#State Violence

[vague-humanoid]

MEIGS COUNTY, Tenn. -- The body of a Tennessee deputy was found Thursday after he went missing following his first-ever arrest. His patrol vehicle and the body of the woman he arrested were also recovered from a river, authorities said.

Multiple agencies will investigate how the vehicle ended up in the water. However, Johnson noted that the deputy, a native of New York, appeared to be texting and radioing while driving in a poorly lit area he was unfamiliar with.

"We're operating under the theory that it was an accident -- he missed his turn, he wasn't familiar and he was doing other things that may have caused him to go into the water," Johnson said at the Thursday afternoon press briefing.

@chrisdornerfanclub @el-shab-hussein

#state violence #police murder #dying because I'm in the power of jackass and was powerless ro affect his reckless actions sounds like a nightmare

[magnetothemagnificent]

This is your reminder that Mahsa Amini's Kurdish name was Jina. The violence she faced wasn't just due to her being a woman, it was also because she was Kurdish. Kurdish people face ethnic cleansing and violence across the SWANA region and Turkey. Kurdish people are not allowed to use their Kurdish names under these regimes.

She wasn't allowed to use her real name in life, please at least grant her the mercy of using her true name in death.

Her name was Jina.

#mahsa amini #jina amini #misogyny #racism #anti-kurdish racism #kurdish rights #current events #Iran #violent misogyny #state violence #violence against women

[decolonize-the-left]

Imagine looking for your son and finding 215 bodies.

It wasn’t until 172 excruciating days after his disappearance that Bettersten learned the truth: Dexter had been killed less than an hour after he’d left home, struck by a Jackson police car as he crossed a nearby interstate highway. Police had known Dexter’s name, and hers, but failed to contact her, instead letting his body go unclaimed for months in the county morgue. Now it was early October, and Bettersten had finally been told where she could find her son. She pulled up to the gates of the Hinds County penal farm, her sister in the passenger seat. A sheriff’s deputy and two jumpsuited inmates in a pickup told her to follow them.

They bounced down the road and curved into the woods, crawling past clearings where rows of small signs jutted from the earth, each marked with a number.

“Girl, look at this,” Bettersten, 65, said to her sister. “Would you believe they would bury someone out here?” The caravan came to the end of the road, at another clearing with more markers. The deputy took one of Bettersten’s hands, her daughter the other, and they walked to the mounds of loosely packed dirt. They stopped at grave No. 672. “Really?” Bettersten said.

She bent over, hands on her knees. She cried out, her voice echoing off the surrounding trees. “I’m sorry, baby. I’m so sorry.”

Also I know Tumblr doesn't exist in a vacuum so I wanted to share this as well:

Dec.18.2023

Blame for these botched cases has fallen primarily on the Hinds County coroner’s office and the Jackson Police Department. Each agency points a finger at the other. Meanwhile, other families are left wondering if their missing loved ones were also given pauper’s burials in that desolate stretch of land, beyond a horse stable and scrapyard. In an effort to help families find answers, NBC News is publishing a list of pauper’s burials in Hinds County since 2016. The list was provided by the county coroner’s office in response to a public records request. The office said in an email that it did not have a list of those buried earlier: "Records before 2016 could not be located. "

#jackson #Missouri #justice #equality #police brutality #acab #jackson police #usa #police #The Atlanta Public Safety Training Center #cop city #police violence #state violence #abolish the police

[pannaginip]

DZRH News on Twitter @dzrhnews:

JUST IN: Drag artist na si Amadeus Fernando Pagente o mas kilala bilang Pura Luka Vega, muling inaresto ng MPD

RH29 @/boy_gonzales

2024 Feb. 29

Bahaghari on Facebook: Pura Luka Vega's rearrest highlights LGBTQI's non-enjoyment of freedom of expression and artistic freedom

After months of being released on bail, drag artist Pura Luka Vega has been arrested again, this time by a different court but with the same complaint.

Bahaghari once again condemns the weaponization of the law against Pura and their right to freely express their relationship with faith through art. Evangelical groups have allotted resources to further marginalize an LGBTQI+ person in the court of law. Similarly, many city councils across the Philippines have declared them "persona non grata," following a viral video where they, dressed as Jesus Christ, performed Ama Namin remix in a bar.

It has not gone unnoticed to Bahaghari the double standards at play in this case. Pastor Apollo Quiboloy of the mega-church Kingdom of Jesus Christ was indicted by FBI for alleged crimes against women and children but none of the city councils who have declared Pura "persona non grata" are mum on this issue. Until now, Quiboloy is in hiding even with summons from the Senate in their investigation on the abuse allegations against him. Furthermore, the complainants for the case are all affiliated with the Philippines for Jesus Movement (PJM) founded by Eddie Villanueva, the father of Senator Joel Villanueva, whose office has deployed disgusting tactics to delay the SOGIESC Equality Bill.

The art of drag and other similar acts of expression by LGBTQI+ people are under attack around the world. In the United States, legislations have been passed to criminalize people based on gender identity and expression. In the Philippines where a national anti-discrimination law is absent, LGBTQI+ individuals are subject to gender-based violence.

Pura Luka Vega's case is an attack on LGBTQI+ people's expression on their relationship with faith and religion and the expression of their artistic freedom. LGBTQI+ individuals have different expressions on their faith. Many are still practicing their religion. Some have abandoned it altogether due to the trauma and marginalization they felt in the presence of their religious leaders.

#DragIsNotACrime #FreePuraLukaVega

2024 Mar. 1

#free pura luka vega #drag is not a crime #sogiesc equality #philippines #state violence #religion #lgbtq discrimination

[hussyknee]

YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND. THEY BASHED PEOPLE ON THEIR HEADS, GASSED SMALL CHILDREN AND OLD GRANDPARENTS, MAIMED AND EVEN KILLED PROTESTORS ON THE STREET WHILE ARMOURED TO THE EYETEETH

Big Damn Post Of The Unfolding Sri Lankan Revolution (Aragalaya)

VICTORY TO THE STRUGGLE!! අරගලයට ජය!

#gotagohome2022 #sri lanka protests #අරගලයට ජය! #sri lanka #ACAB #police brutality #state violence #knee of huss

[prole-log]

#violence #anarchism #winter #state violence #freeblr

[vivi266]

November 29, 2022

The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention voices its concern over the growing number of laws introduced in the United States that target transgender individuals and the transgender community. Anti-trans hostility in the US has become a staple of the Republican Party’s election strategy and is clearly being used to stoke voters’ fears of a changing world by raising the specter of a malevolent polluting force tied to liberalism, cosmopolitanism, and democracy. The Lemkin Institute believes that the so-called “gender critical movement” that is behind these laws is a fascist movement furthering a specifically genocidal ideology that seeks the complete eradication of trans identity from the world.

#transphobia #transmisogyny #genocide #transphobia discussion #transmisogyny discussion #state violence

[thoughtportal]

Homeless Homicides Are On the Rise

The rising number of unhoused people being murdered in the United States is a grim and urgent reminder of our country’s housing crisis.

https://www.thenation.com/homeless-homicides-are-on-the-rise/

#tiktok #homelessness #homeless #mental health awareness #mental health #systemic oppression #systemic problems #systemic violence #housing crisis #housing crash #housing #state violence #article

[fernreads]

A panel of three Trump-appointed judges this week upheld an excessive eight-year prison sentence handed down to climate activist Jessica Reznicek, ruling that a terrorism enhancement attached to her sentence was “harmless.”

The terror enhancement, which dramatically increased Reznicek’s sentence from its original recommended range, set a troubling precedent. Decided by a lower court in 2021, it contends that Reznicek’s acts against private property were “calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government.” The appellate justices’ decision to uphold her sentence, callously dismissing the challenge to her terrorism enhancement, doubles down on a chilling message: Those who take direct action against rapacious energy corporations can be treated as enemies of the state.

Reznicek, an Iowa-based member of the Catholic Worker Movement and a participant in the Indigenous-led climate struggle, engaged in acts of property damage in an attempt to stop the completion of the Dakota Access pipeline in 2016 and 2017. Along with fellow activist Ruby Montoya, Reznicek took credit for various acts of sabotage, which harmed no humans or animals but burnt a bulldozer and damaged valves of the pipeline. The damaged equipment was property not of the U.S. government, but of private pipeline and energy companies.

Following Reznicek’s guilty plea to a single charge of conspiracy to damage an energy facility — which brought a recommended sentencing range of 37 to 46 months — Judge Rebecca Goodgame Ebinger, in allegiance with prosecutors, added the terrorism enhancement. This increased her sentencing range to 210 to 240 months, making the eight-year sentence Reznicek ultimately received fit comfortably below the accepted range, though it’s more than double the previous recommendation. (Montoya, who also pleaded guilty, has filed a motion to withdraw her plea, claiming that it was coerced.)

Both courts’ decisions on Reznicek’s sentence reflect unsurprising but deeply troubling priorities in our criminal legal system. It would be unempirical to the point of foolishness to expect the courts, stacked as they are with right-wing justices, to side with individuals taking risks to stop environmental devastation rather than those corporations making millions on the back of it. Yet Reznicek’s appeal was on a point of law: Terrorism enhancements are only supposed to be applicable to crimes that target governmental conduct; Reznicek’s targets were private corporations.

The collapsing of government and corporate interests signified by Reznicek’s terrorism enhancement is worthy of profound challenge, but the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judges did not even address the substance of the activist’s appeal. In a short, unsigned opinion, the court wrote that even if there had been an “error” in applying a terrorism enhancement, it was “harmless,” because Ebinger had stated on the record that she would have imposed an eight-year sentence with or without the terrorism enhancement.

It is a cynical move indeed to sidestep the chilling effect of labeling such acts as “terrorism,” as if it carries no material consequences for the future of water and Indigenous land protection and other social movements. As Reznicek’s support team wrote in a statement Monday, “Federal prosecutors only pursued terrorism enhancements against Reznicek after 84 Congressional representatives wrote a letter in 2017 to Attorney General Jeff Sessions requesting that Reznicek and other protesters who tamper with pipelines be prosecuted as domestic terrorists.” These members of Congress, note Reznicek’s supporters, have together received a combined $36 million in campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry.

Determinations over which actions are labeled “terrorism” are always political, and in this case nakedly so given the clear pressure applied on prosecutors by politicians and their industry backers. Ebinger’s claim — that she would have imposed the excessive eight-year sentence with or without the terror enhancement triggered — cannot be considered the final word here. Reporting on Reznicek’s case, ABC News — an outlet hardly aligned with the environmental left — noted that neither white supremacist murderer Dylann Roof or avowed neo-Nazi James Fields, who plowed his car into anti-fascist protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, received a terrorism enhancement when sentenced.

Reznicek’s legal team will continue to challenge her sentence in court, especially since the question of the misapplication of a terrorism enhancement remains open, despite the judges’ decision this week. A full court hearing by the 8th Circuit, an appeal to the far-right Supreme Court, or a request for clemency from President Joe Biden are all technical options, but hardly are any of these sites of optimism.

As her legal battles continue, Reznicek, whose acts of sabotage place her firmly on the right side of history, if not the law, deserves full-throated public support. As she noted in her 2017 statement claiming responsibility for the actions against the Dakota Access pipeline: “We acted from our hearts and never threatened human life nor personal property. What we did do was fight a private corporation that has run rampant across our country seizing land and polluting our nation’s water supply.”

#article #full article #bolding mine #environmental justice #nodapl #dapl #us politics #us justice system #terrorism #state violence

[shoutsofmybones]

If you say you believe in Scripture, but still think the death penalty is in any way moral or righteous, you are a hypocrite and a liar.

#christianity #Catholicism #death tw #state violence

[lilithism1848]

#state violence #leftism #anti capitalism #communism #socialism #anarchy #palestine #late stage capitalism #leftists #left wing #progressives #liberal #liberals #republican #twitter x #conservatives #politics #joe biden

[vague-humanoid]

#Palestine #antisemitic violence #state violence #genocide #zionism

[librarycards]

To understand how and why violence against trans women emerged, we need to be able to connect these two scales [the colonial and the interpersonal]. Panic and trans-feminization produced similar experiences for vastly different kinds of people around the world who had little in common—other than being targets. The men who picked up fairies on the street, or who paid to see female impersonators dance in nightclubs, acted out the same structure of violence when they threatened, assaulted, or robbed them as the colonial state in India or the settler-colonial state in America. This was the same violence wielded by municipal police forces that raided bars and locked people up for cross-dressing. The blending of state violence with interpersonal violence is a signature outcome of the global trans panic, a deadly merger that persists to this day.

Jules Gill-Peterson, A Short History of Trans Misogyny. [emphasis added]

#jules gill-peterson #transmisogyny #state violence #colonialism #readings #mine

[pannaginip]

AlterMidya on Twitter @altermidya:

LOOK: Filipino fisherfolks and environmental groups protest in front of the Netherlands embassy in Makati City today, March 22, to demand justice for what they call "grave corporate abuse" by Dutch dredging company Boskalis Westminster NV.

According to Kalikasan - People's Network for the Environment, the Dutch company is involved in several reclamation projects in the country such as the San Miguel Corporation's New Manila International Airport (NMIA) in Bulacan.

NMIA is considered by Boskalis as their "largest project in history."

“Boskalis is profiting from a project that bypassed environmental and social scrutiny, ignored warnings from impact assessments, and, worst, used military intimidation to coerce ‘consent’ from affected communities," said anti-reclamation activist Jhed Tamano.

The groups also seek accountability from the Dutch export credit agency Atradius Dutch State Business for supporting the construction of NMIA by providing export credit insurance valued at EUR 1.5 billion.

"We urge the Netherlands government to investigate corporate abuses by Dutch companies and -- until these abuses are thoroughly investigated -- to pressure the Philippine government to halt the airport project,” said Jonila Castro of Kalikasan.

Meanwhile, environmental advocates also protest in Papendrecht, Netherlands, where the Boskalis Westminster NV headquarters is located.

Photos by John Carlo Magallon

2024 Mar. 22

#no to land reclamation #philippines #corporate violence #netherlands #environmental issues #fishing industry #infrastructure #state violence #afp-pnp #overseas filipinos

[hussyknee]

#western imperialism #colonization #state violence #military violence #racism #child abuse #anti blackness #human rights violations #detention centers #abolition #acab #free palestine #child prisoners #child prosecution #terrorism #liberalism #mass incarceration #anarchism #nation state #child kidnapping #apartheid #prison industrial complex #colonialism #us history #slavery #israel is a terrorist state #west bank #palestinian genocide #knee of huss #social justice

[catdotjpeg]

[Image ID: A large group of people are gathered in protest on a sidewalk. A purple banner reading “Stop Cop City” is centered in the front of the photo. End ID.] 

A broad coalition of groups in Atlanta has launched a referendum to give voters a chance to say whether they want the controversial police and fire department training center known as “Cop City” built in a forest south-east of the city.

The effort requires organizers to collect about 70,000 signatures from Atlanta registered voters in 60 days. Then the question of the city canceling its agreement with the Atlanta Police Foundation to build the $90m center can be added to municipal election ballots in November.

The push comes after an estimated thousand people who showed up at City Hall on 5 June proved insufficient to stop Atlanta’s city council from approving about $67m for Cop City. Meanwhile, machines have already begun clear-cutting trees on the project’s 171-acre footprint in South River Forest.

The referendum faces what one organizer called “an atmosphere of repression” – including two activists being charged with felonies last week while putting up fliers, bringing total arrests since December to 50.

The largest group of arrests, on 5 March in a public park in the forest near where the project is planned, was followed by local government closing the park, in effect shutting off tree-sitting protests by “forest defenders” that had gone on for more than a year.

“We’re at the stage where they’ve pushed people out of the forest, they’ve arrested people … they’ve fenced off the forest, they’ve even begun clear-cutting,” said Kamau Franklin, founder of local group Community Movement Builders. “We’re at the stage where the most direct, legal mechanism to stop this project is by referendum.” [...]

...the movement opposing the project has drawn a wide range of people locally, nationally and internationally who oppose police militarization, urban forest destruction amid climate change and environmental racism. Most residents in neighborhoods surrounding the forest are Black.

Most of the organizations driving the referendum are also Black-led, including the regional chapter of Working Families Power, Black Voters Matter and the NAACP. Officials from the Georgia governor, Brian Kemp, down to the mayor have consistently referred to opposition against the center as the work of white “outsiders”.

“That narrative is false,” said Britney Whaley, regional director of Working Families Power. “This has been national, but it’s also been community-grown for a few years now.”

Ashley Dixon, an Atlanta-area organizer, has led canvassing efforts to inform neighborhoods around South River Forest about the center for nearly a year. Her team has spoken to more than a thousand people. About 80% opposed the project once they knew about it, she said.

The only academic poll on the issue to date, from Atlanta’s Emory University, showed slightly more Black respondents opposed the project than supported it, with the opposite being true for whites. Atlanta’s population is 48% Black.

The idea for the referendum came from one that succeeded in stopping a spaceport from being built in coastal Georgia, said Will Harlan, founder of Forest Keeper, a national forest conservation organization. “To me, Cop City is the most important issue in conservation in the south-east,” Harlan said. “A referendum is the smartest, most democratic solution … [and] a way to find resolution and closure.”

Although the 2022 spaceport referendum affected a county of only 55,000 people, similarities between the two controversies point to the role voters can play when other efforts fall short.

In that case, local officials “dug their heels in” and stopped responding to press requests or providing transparent information to the public, said Megan Desrosiers, who led the referendum. In the case of Cop City, the Atlanta Police Foundation has stopped answering press requests for at least a year, and the city of Atlanta was recently discovered to be understating the project’s cost to taxpayers by about $36m.

The project is planned on land the city owns that is located in neighboring DeKalb county. Because of Atlanta’s ownership, only Atlanta voters can participate in the referendum. [...]

Organizers of the Cop City referendum pointed to the state’s heavy-handed approach to protesters as a primary concern. There have been 42 domestic terrorism charges to date. A bail and legal defense fund’s members were also arrested and the state added fundraising to its criminal description of the training center’s opposition.

In that context, it took about a dozen attempts at finding a legally required fiscal sponsor for the referendum, which may need as much as $3.5m to reach success, said spokesperson Paul Glaze.

Cliff Albright, co-founder of Black Voters Matter – one of two organizations that agreed to take the sponsorship role – said the recent Atlanta Solidarity Fund arrests were done “to send a message, in hopes it would have a chilling effect. We’re not naive about what the threats are – but we believe our community cares about this issue.”

-- From “Activists push for referendum to put ‘Cop City’ on ballot in Atlanta” by Timothy Pratt for The Guardian, 16 Jun 2023 

#atlanta #usa #stop cop city #state violence #police