#Ferguson Protests

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Daniel Marans at HuffPost:

Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) lost her Democratic primary on Tuesday, shrinking the ranks of the House’s left-wing “Squad” and delivering another major victory to the pro-Israel and business-friendly groups that backed her challenger. Wesley Bell, the St. Louis County prosecutor, defeated Bush. Since Missouri’s 1st Congressional District, which includes all of St. Louis and many of its northern and western suburbs, is overwhelmingly Democratic, Bell is all but assured of a seat in Congress come November.

Bell’s victory over Bush marks the second “Squad” member in recent months to fall to a challenger heavily funded by pro-Israel groups. Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), who, like Bush, ousted an incumbent in 2020, lost his race to Westchester County Executive George Latimer this past June. Justice Democrats, the left-wing group that backed Bush’s first successful run, cast the race as yet another referendum on the power of big money to decide elections. “This race is about the future of our democracy and the soul of our Democratic Party, frankly,” Usamah Andrabi, a spokesperson for Justice Democrats, told HuffPost on Monday. “This is a question about whether we want to let a handful of Republican mega-donors dictate the outcome of Democratic primaries, or do we want to move forward to elect more nurses and everyday people to represent the community’s best interests.”

Bush, an ordained pastor and registered nurse, indeed faced a massive fundraising deficit. As Andrabi noted, Bell had the support of some local Republican donors — and many national megadonors from both parties, through the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Super PACs supporting Bell outspent those supporting Bush by a more than 3-to-1 margin. Spending by pro-Bell groups included about $8.6 million from AIPAC’s United Democracy Project, $1.5 million from LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman’s Mainstream Democrats PAC, $1.4 million from the crypto-industry-backed FairShake PAC, and nearly $500,000 from the Democratic Majority for Israel PAC. Bush made national waves with her July 2021 sit-in on the U.S. Capitol steps to draw attention to the expiration of the federal government’s COVID-19-era eviction moratorium. Her action got results; President Joe Biden responded by extending the policy, though the Supreme Court stopped it a few weeks later. Later that year, in a bid to shore up support for abortion rights, Bush spoke on national television — and in a House hearing — about her experience getting an abortion after being raped at age 17.

Bush’s allies — and she retains the support of many local elected officials — see her as an authentic tribune of the Black Lives Matter movement, which was born in Ferguson, Missouri, following the police killing of Michael Brown in 2014. Unlike many other Democrats in Washington, Bush continues to embrace calls to “defund the police.” Bell, who also got his political start during the Ferguson protests and unseated a more conservative incumbent prosecutor in 2018, has, by contrast, disappointed many of his former fellow activists. They fault him for declining to prosecute Darren Wilson, the police officer who killed Brown, and for not more rapidly reducing the county’s jail and prison populations, even as he points to the creation of a conviction review unit and the expansion of drug diversion programs.

[...] Finally, Bush has been among the most outspoken critics of Israel in Congress, particularly after Israel invaded Gaza in response to Hamas’ terror attack on Oct. 7. She was not only an early advocate for a ceasefire, but has also accused Israel of genocide ― a charge that remains highly disputed. And in an interview with The New York Times out on Monday, Bush expressed ambivalence about describing Hamas as a terrorist group, though her campaign later walked it back. “Would they qualify to me as a terrorist organization? Yes,” Bush told the Times. “But do I know that? Absolutely not.” Bush’s stances cost her the support of Susan Talve, a progressive St. Louis rabbi who leads the only synagogue in Bush’s district. But they also unsettled some other allies who see her national profile as a distraction from the needs of the high-poverty, majority Black district.

In the battle of activists rising from the Ferguson protests in #MO01, incumbent Rep. Cori Bush (D) goes down in defeat to AIPAC-backed St. Louis County Prosecutor Wesley Bell (D) in the Democratic Primary. Bell is favored to win this November.

[boredman-da]

It boggles my mind as a foreigner just how, when talking about the history of the USA (usually in online circles), you'll see things like "oh, this president/movement was objectively bad", and many other things that call certain events/people "bad" and/or any other negative adjectives. Richard Nixon was bad, Ronnie the Gipper was bad, the confederacy is bad, yadda yadda yadda.

But when you talk about people and events past the year 2008 or so, suddenly everything is now subjective and softened and "there's two sides to this argument" no matter how many attacks on human rights and whatnot happen, all in the efforts to not spark current discourse and infighting in whatever public community is in.

"Nixon was dogshit! Nixon was a blight on America!" vs "Ohh but Trump's administration had bad things and good things". Or "Reagan ruined everything for everyone!" vs "Ohh, Biden had some issues but he also did a few good things!". "This page has been soft-locked to prevent further edit wars", shit like that.

Bitch are you really gonna downplay recent, constant genocide just for the sake of keeping your little online space free of "flame wars"? Just to keep that userbase and retention? What happened to telling these whackjobs to fuck off?!

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

[ Source: NYPD CompStat 2.0 ]

==

Willing to bet a decent proportion of the excess deaths were black people. Which BLM didn't give a shit about.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: George Floyd wasn't worth it.

[zodiacatsea]

.

[the-penandpaper]

#FreeJoshWilliams

Who is Josh Williams?

Why are we writing?

What do we write?

[kendallwa]

https://www.instagram.com/tv/CtrvNqcgMbc/?igshid=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==

Refresh - “I’m a Cop” 2014.

This was written after the murder of black teen Michael Brown by the Ferguson police. The riots happened and black lives matters went viral. I will keep writing songs of freedom for however long I need to. Also, peep “Pepper Spray” & “Sound of Blackness” on streaming! ✊🏽

“I wish I had time to weep/marching feet after feet/week after week month after month/till equality comes” ☮️

[shawnthewonder]

I'm sure this was in 2014 because I graduated from college that year and I remember talking to my friend then when he asked me if I heard what happened with Ferguson and I thought he meant the building because our campus had a building named Ferguson, but I understand and agree with your sentiment. I'm so irritated, annoyed, and mad with how white people have turned our word for awareness into a dog whistle for their bigotry.

white supremacists one day decided to frame woke as a bad thing and use it as a perjorative and y’all just immediately went along with it posing absolutely no resistance now i gotta hear ppl say “it’s not woke to be antiracist”

[thewwshow]

Michael Brown Protest 10 years Later Ferguson Police Chief Outraged

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Ten years ago this August, a white police officer killed 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. What happened on Canfield Drive that day sparked a nationwide movement to save Black lives, end police brutality, and make safety a reality for all people. As a registered nurse, pastor, and local activist, I spent over 400 days protesting alongside thousands of my fellow community members. I will never forget the brutality we faced in response to our calls for humanity. Police used tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets, noise munitions, batons, shields, fists, and boots against us. The Missouri National Guard called us “enemy forces.” Our government labeled us “Black identity extremists.” Many politicians condemned us. Those of us on the front lines were traumatized, but we knew that time would prove we were on the right side of history — and it did. Time will prove the same for the students currently protesting across the country. From Columbia University in New York City to Washington University in St. Louis to The George Washington University in Washington, DC, thousands of students, faculty, staff, alumni, and their allies of different faiths, ethnicities, and backgrounds have engaged in overwhelmingly nonviolent civil disobedience in support of Palestinian human rights and an end to their universities’ complicity in violation of those rights. For years, politicians, university administrators, and media figures across the political spectrum have professed their commitment to free speech, diversity, and inclusion. They have feigned concern about the state of free speech and dissent on college campuses. Yet when presented with organized, disciplined, nonviolent protest in support of a moral cause that is routinely stigmatized, many of those same people have championed violent, repressive crackdowns intended to crush dissent. We have all seen the footage of armed officers using pepper spray, rubber bullets, fists, and boots against students, faculty, and their allies without provocation. We have all witnessed the cowardly response from too many university administrators, some of whom would rather risk or inflict violence on their own community members than grapple with calls for divestment. We have all heard the stories of students arrested, assaulted, suspended, evicted, banned, smeared, humiliated. Despite knowing what happened nearby in 2014 and expressing support for the Ferguson protesters, Washington University administrators in St. Louis summoned dozens of law enforcement officers to a protest where students, faculty, and other community members were peacefully gathered. Some were brutalized. Officers were filmed beating and body slamming a 65-year-old professor at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, Steve Tamari, who was later hospitalized with multiple broken ribs and a broken hand. Steve is my friend and I am thankful he’s alive. I met him and his wife, Sandra, both Palestinian-Americans, when they joined us in the streets during the Ferguson Uprising. Protesters are now being smeared as violent and antisemitic. Let me be clear: Trespassing, setting up tents, and carrying signs are not violent. Condemning a government that has killed more than 14,5000 children in seven months and created a humanitarian catastrophe is not antisemitic. Beating, tackling, pepper spraying, and shooting rubber bullets at people is violent. The January 6 insurrection was violent. Denying the humanity of the many Jewish people who are participating in the encampments is antisemitic.

Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) for Teen Vogue on police and government repression of social movements such as the Ferguson protests and the campus protests over the Gaza Genocide (05.14.2024).

Rep. Cori Bush wrote an insightful op-ed in Teen Vogue calling out police and government's role in creating violent crackdowns on social movements such as the campus protests against Israel's genocide campaign in Gaza and the Black Lives Matter movement. https://www.teenvogue.com/story/cori-bush-student-protests

[tachyonblu]

Professor Chris Ferguson and I discussed many topics at length. In addition to in-depth discussion of GamerGate, we also discussed the upcoming ALT+F4 conference at LTU, Destiny at the campus protests in Austin, Hezbollah & the Israel-Hamas War.

Check out my great discussion with Chris Ferguson, as we continue our GamerGate book interview. We discussed the ALT+F4 conference, the recent campus protests, the Israel and Palestine conflict, Hezbollah, games journalism, DeepFreeze and SPJ Airplay. As well as the Kunkel Awards and our takeaways from Destiny visiting the Gaza War protests in Austin. Chris and I are still trying to setup a debate between him and Jonathan Haidt.

Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fsh1lrjxEa8

[anarcho-yorpism]

Exactly! It's pathetic seeing things like this, or "Rutgers agreed to 7/9 protest demands!!" when the other two were all the divestment demands, or Brown saying "the corporation board will vote on it". Then, they go on Al Jazeera and talk about how actually it's not anarchy or chaos (which we all know are the same), they have leadership! Well, maybe there should be more anarchy if your leadership does this.

extra tags by @angel-of-anarchy:

[whenweallvote]

Ten years ago, 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot and killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri.

His death immediately sparked unrest in the local community and protests soon spread to cities across the country surrounding one central message: Black Lives Matter.

Michael Brown should be turning 28 years old today. Happy heavenly birthday, king. 🕊️✊🏾

[bitchatar]

[theyknowthatweknow]

Ramy Youssef posted this some time ago about when he managed (despite great restrictions from israel) to perform a comedy event in Palestine and upon finding out he was American, a Palestinian girl asked about the flint water crisis. And this reminded me of when the BLM protests started in Ferguson that people from Gaza reached out on social media to help them what to do when being tear gassed. Palestinians haven't just fought for their own rights. They've also despite their own horrors tried to help others like them

[opencommunion]

the claim that current police brutality in the US represents colonial policing ‘coming home’ completely ignores the reality that US policing is already colonial policing, and always has been. US cops and IOF don’t have a one-way relationship in either direction — they SHARE training and technology in a MUTUAL exchange. if we're seeing an escalation in police violence against protesters specifically (and honestly I don't think we are — they murdered Tortuguita and plausibly assassinated as many as 6 Ferguson organizers; there are no red lines for cops when it comes to suppressing Black and Native uprisings), it's because they regrouped and fortified after the 2020 protests. cop cities are popping up all over the country, not because cops are becoming more violent but because they're afraid of losing the upper hand over the populations they exist to do violence towards