#black lives matter protests

[gwydionmisha]

#Portland Police #Police Violence #Portland #Black Lives Matter Protests #News

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Internal Secret Service emails obtained by CREW show special agents in close communication with Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes, while failing to acknowledge the group’s ties to white nationalists and clashes with law enforcement.

In September 2020, a Secret Service agent sent an email to others within the agency, informing them that he had just spoken to Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes about an upcoming visit by then-President Trump to Fayetteville, NC. The agent, who referred to himself as “the unofficial liaison to the Oath Keepers (inching towards official),” described the group as “primarily retired law enforcement/former military members who are very pro-LEO [law enforcement officer] and Pro Trump. Their stated purpose is to provide protection and medical attention to Trump supporters if they come under attack by leftist groups.” He went on to say that Rhodes, “had specific questions and wanted to liaison [sic] with our personnel” and shared Rhodes’s cell phone number.

The emails obtained by CREW as part of an ongoing public records request offer only a snapshot of the communication between the Oath Keepers and the Secret Service. As they focus solely on the time period around the Fayetteville event, the extent of the contact Stewart Rhodes had with the agency remains unknown. The agent “inching towards” being the “official” liaison for Oath Keepers suggests a more longstanding relationship with Rhodes.

Another Secret Service agent spoke to Rhodes and informed the other agents that “their desire is to assist those attending the event make it to and from their cars safely. They are NOT there to demonstrate or push a political agenda.” In October 2022, a former member of the Oath Keepers testified that Rhodes had spoken to the Secret Service to coordinate around the rally, but an agency spokesman told CNN that, “The US Secret Service doesn’t have enough information to say whether or not this call actually took place.” These emails show that it did.

When one agent requested intelligence about the Oath Keepers another responded: “General searches revealed news articles that touched on the background of the founder Stewart Rhodes and the group. Rhodes has denounced White Nationalists ideals while sharing his dislike for ANTIFA…The group claims it is a local community response team for natural or civil disorders.” Agents also noted that a Facebook account associated with the group “contained pro-gun content, commentary on racism in the US, and news articles about politics,” but failed to find anything else.

There was plenty of other publicly available information about Rhodes and the Oath Keepers at the time that should have easily raised alarm.

In 2014, Oath Keepers traveled to Ferguson, Missouri with assault rifles claiming they were providing security for businesses in the area after the grand jury decision not to indict the white police officer who killed Michael Brown. The St. Louis County Police Department had to demand that the Oath Keepers stop patrolling the city, explaining in a statement that members were walking on rooftops of businesses holding semi-automatic rifles, breaking the county’s ordinance regulating security officers and guards. The police reportedly threatened arrest, and the Oath Keepers began protesting the authorities.

On the one-year anniversary of Michael Brown’s shooting, Oath Keepers again arrived in Ferguson with assault rifles and flak jackets, apparently intending to “protect” businesses and right-wing journalists, including an employee from InfoWars. St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar called their presence “both unnecessary and inflammatory.” This was also covered extensively by national media.

The group has also compared Hillary Clinton to Hitler on its website, and on May 5, 2015, Rhodes was recorded saying that then-Sen. John McCain should be tried for treason, convicted and “hung by the neck until dead.” A long list of former Oath Keepers allegedly cut ties with the group by 2017, citing concerns with Rhodes’s leadership.

Rhodes’s conduct outside of the Oath Keepers had also repeatedly come into question. In October 2015, the Montana Supreme Court’s Office of Disciplinary Counsel recommended that Rhodes be disbarred for violating his attorney oath following a number of ethics and conduct complaints against him, joining Arizona, which admonished Rhodes in 2012 for practicing without a license.

While the nearly all-white Oath Keepers themselves are purportedly not a white nationalist organization, and Rhodes may have “denounced” white nationalist ideals, Oath Keepers have repeatedly worked alongside white supremacist and white nationalist groups. In 2016, as neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups such as the National Socialist Movement, factions of the Ku Klux Klan and the American Freedom Party deployed members at polling sites, the Oath Keepers advised its members to do the same undercover. The Washington Post reported in 2017 that white supremacists in the alt-right scene “seem to have a lot in common with the Oath Keepers,” but that the Oath Keepers were not as racist or radical as certain far-right white nationalists would “prefer.” The Oath Keepers have repeatedly been highlighted in national articles as part of the landscape of white supremacist militias, and are often tied to their public ally the Proud Boys, a group that has been categorized as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The Proud Boys similarly are allied with the American Guard, a white nationalist group according to SPLC.

Rhodes is now best known for his role in organizing significant turnout of insurrectionists at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, just a few months after he was in contact with the Secret Service. Rhodes and other Oath Keepers planned to participate in violence at the Capitol—against Secret Service protectees, no less—and he gave followers instructions like “stay fully armed” and “get ready to fight” leading up to the attack.

In November 2022, Rhodes was convicted of seditious conspiracy by a jury for his role in the attempt to keep Donald Trump in power, and was sentenced to 18 years in prison in May—the longest of any convicted January 6th defendant so far. U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta found that Rhodes’s role in January 6th amounted to terrorism and said that he presents “an ongoing threat and peril to this country.”

#us politics #news #citizens for responsibility and ethics in Washington #US Secret Service #oath keepers #emails #alt right #domestic terrorism #2023 #stewart rhodes #white nationalists #Ferguson protests #Michael Brown #black lives matter protests #St. Louis County Police #Montana Supreme Court’s Office of Disciplinary Counsel #disbarred #far right #capitol riot #jan 6 insurrection #jan 6 #white supremacists #Judge Amit Mehta #seditious conspiracy

[ceevee5]

#black lives matter #protest #direct action #racism #racists

[bfpnola]

While this information may technically be new, government infiltration is not. As mentioned in the video, COINTELPRO is a perfect historical example of the insidious downfall of so many leftist grassroots organizations, and guess what? We've made posts about COINTELPRO in the past!

This information isn't made to scare you though, but to empower us all to come together even stronger, even smarter, even more diligently. We owe it to ourselves, to our communities, and to our predecessors to do at least that much. As working class citizens, we must protect one another. Do not get distracted by the divisions those in power wish to ensue.

Confused on where to start? Even if you don't apply as a volunteer, @bfpnola is a safe space for all youth activists to ask questions and receive free resources! Here’s what you need to get started:

Our Linktr.ee | Liberation Library | Discord Server | Open Youth Leadership Positions | Staff Application | Donate

#reaux speaks #resources #black lives matter #history #cointelpro #indigenous #anti capitalism #bipoc #abolition #queer #protest #intersectional feminism #disability justice #anarchism

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Ian Millhiser at Vox:

The Supreme Court announced on Monday that it will not hear Mckesson v. Doe. The decision not to hear Mckesson leaves in place a lower court decision that effectively eliminated the right to organize a mass protest in the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. Under that lower court decision, a protest organizer faces potentially ruinous financial consequences if a single attendee at a mass protest commits an illegal act.

It is possible that this outcome will be temporary. The Court did not embrace the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit’s decision attacking the First Amendment right to protest, but it did not reverse it either. That means that, at least for now, the Fifth Circuit’s decision is the law in much of the American South. For the past several years, the Fifth Circuit has engaged in a crusade against DeRay Mckesson, a prominent figure within the Black Lives Matter movement who organized a protest near a Baton Rouge police station in 2016. The facts of the Mckesson case are, unfortunately, quite tragic. Mckesson helped organize the Baton Rouge protest following the fatal police shooting of Alton Sterling. During that protest, an unknown individual threw a rock or similar object at a police officer, the plaintiff in the Mckesson case who is identified only as “Officer John Doe.” Sadly, the officer was struck in the face and, according to one court, suffered “injuries to his teeth, jaw, brain, and head.”

Everyone agrees that this rock was not thrown by Mckesson, however. And the Supreme Court held in NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware (1982) that protest leaders cannot be held liable for the violent actions of a protest participant, absent unusual circumstances that are not present in the Mckesson case — such as if Mckesson had “authorized, directed, or ratified” the decision to throw the rock. Indeed, as Justice Sonia Sotomayor points out in a brief opinion accompanying the Court’s decision not to hear Mckesson, the Court recently reaffirmed the strong First Amendment protections enjoyed by people like Mckesson in Counterman v. Colorado (2023). That decision held that the First Amendment “precludes punishment” for inciting violent action “unless the speaker’s words were ‘intended’ (not just likely) to produce imminent disorder.”

The reason Claiborne protects protest organizers should be obvious. No one who organizes a mass event attended by thousands of people can possibly control the actions of all those attendees, regardless of whether the event is a political protest, a music concert, or the Super Bowl. So, if protest organizers can be sanctioned for the illegal action of any protest attendee, no one in their right mind would ever organize a political protest again. Indeed, as Fifth Circuit Judge Don Willett, who dissented from his court’s Mckesson decision, warned in one of his dissents, his court’s decision would make protest organizers liable for “the unlawful acts of counter-protesters and agitators.” So, under the Fifth Circuit’s rule, a Ku Klux Klansman could sabotage the Black Lives Matter movement simply by showing up at its protests and throwing stones.

The Fifth Circuit’s Mckesson decision is obviously wrong

Like Mckesson, Claiborne involved a racial justice protest that included some violent participants. In the mid-1960s, the NAACP launched a boycott of white merchants in Claiborne County, Mississippi. At least according to the state supreme court, some participants in this boycott “engaged in acts of physical force and violence against the persons and property of certain customers and prospective customers” of these white businesses. Indeed, one of the organizers of this boycott did far more to encourage violence than Mckesson is accused of in his case. Charles Evers, a local NAACP leader, allegedly said in a speech to boycott supporters that “if we catch any of you going in any of them racist stores, we’re gonna break your damn neck.”

With SCOTUS refusing to take up McKesson v. Doe, the 5th Circuit's insane anti-1st Amendment ruling that effectively bans mass protests remains in force for the 3 states covered in the 5th: Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi.

#SCOTUS #Deray McKesson #Protests #Black Lives Matter #5th Circuit Court #Texas #Louisiana #Mississippi #1st Amendment #Counterman v. Colorado #NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware #McKesson v. Doe

[wakandan-goddess]

Here we go again with the “I wish Americans protested like the French” shit again.

I don’t know if some of y’all have memory loss but we did protest “like the French” in 2020 (George Floyd Protests) and got shit on and called thugs by the public,the media and politicians. People were seriously injured by police and other random people who wanted to be violent. We were told that peoples property was worth more than justice for a wrongfully taken like. So don’t bring that shit over here. Y’all just like the idea and look of protest but let it inconvenience or the message calls you out then then it’s not the right way to protest.

Just say what you really mean with your chest.

#black lives matter #french protests #george floyd protests

[blmsigns]

#blm #black lives matter #blm movement #blm art #blm protests #las vidas negras importan #peace

[commiepinkofag]

Chisel. Chisel — First Amendment v American Fascism

[The Supreme] Court’s decision to leave the Fifth Circuit’s attack on the First Amendment in place could be temporary. As Sotomayor writes in her Mckesson opinion, when the Court announces that it will not hear a particular case it “expresses no view about the merits.” The Court could still restore the First Amendment right to protest in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas in a future case. For the time being, however, the Fifth Circuit’s Mckesson decision remains good law in those three states. And that means that anyone who organizes a political protest within the Fifth Circuit risks catastrophic financial liability.

#black lives matter #racism #first amendment #right of assembly #capitalism #protest #activism #unconstitutional #fascism #lousiana #mississippi #texas #usa #us politics #supreme court #2024

[disease]

TIME DON’T RUN HERE LIZ JOHNSON ARTUR // 2020

Time Don’t Run Here – a series of images capturing the Black Lives Matter protests that took place in London during the summer of 2020.

#liz johnson artur #BLM #black lives matter #activism #protest #signs #social issues #monochrome #london #photography #u

[sophiaphile]

BLM protest street art on boarded up windows, Chicago, June 2020

#chicago #blm #black lives matter #street art #art #george floyd #say his name #so these were taken from a moving car #i never thought i'd be posting them anywhere #but i searched the tags and didn't see many posts with chicago blm protest art and wanted to share them #even if the images aren't the best #social justice #pics

[seraphimfall]

to anyone protesting in memphis and other US cities: good luck and stay safe!

below are some sources i’ve decided to put together that you may find helpful. feel free to read through them and reblog this for others!

• list of your rights as a protestor

• list of things you’ll want to bring

• the basics of direct action

• guide to protecting your identity during and after

• legal support resources for protestors

• how to address tear gas exposure

• tips for organizing a demonstration

• tyre nichols memorial gofundme page

stay safe, and stay strong! ✧

#|| personal || #leftism #progressive politics #blm #black lives matter #police brutality #defund the police #social justice #social issues #antiracist #memphis protests #tyre nichols #leftist #human rights #atheist #memphis police #civil demonstration #protest #protesting #anarchism #peaceful protest #stronger together

[in-case-of-fire]

#black lives matter #blm #united states #police violence #police brutality #cops #protest #social justice #stop police brutality #black lives movement #racial justice #black lives still matter

[toddchavezwatchescartoons]

What's crazy is that the documents uncovered in the arrests of the white nationalists like the Boogaloo and Proud boys showed that the fires, shooting, damages, etc at the BLM rallies was often started by the white nationalists in a (mostly successful) attempt to besmirch  BLM protesters and start a race war.

It's one of the reasons MLK wrote that those who supported civil rights should stop protesting (which he called "methods of persuasion") and switch to boycotts, lawsuits, and voting marches (which he called "methods of coercion")

"What?" You say. "Wasn't I taught that MLK led mighty protests where people were beaten and that attention changed hearts and minds?"

Yes ... that's what you were taught however - for the past 50 or so years there's been a concerted movement from large industry to whitewash MLKs message and change his actual strategy to "protest and get noticed/beaten", the exact strategy he rejected repeatedly.

The MLK and Gandhi messages of how to do civil disobedience was defanged in modern textbooks to become "your suffering makes a change!" The "make noise and people will pay attention" is a story DESIGNED to get progressives to waste energy in the most inefficient manner.

https://www.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/103hf3s/comment/j307jxb/

#politics #protesting #mlk #blm #black lives matter

[someoneq]

the music of protests is amazing.

I don't mean protest singers, or even the people who sing as one of the speeches. I mean the voice of the crowd.

the way that everyone is singing shouting screaming the same song the same words because we want you to LISTEN

the power of a child's voice calling out the chants

the way that people start clapping along if the chant gets fast enough, keeping time, adding volume.

the lilt in the voices, the change in pitch that just makes a shout into a song

the drums and whistles accompanying the voices

the chaos and beauty of 3 different chants happening at the same time

the way that every protest has a few chants that are the same, but with some of the words changed to fit what the protest is about, like a folk song adapted over and over with a different version everywhere you turn

the unity in the crowd because even though we're here to protest something that shouldn't even be happening, we are a community even if just for a couple of hours

they've done their speeches, they've preached to the choir, but we are the choir and you are going to LISTEN TO US

#idk i just think that theres a lot of beauty in the screaming #free palestine #from the river to the sea palestine will be free #trans rights are human rights #trans rights #israel is a terrorist state #protest #black lives matter #climate justice #viva viva palestina

[bfpnola]

from @/pslnational

#mlk jr #mlk #mlk day #revolution #quotes #socialism #anti capitalism #instagram #black lives matter #civil rights #protest #vietnam #economics #washington dc #united states #black liberation

[alpaca-clouds]

Respectability Politics suck

Okay, let me talk about respectibility politics and why they suck. The face eating tiger party is gonna eat your face, believe it or not.

And hey, this is a topic that even concerns fanwork and shipping and all of that.

I understand that to many Respectability Politics is a word that gets thrown around a lot, but from what I see a lot of people are not quite sure of the exact meaning.

So, basically Respectability Politics is when a marginalized group tries to police parts of their own culture to be more accepted by the majority culture of whatever country they life in. While not the origin of this, the most classical example of this is queer folks trying to push other queer folks into going into more normative, nuclear families. To further the narrative of "we are not so different from you, love is love!" As such quite a few aspects of queer culture (like cruising, for example, but also ballroom culture and such) were socially frowned upon from those queer folks who were trying to seek acceptance by the majority culture.

Which is exactly also what is happening with those queer folks, who try to exclude trans people. and Those trans people trying to exclude non-binary folks. And trans medicalists, and so on and so forth.

It is also seen within general feminism - where this always has been a big thing. "Sure, I want voting rights, but do you really have to wear trousers?!"

Of course this extends to every other marginalized group. My white ass does not have the right to talk about Black civil rights for the most part, but just think of those people who would go "that is not how you ask for it" when it comes to Black Lives Matter and the like.

Or, for example, in the Disability Rights groups, where some people are trying to exclude some other folks. Or are pushing for a "everybody should want to be healed" narrative.

It really is all around.

We see it within fandom culture, too. The entire "proshipping"/"antishipping" thing expesically nothing but Respectability Politics. Be it respectability politics for fandom culture - or for queer culture, because both things are so closely related.

But the thing is this: No matter how much those people pushing for Respectability Politics do that... they will never be accapted by majority culture. They will be used as pawns for those more right leaning folks on the side of the majority culture to go: "See, even the XY agree with us. It is just XY extremists who see it differently and extremism is bad actually!" But make no mistakes: If those right leaning folks manage to push for laws against any minority group, those laws will be acted out against EVERYONE within that minority group, not just the "deviants".

Because here is the thing: the people who think of queerness as something bad and unnatural, will not leave you alone just because you and your gay husband/wife mime a nuclear family perfectly. They will still hate you, vandalize your house and what not. They might just go for the more "deviant" queers, first.

So, yeah. Fuck Respectability Politics. They do not get you anywhere. And when you need to give up part of yourself and your culture to be accepted, you are not accepted at all.

#politics #respectability politics #black lives matter #protests #anti conservative #lgbtq #disability rights #trans rights are human rights