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Monday, December 8, 2014

Assignment 8: Public events, representation and experience. More anger, action at Ferguson Commission meeting : News

Assignment 8: Compare this representation of the second Ferguson Meeting (Dec. 8, 2014), with various twitter feeds from/regarding the same meeting.  Would be better if one were also present at the meeting itself, to triangulate.  Even better with interviews and engagements with participants.

Notes, Dec. 8, 2014. 11:26 PM Having been reading Tweets on the Ferguson Commission's second meeting this evening, I then check the article posted to the Post-Dispatch site.  The article is unobjectionable (til further review).  However, absent, on first glance, from the Post-Dispatch report: On Twitter we see a different story: The PTSD spoken of by those who reacted viscerally, emotionally, and with outrage to Chief Dotson's attempt to establish a single narrative of events.  People also reacted to heavy police presence, itself a trigger for those already traumatized by police action.  Finally, there was a sense of indignation that Chief Dotson would speak in a way that sought to justify police actions, including the killing of Vonderitt Myers, while Vonderitt's parents were present, and the meeting itself was being held close to the site where Vonderitt was killed.

How does a public event get represented?  How does it get experienced?  What does this say about the state tactic of creating a "commission" as a path to supposed solutions?

More anger, action at Ferguson Commission meeting : News

Addendum, 12:15 AM.  And, here's reporter David Hunn's own earlier tweet, left, from the meeting (with a response), that gets at some of the things that don't make it to the newspaper article itself:

Addendum, Dec. 9, 2014, 12:43 PM.  Consider St Louis Public Radio's report (J Rosenbaum) on the event, with some audio of Chief Dotson's remarks and audience feedback.


Addendum, Dec. 11, 2014. 9:50 AM.  Here is the Ferguson Commission's own description of the meeting.

Michael Brown witness Dorian Johnson hired to do work for city of St. Louis : News

Michael Brown witness Dorian Johnson hired to do work for city of St. Louis : News

Chicago: Police Using Iraq/Afghan US Military Music-as-Intimidation Strategies on American Citizens?

You cannot make this stuff up.  File under militarization?  Or, are there historical precedents here in the USA?



Full story here:  http://chicagoist.com/2014/12/08/cpd_squad_car_blasts_sweet_home_ala.php

For reference:

US Miitary used AC/DC in neighborhood operations in Iraq.  From Boots on the Ground, (Clint Wills, ed), p. 277 (left).

US Military Interrogators also blast AC/DC, Eminem, Metallica to 'break' prisoners in interrogation sessions at Guantanamo and elsewhere.  And music fused with combat missions, "Top 10 Songs for Combat."



Articulations: Education/Ferguson -- one angle here: Student Transfer Debate Has New Element: Ferguson

STL NPR, Dale Singer:
http://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/student-transfer-debate-has-new-element-ferguson

Tactics, strategies, and symbolism: Fans' group burns Rams gear -- interpret & discuss


Group Burns Rams Gear, Boycotts Team Over Players' Hands Up Gesture

Steph Lecci - STL Public Radio

Paul Eaton of Piedmont burns a Rams sweatshirt during an event calling for a boycott of the team on Sunday in Imperial.
Credit Stephanie Lecci

Where do you stand? St Louis Students in Solidarity queries Chancellor Wrighton

http://www.studlife.com/forum/letter-to-the-editor/2014/12/08/letter-to-the-editor-neutrality-is-a-fallacy/

WUSTL alum Danielle Hayes reflects on race, racism and (high-school) student mobilizing in Cleveland, OH

"Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public." Dr. Cornell West

The Seniors and I have been tackling the origins of race and racism in Humanities.  Last week, we spent two days in rigorous seminars in which we discussed Jim Crow Laws, the lack of Indictment for Officer Wilson, the shooting of Tamir Rice, James Baldwin's "Letter to my Nephew" and the Principles of Nonviolent Resistance. I drove home on Tuesday, feeling spent and simultaneously aware that I get to "go home" in a way that our students of color do not.  As I was driving home on the Shoreway, police lights caught my eyes up ahead, and as I came out from underneath an underpass, I saw a mass of people move onto the highway.


I met eyes with a protestor who waved to me in invitation. I jumped out of the car, grateful for the opportunity to stand in solidarity, and joined in the powerful song of so many voices chanting "Black Lives Matter" and "No Justice, No Peace" or perhaps "Know Justice, Know Peace." We walked East along the Shoreway among dozens of stopped cars while other people began to block traffic heading in the opposite direction.  

Just when I thought my heart could not swell up any more,  I heard a familiar voice say "Ms.Hayes!" I turned around just in time to receive hugs from two of our seniors, Dion and Corey.


Students.

I was so honored to be marching alongside these young men, and to see them share their experience on Monday with their classmates. Dion later said, "I felt that we let the whole city know that we should not, and will not, let injustice continue. I feel like we made history that day, and I am so proud of Cleveland." Similar peaceful protests took place all over the country--in NYC, LA, Atlanta, Boston and other major cities and small towns. 

May we be reminded by the words of Dr. Cornell West that our work--from the minutiae of our tone when speaking to an individual student to the massive task of transforming society--must spring from the same origin.



Ms. Danielle Hayes 
Teacher | Humanities & Photography
Saint Martin de Porres High School 

Cleveland, Ohio 44102 

Ferguson Commission meetings, coming up: fieldwork/streetwork starts now...

http://stlpositivechange.org/newsroom/release/ferguson-commission-announces-location-second-meeting-shaw-neighborhood-mon-dec-8


"Kettling": in Berkeley, police strategy, 'crowd' control,

Tactics, courage, women leading the way: Meet the BART-stopping woman behind “Black Lives Matter” (Grist)

Meet the BART-stopping woman behind “Black Lives Matter”

http://grist.org/politics/stopping-a-bart-train-in-michael-browns-name/


Picture is from, and see also: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/11/28/1348086/-Breaking-Black-Lives-Matter-Protesters-Shut-Down-BART-at-West-Oakland-Station#


From  Heather Smith, Grist:
"Last Friday, I found myself trapped in a BART station in San Francisco, listening to an announcement that all train traffic into and out of Oakland was suspended due to “civil insurrection.” Because we live in the future, I was able to sit there, underground, and read about what was happening. About an hour earlier, a group of 14 people had walked into the West Oakland BART station, hung a banner over the side that read “Black Lives Matter” — the adopted slogan of those who condemned the recent decision of a grand jury to refuse to punish a police officer, Darren Wilson, for shooting an unarmed teenager, Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Mo.
The protesters then walked into a BART car headed for San Francisco and locked themselves down to the safety rails inside with cables and bicycle u-locks. Then they locked themselves to each other, forming a human chain that extended out of the car and onto the platform. With the doors blocked, the train couldn’t leave the station. Their goal was to shut down BART for four and a half hours — the length of time that Michael Brown’s body lay in the street. … READ ON HERE."

Tuesday, December 2, 2014

This is a thing: Movement Spaces and Police Represssion, the MoKabe's Case. Show me what Democracy looks like - MoKaBe's gassing 11-24-14

MoKabe's coffeehouse, emerged as a center for organizers over days of struggle.  The CopTalk blog and various others had already been attacking and threatening MoKaBe's.  After the non-indictment, activists taking shelter there were gassed, some arrested, by police on November 24.

Video posted by @RebelutionaryZ  (Original, uncut)


December 11, Riverfront Times  story looking into the gas attack, police tactics, and Chief Dotson's responses.  And, new video edited and released by activists (Video posted by @RebelutionaryZ), shows more:

Students in north St. Louis County schools walk out in protest : News

Students in north St. Louis County schools walk out in protest : News

Ferguson Commission (short video) 20141201

Angry residents interrupt Ferguson Commission's first meeting : News

Angry residents interrupt Ferguson Commission's first meeting : News

Sunday, November 30, 2014

Assignment #7: Analyze this. SLPOA calls for Rams players to be "disciplined" and to apologize for hands up gesture.

After some Rams players did this before the game on Sunday November 30, 2014:


The St Louis Police Officers Association made this statement:

http://www.ksdk.com/story/news/local/2014/11/30/stl-police-officers-association-condemns-rams-display/19721979/?hootPostID=56e4d621f410c5ee1ef0c0b0696f34f8 

Some twitter activists considered the SLPOA language to be reflective of a plantation 'overseer's' mentality.   Against the SLPOA's call for the NFL to punish these players, one  commenter on the Deadspin story had this to say:

The president of the SLPOA is Jeff Roorda, who inspires both strong support and vehement opposition in the rapidly polarizing field of St. Louis discourse on Ferguson. Shaun King explores some aspects of Roorda's political history here.

The Rams won the game that day, against the Oakland Raiders, 52-0.

And then there's this movement in Ferguson too: Police shut down mysterious 'Oath Keepers' guarding rooftops in downtown Ferguson : News

Police shut down mysterious 'Oath Keepers' guarding rooftops in downtown Ferguson : News

Public School Activism & Movements & the University Campus: The TFA Debate

Assignment #6: Analyzing strategy.

Social movement strategies: the (on-line) petition tied to a pledge for individual/institutional action (boycott/ban), circulated via Twitter.

A) Should university faculty take such positions?  (whether you agree or not)
B) Where does this strategy fit into wider repertoires of contention?
C) What are the moral, empirical and ideological foundations (the knowledge claims) that sustain this strategy and this position?

https://www.change.org/p/university-faculty-ban-teach-for-america-recruiters-from-your-classrooms