Socialist Organizer

The racist immigrants carry disease rhetoric is nothing new. 

Perhaps we need a U.S. history lesson:

Under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the U.S. forged a program, through a series of agreements with Mexico’s PRI-dominated government, called the Bracero program. This program was used to fill in the gaps in manual labor the U.S. had after the war.

It sounds like a liberal dream: immigrants being given an opportunity to work in the “land of opportunity,” yet it was hardly that. The laborers were forced into horrible working conditions. Many died from exhaustion (often from working in the sun too long) from working in the fields picking food for the U.S. Many also suffered from disease.

Donald Andrews Jr. A Black man  and Business Owner from New York was cleared just last April After being Arrested on Drugs Charges in Scotia, New York.    Police were “suspicious” of Donald Andrews Jr.’s store, which sells incense and smoking paraphernalia, and sent undercover informants several times in March. In one of the informants visits he is seen on Andrews hidden camera planting Crack Cocaine on the counter in Andrews Store.

Andrews was arrested in April  2013 and cleared only after he asked a Grand Jury to watch the surveillance footage from his store. The informant used a cellphone photo he took of the planted drugs as evidence that Andrews was dealing, leading to his arrest.

*YES THIS IS FUCKING REAL LOOK IT UP*

The police claim that the informant has now “fled” and they haven’t found his whereabouts. The sheriff “claims” his investigators didn’t purposely frame Andrews and have the “informant” out to be some rogue agent.

FYI this same “informant” has lead to seven other drug-related arrests the Report says. 

Sounds like a Movie right? But yall still out here calling people “conspiracy theorists”. 

Andrews is now in the process of suing NYPD.

Post Made by @solar_innerg

In July I shared a story of an incident in which my city’s police stormed a man’s house looking for drugs in the middle of the night and executed his two (understandably startled) dogs. One of the dogs was shot to death while fleeing in fear, and as I noted then, this isn’t an isolated incident. Just a few years ago, the Saint Paul Police killed another family dog…and forced handcuffed children to sit next to its bleeding corpse. The kicker? The raid wasn’t even in the right house!

Now, a new report has surfaced of SPPD brutality. This time, a young father named Chris Lollie was arrested while waiting to pick up his kids from school. The charges were “Trespassing, Disorderly Conduct, and Obstructing Legal Process,” and police claimed he refused to leave an area reserved for employees of the bank building he was in. However, not only were there no signs indicating that the location was private, but Lollie wasn’t even in the bank proper; he was in the skyway.

(For those who aren’t familiar with the skyway system, it’s a thing we have in St. Paul, Minneapolis, and some other Minnesota cities. Basically, it gets hella cold here in the winter, so they built enclosed sidewalks, or skyways, one or two stories up. In the downtown areas, the skyways form a whole second network of pedestrian roads, and once you get inside your office building—or whichever building is closest to your parking garage or bus stop or whatever—you can use them to move from building to building to get around the whole downtown area. It’s an easy way to go to lunch or meetings without having the snot in your nostrils freeze. I mention all that to say: Skyways are public spaces. You do not have to be an employee in the buildings they connect to use them. Lollie was not trespassing.)

Fortunately, Lollie had the presence of mind to capture his interaction with the SPPD on film. Here’s a transcript I’ve made of the first few seconds:

Lollie: So what’s your business with me right now?

Officer: I want to find out who you are, and what the problem was back there…

Lollie: There is no problem—that’s the thing.

Officer: So, talk to me, let me know, and you can be on your way.

Lollie: Let you know…why do I have to let you know who I am? Who I am isn’t the problem.

Officer: Because that’s what police do when they get called.

Lollie: Well, I know my rights, first off. Secondly, I don’t have to let you know who I am if I haven’t broken any laws. Like I told him, I’m going to New Horizons [School] to pick up my kids at 10 o’clock. I was sitting there for ten minutes…

As the officer brushes aside his explanation and continues to illegally demand he identify himself, Lollie cuts to the chase: “The problem is I’m black. That’s the problem. No, it really is, because I didn’t do anything wrong.”

Next, Lollie and the female officer he’s been walking and talking with meet a male officer. When Lollie politely asks the officer not to touch or obstruct him, because he has to go get his kids, the man immediately responds, “Well, you’re going to go to jail then.”

As the police initiate the arrest process—telling him to put his hand behind his back or “otherwise things are going to get ugly"—the camera visuals go black. Lollie continues to be heard pleading, still polite even while he’s assaulted, that he be allowed to go meet his children.

Next, they tase him.

If that’s not enough to convince you that this is gross police misconduct, seriously, take five minutes and watch the video. The calmness of his tone alone should make it obvious that there is no possible argument that the situation merited this kind of police action:

After multiple witnesses verified Lollie’s version of events, prosecutors dropped all charges against him. One woman who is also not an employee at the bank the skyway links noted that she regularly sits during her lunch break exactly where Lollie was sitting, but she has never been harassed by police. However, the SPPD continue to defend their actions.

At The Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf points out how simple it would have been for police to resolve this situation without violence and an arrest had they cared to do so:

His story about getting his kids wasn’t merely plausible, given the man’s age and the fact that there was a school right there–it was a story the female police officer shown at the beginning of the video or the male officer shown later could easily confirm. 

Lollie is also absolutely correct that no law required him to show an ID to police officers. As Flex Your Rights explains, “Police can never compel you to identify yourself without reasonable suspicion to believe you’re involved in illegal activity,” and while 24 states have passed “stop and identify” statutes “requiring citizens to reveal their identity when officers have reasonable suspicion to believe criminal activity may be taking place,” Minnesota isn’t one of those states.

The female officer shown in the beginning of the video could easily have de-escalated the encounter by saying, “You’re right, sir, you have every right to refuse to show me identification, and if you’re just picking up your kids I’m so sorry to have bothered you. If you don’t mind, I just want to walk with you to confirm that your story checks out so I can inform the 911 caller of their error. That way we can make sure this never happens again when you’re just here to pick up your kids.”

Or she could’ve said, “Sir, I totally see why this is confusing–a lot of people would think so. Let me try to explain. That totally looks like a public seating area, but it’s actually private. Don’t you think they should have a sign saying so? Calling me may seem like an overreaction, but technically they can ask you to leave. You’re walking away now, so there’s actually no problem as long as you’re not going to go back. Are you? Okay, then we have no problem, have a wonderful day.”  

As Lollie is carried away post-tasing, he can be heard challenging the officers’ “legal” assault: "Who are you? You don’t rule me. I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t hurt anybody. I didn’t touch anybody."

i am angry because this is just another example of women being shamed for taking nudes instead of the douchebag who spreads them being shamed for violating someone’s privacy like that

i am angry because nobody deserves this, regardless of how i feel about their personality

i am angry because this is pure misogyny and shows how women aren’t respected in our culture

i am angry because she did not consent to having those pics posted everywhere but they still were

i am angry because on the VERY RARE occasion this happens to a male celeb he is not shamed but rather the perpetrator is and it’s forgotten quickly whereas this will haunt jennifer for years and years to come

i am angry because this was a sex crime and people are treating it like a joke

i am angry because she is being exploited/objectified and some gross dudebros are probably jacking off to those pics 

i am angry because people are CONGRATULATING the fucker who did such an atrocious thing to her instead of being appalled 

No skin thick enough: The daily harassment of women in the game industry | Polygon (via brutereason)

That is terrible and heart breaking on so many levels

So, for a while now I’ve been making scattered posts about how much I hate this movie, and when asked why I replied: well, it’s fuckin racist (and misogynistic as well we’ll talk about it).

Dropping my trademark lowercase typing for a more legible text here but we’re in for a wild ride. I’ve also been asked: how is the movie racist? Could you elaborate? So here’s the essay.

How is Lost In Translation racist?

I’m sticking to some sort of (shudders) academic but also handy and organised plan here to explain the whys and hows and what makes this movie that a lot of teens and older teens, and olderer not-teens consider deep, relatable, original, good, gorgeous, whatever, a 100 minute constantly and unapologetically racist piece of trash of a movie.

I think we’ve all figured out even by reading the synopsis to whom the aforementioned racism is directed to: it’s us, the Japanese. And yeah for once I’m gonna take the liberty to speak for all of us because let’s be real, this movie is outrageous.

3 Important Points as to How Lost In Translation is racist:

THE WHITE CHARACTERS: the characters themselves are typically “white in a ‘foreign’ country”: entitled, ignorant, racist. I am gonna talk about our two main characters, Charlotte (portrayed by our beloved confirmed zionist Scarlett Johansson) and Bob (portrayed by our favourite wife-beating, multiple time cheating asshole Bill Murray) but also the secondary characters such as Charlotte’s boyfriend or that other girl whose name I totally forget.

THE MOVIE ITSELF AND ITS RUNNING JOKES: something I hadn’t noticed until I rewatched the movie a few days ago for the sake of making this post, there are many, many awfully racist running jokes throughout the movie. It actually angered me a lot. Here I will talk about how the movie itself, how some visual elements and how the plot unravels reveals a lot of racism and misogyny.

THE JAPANESE CHARACTERS: now this is where it gets tricky. truth is, no importance is accorded to any Japanese person in this movie, despite being set in Japan. Fishy huh? This point is kinda tied with the second one but I think I can elaborate on the absence of a Japanese POV, and how this extends to other movies where the setting and its inhabitants serve as a prop to the white story the white movie wants to tell.

Continuing under the cut:

the fact that the CEO of nestle said water isn’t a human right is just fucking disgusting. 

Anti-trans trolling spree forces Wikipedia to ban U.S. House staffers for third time

Aug. 21 2014

Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, has once again blocked all computers from the U.S. House of Representatives in order to stop malicious edits to popular pages on the site.

According to The Hill, Wikipedia instituted the ban on Wednesday night after users operating from the House IP address made a series of anti-trans edits to the page for Netflix series Orange is the New Black.

Anonymous users operating from the Republican-led House were persistently re-editing the page to slur trans actress Laverne Cox by mis-gendering her mentions on the show’s page. For instance, they changed Cox’s description from “real transgender woman” to “real man pretending to be a woman.”

One user in particular went on an anti-trans editing spree this week, changing entries on multiple pages related to transgenderism until Wikipedia administrators were forced to step in.

“An obvious transphobe is using this IP to edit the article on transphobia,” the Hill quoted one Wikipedia user as saying.

“I have no problem with Congressional staffers editing Wikipedia,” said another user to the anti-trans editor. “I have a problem only with YOU vandalizing Wikipedia.”

The person using the IP address responded — without revealing their identity — that the malicious edits were in fact “official business” endorsed by a member of the House. Their changes, they said, were intended to bring “fairness” to the discussion.

Suheir Hammad: Not Your Erotic, Not Your Exotic

Don’t wanna’ be your exotic/Like some dark, fragile, colorful bird imprisoned, caged in a land foreign to the stretch of her wings/Don’t wanna’ be your exotic. Women everywhere look just like me/Some taller, darker, nice than me but like me just the same/Women everywhere carry my nose on their faces/My name on their spirits.

Don’t seduce yourself with my other-ness/My hair wasn’t put on top my head to entice you into some mysterious, black voodoo/The beat of my lashes against each other ain’t some dark, desert beat/It’s just a blink/Get over it.

Don’t build around me your fetish, fantasy, your lustful profanity to cage me in, clip my wings. Don’t wanna’ be your exotic. Your lovin’ of my beauty ain’t more than funky fornication, plain pink perversion. In fact, nasty necrophilia.

Because my beauty is dead to you/I am dead to you.

Not your harem girl, geisha doll, banana picker, pom-pom girl, pum-pum shorts coffee maker, town-whore, belly dancer, private dancer, La Malinche, Venus Hottentot, laundry girl, your immaculate vessel, emasculating princess/Don’t wanna’ be - not your erotic, not your exotic.