#white people in the south

[reasoningdaily]

Authorities have released civil rights attorney Jill Collen Jefferson from jail in Holmes County after Lexington Police arrested her on Saturday, June 10, while she was filming a traffic stop she saw after leaving an event. Police arrested the JULIAN president nine days after she complained about the department’s treatment of Black residents while meeting with U.S. Justice Department officials.

Jefferson’s attorney, Michael Carr, who said he “is very concerned (Lexington Police) engaged in a false arrest in this case,” informed the Mississippi Free Press this morning that she was being released. Bail bondsman Bonita Streeter also confirmed the release, saying officials had waived fees for the civil rights attorney’s release.

Jefferson, who is from Jones County, founded JULIAN in 2020. She named the organization, which conducts investigations into possible civil rights violations, after her mentor, longtime civil rights leader Julian Bond.

The arrest sparked a backlash from the community over the weekend.

“The citizens of Lexington are fearful of driving for fear of harassment from the police,” the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party said in a statement this morning condemning Collen’s arrest. “Innocent mentally ill citizens are brutalized on our streets and imprisoned unlawfully. Our elected officials have refused to act on this matter because these unlawful arrests are benefitting the city financially.”

‘I Guess She Thought That Was A Good Idea’

Assistant U.S. Attorney General Kristen Clarke, who is with the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, visited Lexington on June 1 along with U.S. Attorney Darren J. LaMarca of the Southern District of Mississippi.

The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party said its members “were feeling hopeful” after Clarke and LaMarca’s visit—until Jill Collen Jefferson’s arrest.

“Upon leaving an event, she witnessed police officers engaging with a citizen, but because of the numerous complaints against the police department, she decided to drive by the scene and record,” MFDP said. “While driving, an officer asked her to show her driver’s license Other officers approached the vehicle and began to pull her out. She was placed in handcuffs and put in the patrol car.”

Attorney Carr said police charged Jefferson with three misdemeanors, including failure to comply, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. But he told the Mississippi Free Press this morning that the police department had offered no “narrative supplement” to explain why they charged her with those offenses.

After this story first published, though, Carr shared a recording with the Mississippi Free Press that his office obtained that he says includes remarks the arresting officer made about Jefferson. This reporter could not verify the identity of the person speaking in the recording, however.

“I told her to give me her license five, six, seven, eight times,” a man can be heard saying on the recording. “She argued she ain’t got to. … She was riding by filming. I guess she thought that was a good idea.”

The Mississippi Free Press reached out to the Lexington Police Department for comment this morning, but an employee said there was “no one here right now to speak about that matter” and to call back later. Reached again this afternoon following this story’s initial publication, the department again said no one was available to speak.

Jefferson Speaks: ‘I Did Not Resist’

Later this afternoon, attorney Carr sent this reporter a video of Jill Jefferson speaking with members of the media in Lexington, where she accused the local police of “terrorizing Black people here.”

She said she was driving around with a passenger when she saw the police had someone pulled over and decided to film the incident. The passenger, she said, got out of the car, fearing the police would pull Jefferson over for filming them.

“As soon as the cops saw me, Officer Scott Walters started flagging me down with his flashlight,” Jefferson told reporters. “I stopped, I let my window down, and he said, ‘Show me your ID.’ I said, ‘Why do you need to see my ID?’ … And then he pulled out his taser. And I said, ‘You’re going to tase me?’ And that point, I called my attorney. He said, ‘Jill, of course this is not right, but just show them your ID so you can get this over with.'”

Jefferson said she followed her lawyer’s suggestion, but the situation only escalated from there.

“I held up my license. At that point, Officer Walters snatched my phone out of my hand, he slammed it on the top of the car,” she said. “He started trying to yank at my door handle, trying to pull it open. My car door was locked. He reached through the window and unlocked my car door through the inside. He pulled the door open, pulled me out of the car, pushed me against the car, and then proceeded to arrest me—cuff me. He put my hands behind my back. I did not resist.”

Jefferson said that, after the officer put her in the back of a police car, Jefferson said another officer joined Walters searching her car.

“Then they went to the driver’s side and Officer Walters knelt down and put his hand under the seat and he said, ‘Oh, looky here.’ He’d found my firearm,” she said. “And he said, ‘I sure hope it’s stolen.’ At that point, he came back to the police car. I told him the search was illegal. He told me he would never hire me. He told me I was a shit lawyer since I didn’t know about search incident to arrest. He told me I was being arrested for failure to comply. I told him I had not done anything wrong. He said nothing and shut the car door. He took me to the police station.”

‘It’s Actually Beyond A Breaking Point’

A month later, JULIAN filed a lawsuit against the Lexington Police Department, alleging that it “operates within a culture of corruption and lawlessness, daily and habitually subjecting Black citizens to harassment and brutality, in violation of their civil rights.”

“We are just asking the court to restrain them from targeting, harassing, assaulting Black citizens and violating their constitutional rights in other ways,” Jill Collen Jefferson told the Mississippi Free Press last year. “It’s at a breaking point—it’s actually beyond a breaking point.”

Carr said Jefferson’s court date is set for July 13 at the Lexington Municipal Court.

Lexington is 86% Black and 13% white, but has a deeply racist past. At the dedication of a Confederate monument there in 1908, Confederate veteran Wiley N. Nash said that “these Confederate monuments, these sacred memorials, tells in silent but potent language, that the white people of the South shall rule and govern the Southern states forever.”

The monument still stands at the center of Lexington’s town square.

This story has been updated to add comments from Jefferson after her release.

[hussyknee]

SOUTH ASIANS ASSEMBLE

E.g: Best Bollywood movie of all time!

[ayandagama]

phuti p

[sergle]

this stupid fuckin youtube recommendation was specifically formulated in a lab to piss me off

"RED STATES"? YOU MEAN THE MAJORITY OF THE ENTIRE UNITED STATES???????????

[robotpussy]

since Ghana passed the anti LGBT bill I keep hearing more and more about how hate crimes are increasing, not just in Ghana but also in places like Kenya too. days after the bill was passed, a Kenyan woman was attacked because some men stated she "dresses like a man" - Kenya was also considering passing a anti-lgbt bill (although the supreme court did rule that doing this would be unconstitutional.) but just as Ghana was considering passing the bill for years and it eventually was, it could still happen in Kenya.

screenshot of the tweet underneath the cut. tw for blood and bruises

[timetravellingkitty]

I'm not listening to a white person on what's racist or insensitive to brown people. read orientalism by edward said before talking to me or my son ever again

[zevranunderstander]

number #1 tactic that people use to not sound as racist as they are when they talk to black people: 'uhh so you AMERICANS need to stop pretending everything is about YOU. why should i know this im not from the us :/' (= is talking about like. a phenomenally internationally well-known black artist)

[pinkocowboy]

*from my death bed* wait guys i still like south park wait guys wait w

[deer-with-a-stick]

I wonder how many people know that Maria's animals are the Four Symbols from Chinese/East Asian mythology. Didn't pick it up until the turtle appeared but when I tell you I screamed

[junglejim4322]

As a USamerican I can tell you every place I’ve lived the one constant is I’ve known so many people who dream of getting out and moving away to some magical place that’ll fix all their problems only to find out if you manage to move almost everything is exactly the same because there’s no running away from racism and homophobia etc and all of these places are relatively the same in that how good your experience is really is just based off of how much money and resources you have at your disposal

[unfortunatelyprofounddaughter]

church lady magic✨

[reasoningdaily]

Nothing about this is right - nothing

[nashvillethotchicken]

Sometimes I think about how loustat are in a placage marriage and make myself insane.

[ayandagama]

South African women : MbaliMkh

[handweavers]

older books on like art and history are interesting artifacts in their own right bc you learn not just the content of the book but also the prevailing attitudes and thoughts of that time, what was socially acceptable, common parlance, etc. which are all easier to notice from the distance that time offers. you can't play down past attitudes toward certain people and places when you have the physical evidence, and i like reading these books bc i get to pretend to argue with the author. like i'm reading a book from 1973 about 'historic india' and the way the author writes about 'indian culture' as both a monolith and as something so foreign and different from any other culture on earth is fascinating lol. it echoes so many present day sanghi talking points and even praises the caste system out of some ass backwards attempt at not being racist. it also does that thing where 'hindu' culture is positioned as being fundamentally different and separate from 'muslim' culture, which is so wrong for so many reasons

[stanleys-marsh]

Using 'Deep Learning' as an example that Stan doesn't care about Wendy is a very wrong way to see that episode in my opinion. The right discussion is that Stan is immature as hell, and has a problem facing things.

I think a lot about the different reactions of Clyde and Stan. They are both in the same situation, but while Clyde is afraid of Bebe getting mad at him, Stan is worried about Wendy getting hurt. It's a very simple difference, but it says a lot about how they both saw things, mainly Stan. He is too sensitive and emotional, but this ends up clashing with his more negligent side. He doesn't want to hurt people, but he ends up being too defensive as well.

As I said, Stan is immature, and he and Wendy have had this problem for a long time. Does that mean he doesn't care or love her? I really don't think that's the case. Overall, it's the story of 10-year-olds living their lives, and if we go even deeper, Stan has a terrible example at home too. I genuinely think this is an issue that will change when they grow up lol