Every now and again you read something so monumentally, mind-blowingly, disgustingly unjust that words simply fail you. Such was the case when we saw this:
Cleveland Wants Tamir Rice Estate to Pay $500 Ambulance Bill
WTF!! What?! This is just obscenely wrong and on so many different levels.
How much more can the Rice family take, one is forced to ask? Consider the list of grievances that Samaria Rice has been subjected to:
Her 12 yr old son is killed by police within two seconds of them seeing him
Her 14 yr old daughter had the traumatizing experience of witnessing the killing of her brother
That same teenager was tackled by grown men, handcuffed, and thrown in the back of a police car
Samaria had to choose between attending to her dying son and her emotionally distraught daughter
Police refused to allow her to ride with her dying son to the hospital
Police refused to release the body of her dead baby boy. It took them 6 months! Six fucking months for them to release his body. Samaria was forced to cremate the remains of her son.
Not satisfied with killing the twelve-year-old child, District Attorney McGinty and his office then set about trying to murder his name and that of his family: He looked like a grown man, his father was a drug dealer, there was domestic violence in his home, his mother only cared about money, he was killed because he moved his hand to his waist in a threatening manner.
And now, to add egregious insult to deadly injury, they had the gall to even think of sending the grieving mother a bill for transporting the body of her son whom they murdered. Talk about cruel and unusual punishment! But why? Why, do this, Cleveland? And the answer is, of course, because they can. We need a law that will police the police and make it damn near impossible for them to so abuse citizens. The Michael Brown Over-Policed Rights Act is one step in that direction.
In Other News…
NYPD Officer Peter Laing has been found guilty of manslaughter for the killing of unarmed Akai Gurley.
New York (CNN) Officer Peter Liang, who shot and killed an unarmed man in a New York housing project stairwell in 2014, was found guilty of manslaughter and official misconduct on Thursday.
The Department of Justice filed a 56-page civil lawsuit Wednesday against the City of Ferguson, Mo. alleging that, 18 months after the police shooting of Michael Brown, the city’s police and court system continue to violate black residents’ civil rights.
According to Attorney General Loretta Lynch:
“Residents of Ferguson have suffered the deprivation of their constitutional rights — the rights guaranteed to all Americans — for decades,”
Yep, and about darn time something is done about that sorry state of affairs.
A Black Lives Matter activist fatally shot himself on the steps of the Ohio State House on Monday, according to authorities.
MarShawn M. McCarrel II, 23, of Franklin Township, Ohio, died by suicide on Monday night, according to Lt. Craig Cvetan of the Ohio Highway Patrol.
About Support the Dream Defenders
(Wordcloud composed of Support the Dream Defenders, Michael Brown Over-Policed Rights Act, Expand Medicaid, Freedom of Information Act Project, Combat Racism, Demand Equality.)
Members of the Daily Kos group Support the Dream Defenders launched four ongoing projects:
1. We came together to support the Dream Defenders in Florida and their mission, our first project and the origin of our name. The Dream Defendersdefend the Dream of Martin Luther King Jr. by "develop[ing] the next generation of radical leaders to realize and exercise our independent collective power; building alternative systems and organizing to disrupt the structures that oppress our communities." Please donate here.
2. Our Michael Brown Over-Policed Rights Act, crowd-sourced at Daily Kos in the fall of 2014 after the death of Michael Brown. Our bill quickly earned endorsements from the NAACP and the ACLU. The NAACP forwarded our bill to members of Congress, and we distributed it to members of the Congressional Black Caucus and other progressive members of Congress. President Obama signed into a law a small piece of our bill in December 2014. The Department of Justice included parts of our law in their reports on Ferguson, Missouri, in 2015. Our state version of the MBOPRA is currently in committee in the Kansas legislature.
3. Our Freedom of Information Act project. Nineteen Republican governors chose to kill poor people by not expanding Medicaid. Ebola has killed about 9000 people in total; Republican governors kill 23,000 people PER YEAR by refusing federal support for Medicaid, a story ignored by traditional media. Our project forces those governors to out themselves, clapping them in a Catch 22. With the support of readers, we publicize our results through letters to the editor, press releases, and petitions.
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