Black Lives Matter-Ugliness of Racism.

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Video shows Irvo Otieno pinned to floor before his death
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Denise Lavoie And Sarah Rankin
Published Mar 21, 2023 • 4 minute read

DINWIDDIE, Va. — A group of sheriff’s deputies and other personnel at a Virginia mental hospital forcibly pinned patient Irvo Otieno to the ground until he was motionless and limp, then began unsuccessful resuscitation efforts, according to newly obtained surveillance video.


The video, which was obtained through a link included in public court filings, shows the workers pressing down on a prone handcuffed and shackled Otieno. His death March 6 while being admitted to Central State Hospital has led to second-degree murder charges against seven deputies and three hospital workers.


Relatives of the 28-year-old Otieno were shown the video last week by a prosecutor, Dinwiddie Commonwealth’s Attorney Ann Cabell Baskervill, who said at one point that she planned to publicly release it Tuesday. But attorneys for at least two of the defendants sought to block its release to the public, arguing that it could hinder a fair trial.

Otieno was brought to the hospital south of Richmond that provides psychiatric care after spending multiple days in law enforcement custody.


The video, which has no sound, shows a shackled and handcuffed Otieno being led into a room with tables and chairs. He is hauled toward a seat before eventually slumping to the floor.

An increasing number of workers lay their hands on him as he appears to start to move on the floor. At one point, it appears as many as 10 people are pressing down on his body. Otieno’s body is difficult to see at times, obscured by the employees on top of him or because the camera angle was blocked by someone standing.

The crowd steps back from his body, which appears limp. Resuscitation efforts eventually begin.

Final autopsy findings have not yet been released, though Baskervill has said in court that Otieno was smothered to death.


The prosecutor charged the 10 defendants through a process known as a criminal information. Baskervill has said the case will be presented to a grand jury “for a final determination of charges going forward.” A grand jury was meeting Tuesday morning, court records show.

Several defendants also had either bail hearings or a hearing dealing with the appointment of counsel.

The Associated Press sought comment about the video from defense attorneys for each of the defendants who have obtained counsel. None immediately responded to emails or phone calls.

Douglas Ramseur, who represents one of the hospital employees, told The Washington Post — which first obtained the footage — he was concerned that the court filing with the video link was made “with the intention of making the information available to the media and public after having received a motion by the defense seeking to prevent just such a disclosure.”


“We are considering all our legal remedies,” Ramseur wrote in an email, the newspaper reported.

Otieno’s family spoke at a news conference last week after seeing the footage, which they called heartbreaking and disturbing. They have equated his treatment to torture and called on the U.S. Department of Justice to intervene in the case.

The family is being represented by Ben Crump, a prominent civil rights attorney who also represented the family of George Floyd. Crump has said Otieno’s treatment has close parallels with Floyd’s killing in police custody in Minneapolis in 2020.

“When we think about the tragic killing of George Floyd, you say, ‘Why would anybody, why would any law enforcement officer, put a knee on the neck of a person who is face down, handcuffed and restrained?”‘ Crump said at a news conference last week. “Would anybody not have enough common sense to say, ‘We’ve seen this movie before?”‘


Another attorney for the family, Mark Krudys, didn’t respond to a request for comment Monday.

Otieno, whose first name was pronounced “Ivo,” was 4 when his family emigrated to the U.S. from Kenya. He grew up in suburban Richmond and began dealing with mental health issues during his last year of high school, his mother has said.

He was experiencing mental distress at the time of his initial encounter with law enforcement earlier this month, according to this family. That set off a chain of events that led to him spending several days in custody, first at a local hospital and then at a jail, before his death at the state hospital.

While Otieno was in jail, he was denied access to needed medications, the family’s attorneys have said. The family also viewed video from that facility Thursday, which they said showed Otieno was subjected to further brutality by unidentified officers. That video has not been made available.

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin has said the case is a grim reminder of why the state’s mental health system “needs transformation at every level.” He has also called on the public to respect the ongoing judicial process.
 

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Montreal artist won't change puppet that community groups say looks like blackface
Author of the article:Canadian Press
Canadian Press
Jacob Serebrin
Published Mar 25, 2023 • 4 minute read
Artist Franck Sylvestre poses with puppet Max at his home in Montreal, Saturday, March 18, 2023.
Artist Franck Sylvestre poses with puppet Max at his home in Montreal, Saturday, March 18, 2023. PHOTO BY GRAHAM HUGHES /The Canadian Press
MONTREAL — A theatre performance for children featuring a puppet that has been described as racist is continuing in the Montreal area.


Several Black community organizations have criticized the puppet as being reminiscent of blackface minstrel shows — racist performances during which white people portrayed exaggerated stereotypes of Black people for laughs.


But the show’s creator — Franck Sylvestre, who is Black — has no plans to change the puppet, which he said is a caricature of his own features. Sylvestre said in an interview he can’t accept the idea that he’s not allowed to create a caricature of someone who is Black because racists created caricatures of Black people in the past.

“That’s unheard of for an artist,” he said.

The play, called L’incroyable secret de barbe noire — French for The Incredible Secret of Blackbeard — first drew controversy in February.


A performance at a municipal theatre in the Montreal suburb of Beaconsfield, Que., was cancelled after complaints by Black community organizations. The neighbouring community of Pointe-Claire, meanwhile, removed the play from its official Black History Month programming but allowed the performance to go ahead.

Sylvestre, who wrote the one-man show in 2009 aimed at kids aged five to nine years old, said he had never received a complaint about his show before February.

A series of performances of the play, which combines theatre, storytelling, masks and puppetry, begins Sunday in Laval, Que., he said, before he takes it to France for 30 performances.

Sylvestre said the play tells the story of a young man who travels from Montreal to Martinique — the Caribbean island where Sylvestre’s parents are from — at the request of his dying grandfather, who is haunted by his discovery of a mysterious wooden chest with a connection to the pirate Blackbeard.


Max Stanley Bazin, president of the Black Coalition of Quebec, describes the puppet’s appearance as “very, very, very ugly” and said he worries that seeing a Black person presented in such a way could cause emotional damage to young audiences.

“It will have an impact on them, it will have an impact on the mind of the young people who see this puppet, and that’s what we should think about,” he said in an interview.

People are more likely to speak out about racism now than they were in 2009, Bazin said, adding that he thinks Sylvestre should listen to community members and replace the puppet with a less controversial creation.

“If there are people in society who have said this isn’t right, you have to react,” he said.

Philip Howard, a professor in the department of integrated studies in education at McGill University, said he’s not sure the puppet is an example of blackface — but he said that’s beside the point.


“There is still very much the matter of representation and the potential use of monstrous and grotesque representations of Black people as a source of entertainment and even humour,” said Howard, who has studied contemporary blackface.

Howard said the intentions of the artist are less important than the impact of the performance on an audience.

“Here we have, in this particular instance, a whole community of folks that are responding and saying, ‘Wait a minute, we don’t love this, we don’t think this is OK and we’re particularly disturbed about it during Black History Month,”‘ he said.

Dismissing the opinions of Black people who have a problem with the performance demonstrates anti-Black racism, he said.

Sylvestre said he thinks much of the criticism comes from people who haven’t seen the play.


“It’s the job of the community to see what purpose these caricatures serve; are they, like blackface, denigrating Black people, or, as in my case, are they being elevated?” he said. “This character, he’s a strong character for me personally, and when I made it, I was inspired by myself.”

He said the puppet, named Max, is “like a great sage,” whose interventions lead to the play’s happy ending.

“Max, he was the voice of reason, he was the one who advised us, who mocked me when I made a bad decision, who was above me,” he said.

Prof. Cheryl Thompson, who teaches performance at Toronto Metropolitan University, said she didn’t like the puppet when she viewed a trailer for the play.

“I was extremely shocked,” she said. “I just couldn’t believe what I was seeing.”


While blackface minstrel shows are primarily associated with the United States, Thompson’s research has shown that blackface performances took place in Canada, with shows in Montreal as recently as the 1950s.

Even though blackface originated with white performers, Black actors in the 1800s would also don the exaggerated makeup and participate in the racist performances for white audiences.

“It actually didn’t matter if it was a white actor in blackface or a Black actor in blackface, it was the caricature that audiences thought was funny,” she said.

Thompson said there’s room for theatre performances to be provocative. But performers, she said, need to engage with audiences and be willing to discuss artistic choices — especially when artists are performing for audiences whose histories might be different than their own.

“Why wouldn’t this person at least try to hear the voices of people who maybe have a different experience to him?” she said.

She said she wouldn’t take a child to see the show, especially during Black History Month.

“I just don’t see the uplifting messaging,” Thompson said. “I don’t see the messaging of ‘you matter,’ I just don’t see that celebration of life. I just see something that is steeped in a history of racial caricature and mimicry.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 25, 2023.
puppet-racism-20230323[1].jpg
 

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Mississippi deputies accused of shoving guns in mouths of 2 Black men
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Michael Goldberg
Published Mar 27, 2023 • 7 minute read

BRANDON, Miss. — Several deputies from a Mississippi sheriff’s department being investigated by the Justice Department for possible civil rights violations have been involved in at least four violent encounters with Black men since 2019 that left two dead and another with lasting injuries, an Associated Press investigation found.


Two of the men allege that Rankin County sheriff’s deputies shoved guns into their mouths during separate encounters. In one case, the deputy pulled the trigger, leaving the man with wounds that required parts of his tongue to be sewn back together. In one of the two fatal confrontations, the man’s mother said a deputy kneeled on her son’s neck while he told them he couldn’t breathe.


Police and court records obtained by the AP show that several deputies who were accepted to the sheriff’s office’s Special Response Team – a tactical unit whose members receive advanced training – were involved in each of the four encounters. In three of them, the heavily redacted documents don’t indicate if they were serving in their normal capacity as deputies or as members of the unit.


Such units have drawn scrutiny since the January killing of Tyre Nichols, a Black father who died days after being severely beaten by Black members of a special police team in Memphis, Tennessee. Nichols’ death led to a Justice Department probe of similar squads around the country that comes amid the broader public reckoning over race and policing sparked by the 2020 police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

In Mississippi, the police shooting of Michael Corey Jenkins led the Justice Department to open a civil rights investigation into the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department. Jenkins said six white deputies burst into a home where he was visiting a friend, and one put a gun in his mouth and fired. Jenkins’ hospital records, parts of which he shared with AP, show he had a lacerated tongue and broken jaw.


Deputies said Jenkins was shot after he pointed a gun at them; department officials have not answered multiple inquiries from the AP asking whether a weapon was found at the scene. Jenkins’ attorney, Malik Shabazz, said his client didn’t have a gun.

“They had complete control of him the entire time. Six officers had full and complete control of Michael the entire time,” Shabazz said. “So that’s just a fabrication.”

Rankin County, which has about 120 sheriff’s deputies serving its roughly 160,000 people, is predominantly white and just east of the state capital, Jackson, home to one of the highest percentages of Black residents of any major U.S. city. In the county seat of Brandon, a towering granite-and-marble monument topped by a statue of a Confederate soldier stands across the street from the sheriff’s office.


In a notice of an upcoming lawsuit, attorneys for Jenkins and his friend Eddie Terrell Parker said on the night of Jan. 24 the deputies suddenly came into the home and proceeded to handcuff and beat them. They said the deputies stunned them with Tasers repeatedly over roughly 90 minutes and, at one point, forced them to lie on their backs as the deputies poured milk over their faces. The men restated the allegations in separate interviews with the AP.

When a Taser is used, it’s automatically logged into the device’s memory. The AP obtained the automated Taser records from the evening of Jan. 24. They show that deputies first fired one of the stun guns at 10:04 p.m. and fired one at least three more times over the next 65 minutes. However, those unredacted records might not paint a complete picture, as redacted records show that Tasers were turned on, turned off or used dozens more times during that period.


The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation was brought in to investigate the encounter. Its summary says a deputy shot Jenkins at approximately 11:45 p.m., or about 90 minutes after a Taser was first used, which matches the timeframe given by Parker and Jenkins. The deputy’s name was not disclosed by the bureau.

Police say the raid was prompted by a report of drug activity at the home. Jenkins was charged with possessing between 2 and 10 grams of methamphetamine and aggravated assault on a police officer. Parker was charged with two misdemeanours – possession of paraphernalia and disorderly conduct. Jenkins and Parker say the raid came to a head when the deputy shot Jenkins through the mouth. He still has difficulty speaking and eating.


Another Black man, Carvis Johnson, alleged in a federal lawsuit filed in 2020 that a Rankin County deputy placed a gun into his mouth during a 2019 drug bust. Johnson was not shot.

There is no reason for an officer to place a gun in a suspect’s mouth, and to have allegations of two such incidents is telling, said Samuel Walker, emeritus professor of criminal justice at the University of Nebraska.

“If there are incidents with the same kind of pattern of behaviour, they have their own set of rules,” he said. “So these are not just chance experiences. It looks like a very clear pattern.”

Jenkins doesn’t know the name of the deputy who shot him. In the heavily redacted incident report, an unidentified deputy wrote, “I noticed a gun.” The unredacted sections don’t say who shot Jenkins, only that he was taken to a hospital. Deputy Hunter Elward swore in a separate court document that Jenkins pointed the gun at him.


Elward’s name also appears in police reports and court records from the two incidents in which suspects were killed.

The sheriff’s department refused repeated interview requests and denied access to any of the deputies who were involved in the violent confrontations. The department has not said whether deputies presented a search warrant, and it’s unclear if any have been disciplined or are still members of the special unit.

The news outlet Insider has been investigating the sheriff’s department and persuaded a county judge to order the sheriff to turn over documents related to the deaths of four men in 2021. Chancery Judge Troy Farrell Odom expressed bewilderment that the department had refused to make the documents public.


“(The) day that our law enforcement officers start shielding this information from the public, all the while repeating, ‘Trust us. We’re from the government,’ is the day that should startle all Americans,” Odom wrote.

The AP requested body camera or dashcam footage from the night of the Jenkins raid. Jason Dare, an attorney for the sheriff’s department, said there was no record of either.

Mississippi doesn’t require police officers to wear body cameras. Incident reports and court records tie deputies from the raid to three other violent encounters with Black men.

During a 2019 standoff, Elward said Pierre Woods pointed a gun at him while running at deputies. Deputies then shot and killed him. In a statement to the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation obtained by the AP, Elward said he fired at Woods eight times. Police say they recovered a handgun at the scene of the Woods shooting.


Court records place Christian Dedmon, another deputy who shot at Woods, at the Jenkins raid.

Dedmon was also among deputies involved in a 2019 arrest of Johnson, according to the lawsuit Johnson filed alleging that one of the deputies put a gun in his mouth as they searched him for drugs. Johnson is currently imprisoned for selling methamphetamine.

Other documents obtained by the AP detail another violent confrontation between Elward and Damien Cameron, a 29-year-old man with a history of mental illness. He died in July 2021 after being arrested by Elward and Deputy Luke Stickman, who also opened fire on Woods during the 2019 standoff. A grand jury declined to bring charges in the case last October.

In an incident report, Elward wrote that while responding to a vandalism call, he repeatedly shocked Cameron with a Taser, punched and grappled with Cameron at the home of his mother, Monica Lee. He said after getting Cameron to his squad car, he again stunned him to get him to pull his legs into the vehicle.


After going back inside to retrieve his Taser, deputies returned to find Cameron unresponsive. Elward wrote that he pulled Cameron from the car and performed CPR, but Cameron was later declared dead at a hospital.

Lee, who witnessed the confrontation, told the AP that after subduing her son, Elward kneeled on his back for several minutes. She said when Stickman arrived, he kneeled on her son’s neck while handcuffing him, and that her son complained he couldn’t breathe.

Lee said she later went outside, hoping to talk to her son before the deputies drove him away.

“I walked outside to tell him goodbye and that I loved him, and that I would try to see him the next day. That’s when I noticed they were on the driver’s side of the car doing CPR on him,” Lee said. “I fell to the ground screaming and hollering.”
 

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Montreal artist won't change puppet that community groups say looks like blackface
Author of the article:Canadian Press
Canadian Press
Jacob Serebrin
Published Mar 25, 2023 • 4 minute read
Artist Franck Sylvestre poses with puppet Max at his home in Montreal, Saturday, March 18, 2023.
Artist Franck Sylvestre poses with puppet Max at his home in Montreal, Saturday, March 18, 2023. PHOTO BY GRAHAM HUGHES /The Canadian Press
MONTREAL — A theatre performance for children featuring a puppet that has been described as racist is continuing in the Montreal area.


Several Black community organizations have criticized the puppet as being reminiscent of blackface minstrel shows — racist performances during which white people portrayed exaggerated stereotypes of Black people for laughs.


But the show’s creator — Franck Sylvestre, who is Black — has no plans to change the puppet, which he said is a caricature of his own features. Sylvestre said in an interview he can’t accept the idea that he’s not allowed to create a caricature of someone who is Black because racists created caricatures of Black people in the past.

“That’s unheard of for an artist,” he said.

The play, called L’incroyable secret de barbe noire — French for The Incredible Secret of Blackbeard — first drew controversy in February.


A performance at a municipal theatre in the Montreal suburb of Beaconsfield, Que., was cancelled after complaints by Black community organizations. The neighbouring community of Pointe-Claire, meanwhile, removed the play from its official Black History Month programming but allowed the performance to go ahead.

Sylvestre, who wrote the one-man show in 2009 aimed at kids aged five to nine years old, said he had never received a complaint about his show before February.

A series of performances of the play, which combines theatre, storytelling, masks and puppetry, begins Sunday in Laval, Que., he said, before he takes it to France for 30 performances.

Sylvestre said the play tells the story of a young man who travels from Montreal to Martinique — the Caribbean island where Sylvestre’s parents are from — at the request of his dying grandfather, who is haunted by his discovery of a mysterious wooden chest with a connection to the pirate Blackbeard.


Max Stanley Bazin, president of the Black Coalition of Quebec, describes the puppet’s appearance as “very, very, very ugly” and said he worries that seeing a Black person presented in such a way could cause emotional damage to young audiences.

“It will have an impact on them, it will have an impact on the mind of the young people who see this puppet, and that’s what we should think about,” he said in an interview.

People are more likely to speak out about racism now than they were in 2009, Bazin said, adding that he thinks Sylvestre should listen to community members and replace the puppet with a less controversial creation.

“If there are people in society who have said this isn’t right, you have to react,” he said.

Philip Howard, a professor in the department of integrated studies in education at McGill University, said he’s not sure the puppet is an example of blackface — but he said that’s beside the point.


“There is still very much the matter of representation and the potential use of monstrous and grotesque representations of Black people as a source of entertainment and even humour,” said Howard, who has studied contemporary blackface.

Howard said the intentions of the artist are less important than the impact of the performance on an audience.

“Here we have, in this particular instance, a whole community of folks that are responding and saying, ‘Wait a minute, we don’t love this, we don’t think this is OK and we’re particularly disturbed about it during Black History Month,”‘ he said.

Dismissing the opinions of Black people who have a problem with the performance demonstrates anti-Black racism, he said.

Sylvestre said he thinks much of the criticism comes from people who haven’t seen the play.


“It’s the job of the community to see what purpose these caricatures serve; are they, like blackface, denigrating Black people, or, as in my case, are they being elevated?” he said. “This character, he’s a strong character for me personally, and when I made it, I was inspired by myself.”

He said the puppet, named Max, is “like a great sage,” whose interventions lead to the play’s happy ending.

“Max, he was the voice of reason, he was the one who advised us, who mocked me when I made a bad decision, who was above me,” he said.

Prof. Cheryl Thompson, who teaches performance at Toronto Metropolitan University, said she didn’t like the puppet when she viewed a trailer for the play.

“I was extremely shocked,” she said. “I just couldn’t believe what I was seeing.”


While blackface minstrel shows are primarily associated with the United States, Thompson’s research has shown that blackface performances took place in Canada, with shows in Montreal as recently as the 1950s.

Even though blackface originated with white performers, Black actors in the 1800s would also don the exaggerated makeup and participate in the racist performances for white audiences.

“It actually didn’t matter if it was a white actor in blackface or a Black actor in blackface, it was the caricature that audiences thought was funny,” she said.

Thompson said there’s room for theatre performances to be provocative. But performers, she said, need to engage with audiences and be willing to discuss artistic choices — especially when artists are performing for audiences whose histories might be different than their own.

“Why wouldn’t this person at least try to hear the voices of people who maybe have a different experience to him?” she said.

She said she wouldn’t take a child to see the show, especially during Black History Month.

“I just don’t see the uplifting messaging,” Thompson said. “I don’t see the messaging of ‘you matter,’ I just don’t see that celebration of life. I just see something that is steeped in a history of racial caricature and mimicry.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 25, 2023.
View attachment 17752
Since only whites can be racist, he is obviously a white woman that self identifies as a black male.
 
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CNN’s ‘digital blackface’ report roasted by internet
Author of the article:Denette Wilford
Published Mar 28, 2023 • Last updated 1 day ago • 2 minute read

CNN has been lambasted over its “digital blackface” claims, where white people who use the meme of a black person to express a strong emotion are described as “play-acting at being black.”

The analysis piece written by John Blake is titled “What’s ‘digital blackface?’ And why is it wrong when White people use it?”


Blake opined that white people who share memes featuring black people “may have inadvertently perpetuated one of the most insidious forms of contemporary racism.”

He referenced RuPaul’s “Guuuurl…”GIF, Michael Jordan’s crying face, comedian Holly Logan “hold my wig” meme and a Tyra Bank moment from America’s Next Top Model as examples of the usage.



Blake defined the so-called digital blackface phenomenon as “a practice where White people co-opt online expressions of Black imagery, slang, catchphrases or culture to convey comic relief or express emotions,” and white people who do it are “play-acting at being Black.”

He cited an essay writer Lauren Michele Jackson penned for Teen Vogue in which she says the internet thrives on white people laughing at emotional displays of blackness — and, as a result, view black people as “walking hyberbole.”

Jackson wrote, “No matter how brief the performance or playful the intent, summoning black images to play types means pirouetting on over 150 years of American blackface tradition.”

“Blackface” refers to a form of entertainment that took hold prior to the Civil War in which white performers painted their faces black and exaggerated their features for minstrel shows.


However Blake’s story was widely panned on Twitter as users accused CNN of “essentially calling for the segregation of memes.”

One person mused, “Next they’ll say you’re guilty of audio blackface for singing along to hits by black people…”

Another person added: “I’m Black and I been Black my whole life. I have never read something stupider than this ever.”

The consensus was that the news network can no longer be taken seriously.

“It’s CNN. What do you expect?” asked one user. “Total clown show.”
 

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Reparations for Black Californians could top US$800 billion
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Janie Har
Published Mar 29, 2023 • 4 minute read

SAN FRANCISCO — It could cost California more than $800 billion to compensate Black residents for generations of over-policing, disproportionate incarceration and housing discrimination, economists have told a state panel considering reparations.


The preliminary estimate is more than 2.5 times California’s $300 billion annual budget, and does not include a recommended $1 million per older Black resident for health disparities that have shortened their average life span. Nor does the figure count compensating people for property unjustly taken by the government or devaluing Black businesses, two other harms the task force says the state perpetuated.


Black residents may not receive cash payments anytime soon, if ever, because the state may never adopt the economists’ calculations. The reparations task force is scheduled to discuss the numbers Wednesday and can vote to adopt the suggestions or come up with its own figures. The proposed number comes from a consulting team of five economists and policy experts.


“We’ve got to go in with an open mind and come up with some creative ways to deal with this,” said Assembly member Reggie Jones-Sawyer, one of two lawmakers on the task force responsible for mustering support from state legislators and Gov. Gavin Newsom before any reparations could become reality.

In an interview prior to the meeting, Jones-Sawyer said he needed to consult budget analysts, other legislators and the governor’s office before deciding whether the scale of payments is feasible.

The estimates for policing and disproportionate incarceration and housing discrimination are not new. The figures came up in a September presentation as the consulting team sought guidance on whether to use a national or California-specific model to calculate damages.


But the task force must now settle on a cash amount as it nears a July 1 deadline to recommend to lawmakers how California can atone for its role in perpetuating racist systems that continue to undermine Black people.

For those who support reparations, the staggering $800 billion amount economists suggest underscores the long-lasting harm Black Americans have endured, even in a state that never officially endorsed slavery. Critics pin their opposition partly on the fact that California was never a slave state and say current taxpayers should not be responsible for damage linked to events that germinated hundreds of years ago.

Task force recommendations are just the start because ultimate authority rests with the state Assembly, Senate and the governor.


“That’s going to be the real hurdle,” said Sen. Steven Bradford, who sits on the panel. “How do you compensate for hundreds of years of harm, even 150 years post-slavery?”

Financial redress is just one part of the package being considered. Other proposals include paying incarcerated inmates market value for their labour, establishing free wellness centres and planting more trees in Black communities, banning cash bail and adopting a K-12 Black studies curriculum.

Gov. Newsom signed legislation in 2020 creating the reparations task force after national protests over the death of George Floyd, a Black man, at the hands of Minneapolis police. While federal initiatives have stalled, cities, counties and other institutions have stepped in.


An advisory committee in San Francisco has recommended $5 million payouts, as well as guaranteed income of at least $97,000 and personal debt forgiveness for qualifying individuals. Supervisors expressed general support, but stopped short of endorsing specific proposals. They will take up the issue later this year.

The statewide estimate includes $246 billion to compensate eligible Black Californians whose neighbourhoods were subjected to aggressive policing and prosecution of Black people in the “war on drugs” from 1970 to 2020. That would translate to nearly $125,000 for every person who qualifies.

The numbers are approximate, based on modeling and population estimates. The economists also included $569 billion to make up for the discriminatory practice of redlining in housing loans. Such compensation would amount to about $223,000 per eligible resident who lived in California from 1933 to 1977. The aggregate is considered a maximum and assumes all 2.5 million people who identify as Black in California would be eligible.


Redlining officially began in the 1930s when the federal government started backing mortgages to support homebuying, but excluded majority Black neighbourhoods by marking them red on internal maps. The racial gap in homeownership persists today, and Black-owned homes are frequently undervalued. Redlining officially ended in 1977, but the practice persisted.

Monetary redress will be available to people who meet residency and other requirements. They must also be descendants of enslaved and freed Black people in the U.S. as of the 19th century, which leaves out Black immigrants.

In their report, the consultants suggest the state task force “err on the side of generosity” and consider a down-payment with more money to come as more evidence becomes available.

“It should be communicated to the public that the substantial initial down-payment is the beginning of a conversation about historical injustices, not the end of it,” they said.
 

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Autopsy finds cause of death for Irvo Otieno was asphyxia
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Sarah Rankin
Published Apr 03, 2023 • 2 minute read

RICHMOND, Va. — Irvo Otieno, a 28-year-old Black man whose death last month at a Virginia mental hospital has sparked outrage and led to second-degree murder charges against 10 defendants, died of “positional and mechanical asphyxia with restraints,” a medical examiner’s office said Monday.


Arkuie Williams, the administrative deputy in the state Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, confirmed the cause of death findings to The Associated Press after attorneys for Otieno’s family first shared them in a statement.


The manner of death was homicide, Williams wrote in an email.

Otieno, who struggled with mental illness, died March 6 after he was pinned to the floor while being admitted to Central State Hospital in Dinwiddie County.

Video released earlier this month showed sheriff’s deputies and hospital employees restraining a handcuffed and shackled Otieno for about 20 minutes after he was forcibly led into a hospital room. For much of that time, Otieno was prone on the floor, pinned by a group so large it blocked the camera’s view of him at times.


Personnel who realized he appeared limp and lifeless eventually began resuscitation efforts, the video showed. Otieno’s family and their attorneys have said he posed no danger and was simply trying to breathe.

“The official cause and manner of death is not surprising to us as it corroborates what the world witnessed in the video,” family attorneys Ben Crump and Mark Krudys said in a statement. “In a chilling parallel to George Floyd’s killing, Irvo was held down and excessively restrained to death, when he should have been provided medical help and compassion. It is tragic that yet another life has been lost to this malicious and deadly restraint technique.”

Seven deputies and three hospital workers have been charged with second-degree murder in Otieno’s death.


The local prosecutor who brought the charges has previously said in court that Otieno was smothered to death.

No additional information from the autopsy beyond the cause and manner of death can be released by the medical examiner’s office, Williams said.

Otieno was laid to rest last week. Civil rights leader the Rev. Al Sharpton and other speakers at his funeral said his death shows the need for mental health and policing reforms.

Otieno’s family and their attorneys have said Otieno was experiencing mental distress at the time of his initial encounter with law enforcement earlier this month, days before he was taken to the state hospital. He was first taken into police custody March 3, when he was transported to a local hospital for mental health treatment under an emergency custody order.


Police have said that while at the local hospital, he “became physically assaultive toward officers,” at which point they arrested him and took him to a local jail, something Otieno’s family says should never have happened given that he was in need of treatment. On the afternoon of March 6, he was transferred to the state hospital, which has a unit that provides care for people admitted from jails or by court order.

Some of the attorneys for the defendants charged in his death have said their clients were trying to restrain Otieno.

All defendants have been granted bond and court records show pre-trial hearings in April or May.
 

spaminator

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Tesla ordered to pay $3.2M to Black ex-worker in race bias case
Author of the article:Reuters
Reuters
Daniel Wiessner
Published Apr 03, 2023 • 3 minute read

A federal jury in San Francisco on Monday ordered Tesla Inc to pay about $3.2 million to a Black former employee after he won a racial harassment lawsuit against the electric-vehicle maker, far less than the $15 million he rejected last year in opting for a new trial.


The verdict came after a week-long retrial in the 2017 lawsuit by plaintiff Owen Diaz, who in 2021 was awarded $137 million by a different jury. A judge agreed with that jury that Tesla was liable but said the award was excessive. He ordered a new trial on damages after Diaz declined the reduced $15 million award.


Diaz had accused Tesla of failing to act when he repeatedly complained to managers that employees at the Fremont, California, factory frequently used racist slurs and scrawled swastikas, racist caricatures and epithets on walls and work areas.

The jury on Monday awarded Diaz, who worked as an elevator operator, $175,000 in damages for emotional distress and $3 million in punitive damages designed to punish unlawful conduct and deter it in the future.


Tesla CEO Elon Musk in a tweet said “the verdict would’ve been zero” if the judge had allowed the company to introduce new evidence in the retrial.

Musk added: “Jury did the best they could with the information they had. I respect the decision.”

The company has said it does not tolerate workplace discrimination and takes worker complaints seriously.

Bernard Alexander, a lawyer for Diaz, urged jurors during closing statements on Friday to award him nearly $160 million in damages, and send a message to Tesla and other large companies that they will be held accountable for failing to address discrimination.

“Mr. Diaz’s outlook on the world has been permanently changed,” Alexander said. “That is what happens when you take away a person’s safety.”


Tesla’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, countered that Diaz was a confrontational worker who had exaggerated his claims of emotional distress, and said his lawyers failed to show any serious, long-lasting damage caused by Tesla.

“They’re just throwing numbers up on the screen like this is some kind of game show,” Spiro said.

Lawyers for Diaz did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the verdict.

CASE SEEN ‘FAR FROM OVER’
The verdict was surprisingly low considering the egregious conduct for which Tesla was found liable, said Ryan Saba, a Los Angeles-based employment lawyer who was not involved in the case.

But it could be cut even further because punitive damages are typically capped at no more than nine times the amount of damages for emotional distress and other injuries, Saba said. The punitive damages awarded by the jury on Monday were nearly 20 times the damages for emotional distress.


“I expect both sides will appeal,” Saba said. “This case is far from over.”

Diaz testified last week, tearfully recounting various incidents during the nine months that he worked at the Fremont factory. Diaz said the job made him anxious and strained his relationship with his son, who also worked at the plant.

Lawyers for Tesla highlighted what they said were inconsistencies in Diaz’s testimony and repeatedly raised the fact that he did not lodge written complaints to supervisors. Diaz testified that he verbally complained to managers numerous times and discussed his complaints with Tesla human resources officials.

The EV maker is facing similar claims of tolerating race discrimination at the Fremont plant and other workplaces in a pending class action by Black workers, a separate case from a California civil rights agency, and multiple cases involving individual workers. The company has denied wrongdoing in those cases.


Diaz had sued Tesla for violating a California law that prohibits employers from failing to address hostile work environments based on race or other protected traits.

The first jury in 2021 awarded Diaz $7 million in damages for emotional distress and a staggering $130 million in punitive damages. The award was one of the largest in an employment discrimination case in U.S. history.

U.S. District Judge William Orrick last year agreed with the jury that Tesla had broken the law, but said the award was excessive and cut it to $15 million.

Orrick said Diaz had worked at the factory for only nine months and had not alleged any physical injury or illness warranting a higher award.

On Friday, Orrick denied a motion by Diaz’s lawyers for a mistrial. They claimed Tesla’s legal team violated Orrick’s bar on introducing new evidence in the retrial by questioning Diaz and other witnesses about incidents where he allegedly made racist or sexual comments.

Orrick said those questions were related to other incidents discussed in the first trial, and that Diaz’s lawyers had not shown that the questioning prejudiced the jury.
 

Taxslave2

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By the time his lawyer is done, he will have to declare bankruptcy to get out of paying more legal bills.
 

spaminator

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Teachers thought boy who collapsed at recess was playing dead: Lawsuit
'It's absolutely heartbreaking because it was completely and totally avoidable'

Author of the article:Washington Post
Washington Post
Kyle Melnick
Published Apr 10, 2023 • 3 minute read

A 5-year-old was playing outside during recess at his Connecticut elementary school last year when he suddenly collapsed, according to court documents.


At first, students and teachers thought Romeo Pierre Louis was “playing dead” – something kindergarten students often did, court documents claim. But when a teacher checked on Romeo more than eight minutes later, he wasn’t breathing, according to police.


A teacher rushed Romeo to the nurse’s office. According to a new lawsuit by Romeo’s parents, he was beyond the point of being saved. He died two days later of a rare heart condition, according to a police report.

Last Wednesday – the first anniversary of Romeo’s collapse – D’Meza Shultz Pierre Louis and Chantel Pierre Louis filed the lawsuit in Connecticut Superior Court against the town of West Hartford and its education board. It alleges school staff could have saved Romeo if they had promptly provided him medical care.


“It’s absolutely heartbreaking because it was completely and totally avoidable,” Michael L. Chambers Jr., an attorney representing Romeo’s parents, told The Washington Post. “As any parent who every morning drops their child off at school, there’s a certain level of trust we put in teachers’ and administrators’ hands. And that trust was absolutely broken.”

Andrew Morrow, the interim superintendent of West Hartford Public Schools, in a statement expressed condolences for the family and said the district has provided grief counseling to students and staff.

“The death of a child is a devastating and unimaginable loss, and our thoughts are with the family and friends of Romeo Pierre Louis,” Morrow said in the statement. “This tragedy has deeply affected the Charter Oak International Academy community.”


The lawsuit alleges that the town of West Harford is liable for any negligence of the education board. Dallas C. Dodge, a lawyer for the town, said in a statement, “The death of a child under any circumstance is a tragedy, and we extend our condolences to the family and friends of Romeo.”

On April 5, 2022, Romeo ran around with friends on the playground for about 19 minutes at Charter Oak International Academy, according to a West Hartford Police Department incident report. While playing freeze tag, he stopped breathing and fell, police said.

Other children thought Romeo was pretending to sleep, police said. When a child told teachers a few minutes later that Romeo was acting strangely, the teachers thought he was playing but checked his condition, police said. Three teachers noticed he didn’t have a pulse, according to police, so one lifted him and ran to the nurse’s office while another called emergency services.


Romeo was unconscious for about nine minutes before he was brought to the nurse, according to the incident report.

“There is no reason why a 5-year-old child is on the ground for more than 30 or 45 seconds without an adult responding,” Chambers said. “And had they responded, he would have been fine.”

Romeo did not react when a nurse tested his consciousness with a sternal rub, so she began doing chest compressions and used a defibrillator on him, police said. When officers arrived, they hooked up Romeo to an oxygen tank. He was lifted onto a stretcher and taken to Connecticut Children’s Medical Center by ambulance, police said.

On April 7, 2022, police said Romeo died of Brugada syndrome, a disorder that can cause irregular heart rhythms. According to Mayo Clinic, Brugada syndrome can cause sudden cardiac death, though survival is possible with prompt medical care.


Chambers said Romeo’s parents were unaware of their son’s condition.

After Charter Oak International Academy dismissed students Wednesday afternoon, Romeo’s family and friends held a vigil near where he collapsed. On Facebook, Romeo’s mother asked attendees to wear white and to carry signs that read, “Listen to our children.”

Family members shared stories about Romeo’s love for superheroes, the Bible and family movie nights. They recited the Lord’s Prayer, which Romeo’s father said was his favorite.

“We know that nothing will bring our son back,” Romeo’s mother told the Hartford Courant. “All we can do is keep his memory in our hearts and do what we can so this doesn’t happen to another child.”

Chambers said the family didn’t want to file a lawsuit but thought it was the only way to hold those involved accountable.

“They wanted to feel like it mattered and people took responsibility,” Chambers said, “and it wasn’t going to happen again.”
 

spaminator

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Body-cam footage released as woman claims traffic stop caused miscarriage
Author of the article:Denette Wilford
Published Apr 10, 2023 • Last updated 1 day ago • 2 minute read

A woman claimed a traffic stop caused her to have a miscarriage, but New York state troopers have since released body-cam footage of the incident.

Quashaia Oranchak was 6 1/2-months pregnant at the time of the March 20 traffic stop in Binghamton, N.Y.


She accused troopers of “bodyslamming her on the hood” of the cruiser, which later caused her to be rushed to hospital for an emergency C-section during which she lost the baby.

The footage, however, shows the arresting officer carefully handling the woman, letting her know repeatedly how cautious he was going to be with her.



The arresting officer — who has not been identified — is initially seen yanking Oranchak out of the driver’s seat in the nine-minute video after troopers forced her to stop her car, saying she allegedly ignored their requests to pull over.

Oranchak’s arms were placed behind her back before she was pushed to the rear side of her car — but not right up against it — and nowhere near the hood.

One of Oranchak’s passengers alerts police about the driver’s pregnancy, which was noted as cops searched her car and pockets.

“You good? You sure?” he asked after helping her drink from a water bottle.

“We have a situation that we’re in right now, but at the end of the day — like I told you before — I’m a reasonable guy,” he can be heard saying.


“I see that you’re pregnant,” he continued. “If you’re not good, you need to let me know because you’re in my custody now. Your wellbeing is part of my responsibility.”

Throughout the video, the trooper is heard reassuring Oranchak and gently places her into the cruiser’s backseat.

He is the lone officer seen on video handling Oranchak, though one cop can be heard calling “bulls***” on her claims she wasn’t trying to flee officers.

However, it is unclear how the expectant mother was handled by cops after she was placed in the cruiser.

Oranchak was charged with drug possession and fleeing an officer and transported to Broome County Jail, where she was found unresponsive six hours after her arrest.



“It is acknowledged that drugs were found but no one engaged in any violent conduct, no one resisted arrest, no one was doing anything other than in fact going to get laundry done when stopped by the police,” attorney Ronald Benjamin told WBNG.

“The stop violated numerous protocols and yanking her out of the car like a rag doll and slamming her on the hood of the vehicle undoubtedly caused this child’s untimely demise, and as such the family is demanding that there be an impartial investigation into the police conduct and resulting homicide.”

However, state police issued a statement, saying, “While at the Broome County Jail, Oranchak, who was pregnant, became unresponsive and was transported to the hospital, where a quantity of fentanyl and methamphetamine was located secreted in her body.”

They added: “The unborn child did not survive.”

The investigation is ongoing.
 

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McGill student newspaper drops 'McGill' from name due to 'violent, colonial and racist origins'
The McGill Tribune will now be called The Tribune, a move its editorial team felt "was long overdue."

Author of the article:Montreal Gazette
Published Apr 12, 2023 • Last updated 1 day ago • 2 minute read

Saying that McGill University has exhibited “continued indifference toward its violent, colonial and racist origins,” the Tribune has dropped the name of McGill from its masthead.


The publication’s decision is based on the fact that James McGill (1744-1813) was a slave owner and profited in part from the international slave trade.


“We all felt it was long overdue,” said Tribune editor-in-chief Madison McLauchlan, adding that the change was a group decision by the paper’s editorial team. “As we continued to editorialize against racism, against colonialism, we felt that we couldn’t in good faith continue to publish about injustices with ‘McGill’ on our paper.”

In an editorial posted Wednesday on its website, the student-run newspaper, founded in 1981 and with a circulation of 2,000, argues that “McGill frames its founder as a philanthropist, but hardly acknowledges that the donated fortune, the gift that ensured he would be our namesake, was amassed through the exploitation of enslaved people in Canada, the Caribbean and the slave trade more broadly.”


The editorial describes its decision to rebrand as a “divorcing” itself from McGill. It calls upon the university to eliminate McGill’s name from its identity and follow the lead of Toronto Metropolitan University, formerly Ryerson University, which last year rechristened itself after protests over the role Egerton Ryerson (1803-1882) played in the design of Canada’s residential school system.

McGill University acknowledges on its website that “the wealth leading to (the university’s) establishment was derived, in part, from James McGill’s engagement in the colonial economic system and the transatlantic slave trade. The university acknowledges the deep, long-lasting adverse impacts that these practices have exerted on Black and Indigenous communities.”


The post goes on to say that “in the 200 years since its establishment, McGill University has evolved to become a world-class institution of higher education marked by pluralism and diversity. It is proud to welcome exceptional students, faculty and staff of all identities, beliefs and origins who today call McGill University their intellectual home.”

McLauchlan said on Wednesday that reaction thus far to the decision to change the name of the publication had been largely positive, with just one email stating disagreement.

“I imagine there will be continuing discussion about it in the coming weeks … but as we say in the editorial, it’s by no means the end of the project. This is only the beginning of a new era for us.”

McGill University said in an emailed statement to the Montreal Gazette that “the Tribune is a student-run media outlet and, as such, is an independent legal entity, separate from McGill University. Like all student-run media outlets on campus, it is responsible for setting its own editorial policies.”
 

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Guards beat, taunted inmate, lawsuit alleges
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Morgan Lee
Published Apr 12, 2023 • 3 minute read

SANTA FE, N.M. — Advocates for prisoners’ rights have filed a civil rights lawsuit against state corrections officers who allegedly ignored requirements that they videotape a prison-cell encounter with an inmate who says he was sexually abused, beaten without provocation and taunted with words that evoked the 2020 death of George Floyd at the hands of police.


The New Mexico Prison & Jail Project filed the civil lawsuit Tuesday seeking damages in U.S. District Court on behalf of a Black inmate against five state Corrections Department officers, in connection with an April 2021 confrontation at the Northeast New Mexico Correctional Facility in Clayton.


The advocacy group reconstructed events from the testimony of the plaintiff and other inmate witnesses, along with unredacted portions of an internal investigation by the Correction Department’s Office of Professional Conduct.

Officers told investigators that the inmate was restrained physically and with pepper spray after swinging an elbow at an officer. They denied the inmate’s account of abuses.

Several of the officers acknowledged to Corrections Department investigators that a video camera should have been used inside the cell.


“Its use could have prevented questions, provided answers and the truth would have come out,” one officer told investigators.

Prison & Jail Project Director Steven Robert Allen said video recordings were required because the use of force by corrections officers was planned and not reactive. A copy of agency policy was not immediately available.

Corrections Department spokeswoman Carmelina Hart said the agency does not comment on pending litigation. She said four corrections officers out of five in the complaint still work at the agency.

The lawsuit alleges that corrections officers retaliated against the plaintiff after he spoke out earlier in support of another inmate who was surrounded by officers. Those events also are chronicled in a separate 2022 lawsuit alleging battery and sexual abuse by corrections officers against another inmate.


The new lawsuit says at least five corrections officers and a manager later entered the plaintiff’s cell and ordered a cellmate to leave.

The lawsuit alleges that one officer pushed his crotch up against the plaintiff’s backside. It says the plaintiff objected and wasn’t provoked into retaliating, but he was thrown to the ground and beaten.

The lawsuit alleges that the plaintiff was face-down on the ground, when a corrections officer placed a foot on his back and said, “Let me guess, you can’t breathe.”

Attorneys for the Prison & Jail Project say that the date of the encounter on April 15, 2021, corresponded with the trial of former Minneapolis Police officer Derek Chauvin for pinning George Floyd to the pavement with his knee on the Black man’s neck in a case that triggered worldwide protests and a reexamination of racism and policing in the U.S.


Chauvin was convicted on murder and manslaughter charges on April 20, 2021. The centerpiece of the case was the excruciating bystander video of Floyd gasping repeatedly, “I can’t breathe.”

The inmate in New Mexico “thought he was going to die, and why wouldn’t he?” Allen said. “That kind of terrorizing of a Black prisoner in a prison here in New Mexico is completely unacceptable.”

The lawsuit alleges battery, cruel and unusual punishment and violations of free speech rights, seeking unspecified compensation.

The inmate initially filed an administrative complaint under provisions of the Prison Rape Elimination Act. It is unclear whether officers were disciplined. No criminal charges have been filed. The inmate is serving a sentence after pleading guilty to armed robbery in 2016.