As a white person who lives in the neighborhood where George Floyd was murdered I just want to say quickly that I’ve been very concerned by the narrative I’ve seen many white people spreading online about the protests and riots being sparked by white outsiders, whether anarchists, right-wing provocateurs, or cops. Please stop this immediately.
I gather that people spreading this often mean well, but this is in fact extremely dangerous. It’s racist and patronizing, resting on the assumption that black people can’t decide for themselves how to resist police violence. Perhaps even more concerning, this narrative actively endangers the black people who have from the start pushed this uprising forward. The more people at home who believe that white outside agitators are driving the ‘violence’, the more freedom the police have to attack everyone, especially black youth.
From Ferguson all the way back to the Civil Rights era the label ‘outside agitator’ has justified brutality against black people who stand up against white supremacy. I swear to you that whatever videos or photos you’ve seen of white people doing riotous shit represent a tiny tiny portion of the explosion of mourning, defiance, and rage that has consumed this city over the past days. This rage has been given voice by people of many races, but this has overwhelmingly been led by black and brown youth. I say all of this based on personal experience at the precinct every night of this rebellion as well as from watching many hours of the live-streams.
The only other thing I should acknowledge is that I have seen some POC spreading these narratives online as well. I don’t feel it’s my place to engage in those conversations other than to say that my experience has not reflected this, and so that is why I have addressed the above specifically to other white people.
Brace yourselves, everybody: The fascists of 4chan are planning an anti-LGBT social media blitz starting June 1 for Pride Month
Expect to see a lot of alt-right bots and sockpuppets doing everything possible to increase tension, division, and bad feelings in the LGBTQ+ community.
Basic guidelines:
Focus on your own goals and experiences for Pride Month—instead of just responding to the latest outrage, focus on connecting to people you care about, doing things you enjoy, promoting good causes, sharing media you like, or fundraising for organizations doing good work.
If you see someone promoting hateful or divisive opinions, don’t engage with them and boost their metrics—block and report them
Remember that a lot of troll operations aim to make us feel hopeless and divided. Trolls take our community’s existing vulnerabilities and divisions, and weaponize them. These trolls will be leaning hard on filling social media with new stories about homophobic and transphobic violence and suicide statistics, so we’re upset, in a defensive mentality, and feeling isolated and alone. We have to work together to promote solidarity and positivity.
Double-check news stories before spreading them. Be extra suspicious before you signalboost something. Screencaps can be fabricated; so can videos and images. Google for other sources, check reputable news sites, or look it up on Snopes
Don’t assume people are who they say they are. Trolls will especially assume identities they can use to promote division. They’ll pose as LGBT people so they can inflame infighting or attack LGBT people with fewer consequences, or to frame different groups for misdeeds.
Take care of yourself and don’t let them get you down. Pride 2020 has a huge damper because we can’t do a lot of the things that help us renew and recharge. Being in quarantine means we miss out on festivals, dancing, parades, performances, workshops, and important community-building events. We were already going to have to work to make it a decent Pride at a distance. 4chan wants to make things even worse, so that so we end up feeling paranoid, hypervigilant, abandoned, and at each other’s throats. Do your best to promote your own mental health and everybody else’s, and unplug from social media when you need to.
Question stories like “trans person did something predatory” / “asexual person did something entitled” / “kinky person acted shitty in queer spaces” that confirm existing biases within LGBT communities.
Do not be too eager to ‘cancel’ a queer person because someone dug up 10 year old photoshopped screenshots of them interacting with a ‘bad’ person.
Right now there seems to be a new wave of posts and inbox anons accusing transgender Tumblr users of being rapists / predators / pedophiles. Most of these posts seem to be originating from TERFs. This could be a coincidence or TERFs could be deliberately fueling the flames. It wouldn’t be the first time TERFs worked with fascists…
If you receive an anon message or see a post accusing a trans person of such a thing, question that stuff. Do not silently block the accused, that’s how the social isolation part of slander campaigns works. Don’t be part of that.
If you want answers: First, check the origin. OP is a TERF or most people reblogging are TERFs? Then the claim is pretty much definitely false. Second, consider if there is a victim? False accusations are mostly vague and do not mention an actual person being hurt. That’s deliberate. They don’t want you to be able to fact check. Third, check whether it has been addressed. Search:
rape + site:name-of-accuse-tumblr-user.tumblr.com
Duckduckgo does not support this search feature well so this is a rare occasion where I recommend google.
If you have seriously put work into doing these three things and you still want answers, be very very careful about how you approach the accused trans person. It is very likely that they are receiving death threats and other attacks against their person. They are probably going through a difficult, potentially traumatizing experience. So do not come into that trans person’s inbox acting all entitled to hear their defense. That makes you part of the violence. Instead, acknowledge that they are probably the target of a very shitty slander campaign and gently ask if they have addressed the accusations anywhere so that you can better understand them.
Trans people on Tumblr are used to this shit by now. It mostly isn’t the TERFs messages that hurt us, it’s how the rest of you act when it happens. Be better.
right wing journalists are trying to spin this story about a man getting killed by protestors for trying to protect his shop valorantly but it turns out it was just some roman larper dipshit who tried to kill black people to defend the honor of his favorite sports bar, and he’s not even dead.
Dalton “WarHippie” Dixon, of McKinney, Texas is an internet nazi. Yesterday he loaded his red Mini Cooper with guns & military cosplay and headed to downtown Dallas, but not before posting hints that he was planning to commit a mass shooting. His last Telegram post before heading downtown? “ITS NOT JUST IN MINNEAPOLIS! SOCIETY IS FALLING! THIS IS IT BOYS! RACE WAR NOW!”
Pro Facists designating Anti Facists as a terrorist organization.
Meanwhile neo Nazis, the alt right, the proud boys and every other organization that’s walking lock and step with white supremacy are encouraged while their death toll continues to rise.
On this day, 31 May 1921, one of the worst single incidents of racial violence in US history took place: the Tulsa massacre, which left 300 dead after a false allegation of a Black man attacking a white woman.
The Tulsa Tribune newspaper included a front-page article titled “Nab Negro for Attacking Girl in Elevator” and a back-page editorial titled “To Lynch Negro Tonight.”
Local whites were inflamed, and they attacked the Black community of Greenwood, at the time the most prosperous African American community in the US, commonly known as the Black Wall Street. Mobs were backed up by private planes that reportedly dropped incendiary devices and fired on Black residents. Hundreds were killed and the entire thirty-five-block area was razed to the ground, leaving up to ten thousand people homeless. At the time of writing (early 2020) there are still a few survivors awaiting justice and reparations. https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1439535499564929/?type=3
One of the most important things I learned in my Language and the Law class is that law enforcement will intentionally misinterpret every type of statement asking for a lawyer as not asking for a lawyer. Even directly saying it like this “I will not speak to you without a lawyer” can be taken as a simple statement of fact rather than a request for a lawyer. You literally have to state “I am now invoking my right to a lawyer” and every time they try to proceed with an interrogation you have to answer every question with “I am invoking my right to have a lawyer present”. You can’t just tell them you won’t talk without a lawyer or that you want a lawyer. You have to state that you are invoking your rights. Otherwise they could just say “well they just said they wouldn’t speak without a lawyer present. That’s not invoking their rights to a lawyer. It’s just stating a fact.” even just stating your right to a lawyer doesn’t count!
PLEASE share this addition. I am a lawyer who works in criminal defense, and this is one of the most avoidable things that people consistently get wrong about the Miranda rights.
Here are some more “ambiguous” phrases which courts have found DO NOT invoke your right to a lawyer:
“Maybe I should speak to my lawyer first.”
“I might like a lawyer.”
“I think I should have a lawyer present for this.”
“Could I speak to my lawyer first?”
“How long until my lawyer gets here?”
And perhaps most egregiously – “Get me a lawyer, dawg – ‘cause this is not what’s up.”
Here are the magic phrases which you need to know if you want to invoke your Miranda rights:
1) “Am I free to leave?”
It’s worth asking this even if the answer is obvious. Even if the officer does not let you leave, by forcing them to admit that you are not free to leave, you are creating a record which your attorney can use to prove that you were in custody. Miranda rights only apply if the interrogation is custodial, meaning that police officers will frequently claim that their suspects were “not in custody” to get around their Miranda rights.
2) “I am invoking my right to remain silent.”
Simply staying silent will not invoke your right to remain silent. As absurd as this is, you must explicitly say that you are invoking your right to remain silent in order to invoke that right.
3) “I am invoking my right to an attorney.”
As stated above, you must be not only clear and unambiguous, but clear and legally unambiguous. Don’t get cute. Don’t get sassy. And on the flip side, don’t get intimidated and use verbal ticks to minimize your request. Say the line with those words exactly – say it clearly, and say it once, and then say nothing else.
Because even after you’ve done all this, the police can still try to get you to talk. They’re not supposed to interrogate you, but they’re allowed to make casual conversation, and if that conversation just happens to circle back around to the thing they wanted to question you about, well, that’s really your fault for talking after you said you wouldn’t, isn’t it? Can’t possibly fault the poor officers when you initiated – if you really wanted to have your rights respected, you wouldn’t have talked to them in the first place.
The police know this, and they will mercilessly exploit this loophole. So, once you’ve successfully invoked your Miranda rights, any and all conversation you have with police officers will put those rights back into jeopardy.
Putting it all together:
Ask: “Am I free to leave?”
If they say no, say: “I am invoking my right to remain silent and I am invoking my right to an attorney.”
And then shut up and do not say a single thing to them for any reason whatsoever until you have actually spoken to an attorney. Yes, even if it takes hours. Yes, even if they start talking to you about something else.
Finally, a very important disclaimer:
I may be a lawyer, but I’m not your lawyer, and I cannot guarantee that what I’ve just laid out here will always work for every situation. We didn’t get to this bizarre and absurd place overnight – we built this ridiculous system piecemeal, by deciding on a case-by-case basis that certain phrases were “too ambiguous” or certain types of questioning weren’t actually questioning at all. The law is still in flux, and is still fundamentally out to get you, and willing to bend plain meaning beyond all recognition to do it. Even if you invoke your rights perfectly, exactly as I have specified above, there’s a chance that your invocation of rights will be disqualified on some new technicality that no one’s even thought of yet – and that’s precisely the problem.
Watch this video: “Don’t Talk To The Police”
And do this even if you have actually done something wrong and want to take responsibility for it. Rights aren’t just for wrongly accused people and you cannot count on the police to do the right thing because you’re trying to do the right thing. You may end up charged with far more or worse than what you actually did. Even if, in the best possible scenario, you deal only with honest officers who bear you no malice, they could make honest mistakes that put you in a worse position, and you may not notice because you’re not familiar with all the rules they’re supposed to follow. Your lawyer should know all about that and can speak up for you if procedures are not followed properly. Good luck!
This blog is mostly so I can vent my feelings and share my interests. Other than that, I am nothing special.
If you don't like Left Wing political thought and philosophy, all things related to horror, the supernatural, the grotesque, guns or the strange, then get the fuck out. I just warned you.
