Wendy Brandes Jewelry Blog

Never Is the Next New Thing

White Supremacy Is Terrorism

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Yesterday, a black man named Christian Cooper asked a white woman named Amy Cooper (no relation) to put her dog on a leash in Central Park’s Ramble, where dogs are required to be leashed to protect the wildlife and plants. In response, Amy Cooper called 911 in fake hysterics and told the dispatcher that an “African American man” was threatening her and her dog. She was openly trying to commit murder-by-cop. Christian got her whole act on video and left the scene, as did Amy Cooper, before the cops showed up. This was a fortunate outcome considering that later the same day in Minneapolis, after a call about a “forgery in progress,” a black man named George Floyd was handcuffed and killed by a police officer who knelt on his neck as Floyd cried out, “I can’t breathe” and three other officers stood by.

Amy Cooper was fired from her job at Franklin Templeton and surrendered her dog — who she had choked by his collar while confronting Christian Cooper — to the rescue group she got him from. The four Minneapolis cops have been fired for what that’s worth; bad cops have a funny way of being rehired when the outrage dies down. You can tell the way it’s likely to go from the cops’ reacting to hundreds of Minneapolis protestors today with tear gas and stun grenades. I see no signs of remorse there. Contrast that with how white men with guns haverecently been treated in state capitols; as one protestor in Kentucky said, “I’m completely armed … I’m not a Kentucky resident. I’m from Virginia. A complete stranger. I walked in, [and security acted like], ‘Cool, come on in. Enjoy the capitol.'”

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#Repost @aperture.delta ・・・ Today in The Ramble. Solidarity with #chriscooper. People connecting with what happened to Chris Cooper over the weekend, and speaking out. Like other people with whom I spoke, this young woman was saddened, outraged, but not surprised…even though this is smack in the middle of Central Park, not far from Tavern on the Green and the Delacorte theater, to the west, and the Met, to the east. It's not Ferguson, Missouri, or Glendora, Mississippi, or Minneapolis, Minnesota. This is somewhere else, where a finance executive still felt entitled to lie to the police that her life was being threatened by a bird watcher who asked her to please leash her dog in a wildlife habitat. Put another way, she threatened to have him shot or choked to death, for the temerity of having asked her to comply with a posted regulation. Because he was black. This is not Staten Island, where Eric Garner was killed by #NYPD, or Rikers Island, which drove Kalief Brown to suicide after three years in prison without a trial, or Broadway at 162nd Street, where Jill Nelson was likewise threatened with death, unless you don't consider arresting and detaining an older woman at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, for chalking "trump = plague," potentially deadly. This is, at the end of the day, America, everywhere, and deadly racism is not only tolerated, but encouraged, at the highest levels of power. #blacklivesmatter #justiceforahmaudarbery #justiceforkaliefbrowder #justiceforericgarner @melodycooperfilm @franklintempleton #christiancooper @wewillnotbesilent

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If the latest incidents of attempted murder and murder horrify you, here’s a video from Dr. Ibram X. Kendi about how to become anti-racist. (If they don’t horrify you, you’re in the wrong place.)

I’m interested in the fact that attorney Benjamin Crump is representing Floyd’s family. He’s also representing the families of Ahmaud Arbery, shot in Georgia in February by white men who presumed they could act like cops; and Breonna Taylor, shot in her home in Louisville, Ky., in March by real cops executing a no-knock search warrant for men who weren’t on the premises. I hope that this means that Crump and his associates are aiming to make changes on a federal level to the corrupt, racist, and violent policing system as well as the money-making mass incarceration it feeds into.

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