Austin, Texas: Only a few days after the anniversary of 9/11, Austin police nearly kill an animal activist at a peaceful protest. On September 19, at a Black Lives Matter / Anti-Police Brutality march, six people were arrested and many others harmed, beaten and maced.

According to The Daily Texan, “The rally against police brutality was held at the Capitol in opposition to a concurrently held Police Lives Matter rally, which garnered a crowd of 2,000 people, according to Austin police.”

“The Police Lives Matter rally started in front of the Austin Police Department headquarters, and members marched up Congress Avenue toward the north and eastern lawns of the Capitol building. The rally was held in honor of Harris County Sheriff’s Deputy Darren Goforth, who was shot and killed Aug. 28 while
pumping gas.”

Julian Reyes, a well-known animal rights activist was among those beaten and arrested in front of the state capital. Julian’s dog, Shiner Bock, was killed by Austin police in 2013 in the midst of many other notorious dog murders by Austin police. A tribute Facebook page for Shiner Bock has been established to raise awareness for the senseless murders of innocent animals by Austin police.

Reyes was filming the peaceful protest last Saturday with his certified companion service animal, Lizlee, who was also reportedly manhandled by the enraged police force. In the words of Reyes, “I’m a hardcore activist and that I defend our Family dogs from police violence. Well now the Austin Police and DPS grabbed, beat, tazed, and tried to kill me and my trauma support lizard, Lizlee.”

“I’m recovering and in pretty bad shape now. They falsely arrested me while I was filiming them. There is lots of video around of the police abuses. I may have broken ribs, concussion, and cervical neck damage. It’s too early to tell. I can barely walk or breathe. It happened on Saturday and I was charged twice. The National Lawyers Guild was there and they assisted me and 5 others in jail release. But not all the charges have been made clear. Victim-less crimes are no crimes at all. They are Civil issues.”

The city of Austin has become out of control, a police state. Recently, ex-cop Chris Noble running Austin Animal Center threatened me with jail when I arrived to retrieve our rescue dog, LuLu. During the aftermath,American Pit Bull Examiner and Reunion Rescue became involved with Julian Reyes and his struggle to seek justice for the murder of his dog, Shiner Bock. Reyes and companion pet, Lizlee, are regular visitors at Reunion Rescue public events.

The videos and photos of last Saturday’s attack by Austin police against innocent citizens and animal activists like Reyes has become too commonplace and must stop. Please share this story and watch for updates and a petition to demand these atrocities come to an end. Beating people up is not considered ‘weird’….it’s considered abuse of power.

Two men shot and killed, one a fleeing man in South Carolina, one a Texas sheriff: No connection, no equivalence

Over 1,500 miles separate Harris County, Texas and Harrison Township, New Jersey yet public officials in those two jurisdictions seemingly share a similar posture on persons who protest against abuse by police.

Recently Ron Hickman, the Sheriff of Harris County, Texas, blasted the Black Lives Matters movement blaming that surging anti-abuse entity for being an impetus for the brutal murder of a Harris County deputy.

Hickman readily acknowledged that he didn’t have all of the facts surrounding the murder of Deputy Darren Goforth, particularly the motive for that murder. However, that lack of facts didn’t stop Hickman from his hair-trigger blast at Black Lives Matters for that murder committed by a man known to have a long history of mental illness who had no involvement with Black Lives Matter.

Earlier this year, the governing committee of Harrison Township, NJ approved a resolution “Recognizing and Honoring” the service of law enforcement officers. But that resolution contained flawed assertions like most critics of police brutality are “career criminals and agitators who seek to divide our nation…”

Curiously overlooked by many critics of those who criticize police brutality is the fact that the overwhelming majority of persons who participate in anti-brutality protests are law-abiding citizens opposed to unnecessary use of excessive force by law enforcers. Persons that have led anti-brutality protests in South Jersey communities near Harrison Township have been respected members of the clergy and prominent community leaders, not the “career criminals” referenced in that resolution approved in February.

Although the Black Lives Matters movement certainly is not beyond criticism, it is disingenuous to bash that social justice protest as an initiator of attacks on police.

‘Calling Out’ police abuse is not the same as issuance of calls to attack police. Black Lives Matter does ‘assail repeated failures across America to corral police brutality but it does not ask people to attack police.

That township resolution pointedly condemned the news media for having “perpetuated false narratives” that made law enforcement targets of reprisals inclusive of “the assassination of a number of law enforcement officers throughout the country in recent weeks.”

The Officer Down Memorial Page website listed only one death of a police officer due to gunfire during the ‘recent weeks’ that covered the entire month of January 2015. And, the Memorial listed that one death as “accidental.”

That website did list four police officers killed by gunfire in December 2014.

A man with a history of mental illness who claimed he was reacting to the fatal shooting of a black teen in Ferguson, Missouri by a white policeman murdered two policemen in New York City. The cop killers in the two other December 2014 fatal shootings were a fugitive seeking to escape a return to prison and a man involved in a domestic dispute with his girlfriend.

None of the three men responsible for those fatal shootings of police last December had any involvement with Black Lives Matter or any history of engagement with social justice protests. However, New York City police union officials along with their confederates in political office and the press immediately tarred the Black Lives Matters movement and other civil rights leaders as having blood-on-their-hands for backing anti-brutality protests.

Many see hypocrisy in that fact that many of those currently castigating anti-brutality initiatives, like Black Lives Matters, rarely condemn the abuses by police that produce protests.

Police brutality is a long-standing scourge that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. criticized twice during his seminal “I Have A Dream” speech delivered in August 1963. One of the police departments detailed for excessive brutality in the October 1981 “Who Is Guarding The Guardians?” report issued by the U.S. Civil Rights Commission was Houston, the largest city in Harris County, Texas.

Ron Hickman, the Sheriff of Harris County, Texas, proclaimed “dangerous rhetoric” against police has “gotten out of control.”

Hickman said the “general climate” of the rhetoric generated by the Black Lives Matters “can be influential on people” to kill police.

Hickman had a different stance on cause-&-effect earlier this year. A cellphone video captured two of Hickman’s deputies cursing and abusing their authority during a traffic stop. But Hickman made no comments about abusive police culture comparable to his attack on Black Lives Matter.

If “all lives matter [and] cops’ lives matter, too,” as Hickman and others contend, then there would be no impetus for Black Lives Matters. That movement sprang up because the police killing of non-whites, particularly blacks, historically has received short shrift across American society.

A report on abusive misconduct by police issued by the U.S. Civil Rights Commission in November 2000 stated, “People of color, women and the poor are groups of Americans that seem to bear the brunt of the [police] abuse which compounds the other injustices that they may suffer as a result of discrimination…”

That 2000 report, following up on the Civil Rights Commission’s 1981 police brutality report, noted that reports of police brutality, harassment and misconduct “continue to spread throughout the country.”

In 2014 the United Nations Human Rights Committee issued a report on widespread human rights violations in the United States that included criticism of racial profiling and “excessive use of force” by law enforcement personnel. America’s body politic brushed off that UN Human Rights report as it has reports by the U.S. Civil Rights Commission.

That 2000 Civil Rights Commission report declared, “Police brutality tears violently at the fabric of our nation, leaving in its aftermath a distrustful and divided community.”

That U.S. Civil Rights Commission declaration is a reality that those who castigate critics of police abuse rarely recognize.

Written by Linn Washington Jr. for thiscantbehappening.net

by Virgil Vaduva

Update (August 6, 2015):

Representatives from Ohio Students Association have contacted me and have denied any association with the individuals behind the e-mails sent to Jim Anderson. As of right now, nobody has taken any responsibility for the statements made in the e-mails sent to Jim.

Original story: 

A clear pattern of discrimination and exclusion has been emerging within the last few days regarding the organization Black Lives Matter. It started with the organization attempting to schedule an event at the same time and location as other organizations and immediately attempting to put in place rules limiting attendance, excluding members of Anonymous, members of Cop Block and members of Ohio Open Carry, all organizations which oppose police brutality and work hard to further liberty.

These actions and attempts to control the narrative and attendance to the one year anniversary demonstration of John Crawford’s shooting by Ohio police have stirred up quite a debate in various circles, prompting individuals that would otherwise work together to further the cause of liberty to take sides based on political views and other opinions.

Black Lives Matter, the George Soros funded organization, is now on full attack against Anonymous, a de-centralized organization which has been attempting to participate in exposing police brutality throughout the world for years.  The attempt on the part of BLM to limit speech and control the message at public events is not new and I have documented a number of instances where bigotry is on display by members and leader in Black Lives Matter.

Just today an activist and journalist named Jim Anderson based out of Columbus, Ohio contacted me to inform me that he was told by members of BLM that he was “too white to attend a police brutality protest.”

As early as November 2014 the leaders of Black Lives Matter Columbus have contacted Jim and demanded that he cancels his event against police brutality due to conflict (as they scheduled it after he did) and informed him that no members of Anonymous are welcome to any of their public events.  Furthermore Guy Fawkes masks were banned and white people were told not to attend and were not welcome at any planning meetings. These tactics are identical to the tactics BLM is attempting to use to intimidate white attendees in Beavercreek, Ohio planning to attend the one year anniversary protest of the John Crawford shooting on August 5, 2015.

Screenshots of e-mail exchanges between Jim and representatives from BLM and Ohio Student Association show what appear to be outright and unapologetically bigoted attitudes towards police brutality supporters simply because of their association with Anonymous or simple due to their skin color.

When Jim inquired about the confusion generated by the exclusion of Anonymous members, he was told that Anonymous members lack “revolutionary-ness” (sic) and can be threatening to people of color. The insensitivity of the language used to describe Anonymous is astounding. The BLM leaders are attempting to describe Anonymous members as violent, unaccountable individuals who show up at protests in order to intimidate people of color.

This is not the first time members of Black Lives Matter have excluded whites from their events. In an event scheduled in Dayton, Ohio early in 2015 several messages went out indicating in essence that “no whites are allowed” at their events and that white people are not welcome to participate or take part in police brutality protests. When an outraged community pointed out the bigotry of these demands the request made on Facebook were deleted and BLM leadership pretended they never happened.

In a recent video allegedly recorded in Cleveland, Ohio, another white journalist who attended a BLM meeting to support their cause was assaulted, pushed, cursed at and grabbed before he had a chance to leave the public property he was on.

When asked about the bigoted remarks, the organizers defended the behavior by claiming this was a “private” meeting, however the meeting is clearly out in public on what appears to be public property.  Not only that, but the journalist was clearly in the process of leaving, as he was asked to do, when he was assaulted and threatened. You can watch the video here.

Talis Gage, a leader in Black Lives Matter compares Anonymous members with the KKK in a Facebook post

In a more recent event, a Black Lives Matter leader did not mince words when he outright stated that “the mask is the new sheet” when criticizing Anonymous for attending some BLM events.  He stated:

“Sometimes I wonder if the mask is the new sheet and are they in cahoots with each other I know I know there is some black mask anon members but like the old days you had house negros and field negros and we are not that far from those times. I have associated in all these diff groups but I can’t say I trust them.”

Additional BLM members followed with more inflammatory comments against Anonymous:

“Both anonymous masks and guns endanger people of color…”

All these comments were removed when I warned them that I was taking screenshots, as the story would be hard to believe otherwise.

I am aghast at the idea that Anonymous is being compared with one of the most despicable and racists groups in the world, the KKK, which has lynched, burned and executed people simply because of the color of their skin. Furthermore, Anonymous has shown incredible support for the black community on the issue of police brutality. Several prominent investigations by Anonymous have led to exposing internal e-mails and comments from NYPD and Baltimore PD showing extensive racism among police officers.

When members of Anonymous contacted the BLM leaderships to inquire about the public event scheduled in Dayton Ohio in April, they were told in very clear terms, “It’s an event that’s not for anonymous members.”

The ingratitude shown by Black Lives Matter and the outright disregard for any desire to cooperate with people and groups which have supported them for the past year is very disturbing, to say the least. Exclusion, discrimination and bigotry appears to be alive and well throughout the BLM organization, and is dishonorable to police brutality causes where black Americans have been targeted by police throughout the country.

I am unsure how to encourage BLM leadership to resolve this problem, or even if they are willing to solve the problem or eliminate bigotry from their midsts, but if you want to contact BLM, you can do so by going to their website and writing them a message about the serious problem they are creating by attacking groups of people which have been supportive of the cause of police brutality well before BLM even came into existence.

Words don’t break bones, but they should certainly prompt someone to step back and reconsider their support for such organizations.

Virgil Vaduva is a Libertarian security professional, journalist, photographer and overall liberty freak. He spent most of his life in Communist Romania and participated in the 1989 street protests which led to the collapse of the Ceausescu regime. He can be reached at vvaduva at truthvoice.com.