As a group, the members of Support the Dream Defenders reject terrorism and violence in any and every form, whether that murderous violence is police-on-citizens or citizens-on-police.
So here we are again. Two more lives brutally snuffed by those paid to serve and protect. Blood-stained sidewalk and car. Shocked and terrorized communities. Two more anguished families deprived of their loved ones. Two more hashtag campaigns. Two more markers on the map to be connected to all those other markers. More bitter tears. More impotent anger...masking soul-numbing fear.
As I watched, I heard the words of Eric Garner, “I can’t breathe,” even though those were not Sterling’s last words. Garner and Sterling could have been brothers. They are brothers. One was selling loosies in Staten Island, N.Y., and the other was selling CDs in Baton Rouge. Both were suffocated—literally and figuratively—by those charged “to protect and serve.” Indeed, there is an ancestral echo that permeates the ears and the heart while one is watching the videos of black folks killed by the police. Our spirits know what it feels like to see our kin slain even before we hear the gunshots, and our eyes recognize the blood long before the red stains our kin’s clothes.
This. must. stop.
In this week (7 days from June 30 to July 7 — 10:30 PM ) alone, in addition to Alton and Philando, police killed 23 other Americans!
Let’s repeat that:
American police killed 25 people in the last 7 days!
Pedro Villanueva was 19. He allegedly sped off from plain-clothes officers and then sped toward them; you know he had to be killed.
Jai Williams was 35. He was seen struggling with a woman in a car and he threatened the cops and thus he had to be killed.
Anthony Nunez was 18. Was depressed and suicidal. He shot himself, his family called the cops and they finished the job.
Melissa Ventura was 24. Cops said she attacked them with a knife, they feared for their lives and so they had to kill her. That was their only option.
Unknown name, unknown age. Police said he was armed with a knife and refused to comply with their orders, and so what’s a cop to do? Who cares anyway? Unknown and unimportant.
I know that many of us got super excited at the speech actor/activist Jesse Williams gave at the BET Awards two weeks ago, but in fairness, much of what he said, we’ve been talking about around these parts for years now. In this group — Support the Dream Defenders — we have gone much further than talking about what appears to be an insoluble problem; with the help of 700 other Kossacks, we wrote our own law, which if implemented, we believe will go a long way to change the culture of policing in this country.
“Now, what we’ve been doing is looking at the data and we know that police somehow manage to de-escalate, disarm, and not kill white people every day.
It can be done. We can change this culture. Police successfully apprehended Dylan Roof after he had killed nine people. Young Mr. Roof was said to be armed and dangerous, and yet, not only did the cops arrest him, they took him to get a burger. I am not at all mad at them for treating Roof as if he were one of their sons; no, I am mad that Alton Sterling and Philando Castile and so many others were treated as if they were the mass murderers. And the laws of the land say that even mass murderers deserve their day in court.
Michael Brown Over-Policed Rights Act gives ordinary citizens the power to become a tiny, one-man or one-woman justice department. The law would allow any aggrieved citizen to file suit against an entire police department in federal court in front of a federal judge if that police department is racist, discriminatory, violent, or abusive.
Our Michael Brown Over-Policed Rights Act was designed not to punish cops. Because, quite frankly, if it’s about punishment, and punishment only, then we are about three steps too late. At the point of punishment, we’d have had a life or lives irreparably damaged, anguished loved ones, and taxpayers footing the bill for bad behavior. Our MBOPRA is primarily about changing the prevailing culture.
The Michael Brown Over-Policed Rights Act Addresses:
Racial prejudice in policing.
Identification of problem areas like Ferguson, Missouri before they blow up.
Violence in policing.
Mass incarceration.
Unfairness in policing (such as extraordinary numbers of alleged offenses per population).
Allowing law enforcement officers to avoid answering for their mistakes.
The current lack of reporting on policing statistics (especially regarding race and force, both lethal and non-lethal).
Provision of body cameras to police officers.
Elimination of weaponized police equipment in problem jurisdictions.
Action!
We need suggestions from Kossacks about how to get our Michael Brown Over-Policed Rights Act signed into law. In the meantime, here are our suggestions of some things we can and should be doing:
We must fight for community policing. Alton Sterling had been selling his DVDs, CDs, and mixtapes in that community for years. Not unlike Eric Garner selling his loosies. And yet the cops had no relationship with him. Did not know him or know of him. Did not care to know him.
Fight systemic racism from home. White parents must start giving their version of The Talk to their children. Black parents have been giving the life-saving talk to their children and it clearly has outlived its usefulness. The overwhelming majority of the killings of unarmed citizens is being done by cops who were apparently never taught to value black lives. That is a failing of white parenting.
Pressure the media. Identify individual bad actors in media houses and let the world know what they are doing wrong. Modern day lynching is not a sport. We don’t need Harry Houck screaming at us that black people are criminals and thus deserve what they get. We don’t need to have teasers added to the reports of cops murdering citizens. “An African American male was killed by police today, but did he have a gun? We’ll discuss that when we get back.” Fuck that!
What to do with our Michael Brown Over-Policed Rights Act:
We are rapidly approaching the signature collection phase of our campaign to get the Over-Policed Rights Act on the California ballot. We will be needing your help.
This is a screengrab of the Summary and Title of the Ballot Initiative sent to us by the California Department of Justice:
Our Michael Brown Over-Policed Rights Act as seen through the eyes of the California Justice Dept
We await word from the California Secretary of State who will be sending us a schedule with the maximum filing deadline and the certification deadline.
Update on the NAACP’s Possible Support of the OPRA
More awesome news! Our law has been submitted as a Resolution to the NAACP. That august body will now discuss and then vote on whether to adopt The Michael Brown Over-Police Rights Act (MBOPRA) at the Legislative Session of the NAACP’s Annual Convention later this month!
Stay tuned!
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 Defenders defend 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. Members of the Daily Kos group Support the Dream Defenders launched four ongoing projects:
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.
4. Our Law Enforcement Documentation Act of 2016.
More information about Support the Dream Defenders here.
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