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‘Do Not Open’ is still one of my favorite episodes because of this absolute legend. He’s at the top of my list of badass people who survived encounters because they just ain’t with that shit.

An icon.

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shout out to the new fraud trailer

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i’ll say it a hundred times because some of you need to hear it a hundred times but the trick to liking yourself again is learning new skills and hobbies or returning to ones you had. it makes you so confident learning new shit all the time.

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big fan of this

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Literally cannot tell if I'm sad or hungry right now, whoops

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So much of my childhood was dominated by the "war on terror" and this video really brought a lot of it back.

Nothing is perfect, I've found this useful and depressing.

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Going to sleep late ily

Going to sleep early ily

Going to sleep at a regular healthy time I hate you so much

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this is actually like my third or fourth rodeo so i sort of get it but sort of dont

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I AM THAT IS

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On the evening of the Juneteenth holiday, a crowd gathered near the Upton Metro station off Pennsylvania Avenue, not to celebrate the end of slavery in America but to mourn the shooting of beloved arabber Bilal Abdullah, known as BJ. Tawanda Jones was standing where she has so many times since Baltimore Police officers killed her brother in 2013 — beside another grieving family. Joy Alston, the mother of Abdullah, was sitting in a chair, surrounded by her surviving children and other friends, family, and members of the community.

Alston was the only person sitting, but she was holding her head up, facing the crowd around her and the reality of what had happened, all while nursing an injured shoulder. When her son’s body was lying on the pavement, police physically wrestled her back as she was trying to reach him, causing the injury. “I still was fighting to get over and see him on the ground,” Alston said. “When I finally got over, I saw him on the ground, and I knew he was dead. I knew he was dead then.” “When you got men pushing you on and throwing you, doing all that at the same time, it’s hard,” Alston said. When her daughter demanded the officers leave Alston alone, they threatened to arrest her.

This is one of the reasons why, according to numerous people at the vigil, the crowd was so distressed on the night of the shooting. Not only did police officers shoot a beloved arabber, but as he lay there dying, they were not rendering aid and would not let his mother reach him, injuring her in the process... ...“I said, ‘Where’s my son? I want to see him,’” Alston recalled. At first, doctors told her that Abdullah was in stable condition. The next thing they told her was that her son had died. Exactly what happened is not clear yet, and body camera or other footage has not been released. After her daughter noticed a casing on the ground that police didn’t collect as evidence, Alston is concerned about how thorough the investigation will be...

...Illinois v. Wardlow ruled in 2000 that fleeing in a high crime area can provide an officer reasonable suspicion to make a stop — a ruling that was an important factor in the case of Freddie Gray’s 2015 death in police custody after he was chased for running in a “high crime area.” But in the 2023 case of Tyrie Washington, who was standing with a friend in Baltimore City and ran away when approached by police and argued that after Freddie Gray, it was reasonable for a Black man to fear the police, even when innocent, the Maryland Supreme Court ruled that “unprovoked flight may occur for innocent reasons, including those associated with fear of police officers.” ... ...No evidence of Abdullah wielding a gun has been provided at this point. ...

....“Plainclothes” squads, which would include the Group Violence Unit and the District Action Teams, have had a deeply troubled history in the city, including the Gun Trace Task Force’s federal indictments in 2017. Police scanner audio does not reveal how an officer was shot in the foot, but it is clear that, though a medic was called, that officer was transported to Shock Trauma in a police vehicle before Abdullah was transported by medic. Though Commissioner Richard Worley seemed to blame the crowd in the aftermath, saying they “actually interfered with our ability to give the victim aid,” it is striking to members of Scan the Police, an abolitionist collective focused on monitoring police scanners, how seldom Abdullah is mentioned in the dispatch calls from either the Western or the Central Districts. “He’s only referenced once or twice in the hour or so of recording,” said a member of the collective, whose members do not want to be identified because of fear of reprisals. “Cop down. Suspect was hit,” is one of the few mentions of Abdullah, shortly before the wounded officer arrives at Shock Trauma for care. ...

The Abdullah family has dealt with BPD misleading the public about their family before. In December 2022, Bilal Abdullah’s brother Zayne was awarded a $375,000 settlement for an altercation that occurred two years earlier. Initially, when body camera footage was released of people struggling with Police Sergeant Welton Simpson, police, politicians, and gullible news outlets jumped in to condemn the lawless behavior. “Just before midnight last night, one of our sergeants was conducting a business check on Pennsylvania Ave. when a person in the business became argumentative with the sergeant and spat in his face. Subsequently, as the video that was recently posted online shows, several other people began kicking the sergeant as he was trying to arrest the suspect,” then-Commissioner Michael Harrison said in a statement. Harrison said he was “outraged, as any resident of Baltimore should be,” and noted that “based on our preliminary review of the incident, the sergeant did nothing to provoke the assault, and the sergeant should be commended for using the appropriate amount of force to apprehend his assailant.” Independent video revealed that Simpson bumped into Zayne Abdullah and said “get the fuck out of my face.” As they exchanged words, Simpson pushed Abdullah. Simpson was choking Abdullah and another man, who was also awarded a $375,000 settlement, tried to get Simpson off of Abdullah, who was saying he couldn’t breathe. Both men were held in pre-trial detention without bail until their lawyers released the new evidence. The incident occurred in the same neighborhood where Zayne’s brother, Bilal Abdullah was shot. Several of Bilal’s siblings spoke at the vigil about how deeply Bilal cared about the people around him. “He ‘gon put his heart on the line for anything,” said one brother, who didn’t want to give his name. “He loved the kids. He loved the hood, everybody loved him,” said a sister. “Fruit man, everybody loved him.” The family and supporters will be calling for justice in a protest that will meet at Penn North at 6 p.m. Friday June 20 and march to the Upton Metro Station.

An arabber, for those outside of Baltimore, is a fruit vendor who sells from a horse-drawn cart. It's a longstanding, if dying, tradition here, and Bilal Abdullah was one of the most prominent and long-serving of them.

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[...] the Tomb I will serve till the end of my days 

and then see me buried

in two hundred graves.

ig: d.ill.usion

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