Budget Priorities

The slave patrol in the classroom

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No sooner had the National Rifle Association and its congressional servants raised the call to place armed cops in every school, than videos began to surface of Black students thrown, dragged and beaten by “school resource officers” for such offenses as refusing to put down their phone or getting a drink of water during assembly. While not all schools have armed cops, the trend toward criminalizing childhood for dark children has been in motion for some time. Calling in the cops has become an accepted school response to temper tantrums, arguments and other minor forms of acting out. Continue Reading

Rage, Hope, Love Fueling Black Lives Matter Movement

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“The problem is poverty. The problem is racism,” said Rev. Victoria Safford of the White Bear Unitarian Universalist Church. “The problem is deep, deep, old oppression.”

Safford was one of more than 200 people who showed up outside an Edina, Minnesota court to support eleven people who have been charged with a variety of crimes after a December Black Lives Matter rally at the Mall of America. The problems of poverty, racism and oppression are at the root of what the Black Lives Matter movement is fighting against. What will it to take to fix it? Continue Reading

Body cameras benefit the police

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Whether or not they care to admit it, I am positive that every student, professor and community member has an opinion on body cameras for police officers. Perhaps a body camera would have been useful in the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson this past summer. But while body cameras are certainly useful in situations like Brown’s, they also reward the police officers who are doing a good job. Therefore, I am glad that many police departments are moving toward using them. Having cameras available for law enforcement officers is important for several reasons. First, it enables their superiors to determine whether the officers are doing their jobs well.  Most importantly, the use of cameras will help the fight to end racial injustice. A report by the Washington Post found that in three-quarters of fatal shooting cases since 2005, the police officers were white, and two-thirds of officers’ victims were black.  Prosecutors won’t press charges against officers unless there is a substantial amount of evidence. Continue Reading

Police Brutality and City Hall

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Michael Cavlan has the expressed permission of the  X Vandals to use this song and video clip Plan B in his article titled Police Brutality And City Hall. Please note that it was written on Friday March 6th, 2015 but due to technical copyright issues was not published in the Twin Cities Daily Planet until Saturday March 14th, two days after two police officers were shot in Ferguson, Missouri. On November 25th, 2014 Jeffrey Patrick Rice of St Paul, Minnesota plowed his car into a protest against police killings in Minneapolis. After knocking over a group of protesters and trapping a 16 year old girl under his car, he sped away, putting others at risk. The Minneapolis police talked to him after the incident and let him go without even a ticket. Their initial report called Mr Rice the “victim” and the young girl that had been trapped under his car and others injured by him as “others.” The Minneapolis Star Tribune initially reported the police version of Mr Rice being the “victim” who was “fleeing the mob.” Continue Reading

Bringing the ‘Model Minority Mutiny’ home

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This fall, in the wake of the shooting death of Michael Brown, and in the face of the mounting Black body count at the hands of law enforcement, ChangeLab put out a call for a Model Minority Mutiny. We called on Asian Americans to stand up against the model minority myth as an act of self-liberation from a humiliating, trivializing, and dehumanizing stereotype that has, for too long, been used as a justification for labeling Black communities as “problem” minorities, and excluding and criminalizing Black people.

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#BlackLivesMatter and #ChargeMeToo

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As one grand jury after another refuses to indict police who have killed black men, #BlackLivesMatter protests continue across the United States. I marched on November 25, missed Saturday’s MOA protest, and will probably march again. Like many people, I keep hearing the same questions on Facebook and from friends and family. Before the next family gathering, here’s my short question-and-answer. Continue Reading