UKRAINE PUPPY MILL
‘Nightmare’ Flight Packed With Puppies Lands In Toronto With 38 Dead Dogs

The CFIA says 500 dogs were being transported on a Ukraine International Airlines flight.


Canadian Press

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) is investigating after thirty-eight dogs were found dead upon arrival to Toronto on a flight from Ukraine.

About 500 dogs had landed at Pearson International Airport last Saturday aboard a Ukraine International Airlines flight, according to the CFIA. Thirty-eight were found dead on arrival, and many others were dehydrated, weak or vomiting.
“CFIA officials are currently investigating the circumstances surrounding this incident and will determine next steps once the investigation is complete,″ a spokesperson said in a statement.

CBC reported that since the CFIA’s investigation has come to light, videos from witnesses at a loading dock at Kyiv airport have been released. The videos show crates of dogs being loaded onto a plane headed for Toronto.
JOZSEF SOOS VIA GETTY IMAGES

A Ukraine International Airlines plane carrying 500 puppies from Kyiv to Toronto arrived with 38 of the animals dead, according to authorities.

Witnesses told the National Post they could see the dogs visibly suffering and being stacked on top of each other, with two dogs to one crate, in extremely high temperatures. The CFIA said 500 dogs were on the flight.

Abby Lorenzen, a professional show dog handler, told CBC she was at the cargo area of the Toronto airport to pick up a different animal, when she saw what she described as a “nightmare.”

Lorenzen described seeing garbage cans filled with the bodies of dead puppies, according to the National Post.

The plane was filled mostly with French bulldogs, CBC reported. Animal welfare activists previously warned that the rising popularity and demand for French bulldogs would mean the rise of puppy mills — where the dogs are bred in large numbers and sold to new owners at too young of an age. Being sold off too young can bring an onslaught of health problems for bulldogs.

Ukrainian International Airlines is part of the International Air Transport Association, which has codes requiring dogs and other animals to travel in temperatures under 29.5 C.

In a Facebook post Friday, Ukraine International Airlines apologized for the “tragic loss of animal life″ on one of its flights. UIA did not address video footage from Kyiv in their statement.

Rebecca Aldworth, executive director of the Canadian branch of Humane Society International, called on authorities to get to the bottom of how so many puppies were transported at such high temperatures, possibly in violation of industry animal safety standards.

“It raises a lot of questions. And I definitely think the Canadian public wants answers to these questions,” Aldworth said.

“Responsible airlines will not transport animals in extreme heat, because they know there is a risk of dehydration, heat exhaustion and even suffocation.

“And I would question what airline has the capacity to put 500 dogs on one plane.”

Aldworth said the circumstances bear all the hallmarks of a puppy mill.

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“My organization has been working for more than a decade to shut down puppy mills in Canada. And we are devastated to see that animals continue to be imported from equally horrific facilities and other parts of the world into this country,″ she said.

“People are looking for (pets) on the internet, they’re buying sight unseen, and they’re importing cruelty into this country when we have so much of it to deal with right here at home.″

The CFIA’s standards are rigorous, a spokesperson told the Canadian Press. According to the agency website, most imports of commercial dogs require permits and they require containers that are adequately sized to travel.

In a separate case, one Calgary family who bought a French bulldog through Kijiji, found that dog soon developed breathing problems, according to CTV News. A lot of bulldogs being bought online or through unverified sellers were traced back to Ukraine, CTV reported.

With files from Premila D’Sa

Family Of Ejaz Choudry Call For Inquiry Into Police Killing

Choudry was shot dead by Peel Regional Police after they were called because of a medical crisis.

PEEL POLICE ONE OF THE WORST POLICE FORCES IN CANADA 

Salmaan Farooqui Canadian Press

GALIT RODAN/THE CANADIAN PRESS

Hashim Choudhary addresses media on June 21, 2020 in front of the apartment building where his uncle Ejaz Choudry was shot by Peel police.

The family of a 62-year-old man who died after being shot by police west of Toronto over the weekend called for a public inquiry into the death, citing a lack of faith in the province’s police watchdog to conduct a fair investigation.

Hashim Choudry, the man’s nephew, argued police overused force in shooting his uncle, who he said was suffering from a schizophrenic episode and had threatened to hurt himself.

“We don’t want an investigation with the police and the (Special Investigations Unit),” a visibly emotional Choudry said on Sunday. “We want a public inquiry with politicians involved to help bring this to justice. This is cruel and injustice to the limit.”

The incident began at 5 p.m. on Saturday, Peel Regional Police said, when officers were called to the man’s home because he was in crisis due to a medical condition for which he reportedly was not taking his medication.


HASHIM CHOUDHARY/GOFUNDME

Ejaz Choudry was identified by family as the man shot by Peel police on June 20, 2020.

Police said officers believed the man had access to weapons and entered the home after he stopped communicating, leading to an “interaction” where police fired a stun gun, plastic bullets and a gun.

The SIU has launched an investigation, and has already indentified one officer as its subject, with nine others who witnessed the shooting.
Nine investigators have been assigned to Saturday’s incident, and the SIU said a police-issued firearm, a stun gun, an anti-riot gun and a knife were found at the scene.

The Muslim Council of Peel, which spoke alongside the family at a Sunday press conference, identified the deceased as Ejaz Choudry.

Family members said they asked police to allow them to try to calm their uncle down, but were told by officers to be patient.

The family also said that officers were shouting at Ejaz Choudry in English, which he didn’t understand.

“Anyone in distress knows that ... when anyone you know that really cares about you comes and tells you ‘hey its going to be OK,’ it makes a difference,” said Hassan Choudry, another of his nephews. “None of us were able to go up there and say, ‘uncle, you’re going to be OK.’”

This is insane. This happened in Malton today. The police were called because a man was suffering a mental health crisis. So what did the police do? They climbed a ladder, entered the apartment from the balcony and opened fire on the man, shooting him multiple times pic.twitter.com/Gz9OMVuCih
— Ibrahim Hindy (@Hindy500) June 21, 2020

Family members said officers were shouting to Ejaz from the front door when they saw more officers enter the apartment from the back at around 8:30 p.m. They said they heard multiple shots ring out shortly after.

Ibrahim Hindy, president of the Muslim Council of Peel, told the press conference that police didn’t do enough to de-escalate the situation.

“It’s clear from everything that the family has already shared, from the eyewitness reports, from the video evidence that we have, that the senseless acts of Peel police yesterday was wildly excessive,” Hindy said. “It’s Father’s Day and he’s been robbed from being with his children.”

Hindy said he had no faith in an investigation by the SIU and called on political leaders to get involved.

Choudry’s family has set up an online fundraiser to support his widow and four children.

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The incident comes a month after the high-profile police-involved death of Regis Korchinski-Paquet, a Black woman who fell from her balcony and died after Toronto police responded to a mental health call.

The death prompted thousands of people to protest against racism and use of force by police in Toronto and across Canada.

The SIU continues to investigate both incidents.

Elsewhere in Canada, the police watchdog in Quebec is investigating after a 51-year-old man died during a police intervention in Montreal on Saturday.

Investigators said officers used pepper spray to subdue the man and handcuffed him after a chase, but noticed after that he’d lost consciousness and didn’t have a pulse.

And in nearby Oakville, Ont., an officer was suspended this weekend in relation to an online video that appears to show a cop pushing a man to the ground.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 21, 2020

Inside The Dangerous Online Fever Swamps Of American Police

Cops have a far-right media ecosystem of their own, where they post racist memes, spread disinformation and call for violence against antifa.
By Jesselyn Cook
Nick Robins-Early, HuffPost US


ILLUSTRATION: DAMON DAHLEN/HUFFPOST; PHOTOS: GETTY IMAGES

Around the time news broke on Monday afternoon that the New York City Police Department would disband plainclothes anti-crime units that had been tied to several high-profile police shootings, someone calling themselves “ltdad613” started a thread on Thee Rant, a police message board that purports to host current and former NYPD employees. “I wouldn’t want to be a [Commanding Officer] for the next few compstats,” ltdad613 wrote. “This is right from [New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio]. I feel for anybody still on the job.”

Elsewhere, the posts on Thee Rant were much darker. In one Monday thread, “dominop” wrote that “A Firing squad would be a good cure for ANTIFA!!!” Other users chimed in to say snipers or napalm might be more fitting.

Thee Rant is just one node in a wider web of right-wing police media. On similar message boards, in Facebook groups and on news sites such as Law Enforcement Today — a sort of Breitbart-like outlet written by and for police — there is a fervent narrative that police are under nonstop siege, and that antifa in particular is a constant threat.

This police media ecosystem is not necessarily a broad representation of what most cops believe. But inside this echo chamber, which has thousands of users and readers, extremist views dictate the narrative. Wild misinformation and bigotry are rampant, with people who claim to be current and former officers posting debunked falsehoods and racist stereotypes about protesters.

Intense public focus on police behavior in recent weeks, following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, has led to the termination of several law enforcement officers who posted conspiratorial or racist messages on their personal social media pages. When these posts are singled out for scrutiny and have a real officer’s name attached, opprobrium comes quickly, but most of those posts would be right at home in right-wing police media.
“What I think we have here is a market for this kind of racist and divisive garbage across the internet, and unfortunately police are participating in that wave that is witnessed across various professions,” said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino. “It pains me as a former NYPD officer to see this,” he said. “These posts are devastating.”

Levin doesn’t think people should assume that “cops en masse subscribe to this,” but he does see dangerous potential, because online echo chambers tend to “self-accelerate” bigoted beliefs. For “police in particular, who so often have to hold their tongue and try to restrain themselves,” he said, “online it becomes even more [of an] accelerant.”
The Extreme Views Of ‘Law Enforcement Today’

Law Enforcement Today claims to be the largest law enforcement-owned and -operated media company in America. It has repeatedly promoted far-right conspiracy theorists and authoritarian policies, particularly during the recent mass demonstrations against police violence.

Founded by Robert Greenberg, a Florida police captain who has called his outlet “a platform for the voice of law enforcement,” LET has more than 800,000 followers on Facebook and runs a syndicated radio show. Much of its content is provided by former or current police officers, and it offers paid memberships of $75 a year to gain access to “the patriotic content that the social media giants don’t want you to see.”

The site’s articles often bear only a passing resemblance to reality. Earlier this month, Law Enforcement Today published an article calling for the arrest of Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, accusing him of aiding and abetting “antifa” terrorists. The post cited numerous far-right media activists, including anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, and suggested that Democratic officials including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Rashida Tlaib (Mich.) and Ilhan Omar (Minn.) are antifa sympathizers. It also baselessly attacked Tlaib and Omar, who are Muslim, as “arguably anti-Semites and ISIS supporters (if not in words, in actions).”

“Law Enforcement Today supports Laura [Loomer]’s demand that Dorsey be arrested and prosecuted for promoting an insurrection against the United States,” the article says. It also suggests that politicians such as Omar who have expressed support for the current protests against police brutality and systemic injustice should be arrested as well.

The article is published under the pseudonym “Sgt. A. Merica” and claims to be “written by several staff writers, including retired and wounded law enforcement officers.” Law Enforcement Today says it verifies the identity and background of its authors before publishing.

When it isn’t stirring fear of antifa, much of the site’s coverage focuses on law enforcement officers who have been harmed in the line of duty. It also regularly criticizes elected officials who are seeking to curb police powers, part of what the site calls a “war on law enforcement.” The consistent message is that police are perpetually under attack, and that the government — with the exception of President Donald Trump — does not have their back.

In recent weeks, rumors of antifa reaching small towns have created a kind of moral panic in some communities, leading to armed groups patrolling the streets. Law Enforcement Today has eagerly trafficked in these conspiracy theories. One LET article quotes a source purporting to be an anonymous Connecticut state trooper, who warns that riots in rural areas would be reminiscent of guerrilla warfare in Afghanistan and Iraq, and that “once they start moving into rural America, there will be a LOT of bloodshed.”

Another one of Law Enforcement Today’s recent articles is a far-right screed that claims the Black Lives Matter movement and antifa are using protests to “destroy America from the inside.” The piece echoes common white nationalist talking points: It blames the “radical left” for attacking “our Judeo-Christian heritage,” and claims that Western society faces an existential threat in part from “mass immigration from sub-Saharan Africa and the middle east.” LET tagged the article as one of its “must reads.”

The site also ran an article endorsing far-right congressional candidate Marjorie Greene, who in a campaign ad from early June warned “antifa terrorists” to stay out of her rural Georgia district ― while cocking a gun ― and who has spread a conspiracy theory that billionaire George Soros is funding protesters. Greene has also voiced support for the far-right QAnon conspiracy movement. Facebook removed Greene’s ad from its platform for inciting violence.

Another Law Enforcement Today post promoted a Florida sheriff who responded to unfounded social media rumors of riots moving into small towns by encouraging homeowners to arm themselves and shoot people encroaching on their property. Multiple articles include tweets from QAnon conspiracy theorists.

False, incendiary claims about antifa have rocketed around the right-wing media ecosystem, from Twitter to Fox News and ultimately to the White House. Trump recently tweeted a baseless claim that Martin Gugino, a 75-year-old man who was seriously injured by police in Buffalo, New York, may have been an antifa instigator.

Greenberg, who founded Law Enforcement Today in 2007, is listed as a police captain with the Indian Creek Village Public Safety Department on its official website. It’s not exactly a rough-and-tumble job on the front lines of American policing. Indian Creek Village, Florida, is a tiny island enclave for the superrich that bills itself as “the world’s most exclusive municipality.” At the time of a Miami Herald report in 2014, it had only 86 residents, whose combined net worth exceeded $37 billion. Jay-Z and Beyoncé previously owned a home on the island. (Incidentally, Law Enforcement Today ran an article earlier this month opposing Apple Music’s support of Black Lives Matter and criticizing “cop-hater Beyoncé,” who was included in Apple’s playlist.)

The offices of the village public safety department and of its mayor did not respond to HuffPost’s requests for comment on whether they have any policy on conduct or work outside of the department, or about Greenberg’s current employment status. Law Enforcement Today did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Old-School Message Boards Breed Hatred And Racism

Thee Rant, formerly NYPD Rant, bills itself as a salon of “New York City Cops speaking their minds,” though often the extremist rhetoric on the site more closely resembles 4chan. Edward Polstein, who was fired from the NYPD in 2004, created the site to give verified members of the force — both current and former — an outlet to anonymously vent about their jobs without fear of retribution.

The message board is a cesspool of disinformation, bigoted memes and far-right propaganda, and regularly lights up with racist comments after publicized incidents of police brutality against people of color. Lately, users have been targeting protesters participating in the nationwide Black Lives Matter marches sparked by Floyd’s killing.

Thee Rant posts in the past three weeks have described Floyd as a “mutt” and a “worthless thug,” Black people as “Negroids” and “ghetto rats,” and protesters as “scum.” Various posts call for violence against protesters and spread debunked conspiracy theories that are often sourced to far-right media outlets, including Breitbart, One America News Network and The Federalist.

One post, referring to the recent arrest of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s mixed-race daughter, Chiara, is titled “DeBlasswhole’s Junkie Daughter Collared.” Another, “White Men Stand Up To Negroid Thugs And Looters In Philly,” cheered on a group of bat-wielding white men who reportedly intimidated protesters and assaulted a journalist in Philadelphia. A June 5 post called “BUFFALO PD KNOCKDOWN IS A HOAX” claimed that a video of police officers violently shoving Gugino to the ground, causing him to bleed from his ears, was staged to make cops look bad.

Many other posts on Thee Rant praise Trump, and even entertain QAnon conspiracies.

For much of the forum’s decadeslong existence, members have only been able to sign up with valid NYPD IDs, meaning its content has come directly from New York law enforcement. HuffPost could not independently verify if this is still the case — a request to join the group has not been approved — but posters continue to demonstrate an intimate familiarity with the department, its operations and its officials.

Thee Rant has for years been a source of embarrassment to the NYPD, which has said it’s been unable to take action due to the users’ anonymity.

“We see it. It’s a problem,” Stephen Davis, at the time the chief spokesperson for the NYPD, told ProPublica of the message board in 2015. But, he added, “there are privacy issues involved. We can’t go and peel back email names and tags and try to find out who these people are.”

Thee Rant posters “represent the worst elements of the department,” veteran police reporter Leonard Levitt, who died last month, said at the time. “I don’t think they speak for the average cop.”

Polstein has claimed he was terminated in retaliation for creating Thee Rant, which has long criticized the NYPD and city officials. The department’s given reason for his firing is that he reneged on a retirement deal. The dispute led to a bitter lawsuit, and in a 2008 deal that granted Polstein his pension, he agreed to rename the forum from NYPD Rant to Thee Rant.

“I haven’t been part of [Thee Rant] in over 10 years,” Polstein told HuffPost in an email. “I don’t know who runs it now.”

Thee Rant “is not affiliated with the New York City Police Department,” Sgt. Mary Frances O’Donnell, a spokesperson for the NYPD’s deputy commissioner for public information, told HuffPost. She didn’t answer repeated questions about whether the NYPD has investigated the possibility of its officers using racist and extremist rhetoric on the site.

On similar message boards that also claim to existfor police conversation, such as Law Enforcement Rant, posters suggest that the NYPD should “assign Police Officers by their ethnicity,” putting “Black Officers in black neighborhoods.” They ridicule officers who’ve been photographed kneeling in solidarity with protesters, and complain about citizens filming officers in public. Although some posts show self-described police officers grappling with questions of racism and brutality, the majority are hateful and angry.

“I know cops are beat up, tired, angry, and hurt. But every time we do something it will be recorded and will be used to play against us,” one Law Enforcement Rant poster lamented in a recent thread about the clip of cops assaulting Gugino.

“I recall being at many protests and we could use necessary force. But times have changed,” wrote another. “[The Buffalo video] looks terrible, especially a 75 year old person that wasn’t actively resisting or has a weapon or was fighting us in any real way,” a third poster wrote. “Right now it’s all about optics and the PD is losing the propaganda battle.”
Facebook’s Cop Communities

Social media sites are another place where law enforcement officers can find each other and talk about modern policing — and, lately, post a torrent of false and unsubstantiated antifa-related information. In many large pro-cop groups and pages on Facebook, people have been gleefully exchanging videos of “antifa” protesters getting beaten, and threatening to publish the personal information of supposed antifa activists. Many such pages and groups claim to be operated by police, although it’s unclear how many members are actually law enforcement officers.

A search for the term “antifa” in Back The Blue, a Facebook group with more than 60,000 members, yields dozens of recent results, including a blog post baselessly accusing Gugino of being a “professional agitator and Antifa provocateur” — another early example of police media circulating a conspiracy theory that the president would later share on Twitter to swift condemnation.

Posters in the Facebook group Law Enforcement Family, which claims to have been “developed by law enforcement officers” and has more than 53,000 members, perpetuate racist stereotypes about Black people and call cops who kneel with protesters “pussies.” Those in Brothers Before Others have been sharing entirely unsourced data about gang violence in Black communitiesand spreading debunked claims about antifa.

U.S. Law Enforcement, a page that claims to be run “by several current and retired US Law Enforcement Officers,” has also spread false information to its nearly 500,000 followers. It posted a screenshot of a tweet from what appeared to be an antifa account claiming that antifa would “move into the residential areas… the white hoods…. and we take what’s ours.”Butas Twitter quickly noted, a white supremacist group posing as antifa activists was actually behind that account. The U.S. Law Enforcement page has since acknowledged that the tweet was debunked, and suggested this happened because the Twitter account “may not have been ‘official.’” Yet it has not removed the false post from its page.
‘We Can’t Have That In Policing Today’

American police officers have already been tied to the spread of extremist content on social media. A Reveal News investigation last June found that hundreds of active-duty and retired officers, from every level of U.S. law enforcement, had quietly joined private Confederate, anti-Islam, misogynistic or anti-government militia Facebook groups full of racist memes and conspiracy theories.

The investigation was a rare glimpse at the culture behind the blue wall. As Reveal News noted, disciplinary records and investigations into police misconduct “are kept secret in a majority of states, meaning most American cops enjoy a blanket of protection that can cover up biases.”

But the recent unrest has provokedsome law enforcement officials to openly broadcast their tolerance for police misconduct online, outside of these closed or little-known groups. In a Facebook post earlier this month, the Brevard County, Florida, chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police offered to rehire police officers from other areas who are charged with using excessive force against protesters.

“Lower taxes, no spineless leadership, or dumb mayors rambling on at press conferences,” promised the now-deleted Facebook post, for which Brevard County FOP President Bert Gamin has claimed responsibility. “Plus.... we got your back!”

Certainly not all police officers believe the wild stories pushed by Law Enforcement Today and circulated on pro-police social media groups. But right-wing media and many police labor leaders are heavily invested in the idea of presenting police as hard-right defenders of law and order.

Outlets such as Fox News and OAN often provide a safe space for former officers and labor officials to defend law enforcement’s conduct without challenge. One such voice has been police union leader Ed Mullins, head of the NYPD’s Sergeants Benevolent Association, who in February announced the NYPD was “declaring war” on de Blasio and accused the mayor of fomenting anti-cop sentiment. Mullins has recently appeared on Fox News hosts Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity’s shows, as well as far-right outlets Newsmax and OAN, where he called for military support to quell the protests.

Levin, from theCenter for the Study of Hate & Extremism, said police and city officials nationwide need to pay attention to what some cops are reading and writing online, and get a handle on it.

“We can’t have that in policing today,” he said. “We’re now in an era where police are so detached from many segments of the community that they serve that we don’t have the luxury of having this kind of garbage being tolerated within departments.”

New Yorkers Said ‘F**k The Police,’ So The Police Rioted
A historic uprising against police brutality in the city has seen the arrest of nearly 2,000 people, including me.
By Christopher Mathias, HuffPost US  06/03/2020 

NEW YORK — Thousands of New Yorkers over the last few days have taken to the streets in all five boroughs, setting cop cars aflame, braving beatings by batons and suffering pepper spray to the eyes, all so they can scream an urgent message for all the world to hear: Fuck the police.
They marched in Manhattan, where the New York Police Department once gunned down Patrick Dorismond.

In Queens, where the NYPD shot 50 bullets at Sean Bell.

In the Bronx, where an NYPD cop choked the life out of Anthony Baez.

In Brooklyn, where the NYPD shot 13-year-old Nicholas Heyward Jr.

And they marched on Staten Island, where the NYPD stole the breath from Eric Garner’s lungs.

Nearly 2,000 protesters were arrested over five nights as America’s largest city joined a national uprising against police brutality that saw demonstrations in about 140 cities, a mass unrest the likes of which this country hasn’t seen in over a generation.

There were moments in New York when it felt like this multi-racial coalition of protesters, led largely by young people of color, was taking back the streets from the NYPD, a police force bigger than some nations’ armies that’s terrorized this city’s Black and brown residents since its founding.

It felt like more and more people here had come to question the cops’ monopoly on force and to embrace the radical idea of defunding the department, or even the abolitionist dream of a New York without New York’s Finest at all.

And so New York’s Finest erupted in violence.

The videos of tumult went viral. A cop speeding a patrol car into the middle of a crowd of protesters. A cop pulling down a man’s mask — worn to protect against the coronavirus — and pepper-spraying him in the face. Another using a car door to hit a man. One aiming a gun at demonstrators. Another shoving a woman into the ground so hard that she went into a seizure. And another could be heard saying “Shoot those motherfuckers” over the police scanner. The list goes on.

I witnessed cops brutalize and arrest people before being violently arrested myself.

And yet by Monday, New York’s Democratic governor, the city’s mayor and the country’s Republican president had settled on similarsolutions to all the turmoil: suppressing this historic uprising with more armed agents of the state.

To the protesters, it felt like their government still hadn’t heard them at all, and probably had never been listening in the first place.
“The Only Fucking Way They Understand”

On Saturday in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, thousands gathered outside the Parkside Avenue subway station under the afternoon sun for a series of speeches before that day’s marches. People hung out of windows and draped Black Lives Matter banners off of fire escapes while listening to the speakers below.

“You know how fucked up it is to turn on the news and see another nigga that look like you dead?” a young Black man asked the crowd through a megaphone.

“If you white,” he added, “and you not in the crowd, not on the fire escape, not on the roof screaming ‘Black lives matter’ in New York City … then get the fuck out!”

He and all the other speakers, all Black or Hispanic or Native American, invoked the names of Americans whose recent murders had sparked the demonstrations rocking dozens of U.S. cities: Breonna Taylor, shot by police in Louisville, Kentucky; Ahmaud Arbery, shot and killed while jogging in Georgia by a former cop and his son; and George Floyd, killed in Minneapolis just eight days ago, when a cop pressed a knee into Floyd’s neck and kept it there like a noose.

“We are George!” the crowd chanted.



Protest in Brooklyn getting big. Chants of “We are George!” and “Who keeps us safe? We keep us safe!” pic.twitter.com/aAI2kNn2H6— Christopher Mathias (@letsgomathias) May 30, 2020


Constance Malcolm, the mother of 18-year-old Ramarley Graham, who was killed by the NYPD in 2012, was joined on the podium by her son Chinoor Campbell, who was only 6 years old when he witnessed a white cop shoot his unarmed big brother inside his own home.

A few years ago, Malcolm showed me the bloodstained bath mat she kept on a shelf in her home, from when the cop’s bullet tore through her son’s heart. She couldn’t bring herself to throw it away, she said.

Malcolm has marched in many protests against police brutality in this city, and I once visited her as she slept on the sidewalk outside a Department of Justice building in Manhattan, demanding a civil rights investigation into her son’s murder.

But to the crowd in Flatbush on Saturday, Malcolm argued that such nonviolent actions simply haven’t accomplished what needs to be accomplished.

“We see all the looting and burning buildings down and everything going on, and they call us thugs,” Malcolm said, referring to all the volatile demonstrations across the country, particularly in Minneapolis, where protesters ransacked and then burned down a police precinct.

“I’m not condoning the burning and stuff,” she continued, “but it’s the only fucking way they understand!”

The crowd roared. A short time later, Malcolm grabbed onto a banner that said “Justice for George Floyd,” her surviving son at her side, and led the crowd as it started to march through the streets.

Chants of “Who keeps us safe? We keep us safe!!” and “NYPD, suck my dick!” and “Fuck the police!” filled Flatbush Avenue.

Residents — many of whom have been stuck in their homes, out of work and sheltering from COVID-19, which has devastated predominantly Black and brown working-class neighborhoods like Flatbush — piled out onto the sidewalks to watch and sometimes join in.

An old man inside a bodega explained to another old man what the march was all about, pointing to his knee, and then to his neck.

People in cars — including sanitation workers in a garbage truck, and the drivers of Flatbush’s one-dollar vans, who are regularly harassed by the NYPD for providing cheap rides for locals in an area with scant subway service — honked horns to cheer on the protesters.

Auto shop workers stepped out of their shop to dance and throw up fists of solidarity. A crying woman screamed “I love each and every one of you!” out of a fourth-story apartment window.



Every single car the protesters pass in Flatbush is honking and cheering pic.twitter.com/h33KRgdQBn— Christopher Mathias (@letsgomathias) May 30, 2020



Auto shop workers cheer on protesters marching past in Brooklyn pic.twitter.com/g4wSgVIumm— Christopher Mathias (@letsgomathias) May 30, 2020


The protesters marched for blocks and blocks. A Black organizer occasionally chided white protesters to stay in the back, to let the Black and brown voices be front and center.

Some in the crowd wouldn’t talk to journalists, and why would they? The predominantly white local and national press has drummed up fear of Black New Yorkers or acted as stenographers for the NYPD.
MICHAEL NAGLE/XINHUA VIA GETTY IMAGESA New York Police Department SUV is burned Sunday during a Brooklyn protest over the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.


As day turned to dusk on Saturday, some protesters torched their first NYPD vehicle, a cruiser. Flames curled out the windows, just above the car decals declaring the “Courtesy, Professionalism, and Respect” of the department. Protesters warned others not to get too close in case the car exploded.

Cops in riot gear pushed back the protesters. A firetruck arrived, put out the fire and then left. And then the battle lines formed.

The NYPD stood in rows in the middle of the street, near a Shell gas station. Protesters formed a line directly in front of them. Both Black and white protesters called for white protesters to stand on the front lines, and the white protesters obliged.

A cycle emerged: protesters would throw projectiles at the cops — glass bottles, stones, the occasional fireworks — and cops would charge into the crowd, tackling and arresting protesters before dragging them back to waiting police vans as the melee subsided and the two sides resumed formations.

Michael, an attorney from Brooklyn, stood on the sidewalk during a brief interlude with his friend Jerome, who did not give their last names.

The violence didn’t start with the burning cop cars or the glass bottles flying through the air, Michael argued. The police started the violence a long time ago.

“Every other week, every other day, we hear another story of a Black man being gunned down or a Black woman being gunned down, and that’s not fair, and then they just get away with it, and enough is enough,” Michael said.

“We’re tired, and, no, we don’t want to be out here destroying cop cars and destroying our own neighborhoods and stuff like that, but that’s the way to —” Michael continued, before his friend Jerome interrupted.

“I’m fucking tired of that shit about ‘We are destroying our own fuckin’ community,’” Jerome said. “We do not fucking own the fucking community! We don’t own this shit! Every year we do not fucking own it. Stop fucking telling us that we destroy our own community. We don’t own shit that is fucking here!”

KEVIN HAGEN/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Activists carry protest signs during a march in the Prospect Heights section of Brooklyn on Sunday over the May 25 police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Throughout the day, some protesters had carried signs calling for the defunding of the NYPD, a proposal that’s moved from more radical corners of the left to mainstream discourse in recent years. The idea is to reallocate a big chunk of the department’s mammoth $6 billion annual budget and instead invest it in housing, employment, mental health services and other non-police remedies for the problems of public safety.

“Just imagine if all of that money, or some of that money, was redistributed in the communities, to the broken schools, to our health care system,” Michael told me as the police prepared to charge again. “Like, come on! These are the communities that need it, and yet we don’t see that. We see police cars patrolling.”

The cops were getting angrier. When they charged this time, a white cop screamed “C’mere, you motherfuckers! You bitches!” while chasing after a young Black man.

A woman who gave her name as Jennifer L. yelled after a cop who had just violently tackled and arrested a protester.

“They don’t have no reason to be scared!” her voice trembled. “We should be scared! We should be scared! What are they scared for? Oh, a few bottles? A few bottles?! How about a knee? How about a knee?!”

Nearby, a young white couple stood stunned and silent holding hands and looking out across all the chaos. Their coronavirus masks were stained with baking soda, used as a treatment for the pepper spray that had left their eyes red and irritated. They’d been roughed up in the last police advance, they explained. A cop had hit the woman in the stomach with a baton.

They declined to tell me their names. “Our names are irrelevant in this whole thing,” the man said. “The lives that were lost are the only names that need to be repeated.”
EDUARDO MUNOZ/REUTERS

NYPD officers keep an eye on protesters in Brooklyn on Saturday while they clash during a march against the death in Minneapolis police custody of George Floyd.
After every time the cops charged, the protesters reassembled, staring down their heavily armed attackers, preparing for the next onslaught. They chanted, “Say her name! Breonna Taylor!” and “Say his name! George Floyd!”

They taunted the cops with chants of “NYPD, suck my dick!” and climbed atop a city bus abandoned in the street by its driver, arms outstretched as if, for a moment, the city where they lived actually belonged to them.

The battle lines started to dissolve. Cops ran riot after protesters all along Church Avenue as helicopters circled overhead, occasionally shining spotlights down onto the scattered melees.

I started to film the police charge as I walked backward with a group of retreating protesters, my press pass dangling from my neck.

A sprinting cop veered toward me and bumped into me with his shoulder as he ran past, yelling “Get out my way!” even though there was plenty of room around me.

I’d been watching the cops toss around young New Yorkers all day, pressing their faces into the concrete and cursing at them. I was worked up.

“Fuck you,” I told the cop.

He stopped charging after the protesters and circled back to me, shoving a baton into my chest and knocking me to the curb.

I don’t know how many cops piled on top of me, but there were a lot. A knee or a foot pressed my head and neck into the concrete. Hands tugged at my legs and arms in different directions while different voices issued impossible demands.

“Put your left hand behind your back!” The way my body was twisted, I couldn’t. “Stop resisting!” I wasn’t.

I asked them to look at my press pass. I told them I was a journalist. I begged them to get my phone, which had fallen out of my hand during the fracas.

“Shut the fuck up,” I heard one cop say.

When they cuffed me and stood me up, a white cop, maskless and with rage in his eyes, came within a few inches of my face. “Fucking asshole,” he called me.

Again and again, my press pass clearly visible on my neck, I pleaded for the cops to get my phone, worried that I’d lose so much of what I’d documented that day. The cops refused, leaving it on the street before escorting me to the police van.

If this is how they treat a white journalist, I thought.
COREY SIPKIN/UPI/NEWSCOMHuffPost senior reporter Christopher Mathias is taken into custody after being roughed up while covering the clash between police brutality protesters and New York Police Department officers on Saturday.

“Nigga, I Ain’t George”

As the cops escorted us into the 67th Precinct, we passed a hulking white cop on his way out into the street. He wore a “Punisher” skull patch on his bulletproof vest, a popularfascist ode among cops to the murderous vigilante comic-book character.

Inside the precinct lobby, a tired and demoralized cop stood by the front desk as new detainees were brought in for processing. He had only three years left until he could retire with a full pension, he told me. “If I could, I’d drop my belt and walk out of here right now.”

The officers then put me in a cell with 15 other guys. Everyonehad been arrested at the demonstration; most were Black or brown, save for me and three other white guys. The cops wouldn’t provide anyone with masks, and it was impossible to socially distance.

One of the white guys had a badly broken foot, bare and swollen on the cell floor. He pleaded with the cops for medical attention, and the cops assured him it was coming.

“You’ve just been lied to,” one of the other guys in the cell quipped.

Despite the circumstances, there was camaraderie, and the mood was almost buoyant. One guy polled the cell: Was this anybody’s first time in jail?

Only a few hands went up.

“I’ve been arrested 16 times,” said one respondent, a seasoned activist and protest medic. The cell erupted into cheers and applause so loud that three cops came to check on us.

Everyone started sharing their stories. One guy described liberating an NYPD riot shield from a police van earlier that day. He’d carried it through the crowd as everyone cheered.

Another guy described why he was dressed in sweatpants, an undershirt and Adidas slides.

He’d just stepped out of his apartment to check out the protests, he said, when cops tackled him. One of the cops pressed a knee hard into his neck.

“Nigga, I ain’t George!’” he said he’d told the officers, before using his strength to briefly free himself.

A little after midnight, cops arrived to take me to another precinct where they told me I’d be processed and released. My cellmates wished me luck and told me to stay safe.

The cops put me back into the van and we drove to the 72nd Precinct in Sunset Park. There they put me in a cell by myself and through the bars I could see a fresh batch of arrested protesters arrive in the lobby, including two Black women who were bleeding from the face.

“You’re murderers for hire!” one of the women screamed at the cops as she stood cuffed and crying, waiting to be put in a cell. “You’re murderers for hire!”

I was released and issued a summons to appear in court later this year for a charge of “refusal to disperse.”

A short time later, a spokesman for the New York City mayor’s office told my HuffPost colleagues in a statement that they “apologize” for what I had “experienced tonight.”

It’s unclear if any of the other hundreds of people arrested over the last few days have received such personal apologies from the mayor.

Instead, Mayor Bill de Blasio said officers had shown “tremendous restraint” during the demonstrations. On Monday, de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo implemented a curfew in the city and announced they’d double the number of cops on the streets.

President Donald Trump, while he was threatening to sic the military on anti-racist protesters, used federal police to tear-gas protesters near the White House to clear space for a photo-op in front of a church Monday.

New Yorkers continued to protest on Monday anyway. A woman in Brooklyn stood atop a car holding a sign that read “Radical action brings radical change. #BLM.”

As they took over the Brooklyn Bridge, the sun setting over the Manhattan skyline, a single car accompanied the protesters as they walked, driving slowly with “Fuck Tha Police” blaring from the speakers, a raised Black fist reaching out of the sunroof.

CORRECTION: This article previously misattributed a quote to Kerbie Joseph, a Black woman and community organizer with the Party For Socialism and Liberation. The quote was made by a different speaker at Saturday’s protest rally.

Christopher MathiasSenior Reporter, HuffPost

BANANA REPUBLIC OF AMERIKA

2 Lawyers Of Color Face 45-Year Sentences — For Vandalism

Samantha Storey HuffPost June 22, 202

Urooj Rahman and Colinford Mattis (Photo: Courtesy of Hyder Kazmi, left; Meghna Philip, right)

In a high school English assignment in which students were asked to describe themselves as a metaphor, Colinford King Mattis had a lot of fun with his essay.

Mattis described himself as a piece of vintage furniture that you aren’t sure you want, but you bring it home anyway and put it in a room — and it somehow perfectly brings the room together, and you don’t know how you lived without it in the first place.

In recent days, dozens of colleagues, friends and former classmates have come together and reached for the same hopeful metaphor. As the 32-year-old lawyer sits in a Brooklyn jail awaiting a bail hearing, they say they can’t imagine a room without Mattis in it. He is a loyal and community-minded man who poses no threat to society and deserves to be released pending trial, they argue.

Mattis, along with Urooj Rahman, 31, was arrested in New York City on May 30 during protests against racism and police brutality following the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers. The two were charged with attempting to burn an unoccupied, already damaged New York City Police Department vehicle. Nobody was injured in the incident. Now Mattis and Rahman face additional federal charges that carry a 45-year mandatory minimum sentence, and up to life in prison — for what essentially amounts to property damage.

Activists and lawyers are alarmed by the unusually harsh charges being brought against them, and believe Mattis and Rahman should not be awaiting trial in jail. They say that they are not a threat to society — which the prosecution is arguing — and it is highly unlikely they’re a flight risk or will commit another crime. Mattis is a corporate lawyer educated at Princeton and NYU Law; Rahman went to Fordham Law and works for Bronx Legal Services, helping low-income clients fight evictions in housing court. Both grew up in New York and are deeply connected to their communities.

Mattis and Rahman — a Black man and Muslim woman — sit in jail at the same time that Derek Chauvin, the white police officer who killed George Floyd, awaits his trial from the comfort of home, and while the police officers who fatally shot Breonna Taylor have not even had charges brought against them.

The contrast in treatment of a white murder defendant and two activists of color is particularly stark at this moment people around the world are rising up and demonstrating against racism. Lawyers familiar with their case say it is highly unusual for defendants like Mattis and Rahman — Ivy-league educated and human-rights minded with no history of violence — to be held in jail, and not out on bail.

The decision of whether defendants are released or detained pending trial will determine whether they can be at home contributing to their legal defense or whether they will be in jail, where COVID-19 continues to run rampant; where inmates are frequently targets of violence; and where they are separated from their attorneys, peers and friends.

Hundreds of law students and professors from NYU — more than 850 — wrote to express their concern with the federal government’s aggressive charges and pursuit of pretrial detention; so did the Legal Services Staff Association union. Fordham Law School gathered 650 signatures from students and faculty. They wrote, “We believe that the Department of Justice’s prosecution and efforts to incarcerate Urooj and Colin are a gross overreach of federal law enforcement power, and an attempt to stifle and delegitimize dissent against police brutality.”

The head of Mattis’s former high school, the boarding school St. Andrew’s in Delaware, issued a statement to the school community in support of their former student. HuffPost spoke to Darcy Caldwell, his former English teacher, who described him as a teenager who overcame enormous academic hurdles to become successful in her class.

“Colin has so much goodness to offer this world and I hope he has the chance to do that,” she said.

Alexa Caldwell, Darcy’s daughter, attended school with Mattis and was on a trip to a school conference with him in 2006. He was always social justice minded, Caldwell said. She remembers boarding the bus back to the hotel and how he and his friend Ikenna Iheoma couldn’t stop talking about a senator they met. It wasn’t someone she had heard of before — his name was Barack Obama. They even took a photo with him.



Colin Mattis, right, with then-Sen. Barack Obama in 2006. 

Photo: Courtesy of Ikenna Iheoma

Initially after their arrest, Mattis and Rahman went before the Magistrate Judge Steven M. Gold, who presided over their arraignment virtually. He found that Mattis and Rahman could safely be released with electronic monitoring. But then federal prosecutors appealed the ruling; they believed the two were a potential threat to society and a flight risk. The case was then examined by the District Judge Margo K. Brodie. She reviewed Judge Gold’s decision and determined that Mattis and Rahman should be released, too. Mattis and Rahman were released on a $250,000 bond to home confinement with GPS monitoring.

From there the case took a highly unusual turn, according to lawyers familiar with it. Almost immediately, the government filed a notice of appeal. They announced that they were going to seek an emergency stay of the district court’s decision to send them home. On June 5, a three-judge panel in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit revoked Mattis and Rahman’s bond on the basis that the defendants were a continual danger to society. They were taken back into custody that day.

It is noteworthy that two of the three judges on the panel, Judge Michael H. Park and Judge William J. Nardini, were appointed by President Donald Trump, lawyers say.

“The disproportionate prosecution of Urooj and Colin is another iteration of the Trump administration’s attempt to detract from police violence in the US,” the Fordham Law School signatories wrote in their open letter. “Indeed, Rahman, a Pakistani Muslim immigrant and Mattis, a young Black man, are convenient scapegoats given this country’s deeply entrenched and violent history of anti-Black racism and Islamophobia.”

It is an extraordinary move for the government to order them back in jail, said J. Wells Dixon, a senior staff attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights. What stands in harsh contrast is the notion that if you are a white police officer standing accused of murdering a Black man, you get to be out on bail, he said. But if you are Black and Muslim, you are too dangerous to await trial from home.

“It is an illustration of everything that is wrong with the criminal justice system,” Dixon said in a phone call with HuffPost. “It is the reason why thousands of people have taken to the streets around the world.”

Pretrial detention has enormous knock-on effects, according to the authors of a recent paper on what happens to defendants during the pretrial period. Being kept in detention during pretrial causally increases “the likelihood of a conviction, the severity of the sentence, and, in some jurisdictions, defendants’ likelihood of future contact with the criminal justice system.”

“They face a 45-year mandatory minimum,” Dixon said. “How do you square that? It is shocking and appalling that in the United States someone could spend 45 years in prison for vandalizing an empty police car that had been previously vandalized. That is not right.”
On Tuesday, Mattis and Rahman will go before another panel of judges — none of them Trump appointees.

VANDALISM IS NOT VIOLENCE

DURING WAR WE SAY PEOPLE 

ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN PROPERTY

WHY ISN'T THIS SO 

DURING PEACETIME TOO 

VANDALISM IS PROPERTY DESTRUCTION

VIOLENCE IS ASSAULT OF THE PERSON

Donald Byrd – Ethiopian Knights (1972)

:00 - 15:39 01 - The emperor 15:39 - 19:29 02 - Jamie 19:29 - 37:11 03 - The little rasti Bass – Wilton Felder Composed By – Donald Byrd Design – Dave Bhang Drums – Ed Greene (2) Engineer – Henry Lewy Guitar – David T. Walker, Greg Poree Liner Notes – Bill Quinn (4) Organ – Joe Sample Photography By, Art Direction – Norman Seeff Piano – William Henderson Producer – George Butler Remix, Engineer – Rudy Van Gelder Tenor Saxophone – Harold Land Trombone – Thurman Green Trumpet – Donald Byrd Vibraphone – Bobby Hutcherson

Opinion: Why government is the solution, not the problem, for a weary and worried post-pandemic world

Some countries will try to go it alone, but free trade and open economies are the sure path to growth

GETTY IMAGES

Published: June 22, 2020 By Kishore Mahbubani
Every nation faces a basic choice: Follow the North Korean economic model or the South Korean one.

My wife and I visited the Antarctic in early February. We were probably on one of the last boats to get there before COVID-19 shut down the global cruise industry. Today, thousands of cruise ships lie idle. Few people cross borders. Trade has become unreliable. Countries are clamoring for self-reliance. In this setting, the conventional wisdom is that the era of globalization is over and the world is entering an era of deglobalization.
Beware of conventional wisdom. During this extended period of lockdown the world is experiencing, physical travel is indeed rare. Yet being shut in has opened our minds; we’re spending more time in the digital universe than ever, and this digital world is borderless.
Life online has made people aware that we live on a small planet, where most corners are within reach. For example, in 2018, 134 million Chinese traveled overseas. By 2030, perhaps 300 million to 400 million will do so. Even for a seasoned global traveler like me, it’s striking that I have never lived in a houseboat in Kerala, visited Venice or trekked the Grand Canyon. Consider it done in the next five years. I will not be alone.
Similarly, when COVID-19 becomes a memory, as it surely will, countries will retreat from the impulse to be self-reliant. Ricardo’s law of comparative advantage still holds true: countries that try to produce everything themselves grow more slowly. In the end, every nation faces a basic choice: Follow the North Korean economic model or the South Korean one. North Korea closed its borders (and is relatively self-reliant). South Korea opened its borders. In 1960, both economies were about the same size. Today, South Korea’s economy is 48 times larger — a development story that is the envy of most developing countries.
The economic evidence of the past 40 years makes it clear what the real choice is. Just compare the two most populous countries, China and India (which also had the two largest economies of the world from the year 1 to 1820). In 1980, when Deng Xiaoping opened up the Chinese economy, both economies were about the same size. (China’s GDP then was $191 billion, while India’s GDP was $186 billion.) Now, China’s economy is five times larger. It’s curious that a communist party state has veered closer to the South Korean model than the world’s largest democracy.
Read: Investors could be looking at a ‘lost decade’ in the stock market, the world’s biggest hedge fund warns
Plus: Bank of America on the new world order: Bigger governments, tech wars, less privacy, and ‘health the new wealth’
Some of this is due to the fact that there has been a strong political movement in the Indian body politic to protect Indian industries from global competition. This is a strange response. Indians are among the most competitive people in the world. Indeed, in the most competitive nation, the U.S., the ethnic group with the highest per-capita income is the Indian community. Two of the world’s largest corporations, Alphabet and Microsoft, are run by Indians, not Chinese. When India finally decides to join the mainstream of globalization, the Indian economy could grow as fast as the East Asian miracle stories, including the most recent example of Vietnam.
Countries need to globalize intelligently and thoughtfully.
Yet the East Asian experience also teaches us that countries need to globalize intelligently and thoughtfully. Not all the barricades to trade can be brought down immediately. Some industries will need temporary protection. The key word here is “temporary.” At the same time, in one form or another, each East Asian economy has its own “industrial policy.” This doesn’t mean that bureaucrats choose the winners or losers. It means the state helps the winners thrive and phases out the losers.
The U.S., despite its vehement denials, has a similar industrial policy. When the Reagan administration arm-twisted the Japanese to reduce car exports to the U.S., this was an example of industrial policy in action. Sadly, it wasn’t a thoughtful one.
The most dangerous mindset the Reagan administration left behind was that markets know best. As Reagan famously said in his 1981 inaugural address: “Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.” What followed was several decades of defunding, delegitimization and demoralization of U.S. federal agencies. These structural weaknesses have been exposed in agencies such as the FDA and CDC during the Trump administration’s management of the COVID-19 pandemic.
What the U.S. needs now is an intelligent and thoughtful president who recognizes that today, “Government is not the problem, it is the solution.” Yet for government to be the solution, it must be an independent, neutral actor, serving the larger interests of a society, and not be captured by the industries or sectors it is regulating. For the U.S. this would be a massive and difficult undertaking, made more difficult by the fact that the congressional oversight committees watching these agencies are also bending to narrow industrial interests, not the larger public interests.
In the period immediately after COVID-19 is finally brought to a halt, there will be a lot of global confusion as countries struggle to manage the short-term impulses of fear and keeping borders closed against the long-term impulse to open up and jump-start their economies. No market forces are equipped to manage the careful navigation that will be required. Intelligent and thoughtful government is the only answer.
In this regard, East Asian societies are a model for the rest of the world. Virtually, every East Asian government knows that their economies will not revive their earlier dynamism unless they open up again. So they will — carefully, delicately and selectively. Pragmatism will rule the day. No Western leader has yet dared to say publicly that the West can learn from the East, but heads of state in the U.S. and Europe can and should. When countries learn from each other’s experiences, borders will open again, people and ideas will travel freely, and the pace of globalization will accelerate again.
Kishore Mahbubani is the author of Has China Won? The Chinese Challenge to American Primacy (Public Affairs, 2020). He is a distinguished fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Asia Research Institute. A former Singaporean diplomat, Mahbubani was president of the United Nations Security Council between January 2001 and May 2002.

Trump supporters compete for attention with protesters outside Tulsa arena

Just one arrest, say Tulsa police: apparently that of a local woman wearing an ‘I Can’t Breathe’ shirt; Trump claims ‘bad people’ outside the venue doing ‘bad things’ and potentially reducing attendance


The National Guard member stands outside the BOK Center in Tulsa, Okla., on Saturday. ASSOCIATED PRESS

CAN'T TELL THE WHITE NATIONAL GUARD FROM THE WHITE MILITIA'S

TULSA, Okla. (AP) — President Donald Trump’s supporters faced off with protesters shouting “Black Lives Matter” Saturday in Tulsa as the president took the stage for his first campaign rally in months amid public health concerns about the coronavirus and fears that the event could lead to violence in the wake of killings of Black people by police.

Hundreds of demonstrators flooded the city’s downtown streets and blocked traffic at times, but police reported just a handful of arrests. Many of the marchers chanted, and some occasionally got into shouting matches with Trump supporters, who outnumbered them and yelled, “All lives matter.”

Also see:Trump launches comeback rally in Tulsa amid empty seats and new coronavirus cases on his staff

Later in the evening, a group of armed men began following the protesters. When the protesters blocked an intersection, a man wearing a Trump shirt got out of a truck and spattered them with pepper spray.

When demonstrators approached a National Guard bus that got separated from its caravan, Tulsa police officers fired pepper balls to push back the crowd, said Tulsa police spokesperson Capt. Richard Meulenberg. Officers soon left the area as it cleared.

The Trump faithful gathered inside the 19,000-seat BOK Center for what was believed to be the largest indoor event in the country since restrictions to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus began in March. Many of the president’s supporters weren’t wearing masks, despite the recommendation of public health officials. Some had been camped near the venue since early in the week.

Turnout at the rally was lower than the campaign predicted, with a large swath of standing room on the stadium floor and empty patches in the seating decks. Trump had been scheduled to appear at a rally outside of the stadium within a perimeter of tall metal barriers, but that event was abruptly canceled.

Trump campaign officials said protesters prevented the president’s supporters from entering the stadium. Three Associated Press journalists reporting in Tulsa for several hours leading up to the president’s speaking did not see protesters block entry to the area where the rally was held.

While Trump spoke onstage, protesters carried a papier-mâché representation of him with a pig snout. Some in the multiracial group wore Black Lives Matter shirts, others sported rainbow-colored armbands, and many covered their mouths and noses with masks. At one point, several people stopped to dance to gospel singer Kirk Franklin’s song “Revolution.”

The protesters blocked traffic in at least one intersection. Some Black leaders in Tulsa had said they were worried the visit could lead to violence. It came amid protests over racial injustice and policing across the U.S. and in a city that has a long history of racial tension. Officials had said they expected some 100,000 people downtown.

A woman who was arrested on live television was seen sitting cross-legged on the ground in peaceful protest when officers pulled her away by the arms and later put her in handcuffs. She said her name was Sheila Buck and that she was from Tulsa.

Police said in a news release the officers tried for several minutes to talk Buck into leaving and that she was taken into custody for obstruction after the Trump campaign asked police to remove her from the area.

Buck was wearing a T-shirt that said “I Can’t Breathe” — the dying words of George Floyd, whose death has inspired a global push for racial justice. She said she had a ticket to the Trump rally and was told she was being arrested for trespassing. She said she was not part of any organized group.

Several blocks away from the BOK Center was a festival-like atmosphere, with food vendors serving hot dogs and cold drinks and sidewalks lined with people selling various Trump regalia.

There was also an undercurrent of tension near the entrance to the secured area, where Trump supporters and opponents squared off. Several downtown businesses boarded up their windows as well to avoid any potential damage.

Kieran Mullen, 60, a college professor from Norman, Okla., held a sign that read “Black Lives Matter” and “Dump Trump.”

“I just thought it was important for people to see there are Oklahomans that have a different point of view,” Mullen said of his state, which overwhelmingly supported Trump in 2016.

Brian Bernard, 54, a retired information technology worker from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, sported a Trump 2020 hat as he took a break from riding his bicycle around downtown. Next to him was a woman selling Trump T-shirts and hats, flying a “Keep America Great Again” flag. Her shirt said, “Impeach this,” with an image of Trump extending his middle fingers.

“Since the media won’t do it, it’s up to us to show our support,” said Bernard, who drove nine hours to Tulsa for his second Trump rally.

Bernard said he wasn’t concerned about catching the coronavirus at the event and doesn’t believe it’s “anything worse than the flu.”

Across the street, armed, uniformed highway patrol troopers milled about a staging area in a bank parking lot with dozens of uniformed National Guard troops.

Tulsa has seen cases of COVID-19 spike in the past week, and the local health department director asked that the rally be postponed. But Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt said it would be safe. The Oklahoma Supreme Court on Friday denied a request that everyone attending the indoor rally wear a mask, and few in the crowd outside Saturday were wearing them.

The Trump campaign said six staff members helping prepare for the event tested positive for COVID-19. They were following “quarantine procedures” and wouldn’t attend the rally, said Tim Murtaugh, the campaign’s communications director.

Inside the barriers, the campaign was handing out masks and said hand sanitizer also would be distributed and that participants would undergo a temperature check. But there was no requirement that participants use the masks.

Teams of people wearing goggles, masks, gloves and blue gowns were checking the temperatures of those entering the rally area. Those who entered the secured area were given disposable masks, which most people wore as they went through the temperature check. Some took them off after the check.

The rally originally was planned for Friday, but was moved after complaints that it coincided with Juneteenth, which marks the end of slavery in the U.S., and in a city that was the site of a 1921 race-related massacre, when a white mob attacked Black people, leaving as many as 300 people dead.

Stitt joined Vice President Mike Pence for a meeting Saturday with Black leaders from Tulsa’s Greenwood District, the area once known as “Black Wall Street” where the 1921 attack occurred. Stitt initially invited Trump to tour the area, but said, “We talked to the African American community and they said it would not be a good idea, so we asked the president not to do that.”

___

Associated Press reporters Ellen Knickmeyer in Tulsa, Ken Miller in Oklahoma City, Sara Burnett in Chicago, Adam Kealoha Causey in Dallas and Grant Schulte in Omaha, Nebraska, contributed to this report.