https://americancynic.net/Atom Feed for 'video' Articles2022-04-05T01:08:51ZAmer Canishttps://americancynic.net/about/tag:americancynic.net,2022-04-01:/log/2022/4/1/ukraine_documentaries/Ukraine Documentaries2022-04-01T15:53:31Z2022-04-05T01:08:51Z<div class="dlist">
<dl>
<dt class="hdlist1"><a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/putins-road-to-war/">PBS Frontline: Putin’s Road to War</a> (54m; March 15, 2022)</dt>
<dd>
<p>This short documentary gives pertinent background story on how Putin rose to power in Russia (and it does so with much less warmongering than <a href="/log/2022/3/25/winter_is_coming_the_kasparov_neoconservative-thermonuclear_gambit/">Kasparov’s book</a>).
However, the thesis implied by the documentary that Putin rules Russia and wages wars alone while his staff and the Russian billionaire class are just trembling yes-men is not at all believable.
Why has Putin been so popular in Russia? Frontline doesn’t ask. Maybe because he is willing to stand up to NATO? Americans and American media are so always in such disbelief that the rest of the world is not happy with American military extending all over the place. ππ</p>
</dd>
<dt class="hdlist1"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzNxLzFfR5w">Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom</a> (1h38m; 2015)</dt>
<dd>
<p>After the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Netflix made this documentary available for free on Youtube. It follows several participants in the Euromaidan with an emphasis on the Yanukovych administration’s use of police violence against protesters.
What it did not show at all is the far right’s involvement in the protests, which is almost like making a documentary about the January 6 capitol riots in the US and not mentioning (and even trying to hide) that the participants were Trump supporters.
I saw a few red and black flags of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepan_Bandera">Bandera</a> acolytes in the background of a few scenes, but for the most part it felt like I was being shown carefully selected footage by the director so that I wouldn’t realize I was being asked to sympathize at times with neo-Nazis.
Lev Golinkin provides some balance in a review for The <em>Nation</em>: <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/the-heartbreaking-irony-of-winter-on-fire/">The Heartbreaking Irony of βWinter on Fireβ</a> ππ</p>
</dd>
<dt class="hdlist1"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine_on_Fire">Ukraine on Fire</a> (1h35m; 2017)</dt>
<dd>
<p>This is Oliver Stone’s take on Euromaidan. It gives much more context than <em>Winter on Fire</em> but is an over-correction to that film’s deficiencies: it focuses on the nationalist elements of the protests and through the lens of conspiracy theories and vague religious metaphors provides a very pro-cop and pro-Kremlin perspective.
It’s one-sided, but unlike <em>Winter on Fire</em> at least it mentions some of the victims of the nationalist furor surrounding the Maidan protests like the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Odessa_clashes">2014 massacre of anti-Maidan protesters in Odessa</a>.
(It seems that even Oliver Stone has <a href="https://deadline.com/2022/03/oliver-stone-criticizes-putin-ukraine-1234973037/">criticized Putin for the 2022 invasion</a>.) ππ</p>
</dd>
<dt class="hdlist1"><a href="https://rtd.rt.com/films/maidan-road-to-war/">Maidan: Road to War</a> (53m; March 2022)</dt>
<dd>
<p>I haven’t been able to find out much about this film, but it is from <em>Russia Today</em>'s documentary channel and seems to have been released after the February invasion — apparently in an attempt to provide Russia’s side of the conflict to any English speaker who is willing to listen.
(It is <a href="https://www.bitchute.com/video/hViZui3gEWoT/">available on bitchute</a> in case you can’t access the rt.com site.)
It is similar in scope to Oliver Stone’s documentary, but despite being pro-Russian state-sponsored propaganda it came across as a less sensationalized, more balanced view. ππ</p>
</dd>
<dt class="hdlist1"><a href="https://archive.org/details/01.dvdripsvat.en">The Nine Lives of Nestor Makhno</a></dt>
<dd>
<p>It’s not a documentary, and I have no idea how historically accurate it is, but I’ve been enjoying this 2006 mini-series about the Ukrainian revolutionary hero (the archive.org version has English subtitles).</p>
</dd>
</dl>
</div>Brief reviews of some documentaries about Euromaidan and the Russian invasion of Ukrainetag:americancynic.net,2015-11-19:/log/2015/11/19/joe_hill_the_preacher_and_the_slave/Joe Hill, the Preacher, and the Slave2015-11-19T23:56:31Z2018-11-21T17:09:45Z<div class="paragraph">
<p>On November 19, 1915 (exactly one hundred years ago as I write this), a Utah State Prison deputy prepared his squad of riflemen, concealed in the prison’s blacksmith shed and taking aim through slits in the wall, to carry out the execution of a 36-year-old prisoner convicted of murder.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>“Ready. Aim. —”</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>“Fire!” The deputy was preempted by the blindfolded man bound to a chair at the other end of the rifles.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>The last words of a condemned man are sometimes afforded respect even when the man himself is deemed unworthy of life. Indeed, that day the firing squad obliged the request. Five bullets punctured <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Hill">Joe Hill</a>'s chest and pulverized his heart.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>After immigrating to America from Sweden in his early 20’s, Hill joined the Industrial Workers of the World (the <a href="http://www.iww.org/">IWW</a>, a radical union whose members are known as Wobblies for some reason which no one remembers). He bummed around the country both looking for work and singing about a world without bosses.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>One day in January 1914, while living in a Swedish community near Salt Lake City, Hill was shot in the chest. He told the doctor who treated him that he was involved in a quarrel with another man over a girl. He would never say anything else about it. Earlier that same day a Salt Lake City grocer and his teenage son were murdered in their store by two gunmen. The son had returned fire and possibly hit one of the attackers before being killed. Because of the timing and his unwillingness to explain the hole through his chest, Hill became the prime suspect. Even after he was charged, then convicted (though the state presented no physical evidence, no motive, and never named the second shooter), then sentenced to death, he refused to say who shot him or why.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>The theory among those who believe Hill was innocent is that he was shot by his friend Otto Appelquist who was, or had recently been, engaged to Hilda Erickson — who, by some accounts, was their mutual love interest. In 2011 one of Hill’s biographers discovered a letter written by Erickson decades after Hill’s execution (1949) in which she confirms that theory (“Otto shot him in a fit of anger”). By remaining silent he seized his chance to both protect his friends from state harassment and to become the martyr he thought the anti-capitalist working class needed.</p>
</div>
<div class="imageblock text-center">
<div class="content">
<a class="image" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mural,joehillhouse.jpg"><img src="/log/2015/11/19/joe_hill_the_preacher_and_the_slave/HillMural.jpg" alt="Joe Hill House Mural"></a>
</div>
<div class="title">A twelve by fifteen foot mural, which was located at the Catholic Worker Movement’s Joe Hill House in Salt Lake City, depicting Joe Hill and Jesus of Nazareth being executed together</div>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Before he was shot, and then shot again, and before <a href="http://huckkonopackicartoons.com/billy-bragg-saved-joe-hill-from-michelle-shocked/">Billy Bragg drank a pinch of his cremated ashes in a glass of imported beer</a>, Hill spent his spare time as a <a href="http://local.sltrib.com/charts/joehill/painting.html">painter</a>, musician, poet, and composer. Despite not learning English until he was an adult in America, he became well-known among Wobblies for his lyrics and witty rhymes. Many of <a href="http://local.sltrib.com/charts/joehill/videos.html">his songs</a> are preserved in the IWW’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Red_Songbook">“Little Red Song Book”</a>. His first to be published is my favorite, a parody of the popular hymn “In the Sweet By-and-By” called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Preacher_and_the_Slave">“The Preacher and the Slave”</a> (the full lyrics and chords are listed in the Wikipedia entry).</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>The first four verses put the lie to Christian “preachers,” “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Roller">holy rollers</a>,” and “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Salvation_Army">the Starvation Army</a>,” who pacify workers with promises of “<a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pie_in_the_sky">pie in the sky</a> when you die”.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>But then in the last verse and modified chorus we meet Joe Hill the dialectician:</p>
</div>
<div class="verseblock">
<pre class="content">Working folks of all countries, unite
Side by side we for freedom shall fight
When this world and its wealth we have gained
To the grafters we’ll sing this refrain:
You will eat (you will eat), by-and-by (by-and-by)
When you learned how to cook and how to fry (bake a pie!)
Chop some wood (chop some wood)
'Twill do you good ('twill do you good)
Then you’ll eat in that sweet by-and-by (that’s no lie!)</pre>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>He negates his negation of a future “sweet by-and-by” and, like in <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+6%3A9%E2%80%9313&version=ESV">Jesus’s famous prayer</a>, resets it from heaven to earth. The first line of Hill’s last verse also happens to be the last line of the <em>Manifesto of the Communist Party</em>. It is tempting to read his anti-capitalist Marxian dialectics as an application of Christian theology.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>To Marx, the history of all societies so far is the history of class struggles. Specifically, Marx wrote about how workers and capitalists are both slaves to the machinations of capitalism. Employees spend their working lives literally creating the means for their own exploitation, while an employer who does not constantly reinvest and keep up with technology and who does not exploit his workers as extensively and intensively as he can get away with will soon be out of business, because he can be sure that his competitors will. Capitalists and workers depend on each other, hate each other, and produce each other. It is an apparently unbreakable cycle which must be broken.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Like the Christian conception of humanity which is unable to save itself, but through which a savior is produced, the hope for transcendence can be found to be immanent in the damned system itself. To Marx, this immanent hope is the potential for rebellion among the working class, a potential which is produced by capitalism as it gives workers less to lose and more to gain by transcending capitalist relations.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>To Jesus, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God. It is impossible, in other words, for rich people and the kingdom Jesus spoke about to exist at the same time. But there is hope even for the rich, because <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2019:23-26">“For mortals it is impossible, but for God all things are possible.”</a></p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>In the terms of capitalist relations with which Marx wrote and Joe Hill sang, that miracle is realized when the working folks have gained the world, <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+5:5&version=NRSV">when the meek have inherited the world</a>, when there is no more exploitation because the exploiters (“grafters”) have lost their slaves and learned to bake for themselves. Any pie consumed in such a world is then truly eaten in that sweet by-and-by: not by spirits in the sky but by those living on an earth without masters (and so with no one who needs to worry about the relative size of camels and needle eyes).</p>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="_sources_and_further_reading">Sources and Further Reading</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="paragraph">
<p>A web search will turn up many resources about Joe Hill and the mysteries which surround his life and death. In writing this I relied upon the information written and collected by The <em>Salt Lake Tribune</em> in their online exhibit <a href="http://local.sltrib.com/charts/joehill/landingpage.html">“The Legacy of Joe Hill”</a>. It contains a much more complete telling of his life, death, art, and legacy.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>There is also a recent biography of Joe Hill which has received good reviews (I have not read it): Adler, William M. <a href="https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=nCwHDiXYMRMC&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&ots=DT3yLNcK5V&sig=1FysXmzHR1x-iDF0c1oc_oJY-iw#v=onepage&q&f=false"><em>The Man who Never Died: The Life, Times, and Legacy of Joe Hill, American Labor Icon</em></a>. Bloomsbury Publishing USA, 2011.</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="_mischeif_brews_the_preacher_and_the_slave">Mischeif Brew’s “The Preacher and the Slave”</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="paragraph">
<p>My favorite rendition of “The Preacher and the Slave” is this one by Erik Petersen and his folk punk band <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mischief_Brew">Mischief Brew</a>:</p>
</div>
<iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LYCYJA5DIp8" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
</div>
</div>On the centennial anniversary of Joe Hill's execution, his music, and the theology of his Marxian dialectics.tag:americancynic.net,2015-05-14:/log/2015/5/14/report_back_denver_march_in_support_of_the_baltimore_uprising_429/Report Back: Denver March in Support of the Baltimore Uprising (4/29)2015-05-14T22:28:32Z2015-09-28T05:23:46Z<div class="paragraph">
<p>On the afternoon of May 1st I attended the annual May Day demonstration in Denver. I think it was a larger turnout than last year. But after about a minute I remembered how much I hate things like being in a group of people I don’t (but should) know, standing around “protesting” with signs and slogans, and generally being in a city. So I right away walked back to Union Station and got the next bus home.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>As I walked away from the demonstrators the only police I noticed were some officers staged around the corner of the capitol building largely out of sight so as not to incite any conflict. This was in contrast to the method employed by the Denver Police Department (DPD) across the street from the capitol during a protest demonstration I attended only a few days earlier. That protest, on the Wednesday prior to May Day, was a march organized by the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/denvercommunitydefense">Denver Community Defense Committee</a> (and others) in <a href="https://itself.wordpress.com/2014/07/31/what-does-it-mean-to-support-something/">support of</a> the rioters in Baltimore and of the protest movement sparked by the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Iguala_mass_kidnapping">murdered students of Ayotzinapa</a>.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>My sister met me downtown and attended the march with me, so it was way more fun than when I try to do protesting by myself. We gathered in front of the detention center and courthouse (where I was once detained, and where I was <a href="http://mretc.net/~cris/arrested-O14/">tried and convicted for my role in the Occupy Denver camp</a> almost exactly three years ago). Many cars honked in support as they drove by. Some organizers with permanent markers moved through the crowd making sure everyone who wanted it had the jail support phone number written on their bodies. A member of the ISO was handing out free copies of the latest <a href="http://socialistworker.org/"><em>Socialist Worker</em></a>. <em>Free copies</em>. When the Trotskyists are giving away their newspapers you know Full Communism can’t be far off.</p>
</div>
<div class="imageblock">
<div class="content">
<a class="image" href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10206644668215273&set=pb.1229828253.-2207520000.1431057425"><img src="/log/2015/5/14/report_back_denver_march_in_support_of_the_baltimore_uprising_429/banner.jpg" alt="Protesters holding banner which reads 'From Denver to Baltimore to Ayotzinapa We Do Mind Dying'" width="640"></a>
</div>
<div class="title">From Denver to Baltimore to Ayotzinapa: We Do Mind Dying (photo by Jason Metter)</div>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Once around 100 people had gathered, we moved into eastbound Colfax Ave leaving only one lane open for traffic. Even then we got honks of support from motorists. The police materialized from behind the protesters, moving west up the eastbound side. We turned to face them. I got pressed into service holding one of the banners at the front of the group (via a classic “would you hold this for a second?” move by its previous handler). A line of police on motorcycles drove up to the protest, stopping suddenly only inches from those of us in front so as to prevent us from marching forward down the street. After a brief standoff we moved to the sidewalk and walked past the line of motorcycles.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>For the next couple of blocks the police carelessly and intentionally swooped their heavy motorcycles close to marching protesters in an attempt to keep them on the sidewalk. Many other police vehicles carrying officers in crowd-control gear including a DPD SWAT team riding on an SUV had also responded to the gathering. We lost our motorcycle escort briefly at Civic Center Park where Colfax bends away from the sidewalk, so when we turned right onto Broadway we were in the shoulder of the street again.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>The motorcycles quickly caught up and resumed trying to herd us off of the street. One sped right up beside me, almost right into me, and shouted to MOVE TO THE SIDEWALK! I was looking forward at that moment and was startled by his maneuver and the only thing I could think to say in response was, “be careful.” He repeated, this time in a quieter tone, his command for me to move to the sidewalk. I replied, “ok, but while we are in the street, be careful with your bike.” At that point we were approaching two big tour buses parked on the shoulder of Broadway; he drove off up ahead to find someone else to yell at while I decided to go around the buses on the sidewalk in order to avoid being squeezed between them and the police. I also took the opportunity to abandon my job as a banner holder. I think the other guy was better off without me anyway.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Just as I passed the second bus, the police attacked. I heard a scuffle in the street on the other side of the buses. I jogged back to see several police arresting a protester wearing a backpack. Luckily, as the police were walking him away he managed to toss his backpack in the street where another protester grabbed it before any of the cops could.</p>
</div>
<div class="imageblock">
<div class="content">
<a class="image" href="https://www.facebook.com/occupydenver/photos/a.719504098159144.1073741881.105073176268909/719505464825674/"><img src="/log/2015/5/14/report_back_denver_march_in_support_of_the_baltimore_uprising_429/bicyclistarrest.jpg" alt="Photo of the arrest. He had already thrown his backpack to safety at this point." width="640"></a>
</div>
<div class="title">Photo of the arrest. He had already thrown his backpack to safety at this point. The sign in the back reads "Jesus Loves Coffee Not Cops," a reference to the weekly <a href="https://www.facebook.com/coffeenotcopsdenver">Coffee Not Cops</a> meeting in Denver. (Photo from Occupy Denver’s Facebook page)</div>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>While I was watching, one of the green-clad tactical guys armed with one of those large riot revolvers that shoot 40mm cannisters shoved the guy next to me and then pointed his weapon at my chest and told me to get back. I didn’t know if he was loaded with impact rounds or tear gas, but at that range I assumed anything would be ‘more or less lethal’, so I backed up then returned to the sidewalk.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>That’s when I realized it was not an isolated arrest. Several people between and beside the buses had been pepper sprayed, some tackled on the pavement, and were being bound while other police in crowd-control gear were pepper spraying onlookers. My sister and I both got only a very light misting which caused a bit of coughing and brief eye burning…​ but I saw several people take multiple full sprays directly to the face.</p>
</div>
<div class="imageblock">
<div class="content">
<a class="image" href="https://www.facebook.com/occupydenver/photos/a.719504098159144.1073741881.105073176268909/719505608158993/"><img src="/log/2015/5/14/report_back_denver_march_in_support_of_the_baltimore_uprising_429/spray2.jpg" alt="Eager cop sprays protesters from behind motorcycles" width="640"></a>
</div>
<div class="title">Eager cop sprays protesters from behind motorcycles (photo from Occupy Denver’s Facebook page)</div>
</div>
<div class="imageblock">
<div class="content">
<a class="image" href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10206644676695485"><img src="/log/2015/5/14/report_back_denver_march_in_support_of_the_baltimore_uprising_429/arrest1.jpg" alt="Denver police arrest a man while pepper spraying photographers" width="640"></a>
</div>
<div class="title">Denver police arrest a man while pepper spraying photographers (photo by Jason Metter — see his <a href="https://www.facebook.com/metter/media_set?set=a.10206644678535531.1073741847.1229828253&type=3">Facebook album</a>)</div>
</div>
<div class="imageblock">
<div class="content">
<a class="image" href="https://www.facebook.com/occupydenver/photos/a.719504098159144.1073741881.105073176268909/719506074825613/"><img src="/log/2015/5/14/report_back_denver_march_in_support_of_the_baltimore_uprising_429/spray1.jpg" alt="Police spraying a small group of people on the sidewalk." width="640"></a>
</div>
<div class="title">Police spraying a small group of people on the sidewalk. The sign on the ground reads "Christians Against Killer Cops" (photo from Occupy Denver’s Facebook page)</div>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>The group spent quite a bit of time in Civic Center Park recovering and flushing eyes with water and milk. The police made a few excursions into the park to grab and arrest a few more protesters. I don’t know why some people were targeted, but I’m assuming they were grabbing people they could identify as having been in the street earlier so they could charge them with minor traffic offenses and remove them from the protest (there were forensics officers video recording the entire march).</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Once everyone had more-or-less recovered we continued our march to the 16th Street Mall and around downtown Denver before people began dispersing. After the attack on Broadway, my priority for the rest of the march was to make sure neither myself nor my sister got arrested. That meant leaving the group at one point as it headed down an alley-less street toward police where I feared a kettle and possible mass arrest. Fortunately the group was able to turn, and we caught back up to them on the mall a little before everyone dispersed.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>In total 11 people were arrested. Most were charged with misdemeanors, but there were also at least two felony assault on police charges. Two protesters that I know of were hospitalized while in custody for the injuries they sustained during their arrests.</p>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="_videos">Videos</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="paragraph">
<p>There are several videos of the march available online, especially of the police attacking protesters on Broadway, including some <a href="https://vimeo.com/126535599">footage posted to Vimeo by Unicorn Riot.</a> The videographer during much of that footage is next to me, so it actually provides something near to my point-of-view during the first bit of the protest.</p>
</div>
<div class="videoblock">
<div class="title">Unicorn Riot’s video shows much of what I saw</div>
<div class="content">
<iframe width="500" height="281" src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/126535599" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
</div>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>David Long captured <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEkXquMskHM">video of several of the arrests</a> which I did not witness myself:</p>
</div>
<div class="videoblock">
<div class="title">Arrests During the Denver-Baltimore Solidarity March (4/29)</div>
<div class="content">
<iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/bEkXquMskHM?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
</div>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Finally, the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHZjQZSXytMKNeG0G0FXXOA">DAM Collective</a> posted several videos to YouTube, including <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQ4MpIbickU">this one</a> which shows the general mood of both protesters and police before and during the attack:</p>
</div>
<div class="videoblock">
<div class="title">This video gives the general flavour of the first part of the march</div>
<div class="content">
<iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/kQ4MpIbickU?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="_why_did_they_attack">Why Did They Attack?</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="paragraph">
<p>The attack on Broadway surprised me, and the apparently unprovoked aggression struck me as unusual even by DPD standards. I am not the most experienced street protester (refer to the list of things I hate in the first paragraph), but most unpermitted marches I’ve seen are controlled by police by blocking intersections in order to force the group to halt or turn until everyone gets tired and goes home (or, if the police had time to prepare, until most protesters are kettled and arrested).</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>But this attack occurred in the middle of a block, after we had been walking for only a few minutes, and when a good portion of the protesters were on the sidewalk. There was a rumor that the attack was precipitated by a protester jumping onto or knocking over a police motorcycle. And after the march the Denver Post <a href="http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_28016764/protesters-march-near-jail-downtown-denver">reported</a>, quoting a police spokesperson, that the trigger for the attack was when “An officer got knocked of[f] his motorcycle as he was basically patrolling.”</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>However, on May 1st <a href="https://twitter.com/JesseBenn">Jesse Benn</a> posted a clear <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81xLpbQSq-U">video</a> to YouTube showing the incident which incited the attack by police. In the video, a police officer on a motorcycle is seen riding very close to a bicyclist who was riding along with protesters. The cyclist can be seen defensively sticking his elbow out as he is crowded by the motorcycle, at which point the officer, who is trying to balance at a very slow speed, manages to drop his bike. In response that officer and the tactical team are seen to immediately rush the protesters.</p>
</div>
<div class="videoblock">
<div class="title">Slow motion video of police officer dropping his motorcycle and then attacking protesters</div>
<div class="content">
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/81xLpbQSq-U?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
</div>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>(<strong>May 14:</strong> the video is no longer public at this time. I’m guessing it was made private at the request of the legal defense of the protesters involved. I am hoping Benn will make the video public again once all criminal cases have been dropped or completed.)</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Benn was arrested after recording the incident in the video above. His wife, who was also documenting the action with her phone, was forced up against a bus with a police baton to her throat. Her phone was confiscated and is apparently lost — presumably destroyed by the DPD. The couple was interviewed as part of a CBS4 report a few days after the protest which is available online as <a href="http://denver.cbslocal.com/2015/05/04/pregnant-womans-phone-taken-during-police-protest-that-ends-in-violent-arrests/">“Pregnant Womanβs Phone Taken During Police Protest That Ends In Arrests”</a> (May 4, 2015).</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>On May 22nd, Michael Moore, the bicyclist in question, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10204159978547676&set=a.1247694040456.2032037.1472590064&type=1">posted to his Facebook page</a> that all three charges filed against him had been dismissed (assault on a peace officer, criminal mischief, and resisting arrest). According to <a href="http://notmytribe.com/2015/second-degree-felony-assault-charges-dropped-against-occupy-michael-moore-843259.html">a report at NotMyTribe.com</a>, Moore spent two days in jail after his arrest.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>So the aggression on the part of DPD seems to have been largely unprovoked. Perhaps the situation in Baltimore and the fact that there was another Denver-Baltimore solidarity demonstration the night before contributed to tensions which had the police officers on edge. It may be worth noting that Civic Center Park was also the scene of <a href="http://americancynic.net/log/2014/3/26/denvers_october_2011_uprisings/">Denver’s October 2011 Mini-Uprising</a>, which itself involved an officer being pushed off of his motorcycle by a protester.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>But whatever the reason for their actions at this particular demonstration, the fact that police so often confront political protests at all is a curious phenomenon. Surely everyone involved — protesters, police officers, police commanders, municipal administrators — knows that police presence and police aggression merely extend the duration of demonstrations, cause injuries, and amplify (many times over) the impact on traffic and business.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>During Wednesday’s march the DPD was able to use one officer’s embarrassing motorcycle slip as an excuse, but police will sometimes go to great lengths including undercover <em>provocateurs</em> to stir up trouble and elicit violent confrontations with protesters. While individual police officers may benefit from [overtime] pay, everybody else (including the municipal treasury, especially after any resulting civil suits are paid) may incur very steep costs. So what’s the reason such expensive crowd-control methods have evolved and persist?</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>In Chapter 8 of his book, <em>Our Enemies in Blue</em>, Kristian Williams provides a description of the various crowd control methods favored through the history of modern policing. During the middle of the 20th century, into the 1970s, police adhered to a strategy of “Escalated Force” (as opposed to previous strategies of “Maximum Force”), the implementation of which Williams describes in the following passage:</p>
</div>
<div class="quoteblock">
<blockquote>
Dispersal operations are not designed to uphold the law or to protect public safety; often the police action itself will represent the most serious violation of the law and constitute the greatest threat to the safety of the community. Instead of the law or public safety, the police are concerned with establishing control, maintaining power. (p. 184)
</blockquote>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Williams goes on to note that after the failure of police to control the 1999 Seattle protests there has been a return to the haphazard (but also increasingly disciplined/militarized) use of force to control protests:</p>
</div>
<div class="quoteblock">
<blockquote>
Riot gear, tear gas, mass arrests, and widespread violence have again become common features of demonstrations. While police violence has always been a possibility, it has lately come to resemble an open threat. Some of this is surely deliberate. The threat of violence is an effective tool for suppressing the attendance at a gathering, especially among portions of the population who are more routinely subject to police attack. It also serves to criminalize dissent. When members of the public see the police in riot gear, it is easy to assume that the crowd they are monitoring is dangerous, or even criminal. But some of the police reliance on force is the product of desperation. They simply don’t know what to do, and while they figure it out, the old-fashioned, straightforward head-knocking approach seems like a safe bet. (p. 193)
</blockquote>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>And indeed things make more sense if police (especially riot police) are thought of as producers of fear and discipline rather than as producers of peace. For at least a brief time during a political protest, the protesters themselves perform the difficult police task of intelligence gathering by making themselves visible as dissenters on the streets. This provides a good opportunity for police to dissuade further dissent by putting on an intimidating display of paramilitary force as a sort of counter-protest, recording the faces of those present as a convenient means of surveillance, as well as visiting physical pain and the promise of future punishment at the hands of the criminal justice system upon a sample of protesters.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Attacking protesters also provides police with an opportunity to target known activists and organizers in attempts to disrupt the activities of already-known subversive groups. For example, one of the arrested protesters on Wednesday was Dave Strano, a well-known anarchist organizer in Denver. Strano was charged with several misdemeanors including interference and resisting arrest. As described in <a href="https://denverabc.wordpress.com/2015/05/05/denver-community-organizer-arrested-call-out-for-jail-solidarity/">a weblog post by the Denver Anarchist Black Cross</a>,</p>
</div>
<div class="quoteblock">
<blockquote>
Dave was assaulted and received injuries by the police, including a gash to his head, a broken clavicle and a twisted knee. He was take to the hospital where he was left shackled to the bed covered in pepper spray, and they refused to provide him with crutches after 8 hours. His friends were able to to bring crutches to the jail so that he could walk when he was finally released.
</blockquote>
</div>
<div class="imageblock">
<div class="content">
<a class="image" href="https://www.facebook.com/occupydenver/photos/a.719504098159144.1073741881.105073176268909/719506074825613/"><img src="/log/2015/5/14/report_back_denver_march_in_support_of_the_baltimore_uprising_429/dave.jpg" alt="Dave Strano after being released from jail the first time" width="350"></a>
</div>
<div class="title">Dave Strano after his release</div>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Strano was bonded out the day after the solidarity march, but soon after he was released the district attorney’s office decided to charge him with an additional felony. Denver police then waited until he was driving with his children before pulling him over and arresting him a second time for the same protest, all apparently in an attempt to intimidate Strano and his family.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Of course, even powerful police forces are not completely autonomous. They must avoid too much public and political scrutiny if they wish to continue existing in their current forms — and existing is what police forces do best. Police, then, must balance meting out discipline at political protests with avoiding too many expenses and too much scrutiny-inducing controversy.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>So the police response to any given political protest is difficult to predict. Some times, such as during May Day this year, they will remain discreet in order to keep things calm. Other times they will start hitting and pepper spraying after a demonstration has marched only a few blocks.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>For the same reasons, police always urgently couch their violence in the rhetoric of ensuring “health and safety” — their survival depends on the public believing (or at least having the option to believe) they perform such a beneficial function rather than being seen as merely class enforcers. As an example during our Baltimore solidarity march in April, after the police responded in force and, unprovoked, went out of their way to inflict pain on whichever protesters they could get their hands on with pepper spray, beatings, and arrests, their PR department <a href="https://twitter.com/DenverPolice/status/593590527586512896">tweeted</a> that “Anti-Police Protestors [<em>sic</em>] are now marching on the 16th St Mall. Denver Police are protecting them and ensuring public safety.”</p>
</div>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">UPDATE: Anti-Police Protestors are now marching on the 16th St Mall. Denver Police are protecting them and ensuring public safety.</p>— Denver Police Dept. (@DenverPolice) <a href="https://twitter.com/DenverPolice/status/593590527586512896">April 30, 2015</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>The way police describe themselves as those who “protect and serve” while providing “health and safety” is part of the same language of counterinsurgency which has become standardized over the past 50 years or so of uprisings — most recently in Ferguson and Baltimore — which seeks to valorize both the police and “peaceful protesters” while blaming the impoverished “thugs” who stand up to state violence for their own condition and discrediting those who sympathize with the oppressed as “outside agitators” and “white anarchists”.</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>My account of a protest I attended in support of the April Baltimore uprising. We had only marched for a few blocks before Denver police began pepper spraying and arresting people. If you don't want to read all my words, you can skip to the 'Videos' section.tag:americancynic.net,2014-04-16:/log/2014/4/16/when_police_kill_the_homeless/When Police Kill the Homeless2014-04-16T14:03:07Z2015-09-28T05:23:46Z<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="_homo_sacer">Homo sacer</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="quoteblock">
<blockquote>
In Western politics, bare life has the peculiar privilege of being that whose exclusion founds the city of men.
</blockquote>
<div class="attribution">
— Giorgio Agamben<br>
<cite>Homo Sacer</cite>
</div>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p><em>Homer sacer</em> (“the accursed/sacred man”) is an obscure figure from ancient Roman law whom anyone can kill without committing a crime, but who may not be sacrificed: an outlaw. <em>Homo sacer</em> thus inhabits the threshold of the political realm by being included within the law only by being abandoned by both profane and divine law. In his extensive study of this archaic figure, the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben sees remnants of the original foundation of the Western political sphere in which political life (Aristotle’s <em>bios</em>) is constituted by excluding the ‘bare life’ (<em>zoe</em>) of the home.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>The other limit of the political sphere is the mirrored figure of <em>homo sacer</em>: the sovereign whose inclusion in the law consists of the exclusive ability to suspend the law by declaring a state of emergency (the “sovereign exception”). Insofar as subjects are exposed to legal homicide (such as extra-judicial executions) under the state of exception, sovereign power produces bare life. “<em>The sovereign sphere is the sphere in which it is permitted to kill without committing homicide and without celebrating a sacrifice, and sacred life—​that is, life that may be killed but not sacrificed—​is the life that has been captured in this sphere.</em>” (83)</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>In his book <em>Citizens Without Shelter</em>, Leonard Feldman presents a theory in which the homeless body is seen as an example of <em>homo sacer</em>. Through readings of U.S. case law on anti-homeless ordinances (those municipal codes which forbid begging, public feeding, sitting on sidewalks, sleeping outdoors, etc.) he shows that the courts have constructed homeless life as bare life. The homeless life, even when lived in the very center of the city, is included by the law only through its exclusion from political life.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Homeless life shares similar ambivalence as the sacred life of <em>homo sacer</em>: private and public, disgust and august, reviled and romanticized, criminal and victim, excluded and included. In recognizing homeless life as sacred life, Feldman has done well in following Agamben’s directive: “We must learn to recognize this structure of the ban in the political relations and public spaces in which we still live. <em>In the city, the banishment of sacred life is more internal than every internality and more external than every extraneousness.</em>” (111)</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Even anti-authoritarian or pacifist utopians might concede the benefit of a professional peacekeeping organization whose members, authorized in the use of violence, are dedicated to defending victims and seeking out and providing comfort to the hurting. But in the parlance of actually existing cities, `peace officer' is synonymous with `police officer,' who is often dedicated to enforcing the interests of the strong against the weak and to making cities into safe, clean spaces for <em>bios</em> — for capitalists and their worker-shoppers — by excluding bare life (and relegating the activities of bare life as much as possible to the sphere of the home).</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>If the production of homeless life within the cities of global capitalism can be seen as an instance of (or at least an approximation to) the production of bare life by sovereign power, then the sovereign counterpart to the sacred life of the homeless is the professional policeman (who shares the same, if mirrored, ambivalences as the homeless: respected and reviled, defender and criminal, public and private, human and animal, etc.).</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>In a quotable line from his <em>Homage to Catalonia</em>, George Orwell emphasized the role professional police play in maintaining property and class relations when he called the policeman the “natural enemy” of the worker. But a more diametric contrast would be between the policeman and the unemployed [non]worker: those unwilling or unable (or just too unlucky) to fit into capitalist society, including the ill and homeless.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>In downtowns throughout the world, the homeless beg outside of skyscrapers which are guarded by police and full of financial workers allocating and reinvesting immense concentrations of wealth. Visible on these homeless bodies, refugees with no camp (or whose camp is the streets in the business district of the city), living without homes in the hearts of cities which have banned homeless life, is not only the ancient foundation of political life itself but also the extreme contradictions which characterize life under global capitalism today.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>The interactions between the police and the homeless sometimes show the relation between homeless life and sacred life as more than mere approximation. When the police kill the homeless, they often do so with impunity. Below, I highlight four recent examples of police in the United States needlessly killing homeless men in plain sight of the public and video cameras. In all four cases it is undisputed that the police directly ended the life of the victim, and in three cases the state (local) jurisdiction determined that no crime was committed while carrying out the killing (in the other case, it was a jury which made that determination). Each of the cases reached national attention in part due to street protests following the announcements that officers would not be charged with criminal homicide.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>In some of the cases below, the Department of Justice (DoJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) are still conducting their own review of the incidents. Even if those investigations reveal violations of constitutional or federal law, however, it seems unlikely that the individual police officers who carried out the killings will be indicted for homicide by the federal government.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>In the footnotes I provide at least one link to video of each incident. Most of these videos, and other videos of each incident, are available from several locations on the Internet.</p>
</div>
<div class="sect2">
<h3 id="_marvin_booker">Marvin Booker</h3>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>On July 9, 2010, five Denver Sheriff’s deputies held, beat, and shocked Marvin Booker to death in the waiting area of Denver’s Van Cise-Simonet Detention Center. Booker, a 56-year-old homeless street preacher, was being held on charges of possession of drug paraphernalia. The incident was witnessed by tens of people and captured on several surveillance cameras.<sup class="footnote">[<a id="_footnoteref_1" class="footnote" href="#_footnotedef_1" title="View footnote.">1</a>]</sup></p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Just as sacred life is excluded from legal sanctions against homicide, “The coroner ruled that Booker’s death was caused by homicide, meaning he died at the hands of others. But the deputies were cleared by a criminal investigation which found they had not broken any laws.”<sup class="footnote">[<a id="_footnoteref_2" class="footnote" href="#_footnotedef_2" title="View footnote.">2</a>]</sup></p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>In 2012, the FBI announced that it would investigate the slaying, but it’s been two years and no report has been released yet.<sup class="footnote">[<a id="_footnoteref_3" class="footnote" href="#_footnotedef_3" title="View footnote.">3</a>]</sup> In November, 2014, a federal civil suit found the deputies to have used excessive force. The City of Denver paid a record $6 million to Booker’s family.<sup class="footnote">[<a id="_footnoteref_4" class="footnote" href="#_footnotedef_4" title="View footnote.">4</a>]</sup></p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect2">
<h3 id="_kelly_thomas">Kelly Thomas</h3>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>On July 5, 2011, officers in Fullerton, California, confronted Kelly Thomas, an unarmed homeless man whom they incorrectly suspected of breaking into cars. Thomas became impatient with the policemen’s questions and did not immediately comply with all of their demands. A digital recording device carried by the police captured one of the officers, Manny Ramos, calmly make the following statement to Thomas after putting on some white latex gloves, “You see my fists? They are getting ready to fuck you up.”<sup class="footnote">[<a id="_footnoteref_5" class="footnote" href="#_footnotedef_5" title="View footnote.">5</a>]</sup></p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Two officers then began striking Thomas with their batons and tackled him to the ground. Once on the ground, backup officers arrived who helped to restrain, shock, and beat him. Thomas began apologizing repeatedly, complained he couldn’t breathe, called for help, begged for mercy, screamed in pain, and cried out “Dad! Help me, Dad! They’re killing me, Dad” before losing consciousness.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>When paramedics arrived, they were directed to treat an officer’s minor injury while Thomas lay dying in his own blood on the street.<sup class="footnote">[<a id="_footnoteref_6" class="footnote" href="#_footnotedef_6" title="View footnote.">6</a>]</sup> In the eyes of the police officers at the scene, the bare, biological life of Kelly Thomas was excluded not only from the protections of law, but from also from medicine. Five days after the beating, Thomas was removed from life support and died.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>An unusual element of this case is that (after significant public protest) three of the six officers involved were actually charged with crimes: officer Ramos was charged with murder in the second degree, and the other two officers were charged with involuntary manslaughter. A jury found the first two officers (including Ramos) not guilty, and the charges against the third officer were dropped.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>The city of Fullerton agreed to pay Thomas' mother $1 million in order to avoid civil litigation.<sup class="footnote">[<a id="_footnoteref_7" class="footnote" href="#_footnotedef_7" title="View footnote.">7</a>]</sup></p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect2">
<h3 id="_milton_hall">Milton Hall</h3>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>On the morning of July 1, 2012, members of the Saginaw Police Department in Michigan responded in force to an aggressive man suspected of stealing a cup of coffee and being impolite to the owner of a convenience store.<sup class="footnote">[<a id="_footnoteref_8" class="footnote" href="#_footnotedef_8" title="View footnote.">8</a>]</sup> The police confronted Milton Hall, a 49-year-old black man, in a parking lot. Hall was armed with a three-inch folding pocket knife — hardly a deadly weapon. The confrontation was witnessed by passing motorists and captured on video by both police dashboard cameras and a witness’s cellphone camera.<sup class="footnote">[<a id="_footnoteref_9" class="footnote" href="#_footnotedef_9" title="View footnote.">9</a>]</sup></p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>The dashboard cam videos were shown during a news conference and are available on the MLive website.<sup class="footnote">[<a id="_footnoteref_10" class="footnote" href="#_footnotedef_10" title="View footnote.">10</a>]</sup> The videos show that eight police officers (including a K9 unit) formed a semi-circle around Hall. Six of the officers had firearms, both pistols and rifles, trained on Hall who was squatting in a defensive position with the small knife in his hand. At one point, the K9 handler backed up, apparently deciding not to sic the dog on Hall. In response, Hall seemed to relax, took a few steps backward and then two steps to his right. But when Hall appeared to take a step back toward the police line, all six officers opened fire, discharging 46 rounds in a few seconds and killing Hall.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>A video obtained and broadcast by CNN was captured by a witness across the street and shows the incident from a different angle and with audio.<sup class="footnote" id="_footnote_cnn2">[<a id="_footnoteref_11" class="footnote" href="#_footnotedef_11" title="View footnote.">11</a>]</sup></p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>An investigation by the Saginaw County Prosecutor’s Office and the Michigan State Police into whether the shooting was justified concluded that “Criminal charges aren’t warranted.”<sup class="footnote">[<a id="_footnoteref_12" class="footnote" href="#_footnotedef_12" title="View footnote.">12</a>]</sup> The Department of Justice and the FBI then conducted their own investigation and likewise determined that “this tragic event does not present sufficient evidence of willful misconduct to lead to a federal criminal prosecution of the police officers involved.”<sup class="footnote">[<a id="_footnoteref_13" class="footnote" href="#_footnotedef_13" title="View footnote.">13</a>]</sup></p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Milton Hall’s mother, Jewel Hall, described the shooting as “a firing squad dressed in police uniforms.”<sup class="footnoteref">[<a class="footnote" href="#_footnotedef_11" title="View footnote.">11</a>]</sup> It is worth noting, however, that while the police presented themselves to Milton Hall as executioners and ended his life with an extreme degree of overkill reminiscent of a firing squad, the killing was not carried out according to any legal ritual or due process. Like <em>homo sacer</em>, Milton Hall’s homeless life was exposed to death by being excluded from both legal prohibitions against homicide and from sacrificial rites.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect2">
<h3 id="_james_m_boyd">James M. Boyd</h3>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Jewel Hall is a retired public school teacher and community organizer in the Albuquerque, NM, area. In a tragic coincidence, at the time her son was killed by police in Saginaw, she was working to get the federal government to investigate an alarming pattern of shootings and use of force by the Albuquerque Police Department. In 2011 she wrote an opinion piece for the <em>Albuquerque Journal</em> urging “a full investigation by the Department of Justice.”⁠<sup class="footnote">[<a id="_footnoteref_14" class="footnote" href="#_footnotedef_14" title="View footnote.">14</a>]</sup> A year and a half after her son’s death, a similar shooting unfolded on the outskirts of her hometown in which police with a K9 unit shot an uncooperative homeless man to death.<sup class="footnote">[<a id="_footnoteref_15" class="footnote" href="#_footnotedef_15" title="View footnote.">15</a>]</sup></p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>On March 26, 2014, members of the Albuquerque Police Department (APD) approached and attempted to frisk 38-year-old James M. Boyd based on the suspicion that he was camping without a permit in the Sandia foothills just east of town — he was suspected, in other words, of getting his <em>zoe</em> all mixed up with the city’s <em>bios</em>. Boyd, who was homeless with no private place where he could legally sleep, refused to cooperate. The situation escalated into an hours-long standoff including a tactical team and a State Police liaison. Home video aired by KRQE News 12 shows six regular uniformed officers holding Boyd at gunpoint even before the APD Crisis Intervention Team arrived.<sup class="footnote" id="_footnote_krqe1">[<a id="_footnoteref_16" class="footnote" href="#_footnotedef_16" title="View footnote.">16</a>]</sup></p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Boyd remained defiant. He armed himself with two small knives, and at one point he warned the officers that “I would have the right to kill you right now because you’re trying to take me over. Don’t get stupid with me.”⁠<sup class="footnoteref">[<a class="footnote" href="#_footnotedef_16" title="View footnote.">16</a>]</sup></p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>The APD has released video footage from the helmet camera of one of the officers on scene which clearly shows how the standoff came to an end.<sup class="footnote">[<a id="_footnoteref_17" class="footnote" href="#_footnotedef_17" title="View footnote.">17</a>]</sup> Boyd, who had apparently had enough of the negotiations, began gathering up his belongings to leave the scene. One of the officers called out, “Do it!” and a flashbang grenade detonated a few feet in front of Boyd. Simultaneously a dog was released which appeared to bite Boyd’s hand, and both the dog’s handler and an officer with a rifle moved toward him. Boyd dropped his bags and put his arms up to his side (while still holding at least one knife.)</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Boyd then turned to walk away, which is when two officers with rifles fired six live rounds at his back, striking him at least once. Boyd fell forward to the ground. Mortally wounded and lying prone, he was apparently unable to move his hands. The officers demanded that he drop the knife that was still clutched in his left hand. Boyd replied, “Please don’t hurt me. I can’t move.” Instead of moving to render aid, officers repeatedly ordered him to drop the knife while firing three beanbag rounds into his back from a shotgun. After some deliberation, officers then released the dog a second time. Boyd was unresponsive as the dog chewed at and pulled on his leg. Officers finally moved in, stepped on one of his hands, removed the knife from his other hand, and handcuffed him.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Boyd died from his gunshot wounds in the hospital the next day. At a news conference several days later, APD Chief Gordon Eden announced that the officer-involved shooting was justified.<sup class="footnoteref">[<a class="footnote" href="#_footnotedef_16" title="View footnote.">16</a>]</sup></p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>In January of 2015, in an exceptional move which brings a challenge to the sovereignty of the police, Bernalillo County District Attorney has brought murder charges against the two officers who shot Boyd.<sup class="footnote">[<a id="_footnoteref_18" class="footnote" href="#_footnotedef_18" title="View footnote.">18</a>]</sup> The charges came in the wake of almost six months of large protests across the nation after district attorneys in several jurisdictions failed to indict police officers who shot and killed unarmed black men. Whether the charges will result in a criminal trial depends on the outcome of the preliminary hearing which will be held in a few months — at which point the charges may be downgraded or dropped.</p>
</div>
<div class="sect3">
<h4 id="_department_of_justice_investigation">Department of Justice Investigation</h4>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>At the time of Boyd’s shooting, the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice was already investigating the APD for its large number of shootings (37 since 2010) and apparent pattern of other uses of excessive force during arrests. After the video of Boyd’s death was released, and after hundreds of riotous protesters demanded reform to the police department,<sup class="footnote">[<a id="_footnoteref_19" class="footnote" href="#_footnotedef_19" title="View footnote.">19</a>]</sup> Albuquerque Mayor Richard Berry wrote a letter to the DoJ requesting that they expedite their investigation.<sup class="footnote">[<a id="_footnoteref_20" class="footnote" href="#_footnotedef_20" title="View footnote.">20</a>]</sup> The DoJ complied, and on April 10, 2014, about 17 months after the investigation began, it released its findings in the form of a 46-page letter to the mayor.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>The findings did not address the Boyd shooting because it is still under criminal investigation. It did, however, refer to Chief Eden’s comments at the press conference as evidence “that more work is needed to change the culture of APD.” (4)</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>According to the findings letter, the DoJ found “that the department engages in a pattern or practice of using excessive force during the course of arrests and other detentions in violation of the Fourth Amendment” stemming “from systemic deficiencies in oversight, training, and policy.” The report also noted that “A significant amount of the force we reviewed was used against persons with mental illness and in crisis.” (9-10)</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Those and similar findings from the DoJ investigation reveal how members of the Albuquerque Police Department routinely constitute themselves as little sovereigns acting in <em>de facto</em> states of exception by suspending the constitutional rights of their victims, especially those subjects with mental illness and in crisis who misfit within and are excluded from the political life of the city.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>As a final illustration of how both police (who are excepted from the normal prohibitions of the law) and homeless (who are excepted from the normal protections of the law) share in what Agamben calls the “relation of exception,” here is an account from the DoJ findings letter of an incident in which police confronted an angry 75-year-old homeless man named “Ben” who depends upon a cane to walk:</p>
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<div class="quoteblock">
<blockquote>
The incident happened in September 2012 after officers responded to a bus station because Ben refused to leave. When officers arrived, they offered to take Ben to a homeless shelter and also called a Crisis Intervention Team officer to assist. Ben sat on a bench and told officers that he was not going to leave peacefully and that he was angry with the bus company for refusing to let him board. After officers tried to convince him to leave for about an hour, Ben threatened bus company employees and reached for his cane. Officers ordered him to put his cane down, but he refused. As Ben was trying to stand up using his cane (presumably for support), the CIT-trained officer shot Ben in the abdomen with his Taser. He did so even though the threat from Ben was minimal: Ben had trouble walking on his own, a sergeant and three officers were standing around him, and there were no indications that bystanders were near Ben. The sergeant on the scene found the Taser use reasonable, as did other supervisors. One supervisor praised the officers' conduct as “<strong>exceptional</strong>.” (18, emphasis added)
</blockquote>
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</div>
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</div>
<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="_references_and_notes">References and Notes</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Agamben, Giorgio. <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/37457953"><em>Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life</em></a>. Translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen. Stanford University Press, 1998.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>Feldman, Leonard C. <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/53476873"><em>Citizens without Shelter: Homelessness, Democracy, and Political Exclusion</em></a>. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>Orwell, George. <a href="http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/o/orwell/george/o79h/"><em>Homage to Catalonia</em></a>. Adelaide: The University of Adelaide Library, [1938] 2008. <a href="http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/o/orwell/george/o79h/" class="bare">http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/o/orwell/george/o79h/</a></p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division. <a href="http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2014/April/14-crt-364.html">“Re: Albuquerque Police Department.”</a> Findings Letter. April 10, 2014. <a href="http://www.justice.gov/crt/about/spl/documents/apd_findings_4-10-14.pdf" class="bare">http://www.justice.gov/crt/about/spl/documents/apd_findings_4-10-14.pdf</a></p>
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</div>
</div>
<div id="footnotes">
<hr>
<div class="footnote" id="_footnotedef_1">
<a href="#_footnoteref_1">1</a>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vG7Mjt_j8Cs">YouTube video ID: vG7Mjt_j8Cs</a>. Footage from the surveillance cameras is available elsewhere on the web, <a href="http://www.denverpost.com/ci_18029572">including the <em>Denver Post</em> website</a>
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<div class="footnote" id="_footnotedef_2">
<a href="#_footnoteref_2">2</a>. Tom McGhee, <a href="http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_18025446">“No discipline for deputies in Marvin Booker’s death at Denver jail,”</a> The <em>Denver Post</em>, May 9, 2011.
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<div class="footnote" id="_footnotedef_3">
<a href="#_footnoteref_3">3</a>. Tom McGhee, <a href="http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_22637726/fbi-looking-into-bookers-death-at-denver-jail">“FBI looking into Marvin Booker’s 2010 death at Denver jail,”</a> The <em>Denver Post</em>, February 21, 2013.
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<div class="footnote" id="_footnotedef_4">
<a href="#_footnoteref_4">4</a>. Noelle Phillips, <a href="http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_27019931/denver-pay-6-million-end-appeals-marvin-booker?source=infinite">“Denver to pay $6 million in Marvin Booker jail death settlement,”</a> The <em>Denver Post</em>, November 26, 2014.
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<div class="footnote" id="_footnotedef_5">
<a href="#_footnoteref_5">5</a>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KU0Imk2Bstg">YouTube video ID: KU0Imk2Bstg</a>. Witnesses with a cellphone also captured <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ljYNgLnpxM">video</a>
</div>
<div class="footnote" id="_footnotedef_6">
<a href="#_footnoteref_6">6</a>. Eileen Frere, <a href="http://abc7.com/archive/9349329/">“Kelly Thomas Trial: Forensic Expert, Paramedic Testify,”</a> ABC7 Eyewitness News, December 4, 2013.
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<div class="footnote" id="_footnotedef_7">
<a href="#_footnoteref_7">7</a>. <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2012/may/16/local/la-me-0516-kelly-thomas-settlement-20120516">Richard Winton, “Homeless man’s mother settles with Fullerton over his death,”</a> <em>Los Angeles Times</em>, May 16, 2012.
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<div class="footnote" id="_footnotedef_8">
<a href="#_footnoteref_8">8</a>. David Ariosto, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/12/justice/michigan-police-shooting-saginaw/index.html?hpt=hp_t3">“Prosecutors: Police won’t face criminal charges in Michigan death,”</a> CNN, September 13, 2012.
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<div class="footnote" id="_footnotedef_9">
<a href="#_footnoteref_9">9</a>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YC3OAMi9kjY">YouTube video ID: YC3OAMi9kjY</a>. The cellphone video obtained by CNN is also available on <a href="http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=8f5_1346412595&comments=1">LiveLeak: “Saginaw Police Shoots Homeless Man (Milton Hall) 46 time in 5 Seconds.”</a>
</div>
<div class="footnote" id="_footnotedef_10">
<a href="#_footnoteref_10">10</a>. Bob Johnson, <a href="http://www.mlive.com/news/saginaw/index.ssf/2012/09/video_police_dashboard_footage.html">“Video: Police cruiser footage shows events that led to Milton Hall police shooting,”</a> MLive, September 13, 2012.
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<div class="footnote" id="_footnotedef_11">
<a href="#_footnoteref_11">11</a>. Jason Carroll and Sheila Steffen, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/16/us/michigan-police-shooting/">“Video captures Michigan man’s shooting by police,”</a> CNN, August 17, 2012.
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<div class="footnote" id="_footnotedef_12">
<a href="#_footnoteref_12">12</a>. Bob Johnson, <a href="http://www.mlive.com/news/saginaw/index.ssf/2014/02/no_federal_charges_for_officer.html">“Saginaw officers who shot and killed Milton Hall won’t face federal charges,”</a> MLive, February 25, 2014.
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<div class="footnote" id="_footnotedef_13">
<a href="#_footnoteref_13">13</a>. Department of Justice, <a href="http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2014/February/14-crt-203.html">“Justice Department Announces Results of Investigation into the Death of Milton Hall,”</a> February 25, 2014.
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<div class="footnote" id="_footnotedef_14">
<a href="#_footnoteref_14">14</a>. Jewel Hall, <a href="https://www.abqjournal.com/71117/apd-protects-a-culture-out-of-control.html">“APD Protects a Culture Out of Control,”</a> <em>Albuquerque Journal</em>, November 23, 2011.
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<div class="footnote" id="_footnotedef_15">
<a href="#_footnoteref_15">15</a>. I’m not the only one to notice the connections between the Hall and Boyd shootings: <a href="https://www.abqjournal.com/380620/police-shootings-are-eerily-similar.html">“Michigan police shooting similar to ABQ case,”</a> <em>Albuquerque Journal</em>, April 8, 2014.
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<div class="footnote" id="_footnotedef_16">
<a href="#_footnoteref_16">16</a>. Chris McKee, <a href="https://www.krqe.com/news/apd-officer-involved-shooting-was-justified/">“APD: Officer involved shooting was justified,”</a> KRQE News 13, March 21, 2014.
</div>
<div class="footnote" id="_footnotedef_17">
<a href="#_footnoteref_17">17</a>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgRkkLyZMKM">YouTube video ID: dgRkkLyZMKM</a>. A slightly edited version of the helmet camera video (as released by KRQE) is available on <a href="http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=8aa_1395460451">LiveLeak: “Police helmet camera captures fatal shooting of James Boyd armed with a knife as he’s turning away”</a> (though the YouTube video has better audio)
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<div class="footnote" id="_footnotedef_18">
<a href="#_footnoteref_18">18</a>. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtEBj_mhOCc">“Officers in Boyd shooting charged with murder,”</a> KRQE News 13, January 12, 2015
</div>
<div class="footnote" id="_footnotedef_19">
<a href="#_footnoteref_19">19</a>. Elizabeth Barber, <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/USA-Update/2014/0331/Albuquerque-protest-over-police-shootings-turns-to-mayhem-video">“Albuquerque protest over police shootings turns to `mayhem' (+video),”</a> The <em>Christian Science Monitor</em>, March 31, 2014.
</div>
<div class="footnote" id="_footnotedef_20">
<a href="#_footnoteref_20">20</a>. Anna Velasquez, <a href="http://www.koat.com/news/mayor-asks-doj-to-fasttrack-review-of-apd/25291154">“Mayor asks DOJ to fast-track review of APD,”</a> KOAT Albuquerque, April 2, 2014.
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</div>When police kill the homeless, they often do so with impunity. I've tagged this entry as a 'feature' due to the magnitude of its length more so than of its quality, but it does probe an important issue at the nexus of my libertarian and anti-capitalist motivations. It is my first (and rough) attempt at applying some ideas from the first volume of Agamben's Homer Sacer to the criminalization of homelessness (following Feldman's lead).