#policestate
#NativeJusticeNow: Police Violence, Colonialism, & #JusticeForLoreal
Commentary by Klee Benally @eelk
According to The Guardian’s “The Counted” database, there have been 1,403 people’s lives taken by police terrorism in the US since 2015.
We’re not addressing a few “bad apple” cops here though, this whole system is rotten to the core. This reality was brought close to home on Sunday, March 27, 2016 when 27-year-old Diné woman Loreal
Loreal Juana Barnell Tsingine (Photo courtesy of Adam James)
Juana Barnell Tsingine was gunned down by a Winslow, Arizona police officer who was responding to an alleged act of shoplifting.
Loreal was shot 5 times by the white officer who was reportedly wearing a body camera. Apparently the officer felt threatened because she had scissors.
There have been 53 people killed by cops in AZ since 2015. 0 people have been killed by scissors.
Police violence is systemically rooted in white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, capitalism, and colonialism.
According to Eastern Kentucky University professor Victor E. Kappeler, “New England settlers appointed Indian Constables to police Native Americans (National Constable Association, 1995), the St. Louis police were founded to protect residents from Native Americans in that frontier city, and many southern police departments began as slave patrols. In 1704, the colony of Carolina developed the nation’s first slave patrol. Slave patrols helped to maintain the economic order and to assist the wealthy landowners in recovering and punishing slaves who essentially were considered property.”
According to a 2010 census more than 25% of the 10,000 people who live in Winslow are Indigenous. Although Winslow is considered a “border town” to the Navajo Nation; like Farmington, NM, Durango, CO, and nearby Flagstaff, it’s occupied stolen lands steeped in a legacy of settler colonial violence and class war with resounding impacts of historical trauma and a range of associated social disorders (i.e. poverty) that impact power relations to this day. The City of Flagstaff, which has sanctioned desecration of the San Francisco Peaks (held holy by more than 13 Indigenous Nations), arrests an average of more than 3,000 Indigenous People every year yet only 7,000 Native people call Flagstaff their home. Disproportionate arrests due to racial profiling are not the exception but appear to be the expectation in these hostile environments.
Piecemeal policy adjustments within police institutions such as body cams, cultural sensitivity training, and so-called “less-than-lethal” options, demonstrate no critical change of the power that cops have to kill those who pose no significant threat (not to legitimize cops killing armed folks either). Unless of course we recognize that brown and black bodies are also a factor in what constitutes a “threat.”
According to the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice “The racial group most likely to be killed by law enforcement is Native Americans, followed by African Americans, Latinos, Whites, and Asian Americans.” This is not to argue Indigenous folks’ oppression is more severe, but to recognize our shared struggles to ensure there is not one more Sarah Lee Circle Bear, Corey Kanosh, Paul Castaway, Allen Locke, Mahivist Goodblanket, John Williams, or Loreal Tsingine and to situate the ongoing police terrorism all our communities face as originating from the same systems of oppression.
This also means connecting our struggles beyond co-opting hashtags like #NativeLivesMatter, as Sabah at muslimgirl.com observes, “#BlackLivesMatter represents an entire movement and its history. It’s not “just” a hashtag, it’s a powerful outcry born from a racial injustice felt by a people. It cannot, and should not, be molded to fit another people’s struggle. And solidarity, while important (and in fact, essential), never involves co-opting another movement.”
After all, #BlackLivesMatter & #NativeLivesMatter both mean end police violence. (Check out this great statement by Alicia Garza on why #alllivesmatter is problematic while you’re at it.)
Beyond pleas for a system rooted in genocide and slavery to recognize that our lives matter, our communities and movements can learn from each others’ struggles and build together towards lasting solutions to defend ourselves, neighbors, lands, and to resolve issues we face in more just and healthy ways.
#NativeJusticeNow #JusticeForLoreal #smashthepolicestate #powertothepeople
The family of Loreal Juana Barnell Tsinijini is having a candle light vigil tonight (Wed. March 30, 2016) in Winslow at Kinsley & 4th st. 6:30pm (MST).
They have also set up a fund here: www.gofundme.com/loreal
There is also a vigil on Saturday at 3pm (MDT): www.facebook.com/events/954680254639569/
Some resources:
http://www.infoshop.org/pdfs/Our-Enemies-in-Blue.pdf
http://www.berkeleycopwatch.org/resources/Handbook_06.pdf
https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/what-do-if-youre-stopped-police-immigration-agents-or-fbi
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/2014/07/02/seven-reasons-police-brutality-is-systematic-not-anecdotal/
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/07/native-americans-getting-shot-police
http://www.anarchistagency.com/critical-voices/stuart-schrader-the-liberal-solution-to-police-violence-restoring-trust-will-ensure-more-obedience/
http://m1aa.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Towards-Community-Self-Defense.pdf
http://plsonline.eku.edu/insidelook/brief-history-slavery-and-origins-american-policing
http://www.docs.lakotalaw.org/reports/Native%20Lives%20Matter%20PDF.pdf
Add your comments (racist, sexist, & trans/homophobic comments will not be published)
Article by Brenda Norrell, Censored News
Reprinted with permission.
April 14, 2023
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100075796248532
The Intercept and Grist began releasing new TigerSwan spy documents in new coverage of the mercenaries hired by the Dakota Access Pipeline. They now have 50,000 TigerSwan spy documents, and another 9,000 are held up in the court battle for now. The documents reveal TigerSwan spying on Water Protectors at Standing Rock in North Dakota, Bold Iowa, and at other locations.
Reporters Alleen Brown and Naveena Sadasivam expose the new spy documents in their article, After Spying on Standing Rock, TigerSwan Shopped Anti-Protest ‘Countinsurgency’ to Other Oil Companies.
The article follows an expensive court battle by The Intercept seeking the release of the documents. The North Dakota Supreme Court ordered the release after TigerSwan was found operating without a license in North Dakota.
“The released documents provide startling new details about how TigerSwan used social media monitoring, aerial surveillance, radio eavesdropping, undercover personnel, and subscription-based records databases to build watchlists and dossiers on Indigenous activists and environmental organizations,” The Intercept writes. Read the article at The Intercept: https://theintercept.com/2023/04/13/standing-rock-tigerswan-protests/
Paiute journalist, drone activist and filmmaker Myron Dewey was among those that TigerSwan spied on and stalked at Standing Rock 2016-2017, as revealed in the new documents that were ordered released by the court.
On Tuesday, the driver that killed Myron Dewey on an isolated road near his family’s home in Yomba, Nevada, entered a surprise plea bargain deal that was cut with a new prosecutor assigned to the case in Nye County, Nevada. John Walsh pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of vehicular manslaughter.
This TigerSwan spy document, showing TigerSwan stalking Myron Dewey and Prolific the Rapper at Standing Rock on Dec. 17, 2016, is from the new documents at The Intercept. Document link: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23773105-tigerswan-document-daily-intelligence-update-20161217
Below: From the TigerSwan spy files just released: The power of the global movement, with its heart in Standing Rock.
Below: The first flood of documents show how rattled DAPL was over the involvement of celebrities, the Standing Rock Chairman at the United Nations, Bernie Sanders, the Palestinian flag flying, and big orgs. The doc is from a pitch that TigerSwan made for more work, hustling another pipeline to spy on resistance.
 |
Above: TigerSwan surveillance used drones and helicopters.https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23773104-tigerswan-document-daily-intelligence-update-20161014  |
Above: TigerSwan spy file at Bold Iowa. The mercenaries hired by the Dakota Access Pipeline called Bold Iowa Water Protectors “belligerents.” Document link:
TigerSwan spied on, and stalked the media, including Paiute journalist Myron Dewey, Amy Goodman at Democracy Now, and myself, publisher of Censored News, as revealed in the newly released documents by The Intercept and Grist. TigerSwan used its surveillance on the media in its pitches for more spy work to other oil and pipeline companies.
TigerSwan turned its surveillance at Standing Rock into a potential money maker, using it for powerpoints in its pitches to other oil and pipeline companies for spy work.
TigerSwan even stalked the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, in its high-stakes spying for dollars.
TigerSwan’s Opposition Model, shown below, was used as a potential maker in PowerPoints to other oil and pipeline companies.
The Intercept described the battle for these documents.
“A discovery request filed as part of the case forced thousands of new internal TigerSwan documents into the public record. Energy Transfer’s lawyers fought for nearly two years to keep the documents secret, until North Dakota’s Supreme Court ruled in 2022 that the material falls under the state’s open records statute,” The Intercept said.
“Because an arrangement between North Dakota and Energy Transfer allows the fossil fuel company to weigh in on which documents should be redacted, the state has yet to release over 9,000 disputed pages containing material that Energy Transfer is, for now at least, fighting to keep out of the public eye.”
TigerSwan spy documents on Water Protectors
Note: The documents show that TigerSwan spied on Censored News, as shown in today’s article at The Intercept.
A few resources so we can stay dangerous in the streets!
Justice for Tyre Nichols. Black Lives Matter.
Avenge Tortuguita. Indigenous Justice Now.
Smash the colonial police state.
Shit will inevitably pop-off so best be prepared.
#fuckthepolice #acab #staydangerous
Check out the links here:
www.linktr.ee/IndigenousActionLinks
https://www.sproutdistro.com/catalog/zines/direct-action/abcs-mini-guide-protesting/
https://www.sproutdistro.com/catalog/zines/direct-action/blocs-black-and-otherwise/
https://crimethinc.com/posters/black-bloc-tactics
https://crimethinc.com/2004/11/01/what-is-security-culture
https://itsgoingdown.org/confidence-courage-robust-security/
https://indigenouspeoplesdayofrage.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/warriorsecurity-imposed.pdf
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/06/surveillance-self-defense-attending-protests-age-covid-19
https://indigenouspeoplesdayofrage.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/defend-the-territory-pdf-zine1.pdf
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Christine Prat
March 31, 2016 at 8:14 AM
Traduction française:
http://www.chrisp.lautre.net/wpblog/?p=3325
frontlinegranny60
April 3, 2016 at 11:14 AM
Deep thanks for this. Genocide lives on one way or another.
dahlenaz anon nemus
April 4, 2016 at 9:49 AM
Please count me as one who stands with you against the colonialism/capitalist/corporate C3-terrorism and in your effort to seek justice over this tragic loss of a sister.. To participate in your gathering at the Az capital will be in spirit and resource rather than in person.. The Lord be with you always in your stand to overcome the beast that has encamped around and seeks to oppress and do harm to the creators people. dzp