A University Is Under Fire After A Professor Tweeted About Comparing The "Behavioral Profile" Of Black Americans To Asian Americans

Current University of Central Florida students and faculty are calling for professor Charles Negy's termination.

Tanya ChenBuzzFeed News Reporter


Posted on June 5, 2020


Charles Negy@CharlesNegy
Sincere question: If Afr. Americans as a group, had the same behavioral profile as Asian Americans (on average, performing the best academically, having the highest income, committing the lowest crime, etc.), would we still be proclaiming "systematic racism" exists?09:42 PM - 03 Jun 2020
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The University of Central Florida is being forced to respond after one of its professors of psychology posed a racist question on Twitter, asking if systemic racism would "exist" if "Afr. Americans as a group had the same behavioral profile as Asian Americans."

School officials, including UCF's president Alexander Cartwright, released a statement this week saying they "condemn" professor Charles Negy's tweet "in the strongest terms," and they've launched an investigation.

However, despite huge calls for action by both students, alumni, and other faculty members, Negy is still an active professor, a spokesperson for the school confirmed to BuzzFeed News.

On Wednesday, Negy tweeted, "If Afr. Americans as a group, had the same behavioral profile as Asian Americans (on average, performing the best academically, having the highest income, committing the lowest crime, etc.), would we still be proclaiming 'systematic racism' exists?"

The tweet remains up and has drawn a ratio of loud and angry responses.

Many of them are from current and former students, some of whom identified as Asian American. They wrote back to Negy, laying out all the reasons why his tweet is ignorant and steeped in racism.



「 adrian 」@aaydurian

@CharlesNegy As an Asian American student attending UCF, I am deeply angry at this message perpetuating the model minority myth to deny the injustices against Black communities. NEVER proclaim monolithic APIDA experiences again until you have learned about systemic racism02:22 AM - 04 Jun 2020
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Many quickly called out the "model minority myth," or the flawed logic often used toward Asian Americans as a racial wedge between them and other minority groups.

"As a student that goes to @UCF, an Asian American student, I am deeply offended that this UCF Psychology professor is using the minority model myths and stereotypes to invalidate the injustice and systemic racism that Black communities face daily," user @cailiboone9 wrote.

BuzzFeed News has reached out to some of the students and alumni who are responding, as well as Negy.

User @aaydurian, a current junior at the school, told BuzzFeed News that instances like this are nothing new for students of color on campus. She just hopes that the school can take a firmer stance this time.

"I hope to see UCF truly stand against anti-racism by removing [Negy] of his position and creating specific student government agencies for Black, Asian, and Hispanic students to educate our student body on racial identities and provide more platforms and funding for our cultural student organizations," she said.

Some who've identified themselves as Negy's fellow faculty are expressing their outrage as well. "We must do better for our students," one wrote.


Rob Dvorak@rob_dvorakPhD
As a psych prof @UCF let me say that the ignorance by my colleague is unacceptable. It’s even more unacceptable that he teaches a course requiring racial sensitivity and self-awareness. I’m ashamed to be associated with my dept rn. We must do better for our students. #UCFfirehim04:02 PM - 04 Jun 2020
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The hashtag #UCFfirehim is being used with a clear message from those affiliated with the school: They want Negy fired.

When reached, Heather Smith, the director of the school's media relations, provided BuzzFeed News with a transcript of a recent town hall meeting between the school's president and top officials and its students.

The town hall was previously scheduled for COVID-related discussions, "however, university leadership also took the opportunity to address Dr. Negy’s tweets," Smith said.

"These posts do not reflect the values of UCF, and I strongly condemn these racist and abhorrent posts. I understand the anger it has caused many of our students, staff, and faculty," Cartwright said. "I promise you this is a matter that has our full attention, and we have launched an inquiry to quickly – but fully – evaluate this situation."

According to the transcript, Cartwright said he wants to "learn from [students'] experiences" and added, "I want to ensure you that Black Lives Matter."


beep boop not a bot (Sam)@blipbloop9001
@CharlesNegy As a former UCF cross cultural psychology student of yours, shut up. @ucf @ucfdoi @UCFCartwright It is embarrassing this guy is part of your faculty and was allowed to teach a class like that with these beliefs03:49 AM - 04 Jun 2020
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Beyond the school's immediate community, Negy's tweets have drawn all kinds of other responses. Many of them from Twitter users who felt compelled to educate an educator.

Paul Krueger@NotLikeFreddy
@CharlesNegy -America was built specifically on a foundation of anti-Blackness -America has built system after system specifically to keep down Black Americans -we Asians don’t fit into the nonsense Model Minority myth you’re peddling -Asian and Black luminaries still experience racism04:03 AM - 04 Jun 2020
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readwithcindy 💩@readwithcindy
Putting Asians as the "model minority" to justify the mistreatment of black people is disgusting. We're not here for you to pit us against another group and erase our struggles while dismissing another. https://t.co/OjEtlkEgQz05:09 PM - 04 Jun 2020
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Actor Ken Jeong even responded to Negy, simply tweeting, "Go Fuck Yourself."

Ken Jeong@kenjeong
Sincere response: Go Fuck Yourself. Love, Ken Jeong, MD https://t.co/oHRrP6aDsP05:01 AM - 04 Jun 2020
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Tanya Chen is a social news reporter for BuzzFeed and is based in Chicago.

Police Are Arresting Peaceful Black Protesters Using Force, And The Videos Are Alarming

"Because he was Black, they felt that they needed five cops to tackle him to the ground and drag him to behind the other cops.

Posted on June 5, 2020

Stanton Sharpe / Sipa USA via AP
A protester is arrested in Santa Monica on May 31 during a protest against the killing of George Floyd.


Almost two weeks since the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, the protests against police killings of unarmed Black people across the country show no signs of stopping. Clashes between law enforcement and protesters have so far resulted in more than 11,000 arrests in the US as some demonstrations spiral into scenes of unrest and violence.

But several Black protesters and organizers told BuzzFeed News they've been targeted by police at these protests for not doing anything at all — and viral cellphone videos are reinforcing their feeling that police are carrying out the very behavior that has compelled people to take to the streets: targeting and responding violently to peaceful Black protesters.


Nakia-Renne Wallace — one of the main organizers of the protests in Detroit, alongside her uncle, Tristan Taylor — told BuzzFeed News that police arrested more than 100 peaceful protesters this week. Taylor was anticipating being charged with inciting a riot, but the Detroit police chief later said his actions ultimately didn’t warrant the charge.

“The only people who were there for violence were the police,” Wallace said.

Khalil Coleman, an organizer in Milwaukee, said he too has experienced police arresting nonviolent Black demonstrators during the protests. "Black lives don't matter to the police and to the system overall. Black lives is a commodity," he told BuzzFeed News. "They know that there has been a system [allowing police to] get away with what they have always been getting away with, and that's the abuse of Black people."

In the past two weeks, police have been filmed reacting with disproportionate violence toward protesters and even bystanders, displaying the kind of behavior Black and brown communities say they have long been familiar with.


At a Las Vegas protest on May 29, a protester captured on video the moment police officers swarmed an unarmed Black man in the crowd. In the video, the man lies on the ground in front of the police, then gets up and does not appear to move. The police then rush at him suddenly, as several of them tackle him to the ground while the crowd screams.

ً@MAYAWUB
LVPD TACKLING AN UNARMED PEACEFUL PROTESTER, 5 POLICE OFFICERS FOR ONE UNARMED BLACK MAN?04:57 AM - 30 May 2020
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"There was absolutely no warning," the person who took the video, Maya, told BuzzFeed News about the arrest. (Maya asked to only be identified by her first name).

There was no indication that protesters were provoking police, Maya said. "The only sense I got of why they arrested him was because they could. We were peaceful, talking to them, trying to speak peacefully. They didn’t want that. They wanted us to stop protesting," she said.

The Las Vegas Police Department told BuzzFeed News that officers "created a mobile field force arrest team" to take the man into custody, a tactic used when officers "enter a crowd with the intent of detaining or arresting a person."

"During events where a person is identified as an agitator or someone who is inciting violence, those persons are removed out of the crowd so others can protest peacefully," the LVPD said.

Maya said she was "terrified and confused" when the police arrested the man. "Cops are the ones that have the guns, the batons, the tasers, the pepper spray. What do we, the protesters, have? Our voices, our words," Maya said. "Why are the police using so much force on people who have their hands up and hearts out?"

Wallace said she has "absolutely" seen police single out Black protesters. She said this was partly because Black organizers are the ones leading the demonstrations and are therefore "automatically" more prominent.


But police are also targeting Black protesters, Wallace said, because "that's what they know, that's what they've always done. They know how to single out Black people."

Michael Houston, a 24-year-old Black man, was at a protest in Oakland, California, on Sunday when he decided to give a speech in a show of support for the demonstrators. Two officers then approached Houston, who was standing near the designated media area, to tell him that he did not have press credentials and then proceeded to remove him from the crowd.


A video of the interaction was taken by journalist Shane Bauer, who posted it on Twitter. Bauer noted in a tweet that he himself did not have media credentials, and was wearing a black hoodie and carrying a skateboard.

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Shane Bauer@shane_bauer

This 24-year-old black man gives a moving speech to thank nonviolent protesters who are being arrested in Oakland tonight. Watch the whole thing to see how the police react.04:09 AM - 02 Jun 2020
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Oakland police did not respond to a request for comment, but Houston told BuzzFeed News that he believes police removed him because he was a Black man who spoke up. "It wasn't until I started speaking out — that's when they decided to arrest me," he said.

"It just goes to show, you have to just shut up and be quiet. And if you don't and you speak up, then you'll definitely be arrested," Houston said. "And with Shane, him not having his credentials, and him being white — that was OK."

Maya, the woman who took the video in Las Vegas, said she believes police reacted with such force "absolutely" because the man she filmed was Black.

"If the protester that did get tackled was white, it would have never happened," she said. "Because he was Black, they felt that they needed five cops to tackle him to the ground and drag him to behind the other cops."

Of course, not all the people injured or arrested by police while acting in a nonviolent manner have been Black. One of the most high-profile incidents of viral police violence occurred on Thursday evening when officers in Buffalo, New York, were filmed pushing an elderly white man to the ground. The man had to be taken to a hospital in a serious condition after he hit his head and began bleeding on the pavement.

Geneviéve Jones-Wright, an activist and legal director at PANA San Diego, a group advocating for refugees, has been calling for more scrutiny of how police deal with protesters. She told BuzzFeed News that from what she's seen in the past two weeks, police have frequently been escalating the already-high tensions with protesters. "The protesters are not inciting the violence. It is the police coming into the protest [and] inciting the violence a lot of the times," she said.

That appeared to be the case during a protest in Kansas City, Missouri, where police in riot gear were filmed over the weekend spraying a chemical agent in the face of two peaceful Black protesters.

The video shows a Black protester criticizing police from a distance about "prematurely using excessive force." A row of officers then approach the man and a Black woman next to him and spray a chemical directly into their faces. They then drag the Black man away, while several white protesters next to them remain untouched by police.



🤍🖤🤎@Elise_Villa

@kcpolice WE are disappointed. This man was using his WORDS and was responded to with WEAPONS. #BlackLivesMatter #JusticeForGeorge02:43 AM - 31 May 2020
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Sgt. Jake Becchina told BuzzFeed News in a statement that the man's arrest is one of 151 police made over the weekend. "The protestor in the video was arrested for municipal/city protest related charges. He did not resist his arrest. However, the associated response from the crowd was aggressive and violent by throwing various objects and physically interfering with the arrest, which is also a crime for which they were not arrested for at that time, that is what led to the officer's response with pepper spray," Becchina said.

The video, however, does not show protesters throwing objects or interfering with the arrest.

Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas's office directed BuzzFeed News to his tweets addressing the protests, and announcing that the county prosecutor is conducting an "external review."

Wallace, the Detroit activist, said police officers' behavior toward Black protesters today is nothing new. "We can go back to almost every pivotal moment in this country in terms of the struggle of Black and brown lives. We saw what the police did at the Montgomery Bus Boycott. We saw what the police did at Bloody Sunday. We saw how the police treated the Black Panther Party," she said. "This is not new. It is, in fact, their purpose."

Clarissa-Jan Lim is a reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News. She is based in New York.

Lawmakers Call For Halt To Covert Surveillance Of Protesters By DEA
Following a BuzzFeed News report revealing that the Justice Department authorized the spying, two members of Congress called the program “antithetical to the American people’s right to peacefully assemble.”



Posted on June 5, 2020

Kevin Lamarque / Reuters

Two lawmakers have called for the Drug Enforcement Administration to stop conducting covert surveillance on civilians as part of the government’s plan to confront widespread protests following the killing of George Floyd last week.

The Justice Department temporarily expanded the DEA’s power to collect information on protesters — and to share that intelligence with other law enforcement agencies and make arrests for non-drug related crimes — last weekend. The measure, first reported by BuzzFeed News, followed remarks by Attorney General William Barr that blamed, without evidence, “anarchistic and far left extremist groups” for the unrest.

In a letter sent to Barr and Timothy Shea, the acting administrator of the DEA, Democratic Reps. Jerry Nadler and Karen Bass on Friday called the expansion of the drug agency’s powers “antithetical to the American people’s right to peacefully assemble and to exercise their Constitutional rights without undue intrusion.”

Nadler chairs the House Judiciary Committee, of which Bass is also a member. The two lawmakers demanded Barr and Shea "immediately rescind" the sweeping new authority granted to the DEA and asked for “a briefing detailing the timeline and rationale for the expansion of authority."

As unrest about racial injustice spread across America over the past two weeks, at times spilling over into property destruction and looting, the Trump administration has taken an increasingly adversarial posture.

In recent days, the Justice Department has deployed agents from the FBI, DEA, US Marshals, Bureau of Prisons, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to back up local police. An email obtained by BuzzFeed News this week showed that the DEA on Tuesday was seeking to send 25 members of its Special Response Team, which among other activities conducts surveillance, to assist with “security” in Washington.

The Department of Homeland Security, meanwhile, sent officers to multiple cities and launched a Predator drone to circle above protesters in Minneapolis, where a police officer killed Floyd after kneeling on his neck for more than eight minutes on May 25.

Because the DEA is normally restricted to enforcing drug-related federal crimes, the agency needed special permission to carry out operations against protesters. On Sunday, acting DEA administrator Shea, a former US attorney known to be close to Barr, received written approval to go beyond the normal mandate to perform functions that the attorney general may “deem appropriate.” This expanded authority is for two weeks.

News of the unusual expansion of powers raised concerns among critics, including the ACLU, that gathering intelligence on civilians could infringe on their First Amendment right to protest.

Nadler and Bass, in their letter, raised separate concerns about the DEA’s “history and practice of disproportionately targeting people of color.”

The lawmakers cited a 2009 government report that found Latinos made up 46 percent of DEA’s arrestees but only 16 percent of the US population, and pointed to statistics showing that more than a quarter of the DEA’s arrests of male suspects were for marijuana violations. Nadler and Bass called that track record “out of touch” with contemporary models of enforcing drug laws, and raised concerns that “wider deployment of the DEA may only continue the disproportionate arrest trends that, in part, motivate the expressions of outrage that we are witnessing,”

A spokesperson for the DEA said the agency will “respond appropriately.” The Justice Department did not immediately return a message seeking comment.

The unusual deployment of the DEA and other agencies has also rankled top Senate Democrats who demanded answers by Monday about the use of "extraordinary authorities" to crack down on the protests.

Citing BuzzFeed News's reporting, minority leader Chuck Schumer, along with four other Democratic Senators, sent a letter Friday to Barr, Department of Homeland Security acting administrator Chad Wolf, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, and Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt requesting detailed information about federal law enforcement personnel possibly being "inappropriately mobilized in response to protests over the death of George Floyd."

Noting that a “hybrid force” drawing from the Secret Service, US Park Police, and DC National Guard had aided police efforts to forcibly remove protestors from Lafayette Park in Washington using tear gas and rubber bullets, the letter demanded information about what authorities those agencies were exercising and how the Constitutional rights of civilians were being protected in a time of social unrest.

“We are deeply concerned that, in the wake of the horrific killing in Minnesota, there is a lack of transparency regarding the forces you have deployed and under what authorities you have deployed them,” read the letter, which was also signed by Sen. Mark Warner, the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Jack Reed, the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and Sen. Gary Peters, the ranking member on the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee. “These actions only further undermine the American people’s faith in their law enforcement."

Requests for comment from the Department of Interior, Department of Homeland Security, and the Pentagon, were not immediately returned.

The DEA's role in gathering intelligence on citizens dates back to the early 1990s, when Barr, serving as attorney general under president George HW Bush, approved a bulk surveillance program that scooped up billions of phone records without warrants or a legal review. Last December, Senators Ron Wyden and Patrick Leahy called for a Justice Department ethics investigation into Barr's decision to authorize the DEA program.

Separately, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee sent a letter Friday to Chad Wolf, the acting director of the Department of Homeland Security, about the agency’s use of a Predator drone, as well as immigration and border agents to “surveil and intimidate peaceful protesters.”

The committee requested a wide range of documents about the details and costs associated with the agency’s operations.

"The deployment of drones and officers to surveil protests is a gross abuse of authority and is particularly chilling when used against Americans who are protesting law enforcement brutality," wrote Reps. Carolyn Maloney, Jamie Raskin, Stephen Lynch, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Ayanna Pressley.


2020 PROTESTS

The DEA Has Been Given Permission To Investigate People Protesting George Floyd’s Death

Jason Leopold · June 2, 2020

Police Arrested More Than 11,000 People At Protests Across The US

Scott Pham · June 2, 2020

UPDATE
June 7, 2020, at 12:20 p.m.


This story was updated to include information about a letter top Senate Democrats sent to Barr and other agency heads Friday requesting details about their role in quelling the protests.


Jason Leopold is a senior investigative reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in Los Angeles. He is a 2018 Pulitzer finalist for international reporting, recipient of the IRE 2016 FOI award and a 2016 Newseum Institute National Freedom of Information Hall of Fame inductee.


Anthony Cormier is an investigative reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York. While working for the Tampa Bay Times, Cormier won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting.

“Santa Monica Was A Boiling Point": Protests Are Taking Over White Wealthy Neighborhoods So They Can't Look Away

Protests over the death of George Floyd have culminated in some of the largest civil rights uprisings in history. And white, wealthy areas like Santa Monica are no longer exempt.

Brianna SacksBuzzFeed News Reporter


Posted on June 5, 2020

Brianna Sacks / BuzzFeed News

David Brown had been demonstrating peacefully, along with a group of other protesters near the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica when he felt hands latch onto him. Police officers roughly pulled him out of the crowd. They pushed him — hard. They prodded him with their batons. Then they clapped cold steel handcuffs around his wrists and took him into custody.

“They put me in a van and they slammed those doors,” he said, “and I never heard such a deafening sound as when they closed those doors.”


Hours later, police dropped him off at a gas station on Centinela Avenue, at the Los Angeles city limits. If you go back to Santa Monica, he said they told him, you will be arrested.

“What do you mean ‘don’t go back’?” he said he asked the officers. “I live in Santa Monica.”

Brown, who is Black and has lived in the beach town since high school, had been out on the street because he wanted to witness the movement against police brutality that has swept the country since the killing of George Floyd.

At 59, he is old enough to remember the Rodney King uprising of 1992, when he watched on television as Los Angeles’s historically Black neighborhoods like Crenshaw and Watts went up in flames. This time was different — in Los Angeles at least. This time, he said, protesters got smart and decided: “‘You know what, we’re going to the white neighborhoods and tear up their neighborhoods. We’re going to Bloomingdales, Beverly Hills, the Grove, all those places,’ and that’s exactly what they did.”

It was a deliberate strategy, according to Black Lives Matter LA cofounder Melina Abdullah. In 2013, during a protest over the killing of Trayvon Martin and the acquittal of his killer, George Zimmerman, the group decided to march in Beverly Hills, so that LA’s rich, white residents could not turn away. The tactic worked and, Abdullah said, has since been adopted nationwide.

“We are not willing to enable white folks with wealth to retreat to their places of refuge,” she said.

Which is what brought protesters on Sunday to Santa Monica, a city whose leafy streets are lined with multi-million dollar homes. The protest began on a street near the beach and was mostly peaceful, but a few blocks away, separate groups came in and targeted the heart of a popular shopping area — looting and vandalizing dozens of stores and starting fires. Police moved in and arrested more than 400 people, including some peaceful demonstrators. Authorities later said more than 95% of those arrested did not live in the city.

The destruction and violent clashes in Santa Monica played on televisions across the world. There were scenes of looting and burning, and images of police brutalizing demonstrators, blasting them at close range with rubber bullets.


“Normally, we are able to anticipate when a dispersal order is coming,” Abdullah said. “It’s all out the window this time. Police aren't giving people a chance to decide. They're beating people with batons. Several members were beaten to the point of hospitalization, and that's new for us.”

For some residents of Santa Monica’s historically Black and Latinx neighborhood who participated in the demonstrations, the events in their city felt both surreal and empowering.







Marcio Jose Sanchez / AP

“Everything that is so shiny about Santa Monica is now being destroyed in front of everyone’s eyes,” said Jessica Walker, a Santa Monica High School graduate who is now pursuing a master’s degree in child development. She stood in an alley near the promenade that was littered with shoeboxes and water from a broken main as looters spilled out of a shattered store window.

“It’s a rude awakening for Santa Monica natives,” she said, adding that, “with all the pain and suffering Black people have gone through, the looting and damage doesn’t compare.”

For Brown, though the violence across the city, and his own rough detainment, has been painful and complex to process, he said he also felt "more connected to some of his white neighbors."


At 6 feet and 230 pounds, he’s used to being singled out and discriminated against — used to getting pulled over in Beverly Hills because his friend was driving a BMW and having men move closer to their girlfriends when he walks toward them down the street. He makes a concerted effort to fit in and dress clean and crisp, in polos and cargo shorts, and wears a suit and tie to work.

But now, he said he’s “talking to more white people than I have never talked to before. I am seeing a lot of white people out there and it feels like we are more on a common ground. The fact that we can talk, and we can walk together and talk together like we've known each other for a long time. That wouldn't have happened before.”

He was relieved that, this time, it wasn’t South Los Angeles that burned, as it did in 1992 and before that in 1965. Some neighborhoods in South LA still haven’t been completely rebuilt, he knew, whereas the damage in Santa Monica would likely be repaired almost immediately.

At the same time, it hurt to see his city “ruined” because people felt desperate, angry, vengeful, empowered — or were simply opportunists seizing on a moment that burst in the middle of a global pandemic, and its accompanying dire economic situation and historic unemployment rate, to loot succulents from West Elm. He gets it, though. He mostly lives paycheck to paycheck, and he doesn’t know how much more he can take. His income as a Lyft driver has plummeted during the pandemic, and he’s still waiting for his stimulus check and unemployment money to arrive.

Brown has lived in the same rent-stabilized two-bedroom in Santa Monica for most of his life. In 1978, when he was 17 years old, his mom moved him and his two older brothers from Chicago to the then-sleepy beach town.



Agustin Paullier / Getty Images

“She fell in love with it after one vacation,” Brown said of his late mother.

Santa Monica’s Pico neighborhood straddles the 10 Freeway at the city’s southern end, near the airport. The neighborhood used to be predominantly Black and Latino, and still has more diversity than the rest of the city. It is also much less wealthy and historically has had more problems with gang violence. Between 1980 and 2013, almost half of Santa Monica’s homicides occurred within those blocks.

Still, the area is changing, squeezed by the gentrification that has swept across Los Angeles and especially along the beach.

“It’s a stark contrast here in just 10 years,” said Oscar de la Torre, a longtime community activist and founder of the Pico Youth & Family Center. “The changes have escalated to a whole new level, and there’s a lot of displacement.”

De la Torre, who also grew up in the Pico area, recalls the rarity of seeing a white person walking down the street in the 1980s and parents cautioning kids not to ride their bikes north of Wilshire Boulevard, because police would “pull you over and ask what you were doing.” As Santa Monica grew, city leaders put all the “undesirable shit,” like the city dump, bus yards, buildings, and infrastructure within that rectangular district. When the crack cocaine epidemic hit, gang violence also spiked.

While it’s gotten better over the years, de la Torre noted that there’s still palpable racism in Santa Monica. There are no Black members on the city council, and the area’s minorities have been eradicated as developers purchase plots and erect multimillion-dollar condos next to rent-stabilized buildings like Brown’s, where mostly Latinx or Black families are still able to live because landlords are limited in how much they can raise the rent.


Samantha Borges
Jessica Walker

Jessica Walker also grew up in the Pico neighborhood, in a rent-stabilized building that’s now sandwiched between brand-new developments filled with mostly white tenants, she said. When she was 16, students at her high school hung a noose around a dummy and chained one of her other Black wrestling teammates to his locker and chanted “slave for sale.” After that, she helped create the Committee for Racial Justice at Santa Monica High School, organized events against racism, and spoke out at school board meetings.

Essentially, she said, she’s spent a lot of her life speaking out against racism and the killing of Black people by police. Until now, she said, she felt like it often has been ignored. That was until people brought their anger and exhaustion to white people’s doorsteps and burned them down. After Santa Monica’s demonstration on Sunday, she plans to attend another protest in Palm Springs on Saturday and is planning yet another one in Palm Springs on Monday. She’s also thinking about next steps: “How are we going to build our Black communities back up? How are we going to reform the justice system?”

“Now shit has really hit the fan, and now everyone is being forced to say something,” she said. “Santa Monica was a boiling point and white people are beginning to see it, especially through these most recent events.”

Nearly 30 years after he watched South LA rise up and evolve into a war zone from his mom’s living room, Brown scrolls through his recent uploads on Facebook, trying to process his own footage of burning restaurants, police firing tear gas in his streets, National Guard vehicles rolling by.

He said he doesn’t know how to feel: “I am electrified and numb.” A few days later, he saw a clip of his own arrest for the first time, and he finally cried. He’s going back out tomorrow.

PROTESTERS And Journalists Are Being Attacked For Exercising The Same Rights

Why are some journalists all too eager to rail against media suppression while downplaying — or even championing — police efforts to harass or arrest protesters?

Shannon KeatingSenior Culture Writer & Editor


Posted on June 6, 2020,


Ben Kothe / BuzzFeed News; Getty Images

On Tuesday night, I was reporting on the protests against police brutality and racism in New York City when an NYPD officer threatened to arrest me. It was a couple hours after the city’s newly established curfew, and a colleague and I were trying to figure out what was happening at the Manhattan Bridge. Thousands of nonviolent protesters who’d marched from Brooklyn were now being barred entrance into Manhattan by lines of officers in riot gear. All of Confucius Plaza was crawling with police, while a low-flying helicopter buzzed ominously overhead, illuminating the protesters who were boxed in and shouting to be freed. It was one of the most surreal scenes I’ve ever seen, in the city I call my home or anywhere.

My colleague Tilli and I were standing with a group of onlookers who were chanting “Let them go!” across from the entrance to the bridge when cops suddenly started pushing us back. We thought they might be about to start kettling the protesters, forming a circle in which to trap and potentially arrest them; it’s a tactic that the NYPD has been using this week to round up people deliberately protesting after the citywide curfew. As I tried to get closer to the crowd on the bridge, I showed an officer my press pass, but he barked that it wasn’t NYPD certified. “You’re in violation of the curfew,” he said. “If you don’t go home now, expect to be arrested.”


The kettling never came to pass. Eventually the protesters were encouraged to turn around and try their luck on the Brooklyn end of the bridge — where a huge police presence awaited them. Some protesters were placed into police custody while most were allowed to march on unimpeded after more than an hour trapped in terrifying limbo. That incident would ironically end up being one of the more peaceful encounters documented between police and protesters in New York City this week. Residents fighting for their right to peaceful assembly — or else simply doing their jobs, as reporters or delivery drivers or legal observers or healthcare providers — have been routinely rounded up, beaten bloody, arrested en masse, and, due to a judge’s recent ruling, detained for 24 hours or more in the city’s coronavirus-infested jails.


Shannon Keating / BuzzFeed News



Not only do the president and his supporters deride the media as the “enemy of the people” and gleefully advocate for our destruction on a daily basis; we’re now seeing police officers across the country blatantly violate journalists’ First Amendment rights, as well as our classifications as essential workers who are supposed to be exempt from curfews in cities like New York. According to a new analysis by the Guardian and Bellingcat, an investigative journalism website specializing in open-source intelligence, there have been at least 148 instances of journalist arrests or attacks during coverage of these protests — they’ve been “blinded, beaten, maced and arrested by police in numbers never before documented in the US.”


Mayor Bill de Blasio, who had seemingly avoided watching any of the other hundreds of stomach-churning viral videos of police brutality against protesters and essential workers, finally spoke up on Thursday night about “the troubling video” of an arrested delivery worker. “Food delivery is essential work and is EXEMPTED from the curfew,” he tweeted. “Same goes for journalists covering protests out doing their jobs. They are essential workers, too.” It remains to be seen whether the NYPD will heed the mayor’s words, but all evidence indicates that yet again, “essential workers” during the coronavirus pandemic aren’t being paid or treated as though they’re really so essential.

When I was able to narrowly avoid arrest on Tuesday and return safely to my home, I thought about how ridiculous — and how troubling — it was that even my supposedly protected status as a reporter almost didn’t protect me after all, as has been the case for multiple colleagues of mine this week. Though de Blasio’s press secretary has indicated reporters shouldn’t need official NYPD-certified press passes to do their jobs at the protests this week, that hasn’t filtered down to police on the ground. Those passes are notoriously difficult to obtain, even for those working at name-brand news outlets, let alone for freelance and citizen journalists. A detective told me the department isn’t even processing press cards until further notice “due to the current situation.” It’s disconcerting that the police are tasked with deciding which journalists can move freely on the streets when the question of their own brutality is currently the biggest story in the world.



Caroline Haskins@carolineha_

Police descending on protesters who were completely peaceful. Completely chaos. People screaming. Police grabbed my arms and tried to cuff me but let me go when I showed my press pass.02:10 AM - 05 Jun 2020
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But I feel even more uncomfortable with the idea that I’ve been afforded any special status at all. As the journalist Wesley Lowery recently pointed out in an excellent Twitter thread, “police have been blatantly ignoring the First Amendment rights of protesters — responding to their constitutionally protected speech with state violence — for years,” and “journalists are not a specially protected class of 1st Amend users. It is no *more* outrageous for a reporter to be targeted with tear gas or rubber bullets or arrest than it is for a citizen peacefully assembling & chanting (no matter how angry) to be met with that same force.”



Wong Maye-e / AP



A police officer shouts at Associated Press videojournalist Robert Bumsted, Tuesday, June 2, 2020, in New York. New York City police officers surrounded, shoved and yelled expletives at two Associated Press journalists covering protests Tuesday in the latest aggression against members of the media during a week of unrest around the country.


And yet some in our profession — especially those who haven’t experienced discrimination, from the police or otherwise, due to their race or gender or socioeconomic status — are all too eager to rail against journalist suppression while downplaying or even championing police efforts to harass or arrest protesters. The National Press Club earlier this week penned an open letter, signed by 28 press organizations, calling “for police nationwide to halt use of violence, arrests against journalists covering protests,” but made sure to clarify their “utmost respect” for law enforcement. “The job you are being asked to do is difficult and requires extraordinary courage and discipline and we can see that most of you are working diligently to restore a sense of peace and calm to your cities,” the letter begins. “Thank you for your best efforts.” Press freedom is, of course, essential and worth fighting for, but that so many journalism groups would lend their names to a letter commending “most” cops for restoring “peace and calm” when hundreds of protesters are being brutalized on a daily basis is a sign, to me, of an industry in great and terrible crisis.



It’s disconcerting that the police are tasked with deciding which journalists can move freely on the streets when the question of their own brutality is currently the biggest story in the world.



For one thing, to advocate for journalists’ rights without doing so just as passionately for the rights of protesters — which are, again, enshrined in the same constitutional amendment — is to deny that, as Wesley Morris wrote this week for the New York Times, “the most urgent filmmaking anybody’s doing in this country right now is by black people with camera phones.” In the United States and around the world, regular citizens’ abilities to record the abuses and brutalities they’ve faced while fighting for a better future have exposed long-standing injustices like police violence to communities who’d been previously sheltered from it, and therefore inured. A new study from Monmouth University released this week found that 57% of Americans believe police are more likely to use excessive force against black people, compared to 34% in 2016. It was citizen journalists and other social media users who made Ferguson “America’s Arab Spring,” and have continued to do the work ever since.

Nothing about police behavior has fundamentally changed — white people are now just seeing more of it, and are now more likely to actually believe what black people have been telling us for decades. Whether or not reporters with a piece of employer-issued plastic around our necks are on the ground, witnessing and documenting the atrocities or experiencing them ourselves, the ever-mounting video evidence from anyone with a smartphone is increasingly impossible to ignore. When Gov. Andrew Cuomo falsely claims that NYPD haven’t attacked peaceful protesters with batons, a combination of journalist and protester videos can prove him wrong.

The George Floyd demonstrations are just the latest and most incendiary events to trouble the boundaries between journalists and the activists on whom we’re reporting. More reporters are realizing that they need not — and should not — always take law enforcement at their word.


Elijah Nouvelage / Getty Images



People use their phones to record the police during a protest in response to the police killing of George Floyd on May 30, 2020 in Atlanta, Georgia.



In the horrifying incident of Buffalo officers shoving an elderly white man to the ground, where they left him bleeding from the head, police originally said he “tripped and fell.” Even Cuomo stepped in to call for the officers involved to be suspended and investigated, having previously ignored every other appalling video of brutality against Black and brown bodies at the hands of his officers. (The entire Buffalo riot squad has since resigned from the team, though not their jobs, in solidarity with their disgraced colleagues.) Every night we witness brutality and abuse just to wake up to our elected officials denying what we’ve seen with our own eyes. On Friday, de Blasio even accused WNYC radio host Brian Lehrer of not being “objective” for accurately summarizing police activity in New York this week. Luckily, we’re equipped to report the facts. And if officers are harassing and arresting even the people they aren’t “supposed” to, from journalists to lawmakers, what might they be getting up to in the marginalized communities they’ve been over-policing for decades now? Especially when the evidence isn’t captured on video, police testimony puts people in jail every day.

“One reason journalists are conditioned to ignore saying anything on the rights of protesters being violated by the gov is cause they’re scared that would be inappropriate ‘activism,’” Lowery noted in his thread, “while advocating loudly for their *own rights* is seen as necessary and noble.’” That’s why some newsroom leadership — including my own — have discouraged their staffers from contributing to bail funds to free arrested protesters and workers, arguing as Business Insider editor-in-chief Nich Carlson did recently that those donations “call into question our credibility in covering the protests.” (After a Daily Beast report on employee outcry, the company clarified the editor’s comments, referring to the policy as a mere guideline to use “best judgment.”) Most news outlets have ethics guidelines that discourage journalists from donating to “political” causes — the question newsroom leaders face is whether supporting the release of protesters from police custody for exercising their First Amendment rights, as they likely would for journalists, is really a “political” cause rather than one of free speech and human rights.

The burden of supposed objectivity has fallen especially heavily on journalists of color, in particular Black journalists, during the 2020 protests and long beforehand. Karen Attiah of the Washington Post recently noted, “This is another problem with the lack of diversity in our newsrooms. Too many … treat serious life or death issues as their fodder for intellectual calisthenics, while many of us and our communities are literally under siege from dangerous rhetoric and racist policies.”

Every night we witness brutality and abuse just to wake up to our elected officials denying what we’ve seen with our own eyes.


In the past week a wave of Black journalists at the New York Times, as well as hundreds of their colleagues, publicly condemned an opinion piece by Sen. Tom Cotton, which called for a military crackdown on protesters. It was a protest that felt both unprecedented and inevitable — just one of the long-strained dams finally broken during These Extraordinary Times. Not only does the Times have a strict social media policy about criticizing colleagues in public; journalists of color have described being prohibited or discouraged from calling out racism in the industry and beyond it for fear they’ll be labeled biased activists.

At least one New York Times staffer and other (white) journalists have seized the moment to dig in their heels about “safetyism,” quelling “bad opinions,” and the “free exchange of ideas”,” delegitimizing and insulting their Black peers in the process. But the shakeup at the Times over publishing a fascist op-ed offers us the tiniest window into a potential future of journalism that doesn’t have to submit to bothsidesism. Newsroom leaders often seem more concerned about conservatives perceiving them as biased than they are concerned about the prejudice and human rights abuses faced by marginalized communities that include their own employees. In prioritizing false equivalences over truth, these journalists are in dereliction of their duty to their readers and to each other.

Months into the coronavirus pandemic, when antiracist protests have swelled to hearteningly staggering levels — and police crackdowns have responded in kind — journalism is just one of many industries that will have to make a case for itself in whatever world we build out of all this. I hope white journalists can use the opportunity to finally stand in solidarity with Black journalists, and with protesters, and with all workers against state-sanctioned violence. It’s our job to hold abusers of power to account. We can’t stop now. ●




Shannon Keating is a senior culture writer and editor for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.

It Was A Completely Peaceful Protest Against Police Brutality. Then The Cops Attacked.

A peaceful gathering in Manhattan ended with hundreds of police officers attacking people in the streets. Here’s how it unfolded.

Caroline HaskinsBuzzFeed News ReporterRosalind AdamsBuzzFeed News Reporter

Reporting From

New York, New York

Posted on June 6, 2020, at 11:22 p.m. E

Caroline Haskins

An entirely peaceful protest in Manhattan ended in chaos, panic, and violence when a mass of police officers in riot gear confronted protesters we were following near Grand Army Plaza, at the entrance to Central Park.

Since an 8 p.m. curfew went into effect on Tuesday to curb looting, there have been nightly clashes between peaceful protesters and police across the city. Looting is down, but the NYPD continues to make mass arrests for curfew violations—sometimes violently. The NYPD did not use tear gas or rubber bullets on this group of protesters, as police have used in other parts of the country. But the rapid escalation of Thursday night’s protest illustrates just how quickly a peaceful march can turn into mayhem.

In the end, police shoved, hit, and arrested dozens of people. BuzzFeed reporters were caught up in the clash. As we tried to record the arrests on video, a police officer shoved one of us with a baton, despite the fact that we had identified ourselves as press. Another officer, in a white shirt, grabbed the other reporter’s arms and was about to handcuff and arrest her, and only stopped after other officers intervened. All around us, batons were swinging and people were running as police rounded up marchers.

The night had begun peacefully. And for a time, it looked as though it was going to remain that way. After a week of protests, the chants were familiar.

“SAY HIS NAME”

“GEORGE FLOYD”

“NO JUSTICE”

“NO PEACE”

“WHOSE STREETS”

“OUR STREETS”

The chants come over megaphones from organizers, from teenagers cupping their hands to their mouths, and from groups of friends holding up signs saying “Black Lives Matter.”

For hours — as the protesters marched in a giant loop starting in Times Square, moving south to Herald Square, west to Chealsea, back east to Union Square and finally north to Central Park — the event was peaceful and relaxed.

Even when the 8 p.m. curfew hit, things stayed calm. Dozens of police officers on bikes and foot trailed the group, and spirits remained high. “It’s our right to peacefully protest,” the crowd chanted, marching down city blocks.

MTA buses and cars beeped their support. Drivers smiled and pumped their fists. The protesters roared back in grateful appreciation. Others handed out water to keep the crowd hydrated on the hot and humid day. Up above, residents standing on their balconies cheered, clapped, and banged pots and pans to show solidarity.

“I love the fact that there’s been support from everywhere, it wasn’t just Black people,” said Angelo La Roche, remarking on the diversity of the crowd. “It really felt amazing to have that love, and feel that vibe and energy from everyone,” the 32 year-old added.

“People just want to protest,” 

READ ON HERE https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolinehaskins1/nypd-violence-batons

Philadelphia judge orders release of man on death row for 23 years

WHY I AM OPPOSED TO CAPITAL PUNISHMENT


The Philadelphia County District Attorney's Office filed a motion seeking to decline to retry Walter Ogrod for the death of a 4-year-old girl. File Photo courtesy of attorneys for Walter Ogrod

June 5 (UPI) -- A Philadelphia judge on Friday ordered the release of Walter Ogrod, a man who's served 23 years on death row for a slaying prosecutors now don't think he's responsible for.
Philadelphia County Common Pleas Judge Shelley Robins New vacated Ogrod's murder conviction for the 1988 death of 4-year-old Barbara Jean Horn. Ogrod was sentenced to death in 1996.

"The brutal injustice of Walter Ogrod's case is impossibly tragic," James Rollins, one of Ogrod's lawyers, said in a statement.

"This innocent man and his family lost almost 30 years that they should have spent together. Instead, that irreplaceable time together is gone, lost to a system that keeps making the same mistakes."
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The ruling ends four months of jostling between the court and Ogrod's attorneys, who sought to have an expedited hearing on his case after their client became ill with symptoms consistent with the coronavirus disease. His lawyers sought to have him released for testing and treatment.

In February, the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office filed briefs saying Ogrod was "likely innocent" of killing the girl and was convicted on flawed evidence, including a coerced confession and testimony from discredited jailhouse informants.

"This is a case where no forensic evidence tied Mr. Ogrod to the crime, where eyewitness descriptions didn't match Mr. Ogrod, and where police coerced a false confession from Mr. Ogrod which got many of the facts incorrect about the crime he allegedly committed," Rollins said.

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The Philadelphia District Attorney's Office said it has filed an additional motion requesting to decline retrying Ogrod, who was arrested and charged in 1992 for Horn's death.

"I am sorry it took 28 years for us to listen to what Barbara Jean was trying to tell us: that you are innocent, and that the words on your statement of confession came from Philadelphia Police detectives and not you," Assistant District Attorney Carrie Wood told Ogrod during Friday's virtual hearing.

"Not only did this misconduct result in 28 years of your life being stolen, but you were also threatened with execution based on falsehoods. On behalf of the District Attorney's Office, I want to offer my sincerest apologies to you, your family, and friends."

Sharon Fahy, Barbara Jean's mother, also participated in Friday's hearing and said she didn't believe Ogrod killed her daughter, adding that she's "angry that the person who took my daughter's life is likely walking free."

Hannah Cox, the national manager of Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty, welcomed Friday's ruling.

"Walter Ogrod's case is just the latest example of a broken system that risks the life and liberty of innocent people, one of many reasons why so many conservative Republican state legislators nationwide are nowadays seeking repeal of the death penalty," she said.

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Philadelphia County District Attorney Larry Krasner said if Ogrod is officially declared innocent of the crime, he'll be the 13th person exonerated under his 2 1/2-year administration.

RELATED Judge orders new proceedings or release for Texas death row inmate

ACLU sues Trump, Barr over 'criminal attack' on Lafayette Square protesters

President Donald J. Trump returns after posing with a bible outside St. John's Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C., on Monday. Photo by Shawn Thew/UPI | License Photo

June 4 (UPI) -- Protesters and the American Civil Liberties Union sued President Donald Trump, Attorney General William Barr and other top officials on Thursday, alleging their civil rights were violated when police used violent crowd control measures to disperse hundreds of peaceful demonstrators from Lafayette Square so Trump could pose for photos before a nearby church.

In the lawsuit filed on behalf of Black Lives Matter D.C. and individual protesters in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the plaintiffs argue that their First Amendment rights to protest and their Fourth Amendment rights were violated when U.S. law enforcement agents fired tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets and flash bombs to force them and other peaceful protesters to disperse Monday evening near the White House.

"Defendants had no legitimate basis to destroy the peaceable gathering," the court filing reads. "Defendants' professed purpose -- to clear the area to permit the President to walk to a photo opportunity at a nearby church -- was a wholly illegal reason for abridging the constitutional rights of Plaintiffs and the others assembled in Lafayette Square."

BREAKING: Together with allies, @ACLU_DC is taking Trump, Barr and Esper to court for firing tear gas and other weapons on protesters outside the White House.
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The use of a chemical weapon was an inhumane violation of the First Amendment.
Our government must be held accountable.— ACLU (@ACLU) June 4, 2020

The use of force to disperse the peaceful demonstrations and the subsequent photos of Trump brandishing a bible before the St. John's Episcopal Church, which had sustained damage from a fire lit in its basement during protests the night before, attracted widespread condemnation from the Democratic Party and the Washington Catholic Diocese as well as some Republicans.
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The White House has compared the photo op to seminal images of American and world leaders showing bravery amid tragedy and said that critics were attempting to politicize the event.
Barr, during a press conference Thursday, said the use of force was not connected to Trump's movement to the church but due to the escalation of the protest in the area and was done to protect federal property and agents by expanding a "buffer zone," stating violent protesters were throwing projectiles amid the peaceful protesters.

"We could not continue to protect the federal property involved and protect our federal agents with such a tight perimeter and so our object was to move it out by one block," he said.

The ACLU argued in the lawsuit, which also names Defense Secretary Mark Esper and several others as defendants, that the actions by the Trump administration are "the manifestation of the very despotism against which the First Amendment was intended to protect."

According to the court filing, Trump and Barr directed the law enforcement agents to disperse the crowd, leaving several protesters injured, some severely.

"The President's shameless, unconstitutional, unprovoked and frankly criminal attack on protesters because he disagreed with their views shakes the foundation of our nation's constitutional order," Scott Michelman, legal director at the ACLU of the District of Columbia, said in a statement. "And when the nation's top law enforcement officer becomes complicit in the tactics of an autocrat, it chills protected speech for all of us."

RELATED Center for Democracy and Technology challenges Trump social media executive order

The ACLU said more lawsuits will be filed across the country in response to police attacks against protesters and journalists documenting nationwide protests that have rocked the country demanding justice for the police-involved death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man who died May 25 while in police custody.

The arresting officer, Derek Chauvin, who was seen in video kneeling on a prostrate and handcuffed Floyd's neck for more than 8 minutes, has been fired and charged with murder. Three other officers involved in the arrest have been charged with aiding and abetting a murder.

"Across the country, law enforcement armed with military weaponry are responding with violence to people who are protesting police brutality," Ben Wizner, director of the ACLU's Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, said in a statement. "The First Amendment right to protest is under attack, and we will not let this go unanswered. This is the first of many lawsuits the ACLU intends to file across the country in response to police brutality against protesters."