I want people to start talking about this. I want them to know that this young woman of color is facing up to 70 years in prison based on contradictory charges. I want you all to be outraged over the fact that there were no abortion drugs found in her system but they are accusing her of feticide. I want your outrage over the fact that a method from the 17th century that is no longer used for being unreliable was used to determine if her fetus lived. I want your outrage over the fact that the court is treating that method as valid proof. I want your outrage over the racial profiling and targeting of the victim, and I am calling Purvi a victim because that is what she is. They are trying to make an example of her and that should not stand. I want more people talking about her case and I want your outrage over the fact that only 8 people will be attending the “protest” for her. Tomorrow is her sentencing. I do not want her to be alone.
Also people should think about the fact that in a country where abortion is supposed to be legal, states are intensifying abortion restrictions and then prosecuting marginalized women for allegedly trying to abort fetuses themselves (or even doing anything to endanger fetuses). They are trying to charge these women as murderers for self-aborting when the laws create obstacles for them in their state.
Purvi Patel’s case is also indicative of racialized misogyny: a policeman interrogated Patel about the race and ethnicity of the father of her child, and accused her of being impregnated on a one night stand. Patel is also not the first woman of color targeted by these laws. A Chinese woman named Bei Bei Shuai was also charged with similar crimes after she survived attempting to poison herself and had a miscarriage. Those charges were dropped, but the fact Purvi Patel is actually facing sentencing for jail time demonstrates a disturbing trend.
racism
Kam Brock says she is definitely not crazy, but eight days in the Harlem Hospital psych ward being treated for delusions and bipolar disorder make it look otherwise.
According to the New York Daily News, the whole ordeal started when Brock’s car was seized by the NYPD, who suspected she was high on weed and confiscated her car even though they found no marijuana. When Brock returned to claim her car, she was understandably upset, but not upset enough to justify what happened next.
“Next thing you know, the police held onto me, the doctor stuck me with a needle, and I was knocked out,” Brock said told the Daily News. “I woke up to them taking off my underwear and then went out again. I woke up the next day in a hospital robe.”
In an attempt to explain her situation to the hospital workers, Brock tried a character reference that epically backfired. “I told (the doctor) Obama follows me on Twitter to show her the type of person I am. I’m a good person, a positive person. Obama follows positive people!” she said.
But apparently, the hospital didn’t believe her. Nor did they believe that she worked at a bank. As hospital records show, her treatment was intended to get her to face the “reality” that she was unemployed and that Obama was not following her.
After eight days of group therapy and sedatives, as well as doses of lorazepam and lithium, she was released without explanation.
Then, on top of everything else, Brock received a bill for $13,637.10 from the hospital.
Since then, she has filed suit for unspecified damages. As she continues her crusade for justice, she has one wish: “Follow me on Twitter! Like Obama does!”
What really kills me about this is a few things
False drug charges
Took someone’s property
Respectability politics fell through
Wasted this woman’s time
Racist belief that black people can’t be wealthy/powerful/connected landed this woman in a hospital
She is deemed bipolar and delusional
She is deemed BIPOLAR AND DELUSIONAL
SHE IS DEEMED BIPOLAR AND DELUSIONAL IN THE EYES OF WHITE SUPREMACY BECAUSE SHE KNOWS THAT SHE IS A BANKER AND WEALTHY
She has her clothes removed without her consent, which I’m sure violates a couple medical standards
She is then charged extreme amounts of money for services she got AGAINST her will
You can basically outright say that the cops were working in tandem with the hospital, and it wouldn’t surprise me if they had it out for her by the virtue of her money.
There’s so many levels to this fuckery it makes my head spin, the fact that people STILL don’t think institutional racism is a thing kills me. This is such a far gone example of it, yet it’s still so close to reality that no one is surprised. From the ground up this system will game the fuck out of you and I hope it burns to ashes someday.
New Yorker Tyeesha Mobley was at a gas station near her Bronx apartment with her two sons when she caught the older boy, aged nine, stealing $10 out of her purse. Thinking this was a good opportunity to teach him a lesson about honesty and consequences, she called the police, asking them to help her communicate the seriousness of stealing.
When the police arrived, however, Mobley’s Arrested Development-style lesson quickly escalated into a terrifying situation. Three of the four officers who arrived at the gas station apparently understood that this was a lighthearted call.
“They started asking Tyleke what did he take,” said Mobley. “He told them. And about three officers was joking around with him, telling him, ‘You can’t be stealing, you’ll wind up going in the police car.’”
The fourth cop, however, had different ideas. He began yelling: “You black b——es don’t know how to take care of your kids … why are you wasting our time, we aren’t here to raise your kid … why don’t you take your f—-ing kid and leave?”
When she tried to follow his order, Mobley says the fourth officer arrested her, refusing to give a reason. While she and her children cried for him to stop, one of the other officers attempted to intervene, saying, “We are not supposed to act like this.”
He replied, “Black b——es like that … this is how I treat them.”
After her arrest, Mobley was hospitalized for the bruises she’d sustained on her legs thanks to the fourth cop kicking her during the arrest. She successfully fought off child endangerment charges—a pretty interesting charge given that the “endangerment” in question seems to have been calling the police.
Mobley’s two children were placed in foster care for four months, where they reportedly received sub-par care. Now, having recovered her children—who have undoubtedly learned a very different lesson than the one she intended to teach—Mobley is suing the NYPD.
And, to paraphrase J. Walter Weatherman, that’s why you don’t call the police.
As a paraprofessional, I work with clients who can be extremely aggressive (biting, punching, charging, etc) and many suffer from PTSD, Austism, ODD etc. I do feel afraid in that moment but I am a TRAINED professional, emphasis on the TRAINED part. I don’t have a gun on me because I was taught to take down/restrain w/o one. How tf am I, a 5”2 woman working w/18-22 year old 6 foot plus men, able to take down aggressors w/o a problem but the mf police CAN’T?
Reminder to followers that police forces are often just as ableist as they are racist. In Anthony Hill’s case this was an unjust double whammy for him. Change needs to occur now.
I am a care worker and we’re trained to restrain people who are hitting/kicking/strangling you, whilst causing as little pain as humanly possible. Seriously, they drill that into you on day one. You do whole classes practicing these moves in case you have to use them. Have I used them? Absolutely, and whilst afraid, and whilst things that could be used as weapons to badly hurt me were in the mix.
I would point and laugh at the pathetic human specimens who can’t deal with an aggressor without shooting them, if the whole thing wasn’t a horrible combination of racism, ableism and police brutality that’s about as far away from funny as you can get.
HAPPENING NOW (10.9.14): Another young black man, 18-year old Vonderrick Myers, has been killed by a police officer, miles away from Ferguson. St Louis (STL) is turnt the fuck up right now. They literally ran the police out of the neighborhood, and are currently marching around the city. Details are still emerging, but from eye witness accounts, the young man was shot 16 times after the cop mistook a sandwich for a gun. My heart and soul are with the people of STL tonight. See you on Friday for #FergusonOctober. #staywoke #blacklivesmatter
Follow #shawshooting on Twitter for updates.
Follow the Argus Livestream as events unfold tonight.
Check out Bella Eiko’s UStream.
RIP Vonderrick Myer, the victim of tonight’s police shooting. We fighting for you now too.
Would a White Girl Be Prosecuted for a Botched Science Experiment?:
The notion of a white girl getting hauled off to jail for a harmless expression of intellectual curiosity is dubious, to say the least. And though the rise of “zero tolerance” policies in American schools should theoretically be race-neutral, that’s not the reality.By now you’ve probably heard about Kiera Wilmot, the 16-year-old Florida girl who botched a science experiment with a plastic bottle and toilet cleaner. The bottle ended up exploding, and though no one was hurt and no property damaged, Kiera was expelled from high school and is now being prosecuted as an adult for discharging a weapon on school grounds. She had an exemplary behavioral record up until that point.
Kiera is, as one might expect, black. The notion of a white girl getting hauled off to jail for a harmless expression of intellectual curiosity is dubious, to say the least. And though the rise of “zero tolerance” policies in American schools should theoretically be race-neutral, that’s not the reality. According to the Dignity in Schools campaign, “students of color… are more likely to be suspended and expelled than their peers for the same behavior” and “African American students [are] 3.5 times as likely to be expelled” as whites. What happened to Kiera Wilmot is part of a broader story about racial disparities in our criminal justice system.
Yet we don’t have to go macro to get the whiff of racial bias in this case. The prosecutor who decided to throw the book at Kiera is one Tammy Glotfelty, an assistant state attorney in Florida. The officer who arrested Kiera named Glotfelty in his police report:
I THEN CONTACTED ASSISTANT STATE ATTORNEY TAMMY GLOTFELTY VIA TELEPHONE. I ADVISED [HER] OF THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE CASE AND SHE ADVISED THIS OFFICER TO FILE THE CHARGES OF, POSSESSING OR DISCHARGING WEAPONS OR FIREARMS AT A SCHOOL SPONSORED EVENT OR ON SCHOOL PROPERTY F.S.S. 790.115 (1) AND MAKING, POSSESSING, THROWING, PROJECTING, PLACING, OR DISCHARGING ANY DESTRUCTIVE DEVICE F.S.S. 790.161 (A).Sounds absurdly harsh, right? And there has been no reversal of this decision since then. But Glotfelty isn’t always so heartless. Just last week, she decided not to prosecute a teenager named Taylor Richardson who accidentally shot and killed his younger brother with a BB gun. Glotfelty declared the case “a tragic accident.” I don’t doubt that it was. The Richardson kid will probably have nightmares about this incident for the rest of his life. But I do wonder how to make sense of a prosecutor who one week shows understandable compassion for a kid who made a terrible mistake and the next week insists on giving a teenager the harshest possible sanction for something that didn’t harm anyone.
The first Tammy Glotfelty has a normal-sized heart in her chest. The second one has a hole there.
There is one fact, however, that may help us figure out the discrepancy between Glotfelty #1 and Glotfelty #2: The Richardson family is white.
Am I accusing Glotfelty of conscious racial bias? Nope. Self-awareness isn’t the issue here. And maybe she has good reasons for treating these two cases differently. Hey, Taylor was 13 instead of 16; perhaps that makes all the difference in her eyes. But I can’t shake the feeling that these two stories would have unfolded quite differently if the races of the children had been reversed. Somehow the white Kiera Wilmot would have had her story end with an adult touching her shoulder saying “I’m just glad you’re alright.” And the black Taylor Richardson would have heard platitudes about “taking responsibility” while being led away in handcuffs.
The school-to-prison pipeline has become a very real phenomenon in this country, at least in communities of color. Suspending and expelling students for minor misbehavior has become routine despite there being no evidence that these steps improve school safety and strong evidence that they are linked to increased odds of behavior problems later. Moreover, prosecuting children as adults can destroy their chances of becoming productive members of society later in life. If prosecutors like Tammy Glotfelty really want to get serious about public safety, they’ll work to transform our racially disparate justice system and refuse to put harmless black students behind bars.