Category
Another white cop shoots unarmed black man -- this time for following orders (Video)
On Wednesday, South Carolina state trooper Sean Groubert, 31, was
arrested and charged with assault and battery of a high and aggravated
nature after his dashboard camera surfaced and showed the unnecessary,
unwarranted, and presumably illegal attack.
The video clearly shows Groubert firing at Levar
Jones, a black motorist, at point-blank range as Jones reached into his
vehicle to retrieve his driver's license – at Groubert's request.
After the shooting stops, Groubert is heard telling Jones that he “stopped” him because of a seat belt violation.
The dirty details:
Jones pulls his white SUV into a Shell gas station/convenience store.
His vehicle was completely stopped. He removed his seat belt and exited
the vehicle.
Groubert pulls up on him and asks, “Can I see your license please?”
Jones then turns back toward the still open door to get his license from the vehicle.
Groubert in a panic and rage immediately begins screaming, “Get out
of the car! Get out of the car!” and begins shooting at the unarmed
Jones. Jones had just left his job. He turns and faces this policeman,
throws his hands high into the air with his right hand holding onto his
wallet.
But the officer continues to fire upon him even while his hands are up.
Amazingly – and thankfully – of the total of four shots only one hit Jones in the hip, and his injury is not life-threatening.
Commentary
A recent study has shown that a black man is killed by white police officers, “security” agents, or white vigilante types every 28 hours.
For those many, many white people – “conservative,” liberal,
libertarian, or of any other political persuasion – who insist that
“Driving While Black” (DWB) springs from black folks' mass paranoia, or a
trigger-happy penchant to play the so-called “race card,” this story
with its undeniable video should convince even the most ardent white
supremacists that DWB is a real and present danger each and every time a
black person turns the ignition in his or her vehicle.
This time, however, because of (and only because of) the video evidence, it appears that at
least a modicum of “justice” may will out. This cop is actually facing
criminal charges for his actions and, indeed, has already been fired.
According to The State, former officer Groubert could get 20 years in prison upon conviction.
Look carefully at this footage. Listen carefully as well. Jones
repeatedly asks this cop why he shot him. Finally, Groubert says he
stopped him for not wearing his seat belt.
The video shows that Groubert actually passed Jones, backed up, and then approached him.
After being shot, the cop orders Jones to the ground, hands behind
his back. Jones is still trying to figure out why this is happening.
“Why did you shoot me?” he asks. “Sir, I was just doing what you
asked....getting my license.”
The cop finally says he shot Jones because he reached head first into
his car after what he just knew was a gun. He is heard saying as much
just before he fires at Jones who has his back turned to the officer.
Jones, befuddled and injured, says, “I'm sorry.”
The cop never once apologizes for shooting him.
Every 28 hours.
This shocking (and graphic) video may be seen here.
References
http://www.brothersonsports.com/shocking-video-of-south-carolina-cop-shooting-black-man-for-following-instructions/#prettyPhoto
http://abcnews.go.com/US/dashcam-captures-south-carolina-trooper-shooting-unarmed-man/story?id=25749239
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/09/25/sc-trooper-faces-felony-assault-charge-after-shooting-unarmed-man-during/
http://www.wltx.com/story/news/local/2014/09/24/video-released-released-of-trooper-involved-shooting/16187305/
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/09/24/ex-trooper-who-shot-unarmed-man-faces-charges/16178961/
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/1-black-man-killed-every-28-hours-police-or-vigilantes-america-perpetually-war-its
Current Events
23-year-old Hillary's letter to Chicago 'radical' Saul Alinsky reveals search for truth
As Hillary Clinton gears up for another expected run for the White
House, a previously unpublished 1971 letter between the erstwhile
Secretary of State, US Senator, First Lady and the late leftist and
Chicago-based “community organizer” Saul Alinsky has been published.
The Washington Free Beacon posted a 1971 letter
from the then 23-year-old law school graduate revealing her
still-forming ideological bent and shedding considerable light, with
20-20 hindsight, on Hillary's future intellectual development.
“Dear Saul,” the letter begins. “When is that new book [Rules for
Radicals] coming out—or has it come and I somehow missed the fulfillment
of Revelation?”
“Rules” was (and still is among many former, current and upcoming
“radicals") considered the bible for those who are determined to effect
radical change in this nation-state.
The future New York senator continued:
“I have just had my one-thousandth conversation about Reveille [for
Radicals – Alinsky's prior tome] and need some new material to throw at
people.”
Alinsky’s widely read 1946 practical and theoretical guidebook on the
ways and means of effective (results-oriented) community organizing
became a staple among and required reading for those in the 1960s who
protested America's war against Vietnam, demanded civil and human
rights, Black Power and women's rights. (The Gay Liberation Movement was
in its infancy at the time).
Future First Lady Clinton's '71 letter to Alinsky acknowledged and
thanked him for his work in bringing anti-war and human rights movements
to the "mainstream" of American political discourse -- and for his
profound effects in helping focus her personal world view:
“If I never thanked you for the encouraging words of last spring in
the midst of the Yale-Cambodia madness, I do so now,” wrote Clinton. At
the time, she had just played the role of “moderator” during a Yale
University student election as to whether that campus should join other
campuses which were calling for a nationwide anti-Vietnam War student
strike. She had just graduated and moved to California.
“I am living in Berkeley and working in Oakland for the summer and
would love to see you,” Clinton wrote. “Let me know if there is any
chance of our getting together.”
As to her law school experience, Clinton told Alinsky that she had
“survived law school, slightly bruised, with my belief in and zest for
organizing intact.”
“The more I’ve seen of places like Yale Law
School and the people who haunt them," Clinton wrote, "the more
convinced I am that we have the serious business and joy of much work
ahead, — if the commitment to a free and open society is ever going to
mean more than eloquence and frustration."
The former Republican and “Goldwater Girl” had first met Alinsky as a student at Wellesley in1969.
Alinsky's “Reveille” encouraged community organizers to "fan the
latent hostilities" of poor whites, blacks and browns of the ghettoized
cities while "search[ing] out controversy and issues, rather than avoid
them."
The book Clinton was so eagarly anticipating urged organizers to
"Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it," Alinsky
wrote.
In an indication that she is not and never has been the total
and unrepentant "radical" which today's right loves to aver, she
presciently added this little gem to her l971 letter to Alinsky:
"Hopefully we can have a good argument sometime in the future."
Alinsky's secretary, Georgia Harper, responded
to Clinton's letter telling her that the boss was away on a six-week
trip to Southeast Asia, but that she had taken the liberty to read
Clinton's letter anyway.
“Since I know his feelings about you I took the
liberty of opening your letter because I didn’t want something urgent
to wait for two weeks,” Harper wrote in the July 13, 1971, response.
“And I’m glad I did.”
“Mr. Alinsky will be in San Francisco, staying
at the Hilton Inn at the airport on Monday and Tuesday, July 26 and 27,”
Harper added. “I know he would like to have you call him so that if
there is a chance in his schedule maybe you can get together.”
Interestingly, according to Clinton's 2004
memoir, "Living History," Alinsky had offered her a job after she
finished at Wellesley, but she turned him down in favor of an Ivy League
legal education.
“He offered me the chance to work with him when
I graduated from college, and he was disappointed that I decided
instead to go to law school,” she wrote. “[He] said I would be wasting
my time, but my decision was an expression of my belief that the system
could be changed from within.”
Saul Alinsky
Yes. For the right wing, conservatives, the Tea Party, et al., Saul
Alinsky had a real and present influence in the intellectual development
of both Hillary Clinton (and Barack Obama). Both Clinton and Obama
studied and to a greater or lesser extent followed his methods of
political organization of the poor and marginal.
Thanks to the right wing's takeover of most media outlets (save the
Internet!), Saul Alinsky has come down to us as a shadowy, radical
”Chicago-style” political bogeyman rather than as the actual political
philosopher and grass roots activist whose deep-seated beliefs and
practical application thereof helped to fuel the often real radicalism
of the 1960s. His true meaning and significance in shaping American
politics has therefore been virtually completely obscured by a
correspondent right wing radicalism which has assigned Alinsky,
his motives, and his progidies to an undifferentiated "left wing" world
filled to overflowing only with those who "hate" all things “American.”
This process of delegitimizing Alinsky had begun within his lifetime,
and 23-year-old future presidential candidate Hillary Clinton
recognized both Alinsky's significance and the right's efforts to
discredit him even then. “You are being rediscovered again as the New
Left–type politicos are finally beginning to think seriously about the
hard work and mechanics of organizing,” she wrote.
“Hopefully we can have a good argument sometime in the future.” I
repeat and emphasize these words of young Hillary Clinton because they
capture the mutual respect she and Alinsky shared while simultaneously
acknowledging that there were significant areas of disagreement between
the two.
Thus, these words indicate that Hillary Clinton was no “right” or
“left” wing ideologue – at least not at the time this letter was written
in 1971.
On the contrary, like most young people during those turbulent times
and at that highly impressionable age, she was deeply involved in an
active search for the truth.
References
http://news.yahoo.com/hillary-clinton-saul-alinsky-letters-155526953.html
http://freebeacon.com/politics/the-hillary-letters/
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/09/22/hillary-letters-clinton-saul-alinsky-correspondence-revealed/
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/09/saul-alinsky-secretly-controls-hillary-too.html
