I really did mean to go to sleep early tonight. But I didn't, and at around 1am I started seeing hints of what's going down in Anaheim via my Twitter stream. I'd actually seen -- and even retweeted -- some very specific and worrisome info on Anaheim earlier today, but it was while I was working and trying to stay as focused as possible. Yes, I'll admit, I sometimes retweet even big deal things without getting to peruse them thoroughly. Probably not the best idea.
Anyhow, this tweet from Liz Henry tipped me off again:
[blackbirdpie id="227262303001800705"]
I started doing some more research and was shocked by what I saw. First, the video I'd actually retweeted about earlier but never fully processed or watched (which I'm somewhat ashamed and appalled to admit):
My reaction on Facebook: "What the HELL. This is on the regular old channel 9 news. Earlier in the day in Anaheim the police shot a guy who was one of three men who ran away from the police. Not drew on the police, not NOTHING, just ran. Then the community dared to meet about it, dared to demand ACCOUNTABILITY from the cops, and they opened FIRE with rubber bullets. They let a K-9 loose and it went at a woman CARRYING HER BABY and then brought down a man, a cop trying and failing to control this dog. Towards the end there is a heartrending, enraging image of children carrying a seemingly unconscious child -- un nene, carajo, un chiquito -- away from the mayhem. Everyone there under fire is brown, so many Latinos, apparently no one armed at all. "Dozens of people had their cell phones and at least four different people told me that police officers offered to buy their videos from them with no explanation," the reporter on the scene says. This is terrifying and real."
Next: this article from the Washington Post that describes the event that sparked the community outrage: the Anaheim police's killing of an unarmed man who had fallen to his knees as tried to run away from the police. They shot him in the back of his head.
The 16-year-old niece of the man who was shot and killed, Manuel Diaz, said her uncle likely ran away from officers when they approached him because of his past experience with law enforcement.
“He (doesn’t) like cops. He never liked them because all they do is harass and arrest anyone,” Gonzalez told the newspaper after lighting a candle for her uncle. She cursed at officers who were nearby and a police helicopter that hovered overhead.
As I posted on Facebook: "Again, this is what the plain old mainstream media is reporting about what's going down in Anaheim. Usually I assume that the mainstream media version is the watered down version. In this case, that's just frightening."
After that, a friend provided this article published Sunday by the Orange County Register. It's very long and detailed; included is some background on the long history of police violence and misconduct in Anaheim:
Saturday's shooting was the latest by the Anaheim Police Department, which is under scrutiny for several recent officer-involved shootings.
For nearly two years, families of others who have been fatally shot by Anaheim police in recent years have been holding protests at Anaheim police headquarters each Sunday.
Those protests led city officials last month to order an independent investigation of "major police incidents," several of which resulted in suspects being killed."
Also notable from this article: the Anaheim Police seem to love the label "documented gang member," as demonstrated by how often they threw it around, as if to justify their acts of extreme violence both during the shootings and the severe crackdown on unarmed community members. I've never seen the word "documented" being used to refer to Latin@s so much outside of the context of immigration. To what agency does one go to get their gang papers, one might wonder.
UPDATED: 9:36am ET, 7/23/12
A few things to add since I signed off last night:
Gustavo Arellano of the OC Weekly posted a video of the immediate aftermath of the shooting of Manuel Diaz. The video is graphic. It shows Diaz laying on the ground, still moving, with no one attending to him; the police on the scene are milling around, then focus on pushing the crowd back away from the scene. You hear people telling the cops that Diaz is still moving, asking why no one is helping him. At around minute 3:13 of the video the cops pull him over roughly, his face a mask of blood. The video cuts off immediately thereafter.
Earlier this morning, Arellano sent out this tweet:
[blackbirdpie url="https://twitter.com/GustavoArellano/status/227335717553045504"]
Yes, this is a report of another Latino being shot and killed by the Anaheim police department just last night.
While reading through all of this, I couldn't help but think of another recent incident of police officers violently and indiscriminately cracking down on unarmed people of color. As I shared on Facebook: "Take what's happening in Anaheim, then connect it to this account of NYPD cops' violent response to what amounts to standard swimming pool horseplay at McCarren Pool in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Pepper spray was involved; a kid got maced." Chavisa Woods' accountaccount begins:
It was one of the hottest days of the year. I went to McCarren Pool at six oclock. I’d always imagined what it would look like as an actual pool. This was beyond my expectation. It looked like a paradise (although there was a heavily imbedded police presence). I didn't know I was about to witness people wearing nothing but swimming suites getting brutally arrested, slammed on their stomachs, shoved aside and to the cement, children and adults being haplessly maced and rushed by very large, enraged police officers, all because some people, most of whom were kids, decided to do a few flips into the water.
Aside from this account, which I only saw thanks to a few friends who shared it online, there has been very little coverage of this incident. What little is out there leaves out much if not all of the detail and analysis that Woods' account contains. I did find and appreciate "The Politics of McCarren Park Pool," a lengthy and detailed history of the pool, the surrounding neighborhoods, and the race and class tensions therein. One quote shocked me:
One Parks worker even floated the idea of charging for pool use. “There will be fights and problems throughout the summer—because it’s free,” he said. “They need to charge a little money to keep the riff raff out.”
Because being broke, even in this decrepit economy, automatically qualifies you as "riff raff" who doesn't deserve to access the public city pool on a boiling hot summer day.
(Autobiographical aside: my mom spent some of her early years in the states living in south Williamsburg. I often wonder how shocked she'd be by what the neighborhood has become.)
Now it's 2:39am ET, and I've really got to get to sleep. I'll sum up by saying that as shocking and upsetting and frightening as all of this police violence leveled at unarmed people of color is, this is nothing new. This heightened policing, automatic suspicion, and violence is an everyday fact of life for people of color, especially low-income and poor people of color, in this country. That's the sad, sick truth. But that's why we've got to keep working so that solidarity, struggle, community and justice are also our everyday facts of life, as hard as we need to work to get it.
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