To go with a new blog (I decided not to kill it ju$t yet) .
"Partying, protest mark Boston’s First Night" by Travis Andersen, Nestor Ramos and Jeremy C. FoxGlobe Staff | Globe Correspondent December 31, 2014
Protests rang a sober reminder that 2014’s trials will not disappear with December, but they did not disrupt the fun for families who came to celebrate, and so celebrate they did, bundled up against a bracing cold, struggling to stay warm.
Sort of a punctation mark on global warming.
*********
For Jackson Fogel, 3, and his father, Jackson Fogel, 36, First Night was a personal first.
For his son, the most fascinating flashing lights were at ground level.
“He loves seeing police cars,” Fogel said.
Let's hope he feels that way later in life. Not many do. It's usually uh-oh, and for no reason at all. You don't have to be doing something wrong.
There were plenty on hand.
Boston police vowed to be out in large numbers, and Mayor Martin J. Walsh had in recent days urged protesters to be respectful of families out enjoying the festivities. On Wednesday evening, protesters appeared to be making good on their pledge to exercise their right to free speech peacefully. Police said there were no arrests.
Onus is on protesters now, free speech right, I'm not worried, I'll never attend another protest ever again, particularly any promoted my ma$$ media and propaganda pre$$.
Protesters began to march around 3 p.m., carrying handmade signs and chanting while bystanders took pictures, raised their arms in support, or, in some cases, swore and shouted.
At 5 p.m., roughly 100 protesters descended on Copley Square. Under the watchful eyes of about two dozen uniformed officers, the demonstrators took up positions in front of the Boston Public Library.
Together, the protesters dropped to the ground and lay still — a protest known as a “die-in,” meant to mimic the deaths of black men and boys killed by police.
What about everyone else?
As they were lying down, an organizer read the names of some who were killed by police in 2014: Michael Brown, an unarmed teen shot to death in Ferguson, Mo.; Eric Garner, who died after being wrestled to the ground by police in New York; and Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old boy who was holding a pellet gun when a Cleveland police officer shot him.
Time for a smoke before the protest. Maybe it will calm you murderers down.
The protest did not interfere with the parade, which turned onto Boylston Street a few minutes after the die-in ended. Along the route, a small group of protesters unfurled a banner. “No New Year Under This Old System!” it read.
***********
The protest dispersed quietly after 6 p.m., with protesters vowing to remain committed to their cause.
“Institutionalized racism and police brutality hasn’t ended, we need to continue this part of the conversation that everyone’s thinking about, everyone’s talking about, until a change is made,” said Brock Satter, 43, of East Boston, who helped organize the First Night action.
Brandi Artez, 28, of the South End, urged the crowd to keep their movement alive going forward.
“We have to keep going,” Artez said. “The civil rights movement took 10-plus years.”
Wednesday night was not the first time protesters had brought their message to a citywide celebration. Boston’s annual Christmas tree lighting party was also the rallying point for a larger demonstration.
Dan Bohrs of Newton came for the fun but said he had no objection to the protesters exercising their free speech rights.
“They’re trying to get the word out,” said Bohrs, 50.
He added that while some people have raised concerns the demonstrators, on the grounds that First Night is a family event, “kids can learn about civics as well.”
But for some who came downtown for the First Night revelry, the protests seemed out of place.
My printed paper says "an unwelcome intrusion."
Eric Roschardt, 43, said he and his family came to visit the city from El Salvador. He said he did not think First Night was an appropriate venue for the protests. “It’s a happy moment,” said Roschardt.
Discomfort is necessary.
"Organizers are now focused on planning actions during the week of Martin Luther King Day."
Starting to look like an Occupy Wall Street crowd. That accounts for the sudden shift in tone.
Web adder:
As the midnight fireworks drew closer, many revelers, including Smith, the South Boston woman out with her boyfriend, planned to move to the waterfront to watch the display as it went off over the Boston Harbor.
She said she hoped 2015 would be a year of greater harmony among people.
“Enjoy everyone, regardless of your ethnicity. Black or white, it doesn’t matter,” she said. “I’d like to see more togetherness in 2015.”
I think the American people are pretty much together: no more wars based on lies, no more serving Wall Street, a good, decent, universal health system -- not the abomination of Obummercare -- and no more police beating and killings with impunity no matter what.
That's four for starters, need I go on?
--more--"
Happy New Year (would you mind toning it down just a bit?)!!
NDU: So much for not making a big deal of such things.
Meanwhile in Wyoming they had to burn the town to keep warm.
It's not just the locals, either:
"Mother sues feds after agents kill son in Nevada" Associated Press January 01, 2015
LAS VEGAS — A woman has filed a federal wrongful death lawsuit against the US Bureau of Land Management and two unidentified rangers who shot and killed her 20-year-old son during a chaotic confrontation on a state highway outside Las Vegas.
Attorney Jacob Hafter said his client, Tracy Meadows, filed the suit after getting no answers from the government about the death of D’Andre Berghardt Jr.
“We’ve been patient and we haven’t rushed the way others have in other places,” Hafter said Tuesday, referring to police slayings in Ferguson, Mo., and Staten Island, N.Y.
The slaying of Berghardt on State Route 159 near Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area drew attention after a witness cellphone video was posted online showing two officers preventing Berghardt from entering two vehicles stopped in traffic. It appeared about 10 gunshots were fired after Berghardt climbed into an idling Nevada Highway Patrol vehicle.
The Bureau of Land Management released a statement several days later saying Berghardt had threatened to shoot the officers.
Was he armed, or is that just more cock and bull that is usually shoveled out by authority and its mouthpiece?
--more--"
FBI going to investigate when they do the locals (whatta joke)?
This is getting a lot of press and play, though:
"Idaho mother lived a life surrounded by guns, friends say" by Terrence McCoy, Washington Post January 01, 2015
WASHINGTON — Veronica Rutledge and her husband loved everything about guns. They practiced at shooting ranges. They hunted. And both of them, relatives and friends say, had permits to carry concealed firearms. Veronica typically left her Blackfoot, Idaho, home with her gun nestled at her side.
So on Christmas morning last week, her husband gave her a present he hoped would make her life more comfortable: a purse with a special pocket for a concealed weapon.
The day after Christmas, she took her new gift with her on a trip with her husband and her 2-year-old son. They headed hundreds of miles north to the end of a country road where Terry Rutledge, her husband’s father, lived. The father-in-law learned of the new purse.
‘‘It was designed for that purpose — to carry a concealed firearm,’’ Rutledge said in an interview Tuesday night. ‘‘And you had to unzip a compartment to find the handgun.
On Tuesday morning, that was exactly what Veronica Rutledge’s son did — with the most tragic of outcomes. Veronica, 29, arrived at a nearby Walmart in Hayden with her three nieces and son, her gun ‘‘zippered closed’’ inside her new purse, her father-in-law said. Then, near the electronics section, the purse was left unattended for a moment.
‘‘An inquisitive 2-year-old boy reached into the purse, unzipped the compartment, found the gun, and shot his mother in the head,’’ Rutledge said. ‘‘It’s a terrible, terrible incident.’’
One that will new ammunition to the gun control crowd.
The aftermath has been crushing, Rutledge said. His son went to the Walmart to collect his nieces and son, and no one now is sure what to say to the boy, who is not doing well.
‘‘My son is terrible,’’ Rutledge said. ‘‘He has a 2-year-old boy right now who doesn’t know where his mom is, and he’ll have to explain why his mom isn’t coming home. And then, later on his life, as he questions it more, he’ll again have to explain what happened, so we’ll have to relive this several times over.’’
Rutledge isn’t just sad — he’s angry. Not at his grandson. Nor at his dead daughter-in-law, ‘‘who didn’t have a malicious fiber in her body,’’ he said. He’s angry at the people already using the accident as an excuse to grandstand on gun rights.
‘‘They are painting Veronica as irresponsible, and that is not the case,’’ he said. ‘‘. . . I brought my son up around guns, and he has extensive experience shooting it. And Veronica had had handgun classes; they’re both licensed to carry, and this wasn’t just some purse she had thrown her gun into.’’
The path Veronica Rutledge charted, friends and family say, was one of academics and small-town, country living. ‘‘Hunting, being outdoors, and being with her son’’ was what made her happiest, her friend Rhonda Ellis said. She was raised in northeast Idaho and always excelled at school, former high school classmate Kathleen Phelps said, recalling her as the “valedictorian of our class, very motivated, and the smartest person I know.’’
She went on to graduate in 2010 from the University of Idaho with a chemistry degree, according to a commencement program. From there, she got a job at Battelle’s Idaho National Laboratory and published several articles, one of which analyzed a method to absorb toxic waste discharged by burning nuclear fuel.
Hmmmmmm.
While away from the lab, she and her husband, whom she married in 2009, spent time shooting guns. ‘‘She was just as comfortable at a camp ground or a gun range as she was in a classroom,’’ close friend Sheri Sandow said in an interview. On Facebook, she showed an interest in the outdoors and the National Rifle Association.
‘‘They carried one every day of their lives, and they shot extensively,’’ Rutledge said. ‘‘They loved it. Odd as it may sound, we are gun people.’’
A lot of people in Idaho are. The state Legislature this year passed a bill that allows people to carry concealed guns onto state university campuses. And more than 85,000 people — 7 percent of the population — are licensed to carry concealed weapons, the Crime Prevention Research Center said.
So many locals didn’t discern anything odd with 29-year-old woman carrying a loaded gun into a Walmart during the holiday season.
Sandow said she often sees people with a gun cradled at their side. ‘‘In Idaho. . . to see someone with a gun isn’t bizarre. [Veronica] wasn’t carrying a gun because she felt unsafe. She was carrying a gun because she was raised around guns. This was just a horrible accident.’’
--more--"
I've noticed that my supremacist paper often treats those not like them with disparaging insult. In Idaho's case, the narrative is racist, gun-nut crazies.
Then there is the stereotype regarding the South, a 50-year-old record that has been so played:
"KKK group to keep fighting to join cleanup program" Associated Press January 01, 2015
ATLANTA — A Georgia Ku Klux Klan group says it will move forward with its application for a highway cleanup program after a judge ruled the state’s denial violated the organization’s right to free speech.
The north Georgia KKK group applied to join the state’s Adopt-A-Highway program in May 2012, hoping to clean up along part of Route 515 in the Appalachian Mountains. The state Department of Transportation, which runs the program, denied the application, saying it is aimed at “civic-minded organizations in good standing.”
“Participation in the program should not detract from its worthwhile purpose,” the department said in a statement at the time of the denial. “Promoting an organization with a history of inciting civil disturbance and social unrest would present a grave concern to the department. Issuing this permit would have the potential to negatively impact the quality of life, commerce, and economic development of Union County and all of Georgia.”
The American Civil Liberties Union Foundation sued on behalf of the KKK group in September 2012, arguing the state violated its free speech.
--more--"
Turns out the Klan -- if you do the research -- is kept alive by the government. All the leaders are agents. Government and those that rule us always need an enemy with which to divert you, be it foreign or domestic.
Nevertheless, the free speech rights are inviolate:
"Brandeis student stands by comments on slain NY officers; Insists tweets about deaths were taken out of context" by Matt Rocheleau, Globe Correspondent January 01, 2015
A Brandeis University junior who caused an uproar on campus for tweeting that she had “no sympathy” for two New York police officers slain in an ambush is standing by her widely shared comments.
I'm sad anytime anyone dies. Life is precious.
But the student, Khadijah Lynch, told the Globe on Wednesday that she feels her messages on social media were taken out of context.
Here we go.
In defending the statements, Lynch said they reflected raw anger and frustration following the fatal shooting of a 12-year-old black boy by a police officer in Cleveland and grand jury decisions in Missouri and New York to not indict white police officers in the deaths of unarmed black men.
In that light, “it was hard for me to conjure sympathy for those police officers” shot to death in New York, she said.
But, she added in a telephone interview, “Not having sympathy is not that same as rejoicing or saying that they deserved to die. I think all human life is valuable; I’m not a violent person; and I don’t condone violence. I was very sympathetic for the families.”
Lynch’s comments have reverberated on campus and across the Internet, spawning debate about free speech, threats, and calls for Lynch to be suspended. They also prompted a campuswide message from the Brandeis president Frederick M. Lawrence, who called on students and others to be more civil toward one another.
Maybe this blog is over.
One thing I have noticed, and maybe I'm too tired or too jaded after more than eight years -- but my language is nowhere near as strident as it once was, and my rage has faded.
Lynch resigned as undergraduate representative for the university’s African and Afro-American Studies Department.
Lynch sent out the first tweet shortly after the officers were killed Dec. 20 in Brooklyn. “i have no sympathy for the nypd officers who were murdered today,” she wrote.
The next day she reaffirmed her opinion in another tweet and added, “i hate this racist [expletive] country.”
I did this for love of country, and I failed to save it.
The inflammatory messages were spotted by another Brandeis student, senior Daniel Mael, who re-published them in a post on the conservative news website TruthRevolt. That post, in turn, was well-shared online and ignited emotional, heated exchanges.
Some condemned Lynch and defended Mael’s decision to re-publish her tweets. Others expressed support for Lynch and instead criticized Mael, asserting that he had taken the tweets out of context and set her up as a target for cyberbullying.
The flurry of vitriol prompted Brandeis’ president to weigh in.
“It is critically important that we be able to have discussions about complex and charged issues in a climate of mutual respect and civility,” Lawrence wrote to the school community Monday.
Lynch said that at the time she tweeted about the officers’ deaths, she never expected much of a reaction. Her Twitter account was available for anyone to see, but had just 81 followers. She has since made her Twitter profile private.
This is all here as a service to you, dearly beloved readers; otherwise, I wouldn't be doing it.
Lynch described Mael’s article and some subsequent coverage of her tweets as “an attempt to embarrass me and silence me.”
“But I won’t let that happen,” she said. “I stand by everything I said on my Twitter account. . . I don’t want to live in a country where police can get away with murdering black children and black people and not be held accountable.”
So do I.
Mael said Wednesday he was shocked by the attention his post received and by much of the reaction. He said that he re-published Lynch’s tweets because “students on campus deserve to know when other people on campus, particularly student leaders, support violent acts and express a lack of sympathy for murdered police officers.”
Professor Chad Williams, chairman of the college’s African and Afro-American Studies Department, issued a lengthy statement distancing the department from Lynch’s comments.
“Indeed, the fundamental premise behind the declaration that ‘Black Lives Matter’ is that all lives matter,” Williams wrote. “We must mourn the unnecessary loss of life of a 12-year-old unarmed boy in Cleveland with the same compassion as we do the death of a Brooklyn police officer.
That is what I have been saying, and to quote a certain someone:
"It was one incident: Tell that to the families of the policemen who died."
Good point.
He added: “Social media has the power to educate, energize, and organize people in unprecedented ways. However, with the click of a button, social media also can give comments expressed in the heat of the moment a potentially regrettable permanency.”
I regret nothing, nor should I. Let justice be done (and truth be told) though the heaven's fall.
--more--"
NEXT DAY UPDATES:
Deadly N.Y. fire linked to holiday cooking
Woman hit in leg by stray New Year’s bullet
51 years after car crash, turn signal lever is removed from driver’s arm
So how was the swim? Water warm enough for you?
Throwing hot tea on someone is now "assault and battery with a dangerous weapon?"
