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Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Officer Michael Forbes took the stand this week in the civil case surrounding a 2011 death. The wheels of justice move slowly ... but, the parents of the La'Reko Williams, 21, have not given up. They are suing Forbes for wrongful death and say he used excessive force when he shot Williams with a Taser two times in 2011. Williams later died of a heart attack. [SOURCE]
Officer Forbes was cleared by the department of any wrongdoing and is still on patrol. But Williams' family said the actions of Forbes are the reason Williams died. The attorneys suing Officer Forbes, on behalf of Williams' parents, showed autopsy photos of Williams. They also played the video dash cam recording, which included audio. Attorneys said Forbes tased Williams within 15 seconds of arriving on-scene.
The audio cuts out right before Forbes used his Taser the second time. Was the second shot from Officer Michael Forbes’ weapon necessary?
Opening statements to the five-woman, three-man jury on Wednesday were brief, but direct. Attorneys for the prosecution said Williams was not a threat when he was approached by the officer in July of 2011. They say he didn't try to punch, bite or run from Officer Forbes, and only asked why he was detained.
It captures in dramatic fashion how Republicans have made no effort to change their ways to reach out to and be more tolerant towards women, African Americans, Latinos, young people and the LGBT community despite an autopsy report released 100 days ago today which said it must do so to be a viable national party. If anything, Republicans have gone the other way – using more extreme rhetoric and taking more extreme positions than ever. Truth is, the Grand Old Party is just the Same Old Party it has been.
Perhaps it's time for GOP chair Reince Priebus to give a call to Aaron Laramore. He's got some tips on how the Republican Party can better reach out to Black folks.
One reason that I operate this blog is to share information that impacts on people of African descent. I'm convinced that it is a mistake to rely exclusively on media that is not owned and operated by us.
For example, have you noticed that the mainstream media (MSM) only seems to care about the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. in mid-January, around the time of his birthday celebration, or mid-April, around the time of his assassination remembrance.
Even when the MSM shares video of King's life ... it is severely limited. What we see is a closed loop of familiar file footage: King battling desegregation in Birmingham (1963); reciting his dream of racial harmony at the rally in Washington (1963); marching for voting rights in Selma, Alabama (1965); and finally, lying dead on the motel balcony in Memphis (1968).
Ever wonder what was going on in King's life between 1965 and 1968? You would think he went into the witness protection program based on what MSM executives feel is proper to show us.
The reality is that King was working hard in 1965-1968. His speeches were filmed or taped. But they're not shown today on TV.
By 1967, King had also become the country's most prominent opponent of the Vietnam War, and a staunch critic of overall U.S. foreign policy, which he deemed militaristic. In his "Beyond Vietnam" speech King called the United States "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today."
His skills as an orator earned him a place on the list of the Top 100 Speeches of the 20th Century produced by the folks at American Rhetoric. Rev. King delivered a speech entitled "A Time to Break Silence" (Top Speech #43) on April 4, 1967 (a year to the day before he was murdered), at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City.
There is no available video of his entire speech, however, we do have an audio clip and text transcript [SOURCE] for your edification.
Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen: I need not pause to say how very delighted I am to be here tonight, and how very delighted I am to see you expressing your concern about the issues that will be discussed tonight by turning out in such large numbers. I also want to say that I consider it a great honor to share this program with Dr. Bennett, Dr. Commager, and Rabbi Heschel, and some of the distinguished leaders and personalities of our nation. And of course it’s always good to come back to Riverside Church. Over the last eight years, I have had the privilege of preaching here almost every year in that period, and it is always a rich and rewarding experience to come to this great church and this great pulpit. I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. I join you in this meeting because I am in deepest agreement with the aims and work of the organization which has brought us together: Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam. The recent statements of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart, and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: "A time comes when silence is betrayal." And that time has come for us in relation to Vietnam. The truth of these words is beyond doubt, but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexed as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on. And some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation's history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movements and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us. Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: "Why are you speaking about the war, Dr. King?" "Why are you joining the voices of dissent?" "Peace and civil rights don't mix," they say. "Aren't you hurting the cause of your people," they ask? And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live. In the light of such tragic misunderstanding, I deem it of signal importance to try to state clearly, and I trust concisely, why I believe that the path from Dexter Avenue Baptist Church -- the church in Montgomery, Alabama, where I began my pastorate -- leads clearly to this sanctuary tonight. I come to this platform tonight to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation. This speech is not addressed to Hanoi or to the National Liberation Front. It is not addressed to China or to Russia. Nor is it an attempt to overlook the ambiguity of the total situation and the need for a collective solution to the tragedy of Vietnam. Neither is it an attempt to make North Vietnam or the National Liberation Front paragons of virtue, nor to overlook the role they must play in the successful resolution of the problem. While they both may have justifiable reasons to be suspicious of the good faith of the United States, life and history give eloquent testimony to the fact that conflicts are never resolved without trustful give and take on both sides. Tonight, however, I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the National Liberation Front, but rather to my fellow Americans. Since I am a preacher by calling, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor -- both black and white -- through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated, as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So, I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such. Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. And so we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. And so we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would hardly live on the same block in Chicago. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor. My third reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness, for it grows out of my experience in the ghettoes of the North over the last three years -- especially the last three summers. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected, and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they ask -- and rightly so -- what about Vietnam? They ask if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent. For those who ask the question, "Aren't you a civil rights leader?" and thereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace, I have this further answer. In 1957 when a group of us formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, we chose as our motto: "To save the soul of America." We were convinced that we could not limit our vision to certain rights for black people, but instead affirmed the conviction that America would never be free or saved from itself until the descendants of its slaves were loosed completely from the shackles they still wear. In a way we were agreeing with Langston Hughes, that black bard of Harlem, who had written earlier:
O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath -- America will be!
Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read: Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that America will be are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land. As if the weight of such a commitment to the life and health of America were not enough, another burden of responsibility was placed upon me in 19541; and I cannot forget that the Nobel Prize for Peace was also a commission -- a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for "the brotherhood of man." This is a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances, but even if it were not present I would yet have to live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ. To me the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I'm speaking against the war. Could it be that they do not know that the good news was meant for all men -- for Communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and for white, for revolutionary and conservative? Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the One who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them? What then can I say to the Vietcong or to Castro or to Mao as a faithful minister of this One? Can I threaten them with death or must I not share with them my life? And finally, as I try to explain for you and for myself the road that leads from Montgomery to this place I would have offered all that was most valid if I simply said that I must be true to my conviction that I share with all men the calling to be a son of the living God. Beyond the calling of race or nation or creed is this vocation of sonship and brotherhood, and because I believe that the Father is deeply concerned especially for his suffering and helpless and outcast children, I come tonight to speak for them. This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation's self-defined goals and positions. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation and for those it calls "enemy," for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers. And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways to understand and respond in compassion, my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. I speak now not of the soldiers of each side, not of the ideologies of the Liberation Front, not of the junta in Saigon, but simply of the people who have been living under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades now. I think of them, too, because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution there until some attempt is made to know them and hear their broken cries. They must see Americans as strange liberators. The Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence in 1954 -- in 1945 rather -- after a combined French and Japanese occupation and before the communist revolution in China. They were led by Ho Chi Minh. Even though they quoted the American Declaration of Independence in their own document of freedom, we refused to recognize them. Instead, we decided to support France in its reconquest of her former colony. Our government felt then that the Vietnamese people were not ready for independence, and we again fell victim to the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long. With that tragic decision we rejected a revolutionary government seeking self-determination and a government that had been established not by China -- for whom the Vietnamese have no great love -- but by clearly indigenous forces that included some communists. For the peasants this new government meant real land reform, one of the most important needs in their lives. For nine years following 1945 we denied the people of Vietnam the right of independence. For nine years we vigorously supported the French in their abortive effort to recolonize Vietnam. Before the end of the war we were meeting eighty percent of the French war costs. Even before the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, they began to despair of their reckless action, but we did not. We encouraged them with our huge financial and military supplies to continue the war even after they had lost the will. Soon we would be paying almost the full costs of this tragic attempt at recolonization. After the French were defeated, it looked as if independence and land reform would come again through the Geneva Agreement. But instead there came the United States, determined that Ho should not unify the temporarily divided nation, and the peasants watched again as we supported one of the most vicious modern dictators, our chosen man, Premier Diem. The peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly rooted out all opposition, supported their extortionist landlords, and refused even to discuss reunification with the North. The peasants watched as all this was presided over by United States' influence and then by increasing numbers of United States troops who came to help quell the insurgency that Diem's methods had aroused. When Diem was overthrown they may have been happy, but the long line of military dictators seemed to offer no real change, especially in terms of their need for land and peace. The only change came from America, as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept, and without popular support. All the while the people read our leaflets and received the regular promises of peace and democracy and land reform. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us, not their fellow Vietnamese, the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know they must move on or be destroyed by our bombs. So they go, primarily women and children and the aged. They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. They wander into the hospitals with at least twenty casualties from American firepower for one Vietcong-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a million of them, mostly children. They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see the children degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers. What do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with the landlords and as we refuse to put any action into our many words concerning land reform? What do they think as we test out our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe? Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building? Is it among these voiceless ones? We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops. We have cooperated in the crushing of -- in the crushing of the nation's only noncommunist revolutionary political force, the unified Buddhist Church. We have supported the enemies of the peasants of Saigon. We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men. Now there is little left to build on, save bitterness. Soon the only solid physical foundations remaining will be found at our military bases and in the concrete of the concentration camps we call "fortified hamlets." The peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our new Vietnam on such grounds as these. Could we blame them for such thoughts? We must speak for them and raise the questions they cannot raise. These, too, are our brothers. Perhaps a more difficult but no less necessary task is to speak for those who have been designated as our enemies. What of the National Liberation Front, that strangely anonymous group we call "VC" or "communists"? What must they think of the United States of America when they realize that we permitted the repression and cruelty of Diem, which helped to bring them into being as a resistance group in the South? What do they think of our condoning the violence which led to their own taking up of arms? How can they believe in our integrity when now we speak of "aggression from the North" as if there were nothing more essential to the war? How can they trust us when now we charge them with violence after the murderous reign of Diem and charge them with violence while we pour every new weapon of death into their land? Surely we must understand their feelings, even if we do not condone their actions. Surely we must see that the men we supported pressed them to their violence. Surely we must see that our own computerized plans of destruction simply dwarf their greatest acts. How do they judge us when our officials know that their membership is less than twenty-five percent communist, and yet insist on giving them the blanket name? What must they be thinking when they know that we are aware of their control of major sections of Vietnam, and yet we appear ready to allow national elections in which this highly organized political parallel government will not have a part? They ask how we can speak of free elections when the Saigon press is censored and controlled by the military junta. And they are surely right to wonder what kind of new government we plan to help form without them, the only party in real touch with the peasants. They question our political goals and they deny the reality of a peace settlement from which they will be excluded. Their questions are frighteningly relevant. Is our nation planning to build on political myth again, and then shore it up upon the power of new violence? Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence, when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition. So, too, with Hanoi. In the North, where our bombs now pummel the land, and our mines endanger the waterways, we are met by a deep but understandable mistrust. To speak for them is to explain this lack of confidence in Western words, and especially their distrust of American intentions now. In Hanoi are the men who led the nation to independence against the Japanese and the French, the men who sought membership in the French Commonwealth and were betrayed by the weakness of Paris and the willfulness of the colonial armies. It was they who led a second struggle against French domination at tremendous costs, and then were persuaded to give up the land they controlled between the thirteenth and seventeenth parallel as a temporary measure at Geneva. After 1954 they watched us conspire with Diem to prevent elections which could have surely brought Ho Chi Minh to power over a united Vietnam, and they realized they had been betrayed again. When we ask why they do not leap to negotiate, these things must be remembered. Also, it must be clear that the leaders of Hanoi considered the presence of American troops in support of the Diem regime to have been the initial military breach of the Geneva Agreement concerning foreign troops. They remind us that they did not begin to send troops in large numbers and even supplies into the South until American forces had moved into the tens of thousands. Hanoi remembers how our leaders refused to tell us the truth about the earlier North Vietnamese overtures for peace, how the president claimed that none existed when they had clearly been made. Ho Chi Minh has watched as America has spoken of peace and built up its forces, and now he has surely heard the increasing international rumors of American plans for an invasion of the North. He knows the bombing and shelling and mining we are doing are part of traditional pre-invasion strategy. Perhaps only his sense of humor and of irony can save him when he hears the most powerful nation of the world speaking of aggression as it drops thousands of bombs on a poor, weak nation more than eight hundred -- rather, eight thousand miles away from its shores. At this point I should make it clear that while I have tried in these last few minutes to give a voice to the voiceless in Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called "enemy," I am as deeply concerned about our own troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy, and the secure, while we create a hell for the poor. Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as one who loves America, to the leaders of our own nation: The great initiative in this war is ours; the initiative to stop it must be ours. This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Recently one of them wrote these words, and I quote:
Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom, and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism (unquote).
If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. If we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam immediately, the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horrible, clumsy, and deadly game we have decided to play. The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways. In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war. I would like to suggest five concrete things that our government should do immediately to begin the long and difficult process of extricating ourselves from this nightmarish conflict: Number one: End all bombing in North and South Vietnam. Number two: Declare a unilateral cease-fire in the hope that such action will create the atmosphere for negotiation. Three: Take immediate steps to prevent other battlegrounds in Southeast Asia by curtailing our military buildup in Thailand and our interference in Laos. Four: Realistically accept the fact that the National Liberation Front has substantial support in South Vietnam and must thereby play a role in any meaningful negotiations and any future Vietnam government. Five: Set a date that we will remove all foreign troops from Vietnam in accordance with the 1954 Geneva Agreement. Part of our ongoing -- Part of our ongoing commitment might well express itself in an offer to grant asylum to any Vietnamese who fears for his life under a new regime which included the Liberation Front. Then we must make what reparations we can for the damage we have done. We must provide the medical aid that is badly needed, making it available in this country, if necessary. Meanwhile -- Meanwhile, we in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task while we urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment. We must continue to raise our voices and our lives if our nation persists in its perverse ways in Vietnam. We must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative method of protest possible. As we counsel young men concerning military service, we must clarify for them our nation's role in Vietnam and challenge them with the alternative of conscientious objection. I am pleased to say that this is a path now chosen by more than seventy students at my own alma mater, Morehouse College, and I recommend it to all who find the American course in Vietnam a dishonorable and unjust one. Moreover, I would encourage all ministers of draft age to give up their ministerial exemptions and seek status as conscientious objectors. These are the times for real choices and not false ones. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest. Now there is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending us all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade against the war in Vietnam. I say we must enter that struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing. The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality...and if we ignore this sobering reality, we will find ourselves organizing "clergy and laymen concerned" committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end, unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy. And so, such thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God. In 1957, a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years, we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which has now justified the presence of U.S. military advisors in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counterrevolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Cambodia and why American napalm and Green Beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru. It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin...we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered. A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood. This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. War is not the answer. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and, through their misguided passions, urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations. These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. We must not engage in a negative anticommunism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take offensive action in behalf of justice. We must with positive action seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity, and injustice, which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops. These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wounds of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light. We in the West must support these revolutions. It is a sad fact that because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch antirevolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has a revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions that we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores, and thereby speed the day when "every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain." A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies. This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind. This oft misunderstood, this oft misinterpreted concept, so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force, has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am not speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John:
"Let us love one another, for love is God. And every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love." "If we love one another, God dwelleth in us and his love is perfected in us."
Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day. We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. And history is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. As Arnold Toynbee says: "Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word" (unquote). We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood -- it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, "Too late." There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. Omar Khayyam is right: "The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on." We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation. We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight. Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message -- of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise, we must choose in this crucial moment of human history. As that noble bard of yesterday, James Russell Lowell, eloquently stated:
Once to every man and nation Comes the moment to decide, In the strife of truth and falsehood, For the good or evil side; Some great cause, God's new Messiah, Off'ring each the bloom or blight, And the choice goes by forever Twixt that darkness and that light. Though the cause of evil prosper, Yet 'tis truth alone is strong; Though her portion be the scaffold, And upon the throne be wrong: Yet that scaffold sways the future, And behind the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadow Keeping watch above his own.
And if we will only make the right choice, we will be able to transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of peace. If we will make the right choice, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.
Darrin “Dagwood” Hanna was tasered multiple times during his arrest by six North Chicago police officers a year ago. Those shocks and other “tactics” police claimed they had to use to subdue Hanna, a big but gentle man according to his family, contributed to his death a week later, according to an official autopsy.
The incident sparked an outcry from Hanna’s large extended family, among them some of the area’s earliest Black residents.
In the months that followed, Hanna’s mother and son filed a federal wrongful death suit and supporters staged rallies, marches and weekly protests at city council meetings, demanding that the officers involved be removed from duty and charged with murder.
While the state’s attorney office declined to prosecute the arresting officers, an internal investigation ordered by North Chicago Mayor Leon Rockingham resulted in the firing of one officer who was found to have punched Hanna, 45, repeatedly in the face while he had him trapped in a headlock, the discipline of another for falsifying a report, and the forced retirement of Police Chief Michael Newsome. Last month, Newsome was arrested and charged with the theft of $140,000 in drug money.
Unidentified Saginaw police officers shot their taser five times at 38-year old Bobby Merrill when they found him running into traffic and jumping on cars back in April. One of the taser blasts connected with Merrill and he went into cardiac arrest and died.
The Saginaw County Prosecutor Michael Thomas says that the police were blameless. Thomas indicates that the man who died caused his own death with cocaine and alcohol. According to the 'powers-that-be' the 50,000 volts of electricity pumped into his body by the taser had nothing to do with his death. [SOURCE]
The investigation showed that police officers subdued Merrill with the taser shot before handcuffing him and placing him in the back of their car. The police were high-fiving each other over their 'Wild West' show when they finally allowed the medical responders to see Merrill. The medical personnel had been onsite before the tasing ... but, they weren't allowed to help Merrill. Instead the police went buck wild ... fired off five taser shots ... and now an unarmed man is now dead.
The district attorney and the police want us to believe that drugs and alchohol killed this guy. In fact, the autopsy report acknowledges that he was tased before his death ... but, the report refuses to acknowledge that the taser contributed to his death.
I suspect that the Merrill family will end up taking this decision to civil court in order to get some justice for Bobby.
It appears that the only way that anyone can get justice for the pre-judicial electrocution of a family member is via civil action. We are simply not seeing many law enforcement officers being held accountable for their actions when they use a taser to cause the death of a citizen.
The family of 47-year old Michael White came to that conclusion this week when they filed a lawsuit in Sacramento (CA) alleging that Vallejo police officers used excessive and "unreasonable" force and were not properly trained in the deployment of their tasers. [SOURCE]
'Villagers' may recall that Michael White died June 15, 2010 after police used pumped his body several times with 50,000 volt shocks from their taser guns. The police were responding to a report that he had assaulted a woman at the Vallejo Mobile Estates.
An autopsy report said that White had cocaine in his system and died from "excited delirium."
Court documents indicate that the plaintiffs, White's daughter and her mother, are seeking $25,000 in damages for emotional distress, funeral and medical bills and loss of economic support, among other things.
The 'powers-that-be' up in Baldwin, LA don't intend to have anyone take responsibility for the taser-related death of Damon Abraham. That is the conclusion that I draw from the fact that the local coroner declared Baldwin suffered from "cocaine intoxication" that The coroner says the cause of death was excited delirium. [SOURCE]
The police often try to blame their pre-judicial electrocutions on the victim being a criminal or a drug addict or a drunk. None of those things held true for 62-year old Roger Anthony when he was pumped with 50,000 volts of electricity from Scotland Neck (NC) police officer John Turner. Officer Turner didn't appreciate being ignored by an old guy on a bicycle ... so he took out his taser gun and killed Mr. Anthony.
Roger Anthony died last November after Scotland Neck police got a call about a drunk man falling from his bicycle. The officer said he called out to the 62-year-old man, turned on his lights and siren and tried to get him to stop.
The police officer thought that Turner was drunk. Anthony's toxicology tests came back clean. He had no alcohol or drugs in his system.
Methinks that a lawsuit is coming up next if the prosecutor doesn't take criminal action against Officer Turner.What say u?
It happened again! This time the electrocution-by-taser took place in Aurora, Illinois. Police responded to several 911 calls last night about 37-year old Jersey Green. It appears that Green was jumping on parked vehicles. Police say that Green jumped off a parked SUV when they arrived and he tried to run away.
Ordinarily being a fool doesn't result in the death penalty. However, we now know that the Aurora Police Department doesn't like to be disrespected. They don't bother seeking out a reason for disrespect. They react.
Green made the mistake of jumping on the hood of a police car. That was enough provocation for a police officer to pump 50,000 volts of electricity into Green. The jolt was enough to knock Green to the ground where three police officers handcuffed him and put him into custody.
At this point the officers figured out that this UNARMED man was in physical distress. They called for an ambulance. Shortly thereafter Green stopped breathing. He was taken to a nearby hospital and pronounced dead.
It took only a few hours for the police to let the public know that Green was a registered sex offender and that he was charged with some drug offenses 15 years ago. They conveniently avoid mentioning that he wasn't convicted of those charges. It is typical in these taser-related deaths for the police to try to indicate that drugs were involved in the death ... anything to avoid admitting that they killed an UNARMED man by extra-judicial electrocution.
An autopsy is scheduled for tomorrow by the Kane County coroner’s office.
It happened again! This time an UNARMED 34-year old father of three was killed by taser-happy officers from the Galveston Police Department. The family of Raymond Allen, Jr. seeks to find out exactly what happened to him. [SOURCE]
"He was tasered from what I hear, two to three times and hog tied." said the victim's father, Raymond Allen Sr.
Allen Jr. rented a room at a Galveston motel on February 29, 2012. He was seen jumping from a second story balcony. A worker at the motel said she saw Allen Jr. jump twice and that's when the police showed up. Instead of helping the unarmed man ... the police pumped him with 50,000 volts of electricity more than once.
The crime listed on the incident report is resisting arrest.
Investigators also said that Allen Jr. stopped breathing at the scene, was revived, then rushed to the hospital. He died two days later.
The Galveston County Medical Examiner’s Office performed an autopsy, but the ruling on what caused his death is pending results from a toxicology report.
It happened again! Earlier today Alachua County Sheriff deputies used their taser guns at least twice on a patient at the Meridian Behavioral Healthcare located in Gainesville, FL. They were called to the location to handle 29-year-old Nehemiah Lazar Dillard who was tearing up property, throwing chairs, and threatening staff. [SOURCE]
Deputies tried to talk Mr. Dillard down ... and when that didn't work they blasted him with 50,000 volts of electricity from their taser. Dillard continued to fight back. A second shot was fired from the taser gun. This second electrocution effort brought Dillard down. He was transported to a local hospital ... where he was promptly pronounced dead.
An active investigation is underway to determine the cause and manner of death. The sheriff deputies involved in this taser-related killing have not been identified to the public yet. An autopsy is expected to be performed in the upcoming days. Further details will be made available upon investigation.
Mason police officers tased 39-year old Douglas Boucher in December 2009. He died. The police didn't see anything wrong with it. No charges were filed against the two officers. The family of the dead man see it differently. Boucher's family filed a federal lawsuit. [SOURCE]
The autopsy didn't indicate that the taser was the cause of death. The lawsuit claims that the two police officers used excessive force on a mentally ill person. The family seeks compensatory and punitive damages from the city of Mason and officersDaniel Fry and Sean McCormick.
The two police officers were not called onto the scene. They just stopped by the same Speedway gas station where a female clerk was serving Mr. Boucher. When the police arrived, the clerk alleged that Boucher was harassing her. The two officers asked Boucher to go outside. The officers were attempting to handcuff Boucher when he wrestled away and hit Fry in the head with his one handcuffed hand, according to the police. When he tried to go after the clerk again - she had come outside - McCormick attempted to use a Taser on him. The first shot failed, but the second electrocution with the 50,000 volts from the taser gun knocked Boucher to the ground. He hit his head on the concrete and died.
The lawsuit claims that "Mason police officers arrested him, tased him in the chest and in the back and then, while he was on the ground, struck him with a police baton, kicked him and tased him five more times."
The report issued by the Ohio powers-that-be did note that the police officers failed to 'spark test' their taser guns ... to the device may have given off more that the 50,000 volts of electricity specified by the manufacturer.
It happened again! A young man was electrocuted with over 50,000 volts of electricity from a taser gun and died. This time the taser gun was used by police officers in Houma, LA. The guy who died, 27-year old Wayne Williams, was in police custody at the time of his death. The police indicate that he swallowed drugs. I imagine that the autopsy will play up the drug angle.
It is worth noting that Houma is a relatively small town in Louisiana. However, Houma is no stranger to taser-related deaths. Villagers may recall that Dennis Sandras was also electrocuted by the Houma police department last year.
It happened again. This time 32-year old Chad Brothers is dead as a result of having been electrocuted 4-5 times by the taser guns of unidentified Colonie (NY) police officers. There were no drugs involved in this case according to the preliminary autopsy reports.
Chad Brothers went on some type of rampage at the Gold's Gym in Colonie, NY. Police responded to a 911 call that says that a man was "going crazy". Nobody appears to know why Brothers was so upset. We'll never know now because the young man is dead.
Witnesses tell police he was intentionally speeding up treadmills other people were using, as well as pushing over machines, some weighing up to 700 lbs.
When the first officer arrived to the scene, an unidentified female officer, Brothers was still causing a disturbance and started throwing items at the officer.
The officer tried to take Brothers into custody, commanding him to calm down, but the 6'1'' and 240 lb. man continued to cause a ruckus. The officer attempted to handcuff him, and when she was unable to do that, she deployed her pronged taser. At that time, the officer said Brothers attempted to grab her taser away.
Two additional officers arrived at the scene, each using their own taser on Brothers.
Police say Brothers was stunned four to five times, in all.
After taken into custody, Brothers went into cardiac arrest. The officers at the scene, as well as a gym patron, began CPR on the victim before Colonie EMS arrived.
Brothers was taken to Albany Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.
The unidentified officers involved in the incident have been put on paid administrative leave pending the end of the investigation.
Colonie Police Chief Steven Heider says his officers were jusified in what they did.
We learned that the 50,000 volts of electricity pumped into the body of 56-year old Michael Evans contributed to his death back on August 25. However, the cause of death is listed as cocaine overdose. [SOURCE]
The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Fayetteville (NC) said Evans had more than four times the lethal amount of cocaine in his system when he was electrocuted by the police.
The report says the cocaine level was the cause of the death, complicated by cardiovascular disease, significant physical exertion while trying to avoid restraint and the electric shock.
Officers said they were trying to take Evans into custody because he was trying to jump in front of cars.
This blog told you about the taser killing of 29-year old Alonzo Ashley that took place at the Denver Zoo earlier this year. Denver's coroner recently ruled that the death at the hands of the police was a homicide. [SOURCE]
Officers said Ashley bit them before they electrocuted him with 50,000 volts of electricity from a taser gun. Police shot the taser gun FIVE times even though they had Ashley face-down on the ground, with shoulders pressed down, hands cuffed behind his back and legs crossed, flexed and pressed toward his buttocks, the autopsy by Dr. John Carver says.
Ashley began convulsing and he was dead before paramedics arrived.
Denver District Attorney Mitch Morrissey, however, said Ashley's death met no legal criteria for prosecution under Colorado homicide statutes.
"This clearly is not a homicide under Colorado law," Morrissey said. "I have some real questions about using the term homicide."
Police Chief Gerry Whitman said all the officers who responded to the incident will remain on duty. Additional investigations by police and Manager of Safety's Office to determine whether policies were violated are pending.
Ashley's death sparked protests by the Greater Metro Denver Ministerial Alliance. Dr. Timothy Tyler, pastor of Denver's Shorter Community AME Church, said that the city promised changes after Marvin Booker's death at the city jail in July 2010 but that apparently nothing has changed.
He predicted the Police Department will investigate its own and determine that the officers followed the restraint policy.
"Perhaps the restraint policy needs to be changed," Tyler said.
I suspect that the next thing we hear from this case will be a lawsuit filed by Mr. Ashley's family.
It happened again! This time we learn that the San Leandro police were involved in a taser-related killing of 32-year old Darnell Hutchinson. Hutchinson, an Oakland resident, died after an incident at Nations Giant Hamburgers, where officers responded to a report of a suspicious person.
Nations employees reported that a man there, later identified as Hutchinson, was scaring customers by "acting strange" and was asked to leave several times but refused. [SOURCE]
Officers arrived and found Hutchinson outside the restaurant, where he refused to cooperate with the officers and a struggle ensued.
One of the officers pumped Hutchinson with 50,000 volts of electricity from a taser gun. Ultimately, the four police officers on the scene were able to control and handcuff him.
Immediately after being handcuffed, Hutchinson's health began to deteriorate. Paramedics responded and took him to a hospital where he died.
The cause of his death has not been determined, with toxicology and autopsy reports from the coroner's bureau still pending. We know that the young man was UNARMED and that the penalty for being 'scary' is not supposed to be death.
It happened again! This time a 30-year old father of four has been ripped from his family because of extra-judicial electrocution techniques of a couple of York (PA) City police officers. [SOURCE]
It turns out that Howard Cook was a passenger in a car that was pulled over for a traffic violation by the Pennsylvania State Police. Mr. Cook had some outstanding warrants and the sight of the flashing lights made him nervous ... so he made what turned out to be a fatal mistake ... he got out of the car and ran.
The police had no way of knowing about the warrants when they began chasing Mr. Cook. They simply saw a Black man running and they pulled out their taser guns. They shot the man once with a taser gun during the chase ... and evidently they electrocuted him once more when they caught him near his home.
The York Police Department took Mr. Cook into custody and then noticed that he wasn't breathing. He was taken to the York Hospital where he was pronounced dead.
"He left four children by themselves. He has a great wife. He left a lot of family members and a lot of friends that really loved them," said Claudia Ortiz.
The two unidentified police officers involved are on administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation.
The coroner says an autopsy did not determine the cause of death.
I can't imagine that it is rocket-science. The police pumped 50,000 volts of electricity into the young man's body twice ... and his heart stopped. The young man was UNARMED and there is no evidence of drug use. He simply made the same mistake that most Black men make when they see flashing lights on top of a police car ... he got scared.
Now his four children no longer have a father. When will the police admit that there is something wrong when a so-called non-lethal weapons continue to kill American citizens on a weekly basis?
It happened again! This time unidentified Camden County (MO) sheriff deputies electrocuted a 46-year old man until he stopped breathing and died. I'm sure that the deputies didn't mean to kill Glenn Norman. That doesn't change the fact that another 5'3", 140-pound UNARMED man is dead.
As I understand it, the Camden County Sheriff's Office responded to a 911 call stating a man had knocked on the caller's door and forced his way into the caller's home. The man turned out to be Glenn Norman. Norman's fiancee said that he was visiting the house to ask for a drink. The homeowner didn't think so. That explains why the 911 call was placed to ask for police help.
The Camden County deputies arrived on the scene and approached Norman, who began to resist arrest. That was Norman's fatal mistake.
Deputies used their taser gun to subdue him with 50,000 volts of electricity. Norman was handcuffed ... and then he began to have trouble breathing. Paramedics were called ... but it was too late. Norman was pronounced dead at the scene.
No cause of death has been officially ruled. However, it shouldn't be too hard to figure out. The guy was alive ... then he was shot with a taser gun ... then he was dead. The cause of death seems self-evident. You have to wonder who's life was in danger when the tasers were deployed. There were four deputies on the scene and this UNARMED man was small in stature -- only 5'3" tall. Were the police in fear of their lives?
The Missouri State Highway Patrol has been requested to conduct the official investigation of the incident, and an autopsy is underway. Glenn Norman did a stupid thing by resisting arrest ... however the penalty for being stupid should never be the death penalty.
It happened again! This time Mt. Pleasant (MI) police Sgt. Sean Paull used his taser gun on an unarmed man who was being disorderly at a bar on Saturday, September 24. Paull pumped over 50,000 volts of electricity on two separate occasions from his taser gun into the body of 35-year old Bradford Gibson.
Gibson died a few hours later while in police custody. Speculation is that the death was directly related to the taser gun usage.
The police indicate that Gibson was "out of control" and didn't comply with orders in a timely manner. It seems that Gibson was being quite a jerk inside of the bar. He is accused of grabbing women and such. Of course, the police seem to forget that the penalty for disorderly conduct or resisting arrest is not supposed to be death.
The police issued a report yesterday that included the following:
When told he had to leave the bar, Gibson at first did as he was instructed but then, when Paull arrived,
"It was apparent to me at this time that Gibson was not going to leave the property as requested," the officer said in the report. "I then asked Gibson to take a seat next to a cement pillar. I asked Gibson to sit down multiple times before he eventually complied and sat down in front of the pillar."
When Gibson stood again, Bliss told him he was under arrest for trespassing, and got his right hand cuffed, before Gibson began resisting, according to the report.
Police eventually got Gibson into the back seat of their patrol car.
Still, Gibson continued to try to get out of the car, Bliss drive stunned him twice on the leg, which moved him backwards enough for officers to shut the doors, according to the report.
An autopsy has been completed but results could take as long as two weeks.
