Y-Body
02-17-2016, 4:24pm
From a BBC Article Who do you call when you can't call the police? (http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/item/f1d580cb-33ff-4d6d-bc41-6483e94d6580)
The Author:
Dan Murdoch is the director of KKK: The Fight for White Supremacy. He returned to America this winter to meet groups in the Black Power movement - the film comes to BBC Three later this year.
The complete text and one of six pictures:
At last night's Grammys, Kendrick Lamar stood on the stage, a bruise painted around his left eye. He's singing, 'The Blacker the Berry' with chains on his hands on a set designed to look like a prison.
Only last week, Beyonce's 'Formation' video asked police to "stop shooting us" scrawled across a brick wall; a child facing a row of police and an army of dancers in Black Power outfits. Backstage at her Super Bowl performance, they hold a sign: 'Justice 4 Mario Woods' - a man shot dead in December by police in San Francisco.
The message from the stars is clear: Black Lives Matter.
34 people have been shot dead by Dallas officers in the last five years, though no officer has been indicted for a wrongful killing.
“I think the police are the biggest gang out here,” activist La’Shadion 'LA' Anthony told me, “they kill people in broad daylight, on camera, and they get away with it.”
Over the last few months, I've been meeting armed activist groups in Dallas to try and find out how bad things have really become. I’ve been on a 'Clean Up the Neighborhood Day' - a litter pick to you and me - with six men and women from the Black Women’s Defense League providing security, armed with shotguns and rifles.
In Dallas, LA is describing his relationship with police: “My kids don’t call 911. My kids are afraid of the police. Who do you call for help when 911 is the one that’s killing us? My kids call me. I call my family, I call my friends, and I call my AR-13 rifle, my best friend.”
LA is one of a growing number of citizens in the city who believe that police brutality has become so prevalent that they have no choice but to arm themselves.
Dallas has the third highest rate of fatal police shootings among America’s 10 largest cities, with the 2014 shooting of the schizophrenic Jason Harrison drawing particular attention, and leading many that I spoke to in the city to claim that the police can shoot with impunity.
I joined the Huey P Newton Gun Club as they turned up armed and en masse to march on the Martin Luther King Day parade. Thirty men and women in military fatigues with rifles and shotguns, standing sentry amongst the barbecue and bunting.
The overwhelming number of Dallas’s poorer citizens that I met supported these groups exercising their right to bear arms. Though some of the mothers at the MLK Day parade were leading their children away, afraid by the presence of so many weapons.
As an Englishman, unused to being surrounded by armed civilians, I kept wondering if all the extra weapons weren’t just making the chance of a tragedy more likely?
LA was adamant: “No. We're just letting the cops know that we will not be intimidated. It’s no longer gonna be hands up and we’re just gonna allow you to shoot us. Its gonna be hands down, shoot back. You shoot at us, we’re gonna shoot back.”
It seems a frightening turn of events when the citizens are arming themselves against their own police force.
One of six pictures (of course it is one of the more "alarming":
http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/live-experience/cps/1056/cpsprodpb/vivo/live/images/2016/2/8/3c94db91-bc53-4965-a1e2-9f0c74d4aaf0.jpg
The Author:
Dan Murdoch is the director of KKK: The Fight for White Supremacy. He returned to America this winter to meet groups in the Black Power movement - the film comes to BBC Three later this year.
The complete text and one of six pictures:
At last night's Grammys, Kendrick Lamar stood on the stage, a bruise painted around his left eye. He's singing, 'The Blacker the Berry' with chains on his hands on a set designed to look like a prison.
Only last week, Beyonce's 'Formation' video asked police to "stop shooting us" scrawled across a brick wall; a child facing a row of police and an army of dancers in Black Power outfits. Backstage at her Super Bowl performance, they hold a sign: 'Justice 4 Mario Woods' - a man shot dead in December by police in San Francisco.
The message from the stars is clear: Black Lives Matter.
34 people have been shot dead by Dallas officers in the last five years, though no officer has been indicted for a wrongful killing.
“I think the police are the biggest gang out here,” activist La’Shadion 'LA' Anthony told me, “they kill people in broad daylight, on camera, and they get away with it.”
Over the last few months, I've been meeting armed activist groups in Dallas to try and find out how bad things have really become. I’ve been on a 'Clean Up the Neighborhood Day' - a litter pick to you and me - with six men and women from the Black Women’s Defense League providing security, armed with shotguns and rifles.
In Dallas, LA is describing his relationship with police: “My kids don’t call 911. My kids are afraid of the police. Who do you call for help when 911 is the one that’s killing us? My kids call me. I call my family, I call my friends, and I call my AR-13 rifle, my best friend.”
LA is one of a growing number of citizens in the city who believe that police brutality has become so prevalent that they have no choice but to arm themselves.
Dallas has the third highest rate of fatal police shootings among America’s 10 largest cities, with the 2014 shooting of the schizophrenic Jason Harrison drawing particular attention, and leading many that I spoke to in the city to claim that the police can shoot with impunity.
I joined the Huey P Newton Gun Club as they turned up armed and en masse to march on the Martin Luther King Day parade. Thirty men and women in military fatigues with rifles and shotguns, standing sentry amongst the barbecue and bunting.
The overwhelming number of Dallas’s poorer citizens that I met supported these groups exercising their right to bear arms. Though some of the mothers at the MLK Day parade were leading their children away, afraid by the presence of so many weapons.
As an Englishman, unused to being surrounded by armed civilians, I kept wondering if all the extra weapons weren’t just making the chance of a tragedy more likely?
LA was adamant: “No. We're just letting the cops know that we will not be intimidated. It’s no longer gonna be hands up and we’re just gonna allow you to shoot us. Its gonna be hands down, shoot back. You shoot at us, we’re gonna shoot back.”
It seems a frightening turn of events when the citizens are arming themselves against their own police force.
One of six pictures (of course it is one of the more "alarming":
http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/live-experience/cps/1056/cpsprodpb/vivo/live/images/2016/2/8/3c94db91-bc53-4965-a1e2-9f0c74d4aaf0.jpg