist the administration's initiatives on criminal justice, immigration and other issues.

Although laws and court precedents govern how and when surveillance tools are used, there remain broad legal gray areas as technology rapidly evolves. The Justice Department, for example, in 2015 began requiring that federal authorities get search warrants before using cellphone tracking technology, a standard that requires demonstrating probable cause that a target has committed a crime. But the federal restrictions do no apply to state and local police forces, most of which have not adopted the standard.

As concerns have grown since the election in November, Equality Labs, a human rights group that works in the United States and South Asia, has led dozens of digital-security training sessions, including the one in Oakland. Other groups, meanwhile, have increased the frequency of "cryptoparties" that teach how to encrypt messages, hard drives and other digital essentials that are vulnerable to surveillance.

"It's this moment when all of the sudden, people are very worried and suspicious of the government," said Matt Mitchell, an African American security researcher who founded the New York group CryptoHarlem. "They feel like using these tools will give them some semblance of freedom and autonomy and ability to speak."

Better security, however, has always carried costs, because the most vulnerable technologies also tend to be the most widely available and easiest to use. Emails and text messages are vulnerable to interception and can open the door to hackers. Social-media postings create streams of data that law enforcement authorities can monitor using powerful analytical software. And cellphones, no matter how advanced or primitive, continuously transmit location data in ways that surveillance gear can collect.

The more secure alternatives often require new technical skills or extra precautions, such as using the heavily encrypted Tor browser for surfing the Web more safely - if somewhat more slowly - than is possible with Chrome or Internet Explorer.

Cyril acknowledged that the push for tighter security might dampen or discourage some activists who are reluctant to change familiar habits. "There is a tension, but not one that can't be overcome."

The lead trainer this evening, Thenmozhi Soundararajan of Equality Labs, compared the techniques she was teaching to "safe sex" campaigns stressing the use of condoms to block HIV and other sexually transmitted infections. Such measures, while not perfect, help guard against persistent dangers, she said.

"You should never use the Internet without protection," she said.

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In Trump's America, Black Lives Matter activists grow wary of their ... - Chicago Tribune