By Lee Rowland
Since our very founding, the American people have taken to the streets and sidewalks to make their voices heard. Unfortunately, this week it’s the residents of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who have good reason to partake in this historical tradition. On July 5, 2016, a Black Baton Rouge resident named Alton Sterling — a man who had committed no crime — was tackled, Tasered, incapacitated, and fatally shot at point blank range by two white Baton Rouge police officers.
The anger at Mr. Sterling’s death is immense. It is real. It is justified. And it deserves a voice.
So in our grand American tradition, residents sought to make their voices heard, to speak truth to power about police use of force, to object to the death of Black men in police custody, and to say that Black lives matter. To do this, they spilled out onto the city’s streets and sidewalks — the very places which the Supreme Court has described as having “immemorially been held in trust for the use of the public” as the place to exercise our constitutional liberties.
But it doesn’t appear that the law enforcement agencies in Baton Rouge care much for our Constitution, or for the liberties of its own citizens. Instead officers have shown naked hostility to the constitutional rights of the citizens they have a duty to serve. That’s why today the ACLU of Louisiana is going to court on behalf of community organizations like Black Youth Power 100 New Orleans, New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice, and Louisiana Chapter of the National Lawyers’ Guild to seek an emergency order to ensure that the police in Baton Rouge obey the Constitution. It’s not the first time an ACLU affiliate has stepped up to challenge the cops reacting to protests over police accountability — and while I hope it’s the last, it won’t be.
Constitutional rights — particularly that very First Amendment — are pretty robust, on paper. But as Black citizens of America know, for far too much of our history so many of those “rights” have had invisible whites-only asterisks attached. What’s new about modern protest is that our First Amendment rights are now often exercised on videotape, as are law enforcement’s reactions to speech and protest. And the livestreams coming out of Baton Rouge this week should cause grave concern. And recognition that we still have hard work to do translating those parchment rights to the streets.
Citizens peaceably exercising their rights to free speech and assembly have been met by police dressed in full riot or paramilitary gear. They have received confusing and conflicting demands from law enforcement officers, spoken through Darth Vader-style gas masks that make their commands barely audible. They have been arrested — or threatened with arrest — for peaceably gathering in public spaces, and these arrests have been effected with unnecessary and excessive physical force. Even journalists have found themselves spending time in Baton Rouge’s jail cells, just for monitoring the police response to the protests.
As this harrowing livestream shows, first the police told protesters to get off the street. So protesters went to the sidewalks. Then they were told to get off the sidewalks — and a private property owner offered refuge. So the cops told people the assembly was no longer lawful, and they’d be arrested. Where, exactly, do government officials expect their citizens to protest? It’s looking, unfortunately, like the answer is “nowhere.”
In short, law officers on the ground in Baton Rouge have done nothing to facilitate the constitutional rights to which they have each sworn an oath. Instead, they have met words with weapons, peace with violence. They have continually escalated a nonviolent protest into a full-scale conflict between the citizens and the police.
And it’s not okay.
Which is why we’re asking the federal courts to step in and ensure that our lofty constitutional rights are enforced on the ground — where they count.
Lee Rowland is the Senior Staff Attorney for the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project
Should protesters have the right to block freeways?
http://controversialtimes.com/instant-justice/driver-plows-through-protestors-who-shut-down-highway-police-charge-protestors/?utm_source=MOH
No
BP asks:
> Should protesters have the right to block freeways?
the David says:
> No
It looks like David won’t be getting an invite to the ACLU and BLM holiday parties this year…
They don’t have the right to block highways, it’s illegal. That’s separate from the question of civil disobedience.
David wrote:
> They don’t have the right to block highways, it’s illegal. That’s
> separate from the question of civil disobedience.
Civil “Disobedience” means you are “Disobeying” laws
civil disobedience:
“the refusal to comply with certain laws or to pay taxes and fines, as a peaceful form of political protest.”
That was the point of my comment, thank you for clarifying
Wow! Five dead officers in Dallas, assassinated while protecting the public’s rights to demonstrate against the killing that occurred in Baton Rouge and near Minneapolis… three officers dead in Baton Rouge… and ACLU wants to make Baton Rouge more “protest-friendly”…
Lee wrote:
> a Black Baton Rouge resident named Alton Sterling — a man who had committed no crime
It is a crime to be a felon in possession of a firearm (and to sell CDs in public without a business license). He was also a registered sex offender who had had previous run ins with the police including “In 2009, the affidavit of probable cause contends that a police officer tried to pat down Sterling when Sterling resisted arrest, and the officer ended up “wrestling with the defendant on the ground” at which time a “black semi auto gun fell from his waistband.”
> So in our grand American tradition, residents sought to make their voices heard,
> to speak truth to power about police use of force, to object to the death of Black
> men in police custody
It looks like people are doing this despite any “naked hostility to the constitutional rights of the citizens” shown by police:
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/baton-rouge-shooter-gavin-long-article-1.2715013
Isn’t the question of the gun in dispute? The police officer claims he saw a gun. SSeveral witnesses never saw one. The video doesn’t show a gun. Has the police pulled a gun off his body? It would seem fairly easy to establish and yet I haven’t seen an article definitively establish the presence of a gun.
The Pugilist wrote:
“Isn’t the question of the gun in dispute?”
The reason the cops came to the store in the first place was because someone called 911 and said he pointed a gun at them.
One of his friends said he bough a gun for protection after another guy selling CDs was robbed saying “He had a gun on him for a reason,” Harton said Thursday. “He just wanted to protect his business. He was a good guy, man.”
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/alton-sterling-killed-police-homeless-man-called-911-article-1.2702401
P.S. I bet business is slow for people illegally selling CDs with the price of a NEW iPod under $50 (and used ones selling for less than $10)…
From what I was able to find, Sterling had a criminal record, although his last offense is about seven years old other than failing to register as a sex offender (for something that happened 16 years and appears to be sex with a minor when he was a teenager).
But Sterling’s what you and others seem to be missing is that previous convictions aren’t what’s relevant to the shooting; it’s whether he was armed and attempting to use a gun on the officers at the time he was shot. The legal standard for use of force requires officers to reasonably perceive a threat at the moment of use of force.
The officer claims he saw him reaching for his weapon. The video shows him pinned on the ground at the time he was shot. I think it’s reasonable to question whether the officer should have shot him at that point. Everything else is obfuscation by you.
From this article; looks like there has been a snafu in the Baton Rouge city government; certainly citizens have the right to a peaceful protest demonstration. Was there a snafu in the permitting; or how was this protest organized; also what was the date of this protest? If after the Dallas (and particularly the Baton Rouge) police shootings; I think it is understandable that the police would take more precautions; as there seem to be more murderous police haters out there in recent days. Would be nice to be informed about more background facts here.
I find it interesting here that the author capitalizes the word ‘black’ or ‘blacks’ (when used as an adjective) but leaves the word ‘white’ or ‘whites’ in lowercase (when used as an adjective).
“I find it interesting here that the author capitalizes the word ‘black’ or ‘blacks’ (when used as an adjective) but leaves the word ‘white’ or ‘whites’ in lowercase (when used as an adjective).”
Capitalizing “black” suggests the author is poorly educated … or maybe she’s just a racist. The equivalent error would be to write “African-American” and then “european-american.” All proper nouns require capitalization. Colors are not proper nouns, geographical names are.
Or maybe the adherence to such rigid rules should be more flexible in new media
which ignores the point that inconsistency shows bias
Tribe: you still have adhere to the use of force guidelines which don’t allow you to shoot unless there is an immediate threat. Anyone watching the video has to question whether such a threat existed at the time of the shooting.
The extremists behind the bogus narrative that white cops are out to murder innocent blacks emphasize in the Alton Sterling case the race of the cops. They protest the killing of Philando Castile in Minnesota, but don’t mention the race of the cop (because he was not white) who shot Castile. They say they are against murders of police like those which recently occurred in Dallas and Baton Rouge, but don’t mention the racist motivation of the killers, because they were both black. It’s the same story with the cases in St. Louis, Valdosta, Georgia, and Bristol, Tenn., where black suspects decided to shoot cops with the intent to kill them.
The result of this radical hatred of whites on the part of extremists at the ACLU and Black Lives Matter is to encourage more violence, more killings and more of a racial divide in the U.S. That seems to be the end-game of their agenda. I just wonder how long this radical racism among the leftists will go on before there is a backlash.
I don’t think most people believe that police officers want to murder black innocent individuals. Certainly you can find some and they are extremists, but that’s a strawman argument you’re creating. Even this article doesn’t use the “m” word. Instead they argue that the killing was unjustified. It hasn’t been proven to be unjustified, but on the other hand, it hasn’t proven justified either. So it’s not an unreasonable position.
We agree. I never said or implied “most people” believe that about cops. I said “extremists.” It is the ideology of the BLM movement, as well. Insofar as the extremists, including this author, focus exclusively on cases where blacks are killed by cops, and only note the race of the cop if the cop is white, and never mention cases where whites are killed by cops, and never mention the race of the killer if a black murders a cop or cops, it is not a “straw man,” as you say. It is a pattern — one which is dividing the United States across racial lines and leading to more and more violence and making it less and less safe for police officers (which inevitably will lead to more civilians being killed by police).
But what is the ideology of the BLM movement? I don’t see it as that extreme. I know you can point to extreme elements within it, but it’s a broad coalition. I see the injection of this extreme rhetoric as a way to discredit a movement that has a lot of merit. And you’re not going to stop them from speaking out, so if you want to reduce the number of dead cops starting dealing with the actual problems. I give groups like PERF and the Police Chiefs across the country high marks here.
This is what BLM says:
“BlackLivesMatter is … a response to the virulent anti-black racism that permeates our society.”
Considering we have an African-American president and considering that the United States is by any measure the least prejudiced multi-racial, multi-ethnic society on Earth, it strikes me as rather extreme to say “virulent anti-black racism permeates our society.” Racism exists. But it is entirely irrelevant to the success or failure of anyone in the United States.
“Black Lives Matter … goes beyond extrajudicial killings of black people by police and vigilantes. It is a tactic to (re)build the black liberation movement.”
The black liberation movement is and always has been extremist and racist.
See: https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-1/bwc-history.htm
“When we say Black Lives Matter, we are broadening the conversation around state violence to include all of the ways in which black people are intentionally left powerless at the hands of the state. We are talking about the ways in which black lives are deprived of our basic human rights and dignity.”
Suggesting that “black people are intentionally left powerless at the hands of the state” is a very extreme belief and one which is wholly unsupported by any factual evidence.
Moreover, unless you believe that police forces across the United States are systemically targeting black people and killing them for racist or other unjustifiable reasons, it is extreme hogwash to think “black lives are deprived of basic human rights and dignity” by the government.
On the other hand, if you care about the large number of blacks who are victims of violent crime (six times as likely as non-Hispanic whites), who are victims of child abuse (two times as likely as non-Hispanic whites), who are victims of domestic spousal violence (22 times as likely) or who are raised without fathers (67 percent) and are not taught how to be self-reliant as a result, then it is not unreasonable to conclude that (at least among the lower-income blacks) they are being deprived of basic human rights by their own culture.
“How black poverty and genocide is state violence. How 2.8 million black people are locked in cages in this country is state violence. How black women bearing the burden of a relentless assault on our children and our families is state violence. How black girls are used as negotiating chips during times of conflict and war.”
It seems rather extreme — and intellectually vacuous — to blame everyone else for these issues. We do lock up too many people for too long in the United States. But it is not as if most of those incarcerated were innocent. They choose a life of crime and violence and so on. Don’t blame anyone else for a criminal’s bad life choices.
“#BlackLivesMatter is working for a world where black lives are no longer systematically and intentionally targeted for demise.”
This is yet another extremist claim without any foundation. Blacks are not being “targeted for demise” by the police or by whites or by the state. Insofar as blacks are victims — and many are — the guilty parties are almost always other blacks who come from that same broken culture of victimhood, broken families, a neglectful attitude toward educational excellence and a willingness to delay gratification and invest in the future.
“We affirm our contributions to this society, our humanity, and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression.”
This is repetitive, but still extreme and wrong.
“The call for black lives to matter is a rallying cry for all black lives striving for liberation.”
Again, black liberation movements are extremist in every respect. They always have been. And by their very nature, they are entirely racist.
Rich wrote:
> Again, black liberation movements are extremist in every respect.
Thanks for the great post Rich. It is sad that the blacks that really want to get rid of bad cops (that like bad teachers are more likely to work in black neighborhoods) don’t get together with the “all lives matter” people who also want to get rid of bad racist cops. The more “extreme” BLM gets (and the more cops they kill) the less likely there is going to be anyone working to get the bad racist cops working in black areas fired…
Crowd control of a potentially unruly large gathering of people is one of the most difficult of law enforcement tasks. Something seldom noted it that a group of protesters require one prime ingredient to be effective while also being responsible and lawful. The absence of that ingredient is ominous. And that essential ingredient is leadership.
A gathering of police crowd control people is trained and experienced to perform this task. A police gathering has a built-in readily identifiable leadership hierarchy. When law enforcement arrives tasked to ensure the safety of all present, the police leadership first asks, “Who’s in charge?”
Sometimes there’s a response of blank stares, and that means it going to be a long day. But usually somebody steps forward. If that crowd leader is a skilled leader, ground rules and parameters can be determined by mutual consent. The protest will have a maximum potential of achieving what it was intended to do in a peaceful manner. The best example of this desired interaction is Labor Disputes.
If the crowd leader is openly hostile to the police and postures same to his/her gathering, it’s going to be a long day. Finally, if the “peaceful demonstration” has a real purpose of provoking the police to require them to make forcible arrests to gain face-time on television and advertise the cause for free, no earthly power can prevent the inevitable.
You make a good distinction… between a ‘protest gathering’, and a ‘mob’…
Given the provocation, the first can become the second in seconds. Analogous to a subdued gathering in a crowded theater, and then somebody yells, “Fire!”
Or, given the crowd, “Malt Liquor”
In case you are curious — I was, so I looked it up — here is why malt liquor is associated with African-Americans.