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Black Lives Matter Tag

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 23, 2015 25 Comments
We previously reported how, on Monday, January 19, 2015, Anti-Israel activists blocked the San Mateo - Hayward Bridge. While the protest ostensibly was about the #BlackLivesMatter movement and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, it was hijacked as so many such protests are by the anti-Israel contingent, just like in Ferguson and to a lesser extent in New York City during the Eric Garner protests. Subsequent to that initial report, we have learned that it was much worse than originally thought. The tactics used were designed to cause maximum traffic disruption and mayhem, including protester cars being abandoned on the roadway, resulting in several car crashes and emergency vehicles being blocked. The activists used a dangerous tactic of blocking both directions initially, making the scene inaccessible initially to emergency vehicles:
Over 100 Stanford students and community members demonstrating against police brutality temporarily shut down the San Mateo-Hayward Bridge Monday afternoon, snarling the evening commute. The group made their way on eastbound and westbound lanes of state Highway 92 on the bridge at the high-rise around 4:50 p.m., CHP Officer Daniel Hill said. The protesters had been dropped off by cars on westbound lanes and briefly made their way to both sides of the freeway, he said. As of shortly after 5 p.m., eastbound lanes were reopened for motorists heading to Hayward but westbound lanes were still closed off for cars traveling to Foster City, Van Eckhardt said. Drivers were seen turning around at the toll plaza and going the wrong way on the bridge as CHP tried to find tow trucks to take away abandoned cars left on the bridge by protesters. The bridge was reopened shortly before 5:30 p.m.
[caption id="attachment_113857" align="alignnone" width="600"]https://twitter.com/farah_salazar/status/558214869648814080 (Image via Farah Salazar Twitter)[/caption] In this video taken by a stalled driver on the other side of the highway, you can see how initially traffic was backed up on both sides creating a dangerous situation high on the span (the initial comments seem to indicate the drivers thought it was an abortion protest until they got closer):

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 20, 2015 18 Comments
Don't say I didn't warn you about how anti-Israel activists have set on a deliberate course to hijack the Ferguson and #BlackLivesMatters protests to their own anti-Israel agenda: It started in Ferguson, then the Eric Garner protests, and is being pushed by the anti-Israel Students for Justice in Palestine through groups like Dream Defenders, which carries a Tides Foundation logo on it's website.  Dream Defenders was responsible for Marc Lamont Hill's trip to "Palestine" in which he recorded a video supporting "Revolutionary Struggle" against Israel. http://youtu.be/L2yMMdPTQ30 A key player in the effort to turn the #BlackLivesMatter movement into an anti-Israel movement is recently graduated Stanford student and SJP activist Kristian Davis Bailey, who writes not only for the anti-Zionist Mondoweiss website, but also has been promoting the effort in Ebony Magazine.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on January 18, 2015 38 Comments
Last Thursday protesters exploiting the #BlackLivesMatters movement as an excuse for anarchy blocked traffic on Route 93, a key highway leading into Boston:
Protesters affiliated with the activist group Black Lives Matter carried out their most audacious and disruptive demonstration yet in the Boston area Thursday, blocking the largest highway into the city, snarling rush-hour traffic, and stopping an ambulance in its tracks. In a pair of coordinated surprise actions that angered commuters, the protesters formed human barricades on Interstate 93 north of the city in Medford, and south, in Milton. Some put barrels filled with concrete on the highway and chained themselves to them. Twenty-nine protesters were arrested. The well-organized protests were carried out on Martin Luther King’s birthday by activists calling attention to the deaths of unarmed black men at the hands of police in Missouri and New York.
The protesters are being prosecuted, more vigorously than usually happens, perhaps because at least two ambulances had to be rerouted due to the traffic jam.

Posted by Amy Miller on January 05, 2015 29 Comments
Teachers in the San Francisco United School District are concerned about race. In an area where schools are almost 90% non-white, you'd expect that an emphasis on cultural diversity would happen by default, and that teachers wouldn't need the help of an institutionalized curriculum to get the job done. But in the wake of the Ferguson protests and rise of the "Black Lives Matter" movement, five teachers from the San Francisco area have teamed up to provide other educators with a guide to teaching about the Michael Brown shooting, the Ferguson protests, and race-based social justice movements. From the San Francisco Examiner:
Chalida Anusasananan, a teacher librarian at Everett Middle School who helped launch the resource guide, said both incidents and the subsequent protests have hit home with many public-school students in San Francisco, where nearly 90 percent are nonwhite. "We wanted to make sure that teachers had a means to teach what students were talking about with their families, or seeing on the news, or feeling every day," Anusasananan said. The resources, posted to the SFUSD's LibGuide page, includes the grand jury documents, poetry, videos and graphics, readings, and lesson plans and activities for elementary, middle and high school students. "What has to happen first and foremost is to create a safe space in the classroom for young people to talk about these things," said Karen Zapata, a humanities teacher at June Jordan High School and a co-founder of the grass-roots organization Teachers 4 Social Justice. "What's happened affects young people on an emotional level."
I took a look at the online curriculum provided by the five teachers, and it's pretty much what you'd expect to see. I took some screenshots: Screen Shot 2015-01-05 at 1.08.01 PM

Posted by Amy Miller on December 23, 2014 8 Comments
Bloomington City Attorney Sandra Johnson is making moves to hold accountable the organizers of this past Saturday's "Black Lives Matter" protest at the Mall of America. Officers were present on-site, and once the chanting started, moved to close almost 100 stores and several entrances to the mall. I say "moved to" as opposed to "were forced to" because the shutdown occurred as soon as the protests began, and there were no reports of some sort of violent instigating event; but perhaps it's a good thing the officers moved so quickly, based on how mall employees describe what happened next: From CBS Minnesota:
Nate Bash works at one store near the rotunda, which he didn’t want us to name. “You had people yelling and screaming inside the mall that wanted out and you had people yelling and screaming outside the mall that wanted in,” he said. “I would say the mall was less than half as busy as it should have been considering what day it was.” “This was a powder keg just waiting for a match,” said Johnson.
Police officers are busy using social media in an attempt to single out the organizers (arresting every single protester would be chaos, and not worth the trouble;) their goal is to target the organizers and participants who encouraged others to come to the mall even after officials made moves to emphasize that the Mall of America is privately owned, and those disrutping business would be asked to leave. Officials don't yet know how much money was lost during the shutdown, but they're throwing around words like "staggering," so I'm willing to assume that losses were well worth the effort to track these people down and file a lawsuit.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 12, 2014 25 Comments
College Insurrection and others recently reported how the President of Smith College apologized to the student body for using the term "All Lives Matter" rather than "Black Lives Matter." A Cornell engineering student just tweeted to me about a similar statement from the Chief of the Cornell University Police, Kathy Zoner, in an all campus email. https://twitter.com/TTimeOnThe19th/status/543545839927693312 I checked my own email, and sure enough, there it was: Cornell Police #ALLLIVESMATTER That original message from the week before was:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 07, 2014 11 Comments
Yes, I agree that #BlackLivesMatter. So do all other lives, including the lives of police (of all races) who keep us from the abyss. Remember Officer David Smith never lived to tell about enraged perp who stole his service gun. Someone started a hashtag, #PoliceLivesMatter. Seems worth retweeting some of these tweets, don't ya think?

Posted by Amy Miller on December 04, 2014 16 Comments
The photograph featured above surfaced shortly after a grand jury in Missouri refused to indict police officer Darren Wilson for the shooting death of Michael Brown. In a sea of memes, photoshops, and Twitter commentary, the picture went viral alongside its companion photograph (courtesy of Politifact): politifact-photos-Ferguson_sign_original Two different photographs, one very clearly photoshopped to provide some social commentary on a quickly spiraling situation. Predictably, the photograph enraged some, delighted others, but no one with two brain cells to rub together believed that the "rob a store" version of the photograph was real. Politifact, however, dove in headfirst to provide us with an analysis no one asked for (emphasis mine):

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on December 01, 2014 9 Comments
Demonstrations called "Hands Up Walk Out" are taking place all over the country today. According to the event website:

In the wake of events in the last weeks, including the non-indictment in the killing of Mike Brown and the senseless killings of Akai Gurley in New York and 12-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland, our communities are hurting and justifiably angered. What gives us hope in this moment of pain and anguish is the thousands of people who have poured into the streets of America to demand change.

From the #ShutItDown actions that have blocked major highways and intersections to the #BlackoutBlackFriday protests,the message is clear: No more business as usual. We can no longer do what we have always done and cooperate with a system that does not respect Black Lives. We will only get the change we want if we disrupt the daily order and insists that Black Lives Matter. If that means shutting down the entire country, that’s what we’ll do.

On Monday, Dec 1st people around the country will be walking out of their schools and places of work in solidarity with Ferguson communities across the country effected by police violence.

Where? It can be any central location at your school or the area where you work . Consider if there is a place that has relevance to social justice such as a monument, chapel, or scene of previous protests.

"Hands Up" refers to early reports that suggested Mike Brown had his hands up in the air as a sign of surrender when he was shot by police officer, Darren Wilson. Later, it was revealed this was not true.

Participants of "Hands Up Walk Out" were encouraged to post photos of their events online.

Not surprisingly, the largest turnouts seemed to have occurred at ivy league campuses and leftist organized marches, but even those were not particularly large. The rest? They were itty bitty. Take a look:
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