Tag Archives: police brutality

Every cop with a gun should also be outfitted with a video camera

By Mark | January 10, 2014

Earlier this week, after an inquest jury essentially vindicated London police officers in the 2011 killing of 29 year old Mark Duggan, authorities announced that, henceforth, some number of London’s 2,300 firearms-carrying officers would begin wearing vest-mounted video cameras. And, as much as I consider myself a privacy advocate, and despise our ever expanding surveillance […]

Posted in Civil Liberties, Uncategorized | Also tagged Bernard Hogan-Howe, big brother, California, David Ware, excessive force, Gary Schiff, London, Mark Duggan, Minneapolis, police, Police Foundation, privacy, recording the police, Rialto, surveillance, surveillance culture, Surveillance State, the militarization of the police, Tony Farrar, video, video surveillance | 17 Comments

Boots Riley of The Coup… on Communism, Corporatism, hip-hop, and the need to beat down scabs

By Mark | November 28, 2012

Last night, I had the occasion to speak with world-renowned hip-hop provocateur Boots Riley on a wide range of subjects spanning from his childhood in Detroit, spent in a household of Communist organizers, to his current work, organizing people in his neighborhood as a member Occupy Oakland. And, of course, we touched on his equally […]

Posted in Art and Culture, Civil Liberties, Corporate Crime, Detroit, Economics, Uncategorized, Ypsilanti | Also tagged 21 Grams, 9/11, advertising, Alex Rivera, American Splendor, anti-capitalist, at-risk youth, Barbara Ransby, Bill Maher, Boots Riley, California, Capitalism, civil rights, class, College of Ethnic Studies, Communism, Congress of Racial Equality, CORE, Danny Goldberg, dark comedy, fast food workers union, Five Million Ways to Kill a CEO, foreclosure defense, fundraisers, Greensboro, guillotine building workshop, Happiness, hip hop, ILWU, independent film, International Longshore and Warehouse Union, interviews, Japanther, Jeff Clark, K-Mart, Kev Choice, KKK, Ku Klux Klan, La Peña Cultural Center, labor history, labor movement, Led Zeppelin, Levi's, longshoremen, lunch counter sit-ins, Magic Clap, Me and Jesus the Pimp in a '79 Granada Last Night, militancy, NAACP, Nirvana, North Carolina, Oakland, Occupy Oakland, Occupy Sandy, Ohio Players, Oscar Grant, Ozone House, picket lines, political hip hop, political organizing, Politically Incorrect, Port of Oakland, Progressive Labor Party, Prop 21, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, rap, revolution, rhetoric of violent revolution, San Francisco, San Francisco State, San Francisco State strike, scabs, SDS, sit-down strikes, Sleep Dealer, social justice, Sorry to Bother You, speaking truth to power, Street Sweeper Social Club, Students for a Democratic Society, sympathy strikes, Taft–Hartley Act, Ted Hope, The Coup, The Guillotine, The Ice Storm, threat of violence, unions, United Steelworkers, USW, Walmart, Walter Riley, Washtenaw Eviction and Foreclosure Defense, we need a revolution, WEFD, Woodruff's, work stoppage, World Trade Center | 32 Comments

Housing incentives for municipal employees… is now the right time?

By Mark | November 29, 2011

A few days ago, in a post about the recent string of downtown burglaries, I noted that, given that we have fewer police on the streets these days due to budget cuts, it might help if those police officers that we did have working for the City, actually lived here. I don’t know that it […]

Posted in Detroit, Ideas, Ypsilanti | Also tagged Eastern Michigan University, Elvis Costello, EMU, getting more local employees to live in Ypsilanti, housing, housing incintives, Lee Azus, Live Downtown, municipal employees, Murph, puppet public service employees, residency, residency rule, Susan Martin, Ypsilanti Fire Department, Ypsilanti police department, Ypsilanti Township | 21 Comments

UC Davis Chancellor escorted from her office as hundreds of students line her path, staring in deafening silence

By Mark | November 20, 2011

By now, you’ve probably seen the the footage of the UC Davis students being pepper sprayed. It’s disgusting stuff. The students are sitting down in a line, across a sidewalk, protesting recent tuition hires, and, ironically enough, episodes of police brutality elsewhere in the University of California system. They are peaceful. No one is yelling. […]

Posted in Civil Liberties, Other, Uncategorized | Also tagged bullying, Celeste Langan, coughing up blood, Eastern Michigan University, Geoffrey O’Brien, Glen Greenwald, higher education, Joe Paterno, John Pike, kids today, Linda Katehi, Linda P.B. Katehi, Nathan Brown, non-violence, Penn State, pepper spray, police state, Robert Hass, shame, solidarity, student activism, students today aren't worth a damn, surveilance, surveillance culture, Surveillance State, tuition protests, UC Berkeley, UC Davis, University of California, University of Michigan, violence vs non-violence, walk of shame | 22 Comments

Which of these three videos do you find most upsetting?

By Mark | November 19, 2011

First, we have video of a peacefully protesting Iraq war veteran by the name of Kayvan Sabehgi being severely beaten by Oakland riot police. It’s being reported that his spleen was lacerated in the attack. Next, we have Daily Show corespondent Samantha Bee exposing the class divisions taking shape between protesters in Zuccotti Park. The […]