Wednesday, June 03, 2020

CoViD-19 & Protests: La Mesa Community Leaders Are Outraged | Covidiot In Chief Divides A Nation | Thoughts On Demonstrations

Mission Trails 1.9.2020

It's Wednesday and I had a lot of thoughts on my brain last night and am still catching up on all the press briefings today. I'm gonna have to get them into a separate post because the La Mesa press briefing was really intense. Meanwhile, our covidiot-in-chief is still a worthless piece of shit while my godfather's sociopathic wife--who herself is an immigrant and a person of color, which she seems to have forgotten-- is still posting memes of herself carrying machine guns in full fatigues in front of the American flag and it is so fucking gross I can't even believe that this is a person, albeit distantly, connected to me in real life. So there's a lot today. It's after 5pm and I have barely touched today's emails. There's a lot to unpack, so first some reading, after the jump. A reminder that the public meeting for the San Diego Citizens Advisory Board On Police/Community Relations starts at 6pm today.



I know that it is an enormous task that we all have. We have all been doing our best to stay at home because of Covid-19, and then super incendiary acts of injustice call many to the streets in protest. You shouldn't feel bad if you sit out the protests nor should you feel bad if you break the health orders to amplify your voice among the injustices that people of color are facing every single day. For someone like me, a so-called 'keyboard warrior,' which can be both a compliment and also used as the pejorative, all I can do is keep watching and reading and amplifying the meaningful voices in all of the madness. We focus on the immediate and the really, really bad stuff now, but it's important to account for the widespread injustice that has been inflicting people of color for four centuries in different ways. We have a sickening and painful history told from one perspective that expanded this country, while we tossed many, many people of all stripes to the wayside while we cared about wealth and getting and metaphorically being the kid in the playground with all the things, while the actual people who own all the things make us fight one another and see each other as the enemy. It is a super fucked up situation. It has been for a very, very long time. A worldwide pandemic has exacerbated the inequity. Still we allow our leaders to militarize the police and military against citizens while our top leader instigates and flat-out supports racial tensions. We want to rise above, but the anger and the hurt and the pain is deep. And often, instead of fighting against the power structures, we fight against one another. We are trained to have a mindset that 'If you get, I cannot have, and I should worry about my own, first things first.' Meanwhile the billionaire class just profits. The more we fight amongst ourselves, the less likely we are to revolt against the fact that "corporations are people," that CEOs amplified their own wages from 30x the average worker in the 80s and 90s to 300 or 3000 times what the average worker will ever make. But the reality is that those billionaires will die, too, just like the rest of us. Today's protests and actions advance political and economic structures so we don't have to wait for that to happen for change to come.

  • Election results:
  • 'The impossible has already happened': what coronavirus can teach us about hope - Rebecca Solnit for The Guardian (4.7.2020)
  • I Cannot Remain Silent: Our fellow citizens are not the enemy, and must never become so. - The Atlantic (6.2.2020)
  • Why this 'sick to my stomach' quote proves exactly what is wrong with the Trump White House - CNN (6.2.2020)
  • "We are not going to be unified. We are not going to be healed. He doesn’t have it in him, and it is not the purpose of his presidency. (That he’s apparently been chatting up Vladimir Putin while the United States falls apart is too perfect a plot twist.) It is not the basis of his campaign for re-election. The violence is the campaign. That is going to be how he runs for re-election."
  • San Diego Sheriff Bill Gore has ended the use of carotid restraint among his department. SDPD, Coronado, and La Mesa Police Dept have all done the same. 
  • La Mesa Mayor Mark Arapostathi held a press conference today
    • Curfew for La Mesa at 7pm-5am until Monday
    • Ending use of carotid restraint among LMPD
    • Will do full review of footage to understand shortcomings of department during protests
    • Will fully investigate arrest of Amaurie Johnson and release body-cam footage
      • According to officer report, initial contact was for smoking at a trolley station
    • Will fully investigate shooting of bean bag round at Leslie Furcron during protests 
    • Policy is to shoot bean bag rounds in the torso
    • (According to La Mesa Police Chief) Unlawful assembly was announced around 5:20pm, shooting of Furcron was around 8:10pm 
    • Mayor says citizens should not be defending property 
    • Dr. Akilah Weber (Council Member who attended Saturday's Protest)
      • All voices should be heard 
      • "You have very valid concerns" 
      • Bias training, deescalation training, who we hire  
      • "We hear you, trust me, we hear you"
    • The other day someone said that "councilmembers are paid good money to protect us" so I looked into salaries. In fact, they are paid $12,000 a year
    • LMPD was overwhelmed and underprepared
    • Citizen's oversight committee will start meeting this week
    • Community leaders took the mic
      • The shooting and tear gas started without warning
      • LMPD should not be shooting from an elevated position on people
      • "Nothing turned violent until my mother was shot" - Ahmad Furcron 
      • Khalid Alexander of Pillars of the Community (helps people who are affected by police)
        • Use of language is a dogwhistle
        • "Anybody who has been at any demonstration knows where the violence comes from. They come up wearing armor, carrying guns." 
        • "Tired of being treated like outsiders in the country that we were born in, tired of being treated like outsiders in the country that we built"

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