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One dead, six injured in shooting at Peregrine Park in Natomas area
By Hudson Sangree
A child’s birthday party at a neighborhood park in the Natomas area turned into a scene of grief and horror Saturday after gunmen attacked the party, killing one man and wounding six others, including a 7-year-old child. About 5 p.m., gunmen approached the party at Peregrine Park on foot and began firing, said Officer Doug Morse, Sacramento police spokesman. They fled in a vehicle, though Morse said police were not ready to release a description of either the shooters or vehicle.
“There were so many eyewitnesses,” Morse said. “Detectives are trying to talk to everyone they can.” The shooting happened at a playground with blue-and-yellow play structures and picnic tables on the edge of a newer neighborhood of stuccoed houses with tile roofs. The victim who died was a man in his 20s. His body lay beneath a sliding board, his face uncovered, for hours after the shooting. A large blue Cookie Monster figure was on one of the picnic tables. An inflatable playhouse had collapsed. Clothing and shoes were scattered about. Morse said the other six victims had injuries that were not life-threatening. A 7-year-old child was among those wounded but is expected to survive, he said.
Some of those who were shot drove themselves to hospitals or were taken by friends or family members, he said. Others went by ambulance. Police did not identify the victims, and the Sacramento County Coroner’s Office had not released the name of the dead man Saturday night. Near the park on Guadalajara Way, mourners and onlookers stood talking in small groups, some smoking cigarettes as the sun set. At one point about, about a dozen gathered in a circle to pray with a chaplain. A young woman leaned her head on the chaplain’s shoulder and sobbed. From time to time, women wailed or cried.
Among them was Denise James, who said the man who was fatally shot was her 29-year-old son-in-law. She said he had a young son who would now grow up without a father.
“They came in the party and shot my son-in-law,” James said. “They took him away too early.” -
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Texas Student Suspended for Refusing to Stand for Pledge of Allegiance
By: Rebecca Rose
A Texas high school student was disciplined for refusing to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.
Needville High School sophomore Mason Michalec received a two-day in-school suspension when he refused to stand and recite the Pledge along with his classmates.
"I'm really tired of our government taking advantage of us," Michalec told KHOU. "I don't agree with the NSA spying on us." He said he was tired of laws restricting free speech on the Internet as well.
Via Fox News:
The 15-year-old has refused to stand for the Pledge for most of the year, but he ran into trouble when a different teacher noticed he was staging a silent protest.
"And she told me, 'This is my classroom. This is the principal's request. You're going to stand,'" Michalec told the station. "And I still didn't stand and she said she was going to write me up."
Michalec said that after he was punished with two days of in-school suspension, the principal warned him that he would face more suspensions if his protest continued.
Residents seem to be divided over Michalec's actions. One person told KHOU the teen should stand up because "the soldiers are out there, they're doing their job."
However, one local veteran disagreed:
"The kid's well-spoken and he's well-informed," said Needville neighbor Dean Reese. "It's not like he's ignorant, he's not doing it to make people mad. He's doing it because of his personal beliefs."
Reese believes punishing Mason for speaking his mind, sends the wrong message.
"I'm a veteran, I'm not real big on flag-burning or anything like that, but this country is a free country and we're free to do what we want," he said. -
Massive International Worker Strike Has the Food Industry Terrified
By: C.A. Pinkham
Fast food workers are planning the largest international worker strike to date, and a bevy of news stories from this week show just how scared the food industry actually is of the rising tide of worker organization.
On May 15, labor organizers have planned one-day walkouts and strikes across 150 U.S. cities. That's impressive enough, but they've also planned similar protests in 32 countries across five continents, from the Phillippines to the UK to New Zealand to Brazil to Nigeria. Assuming they pull it off, this would be the first global fast food worker strike and could signal a new phase of the movement to maybe pay workers an actual, livable wage for their labor.
So far, the restaurant industry has been silent in the face of this announcement, which is telling. For all of their previous public bluster and attempts to minimize the importance of the strikes as some passing phase, we've received ample evidence that the food industry is starting to panic in the face of the rising tide in support of minimum wage. Earlier this week, Salon uncovered a bevy of private documents from inside the National Restaurant Association (the so-called "other NRA") that show just how worried they are at the food industry's largest lobbying arm. In addition to tracking protest movements using the protest organizers' own Low Pay is Not OK website, they're also attempting to go after both the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the Restaurant Opportunities Centers (ROC) using "third party allies" to "place op-eds and letters to the editors criticizing ROC and exposing its shady past."
What's interesting is that the documents make clear that the NRA is particularly obsessed with the ROC, tracking them relentlessly, even going so far as to track restaurants the ROC has talked about as being good employers. ROC co-founder Saru Jayaraman, a particular target for the NRA, points out in that the NRA would probably have a much easier time of it if they took all those resources devoted to tracking and discrediting food industry workers and just decided to pay the workers better.
But what the NRA and most of the food industry in general hasn't yet caught onto is the fact that the current rate of CEO-to-worker pay, as well as the refusal to pay workers a living wage, is unsustainable. Sooner or later, the whole house of cards has to come crashing down, and by refusing to acknowledge that what they're doing isn't viable in the long-term, the restaurant industry is only harming both itself and the American economy. The funny thing is that a lot of the smarter business elements are starting to figure this out: on Wednesday, Subway CEO Fred DeLuca said that he didn't think raising the minimum wage was a bad idea, and even suggested indexing it to inflation, and on Thursday, Dairy Queen CEO John Gainor echoed his comments. On that same day, no less than Mitt Romney said that Republicans should be supporting the idea of a minimum wage hike. It's worth noting that Romney has in the past made comments supportive of indexing the minimum wage to inflation, although to be fair, you'd be hard-pressed to find a political position Romney hasn't taken at some point during his career.
Regardless, the writing is on the wall: the status quo for the last two decades isn't going to cut it any more.
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/5/7/fast-food-workersuniteactivistsannounceglobalprotest.html
http://www.salon.com/2014/05/07/exclusive_fast_food_strikes_in_150_cities_and_protests_in_30_countries_planned_for_may_15/
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/05/08/3435546/subway-minimum-wage/
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China may build an undersea train to America
BY ISHAAN THAROOR
China is planning to build a train line that would, in theory, connect Beijing to the United States. According to a report in the Beijing Times, citing an expert at the Chinese Academy of Engineering, Chinese officials are considering a route that would start in the country's northeast, thread through eastern Siberia and cross the Bering Strait via a 125-mile long underwater tunnel into Alaska. "Right now we're already in discussions. Russia has already been thinking about this for many years," says ? Mengshu, the engineer cited in the article. The proposed "China-Russia-Canada-America" line would be some 8,000 miles long, 1,800 miles longer than the Trans-Siberian railroad. The tunnel that the Chinese would help bore beneath the icy seas would be four times the length of what traverses the English Channel.
That's reason enough to be skeptical of the project, of which there are few details beyond what was attributed to the one official cited by the state-run Beijing Times. Meanwhile, a report in the state-run China Daily insists the country does have the technology and means to complete a construction project of this scale, including another tunnel that would link the Chinese province of Fujian with nearby Taiwan.
In the past half decade or so, China has embarked on an astonishing rail construction spree, laying down tens of thousands of miles tracks and launching myriad high-speed lines. It has signaled its intent to build a "New Silk Road" -- a heavy-duty freight network through Central Asia that would connect with Europe via rail rather than the old caravans that once bridged West and East. A map that appeared on Xinhua's news site outlines the route below, alongside a parallel vision for a "maritime Silk Road."
While some of its neighbors watch China's rise warily, the main plank of Beijing's soft power pitch has always been its stated desire to improve economic ties and trade with virtually everyone. "China’s wisdom for building an open world economy and open international relations is being drawn on more and more each day," trumpets the Xinhua report that accompanies the map above, according to the Diplomat. To that end, Beijing has assiduously resurrected the narrative of the ancient Silk Road as well as given prime billing to the tales of China's famed Ming dynasty treasure fleets, which sailed all across the Indian Ocean. Seen in such grand historic perspective, a tunnel to Alaska doesn't seem too far-fetched.
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SMH that teacher would be dead if that were my child
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vH46floJQRk
http://jezebel.com/kindergarten-teacher-grabs-childs-neck-slams-his-head-1577810904 -
Woman Threatens to Shoot up Burger King over Stale Cinnamon Roll
By: Kelly Conaboy
Police in South Carolina say that a woman threatened to shoot everyone in a Burger King restaurant after she was served a stale cinnamon roll. (Shocking not only because of the obvious, but also because "stale cinnamon roll" is still a fairly appetizing phrase.)
The Post and Courier reports that the woman was eating at a Mount Pleasant Burger King location in South Carolina with two friends on Tuesday when she complained that her cinnamon bun wasn't fresh. A witness told police that she became angry and started shouting, then stormed out when a manager tried to speak to her.
She came back later that day with her friends and threatened to shoot the restaurant's employees and patrons. According to the police report, she said, "I'm going to shoot down the place." She left when employees called the police.
The police have not yet found her and no one has been arrested. -
Teenager falls into a coma and dies after being Tased by Baltimore police during struggle at hospital
By LOUISE BOYLE
A 19-year-old boy has died after falling into a coma following being hit with a Taser by police at a Baltimore hospital.
The city's police department has launched an investigation after the incident at Good Samaritan Hospital.
Officers claim that the teenager was part of a violent altercation with at least five security guards earlier this month when they got involved in the struggle.
The teenager, whose identity has not been revealed because he is a ward of state, was given an unknown amount of medication before officers arrived on the scene, according to reports.
Baltimore police Deputy Commissioner Jerry Rodriguez told CBS: 'The person was breathing when the officers left the hospital.
'It was not learned that the individual was in a coma and was possibly brain dead until several days after this incident.'
Police would not reveal if the teenager had been Tased more than once or for how long.
He was initially brought to the hospital suffering from emotional distress on May 6.
He had been taken to the hospital from a home he was staying at. It is unclear whether the boy was at a foster or group home.
Officials who spoke to The Baltimore Sun would identify the teenager only as a 'ward of state'. It is unclear why he was a ward of state but in Maryland you can remain in state care until the age of 21.
A spokesman for Good Samaritan Hospital refused to comment on the case to MailOnline today because the name of patient could not be provided.
MailOnline was awaiting a comment from the Baltimore Police Department.
Once witnesses and the responding officers are interviewed for the investigation, the findings will be turned over to the State's Attorney's Office. -
Woman Is Officially Over It, Fills Entire Lawn With Sand
By: Aleksander Chan
Georgianna Reid, of Kansas City, Mo., was sick and tired of all the work involved maintaining a beautiful yard. Mostly, she had grown to resent having to mow and water her lawn. So she resolved to do what anyone would do in her situation: fill her lawn with 80 tons of sand, for which she paid only $4,000 to do.
"Now being over 60, I've decided that I've owned the house for 33 years and that I wasn't going to mow anymore or water," Reid told KCTV.
Some of her jealous neighbors think that Reid's beach house is bad for their landlocked neighborhood. Some have even filed complaints with the city. "I think the house looks revolting with all that is out there," neighbor Edwin Bisby said. "I'm sure it's going to hurt the property values in this neighborhood."
For her part, Reid really does not care what her neighbors think. "I would say, 'I'm putting in the largest litter box in the world,'" she said.
Also, if you took anything from her beach-yard, please return it:
A rather confrontational yard sign is posted in the yard offering a $2,000 reward for tips on who stole a volleyball net, lawn ornaments and a life-sized chest set. Reid said they set in the sand until they were taken.
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Teacher Removed From Classroom For Showing Blackface Videos
By: Mark Shrayber
Administrators at Monroe Middle School in Michigan have placed retiring teacher Alan Barron "on leave" after they decided that his way of teaching history was offensive. Barron was removed from the classroom when he showed archival footage of whites in blackface to illustrate his lesson on Jim Crow laws. The assistant principal who was sitting in on Barron's lecture thought that the video was offensive and racist. The assistant principal is correct, but what's offensive isn't that the video was being shown but that blackface ever happened at all.
If schools insist on teaching history, then administrators must understand that it's not all fun and games and freedom for everyone. While showing archival footage of whites in blackface can be shocking and jarring (and it should be because that ? is disgusting), it can also be an important visual aid to describing what institutional racism looked like as well as an entry into the more important discussion of the racism happening today. I took eighth grade history and aside from discussing racism (which I think most of us were ready for), we also discussed (and watched videos of) World War II and both the Holocaust and the internment of the Japanese in America. It was uncomfortable, but it was also important.
Not everyone agrees with the assistant principal and many students and parents are arguing against Barron's unfair suspension. One parent said this regarding Barron's suspension and the claims that his teaching methods were racist:
It had nothing to do with racism. History is history. We need to educate our kids to see how far we've come in America. How is that racism?"
Another parent wrote a letter in support of Barron and posted it on Facebook:
Mr. Barron is one of the ... great teachers we have in Monroe Public Schools...He has changed many children's lives over the course of his career. If Mr. Barron felt that he was teaching something that was offensive, he would most definitely not have done it."
Barron was set to retire this year and due to his suspension (or "leave") he has been barred from going to any and all district functions, including a banquet where he and other retiring teachers would be honored. I can't imagine that this is the first time Barron has taught this particular topic. He's been instructing at the school for over 36 years and to be denied a chance to say goodbye to his school because he was actually doing his job and making students think about racism? That appears to be the only offensive thing about this whole story.
http://www.monroenews.com/news/2014/may/30/monroe-teacher-alan-barron-suspended/ -
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Here are Seven Restaurants and Retailers That Pay a Livable Wage
By Patrick allan
If you're shopping around for a new job with a decent starting pay, G.E. Miller at 20somethingfinance has compiled a list of business chains that give you a fighting chance.
Here's a list of the decent paying business chains, that might make the perfect summer job:
IKEA: You can start here at $9.17 an hour, and next January they're upping it to $10.76.Costco: Starting wage here is $11.50 an hour and if you stick around long enough, the average wage is around $21.00 an hour.The Gap: $9.00 an hour to start here, but it will be raised again to $10.00 an hour in June 2015. (This includes Old Navy, Banana Republic, PiperLime, and Athleta)Whole Foods: Workers start here at $10.00 an hour.Trader Joe's: You can start here at $9.00 and the average wage is $13.33 an hour.Ben & Jerry's: You start here at a whopping $16.13 an hour. Pretty cool, right?In-N-Out Burger: This chain starts new employees at $10.50 an hour.
So if you're out there looking for a good first gig, or just something to move on to, check these places out first.
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You Do Pig Cheeks? You're Hired. Restaurants Face Labor Crunch
By Jennifer Oldham
A labor crunch fueled by improving consumer confidence is cooking in the restaurant industry as venues from San Francisco to New York increase wages and benefits to attract cooks, servers and dishwashers. “We had an open call for staff I posted on at least three sites at up to $80 an ad,” said Casey Thompson, executive chef at Aveline in San Francisco. “Zero people came.” Thompson increased hourly pay at the newly opened restaurant to $17 an hour from $11 for cooks who prepare abalone, pig cheek and seaweed soda bread. Encouraged by an improving economy and growing appetite for dishes prepared in unusual ways with newfound ingredients, chefs such as Thompson are opening more fine-dining restaurants, helping boost total industry sales to an expected record high of $683 billion in 2014.
The jump in spending on eating out comes as the number of immigrants available to work in kitchens shrinks and restaurant employees take jobs in other sectors of an improving labor market. The job crunch extends from upscale restaurants to fast-food chains and from Arizona and Texas to Washington, and New York, said Chris Christopher, director, U.S. & global consumer economics at IHS Economics, a Lexington, Massachusetts-based research firm. “Increased income in upper household income brackets is fueling increased demand in full service restaurants,” Christopher said. “Consumers are feeling more confident about things and will splurge. Instead of going out to eat once a month at the corner fancy restaurant they will go twice.”
‘Flipping Burgers’
Escalating competition is leading restaurants to pay employees more so they don’t leave “even if they are just flipping burgers,” he said. The demand contributed to 644,000 open jobs in the accommodation and food services sector on the last business day of May, an increase of 209,000 positions from a year earlier and the highest monthly level since the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics began tracking the data in 2000. Fewer Americans than forecast filed applications for unemployment benefits last week, a sign the job market continues to strengthen. Jobless claims dropped by 11,000 to 304,000 in the week ended July 5, the fewest in more than a month, a Labor Department report showed today in Washington. The median forecast of 45 economists surveyed by Bloomberg called for 315,000.
Jobs Surge
The surge in openings comes as employment at restaurants and bars grew more quickly than the overall economy, with 10.7 million workers in June, up 3 percent from a year earlier, according to the U.S. Labor Department. That compares with a 1.8 percent gain for total payrolls over the same period, figures show. The trend extends beyond the coasts. In Arizona, job growth in food services and drinking places rose 3.6 percent in 2013, outpacing total employment gains of 2.1 percent and causing average weekly restaurant wages to rise 1.3 percent -- almost twice total state wage growth, said George Hammond, Tucson-based director of the University of Arizona’s Economic and Business Research Center. Prices in the Phoenix area for food purchased away from home also climbed, he said.
“I would expect this to result in unemployed residents in other industries to be attracted to jobs in the restaurant/bar sector,” Hammond said in an e-mail. “I’d also expect some retirees to be drawn back into the labor market.”
Still, some labor economists are skeptical about the depth of the shortage.
Wage Issue
“Employers often complain they can’t find skilled enough workers at the wages they want to offer -- that’s probably right,” said Gary Burtless, a labor economist at the Washington-based Brookings Institution. “It’s also the case that they aren’t offering very good wages.”
Workers in food services in Arizona earned $16,622 last year on average, more than the U.S. average of $16,446 and 1 percent less than in Texas, Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows.
Fine-dining restaurants geared to provide locally sourced meat and produce with white-tablecloth service are sprouting in states and cities outside traditional food meccas.
An increasing population is leading to more restaurants in Arizona, which along with Texas, is expected to generate more dining jobs in the next decade than in any other state.
“We had two kinds of food when I was growing up: Mexican food and a different kind of Mexican food,” said Steve Chucri, president of the state’s restaurant association. “Now people are always looking to try new concepts.”
Gourmet Cuisine
Phoenix-based Chef Justin Beckett, who plans to hire 30 people this month for a new venture, said it is difficult to find employees as consumer appetite for gourmet cuisine grows and “more talented chefs in town are starting their own restaurant, or second or third restaurants.”
“There are restaurants paying two to three dollars an hour more than our current pay scale,” said Beckett, who seeks a five-star experience at a three-star price for deep fried deviled eggs and chocolate dipped bacon s’mores at Beckett’s Table. “We are a smaller restaurant group -- we don’t have the financial resources that some of the larger groups do.”
The expansion of Arizona’s restaurant industry comes as 300,000 people have left the state since 2007 following passage of anti-immigration legislation and the housing crisis, including workers chefs relied on, Chucri said.
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No Visas
Food and drinking establishments lack a visa program, said Angelo Amador, a vice president at the Washington-based National Restaurant Association. Immigration legislation approved by the Senate included such a provision. The House isn’t scheduled to take up the bill.
“In places where there are shortages I see a move in many restaurants to do more automation,” Amador said. “That trend will continue unless there is immigration reform to bring other workers.”
A hunger for new restaurants in the nation’s capital is frustrating seasoned chefs.
“A busy night at Marcel’s is 120 people and I’ll have 13 cooks, plus two sous chefs, plus a chef de cuisine running the kitchen,” said Chef Robert Wiedmaier, who opened the French Belgian restaurant 15 years ago. “It’s very difficult to find talented, hard-working chefs.”
Marcel’s needs 37 people, 20 in the front of the house including bartenders, servers and managers and 17 in the back such as chefs and dishwashers.
In New York City, restaurateurs like the Union Square Hospitality Group are skipping culinary schools and hiring high school interns willing to make lower wages in exchange for experience.
‘Food Cities’
“Look at how many great food cities there are out there for someone graduating from culinary school,” said Sabato Sagaria, the group’s chief restaurant officer. “Instead of having to go to San Francisco, New York, or Chicago, they can go to Charleston or Nashville where the cost of living is more affordable.”
New York-based Union Square, which employs 3,500, is holding its first-ever job fair on July 19.
The shortage is also being felt in states experiencing an energy boom. In Midland, Texas in the Permian Basin, workers at Firehouse Subs can earn $15 an hour, almost twice the average hourly pay at stores elsewhere, said Don Fox, chief executive of Jacksonville, Florida-based Firehouse of America LLC.
“Because of a robust economy and a real tight labor market it’s tough to attract people,” he said. “Restaurants there are doing significantly higher sales volumes, so they can afford to pay the wages.”
Health Benefits
Firehouse Subs replaces as many as 10 of the 15 employees at each of its 31 company-owned restaurants each year, Fox said, adding the turnover rate is lower than the industry average of 200 percent. In these stores, Fox rolled out health care this year, a “substantial benefit and raise for full-time employees,” he said.
At San Francisco’s Aveline, Thompson, who competed on the Bravo cable television network’s Top Chef and relies on local farms, artisans and wine purveyors, said a fruitless search for staff requires existing employees to work overtime.
“My pastry chef hasn’t had a day off since before we opened -- she’s been working almost two months without a day off,” said Thompson. “It’s crazy, I’ve never seen anything like it.” -
Young_Chitlin wrote: »Diabetes rate in U.S. children skyrockets THIRTY per cent in a decade as experts warn of high costs and a 'lifetime of burden'
By CHRIS PAINE
Childhood diabetes has spiraled out of control and experts fear it might be years until they catch up on just how rapidly the problem is spreading.
New figures show instances of Type-2 diabetes in children and teenagers spiked a drastic 30 per cent between 2000 and 2009, and there are fears the problem has gotten a lot worse in the untracked period in the five years since.
The complications arising from diabetes means those children affected face 'a lifetime burden', the study's author warned.
New figures released today show that 0.46 in every 1,000 kids is affected by Type-2 - with more than 20,000 sufferers across the U.S. - while the cases of Type-1 diabetes is up 21 per cent to 167,000 children. The research was presented at a Pediatric Academic Societies conference in Vancouver by Dana Dabelea, from the Colorado School of Public Health in Aurora, who authored the study.
'These increases are serious,' she said, according to USA Today.
'Every new case means a lifetime burden of difficult and costly treatment and higher risk of early, serious complications.'
Nearly 10 per cent of the entire U.S. population - 25.8 million people - is affected by diabetes. Obesity expert David Ludwig, from the Boston Children's Hospital, says the gap in tracked data since 2009 has caused the industry concern that things are getting worse. 'We don't know what happened in the last five years,' he said.
'Most likely, things have gotten worse.' The spike in Type-2 diabetes among children is particularly concerning because it's traditionally referred to as 'adult-onset' diabetes and usually only affects people over the age of 40.
And most children who do suffer from it are already obese, experts say, meaning they are facing an array of health problems including heart attacks and ? failure.
A kid on my AAU team had diabetes ? is like 17 lol, said all he eats is taco bell -
America Is Not For Black People
By: Greg Howard
The United States of America is not for black people. We know this, and then we put it out of our minds, and then something happens to remind us. Saturday, in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson, Mo., something like that happened: An unarmed 18-year-old black man was executed by police in broad daylight. By now, what's happening in Ferguson is about so many second-order issues—systemic racism, the militarization of police work, and how citizens can redress grievances, among other things—that it's worth remembering what actually happened here. Michael Brown was walking down the middle of the street in Ferguson's Canfield Green apartment complex around noon on Saturday with his friend Dorin Johnson when the two were approached by a police officer in a police truck. The officer exchanged words with the boys. The officer attempted to get out of his car. At this point, two narratives split.
According to the still-unnamed officer, one of the two boys shoved him back into the vehicle and then wrestled for his sidearm, discharging one shot into the cabin. The two ran, and the police officer once again stepped from his vehicle and shot at the fleeing teenagers multiple times, killing Brown.
According to Johnson and other eye witnesses, however, the cop ordered the friends to "get the ? on the sidewalk," but the teenagers said they had almost reached their destination. That's when the officer slammed his door open so hard that it bounced off of Brown and closed again. The cop then reached out and grabbed Brown by the neck, then by the shirt.
"I'm gonna shoot you," the cop said.
The cop shot him once, but Brown pulled away, and the pair were still able to run away together. The officer fired again. Johnson ducked behind a car, but the cop's second shot caused Brown to stop about 35 feet away from the cruiser, still within touching distance of Johnson. Multiple witnesses say this is when Brown raised his hands in the air to show he was unarmed. Johnson remembered that Brown also said, "I don't have a gun, stop shooting!" The officer then shot him dead.
After that, the narratives dovetail again. Brown was left where he died, baking in the Missouri heat for hours, before he was removed by authorities. The officer was placed on paid administrative leave.
Michael Brown is not special. In all its specificity, the 18-year old's death remains just the most recent example of police officers killing unarmed black men.
Part of the reason we're seeing so many black men killed is that police officers are now best understood less as members of communities, dedicated to keeping peace within them, than as domestic soldiers. The drug war has long functioned as a full-employment act for arms dealers looking to sell every town and village in the country on the need for military-grade hardware, and 9/11 made things vastly worse, with local police departments throughout America grabbing for cash to better defend against any and all terrorist threats. War had reached our shores, we were told, and police officers needed weaponry to fight it.
Officers have tanks now. They have drones. They have automatic rifles, and planes, and helicopters, and they go through military-style bootcamp training. It's a constant complaint from what remains of this country's civil liberties caucus. Just this last June, the ACLU issued a report on how police departments now possess arsenals in need of a use. Few paid attention, as usually happens.
http://www.stltoday.com/lifestyles/relationships-and-special-occasions/parenting/aisha-sultan/why-ferguson-burned-explaining-st-louis-area-riot-to-kids/article_725f501f-ba21-538a-acaf-f00221add91d.html
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The worst part of outfitting our police officers as soldiers has been psychological. Give a man access to drones, tanks, and body armor, and he'll reasonably think that his job isn't simply to maintain peace, but to eradicate danger. Instead of protecting and serving, police are searching and destroying.
If officers are soldiers, it follows that the neighborhoods they patrol are battlefields. And if they're working battlefields, it follows that the population is the enemy. And because of correlations, rooted in historical injustice, between crime and income and income and race, the enemy population will consist largely of people of color, and especially of black men. Throughout the country, police officers are capturing, imprisoning, and killing black males at a ridiculous clip, waging a very literal war on people like Michael Brown.
"There's a long history of racial tension and misunderstanding in this region," St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Aisha Sultan told me over the phone yesterday. "Especially on the north side."
This sort of thing—especially on the north side—is what gets glossed over a little too easily when we try to fit a particular incident into a broader narrative. Ferguson is a small town of 21,000, mostly white until the 1960s, when whites fled anywhere but where they were. Today, Ferguson, which is a bit north of St. Louis is mostly black; Ferguson and St. Louis County police are mostly white. That fits a metropolitan area flanked by two rivers that divide neighborhoods and regions by race, the sixth-most segregated in the United States.
To people, like me, from the coast—I'm from Maryland—St. Louis can seem like a blank in the the middle of the country, a place where people and even ideas get stuck on the way to somewhere better, or at least somewhere else. But St. Louis is like New York (the fourth-most segregated metro in America), or Los Angeles, or Miami, or Dallas, or Washington, DC, only more so. Far from a blank, St. Louis is often regarded as the most American of America's cities.
"It is a microcosm of the rest of the country," Sultan said. "If this can happen in St. Louis, it can happen in any city."
It does. On August 5 in Beavercreek, Ohio, 22-year-old John Crawford was killed in a Walmart when a toy gun he had picked up from inside the store was apparently mistaken for a real gun. LeeCee Johnson, who had two children with Crawford, said that she was on the phone with him, and that his last words before she heard gunshots from police officers were, "It's not real."
On July 17 in Staten Island, New York, 43-year-old Eric Garner, a well-known presence in the neighborhood who sold illicit cigarettes and kept an eye on the block, was killed after breaking up a fight when NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo used an illegal chokehold on the asthmatic man. "I can't breathe," he said, before he died. "I can't breathe."
On the night of September 14, 2013 in Charlotte, N.C., 24-year-old Jonathan Ferrell was killed after getting into a car accident. He climbed out of the rear window of the car, stumbled to the nearest house, and banged on the door for help. The homeowner notified the police, who showed up to the house. Ferrell was tased, and then an officer named Randall Kerrick shot and struck Ferrell 10 times.
There was Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Fla., and Oscar Grant in Oakland, Calif., and so many more. Michael Brown's death wasn't shocking at all. All over the country, unarmed black men are being killed by the very people who have sworn to protect them, as has been going on for a very long time now. It would appear that cops are not for black people, either.
After Brown's death came his demonization. First, we heard that Brown had run for stealing candy from a store. Then we were bombarded with a photo of Brown in a red Nike tank top on a stoop, posing for the camera.
This photo, in which Brown was flashing a "gang sign"—a peace sign, actually—was presented as proof that the teenager was a thug; his friends and family now not only have to work through their grief, but against a posthumous slur campaign. Johnson described his friend in an MSNBC interview as cool and quiet. Brown's uncle, Bernard Ewings, said in a Sunday interview that Brown loved music. Brown's mother, Leslie McSpadden, said that he was funny and could make people laugh. He graduated from high school in the spring, and was headed to college to pursue a career in heating and cooling engineering. Monday would have been his first day.
By all accounts, Brown was One Of The Good Ones. But laying all this out, explaining all the ways in which he didn't deserve to die like a dog in the street, is in itself disgraceful. Arguing whether Brown was a good kid or not is functionally arguing over whether he specifically deserved to die, a way of acknowledging that some black men ought be executed in the street.
To even acknowledge this line of debate is to start a larger argument about the worth, the very personhood, of a black man in America. It's to engage in a cost-benefit analysis, weigh probabilities, and gauge the precise odds that Brown's life was worth nothing against the threat he posed to the life of the man who killed him. It's to deny that there are structural reasons why Brown was shot dead while James Eagan Holmes—who on July 20, 2012, walked into a movie theater and fired rounds into an audience, killing 12 and wounding 70 more—was taken alive.
To ascribe this entirely to contempt for black men is to miss an essential variable though—a very real, American fear of them. They—we—are inexplicably seen as a millions-strong army of potential killers, capable and cold enough that any single one could be a threat to a trained police officer in a bulletproof vest. There are reasons why white gun's rights activists can walk into a Chipotle restaurant with assault rifles and be seen as gauche nuisances while unarmed black men are killed for reaching for their wallets or cell phones, or carrying children's toys. Guns aren't for black people, either.
Sunday was Brown's vigil, and several hundred people congregated in Ferguson. They began to march toward the Ferguson police station in protest. Police met them in full riot gear, with rifles, shields, helmets, dogs, and gas masks. Protesters yelled, "No justice, no peace!" They called the police murderers. They raised their hands in mock surrender, saying, "Don't shoot, I'm unarmed."
And then the protest turned violent, as some citizens began to break into, loot, and set fire to storefronts in their own community.
Police officers shot tear gas and rubber bullets. Thirty-two people were arrested that night. Two policemen were injured. There was nothing easy to make of it. It was a senseless and counterproductive attack on the community; it was the grief-stricken flailing of people who knew it could have been them, or their friends, or their brothers or sons. Whatever it was, it was met with force.
On Monday morning, Sultan went back to Ferguson, where she witnessed citizens cleaning up debris from the night before. Some were shocked by the violence; others said that they'd been backed against a wall, forced into necessary evil. Sultan interviewed an 11-year-old boy about the rioting. "I don't know why they hate us so much," he said. "It seems like police are about to go to war with the people." -
On Monday night, police again took the streets as demonstrators again marched in nonviolent protest, holding their hands high. Police again fired rubber bullets and tear gas, and again blocked off the main streets, not allowing anyone in or out. Police were photographed sweeping into side streets, and pointing guns over fences into backyards. It spilled over into today. They ran helicopters and drones over all of it; they shot tear gas; they ran up on citizens with guns drawn.
"Return to your homes," they yelled over megaphones.
"This is our home," the people of Ferguson answered. There wasn't—there isn't—much more to say. -
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From a trill snake to a trill dog burning a house downAuthorities are positively astounded after responding to a reported fire in Lacey Township in New Jersey, only to find the culprit was a dog.
When the Forked River Fire Department arrived at the scene of a house fire last night, they found that no one was inside the home at the time and were able to put it out. They did, however, find (and safely rescue) the family dog. Upon further investigation, they found that there was a laptop placed on top of the stove. And that the dog turned the stove on, allowing the laptop to catch fire, which then caused the house fire.
Okay. So who in their right minds puts a laptop on a stove? A dog who wants to destroy evidence, obviously. Is it me or is this the fishiest sounding crime ever, and not because a dog was able to turn a stove on? Obviously this pooch was in possession of some classified information that needed some destroying. Or maybe another dog wanted to send a strong message. OR MAYBE, AND MOST PROBABLY, this was the work of a wily cat who wanted to frame the poor dog.
Honestly at this point I'm just glad no one and no dog was hurt. But folks, should there be a fire in my apartment because someone left my laptop on the stove…know that it's because I asked all the wrong questions and that this thing is bigger than we thought.LACEY TOWNSHIP, N.J. — A fire broke out in a home on Norwood Drive on Friday night after a dog accidentally turned on a stove, which then burned a laptop that was on top of the stove, police said.
At 5:17 p.m. Friday, township police along with the Forked River Fire Department responded to 1318 Norwood Drive in the Forked River section of the township for a reported structure fire, Sgt. James Tranz said in a news release.
Upon arrival, smoke was seen coming out of the roof of the home, Tranz said. The Forked River Fire Department then went inside the home and put the fire out.
No one was inside the home at the time of the fire, but firefighters safely removed a dog from the home.
The fire department determined the cause of the fire was from a laptop that had been placed atop a stove, Tranz said.
The Ocean County Fire Marshal also responded and investigated the fire. After the investigation, it was believed that the dog that was inside the house accidentally turned the stove on, which then went on to burn the laptop, Tranz said. -
Rematch accepted
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWim8xZ94dw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLnL4cYXHZo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eC4dVe8pIGY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31AWe-FN7CA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKvgOLQwp5c
