#rayshard brooks

[journalismjpg]

The 109-page indictment paints the movement to oppose the construction of a massive police training center in the Atlanta area’s Weelaunee Forest as a criminal conspiracy, and it goes back to the Minneapolis police department’s killing of George Floyd, which took place almost a year before Cop City was announced.

By doing so, the National Lawyers Guild said in a press statement, the indictment “attempts to render all mass protest against police violence and racism—including the killing of Rayshard Brooks by Atlanta police—an ‘unlawful conspiracy’ or ‘racketeering.’ ”

Read more here.

[ausetkmt]

HOW ARE THEY REINSTATING MURDERING COPS IN ATLANTA?

U.S.|Atlanta to Pay $1 Million to Rayshard Brooks’s Family

Nov. 21, 2022, 9:50 p.m. ET

The city of Atlanta agreed on Monday to pay $1 million to settle a lawsuit brought by the widow and the estate of Rayshard Brooks, a Black man who was fatally shot by a white police officer in 2020, and whose death touched off nationwide protests.

The City Council’s unanimous vote came nearly three months after prosecutors determined that the two officers involved in the episode committed no crimes on June 12, 2020, when Mr. Brooks, 27, was shot by one of the officers in a Wendy’s parking lot. The Council also found that the use of deadly force had been reasonable.

Lawyers for Mr. Brooks’s family, from the firm Stewart Miller Simmons Trial Attorneys, said in a statement that “although the children of Mr. Brooks have lost their father, settling the case will undoubtedly assist them with future plans as they come of age.”

They added that the family was “disappointed that prosecutors didn’t pursue a criminal case against the officers involved in Mr. Brooks’s death.”

Councilman Dustin Hillis said at a Council meeting on Monday that the settlement would be paid to Mr. Brooks’s widow, Tomika Miller; the Brooks estate; and the lawyers’ firm.

He added that the city attorney had determined that “the city of Atlanta’s potential financial exposure in defending plaintiff’s claims is in excess of the settlement amount.”

The family’s wrongful-death lawsuit had claimed that the killing of Mr. Brooks was “senseless and unjustified,” and that the city had violated his civil rights.

Mr. Brooks was killed about three weeks after a police officer in Minneapolis murdered George Floyd. The Atlanta killing spurred fresh rounds of street demonstrations in 2020 and became part of the broader national debate about the treatment of Black Americans at the hands of police officers.

The authorities said that Mr. Brooks had fallen asleep in his car in the drive-through lane at Wendy’s on June 12, 2020. At first, the encounter between the officers and Mr. Brooks was calm. But after 40 minutes, the episode turned violent when the officers moved to arrest him. Mr. Brooks hit one of the officers, grabbed the other’s Taser, fired it and took off running.

A widely shared video captured the moment when one of the officers, Garrett Rolfe, who had worked with the department since 2013, fired his handgun three times while he was chasing Mr. Brooks, who fired the Taser he had seized as he ran.

Mr. Brooks was shot twice, in the back and buttocks, prosecutors said. He was taken to a hospital, where he died after surgery, the authorities said.

In the wake of the shooting, the Wendy’s restaurant where the shooting occurred was burned down after angry demonstrations, and the Atlanta police chief at the time, Erika Shields, resigned.

Officer Rolfe was initially charged with murder and 10 other criminal counts in connection with the fatal shooting of Mr. Brooks, and the other officer, Devin Brosnan, faced a number of lesser charges. But prosecutors announced in August that they would drop all charges.

Officer Rolfe was fired from the Police Department the day after the shooting, but reinstated in May 2021 by the city’s Civil Service Review Board.

[pumpacti0n]

The REAL Faces of Black Conservatism - FD Signifier

[thefreethoughtprojectcom]

Not only did the badged murderers get away with it but they also received back pay while their department investigated the death.

[getinvolvedyoulivehere]

Don't accidentally fall asleep in a Wendy's drive-through in police state America. You can be killed and your murderers will not get away with it but they will also get back pay while they investigated your death.  

[sleepysera]

8.23.22 Headlines

WORLD NEWS

Europe: Worst drought in 500 years (BBC)

“Two-thirds of Europe is under some sort of drought warning, in what is likely the worst such event in 500 years. The latest report from the Global Drought Observatory says 47% of the continent is in "warning" conditions, meaning soil has dried up. Another 17% is on alert - meaning vegetation "shows signs of stress". The report warns that the dry spell will hit crop yields, spark wildfires, and may last several months more in some of Europe's southern regions.”

Philippines: Storm forces school closures, evacuations (AP)

“A tropical storm lashed the northern Philippines with strong winds and rain Tuesday, injuring at least two people and prompting the president to close schools and government offices in the capital and outlying provinces.”

Colombia: Police officers held over killing of youths (BBC)

“Ten police officers have been arrested in Colombia on suspicion of involvement in the killing of three youths. The three were shot dead while in police custody in northern Sucre province on 25 July. A police colonel, the highest-ranking officer suspected in the case, is on the run and thought to be abroad. Prosecutors say the police officers had alleged that the youths were members of the Gulf Clan criminal group that had earlier shot dead a policeman. Colombia has a dark history of "false positives" - cases in which civilians were murdered by the military and passed off as rebels to boost its kill rate.”

US NEWS

Ukraine: US to send $3 billion in aid as war hits 6 months (AP)

“As Russia’s war on Ukraine drags on, U.S. security assistance is shifting to a longer-term campaign that will likely keep more American military troops in Europe into the future, including imminent plans to announce an additional roughly $3 billion in aid to train and equip Ukrainian forces to fight for years to come, U.S. officials said.”

Breonna Taylor: Former Louisville cop pleads guilty (AP)

“A former Louisville police detective who helped falsify the warrant that led to the deadly police raid at Breonna Taylor’s apartment has pleaded guilty to a federal conspiracy charge. Federal investigators said Kelly Goodlett added a false line to the warrant and later conspired with another detective to create a cover story when Taylor’s March 13, 2020, shooting death by police began gaining national attention.”

Rayshard Brooks: Officers won’t face any charges in shooting (AP)

“A specially appointed prosecutor announced Tuesday that he will not pursue charges against the two white Atlanta police officers who clashed with Rayshard Brooks during a 2020 encounter that ended with the 27-year-old Black man’s fatal shooting. Pete Skandalakis, executive director of the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia, said he believes Officer Garrett Rolfe, who shot and killed Brooks in June 2020, acted appropriately. He also said the second officer involved in the encounter, Officer Devin Brosnan, will not be charged.”

[opencommunion]

The Stop Cop City movement has sought to prevent the expropriation of part of the Welaunee Forest for the development of an 85-acre police mega training center: a model town to prepare the state’s repressive arms for the urban warfare that will ensue when the contradictions of their exploitation and extraction become uncontainable, as they did in 2020 after the APD murdered Rayshard Brooks.  That murder, and all those that came before, were the lodestars of the Black-led movement during the George Floyd uprisings; their demands were no less than the dismantlement of the entire carceral system. Unable to effectively manage or quell the popular street movements, the Atlanta Police Foundation set out to consolidate and expand their capabilities for surveillance, repression, imprisonment, armed violence, and forced disappearance. One result is Cop City, which has been racked by militant sabotage, land occupation, arson, and popular mobilizations, in an attempt to end the construction and return Atlanta to its people.  As the Atlanta Police Foundation was unable to contain the 2020 Black rebellion, so too have they been unable to quell the resistance against Cop City. The press reports that the project is hemorrhaging money and is mired in delays and difficulties. For their part, the city, the state, and the federal government, have in turn employed every tool in their power to destroy the movement. Last week, the Georgia State Senate passed a bill to effectively criminalize bail funds in the state; RICO charges have been contorted to target networks of support and care that surround the fighters; and last January, APD assassinated the comrade Tortuguita in cold blood while they rested in their tent in the forest. It is clear that Stop Cop City represents one of the conjunctural spear tips for expanding the existing systems of counterinsurgency that span Africa, Asia, and the Arab world.  Today the system’s belly rests atop Gaza, whose rumblings shake the earth upon which we walk. Through its Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange (GILEE) program, the APD has sent hundreds of police to train with the Zionist occupation forces. And in October 2023, after Tufan al-Aqsa, the Atlanta Police Department engaged in hostage training inside abandoned hotels, putatively intended to “defeat Hamas,” in an advancement of tactics for the targeting of Black people. With every such expansion, the ability of counterinsurgency doctrines to counteract people’s liberation struggles grows. The purpose of counterinsurgency is to marshal state and para-state power into political, social, economic, psychological, and military warfare to overwhelm both militants and the popular cradle—the people—who support them. Its aim is to render us hopeless; to isolate and dispossess us and to break our will to resist it by any and all means necessary. This will continue apace, unless we fight to end it. Stop Cop City remains undeterred: on Friday, an APD cop car was burnt overnight in response to the police operation on February 8; yesterday, two trucks and trailers loaded with lumber were burnt to the ground. An anonymous statement claiming credit for the former, stated: “We wish to dispel any notion that people will take this latest wave of repression lying down, or that arresting alleged arsonists will deter future arsons.”  As the U.S. government and Zionist entity set their sights on the Palestinian people sheltering in Rafah, as they continue their relentless genocide of our people in Khan Younis, Jabalia, Shuja’iyya, and Gaza City, the Stop Cop City movement has clearly articulated its solidarity with the Palestinian struggle. They have done so with consistency and discipline, and we have heard them. Our vision of freedom in this life and the next requires us to confront and challenge the entangled forces of oppression in Palestine and in Turtle Island, and to identify the sites of tension upon which these systems distill their forces. This week, as with the last three years, the forest defenders have presented us one such crucible.

(11 Feb 24)

National Lawyers Guild, Stop All Cop Cities: Lessons For a National Struggle (video, 1 hr 45 min)

[workingclasshistory]

On this day, 25 May 2020, George Floyd, 46, a Black security guard and father of two, was murdered by Minneapolis police, as an officer knelt on his neck for over eight minutes. The killer, who had eighteen previous complaints filed against him, ignored Floyd's desperate calls that he could not breathe, and that the officer would kill him. He kept kneeling on Floyd's neck after he lost consciousness, and even after paramedics arrived he kept kneeling on his neck for a further minute and twenty seconds. Meanwhile, three of his colleagues stood by and protected him while onlookers filmed and called for help. Combined with a spate of other killings of unarmed Black people by police and vigilantes, including Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and Rayshard Brooks, the Black Lives Matter movement re-emerged and swept the US and internationally. Within the next two months, over 4,700 protests took place in some 2,500 towns and cities around the US with between seven and 26 million participants, which would make it the largest protest movement in US history. This has been despite violent attacks on demonstrators by police, National Guard, and armed white supremacists. The full scope of the movement cannot be known at present, but so far it has resulted in criminal convictions for the killers of Floyd and Arbery, and has sparked growing calls for the defunding or even abolition of police forces. In Minneapolis itself this resulted in the city council initially pledging to dismantle its police department, although after protests died down, authorities backtracked on the plan. More information, sources and map: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/9773/george-floyd-murdered https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=632513372255215&set=a.602588028581083&type=3

[cartermagazine]

Together, You Can Redeem The Soul of Our Nation

Though I am gone, I urge you to answer the highest calling of your heart and stand up for what you truly believe.

While my time here has now come to an end, I want you to know that in the last days and hours of my life you inspired me. You filled me with hope about the next chapter of the great American story when you used your power to make a difference in our society. Millions of people motivated simply by human compassion laid down the burdens of division. Around the country and the world you set aside race, class, age, language, and nationality to demand respect for human dignity.

That is why I had to visit Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, though I was admitted to the hospital the following day. I just had to see and feel it for myself that, after many years of silent witness, the truth is still marching on.

Emmett Till was my George Floyd. He was my Rayshard Brooks, Sandra Bland, and Breonna Taylor. He was 14 when he was killed, and I was only 15 years old at the time. I will never ever forget the moment when it became so clear that he could easily have been me. In those days, fear constrained us like an imaginary prison, and troubling thoughts of potential brutality committed for no understandable reason were the bars.

Like so many young people today, I was searching for a way out, or some might say a way in, and then I heard the voice of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on an old radio. He was talking about the philosophy and discipline of nonviolence. He said we are all complicit when we tolerate injustice. He said it is not enough to say it will get better by and by. He said each of us has a moral obligation to stand up, speak up and speak out. When you see something that is not right, you must say something. You must do something. Democracy is not a state. It is an act, and each generation must do its part to help build what we called the Beloved Community, a nation and world society at peace with itself.

Ordinary people with extraordinary vision can redeem the soul of America by getting in what I call good trouble, necessary trouble. Voting and participating in the democratic process are key.

[thatsleepymermaid]

here is a song I wrote about the Cop City thing going on in Atlanta, because there should be more protest songs in this world

you can sing it to Lili Marlene if you like

Weelaunee is a forest, filled with life and peace,

City Hall is planning a playground for police,

that's where they'll go to learn the way

to kill and maim, and so we say

defend atlanta's forests

and let weelaunee grow!

remember Tortuguita, innocent of crimes,

murdered in the morning, shot fifty-seven times,

shot with his hands up as he died,

they told their tale, of course they lied.

defend atlanta's forests

and let weelaunee grow!

remember all the victims: remember Rayshard Brooks,

murdered by policemen who didn't like his looks,

dragged from the drive-thru one fine day

they shot him as he walked away

defend atlanta's forests

and let weelaunee grow!

first they take our forests, then they say they need

nineteen million dollars of bitterness and greed.

woodlands with life in every breath

destroyed for cops to deal out death:

defend atlanta's forests

and let weelaunee grow!

@marnanel this is so beautiful! You're making this ecologist-in-training cry.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

BY BREE NEWSOME BASS

BLACK COPS DON’T MAKE POLICING ANY LESS ANTI-BLACK

The idea that we can resolve racism by integrating a fundamentally anti-Black institution in the U.S. is the most absurd notion of all

This article is part of Abolition for the People, a series brought to you by a partnership between Kaepernick Publishing and LEVEL, a Medium publication for and about the lives of Black and Brown men. The series, which comprises 30 essays and conversations over four weeks, points to the crucial conclusion that policing and prisons are not solutions for the issues and people the state deems social problems — and calls for a future that puts justice and the needs of the community first.

Amid recent growing calls for defunding police this summer, a set of billboards appeared in Dallas, Atlanta, and New York City. Each had the words “No Police, No Peace” printed in large, bold letters next to an image of a Black police officer. Funded by a conservative right-wing think tank, the billboards captured all the hallmarks of modern pro-policing propaganda. The jarring choice of language, a deliberate corruption of the protest chant “no justice, no peace,” follows a pattern we see frequently from proponents of the police state. Any word or phrase made popular by the modern movement is quickly co-opted and repurposed until it’s rendered virtually meaningless. But perhaps the most insidious aspect of modern pro-police propaganda is reflected in the choice to make the officer on the billboard the face of a Black man.

This is in keeping with a narrative pro-police advocates seek to push on a regular basis in mass media — that policing can’t be racist when there are Black officers on the force, and that the police force itself is an integral part of Black communities. When Freddie Gray died in police custody, police defenders quickly pointed out that three of the officers involved were Black, implying that racism couldn’t be a factor in a case where the offending officers were the same race as the victim.

When I scaled the flagpole at South Carolina’s capital in 2015 and lowered the Confederate flag, many noted that it was a Black officer who was tasked with raising the flag to the top of its pole again. When an incident of brutality brings a city to its brink, Black police chiefs are paraded to podiums and cameras to serve as the face of the United States’ racist police state and to symbolically restore a sense of order. One of the most frequent recommendations from police reformists is to recruit and promote more Black officers. This is based on an argument that the primary problem with policing centers on a “breakdown of trust” between police forces and communities they have terrorized for decades; the solution, then, is to “restore trust” between the two parties by recruiting officers who resemble the communities they police. Images of police officers dancing or playing basketball with Black children in economically deprived neighborhoods are often published as local news items to help drive this narrative home. The idea gained traction in the aftermath of numerous urban rebellions in the 1960s and has seen a resurgence in the wake of the 2014 Ferguson uprising.

When protests broke out in Atlanta this past summer in response to the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, the city’s Black mayor, Keisha Lance Bottoms, held a press conference flanked by some of Atlanta’s most famous and wealthy Black residents. Together they pleaded for protestors to go home and leave property alone. Soon after, Rayshard Brooks was killed by white police officers in Atlanta. The moment exposed a class divide that exists in cities all over the nation: A chasm between the image of Black affluence promoted by Black politicians and the Black petite bourgeoisie (middle class) and the lived realities of the majority of Black residents in those cities, many of whom still face disproportionate unemployment, displacement by rapid gentrification, and policies that cater to white corporate interests. If the solution to racism were simply a matter of a few select Black people gaining entry to anti-Black institutions, we would see different outcomes than what we’re witnessing now. But the idea that we can resolve racism by integrating what is perhaps the most fundamentally anti-Black institution in the U.S. — its policing and prison industry — is the most absurd notion of all.

Part of the reason why calls to defund police have sent such shock waves through the nation, prompting placement of pro-police billboards and pushback from figures of the Black establishment, is because it cuts right to the heart of how structural racism operates in the United States. At a time when the Black elite would prefer to measure progress by their own tokenized positions of power and symbolic gestures like murals, the push to defund police would require direct confrontation with how the white supremacist system has been organized since the end of chattel slavery — when the prisons replaced plantations as the primary tool of racial control. Actions that may have been widely seen as adequate responses to injustice just a couple of decades ago now ring hollow to many observers who see that Black people continue to be killed by a system that remains largely unchanged.

Police forces represent some of the oldest white fraternal organizations in the United States. The rules of who is empowered to police and who is subject to policing are fundamental to the organization of the racial caste system. Even in the earliest days of integrating police forces, Black officers were often told they couldn’t arrest white people. The integration of police forces does nothing to alter their basic function as the primary enforcers of structural racism on a daily basis, and the presence of Black officers only serves as an attempt to mask this fact.

Police forces in America began as slave patrols, and their primary function has always been to act in service of the white ownership class and its capitalist production. In one century, that meant policing and controlling enslaved Black people, with the purview to use violence against free Black people as well; in another, it involved cracking down on organized labor, for the benefit of white capitalists. Receiving a badge and joining the force has been an entryway to white manhood for many European immigrants — providing them a sense of citizenship and superiority when they would have traditionally been part of the peasantry rather than the white owner class.

That spirit of white fraternity remains deeply entrenched in the culture of policing and its unions today, regardless of this new wave of Black police chiefs and media spokespeople. Police forces became unionized around the same time various other public employees sought collective bargaining rights — however, under capitalism, their role as maintainers of race-property relations remains the same. The most fundamental rule of race established under chattel slavery was that Black people were the equivalent of white property (if not counted as less than property). This relationship between race and property is most overt during periods of open rebellion against the police state, where officers are deployed to use lethal force in the interest of protecting inanimate property. We see swifter and harsher punishments handed out to those who vandalize police cars than to police who assault and kill Black people. (This is a major reason why the press conference in Atlanta with T.I. and Killer Mike struck people as classist and out of touch with the majority Black experience.)

This same pattern extends throughout the carceral state. Roughly a quarter of all bailiffs, correctional officers, and jailers are Black, yet there’s no indication that diversifying the staff of a racist institution results in less violence and death for those who are held within it. That’s because the institution continues to operate as designed. It is not “broken,” as reformists are fond of saying. The fallacy is in believing the function of police and prisons is to mete out punishment and justice in an equitable manner and not to first and foremost serve as a means of maintaining the race, gender, and class hierarchy of an oppressive society.

Believing that the system is “broken” rather than functioning exactly as intended requires a certain adherence to white supremacist and anti-Black beliefs. One has to ignore the rampant amount of violence, fraud, and theft being committed by some of the most powerful figures in society with little to no legal consequence while massive amounts of resources are devoted to the hyper-policing of the poor for infractions as minor as trespassing, shoplifting, and turnstile jumping at subway stations.

The Trump era has provided some of the starkest examples of this dynamic. The most powerful person in the nation and his associates have been able to break the law and violate the Constitution — including documented crimes against humanity — in full view of the public while he proclaims himself the upholder of law and order. Wealthy celebrities involved in the college admissions bribery scandal have gotten away with a slap on the wrist for orchestrating a multimillion-dollar scheme while a dozen NYPD officers surrounded a Black teenager, guns drawn, for the “crime” of failing to pay $2.75 for a subway ride.

The propaganda that depicts this type of policing as being essential to public safety and order is fundamentally classist and anti-Black. It traces its roots to the Black Codes that were passed immediately after the Civil War to control the movements of newly freed Black people. It relies on the racist assumption that Black people would run amok and pose a threat to the larger society if not kept under the constant surveillance of a police force that has authority to kill them if deemed necessary, and with virtual impunity. That’s why we are inundated with a narrative that depicts the police officer who regularly patrols predominantly Black communities as being an essential part of maintaining order in society.

One of the primary talking points against calls to defund and abolish police is that Black communities would have no way to maintain peace and order, and that a state of chaos would ensue. In wealthier neighborhoods, if an officer is present at all, they’re most likely positioned by a gate at the top of the neighborhood to monitor who enters. Meanwhile, the officer assigned to the predominantly Black community is there to keep a watchful eye on the residents themselves, and to ensure they are contained in their designated place within the larger city or town.

The current political divide on this issue falls exactly along these lines, separating those who think the system is simply in need of reform and those who correctly define the problem as the system itself. The reality is that Black people fall on both sides of this divide, which is why we find so many Black officers in uniform arguing for a reformist agenda even as every reform they propose is vociferously opposed by the powerful, majority-white police unions and most of the rank and file. Reformists remain committed to preserving the existing system even though the idea of reforming it to be the opposite of what it was designed to be is an unproven theory that’s no more realistic than the idea of abolishing police altogether.

The most pressing question remains: Why are we seeking to integrate and reform modern manifestations of the slave patrols and plantations in the first place? In Mississippi and Louisiana, state penitentiaries are converted plantations. What is a reformed plantation — and what is its purpose?

We must remember that many of these so-called “reforms” are not new. For as long as the plantation and chattel slavery systems existed, there also existed Black slaveowners, Black overseers, and Black slave catchers who participated in and profited from the daily operations of white supremacy. The presence of these few Black people in elevated positions of power did nothing to change the material conditions of the millions of enslaved people back then. And it makes no greater amount of sense to believe they indicate a shift in material conditions for Black people now.

[getinvolvedyoulivehere]

The whole situation could have been resolved peacefully, but because some "see something, say something" citizen decided to involve the police an otherwise innocent man was gunned down  

[mallbangs]

in 2017, i tried to start this project where anyone could call a number and leave a voicemail of literally anything; sounds, memories, whatever they wanted that was tied to a music project called enoshima that had gone dormant until “recently”. i put “recently” in quotes bc i guess we will just have to wait and see (if ur like me with trying to find new music, if u do enough digging on the internet i’m sure you’ll find some stuff) the goal was to use a landline phone with cassette answering machine so i could keep hard copies for a future use of an idea. after buying three used landline phones and phone calls not triggering the answering machines but luckily would still get email copies of the few voicemail audio files i did…in short, the idea failed miserably due to lack of reach, personal reasons, and money because its not free to have a phone number lol and the enoshima project just went dormant with its own reasons as well…

in 2019, i started to brainstorm a more intentional concept that would connect the caller/listener with the music i had started to write (the current project, mallbangs, that i feel lucky enough and honored to work with the people i do now and have had worked with previously, when it always feels so embarrassing for me to release any of it) and the kind of experience i am trying to thread together now, community and a space in the art, music from inside and outside the digital space. i guess attempting to ground the way that i and i think a lot of ppl consume art these days; strictly through their phones.. it’s why i use my music in the voicemail videos and posts with the hope that ppl make the connection that it’s tied together..well.. it sorta started to gain very little traction but better than it had ever previously.

i think the fact that it began to reach ppl was in part due to 2020 and everything that started unfolding that year; pandemic, quarantine, school years and graduations/normal experiences just evaporated, here in the united states the murders of george floyd and rayshard brooks and the summer uprising of 2020.. i could obviously go on… come january 4th 2022, after a year or so of randomly posting about it because i started to think it wasn’t something ppl were really interested in, it went viral. i spent literally 24 hrs, multiple days, no sleep, emptying the voicemail box every 10 - 20 minutes because that many ppl were calling. i got so anxious, and this feeling of guilt because i wanted everyone who was calling to have the ability to leave one. i didn’t want to let anyone down those first weeks. it’s not as intense as it was then but im still emptying the voicemail box multiple times a day. i’m ngl i freaked out. it was completely overwhelming.

through out last year the project, my personal, and music accounts nearly got banned about 20 times or so because i was unaware that i was doing something that wasn’t allowed on a certain platform. somehow, all of the accounts survived, and it’s up to over 80k voicemails. i even started accepting DMs to post just in case speaking was too much for someone and that’s at a few thousand now. started a p.o. box as well and that’s been very little. allowing the project to evolve into web of different formats naturally as it feels that it wants to. i’m not sure if someone’s written words are any easier to absorb than hearing some ppls pain audibly. both written and audio recorded msgs have made me breakdown more than i can count on what seems inevitable but still for unknown reasons to myself, unexpected.

the new song gutter was inherently inspired and written about all of those emotions i had and have been feeling from the voicemails and what not as well as my own personal shit whether i was consciously aware of it at the time or not. some of the time im oblivious when writing. more often than not it just happens melodies and lyrics fall out like word vomit. stream of consciousness or serendipitous i guess. it became evident it was inspired by all of the aforementioned when i started trying to piece together random lyrics it already had ruminating and while demoing it out. the song had started to, in a way, show me what i was trying to convey. which is why you hear the guttural stutter in the beginning and end. its the dying sound of the radio in my car i no longer have for transportation and hundreds of voicemails collaged together in the demo. When i went to actually record the song, i insisted on keeping that collaged stutter of voicemail’s and noise bc it would have lost what i felt made it even more personal for me. idk if this is fucking pretentious or stupid to say, but that incessant stutter is like symbolic for getting drowned out when u need to be heard.. isolation.. denial.. i guess, if the lyrics are even that revealing. i always try to make lyrics not so surface level but yea i think this one is maybe more surface level than others and yea i just think the stutter sounds cool too.

if you’ve been following the music or the voicemail project for a while, this song could either have been a subliminal experience (of) or maybe surface level at best what its place is in either the VM project or in the music; descending from the official version, a demo version lazily titled “sorry demo”, and the early version which was an acoustic demo. the latter of said three versions had long been the de facto voicemail project song for a while, I guess. 

if its familiar to you because you know me its probably because, as you know, I tend to neurotically play so many song ideas on the guitar into the ground that it’s to the point I don’t realize Im playing them when im around y’all lol 

to everyone else, if this song had been familiar at all to you prior to it being released it is because the acoustic demo version was used around that period of time in 2022 when i was repeatedly getting threatened with being banned.. potentially losing the VM project’s account, the art, and the memories of genuine interactions with strangers that I often tend to think isn’t really real sometimes. Like having felt some of you accepted me for me or what I am emotionally/comfortably able to present to you online..and in that sentiment irl I maybe take for granted interactions with new potential friends or even strangers sometimes as well tbh. 

I realize all of that previous paragraph could be redundant, im sorry :/ But, I have such strong passion for the music and the voicemail thing. So much so that i’ve never monetized any of the voicemail stuff. i’ve never made any “merch/products” to sell or have tried to turn it into a business because these things i create or write mean more to me than the idea of “curating for profit”. never intended for any of the voicemail stuff to be a “marketing strategy” thing. the music hasn’t been recognized as part of this thing, probably due to my lack of making the concept of all of this clear, and probably because of my pride in not wanting any of this to be perceived as such. which i know in this capitalistic hellscape it will be ripped off and done in such a way that someone may be successful from it, its already happening as many have pointed out to me.

out of all this silly voicemail thing and my musical attempt, the most important thing i’ve learned is that everyone just needs someone to speak to even if they don’t talk back. someone just to listen. to be able to get lost in music that takes them somewhere they can feel comfortable like i try to do everyday when listening to music. the voicemails, the DMs, writing music.. it gets very mentally and emotionally overwhelming for me.. listening to them everyday, reading the DMs everyday, struggling to gather the energy in me that never seems to wither to just write.. and if someone offered me a path that is without any of that? i wouldn’t take it. even if it meant making some of these lingering feelings just go away for good.

a few people have told me to end the project because they’re afraid of what it could be doing to me. their concern is valid. i won’t deny that. but i feel as if this thing is larger than myself at this point. and i think the take away for me from all of this is that, im just glad this silly little idea may be helping someone when i myself most times feel like i have nowhere to go or no one to run to. and if i die tomorrow ill be at some what of peace knowing that if i have done anything worth meaning in this short experience of life that we all get to share with one another, its the music and this voicemail project and the community, the safe space ..all of whatever the music and this project has given someone…everything i feel that i never had. i feel eternally honored and grateful that if at all, it has helped someone when i couldnt even help myself.

there’s nothing i could give that’s of equal value to the gratitude i have for anyone that has ever left a msg of some sort and has or continues to support this project and the music. so all i can say is thank you.

with all the love i have,

aidy <3

[thefreethoughtprojectcom]

He definitely shouldn't have been driving, that being said when someone is away from the car and running away from you they no longer pose a lethal threat. So shooting them multiple times is uncalled for.

[cosmicanger]

“wish y'all would stop hyping up french protests because they will always continue to fail to result in any fundamental change as long as french's history, including that of today, of brutal colonialism is not addressed.”

“why don’t we protest like france” because you call anybody who does anything cool an outside agitator or secret fed or adrenaline junkie and you do not protect frontliners when they catch serious charges. unserious. you don’t have riots without rioters. you thought fireworks and construction supplies were a psyop. now you want barricades?”

“These fools literally cant handle a Black person calling out antiBlackness before it is socially profitable & they doing NOTHING to support Black folks protesting c*p city have the nerve to ask “omg where the protests in the empirical core?!””

“Most folks are way too into snitch-jacketing, fed-jacketing & badjacketing Black folks who call out anti-Blackness before it is socially profitable while engaging with various other COINTELPRO activities. Not serious at all.”

“I will still never ever forgive Twitter for turning on the girlfriend of Rayshard Brooks when she burnt up the same Wendy’s that got him killed…”

“"Imagine if people in the US protested like this" THEY DID! In 2020! The police beat the shit out of us! You all were there! It's wild to watch cause people are acting as if we're not living through the reaction to the Floyd protests. They're passing more laws to continue targeting protesters right now! They're charging protesters with domestic terrorism right now! This is because of those protests! Literally passed laws that made it okay for people to hit protesters with their cars. That was the response. The issue is here when things get to burning, Black people are blamed and the specter of Black violence doesn't stir the same revolutionary fervor for the public the way the French protests seem to inspire. If you're lamenting the lack of radical action in response to exploitive fiscal policy in the US, maybe we should look at the fact that the police have been given functional impunity for harming protesters with right-wing militias increasingly being deputized as well. But y'all want a radical confrontation with capital while funding the police as if we don't know how that will play out.”