Tag Archives: civil liberties

Black Lives Matter Organizers Labeled as "Threat Actors" by Cybersecurity Firm

by Daisy09Jmt Posted on August 3, 2015

Mother Jones

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The cover of a report by a cybersecurity firm that identified Black Lives Matter organizers as “threat actors.” ZeroFox

Documents from a “crisis management” report produced by the cybersecurity firm ZeroFox indicate that the firm monitored Black Lives Matter protesters during the Freddie Gray protests in Baltimore earlier this year. The documents, which surfaced online last Wednesday, also state that the firm “protected” the online accounts of Maryland and Baltimore officials and members of the Baltimore Police Department and Maryland National Guard.

The report identifies DeRay McKesson and Johnetta Elzie, two prominent Black Lives Matter organizers who took part in the Baltimore protests, as “threat actors” for whom “immediate response is recommended.” It describes McKesson and Elzie as “high” severity, “physical,” and “#mostwanted” threats and notes both have a “massive following” on social media. It says that ZeroFox was engaged in “continuous monitoring” of their social media accounts and specifies their geographical locations at the time of the report. The report does not suggest that the pair were suspected of criminal activity but were “main coordinators of the protests.”

ZeroFox

McKesson and Elzie both tell Mother Jones they were “not surprised” that they were being watched. “It confirms that us telling the truth about police violence is seen as a threat,” McKesson says. Both activists say they do not know why they were identified as physical threats. McKesson and Elzie live in Missouri, where they helped organize the Ferguson protests. They traveled together to Baltimore for a week and a half during the Freddie Gray protests.

A link to the ZeroFox report first circulated on Twitter last Wednesday. ZeroFox did not respond to a request to confirm the authenticity of the documents. The Baltimore Police Department and the mayor’s chief of staff did not respond to request for comment. The Maryland governor’s office says that the state does not have a contract with ZeroFox.

In emails exchanged in April, ZeroFox’s CEO, Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlins-Blake’s chief of staff, and the president of the Maryland chapter of an FBI intelligence partnership program discussed ZeroFox’s potential surveillance “help” for Baltimore. These emails were released to the Baltimore Sun last week following a public records request. The emails also indicate that ZeroFox “briefed our classified partners” at the Fort Meade Army base in Maryland on “intelligence” it had collected during the Gray protests. Other emails from the Baltimore Police Department indicate the department had collected “intelligence regarding potentially violent agitators.”

The report on the Black Lives Matter organizers is dated the day after the Fort Meade briefing. It states that ZeroFox intended to “alert Baltimore PD on all monitoring threat actors and influencers.”

According to the leaked report, ZeroFox monitored 62 “threat actors” and 187 “threat influencers,” including a Twitter user who was “a main local protest organizer” and another who was “sending supplies from New Jersey.” The report also identifies people, organizations, and systems for “asset protection,” including Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlins-Blake, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, Baltimore Police Department Captain Eric Kowalczyk, and other members of the Baltimore police and Maryland National Guard.

ZeroFox

This report has emerged amid growing evidence of federal, state, and local government monitoring of Black Lives Matter protests. Last month, the Intercept published Department of Homeland Security emails showing that the department had closely tracked Black Lives Matter protesters in Washington, DC in April. Since protests started in Ferguson, Missouri, last August, the department has also monitored non-protest events such as cultural events and prayer vigils in DC, Atlanta, Oakland, Chicago, Baltimore, New York City, Philadelphia, and elsewhere.

The emails obtained by the Baltimore Sun also say that ZeroFox performed surveillance for the New York Police Department during protests over the death of Eric Garner. ZeroFox also has a contract to provide equipment to the State Department.

McKesson says that during last year’s protests in Ferguson, he and other prominent organizers became suspicious that they were being monitored by local police officials there as well. On numerous occasions, he says, they interacted with police officers that knew their names and Twitter accounts. “The police officers in St. Louis knew us. They knew many of us by Twitter handle. It was clear they read our Twitter feed. It was clear they watched the live streams of protests,” he says. But the ZeroFox documents mark the first time he has seen written evidence that his activity was being tracked.

Elzie, too, says she already knew she was being watched. “I never needed a paper confirmation. But I guess it made it real for other people who just didn’t think that it was possible.”

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Black Lives Matter Organizers Labeled as "Threat Actors" by Cybersecurity Firm

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Homeland Security Is Tracking Black Lives Matter. Is That Legal?

by LuzMSKfovu Posted on July 30, 2015

Mother Jones

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Last Friday, the Intercept released documents revealing that the Department of Homeland Security had been monitoring the Black Lives Matter movement since protests erupted in Ferguson, Missouri, last August. Emails obtained via the Freedom of Information Act showed that the department had tracked the movements of people at a Freddie Gray-related protest in Washington, DC, and had also monitored cultural events like DC’s Annual Funk Parade and prayer vigils in predominately black neighborhoods nationwide. DHS also tracked hashtags and other social media associated with Black Lives Matter.

Nusrat Choudhury, a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union’s Racial Justice Program, says that while this type of surveillance may not be illegal, it may have significant chilling effects that do infringe on people’s rights. “There’s no question at all that the kind of mapping identified by the documents provided to Intercept chills people’s First Amendment-protected activities,” she says. “Of course it makes people feel afraid to go to these kinds of protests because of the impact it might have in terms of law enforcement’s ability to gather intelligence about them.” It may difficult to tell if this has happened, but, Choudhury says, “The line is drawn when that effect takes place.”

Federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies have the legal authority to monitor people and activities in public places. This includes attending, observing, and taking notes on protest activities. However, collecting and storing personally identifiable information on specific individuals is not allowed, with the exception of people suspected of criminal activity. Monitoring tweets and other social media posts, including any geolocation information associated with those posts, is also legal.

Asked for comment, DHS spokesperson S. Y. Lee told Mother Jones that the department’s National Operating Center did monitor Black Lives Matter for “situational awareness purposes” to “ensure that critical information reaches appropriate decision-makers in federal, state, local, tribal and territorial governments.” According to DHS documents, the NOC’s Social Media Monitoring and Situational Awareness program does not collect any personally identifiable information, and surveillance is conducted by searching certain hashtags and keywords on social media sites, not by watching particular personal user accounts.

The ACLU is also concerned that the surveillance of Black Lives Matter could amount to racial profiling. “Because of the predominance of people of color in the Black Lives movement, and the evidence that some of these documents show government surveillance of innocuous cultural events, including music events as well as peaceful protests that take place in historically black neighborhoods, there’s a serious concern that surveillance of Black Lives Matter and cultural events will lead to racial profiling,” Choudhury says. The Department of Justice bans racial profiling by federal law enforcement agencies.

The federal government’s history of surveillance of black civil rights activists in the 1960s and 1970s also adds cause for concern, according to Choudhury. “We have these long-standing concerns that government has engaged in surveillance of people not because there’s evidence of wrongdoing, but because of what they think, what they believe, and what their ideology is, as well as the color of their skin.”

Determining whether the DHS’s monitoring of Black Lives Matter has had a chilling effect on individuals’ First Amendment rights or a disparate impact on African-Americans would require identifying people whose social media posts were monitored and who attended protests that were watched, and ascertaining the effect of the surveillance on them. “But based on the kinds of things that people interviewed by Intercept were saying, there is real concern that the impact is there,” Choudhury says.

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Homeland Security Is Tracking Black Lives Matter. Is That Legal?

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Native Americans Get Shot By Cops at an Astonishing Rate

by yiszkj53 Posted on July 15, 2015

Mother Jones

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Nearly 100 people demonstrated in downtown Denver earlier this week after police there shot and killed 35-year-old Paul Castaway on July 12. Police said the man was coming towards an officer with a knife, but his family and witnesses on the scene dispute those claims and say he was pointing the knife toward himself.

The shooting comes a little more than a month after two Denver Police officers were cleared in the shooting death of Jessie Hernandez, a 17-year-old girl killed in January when the officers fired into a stolen car she was supposedly driving toward them in an alley.

According to his mother, Castaway struggled with schizophrenia and alcoholism. Witnesses say he was holding a knife to his own throat and didn’t threaten officers, according to the Denver Post. Castaway was shot four times and died later that night. Denver Police Department spokesman, Sonny Jackson, told the Post that the department is reviewing the incident, and that the officers involved will be named soon.

Castaway was a Lakota Sioux. His death brings up a rarely-discussed aspect of the ongoing conversation around police brutality in the United States: Native Americans are more likely than most other racial groups to be killed by police. Indian Country Today noted that according to the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, a nonprofit organization that studies incarceration and criminal justice issues, police kill Native Americans at a higher rate than any other ethnic group.

The center’s analysis relied on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Center for Health Statistics. It found that Native Americans, making up just .8 percent of the population, are the victims in 1.9 percent of police killings. When the numbers are broken down further, they reveal that Native Americans make up *three of the top five top age-groups killed by law enforcement:

Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice

“This is a reflection of an endemic problem in the perception of non-white people when it comes to the administration of justice,” Chase Iron Eyes, an attorney with the Lakota People’s Law Project in South Dakota, told Mother Jones. The group put out a report called “Native Lives Matter” in February discussing various ways the justice system disproportionately impacts Native Americans. He said the US Department of Justice needs to address police violence against Native Americans and that Castaway’s death is only the most recent example of the problem.

“You can tell they’re shooting out of fear,” he said. “If it’s not out of hate, for some reason they’re pulling the trigger before determining what the situation actually is. Something does need to happen. Somebody does need to take a look and we need help.”

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Native Americans Get Shot By Cops at an Astonishing Rate

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Republicans Trashed Democracy in Michigan. Now They Want To Trash It in Your State, Too.

by Isabelle7254 Posted on June 9, 2015

Mother Jones

This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website. Photos and reporting by Eduardo García

Something is rotten in the state of Michigan.

One city neglected to inform its residents that its water supply was laced with cancerous chemicals. Another dissolved its public school district and replaced it with a charter school system, only to witness the for-profit management company it hired flee the scene after determining it couldn’t turn a profit. Numerous cities and school districts in the state are now run by single, state-appointed technocrats, as permitted under an emergency financial manager law pushed through by Rick Snyder, Michigan’s austerity-promoting governor. This legislation not only strips residents of their local voting rights, but gives Snyder’s appointee the power to do just about anything, including dissolving the city itself—all (no matter how disastrous) in the name of “fiscal responsibility.”

If you’re thinking, “Who cares?” since what happens in Michigan stays in Michigan, think again. The state’s aggressive balance-the-books style of governance has already spread beyond its borders. In January, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie appointed bankruptcy lawyer and former Detroit emergency manager Kevyn Orr to be a “legal adviser” to Atlantic City. The Detroit Free Press described the move as “a state takeover similar to Gov. Rick Snyder’s state intervention in the Motor City.”

And this spring, amid the hullabaloo of Republicans entering the 2016 presidential race, Governor Snyder launched his own national tour to sell “the Michigan story to the rest of the country.” His trip was funded by a nonprofit (fed, naturally, by undisclosed donations) named “Making Government Accountable: The Michigan Story.”

To many Michiganders, this sounded as ridiculous as Jeb Bush launching a super PAC dubbed “Making Iraq Free: The Bush Family Story.” Except Snyder wasn’t planning to enter the presidential rat race. Instead, he was attempting to mainstream Michigan’s form of austerity politics and its signature emergency management legislation, which stripped more than half of the state’s African American residents of their local voting rights in 2013 and 2014.

As the governor jaunted around the country, Ann Arbor-based photographer Eduardo García and I decided to set out on what we thought of as our own two-week Magical Michigan Tour. And while we weren’t driving a specially outfitted psychedelic tour bus—we spent most of the trip in my grandmother’s 2005 Prius—our journey was nevertheless remarkably surreal. From the southwest banks of Lake Michigan to the eastern tips of the peninsula, we crisscrossed the state visiting more than half a dozen cities to see if there was another side to the governor’s story and whether Michigan really was, as one Detroit resident put it, “a massive experiment in unraveling US democracy.”

Stop One: Water Wars in Flint

Just as we arrive, the march spills off the sidewalk in front of the city council building.

“Stop poisoning our children!” chants a little girl as the crowd tumbles down South Saginaw Street, the city’s main drag. We’re in Flint, Michigan, a place that hit the headlines last year for its brown, chemical-laced, possibly toxic water. A wispy white-haired woman waves a gallon jug filled with pee-colored liquid from her home tap. “They don’t care that they’re killing us!” she cries.

A Flint resident at the march demanding clean water. Eduardo García

We catch up with Claire McClinton, the formidable if grandmotherly organizer of the Flint Democracy Defense League, as we approach the roiling Flint River. It’s been a longtime dumping ground for the Ford Motor Company’s riverfront factories and, as of one year ago today, the only source of the city’s drinking water. On April 25, 2014, on the instruction of the city’s emergency manager, Flint stopped buying its supplies from the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department and started drawing water directly from the river, which meant a budgetary savings of $12 million a year. The downside: people started getting sick.

Since then, tests have detected E. coli and fecal bacteria in the water, as well as high levels of trihalomethanes, a carcinogenic chemical cocktail known as THMs. For months, the city concealed the presence of THMs, which over years can lead to increased rates of cancer, kidney failure, and birth defects. Still, it was obvious to local residents that something was up. Some of them were breaking out in mysterious rashes or experiencing bouts of severe diarrhea, while others watched as their eyelashes and hair began to fall out.

As we cross a small footbridge, McClinton recounts how the city council recently voted to “do all things necessary” to get Detroit’s water back. The emergency manager, however, immediately overrode their decision, terming it “incomprehensible.”

“This is a whole different model of control,” she comments dryly and explains that she’s now working with other residents to file an injunction compelling the city to return to the use of Detroit’s water. One problem, though: it has to be filed in Ingham County, home to Lansing, the state capital, rather than in Flint’s Genesee County, because the decision of a state-appointed emergency manager is being challenged. “Under state rule, that’s where you go to redress grievances,” she says. “Just another undermining of our local authority.”

In the meantime, many city residents remain frustrated and confused. A few weeks before the march, the city sent out two notices on the same day, packaged in the same envelope. One, printed in black-and-white, stated bluntly: “Our water system recently violated a drinking water standard.” The second, in flashy color, had this cheery message: “We are pleased to report that City of Flint water is safe and meets US Environmental Protection Agency guidelines… You can be confident that the water provided to you today meets all safety standards.” As one recipient of the notices commented, “I can only surmise that the point was to confuse us all.”

McClinton marches in silence for a few minutes as the crowd doubles back across the bridge and begins the ascent up Saginaw Street. Suddenly, a man jumps onto a life-size statue of a runner at the Riverfront Plaza and begins to cloak him in one of the group’s T-shirts.

“Honey, I don’t want you getting in any trouble!” his wife calls out to him.

He’s struggling to pull a sleeve over one of the cast-iron arms when the droning weeoo-weeooo-weeoo of a police siren blares, causing a brief frenzy until the man’s son realizes he’s mistakenly hit the siren feature on the megaphone he’s carrying.

After a few more tense moments, the crowd surges forward, leaving behind the statue, legs stretched in mid-stride, arms raised triumphantly, and on his chest a new cotton T-shirt with the slogan: “Water You Fighting For?”

Stop Two: The Tri-Cities of Cancer

The next afternoon, we barrel down Interstate 75 into an industrial hellscape of smoke stacks, flare offs, and 18-wheelers, en route to another toxicity and accountability crisis. This one was caused by a massive tar sands refinery and dozens of other industrial polluters in southwest Detroit and neighboring River Rouge and Ecorse, cities which lie along the banks of the Detroit River.

Already with a slight headache from a haze of emissions, we meet photographer and community leader Emma Lockridge and her neighbor Anthony Parker in front of their homes, which sit right in the backyard of that tar sands refinery.

In 2006, the toxicity levels in their neighborhood, known simply by its zip code as “48217,” were 45 times higher than the state average. And that was before Detroit gave $175 million in tax breaks to the billion-dollar Marathon Petroleum Corporation to help it expand its refinery complex to process a surge of high-sulfur tar sands from Alberta, Canada.

The Marathon tar sands refinery in southwest Detroit. Eduardo García

“We’re a donor zip,” explains Lockridge as she settles into the driver’s seat of our car. “We have all the industry and a tax base, but we get nothing back.”

We set off on a whirlwind tour of their neighborhood, where schools have been torn down and parks closed due to the toxicity of the soil, while so many residents have died of cancer that it’s hard for their neighbors to keep track. “We used to play on the swings here,” says Lockridge, pointing to a rusted yellow swing set in a fenced-off lot where the soil has tested for high levels of lead, arsenic, and other poisonous chemicals. “Jumping right into the lead.”

As in other regions of Michigan, people have been fleeing 48217 in droves. Here, however, the depopulation results not from deindustrialization, but from toxicity, thanks to an ever-expanding set of factories. These include a wastewater treatment complex, salt mines, asphalt factories, cement plants, a lime and stone foundry, and a handful of steel mills all clustered in the tri-cities region.

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Republicans Trashed Democracy in Michigan. Now They Want To Trash It in Your State, Too.

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How Mitch McConnell Tried—and Failed—to Weaken NSA Reform

by RogerFegan Posted on June 2, 2015

Mother Jones

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The USA Freedom Act, the bill that reforms the Patriot Act and stops the US government’s bulk collection of phone records, finally passed the Senate on Tuesday after the chamber rejected three amendments from GOP Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) aimed at weakening the bill’s reforms.

McConnell originally supported leaving the Patriot Act with all of its surveillance powers intact, but he faced resistance from both Democrats and Republicans, including die-hards such as Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) who were happy to let bulk collection simply disappear without creating a replacement. So McConnell agreed to proceed with the USA Freedom Act, but proposed four amendments to address what he called the bill’s “serious flaws.” (He withdrew one of them.)

Harley Geiger, chief counsel of the Center for Democracy and Technology, called McConnell’s amendments “unnecessary for national security” and said that they would “erode both privacy and transparency.”

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How Mitch McConnell Tried—and Failed—to Weaken NSA Reform

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Mayor: 6 Months Is "an Unacceptably Long Period of Time" to Investigate a Police Shooting

by JesseAunger Posted on May 29, 2015

Mother Jones

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When police officers shoot or kill unarmed civilians, it can take months, even years, for the incidents to be officially investigated and publicly explained. As Mother Jones recently reported, the cop who shot 12-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland had yet to be interviewed by investigators, more than six months since Rice’s death. The family of 37-year-old Tanisha Anderson, who died after being restrained by police last November, also in Cleveland, is still waiting for answers.

The case of Jerame Reid has gotten far less attention. Reid was a passenger in a car that was pulled over on December 30, 2014, in Bridgeton, New Jersey. As recorded by the police car’s dashboard camera, two officers approached the car and allegedly found a gun in the glove box. When the 36-year-old Reid tried to get out of the car with his hands apparently up and in front of his chest, the officers opened fire, and Reid died. The officers in the case—Roger Worley and Braheme Days—were placed on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of an investigation.

Nearly six months later, Reid’s family and his community are still waiting for answers. It’s not clear exactly where the investigation stands. Last weekend, a report in the New Jersey Star-Ledger suggested the case had been passed from the Cumberland County Prosecutor’s Office to the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office. A spokesman for the New Jersey AG told Mother Jones that the Cumberland County Prosecutor’s Office is still the lead agency in the investigation and declined further comment. A message sent to the Cumberland County Prosecutor’s Office wasn’t answered.

The wait has been too long, according to Bridgeton Mayor Albert Kelly. In an op-ed published earlier this week, Kelly lays out exactly why the wait in these cases is such a problem:

Six months may not seem like a long time if you’re in the Cumberland County Prosecutor’s Office handling multiple cases, nor would it seem a long time if your view is one taken from the perch of the Office of the Attorney General.

But it is an eternity if you’re the grieving widow and part of a grieving family wanting some sense of closure. It’s also a stunningly long time if you and your family are waiting around day after day to find out your fate and what the balance of the rest of your life might look like.

Beyond that, it may well be an unacceptably long period of time for an entire community waiting to find out what exactly happened to one of its own, for better or for ill, on a cold December night a few days after Christmas, at what began as a routine traffic stop.

The time involved, just like the questions involved, is no small thing because for anyone who cares—for anyone who knows how quickly things can go from zero to sixty in the blink of an eye at what was essentially a routine interaction between a police officer and a citizen—it’s about knowing where the lines are drawn and maybe where they got crossed.

Mayor Kelly’s letter expresses the growing impatience with the slow official responses to police killings that have long been the norm. As David Harris, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh, explained to Mother Jones reporter Jaeah Lee, recent events have changed the way Americans look at these investigations. “One year ago, we probably did not take a lot of notice,” he says. “It’s only since Ferguson, and especially since North Charleston and Baltimore, that we are seeing cases being evaluated and moved more rapidly.”

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Mayor: 6 Months Is "an Unacceptably Long Period of Time" to Investigate a Police Shooting

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Moving Photographs of Japanese-American Internees, Then and Now

by BradFoustr Posted on May 22, 2015

Mother Jones

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In early 1945, the federal government started to open the internment camps where it had held 120,000 Japanese Americans for much of World War II. Seven decades later, photographer Paul Kitagaki Jr. has been tracking down the internees pictured in wartime images by photographers like Dorothea Lange (who photographed Kitagaki’s own family—see below).

So far, he’s identified more than 50 survivors, often reshooting them in the locations where they were originally photographed.

Seven-year-olds Helene Nakamoto Mihara (left, in top photo) and Mary Ann Yahiro (center) were photographed by Lange as they recited the Pledge of Allegiance outside their elementary school in San Francisco in 1942. Both were sent to the Topaz Internment Camp in Utah. Yahiro (right, in bottom photo) was separated from her mother, who died in another camp. “I don’t have bitterness like a lot of people might,” she told Kitagaki.

Dorothea Lange

Paul Kitagaki Jr.

Lange photographed 19-year-old Mitsunobu “Mits” Kojimoto in San Francisco as he waited to be sent to the Santa Anita Assembly Center in Arcadia, California. “We were being kicked out of San Francisco,” he recalled to Kitagaki. “It was kind of shocking, because as you grow up you think you are going to have certain rights of life, liberty. And to be sitting there was very disheartening. I was really wishing that somebody would come and save us. We were citizens, but now we were not.”

Kojimoto volunteered for the army and received a Bronze Star for his service in France and Italy. “I felt, I’m going to volunteer,” he said. “Why not?…We were behind barbed wire, and we should put our best foot forward and volunteer.”

Dorothea Lange/UC Berkeley Bancroft Library

Paul Kitagaki Jr.

In one of the best known photographs of Japanese-American internment, 70-year-old Sakutaro Aso and his grandsons Shigeo Jerry Aso and Sadao Bill Aso wait to be deported from Hayward, California, in 1942. “When I look at the picture, I can see my grandfather realized that something terrible was happening and his life was never going to be the same again. That was the end of the line for him,” Bill Asano told Kitagaki about his grandfather. His brother, Jerry Aso, agrees: “So, grandfather’s dream of coming to the United States, his dream of making a life, his dream of having his children working in this business, to support them all were totally dashed.”

“My parents and my grandparents seldom talked about the internment experience, even though I know that it was a searing memory,” said Aso. “And I think because it was so searing, that they didn’t want to talk about it. But I think also, also the idea that, if you try to explain the unfairness of the whole situation, the explanation itself kind of falls on deaf ears.”

Dorothea Lange

Paul Kitagaki Jr.

Below, seven-year-old Mae Yanagi before being sent to the Tanforan Assembly Center in San Bruno, California, where her family spent several months in a horse stall before being shipped to a camp in Utah. The Yanagis left their home and nursery business in Hayward, California, in the care of a businessman. “When we got back, it had been sold,” Mae Yanagi Ferral told Kitagaki. “It was there, but somebody else was living there. We didn’t talk about it.” Her father had to start over as a gardener in Berkeley. “He had the most difficult time with the relocation and he never accepted the premise that they were doing it for our benefit. For many years he was very angry. My father felt the injustice of the interment, and my older siblings really felt the injustice of it. We just didn’t say anything about it.”

Dorothea Lange/UC Berkeley Bancroft Library

Paul Kitagaki Jr.

Harvey Akio Itano was interned in 1942, forcing him to miss his graduation from the University of California, Berkeley, where he was awarded the school’s highest academic honor in absentia. In the summer of 1942, he was allowed to leave Tule Lake War Relocation Center to attend medical school. Itano went on to help discover the genetic cause of sickle cell anemia while working with Dr. Linus Pauling at Cal Tech in 1949. He also worked as the medical director of the US Public Health Service and as a pathology professor at University of California, San Diego. In 1979, he became the first Japanese American to be elected to the National Academy of Sciences. He died in 2010.

Dorothea Lange

Paul Kitagaki Jr.

“We should be careful not to incarcerate whole groups of people, as they did,” Anna Nakada told Kitagaki. “We need to be very wary of that.” As a girl, Nakada was photographed during a 1945 performance at the Topaz War Relocation Center in Utah. After the war, Nakada became a master of ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arrangement. Internment, she reflected, “displaced our family in kind of a positive way rather than negative. It didn’t drag us down. In fact, it gave us some chances.”

War Relocation Authority/California Historical Society

Paul Kitagaki Jr.

Kitagki located former Boy Scouts Junzo Jake Ohara, Takeshi Motoyasu, and Eddie Tetsuji Kato, who had been photographed during a morning flag raising ceremony at the Heart Mountain Relocation Center in Wyoming. “I didn’t feel anything until later on,” said Ohara, who later became a pharmacist. “I got kind of angry, because of all the experiences that we went through, the losses, not for myself but for the parents and the older guys that had already graduated high school. You start to think about those guys.” After Takeshi returned home, he became an electrical engineer. “I think for us young guys it was not too bad,” he said. “They fed you, they clothed you. It’s just the persecution from you being the enemy, that’s the only thing that would bother you.”

Pat Coffey/War Relocation Authority/UC Berkeley Bancroft Library

Paul Kitagaki Jr.

Ibuki Hibi Lee stands in the exact location in Hayward, California, where she and her mother waited to board a bus with their belongings 70 years earlier. Her parents, Matsusaburo Hibi and Hisako Hibi, were artists who documented life in their internment camp in Utah. “You have to think of camp from the view of injustice,” Lee said. “And it was really an injustice to Japanese-Americans and those who were citizens. It had to do a lot with economics, racism and politics.”

Dorothea Lange

Paul Kitagaki Jr.

Lange photographed Suyematsu Kitagaki and Juki Kitagaki as they sat with their children, 11-year-old Kimiko and 14-year-old Kiyoshi, at the WCCA Control Station in Oakland, California, before being detained in May 1942. In the photo, a family friend hands Kimiko a pamphlet expressing good wishes toward the departing evacuees. The Kitagakis were later sent to the Topaz Internment Camp in Utah.

More than 60 years later, Paul Kitagaki Jr. joined his father and aunt outside the same Oakland building where they had been photographed with his grandparents. From left to right: Agnes Eiko Kitagaki (his mother), Kimiko Wong (his aunt), Paul Kiyoshi Kitagaki (his father), Sharon Young (his cousin), and Paul Kitagaki Jr.

Dorothea Lange

Paul Kitagaki Jr.

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Moving Photographs of Japanese-American Internees, Then and Now

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Here Are 13 Killings by Police Captured on Video in the Past Year

by AmberSuttor Posted on May 20, 2015

Mother Jones

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Screenshot from police video of the shooting of Jason Harrison in Dallas on June 14, 2014. Harrison’s family obtained the footage in a civil rights lawsuit and chose to publicize it.

From Ferguson last summer to Baltimore this spring, police killings of unarmed black men under questionable circumstances have sparked outrage, civil unrest, and a heated national debate about policing in the United States. As Mother Jones and others have reported, there isn’t sufficient data available for determining how many people are shot to death or otherwise killed by police each year, or how the issue might be trending. But more such incidents appear to be getting captured on video than ever before, due in part to the ubiquity of cellphone cameras. The footage—not only from cellphones, but also surveillance cameras, dashboard cameras in police cars, and police-worn body cameras—has caused a tectonic shift in public awareness.

More MoJo coverage on police shootings:


Itâ&#128;&#153;s Been 6 Months Since Tamir Rice Died, and the Cop Who Killed Him Still Hasn’t Been Questioned


The Tamir Rice Killing: “I Feel So Disgusted With the City of Cleveland.”


Exactly How Often Do Police Shoot Unarmed Black Men?


2 Shootings Caught on Camera, 2 Young Black Victims, Zero Charges


The Cop Who Choked Eric Garner to Death Won’t Pay a Dime


Philly Cops Shoot and Kill People at 6 Times the Rate of the NYPD


Here’s What Happens to Police Who Shoot Unarmed Black Men

Below are 13 videos of fatal police encounters recorded between March 16, 2014, and April 4, 2015. Most of the suspects killed were black. A majority of the suspects were unarmed. In three cases, the suspects killed reportedly had serious mental-health problems—which may have been known to the police in at least two of those cases at the time of the shootings.

Mother Jones has contacted law enforcement officials about the status of these 13 cases: Investigations are ongoing in eight of them. In one case, now six months old, the two officers involved still haven’t been questioned by investigators. Officers in the five other cases have been absolved of wrongdoing via local or state proceedings. (One of those five cases is currently under review by the US Department of Justice.) Three of the 24 officers total who were involved in the 13 cases are currently facing criminal charges.

WARNING: The videos below contain graphic footage that some viewers may find disturbing.

Suspect killed: James Boyd
Race: White
When: March 16, 2014
Where: Albuquerque, New Mexico
Footage from: Police-worn body camera

What happened: James Boyd, a homeless man who reportedly suffered from mental illnesses for years, was shot by Albuquerque police officers Keith Sandy and Dominique Perez after a standoff over Boyd’s hillside encampment in March 2014. Randi McGinn, the special prosecutor appointed to take over the case in April 2015, told Mother Jones that she is likely to pursue homicide charges, originally brought by the district attorney, and will make a determination in the next few weeks.

Suspect killed: Richard Ramirez
Race: White/Hispanic
When: April 14, 2014
Where: Billings, Montana
Footage from: Police dashboard camera

What happened: Richard Ramirez was in the back of a car that was pulled over by officer Grant Morrison. Morrison later testified that, after he ordered the passengers to put up their hands, Ramirez repeatedly dropped his left hand. Morrison stated that he thought Ramirez—who’d been identified as a suspect in an armed robbery the prior night—was reaching for a gun, so he shot him three times. Ramirez was unarmed. (In February 2013, Morrison shot and killed another man while on duty, and was cleared of any wrongdoing.) In January 2015, a coroner’s jury ruled the action a justifiable homicide.

Suspect killed: Jason Harrison
Race: Black
When: June 14, 2014
Where: Dallas
Footage from: Police-worn body camera

What happened: Harrison’s mother called police saying that her son was off his medication and acting out, and requested help to get him to a hospital. When Dallas police officers John Rogers and Andrew Hutchins arrived at the front door, Harrison’s mother stepped out, letting the officers know that her son was bipolar and schizophrenic. When Harrison came to the door, the officers told him to drop a screwdriver he was holding, and shot him when he failed to comply. According to the Dallas Morning News, the officers’ attorney said that they feared for their lives, because killing someone using a screwdriver would be “pretty easy. It’ll only take one blow.” In April 2015, a grand jury decided not to indict the officers.

Suspect killed: Eric Garner
Race: Black
When: July 17, 2014
Where: Staten Island, New York
Footage from: Bystander’s cellphone

What happened: In July 2014, police approached Eric Garner on a Staten Island street after Garner had broken up a fight, and then started questioning him about selling loose cigarettes. NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo wrapped his arm around Garner’s neck from behind in a takedown maneuver and held Garner on the ground as Garner repeatedly said, “I can’t breathe.” Garner was later pronounced dead at the hospital. In December 2014, a grand jury decided not to indict Pantaleo.

Suspect killed: John Crawford III
Race: Black
Where: August 5, 2014
Where: Beavercreek, Ohio
Footage from: Walmart surveillance camera

What happened: Crawford, 22, was walking around in a Walmart holding a BB gun that had been for sale on the store’s shelves. Responding to a 911 call about a man waving a gun, Beavercreek officer Sean Williams and Sergeant David Darkow arrived at the Walmart. The officers later told investigators that Williams opened fire after Crawford failed to comply with their orders to drop the gun. A grand jury decided in September 2014 not to indict the officers. The US Department of Justice launched a review of the case last September, which is ongoing, a DOJ spokesperson confirmed to Mother Jones.

Suspect killed: Dillon Taylor
Race: White
When: August 11, 2014
Where: Salt Lake City
Footage from: Police-worn body camera

What happened: Dillon Taylor, his brother, and his cousin were outside a convenience store and allegedly matched the description from a 911 call about three men, including one brandishing a gun. Officer Bron Cruz confronted the trio and began following Taylor, who initially walked away with his back toward Cruz. Taylor then turned around and kept walking backward, and had both hands in his waistband, according to Cruz. Cruz said he thought Taylor had a gun, and he repeatedly yelled at Taylor to get his hands out, before firing two shots. Taylor was unarmed. In September 2014, the Salt Lake City District Attorney determined the shooting was justified.

Suspect killed: Kajieme Powell
Race: Black
When: August 19, 2014
Where: St. Louis
Footage from: Bystander’s cellphone

What happened: A bystander’s cellphone video shows Powell, 25, walking around outside a corner grocery store after allegedly stealing energy drinks and pastries. As he paced back and forth, a police car pulled onto the sidewalk just up the street and two police officers got out. Powell, who was brandishing a knife, began to approach the officers (whose names have not been released), telling them to shoot him. After a pause, he took another step toward the officers and they opened fire. St. Louis Metro police chief Sam Dotson later stated that Powell “came at the officers” while gripping the knife. In February, the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department did not request charges when it handed off its investigation to the circuit attorney’s office, whose probe is ongoing, a spokesperson confirmed.

Suspect killed: Tamir Rice
Race: Black
When: November 22, 2014
Where: Cleveland
Footage from: Surveillance camera

What happened: Rice, 12, was playing in a local park when someone called 911 and reported that a person, “probably a juvenile,” was waving a gun around that was “probably fake.” Police officers Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback pulled up to Rice in their patrol car and Loehmann got out and shot Rice almost instantly. No charges have been filed in the case. As Mother Jones first reported last week, the Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Department, which took control of the case in January, has yet to interview the two officers in its ongoing investigation.

Suspect killed: Jerame Reid
Race: Black
When: December 30, 2014
Where: Bridgeton, New Jersey
Footage from: Dashboard camera

What happened: Reid was a passenger in a car that was pulled over for allegedly running a stop sign. Officers Braheme Days and Roger Worley approached the car, and despite verbal warnings from the officers, Reid opened his door and reportedly got out of the car with his hands up, after saying “I ain’t doing nothing. I’m not reaching for nothing, bro,” according to the Associated Press. Both Days and Worley shot him. The officers were placed on paid administrative leave pending the investigation, and Reid’s family has filed a civil rights lawsuit in federal court against the city of Bridgeton. (Days is also facing a separate lawsuit for alleged rape.)

Suspect killed: Antonio Zambrano-Montes
Race: Hispanic
When: February 10, 2015
Where: Pasco, Washington
Footage from: Bystander’s cellphone

What happened: After responding to a call of a man throwing rocks in a grocery store parking lot, three Pasco police officers tried to arrest Zambrano. They pursued him on foot, shooting at him as he ran, and they fired at close range as he turned around to face them. In the video, his hands appear to have been empty. Officers Ryan Flanagan, Adam Wright, and Adrian Alaniz were placed on paid leave, and an investigation is ongoing.

Suspect killed: Charly Keunang
Race: Black
When: March 1, 2015
Where: Los Angeles
Footage from: Bystander’s cellphone

What happened: Six police officers were responding to a 911 call about an alleged robbery and assault on LA’s Skid Row, in which Keunang was reportedly a suspect. During a struggle with police, Keunang, who reportedly suffered from mental health problems, allegedly reached for an officer’s gun, prompting several officers to open fire. The three officers who fired their guns—Sergeant Chand Syed, and Officers Francisco Martinez and Daniel Torres—have been reassigned to administrative duty and an internal police department investigation is ongoing, the LAPD confirmed to Mother Jones. Keunang’s family has filed a $20 million civil claim against the city.

Suspect killed: Phillip White
Race: Black
When: March 31, 2015
Where: Vineland, New Jersey
Footage from: Bystander’s cellphone

What happened: Responding to a call of a man acting erratically, police handcuffed and restrained the 32-year-old White. According to investigators, White became unresponsive and received CPR in an ambulance on the way to the hospital, where he eventually died. Police called it an “in-custody non-shooting death,” but witnesses on the scene said the officers beat White and that a police dog bit him in the face. An investigation by the Cumberland County prosecutor’s office is ongoing. The officers in the case, Louis Platania and Rich Janasiak, are both on administrative leave, according to news reports.

Suspect killed: Walter Scott
Race: Black
When: April 4, 2015
Where: North Charleston, South Carolina
Footage from: Police dashboard camera and bystander’s cellphone

What happened: Dashboard camera footage showed Scott running away from his vehicle after North Charleston police officer Michael Slager pulled Scott over for a broken brake light. In the following minutes, recorded on a bystander’s cellphone, Slager caught up to Scott in an open field, and after a short struggle, Scott, who was unarmed, broke free and began to run away. Slager then shot Scott multiple times from behind. Slager was fired from his job and faces a felony murder charge.

More:

Here Are 13 Killings by Police Captured on Video in the Past Year

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The Future of Lethal Injection Is Being Debated at the Supreme Court. Read These 6 Stories Now.

by KarineGettinger Posted on April 29, 2015

Mother Jones

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Same-sex marriage is not the only major item on the Supreme Court’s docket this week: Today, the court will begin considering the future of a drug used in lethal injections. The suit, Glossip v. Gross, was brought by three Oklahoma inmates sentenced to death and challenges the use of the sedative Midazolam. The inmates’ lawyers argue that the drug—used in the botched execution of Clayton Lockett, who gasped for air and writhed in pain for a prolonged period as he was put to death—violates the Eighth Amendment’s protection from cruel and unusual punishment.

While only four states currently administer Midazolam, a Supreme Court ruling upholding its use could lead more states to employ the drug in executions. An opposite ruling could make lethal injection, and death penalty execution in general, rarer than it is now. Outlawing Midazolam, one of the few available lethal injection drugs, could leave states without any viable alternatives. Ahead of the oral arguments, read up on Mother Jones‘ best coverage of lethal injection and death penalty issues.

The story of the botched Oklahoma execution that sparked the Supreme Court case.
Why lethal injection is a terrible way to kill people.
The facts on the lethal injection cocktail, which includes Midazolam, that states have begun using.
Sometimes, the executioners administering the drug have no idea what they’re doing.
Arizona has a particularly bad track record on lethal injection.
The story of Ohio’s effort to shield what happens in the execution chamber.

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The Future of Lethal Injection Is Being Debated at the Supreme Court. Read These 6 Stories Now.

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Detroit Just Had the Single Largest Tax Foreclosure in American History

by ChadwickEager Posted on April 21, 2015

Mother Jones

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This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

Unlike so many industrial innovations, the revolving door was not developed in Detroit. It took its first spin in Philadelphia in 1888, the brainchild of Theophilus Van Kannel, the soon-to-be founder of the Van Kannel Revolving Door Company. Its purpose was twofold: to better insulate buildings from the cold and to allow greater numbers of people easier entry at any given time.

On March 31st at the Wayne Country Treasurer’s Office, that Victorian-era invention was accomplishing neither objective. Then again, no door in the history of architecture—rotating or otherwise—could have accommodated the latest perversity Detroit officials were inflicting on city residents: the potential eviction of tens of thousands, possibly as many as 100,000 people, all at precisely the same time.

Little wonder that it seemed as if everyone was getting stuck in the rotating doors of that Wayne County office building on the last day residents could pay their past-due property taxes or enter a payment plan to do so. Those who didn’t, the city warned, would lose their homes to tax foreclosure, the process by which a local government repossesses a house because of unpaid property taxes.

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Detroit Just Had the Single Largest Tax Foreclosure in American History

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