Black Lives Matter-Ugliness of Racism.

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Biden inauguration poet Amanda Gorman racially profiled outside her building
Author of the article:WENN - World Entertainment News Network
Publishing date:Mar 06, 2021 • 9 minutes ago • 1 minute read • comment bubbleJoin the conversation
American poet Amanda Gorman reads a poem during the 59th Presidential Inauguration at the U.S. Capitol in Washington January 20, 2021.
American poet Amanda Gorman reads a poem during the 59th Presidential Inauguration at the U.S. Capitol in Washington January 20, 2021. PHOTO BY POOL /REUTERS
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Inauguration poet Amanda Gorman has revealed she was racially profiled by a security guard outside her building on Friday night.

The 22-year-old, who became a household name after performing at U.S. president Joe Biden‘s inauguration in January, took to Twitter to tell her fans: “A security guard tailed me on my walk home tonight. He demanded if I lived there because ‘you look suspicious.’ I showed my keys & buzzed myself into my building. He left, no apology. This is the reality of black girls: One day you’re called an icon, the next day, a threat.”


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She then wrote: “In a sense, he was right. I AM A THREAT: a threat to injustice, to inequality, to ignorance. Anyone who speaks the truth and walks with hope is an obvious and fatal danger to the powers that be.”

State Senator Erika Geiss from Michigan was among those responding to Amanda’s tweet, writing: “Walk tall & strong. You are not alone.”
 

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Biden inauguration poet Amanda Gorman racially profiled outside her building
Author of the article:WENN - World Entertainment News Network
Publishing date:Mar 06, 2021 • 9 minutes ago • 1 minute read • comment bubbleJoin the conversation
American poet Amanda Gorman reads a poem during the 59th Presidential Inauguration at the U.S. Capitol in Washington January 20, 2021.
American poet Amanda Gorman reads a poem during the 59th Presidential Inauguration at the U.S. Capitol in Washington January 20, 2021. PHOTO BY POOL /REUTERS
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Inauguration poet Amanda Gorman has revealed she was racially profiled by a security guard outside her building on Friday night.

The 22-year-old, who became a household name after performing at U.S. president Joe Biden‘s inauguration in January, took to Twitter to tell her fans: “A security guard tailed me on my walk home tonight. He demanded if I lived there because ‘you look suspicious.’ I showed my keys & buzzed myself into my building. He left, no apology. This is the reality of black girls: One day you’re called an icon, the next day, a threat.”


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She then wrote: “In a sense, he was right. I AM A THREAT: a threat to injustice, to inequality, to ignorance. Anyone who speaks the truth and walks with hope is an obvious and fatal danger to the powers that be.”

State Senator Erika Geiss from Michigan was among those responding to Amanda’s tweet, writing: “Walk tall & strong. You are not alone.”
Don't you know who I am?
 

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Video of Rochester police pepper-spraying Black woman in front of tot causes outrage
Author of the article:Washington Post
Washington Post
Jaclyn Peiser, The Washington Post
Publishing date:Mar 08, 2021 • 8 hours ago • 4 minute read • comment bubble34 Comments
This image taken by body camera video shows a Rochester, police officer struggling to subdue a woman suspected of shoplifting who tried to escape with her 3-year-old child in her arms on Feb. 22, 2021.
This image taken by body camera video shows a Rochester, police officer struggling to subdue a woman suspected of shoplifting who tried to escape with her 3-year-old child in her arms on Feb. 22, 2021. PHOTO BY ROCHESTER POLICE DEPARTMENT /AP
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The Black woman with red hair and pink sneakers grasped tightly onto her 3-year-old daughter’s hand last month as she wrestled with a Rochester Police officer in a strip mall parking lot.

“I did not do anything,” she said in an exchange captured on police body camera footage.

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“Stop! Stop grabbing your daughter,” one officer said, adding to another officer on the scene, “Oh my god, what is wrong with her?”

When the officer finally forced her to turn around, he pulled out his pepper spray and aimed it at her eyes as her daughter stood by sobbing, separate video of the incident from a surveillance camera shows.

Footage of the Feb. 22 incident, which was released Friday, has now led to one officer being placed on administrative duty as the department conducts an internal investigation, police said, as critics and city officials demand changes to police tactics.


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The Rochester Police Department did not respond to a request for comment late Sunday. The woman and officers involved have not been publicly identified.

The Rochester police force has been in turmoil for months, since footage was released in September showing officers putting a hood over the head of Daniel T. Prude, a 41-year-old Black man in mental distress, who later died. Last month, body-camera footage showed another officer pepper spraying a 9-year-old girl in the midst of a mental crisis.

Those cases have sparked national protests, as well as local efforts to reassess the department’s treatment of Black residents and its response to mental health crises – a movement that sparked new demonstrations last month when a grand jury declined to indict the officers involved in the Prude case.

“There are troubling parallels between this new incident and the one on Harris Street that occurred just a few weeks earlier,” Rochester Police Accountability Board Chair Shani Wilson said, according to the Rochester City Newspaper, referring to the case involving the 9-year-old girl. “Both incidents involved Black mothers. Both involved Black children. Both involved Black people obviously in crisis. Both involved officers using pepper spray on or around a Black child.”

The Feb. 22 incident began around 4:30 p.m., when officers responded to allegations that a woman with a child had shoplifted from a Rite Aid, argued with employees and then refused to leave, police said in a statement provided to the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle.


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The woman first told an officer she didn’t steal anything, according to the body camera footage, and then opened her bag to let him inspect it. When the officer turned away, the woman ran off with her daughter. Officers caught up to them outside a nearby restaurant. As one officer wrestled the woman to the ground, another dragged away the toddler, who was screaming.

In a video, an officer said, “Can you pull your car over here, because it looks bad that I’m restraining a 3-year-old?”

After police pepper sprayed and handcuffed the woman, they put her in the cruiser and eventually drove away after the toddler’s grandmother arrived to take her.

In separate footage released from the cruiser, an officer told the woman that he had to “karate-chop” her arm to force her to let go of her daughter. He then told her that by running from the scene, she appeared guilty and said he had no choice but to restrain her. “You ran away from us and caused a big scene,” he said.


Another video showed officers talking to a bystander who was recording the police on his phone. Police asked him if he witnessed the incident and if he could recount what he saw. The man, who is Black and has not been identified, called the officer’s actions “inhumane.”

“I know they got a job to do. I refute none of that and whatever she did, she has to deal with that. But come on man, she had a baby in her hand,” he said in the video. “What i’m trying to say is when is this s— going to stop?”

“The child was not pepper sprayed or injured during the arrest,” police said in a statement, noting that the woman was later charged with trespassing.

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The accountability board, though, said that the 3-year-old still could have been exposed to the chemicals due to her proximity to her mom.

City Council President Loretta Scott on Friday called the incident “unacceptable” and said that it likely “severely traumatized” the girl, according to a statement to the Democrat and Chronicle.

“After viewing this video, I am even more convinced that the current culture, policies and procedures of RPD must be changed immediately,” Scott said.

Mayor Lovely Warren, D, called the incident “disturbing.”


“When incidents like this occur, I am relieved that I ensured body-worn cameras are worn by our police, so that we can see what occurs on our streets and hold officers accountable,” Warren said in a statement.

But accountability isn’t necessarily enough, Rickey Harvey, a member of the police accountability board, said in the news conference.

“We would like to see more empathy involved,” Harvey said. “There was a 3-year-old child present. The officers are there to protect the businesses, yes, but the citizens as well.”
 

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Toronto cops cleared of wrongdoing in violent man's arrest at protest
Man, 33, suffered broken facial bones after punching a female officer and repeatedly grabbing another cop's gun

Author of the article:Chris Doucette
Publishing date:Mar 17, 2021 • 9 hours ago • 3 minute read • comment bubbleJoin the conversation
A Toronto Police cruiser travels along Eglinton Ave. W., at Oakwood Ave., on Aug. 30, 2020. This intersection was the scene of a melee which sent four Toronto Police officers to hospital on Saturday night.
A Toronto Police cruiser travels along Eglinton Ave. W., at Oakwood Ave., on Aug. 30, 2020. This intersection was the scene of a melee which sent four Toronto Police officers to hospital on Saturday night. PHOTO BY JACK BOLAND /Toronto Sun
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The province’s police watchdog has concluded Toronto cops acted within the law when deploying conductive energy weapons and delivering numerous blows to a man who attacked officers and repeatedly grabbed at one officer’s gun during a protest last summer.

Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit released its findings Wednesday on the Aug. 29, 2020 incident that was captured on video and made headlines at the time.


“On my assessment of the evidence, there are no reasonable grounds to believe that the SO (subject officer) committed a criminal offence in connection with the complainant’s arrest,” SIU Director Joseph Martino stated in the report of the 33-year-old man, who suffered a broken nose and fractured orbital bone during his arrest.

SIU investigators determined officers were performing crowd control duties at a demonstration near Eglinton Ave. W. and Keele St. — a protest against the lengthy construction time of the TTC’s LRT project and the damage it was doing to black-owned businesses in the area.

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“During the protest, the complainant began to jump on cars and act uncooperatively when asked by police officers to stop,” the SIU said. “The complainant then began punching at police officers but was subdued using a conducted energy weapon (CEW).”

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A Toronto Police cruiser travels along Eglinton Ave. W., at Oakwood Ave., on Aug. 30, 2020. This intersection was the scene of a melee which sent four Toronto Police officers to hospital on Saturday night.
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A Toronto Police cruiser travels along Eglinton Ave. W., at Oakwood Ave., on Aug. 30, 2020.
Crowd happy until man jumped on car in Little Jamaica: Store owner

After interviewing officers and eyewitnesses, and reviewing video, the SIU determined the “extremely agitated” complainant struck two officers. One female cop suffered a concussion as a result.

Two officers deployed CEWs, but the complainant was only briefly incapacitated. The man was then zapped with two more CEWs before officers were able to restrain him — in live lanes of traffic while a large crowd gathered around.

“At about this time, an acquaintance of the complainant injected himself into the situation,” the SIU said, explaining the second man began swinging a jacket at officers and the complainant before being taken into custody.

According to the SIU, the complainant, meanwhile, continued to struggle — even after a woman from the crowd was allowed to cradle his head in her lap and attempt to calm him.

But as a paramedic attempted to dislodge CEW probes from the man, the SIU said, he became angry again and turned his attention to an officer who had arrived on the scene.

“As the complainant had expressed distrust of the ‘white’ officers, the SO explained that he was not ‘white’ and asked the complainant to look at him,” the SIU said, adding the man “continued to struggle” and “spit in the face” of a paramedic.

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As that same officer tried to restrain the complainant, the man grabbed the officer’s firearm, only letting go after the officer jabbed him in the face “a half-dozen times or so.”


The complainant grabbed the officer’s gun two more times and was kneed in his forearm and struck in his upper chest about 10 times before a sedative injected by a paramedic kicked in.

“Though very likely responsible for the complainant’s facial injuries, I am unable to reasonably conclude that the SO’s conduct fell afoul of the limits imposed by the criminal law,” Martino stated in the report. “In the context of the vigour with which the complainant had resisted the officers’ efforts to that point, the SO, I am satisfied, would have had reason to believe that his life, as well as the lives of those around him, was in imminent peril in the event the complainant managed to take possession of the gun.”

The SIU also ruled the use of CEWs by other officers was justified.

cdoucette@postmedia.com

On Twitter: @SunDoucette
 
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BREAKING: Mother Of Tamir Rice Calls Out Black Lives Matter And Ben Crump In Shocking Smack Down

by Kari Donovan March 19, 2021 in Black Lives Matter

The Mother of Tamir Rice, Samaria Rice, is leading a group of concerned citizens to absolutely defang a radical far-leftist movement of social justice warriors, who appear to be seeking fame and money rather than helping communities heal from devastating losses. She called out the “ambulance chasers” out by name and demanded they stop exploiting people’s deaths and injustices for profit.​


“Step down from the spotlight of our fights. Do not do any more interviews, make any more t-shirts, or hold press conferences or events in the name of our loved ones anymore. Do not use our loved ones to market any events,” Samaria Rice said in a released statement, directed to Ben Crump and other high-profile celebrity personalities and actors.

Much, much more in the article
 
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Member of military police charged in relation to racist pictures
Author of the article:Canadian Press
Canadian Press
Lee Berthiaume
Publishing date:Mar 18, 2021 • 1 day ago • 1 minute read • comment bubbleJoin the conversation
Canadian Armed Forces.
Canadian Armed Forces. PHOTO BY JEROME LESSARD /POSTMEDIA
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OTTAWA — A member of Canada’s military police has been charged with two counts of violating the Armed Forces’ disciplinary code after allegedly spreading racist pictures.

The Department of National Defence is not identifying the member but says he serves in 5 Military Police Regiment, based in Montreal and responsible for military law enforcement across Quebec.


News of the pictures first emerged in a message to Canadian military personnel last June from then-chief of the defence staff Gen. Jonathan Vance and his civilian counterpart at National Defence, deputy minister Jody Thomas.

The two were apologizing at the time for their slow response to systemic racism in the military and Defence Department, and said military police were investigating a service member for allegedly spreading racist images.

Thomas and Vance did not provide specifics except to say that the incident was reported to have occurred in Quebec and specifically targeted Black people.

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Defence Department spokesman Daniel Le Bouthillier says an initial complaint was made directly to the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service, which looked into the allegation before referring it back to the member’s unit.

The member was then charged with one count of committing an act to the prejudice of good order and discipline, and one of neglect to the prejudice of good order and discipline.


“The matter is now proceeding through the military justice system,” Le Bouthillier said in an email.

“We will continue to focus on ensuring that all are welcome, safe and treated with the same dignity and respect that we defend and protect each and every day in service to Canada.”

Canada’s military police, including the CFNIS, have faced questions in recent weeks about their independence and ability to probe allegations of misconduct against senior military officers.
 
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Quebec job post for 'white woman' sparks debate about caring for mentally ill seniors
Author of the article:Canadian Press
Canadian Press
Jacob Serebrin
Publishing date:Mar 20, 2021 • 13 hours ago • 4 minute read • comment bubble11 Comments
A medical staff tends to a patient at the intensive care unit for patients patients infected with Covid-19 at the Trinidad Teaching Medical Center, in Caracas, on March 19, 2021.
A medical staff tends to a patient at the intensive care unit for patients patients infected with Covid-19 at the Trinidad Teaching Medical Center, in Caracas, on March 19, 2021. PHOTO BY FEDERICO PARRA /AFP via Getty Images
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MONTREAL — Recent news that a Quebec hospital repeatedly posted notices seeking a “white woman” caregiver has sparked a debate about how to care for mentally ill seniors who refuse to be treated by people of another race.

The heads of two placement agencies in Quebec say those kinds of requests usually come from racist patients who have dementia or Alzheimer’s. They say Black and other racialized workers are sent to care for other patients for safety reasons.


But experts in the health field say trying to protect workers of colour by replacing them with white people is patronizing and paternalistic.

“That is racism, that’s rationalization, said Bharati Sethi, a social work professor at King’s University College at Western University. Focusing on transferring racialized health-care workers instead of looking at bigger institutional issues downplays the problem, she said in an interview Friday.

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“Bluntly, we have to stop rationalizing, look at the problem at the root and do something about it,” Sethi, who worked as a personal-support worker before becoming a professor, said.

Earlier this week, Montreal La Presse reported that a hospital in St-Eustache, Que., north of Montreal, sent 10 requests to placement agencies asking for a “white woman only” or a woman with “white skin.” The hospital had reportedly sought a white woman to care for a patient with dementia who was disruptive in the presence of racialized staff.

In response, the regional health authority in Quebec’s Laurentians region said it has opened an investigation.

Jill Eusanio, president of Comfort Keepers Quebec, said her placement agency receives requests for white workers a few times a year. She said, however, the issue is more complex than it may seem.

“Usually, these requests are for senior citizens, clients, that are racist, and who have a mental disease that’s set in, like Alzheimer’s or dementia, and they’re mean to the worker,” she said in an interview Thursday.

“What do I do?” Eusanio said. “Do I put a Black worker in this environment who will be verbally abused, who could be physically hit?”


Eusanio, whose placement agency provides personal support workers, nurses and nurses aids for home care, long-term care facilities and hospitals, said she would never promise to send a white worker. But, she said, if one of her employees is being abused by a patient because of their ethnic background, she said she would switch them.

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Helene Gravel, head of Sherbrooke, Que.-based placement agency Agence Continuum, said requests for white workers are “very, very rare.”

Gravel said those kinds of requests are intended to ensure employees aren’t placed in difficult situations when dealing with patients suffering from conditions like dementia and Alzheimer’s who have difficulty dealing with people who are different.

In some cases, however, she has received requests from people recovering from surgery or other medical procedures who need temporary home care but don’t want a Black person helping them.

In those cases, she said, she refuses to serve the client. She said she doesn’t tolerate racism.

Sethi recently conducted a study on racism against personal-support workers at an Ontario nursing home. She found that Black workers frequently experienced racism from patients and their families, and in some cases, from colleagues.

If personal-support workers are subject to racist abuse and believe they will be replaced by white people, then that might encourage them to stay silent out of fear of losing work, Sethi said.

Dr. Sophie Zhang, who oversees 15 long-term care centres in Montreal, said she has had patients who are openly racist against workers, adding that it can be challenging to manage those patients when they’re suffering illnesses such as dementia.

Regarding requests for white-only workers, Zhang said there are two issues involved: one is about accommodations in the workplace, while the other is about hiring discrimination.

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“For me, discriminating at the time of hiring is unacceptable,” she said in an interview Friday. “That, I don’t think we can make any excuses for.”

Sometimes, however, when a decision needs to be made about who will be assigned to a patient, accommodations may have to be made, she said.

“This is not because we want to ‘give in to racism,’ but it’s because sometimes the safety of the worker is at risk because there has been abuse, there has been verbal and physical abuse.”

But she said it’s the last resort. When patients are able to be reasoned with, she said, the first step is dialogue.

“My first reaction is to tell them that we don’t accept racism,” Zhang said. “That all our health-care workers are competent, are qualified, will take good care of them no matter what race they are, and that any sort of verbal or physical assault is not tolerated.”

Sometimes, Zhang said, the patient ends up trusting the worker who takes care of them, adding that overall, she has had to manage few cases where people have demanded to be treated by non-racialized people.

“It’s a very small number of cases where we have to intervene and make these accommodations.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 20, 2021.

——

This story was produced with the financial assistance of the Facebook and Canadian Press News Fellowship.