Showing posts with label police state. Show all posts
Showing posts with label police state. Show all posts

Thursday, May 29, 2014

Are you just going to keep watching NYPD police brutality videos online ?

How Can NYC Police Reform Activists Break Free From The Veal Pen ?

In February, NYPD officers used unnecessary and brutal force to detain and arrest an innocent man after he deboarded the Bx12 bus. The New York Daily News wrote a widely cited article about the police department's over-use of force in that incident. In a viral video of the attack, the innocent man screamed for help, asking of bystanders, "Are you just going to watch this sh-t ?"

Police commissioner William Bratton enforces a "broken windows" theory of policing that deliberately targets the poor, people of color, and other minorities for harassment. If the NYPD is left unreformed, then its foreseeable pattern will be more incidents of brutality. And the inevitable question we will all face each time that more and more of these incidents are recorded and posted online will be, "Are we just going to watch these videos -- and do nothing else ?"

In an excerpt of the video of the attack, we ask you this very question :

Join us for a police reform workshop at this year's Left Forum, where we will engage in activities to prompt community groups to renew their calls for reform. To attend the workshop, you need to register to attend the Left Forum ; after that, you can attend other workshops or panels, as well.

ATTEND OUR WORKSHOP : How can NYC police reform activists break free from the "veal pen" ?

Date : Saturday, May 31, 2014

Time : 3:20 p.m. - 4:50 p.m.

Place : 524 West 59th Street, Manhattan -- Session 3, Room 1.92

Join us for an intensive workshop designed to challenge groups and activists, who have voluntarily de-escalated political pressure for police reform by climbing into the "veal pen" following the election of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.

Registration is required to attend the Left Forum.

REGISTER HERE NOW

veal pen
\ vēl pɛn \
noun

a holding cell, where young cattle and activists are restrained to keep their bodies tender, until all of their strengths atrophy in preparation for being butchered by the system.

If you want to take part in the conversation to free activists and community groups from the "veal pen," please join us for this important workshop.

Veal Pen Workshop - The Left Forum 2014 photo VealPenGraphicFacebookEvent_zpse9d5225c.jpg

2014-05-29 Veal Pen Police Reform Workshop - Movement Action Planning - Flyer (Final) by VealPen2014

Thursday, May 15, 2014

Register for the Left Forum to attend the police reform "Veal Pen" Workshop

How Can NYC Police Reform Activists Break Free from the Veal Pen ?

Veal Pen Workshop - The Left Forum 2014 photo VealPenGraphicFacebookEvent_zpse9d5225c.jpg

Workshop : How Can NYC Police Reform Activists Break Free from the Veal Pen ?
Date : Saturday, May 31, 2014
Time : 03:20 p.m. - 04:50 p.m.
Place : Session 3, Room 1.92, 540 West 59 Street, New York, NY 10019

Registration is required to attend the Left Forum 2014 : Register here.

Jane Hamsher appropriated the term “veal pen” to describe how the Obama administration subjugates liberal groups and activists in order to demobilize political pressure for reform from the Democratic left. Join us for an intensive workshop designed to challenge groups and activists, who have voluntarily de-escalated political pressure for police reform following the election of New York Mayor Bill de Blasio. To demobilize some police reform groups, lobbyists loyal to the mayor now control the media relations for these reform groups. What has been removed from the messaging from these groups has been the urgency for reform that was present before the mayor won last year’s election. In this workshop, designed for experienced activists, we will undertake a specific action and then strategize about how to create new opportunities for organizing in the area of police reform against a backdrop of this new political landscape. In a real "Veal Pen," the bodies of calves atrophy by design. Under the de Blasio administration, which is sensitive to political pressure from the Democratic left as is President Obama, activists’ ideas for police reform are meant to atrophy by design. Since this workshop is designed to overcome frustrations faced by activists, who refuse to be demobilized, the rigorous activities are intended to stretch participants’ ideas and to draw attention to the Veal Pen.

Monday, May 12, 2014

Fifty years after Griswold v. Connecticut, NYPD to accommodate safer sex, but stops short of recognizing privacy rights to contraception [UPDATED]

2013-04-11 Protest against Christine Quinn - Condom Banner photo Image_zps30c06990.jpg

At a nighttime protest in Jackson Heights, Queens, last year, activists held up a banner with a giant drawing of condom locked in a police handcuff to represent the NYPD's criminalization of the use of contraception.

New York Police Department to stop criminalizing use of contraception -- in some cases

Advocates for sex workers and improved public health won a major concession from the New York Police Department's on-going oppression against citizens when police officials announced that they would stop seizing reproductive contraceptives, namely, condoms, as evidence of criminality in police crackdowns against sex workers.

Police announced the change in policy after years of demands from activists that the police were stigmatizing the use of condoms, so much so that health officials had long criticized the police practice as undermining their efforts to protect sex workers from disease. In fact, during the 15 years that former Council Speaker Christine Quinn was in public office, she was the city's most visible female and LGBT politician, and she never made any advancement on overturning the police criminalization of condoms. Indeed, under her incumbency, police biases against trans and gender non-conforming citizens extended the anti-condom dragnet against sex workers to include members of the LGBT community. In several media reports, LGBT New Yorkers attested to being harassed, arrested, and stigmatized by the police for innocently carrying contraception -- in direct violation of their privacy rights. What is more, many HIV/AIDS activists had long objected to the police's stigmatization of the use of condoms as flying in the face of advice from city health officials, who advocated their use for safer sex as a way to decrease the incidence of sexually-transmitted diseases and to prevent unwanted pregnancies. For years, if New Yorkers were caught carrying condoms, the prophylactics could be used as criminal evidence in sex worker prosecution cases -- even though the city's Department of Health distributed condoms to all New Yorkers to promote safer sex and greater public health.

In announcing their change in policy today, NYPD officials carved out a backdoor loophole to retain the right to use condoms as evidence in sex trafficking cases, however.

The nominal changes in NYPD condom policy, being spun under the guise as an advancement to public health, comes almost 50 years since the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in the landmark 1965 case of Griswold v. Connecticut that overturned a state law that had criminalized the use of contraception. In The New York Times article posted to their Web site, there was no mention by police as according any reasoning in the policy change to respect New Yorkers' right to privacy. Nor was it mentioned whether police would stop menacing LGBT New Yorkers as part of its new compromised policy. In respect of reproductive rights, it was never explained how police departments across the United States could opt out of compliance in the first place with the Griswold decision.

The partial backpedal on the condom policy is the NYPD's latest half-measure at reform since the election of Mayor Bill de Blasio. Mr. de Blasio campaigned to end the "stop-and-frisk era," but the mayor contradicted his campaign promise by making a regressive appointment of William Bratton as the city's new police commissioner. Commissioner Bratton has promised to continue to use the controversial police tacking known as stop-and-frisk, which has been ruled to be unconstitutional for its racist impact on the community. Mr. de Blasio also campaigned on the promise to stop the arrests of New Yorkers carrying small amounts of marijuana, but Commissioner Bratton's arrest rate for marijuana possession is actually up from the rate of his predecessor, Raymond Kelly. The NYPD has also promised to disband a controversial demographics unit, which targeted New York's Muslim community, but the police department continues to its practice of racial and religious profiling, and surveillance, of Muslims. As Mayor de Blasio tries to resolve many outstanding litigation cases against the police department over its killing of unarmed, innocent civilians and its policy of using brutality against New Yorkers, the de Blasio administration seems to be neglecting long outstanding cases of minority plaintiffs, such as the Central Park 5, further causing tensions over the new administration's insensitivity to the concerns of people long oppressed by the police. Since Mayor de Blasio supports Commissioner Bratton's "broken windows theory" of policing, the NYPD is expected to continue to target its aggressive policing tactics against the city's poor and people of color.

The government compromises its citizens' right to privacy in the new surveillance state, but what happens to citizens' other fundamental rights that are predicated on privacy ?

Meghan Newcomer, a brilliant future lawyer graduating this year from Fordham Law School, published a "Pelican Brief" of sorts last year in the Fordham Law Review entitled, "Can Condoms be Compelling ? Examining the State Interest in Confiscating Condoms from Suspected Sex Workers," about the criminal crackdown by police departments in New York City, Washington, DC, and Los Angeles against sex workers carrying condoms. In Ms. Newcomer's legal analysis, she examined the government's burden in proving it could violate the fundamental right to contraception, and she found that the government could not achieve a compelling state reason to do so. Ms. Newcomer expertly framed her legal reasoning around the constitutional privacy rights established under the landmark Griswold case and other related rulings and laws. After examining the law, Ms. Newcomer concluded in her article that :

Because the Supreme Court has identified a right for all individuals to be free from state interference in their choice of whether to use contraceptive devices, state actors confiscating condoms from suspected sex workers infringes on that constitutionally protected privacy right. The government’s lack of a compelling state interest in taking condoms, coupled with the failure to narrowly tailor the policy so as to involve the least restrictive infringement of the right, means that the conduct cannot survive strict scrutiny. For this reason, New York City, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles are enforcing unconstitutional policies and must stop confiscating condoms from suspected sex workers.

There are more issues that need review, which were not the focus of Ms. Newcomer's fascinating article in the Fordham Law Review. Since New York City officials, privacy rights advocates, and women's rights groups are not raising alarms about the privacy violations of the police department's condom policy, are citizens basically consenting to the government's gutting of the Griswold decision ?

In the time since the Supreme Court issued its ruling in the Griswold case, the impact of the court's decision has been unmistakable in expanding constitutional rights to privacy in subsequent jurisprudence. Prior to Griswold, there was no court case that found a privacy right guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution. After Griswold, the fundamental right to privacy was found from the court's interpretation of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Further landmark Supreme Court case decisions, such as Roe v. Wade, Bowers v. Hardwick, and Lawrence v. Texas, the latter which expanded Bowers by overturning its narrower interpretation, were made possible because of legal precedent that citizens' privacy was protected by the due process clause.

With police departments essentially given discretion to opt out of the law established by the Griswold decision, advocates for police reform are focused on the public health aspects of the dangerous condom policy. Meanwhile, silent are citizens, who appear to be consenting to the wholesale undermining of reproductive freedoms and LGBT civil rights, in addition to the right to privacy established by Griswold. As the government conducts mass warrantless surveillance of its citizens to the outrage of voters, the state doesn't have to go to great lengths to legally violate citizens' privacy rights if the state can first undermine the case law establishing citizens' fundamental rights to privacy. With crime rates so low, why are police departments targeting sex workers carrying condoms ? Perhaps it is to sufficiently restrict citizens' rights under the Griswold case in order to serve the government's "compelling interest" to conduct its unconstitutional surveillance activities. If the state can chip away at privacy rights just enough, it won't technically be violating its citizens' fundamental rights if the state can, ipso facto, succeed at gutting Griswold.

As the government wears down Griswold, where does that leave citizens' rights to an abortion under Roe and to further rights to privacy and substantive due process under the Fourteenth Amendment under Lawrence ? What about the long social movement to end discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity to which Lawrence helped to give critical mass ?

Sunday, November 10, 2013

Man Nails Ball Sack To Red Square Cobblestones To Protest Government's Political Crackdown

The Russian artist Pyotr Pavlensky was hospitalised Sunday after stripping naked and nailing his ball sack to the crevice between cobblestones in Moscow's Red Square in protest against the Kremlin's crackdown on political rights. The following video shows Mr. Pavlensky sitting naked outside Lenin's Mausoleum when police officers arrive and take Mr. Pavlensky into custody.

"The state-run RIA Novosti news agency said Pavlensky was taken to a police station after being treated in a central Moscow clinic," The Huffington Post is reporting.

See also : Naked artist nails his scrotum to square in anti-Putin protest

Friday, March 1, 2013

NYPD lied under oath in Occupy Wall Street trial

Jury Finds Occupy Wall Street Protester Innocent After Video Contradicts Police Testimony [Updated: VIDEO]

Occupy Wall Street - D17 Arrest from Jon Gerberg on Vimeo.

Michael Premo was found innocent of all charges this week in regards to a case that stems from a December 17, 2011 Occupy Wall Street demonstration in Lower Manhattan. For over a year, prosecutors working on behalf of the New York Police Department have insisted that Premo, a known artist and activist, tackled an NYPD officer during a protest and in doing so inflicted enough damage to break a bone. (NYPD lied under oath in Occupy Wall Street trial : RT.com)

In the first jury trial stemming from an Occupy Wall Street protest, Michael Premo was found innocent of all charges yesterday after his lawyers presented video evidence directly contradicting the version of events offered by police and prosecutors. (Jury Finds Occupy Wall Street Protester Innocent After Video Contradicts Police Testimony : Village Voice)

Saturday, October 27, 2012

Protest Banned By French Police ; Security Zone Created Around Moroccan King Mohammed VI Castle

The police in the Oise Department in France have banned a long-term demonstration planned to begin Saturday and to end on Friday, November 2, in front of a castle belonging to the King of Morocco, Mohammed VI.

Organizers of the protest, set to take place in front of the King's castle in Betz, a small village north-east of Paris, were requesting that Moroccans denounce “all injustices and indignities” committed by the current dictatorship in Morocco, reported RFI.

“The chief has banned the protests as a preventative measure” confirmed the Oise police department. “He believes that this area, in conjunction with what was planned for the demonstration and with protesters wanting to camp day and night, that it would only lead to incidents of public disorder. This would go against the purpose of the protest.”

French police officers have created a "security zone" around the castle, RFI reported.

Friday, September 14, 2012

Bloomberg, Kelly, and NYPD to put up Security Checkpoints to Thwart OWS S17 Anniversary

By putting up barricades and security checkpoints all over Lower Manhattan, which has not been done since 9/11, is this how the NYPD thinks it is going to serve and protect us ? Is it trying to protect us from our own Freedom of Assembly and Freedom of Speech ?

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2012 Police State Watch: NYPD to Install Checkpoints, Demand ID in Lower Manahttan on OWS Anniversary Since when are Americans required to carry and show ID to the police to go about their daily business? Apparently since the 1% became sufficiently afraid of the 99% so as to regard the Constitutionally-guaranteed rights to assembly and free speech as security threats. This notice gives a flavor of what to expect for the September 17 celebrations of the anniversary of Occupy Wall Street (click to enlarge; hat tip nathan):

2012 09 14 Pace NYPD ID Checkpoints for Occupy Wall Street Anniversary

Original Source : Police State Watch: NYPD to Install Checkpoints, Demand ID in Lower Manahttan on OWS Anniversary

Intermediary Post : Suzannah B. Troy : Occupy Wall Street Alert Police State Watch: NYPD to Install Checkpoints