EffieBlack
EffieBlack's JournalI've dealt with people like Michael Cohen who think, because they're associated with or represent
famous or powerful people, they can treat everyone else however they want, throw their weight around, speak to "unimportant"people like they're nothing. Part of this is to show off for their guy but much of it is their own insecurity and closeness to power leads them to believe that they are all that.
And almost every single time, they were eventually jettisoned by their guru and found themselves floating through the atmosphere with no parachute - and wondering why no one will give them the time of day or lift a finger to help them.
That's exactly what's happening to Michael Cohen and while part of me feels sorry for him, I also just shake my head and think, "Shoulda thought about that, dude, when you were crapping all over people because you thought Donald Trump had your back."
Jason Johnson: "It's like cops are their racism valets."
On AM Joy this morning, Joy correctly noted that "[w]e tend to talk about police violence against black bodies, against black people. But we don't talk enough about people who keep calling 911 on black people for nothing."
Her guest Jason Johnson, of the Root.com responded that "It's like the cops are their racism valets. Like 'These black people are making me uncomfortable, come do something about it.' And the fact that she can engage in that kind of behavior so consistently and these are the gentlemen who have to deal with the consequences is another part of the discussion we need to have. That could be prosecuted as malicious prosecution. There should be consequences for people who call the police on African Americans for non-crimes for discriminatory purposes and we have to make that a part of the discussion because the police are just an extension of {that} bigotry when they make that phone call."
https://www.theroot.com/from-starbucks-to-hashtags-we-need-to-talk-about-why-w-1825284087
By Jason Johnson
This week, black America added “sitting at Starbucks waiting for a white friend” to the list of things that we cannot safely do without fear of police violence. Previous entries included sitting in your car, sitting in someone else’s car, standing on your front porch, standing on your back porch, surviving a car accident, asking for directions to school and, of course, breathing.
...
The men and women making these outrageous and unwarranted calls to police, which result in the harassment, unfair prosecution and even death of people of color, need to be found, publicly shamed and prosecuted to the full extent that the law allows.
No, I’m not talking about Dave Reiling, the man who reported an actual crime in Sacramento, Calif., that the police used as an excuse to shoot Stephon Clark in his own backyard. Calling the police to report an actual crime that the police overact to is not the citizen’s fault, no matter what color he or she is. I’m talking about the hundreds of cases—that we know about—every year, where white Americans actively and knowingly use the police as an extension of their personal bigotry yet face no consequences.
I’m talking about the white woman at the Red Roof Inn outside of Pittsburgh who called the cops on me because I disputed the charges on my bill and asked to speak to a manager. I’m talking about the white woman who called the cops on me last year even though she knew I was walking with political canvassers for Jon Ossoff’s congressional campaign in North Atlanta. I’m talking about the police officer who followed me behind my house in Hiram, Ohio, asking where I lived because he’d “gotten some calls about robberies.”
In each and every single one of these instances, a white person used the cops as his or her personal racism valets, and I was the one getting served. In each of these instances, I could have been arrested, beaten up or worse based on nothing more than the word of a white person whom I made uncomfortable. As sick as this all is, I still consider myself lucky.
I was in Starbucks today and called the police to report the manager threatened me with bodily harm*
The police showed up, but didn't arrest her for assault.
Can they do that?
*I didn't really do that - just asking for a friend.
That's why they should have asked when they got there
They would have found out in less than a minute that the store had no such policy and, thus, the men weren't trespassing.
A Hypothetical Arrest in Starbucks
Here’s a hypo for folks to consider:
(Law professors LOVE hypos ...)
It is illegal under Pennsylvania law to carry a concealed weapon in public establishments without a valid license to carry. 18 Pa. C.S. Section 6106(b). Assume for the sake of this hypo that Starbucks does not have a separate written policy on gun possession in their stores, but follows state law. Here’s a link to the law: http://www.legis.state.pa.us/WU01/LI/LI/CT/HTM/18/00.061.006.000..HTM
Now, suppose that just before those two men came into Starbucks and didn’t buy coffee last week, the manager served two other men who DID buy coffee. When she was ringing them up, she noticed that each of them had a gun on his belt under his jacket. Alarmed, as soon as the men left the counter and sat down, the manager went to the phone, called the police and reported that two men in her establishment had weapons on them.
The police arrived a few minutes later.
1. Were the police required to arrest the men on the spot for violating Pennsylvania’s concealed carry law?
2. If your answer is yes, please explain your reasoning.
3. If your answer is no, what should they have done next? Please explain your reasoning.
Bree Newsome breaks down the economic inequality/racism issue in one tweet
https://twitter.com/BreeNewsome/status/986765871321411591?s=19The racial wealth gap is not simply a byproduct of racism. It is the *goal* of racism. Racism has always served to maintain a permanent black underclass of unpaid or underpaid labor while wealth/resources are concentrated among a "white" elite.
DUers of Color: Tell Your Story
There have been several discussions the past few days about the incident in which two black men were arrested for "defiant trespass" at a Starbucks on the command of a white manager because they didn't buy anything while waiting for a friend. Some of the discussions have been very interesting and enlightening, but there has also been a very troubling level of dismissal by some who have denied the existence of rampant discrimination against African Americans - in fact, some have actually blamed US for not being more compliant with the police or for unfairly blaming white people for racism where it doesn't exist.
It is clear that, despite considering themselves progressives, many Democrats just aren't aware of the racial dynamics in this country, perhaps because they've never actually experienced or witnessed it themselves.
So, I thought it would be helpful for DUers of color to tell our stories, to offer examples of how we've encountered discrimination, profiling or other indignities and to describe how this felt and/or how it affected you.
I also invite white DUers to share incidents that they have witnessed affecting their minority friends, family, co-workers, neighbors, etc.
I suggest this, not to start any kind of racial battle on this board, but to help more people understand the situation we've been trying to describe and address.
If you don't have a story to share that can help illuminate this discussion, please simply read and think about the posts without pushing back on them. Please don't step in to challenge or argue with any of us who are trying to tell our stories. This thread is not intended to start any argument or any kind of flame war. I am trying to help people LEARN.
Please let this be a positive learning experience for all of us.
So, I'll start -
I have so many examples - it could be a book - it's hard to pick one, but here goes:
A few years ago, I parked in my reserved parking spot at work. When I got out of my car, I was approached by a middle-aged white man I'd seen around the building before. He told me that space was reserved and that I would have to move my car. I politely told him that I was fine parking there, but thank you. He insisted that I move, that I wasn't supposed to be there. I again told him that I was fine parking there and started toward the building. He jumped in front of me, essentially body-blocking me and told me that if I didn't move my car right now, dammit, he was going to have it towed. I said nothing, walked around him and went to work.
When I got to my office, I picked up the phone and called his boss and told him what happened. His boss was mortified. He called me back a few minutes later to tell me that he had read the guy the riot act. "Do you know who she is?! She is MY boss's boss's BOSS!. You just rolled up and confronted the MOST SENIOR PERSON IN THE ORGANIZATION!"
Yes, this middle-level manager, about four rungs down the organizational chart from me, felt perfectly entitled to tell me, a senior executive who was parking in MY OWN DAMNED SPACE that I had no right to park there, demanded that I move and threatened me physically. No one will ever be able to convince me that he would have done this - or even THINK of doing this - to a white person, male or female. He saw my black face and it never even occurred to him that it was even possible that I deserved to be there. And he felt that he had all the right in the world to challenge me.
His boss asked me if I thought the man should be reprimanded. I told him no - he probably didn't know any better but having something this embarrassing happen to him probably got his attention. I suggest that he send him to diversity and inclusion training, which he did.
I left not long after that so I don't know what happened to him. But I do like to think that every time he remembers this incident, he cringes and is reminded not to make judgments about people of color and certainly not to wave his privilege around in our faces.
Fortunately, in this situation, I was in a position to address the situation and shut him down. Many of us don't have that advantage. But it's an example of how these attitudes affect people of color, regardless where we are on the socio-economic ladder.
Ok, y'all - YOUR TURN
NY Times: Philadelphia Starbucks Arrests, Outrageous to Some, Are Everyday Life for Others
But to some black Philadelphia residents who venture into Rittenhouse Square, the neighborhood where it happened, the treatment depicted in the video was a frustrating reality of everyday life.
Christian Hayden, 30, recalled a security guard searching his bags as he left a nearby Barnes & Noble. The guard found his copy of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s memoir “The Beautiful Struggle,” and would not let him leave until the staff had checked the shelves to make sure no copy had been stolen.
Trevor Johnson, 27, a bike courier, recalled being arrested in the square four years ago after an officer asked him to turn off his music and he got up to walk away. And earlier this year, Michele Bradshaw, 49, said she left a Nordstrom Rack not far from the Starbucks after she noticed a security guard following her through the aisles of clothing.
In fact, statistics show that Rittenhouse Square, with its hotels, boutique museums and upscale shops, has the highest racial disparity in the city when it comes to police pedestrian stops. Although black people account for just 3 percent of the residents in that police subdistrict, they made up two-thirds of the people stopped by the police in the first half of 2017, according to figures collected by the American Civil Liberties Union.
...
The eight-minute video clip of the encounter shows three officers in bicycle helmets standing around two black men, who were sitting and calmly responding to the officers’ questions. ... A few minutes go by, with the officers and the men continuing to exchange words, when a white man who was supposed to meet the men showed up. He began arguing with the officers, saying that they were discriminating against the two black men. Eventually, the white man said they would just go somewhere else, but the officer responded, “They’re not free to leave,” adding that they had already failed to comply.
...
Ronal Serpas, a former police chief in New Orleans and Nashville, said it was “troublesome that an arrest occurred,” given the tremendous discretion officers have to handle such situations. “Using every available alternative to a physical arrest, within department policy, should be the goal in a case like this,” said Mr. Serpas, who is now a professor at Loyola University New Orleans.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/17/us/starbucks-arrest-philadelphia.html
Tweet: "The real problem isn't a coffee company"
“The entire morning shift at my regular @Starbucks was staffed by people of color today. Boycott them if you must but please know: the real problem isn’t a coffee company. The real problem is white people calling the police on us for existing.”
https://twitter.com/kelliparker/status/986634284365766656
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