… Then maybe Beyonce would have dedicated the Super Bowl halftime show to him.
That seems to be the sentiment and level of understanding on the issue of race relations and the Constitution we’re receiving from certain circles. Nevada State Assembly Member Shelley Shelton even said that Finicum, who was killed by the FBI while being arrested along with several other members of the domestic terrorist cult who “occupied” federal property in Oregon for more than one month, was just like Jesus, or Moses, or something.
“In any given generation there are men who are willing to stand for what they believe,” Shelton said in a Facebook post. “Most of the time they are demonized and the uninformed are made to believe they are criminals.”
“From Moses who killed an Egyptian for abusing his people, to Jesus who died on a cross as a condemned criminal, many of those who operate outside the box and promote love and justice over the current form of government are treated as outcasts and many times murdered,” she added.
And of course if Finicum had not been white, there would be hell to pay over his death at the hands of law enforcement.
“This has to be the most amazing and blatant attempt at trickery I have ever witnessed,” Shelton wrote. “America, are we are supposed to believe that LaVoy Finicum got out of the truck with his hands raised, with guns pointed at him from all directions, walked out in the open away from the truck, his only cover, and THEN decided to reach for a firearm?”
“If this happened anywhere else, with any other race or class of American the media would be throwing a fit AND SO WOULD I,” the Nevada Republican wrote. “Where are you now? I spent the entire session in Carson City fighting for the rights of every citizen of every race, creed or social class to gain protection from this very type of tragedy. Where are you now? Can we finally drop the labels and the race cards and come together for justice for all Americans? Democrats, ACLU, I worked with you there for justice. Where are you now?”
Yes, clearly it’s Finicum’s lack of pigment that has the media cowed and reluctant to create a frenzy over his shooting. As this essay was being written, the FBI had begun to move in to end the Oregon standoff with a siege of the remaining occupiers of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge (Editor’s note: The last of the occupiers was ousted Thursday). But a fascinating aspect is the dainty patience that has been afforded these people. The same patience certainly has never been afforded to persons of color who similarly protested the government.
One example we can contrast to Ammon Bundy and Lavoy Finicum is the occupation of Alcatraz Island by Native Americans 45 years ago.
Shortly before dawn on November 20, 1969, 89 American Indians boarded boats in Sausalito, California, and made a five-mile trip across foggy San Francisco Bay to Alcatraz Island. Upon landing, they declared the former prison Indian land “by right of discovery” and demanded the U.S. government provide funding to turn it into a Native American cultural center and university. When their terms were ignored, the activists spent more than 19 months occupying the island in defiance of the authorities. Federal officials finally removed the last of the protestors from “the Rock” in June 1971, but not before the occupation had started a national dialogue about the plight of American Indians.
This occupation went through many changes before its end, which came after the daughter of one of the primary organizers died in an accident. Many of the other activists departed on their own, only to be replaced by vagrants looking for free lodging rather than taking a political stand. Eventually it ended with a whimper, not a bang.
Despite increasingly squalid living conditions and flagging outside support, a few holdouts continued to live on the Rock for another year. “I don’t want to say Alcatraz is done with,” former occupier Adam Fortunate Eagle lamented to San Francisco Chronicle in April 1971, “but no organized Indian groups are active there. It has turned from an Indian movement to a personality thing.” Citing a need to restore Alcatraz’s foghorn and lighthouse, government officials finally quashed the occupation on June 11, 1971, when armed federal marshals descended on the island and removed the last of its Indian residents. By then, the occupation force had dwindled to a skeleton crew of only six men, five women and four children.
So the view that these non-white occupiers managed to gain a much higher media profile than Ammon Bundy and Finicum doesn’t really follow, based on past experience.
But clearly Shelton wasn’t referring to the Alcatraz occupation with her statements. It’s far more likely that she was actually saying there should be a Clueless White Assholes Lives Matter protest movement in response to his death.
For example, the Bundys have essentially argued that the federal government has no justification or jurisdiction over the states based on their interpretation of the Constitution. Yet somehow, they continually miss this particular clause from Article 6:
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding
It’s rock, paper, scissors. State law is paper, federal law is scissors. One trumps the other. Get over it.
And of course, her clear point was that if Finicum had been black people would be marching in the streets and dancing on the 50-yard line at the Super Bowl in tribute to him—at least they would until Rudy Giuliani set them straight with his claim that he’s saved more black lives than Beyonce ever has or will.
“At a time in which police officers have a target on their back, when you only emphasize the few small number of situations in which police officers kill people as opposed to the enormous number of times in which people are killed by other people and in the African American community it’s African Americans killing African Americans. I think this is not just any time, this is a time in which police officers feel they have a target on their back.”
Giuliani says that if Beyoncé and others dare to take up the issue of police brutality at all, especially on such a big stage with a huge audience, that even as artists they have to be responsible and show both sides.
“I’ve seen too many cops die saving the lives of people and maybe some emphasis should be given to that. And at a moment like that with 90 million people watching you, to not at least give the other side of the story when that’s the side of the story that’s really saving the lives. Not a bunch of political rhetoric. Look, the reality is the way in which most people are killed in this country are by other people, not by cops. Cops save a lot more lives than they cost.”
First, it should be noted that Giuliani has a habit of quoting fake crime stats. And so far he has failed to acknowledge what independent research by sources such as The Guardian has noted: That the number of persons killed by police every year is hardly a “few small number of situations” but instead sits at more than 1,100 each year. Police have killed more than 100 people so far this year—and it’s only February. According to Mother Jones, the likelihood of a black person being killed by police is four times greater than a white person, so there’s that to consider as well. But it’s not just an issue of quantity: It’s an issue of the “quality” of the shootings, too.
If Lavoy Finicum had been treated the way that Rudy Giuliani’s NYPD treated Patrick Dorismond, he would have been unarmed and shot to death without warning by undercover officers.
The shooting was the third in 13 months in which plainclothes officers shot and killed an unarmed man. It came just as tensions that rose with the acquittal of four officers in the shooting of Amadou Diallo and another fatal shooting by the police a week later had begun to ebb.
Like the earlier two incidents, this shooting involved a black victim. Detective Vasquez and his two partners are Hispanic.
''I would urge everyone not to jump to conclusions,'' Mr. Giuliani said, ''and to allow the facts to be analyzed and investigated without people trying to let their biases, their prejudices, their emotions, their stereotypes dictate the results.''
And people like the former mayor would blame the shooting on the dead person and his “criminal past.”
Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani asserted to a largely black audience in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn last night that a grand jury had found that Patrick M. Dorismond, the unarmed black man shot dead last March by the police, was responsible for his own death because of ''the violent way in which he acted'' during a brawl outside a Manhattan bar.
As the crowd booed, Mr. Giuliani said: ''Well, that's the reality. Sometimes the truth is hard to deal with. But that's the reality of what the grand jury finally resolved.''
…
Last night, Mr. Giuliani said the domestic fight was ''consistent with Mr. Dorismond's prior record of violence.'' As the crowd booed again, Mr. Giuliani chuckled, then moved on to the next question.
And speaking of Amadou Diallo, it’s clear that Mr. Giuliani was much more sympathetic when that unarmed young man was shot by police—or not, because “drugs.”
NEW YORK — The morning after an undercover officer fatally shot an unarmed man in the Bronx neighborhood where Amadou Diallo was also killed, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said yesterday he could not guarantee similar police shootings would not occur there in the future.
"How can I say that it's not going to happen again?" he asked at a news conference about the shooting of Malcolm Ferguson, killed by only a few blocks from where Diallo lived. "When we cure drug dealing, significant violent crime - when we cure all that, then this will not happen again."
…
Six days ago, an Albany jury acquitted four white undercover officers who fired 41 shots at Diallo in the vestibule of his Bronx apartment building, and a Brooklyn jury is considering the fate of three officers charged with concealing the police torture of Abner Louima.
So you see if Lavoy Finicum had not been white, we could have counted on someone like Giuliani coming out to explain that his death at the hands of police, even though he was armed, was all his own fault because he of his own history of repeatedly predicting his own death at the hands of the feds. Guiliani would insist that he shouldn’t have been hanging around two cop killers, not to mention the rest of his rowdy crowd of ex-convicts who were by law prohibited from carrying guns.
Last week, US magistrate Stacie Beckerman ordered Ammon, his brother Ryan Bundy and three others to remain in custody without bail.
Some of the men, including Ammon, have appealed the bail denials, and a series of new detention hearings are scheduled this week starting Tuesday.
Prosecutors have cited many of their past offenses, arguing that it would be too dangerous to release them while the case moves forward.
Jason Patrick, a 43-year-old Georgia resident and one of the last holdouts at the refuge , faced charges in August 2014 of “making terrorist threats” after he “threatened to kill everyone” inside a Georgia municipal court building, according to prosecutors.
Patrick posted bond in that case and was released, but agreed not to possess weapons – a condition that he has since violated. He was photographed with guns during the occupation, prosecutors noted.
And also to blame? Their doing the drugs.
It was unclear how many people remained inside the refuge, but one of them — identified as David Fry, who is from suburban Cincinnati — has been posting live streaming video of the holdouts as they drink beer, smoke marijuana and await an anticipated shootout with law enforcement officers.
“We’re jut chilling, waiting for the government to pop us in the head or something,” Fry said in one video. “Holding our ground.”
Yes, video shows that Finicum reached for his loaded weapon twice before FBI agents eventually shot him. Unlike 12-year-old Tamir Rice who never did reach for the toy gun he had in the two seconds he was afforded before Cincinnati Cleveland police shot him; or Jonathan Crawford, who was also unarmed and only had about two seconds after police demanded he “drop the weapon” to which he responded “It’s not real...” just before he was shot to death; or Jonathan Farrell, who was unarmed and asking for help after he had been in a car accident and was clearly distressed and disoriented before being shot by police; or Walter Scott, who was unarmed and shot in the back while fleeing from an officer over his back child support payments; or Michael Brown, who was unarmed and falling after being shot in the arm (once from behind and once when his hand was raised) and chest before Officer Darren WIlson shot him in the head twice and killed him; or Nicholas Robertson, who had a an empty gun but was shot simply for looking over his shoulder at police (not aiming it at anyone); or Cedric Chapman, who was shot in the back by Chicago police while running away; or Laquan McDonald, who had a knife but was moving away from officers when he was shot; or Freddie Gray, or Kendric McDade, or Darrien Hunt, or Eric Garner, or Oscar Grant, or any one of more than 1,000 others.
Even though Finicum was armed, in the company of a pack of felons, and was in the process of breaking federal law, it’s an absolute certainty that Rudy Giuliani would stand up for those poor, lowly federal officers and tell them “Good job” for taking him down in such a fair, efficient manner.
Right?
He would surely say that those officers “saved lives,” just as he continues to claim that his own policies in New York saved lives—even though many cities’ crime rates went down at the same rate as in New York. Even though 99 percent of the 4 million people that NYPD stopped, questioned, and frisked over that past two decades didn’t have a gun and hadn’t committed any crime, while people like Giuliani continue to claim that in some oddball hyper-clairvoyant pre-crime Minority Report manner, crimes that would have happened simply didn’t happen—thanks to him.
He also claimed that without him and his policies crime would “explode”—except that it hasn’t in NYC.
"If only stop-and-frisk was responsible for getting guns off the street,” Jennifer Carnig, director of communications at the New York Civil Liberties Union, said. “During the [Michael] Bloomberg administration, when the practice grew out-of-control, street stops targeted innocent people. During the entire 11-year period for which we have data available, the NYPD stopped innocent people upwards of 4 million times, and the gun-recovery rate was .016 percent."
Similarly, as the number of police stops ballooned by 600 percent under Mayor Bloomberg -- peaking in 2011 at nearly 700,000 stops -- the number of shootings and murders stayed relatively flat. And from 2011 to 2013, when the number of police stops dropped a precipitous 75 percent, the number of shootings and murders also dropped, by 29 percent. The city’s murder rate, meanwhile, fell to a historic low in 2013.
You see, if Lavoy Finicum had not been white, the city where he was shot would not only have refused to indict those who killed him: They would eventually sue his family for the EMT costs of taking his body from the scene, the way Cleveland is suing the family of Tamir Rice for $500.
Nearly 15 months after a Cleveland police officer fatally shot Tamir Rice, 12, while the boy was playing with a pellet gun near a recreation area, the city sued to collect $500 for his “last dying expense” — the cost of his emergency medical treatment.
The documents were signed by legal officials and posted online, drawing condemnation from the family’s lawyers, one of whom called the suit by the city on Wednesday “nothing short of breathtaking.”
That’s what it’s like to be not white, in America.