Thursday, August 05, 2010
Wednesday, August 04, 2010
Should Videotaping the Police Really Be a Crime?
Anthony Graber, a Maryland Air National Guard staff sergeant, faces up to 16 years in prison. His crime? He videotaped his March encounter with a state trooper who pulled him over for speeding on a motorcycle. Then Graber put the video - which could put the officer in a bad light - up on YouTube.
It doesn't sound like much. But Graber is not the only person being slapped down by the long arm of the law for the simple act of videotaping the police in a public place. Prosecutors across the U.S. claim the videotaping violates wiretap laws - a stretch, to put it mildly.
These days, it's not hard to see why police are wary of being filmed. In 1991, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) beating of Rodney King was captured on video by a private citizen. It was shown repeatedly on television and caused a national uproar. As a result, four LAPD officers were put on trial, and when they were not convicted, riots broke out, leaving more than 50 people dead and thousands injured (two officers were later convicted on federal civil rights charges). (See TIME's special: "15 Years After Rodney King.")
More recently, a New York Police Department officer was thrown off the force - and convicted of filing a false report - because of a video of his actions at a bicycle rally in Times Square. The officer can plainly be seen going up to a man on a bike and shoving him to the ground. The officer claimed the cyclist was trying to collide with him, and in the past, it might have been hard to disprove the police account. But this time there was an amateur video of the encounter - which quickly became an Internet sensation, viewed more than 3 million times on YouTube alone. (Read about the hidden side of the NYPD.)
In the Graber case, the trooper also apparently had reason to want to keep his actions off the Internet. He cut Graber off in an unmarked vehicle, approached Graber in plain clothes and yelled while brandishing a gun before identifying himself as a trooper.
Back when King was beaten, it was unusual for bystanders to have video cameras. But today, everyone is a moviemaker. Lots of people carry video cameras in their pockets, on iPhones, BlackBerrys and even their MP3 players. They also have an easy distribution system: the Internet. A video can get millions of viewers worldwide if it goes viral, bouncing from blog to blog, e-mail to e-mail, and Facebook friend to Facebook friend. (See photos from inside Facebook's headquarters.)
No wonder, then, that civil rights groups have embraced amateur videos. Last year, the NAACP announced an initiative in which it encouraged ordinary citizens to tape police misconduct with their cell phones and send the videos to the group's website, www.naacp.org.
Law enforcement is fighting back. In the case of Graber - a young husband and father who had never been arrested - the police searched his residence and seized computers. Graber spent 26 hours in jail even before facing the wiretapping charges that could conceivably put him away for 16 years. (It is hard to believe he will actually get anything like that, however. One point on his side: the Maryland attorney general's office recently gave its opinion that a court would likely find that the wiretap law does not apply to traffic stops.)
Sunday, August 01, 2010
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Is Essence Magazine Trying To Become The New O Magazine & Reach A White Female Audience? « GayBlackCanadianman
Black women are constantly bombarded with racist and sexist messages that the ideal North American woman is a white woman or a mixed race woman. Black magazines and the mainstream promote mixed race female celebrities such as Mariah Carey, Alicia Keys, Halle Berry, Rihanna, or Beyonce but they are all part white."
Thursday, July 29, 2010
African Americans Raise Voices Against Arizona Law
The groundswell against the unpopular Senate Bill 1070 increased to a fever pitch last week with community meetings and demonstrations to denounce the controversial Arizona law. Response to the state legislation, including a march on the state Capitol on Wednesday, has made one thing evident for Valley Hispanics opposing the law—they do not stand alone.
A prayer meeting and rally took place before the May 5 march at Pilgrim Rest Baptist Church. Faith leaders from houses of worship all across the Valley came out in force to show disapproval for the law, including the Arizona Ecumenical Council.
“Whenever there are laws that allow people to be discriminated against, I believe God stands in opposition to that law,” declared Bishop Alexis Thomas of Pilgrim Rest. “To our Latino brothers and sisters, this is not your fight—this is our fight.”
The rally also provided a forum for an impressive array of community organizations on hand to denounce SB 1070. Union leaders, a nonprofit coalition which included Chicanos Por La Causa, and several city officials shared disapproval and calls for action, while volunteers collected signed petitions and letters to the Oval Office.
The Reverend Al Sharpton delivered a stirring call to rally supporters, and marched on the capital with thousands of demonstrators.
“It is racial profiling, no matter how you cut it,” Reverend Sharpton stated. He also said that the law “robs the rights of legal citizens of Latino descent” despite that many have “fought wars and built schools” for their country.
“Now you want to pull them over on the side of the road and treat them like second class citizens?” he asked. Sharpton also reemphasized that he did not support the protest solely because racial profiling might occur amongst African Americans in Arizona as a result. “If you open the door to a double standard for anybody, you open the door to a double standard for everybody.”
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Call for investigation into sexual attack on detained journalist
Call for investigation into sexual attack on detained journalist
Abdolreza Tajik, a journalist and member of the member of the Human Rights Defenders Centre, has been the victim of mistreatment since his arrest on 12 June. Relatives say that when they visited him for the first time in Evin prison on 14 July, he told them he had been victim of violence in the presence of the Tehran deputy prosecutor general during his first night in prison.
In the course of the conversation in the visiting room, Tajik used the Farsi term “hatke hormat,” which means “to be dishonoured.” His lawyer, Mohammad Sharif, said the term is used in legal language to refer to a sexual assault.
Conversations in the visiting room between detainees and family members are recorded by the prison authorities, who let it be known that they are doing this. The aim is both to monitor what is said and to discourage prisoners from saying too much. Tajik was therefore not free to specify what he meant by “being dishonoured.”
Mehdi Karoubi, one of the opposition candidates in the June 2009 presidential election, published an open letter in his newspaper Etemad e-Melli on 29 July 2009 in which he said young people were being raped in Iran’s prisons.
“Young people have been brutally raped and have subsequently suffered depression and seriously psychological and physical problems,” Karoubi wrote. Former detainees who have managed to flee abroad have confirmed being the victims of sexual attacks, despite the pressure put on them and their families and despite the government’s repeated denials (http://en.rsf.org/iran-newspaper-suspended-in-latest-18-08-2009,34223.html).
Four journalists and political activists have told Reporters Without Borders about cases of sexual abuse in Iran’s prisons.
“The international community has been fully alerted to what is happening in Iranian prisons for the past year,” Reporters Without Borders said. “It is time for Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navanethem Pillay to press the Iranian authorities to accept a visit from the UN special rapporteur on torture, so that he can investigate the allegations of mistreatment in Iranian prisons.”
The authorities did not reveal where they were holding Tajik for nearly a month after his arrest at his home on 12 June. His lawyer has still not been able to see him or examine his case file. When a detainee is held incommunicado in this manner, it can be regarded as a case of forced disappearance and as a crime against humanity.
Ali Malihi, an online journalist who used to work for Etemad e-Melli and Sahrvand, was meanwhile sentenced by a Tehran revolutionary court on 25 July to four years in prison and a fine of 100,000 toman (80 euros) on charges of “activity against national security” and insulting the president.
LinkWithin
