A physician who treated Charles Hill speaks out about BART protests

by: los anjalis

Mon Aug 29, 2011 at 16:07:20 PM PDT

A friend, physician, musician, and activist who previously treated Charles Hill, the man who was recently shot and killed at a San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) station by BART police, wrote a letter this week in solidarity with protestors. Here it is in its entirety below (I received permission from her to post it here):

Dear San Francisco,

I am one of your local physicians and have taken care of many different kinds of people during the past nine years of my appointment as an internist at UCSF, where I have worked at SF General Hospital as well as at the VA and the UCSF campuses.

San Francisco is a surprisingly small town, and when you spend enough time in the health care industry, you come to recognize many of the city's residents. You hold their stories and watch over them, in the hospital when they are ill and in the chance occurrences of running into them on the streets, in the market or painting the town red.

It is an honor and great privilege to take care of the people of this city that I love so dearly.

Last month, I learned that one of my former patients, Charles Hill, was shot and killed by BART police. Per the police, he was armed with a bottle and a knife and had menacing behavior. Per eye-witnesses, he was altered and appeared to be intoxicated but did not represent a lethal danger.

I remember Charles vividly, having taken care of him several times in the revolving door that is the health care system for the people who do not fit neatly into society. Charles was a member of the invisible class of people in SF --mentally ill, homeless and not reliably connected to the help he needed.

While I had seen him agitated before and while I can't speak to all of his behavior, I never would have described him as threatening in such a way as to warrant the use of deadly force. We often have to deal with agitated and sometimes even violent patients in the hospital. Through teamwork, tools and training, we have not had to fatally wound our patients in order to subdue them.

I understand the police are there to protect us and react to the situation around them, but I wonder why the officer who shot Charles did not aim for the leg if he felt the need to use a gun, instead of his vital organs. I wonder if he possessed other training methods to subdue an agitated man with a knife or bottle.

I feel this situation quite deeply. It is hard to watch our civil servants (police) brutally handle a person and their body when I spend my time and energy as a civil servant (physician) honoring the dignity of that person, regardless of their race or social class, their beliefs or their affiliations. I know it is not my job -- nor the police's job -- to mete out justice or judgment of a person's worthiness. It is also hard because Charles has no voice, no one to speak for him now that he is gone. It would be easy to let this slide and move on with our busy lives, as we all struggle to make ends meet in this expensive city during a recession. I believe this situation shows us how powerless we all feel to some degree.

I feel outraged and am trying to find the best ways to express it -- through creative outpouring, through conversations. I would like to lend my voice to the growing protest of the BART police's excessive use of violent force and know that weekly protests are being organized on Mondays until demands are met for BART to fully investigate the shooting of Charles Hill, disarm its police force and train them properly, as well as bringing the officer who shot him to justice.

The media is portraying the annoyance of the protests to commuters more than the unbelievable horror that an innocent man was shot dead by the force that is meant to protect us. I don't want to upset commuters or be a nuisance. I would like to be part of educating and not letting this slip under the proverbial rug -- in honor of Charles Hill and in order to help prevent something like this from ever happening again.

I will be present at the peaceful demonstrations on Mondays in front of the BART Civic Center station, not to prevent commuters from getting home, but to educate a population that may need to pause and think about the value a human life has and the kind of San Francisco we want to live and work in.

Thank you for your time and thoughtful consideration.

Respectfully,

Rupa Marya, MD

Background info on Charles Hill shooting here and here. The protests, going on weekly now, are about BART police's unending violent attacks on civilians (started with or before the shooting of Oscar Grant).

Anonymous, the group behind the protests, put together a video about the protests (which they remind us are more about BART police's violent tactics, but also more recently are about BART's decision to shut down cellphone communications in response to a planned protest).

los angeles' homeboys travel to rural alabama

by: los anjalis

Tue Dec 29, 2009 at 09:00:00 AM PST

The video -- "Alabama's Homeboys" -- captures the critical intersection of rural poverty, joblessness, crime, race and youth, and leaves the viewer with more questions than answers, but is quite inspiring. The Times also provided extremely sobering socioeconomic statistics about Prichard, Alabama at the same link.  It's wonderful to see Homeboys Industries continuing their stellar work in the face of a financial crisis.  Folks who would like to support Homeboy Industries can donate money as part of Homeboys' "virtual carwash". And if you're in Los Angeles you can volunteer at Homeboy Industries, dine at Homegirl Cafe, or purchase Homegirl Cafe's salsa, now selling at Ralphs.  

(cross-posted at LAist)

On apes and dehumanization. and that little cartoon.

by: los anjalis

Sun Feb 22, 2009 at 01:21:12 AM PST

Baratunde Thurston also published an essay in the Huffington Post, where he expands on Dr Phillip Goff's research on the very real brutality/racism effects of psychologically likening blacks to monkeys.  This is VERY interesting, take a look at the essay. Here's a snippet of what Dr Goff has suggested:

For the better part of the past seven years, my colleagues and I have conducted research on the psychological phenomenon of dehumanization. Specifically, we have examined cognitive associations between African Americans and non-human apes. And the association leads to bad things. When we began the research, we were skeptical of whether or not participants even knew that people of African descent were caricatured as ape-like -- as less than human -- throughout the better part of the past 400 years. And, in fact, many were not. However, even those who were unaware of this historical association demonstrated a cognitive association between blacks and apes. That is, when they thought of apes, they thought of blacks and vice versa -- when they thought of blacks, they thought of apes.

But the fact of this cognitive association was not the most disturbing part of the research. Rather, it was the fact that the association between blacks and apes could lead to violence.

In one study, participants who were made to think about apes were more likely to support police violence against black (but not white) criminal suspects. The association actually caused them to endorse anti-black violence. Most disturbing of all, however, was a study of media coverage and the death penalty. Looking at a sample of death-eligible cases in Philadelphia from 1979 to 1999, the more that media coverage used ape-like metaphors to describe a murder trial (i.e. "urban jungle," "aping the suspects behavior," etc.) the more likely black suspects, but not white suspects were to be put to death.

Something to mull over.  

Nicole Salazar films her own arrest [viewer discretion advised]

by: los anjalis

Wed Sep 03, 2008 at 14:04:24 PM PDT

Absolutely unbearable and horrifying.

What's happening in the video:  Salazar is filming (she's a producer for a well-respected tv and video show, and she has full official press pass information around her neck).  Riot police come swarming in from 3 sides.  You can hear her saying Where do you want me to go? as they're rushing the crowd.  She screams "I'm Press! I'm Press!" as she's being pushed by them.  They take her down to the ground, stomp her face in the asphalt, one officer puts his elbow in her back, the other picks her up by her leg, she tries to keep her face up off the ground so it doesn't get macerated from being dragged while elbow is in back and other is holding her leg.  She ends up with a bloody nose and a scratched up face.  And she's still detained.  (info from witnesses)

Her charge?

CONSPIRACY TO RIOT.  What was she doing?  Videotaping the protests and interviewing people.  She's still being detained.  The Department of Pre-Crime (Minority Report reference) is in FULL EFFECT.  

Salazar is just one of the 250 people who were detained or arrested for conspiracy to riot.

Support INCITE! New Orleans in Hurricane Gustav relief efforts

by: los anjalis

Sat Aug 30, 2008 at 23:20:21 PM PDT

Dear INCITE! friends and supporters,

CLICK HERE to DONATE

On the eve of the 3 year anniversary of the devastation wrought by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and subsequent government criminal negligence and assaults on the low income people of color on the Gulf Coast, our sisters from INCITE! projects in New Orleans (including the local chapter, the Women's Health and Justice Initiative, and the New Orleans Women's Health Clinic) are bracing for the potential landfall of Hurricane Gustav, which is currently projected to hit the Louisiana coast on Monday or Tuesday at a category 4 or 5. Voluntary evacuation of New Orleans has already begun, and mandatory evacuation could be declared as early as today.  INCITE! organizers in New Orleans have made over 700 phone calls to women of color and their families that make up the constituency of the New Orleans Women's Health Clinic, working to prepare and implement evacuation and safety plans.

Your assistance is urgently needed to help low-income women of color and their families evacuate safely if need be, stay safe for the duration of the evacuation, and return to the city as soon as possible so as not to fall prey to the pushout that has kept so many folks from being able to return to New Orleans since Katrina. Local organizers are using whatever resources and funds at their disposal to help women and their families evacuate, bond people being held in Orleans Parish Prison out, and support those who make the choice to stay in whatever way they can.

(click on "there's more" for the rest of the post)

The Hospital as a site of Violence

by: brownfemipower

Sun Jul 13, 2008 at 15:45:50 PM PDT

Villegas DeLaPaz was arrested, incarcerated and forced to go through labor under armed guard handcuffed to by her wrist and ankle to a hospital bed. When she arrived at the hospital, the nurse asked the accompanying officer to step outside while Villegas DeLaPaz changed into her hospital gown - he refused, forcing Villegas DeLaPaz to unclothe before him. Then she was shackled on her legs whenever she went to the bathroom. The nurse asked that the shackles be removed because she wanted Villegas DeLaPaz to be able to clean up after childbirth and do other hygiene to prevent infection. Again, the attending officer refused. Her newborn was taken from her and did not receive needed breast milk for several days. She was re-jailed and denied a breast pump to express her milk. Nurses attending her were crying. She could not sleep in the jail because of the intense pain from her swollen breasts. She was not allowed to call her family so her husband could be with her for the birth.

Mother's Day & the week forward: Action Alert - No mother should lose her child to a cluster bomb

by: los anjalis

Sun May 11, 2008 at 22:26:00 PM PDT

And this letter from Physicians for Human Rights and several other major human rights organizations in the US and abroad.

Time for action?  CIVIC (The Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict) is making an urgent appeal to us to call our Senators and ask them to cosponsor the Cluster Munitions Civilian Protection Act (S.594/H.R. 1755).  They've supplied us with the tools we need, and with a list of the Senators who have cosponsored the Senate bill and have made a goal of generating six new co-sponsors in the Senate in the next two weeks.

They say on this Mother's Day:

No mother should lose her child to a cluster bomblet. Unfortunately, you - as a CIVIC supporter - know that children are drawn to unexploded cluster submunitions thinking they are toys. Kids between the ages of 5-15 account for almost half of the world's cluster bomb deaths and injuries.

And here's a short video with their Executive Director in Lebanon, talking about cluster bombs:

Alright let's get to it.  One or two phone calls.  Common sense legislation.

Lastly -- the author of the hit comic series Get Your War On, David Rees, wrote about the presidential candidates and cluster bombs (and about how they were the initial impetus for him to start his GYWO comic strip).  He's a huge activist in this area, and shared that Senator Clinton rejected a proposed ban on cluster bombs back in 2006 (a different proposed ban) because she didn't want to seem soft on terror.  On the other hand, Senator Obama strongly supported this ban.  (on the Republican side, McCain rejected the ban).

Let's give this gift of action to our mothers and to mothers around the world.  And pass on this CIVIC action alert (remember, the goal is to get more cosponsors in the next two weeks!).

Women's buses in Mexico City: safe from harm

by: los anjalis

Sun Feb 17, 2008 at 15:36:10 PM PST

(photo by alfr3do on flickr)

Mexico City rolled out women-only buses in January, in its strongest move yet to deal with groping and sexual harassment by men on crowded buses.

In my personal experience in India and in Tanzania and Kenya, the buses in large cities were similarly packed, and the ensuing groping was a daily violation that many women faced.  Heck, in a 6 person VAN, groping was an issue, let along in a bus where peoples' legs are dangling out the door and everyone's pressed up against each other.  And this isn't a new problem, my mother's generation was also affected by it on a daily basis (and maybe my grandmother's generation too?).

Mexico City's transportation authority and others seem to be addressing this issue from various angles, which is pretty cool.  The Institute of Women in Mexico City is pushing forth education for men;  the transportation authority is expanding the number of women-only buses, and the authority is making it easier to prosecute perpetrators.  

It's so wonderful to see cities making positive strides towards the mental/emotional/physical health of women in this way.

Violence against the homeless rising

by: los anjalis

Sat Feb 16, 2008 at 18:13:14 PM PST

Nationwide, violence against the homeless is soaring, and overwhelmingly the attackers are teenagers and young adults. In Florida the problem is so severe that the National Coalition for the Homeless is setting up speakers bureaus to address a culture that sees attacking the homeless as a sport. It is the first time the organization has singled out a particular state.

Of more than 142 unprovoked attacks on homeless people in 2007, the most - at least 32 - were in Florida, according to a preliminary count by the coalition and the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty. Nationwide, such attacks rose about 65 percent from 2005.

In Fort Lauderdale a group of teenagers captured national attention in 2006 when a surveillance camera caught one laughing as he beat a homeless man with a baseball bat. The teenagers attacked three homeless men that night and face a murder trial in one man's death. A year later in Daytona Beach, a 17-year-old and two 10-year-olds attacked a homeless Army veteran. One 10-year-old dropped a cement block on the man's face, the police said.

"What could possibly be in the mind of a 10- or 12-year-old that would possess them to pick up a rock and pick up a brick and beat another human being in the head?" said Ron Book, chairman of the Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust. "It defies any rational thought process, but it's also why we felt so strongly we had to do something."

The trust has teamed with the local schools to develop a curriculum for elementary, middle and high schools teaching respect for the homeless.

Advocates for the homeless blame a society that they say shuns the homeless through laws that criminalize sleeping in parks, camping and begging.

"I think it reflects a lack of respect for the homeless that has reached such extreme proportions that homeless people aren't viewed as people," said Maria Foscarinis, executive director of the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty.

Source:  "Attacks on the Homeless Rise, With Youths Mostly to Blame" (NYTimes)

What's up with Florida's high number of attacks on homeless people?  And 10 year olds?  Well, it's wonderful that the National Coalition for the Homeless has swiftly moved to address this issue in the schools.  

Hmm.  But we really must address this issue in a larger system-wide context, kids learn from what they've seen around them.  We're teaching our children that homeless people aren't really people through our pervasive state/city violence against homeless people, our habit of jailing/criminalizing them, and the lack of affordable housing and food and other services available to them.

"a violent majority is dictating to a tender minority"

by: los anjalis

Sat Nov 10, 2007 at 18:05:29 PM PST

We impeached a president for lying about sex, and his linguistic "parsing" remains a cultural reference point, even as Senator Larry Craig's "wide stance" becomes one. We cannot impeach a president for lying us into a war. Chris Matthews and his ilk continue to joke about President Clinton's private life, but Bush in a codpiece gave them the vapors. We glorify violence, and are embarrassed by sexuality. Compared to global warming and climate change, famine and genocide, war and terrorism, this may seem a trivial issue, but it really cuts to the heart of what's wrong with this nation. In the past week, the Senate approved as our nation's chief law enforcement officer a man who has no apparent problem with the idea of torture, while also approved spending $141,000,000 on abstinence-only education programs that have been proven failures. But even more to the point: why? Why is it worth spending any money to teach teenagers that the information they are receiving from their own bodies is wrong?

This is from user Turkana at DailyKos.  The post ends with a quote from a filmmaker who stated "The violent majority is dictating to a tender minority", which is an interesting way to frame the issue.