5-17-12 Links Roundup
Boyd and her friends were hanging out at Douglas Park near 15th and Albany when off-duty Police Officer Dante Servin, who lives in the area, allegedly drove up in a BMW and told the group to “shut up all that m—–f—— noise,” Sutton said witnesses told him.
Antonio Cross yelled back “f— you,” at which point Servin allegedly stuck a gun out of the window and opened fire, wounding Cross in the hand and shooting Boyd in the head.
Police officials initially claimed Cross had a gun, but no gun was found, and Cross has been charged with aggravated assault, a misdemeanor.
Forty days later, Sutton still does not know whether Servin will be charged with anything for shooting his sister in the head.
“Right now we are just waiting for an answer,” Sutton told me. “Everybody has told me that it’s under investigation. We are just playing a waiting game.”
The family has filed a civil suit against Servin and the city.
Racism in America’s police force is linked to their role as keepers of the status quo in an unequal society. They enforce laws written by politicians on behalf of the wealthy — laws that end up trapping poor and working-class people in desperate lives. Racial and sexual minorities, legal and illegal immigrants are seen as threats to the social order. When we protest the law and “occupy” a space we are beaten and arrested. When we commit a crime to “get some” we are beaten and arrested. And when we do neither but simply live we’re busted to make a cop’s stop-and-frisk quota.
Language plays an essential role here. It starts with a defensive joke, a “perp” profile that becomes so blurred it encompasses nearly everyone on the street and a constant sense of danger. Each builds on the other until the change is complete and one day, they casually listen to NYPD Capt. James Coan give a racist hurrah speech to detectives executing warrants in Brooklyn. “They’re fucking animals,” he repeatedly said of black people from 2008 to 2010, “If you have to shoot, you shoot them in the head.”
- Janet Mock Launches #GirlsLikeUs Campaign to Empower Trans Women of Color (Queer Women of Color and Friends)
Janet Mock is a transgender woman, advocate, and writer for People.com. In a piece in the May 2011 issue of Marie Claire, Mock discussed her life journey as a trans woman, from her childhood longings to play with dolls and wear women’s clothing, to her sex change operation in Bangkok. But Mock’s focus in her speech was not primarily on her own life, but on the lives of Paige Clay and CeCe McDonald, two trans women of color who suffered for living openly.
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