KARMIC JUSTICE — 4 KILLED COPS
by Joseph Anderson
March 27 2009
Most people of color know that the cops, and police departments as an institution, *historically* represent the street enforcement arm of white American racism. Indeed, the police were born out of the white slave patrols.
People of color and conscious white people have seen how the cops have brutalized, especially, many members of the Black and Brown community — just the latest, in a long series of notorious cases in the Bay Area and all over the country, being the police murder of Oscar Grant — and sometimes (which doesn’t get as much notice) even members of the Asian community — and now (even just recently in San Francisco) peaceful protesters and members of the Arab community (specifically women and children). And just relatively recently, in Oakland, 11 cops were fired for falsifying a whole series of search warrants, and the head of OPD Internal Affairs was put on leave, pending the investigation of his having effectively beaten, in his custody, a Black suspect to death years ago. How soon we forget the Oakland Riders case, and the damage control performed there to politically limit the corruption investigation and exposure to those corrupt street cops, but not the department in whose culture and corruption they were spawned. I’ve heard that Oakland alone pays out (at least averaged over time) about 2 million dollars a year in police brutality cases.
U.S. flags were flown at half-mast for these dead cops — tried, sentenced and executed in the streets just like they do with people of color — but no flags were flown at half-mast over city hall by the Black mayor of Oakland for Oscar Grant. Ron Dellums took a week to say anything about Grant, and then only spoked in carefully indirect and tepid terms. But Dellums, of course, immediately, personally and vociferously condemned the killings of the cops right away. So, much for some of those docilized middle-&-above-class negroes (male and female above the intersection of race and class) who condemn the cop deaths (on TV, radio, even one Black female on KPFA’s Hard Knock Radio) by saying that “all life is equal”. Since when, right from its founding and upon who’s lives it was established (Red, Black, Yellow and Brown), has all life ever “been equal” in the history of AmeriKKKa?
At least a couple of the TV local news stations have shown a servile Rev. Philip Ellinberg, some neegro (probably what we Blacks call “a jackleg / bootleg preacher”, since I tried to look him up online, and in the phone book, and with telephone directory assistance, and found nothing) who’s supposed to sing for Massa at the dead cops funeral, but he didn’t sing at Oscar Grant’s funeral and I haven’t seen him anywhere at the Oscar Grant Movement meetings almost every Saturday in Oakland at Olivet Missionary Baptist Church.
Where were the flags at half-mast, and the state and mass media coverage funeral, for Oscar Grant and other unarmed, innocent victims of killer cops vigilantism and street executions? All the Bay Area cities have to do is to look at the names on the boards of the Stolen Lives project and portable mural. Do you think that any of the Bay Area cities would even just fly their flags at half-mast just one day, collectively for ALL of those victims of the police?
And we forget (or don’t know) that one of the cops who was only wounded, but should have been killed, was Sgt. Pat Gonzales, who shot a young Gary King Jr. (Black) in the back and killed him. Cops up in (or north of) Napa/Sonoma valley even went and gratuitously killed the Black adopted son of an affluent white married couple who made the mistake of calling the cops to help calm down their emotionally distraught son.
You know the old saying, “When The White Man is hurt evvveryone must cry.” But LOTS of people AREN’T CRYING over 4 killed cops — including even a lot of politically conscious white people — and AREN’T MOURNING in this state mass propaganda funeral. While the cops and the media even come up with suspiciously last-minute stories to try to tell us just “how bad” Lovelle Mixon was (how about research into those dead cops background to see how abusive and dirty they were?), many of us realize that _IT’S KARMIC JUSTICE_ whoever killed the 4 cops all in an afternoon’s work. And it’s KARMIC JUSTICE that, just as many Blacks in America have been murdered by cops during a “routine” traffic stop, these cops were killed during a “routine” traffic stop. Ha-Ha.
The cops called Lovelle Mixon, “A cold-hearted individual who doesn’t have any regard for human life.” Well, the cops should know: they behave exactly the same way.
Cops 2; Oakland residents 4.
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Joseph Anderson
Berkeley, California
March 27, 2009
(Written as the Oakland cops funerals are occuring.)
This is the first thing that pops into my mind…. If folks in Iraq or Afghanistan kicked the US out of their country, I’d be happy because the occupation is unjust. But I don’t think I could cheer the death of US soliders in the process. Though I think that many folks imagine police officers as being far more complicit it the workings of the oppressive system they are a part of than a common solider for the US military. Its food for though.
But thanks Davey D for having the courage to put these articles out on your blog.
similar 2 the Minister of Info JR of the POCC piece, still solid nonetheless. This is really how most folks, especially youngstas feel in the Town. I can hear the sirens and helicopters rite now..
You are a silly silly man. Lets turn 911 off in Oakland and let all you idiots rape, murder and rob each other – less for us tax payers to worry about!! You don’t deserve the protection of the police department. I wonder, if you bothered to even compare the numbers (which I am sure you did not because it would prove to you that police are not your true enemy) how many black and browns were killed by other blacks and browns and vs. black and browns killed by the police…think about it idiot. Who is the REAL PROBLEM…not the COPS!
Yoli: man,u sound like a fucking joke,like u don’t know what went on in the 60’s & 70’s in the big O,with these cracker ass pigs killing or setting up black man 4 that long stay in prison or casket. Black folks out here don’t codem any murder,because we hate crime,just like the next man,but don’t ask us 2 shed a tear for 4 cops dead. It aint go happen,but 4 oscar grant,I shed tears and salute that brotha,he didn’t have 2 die in cold blood and if that cop that shot him get off. God help us….
Lets turn 9-1-1 off in Oakland and let all you idiots rape, murder, and rob each other-less for us taxpayers to worry about.
This typifies the comments made by folks of color who are in denial and underestimate the racial and class issues folks still endure because they think that they made good. Many police-though by no means all/there are always exceptions to the rule- are not doing jack in alot of these areas. It is not as if they rush in to answer an emergency in the hood/barrio/reservation/Asiantown/trailerpark when something happens. They don’t. Hell-there are documented cases of residents getting killed for giving information to the police to help the police catch
criminals simply because the police made little attempt to protect the witness/whistleblowers. I am not talking about somebody getting killed under witness protection or in the course of the police trying to do the job-I am talking about the police sending the witness/whistleblower back out on the street with no protection when the police said it would protect the person. I am not sure I celebrate the murder of the police but I am “tired” of people acting like what happened to Oscar Grant or the Pena girl/toddler is just a bad accident or something that does not normally happen. Indeed this happens too much-these are the cases we are lucky to hear about/they are the tip of the iceberg- and the sad thing about at least several of these cases is that these people are not usually resisting the police or arrest!You may very well have cases like that but those cases are not the norm. The citizen ain’t always right but the citizen ain’t always wrong. The police ain’t always wrong but the police ain’t always right. As for blacks and browns killing most of their own-so freaking what-what group “doesn’t” kill more members of their own groups than outsiders-including whites. Seriously. It is not as if folks apologize for black/brown-on-black/brown crime or excuse it when many of the community initiatives started by residents try to counter these things. Anyway, how does internal crime amongst gang members justify the mistreatment that ordinary law abiding citizens or guilty ones that do not resist the police/arrest face? But no, Davey D is not silly, people that cut “rogue cops” too much slack are.
I had a feeling that it was going to come to this – the chickens are coming home to roost. What racist cops are putting on Black, Brown and other non-white people is comin’ right back at ’em and I predict that there will probably be a lot more of cop killings in the future.
Then again, as long as: 1)ameriKKKa is STILL a STOLEN CONTINENT, 2)the descendants of those stealers CONTROL THE CONTINENT, and 3)the descendants of those who it was stolen from and the descendants of those who WERE STOLEN to build it for those who stole, are still viewed as subhuman, then incidents like this will continue to happen. As H Rap said, violence is as ameriKKKan as cherry pie, and so is racism – and some people have the audacity to question why the Black Panthers even came into existence. It’s not rocket science. Anything built and created from an origin of entropy and evil, is bound and doomed to go back to, and sucuumb to what it originated from.
I know better than anyone that there are some bad cops out there, my family has been a victim of a few bad cops over the years…but there are a lot of bad people out there and only a few bad cops, the majority are good. Cops are our last resort & protection from the criminals and sicko’s who prey on the rest of us. Anyone who says it is alright to kill a cop is sick in the head – killing ANYONE is WRONG!!! You can not separate cop from civilian…and if you do you are just a hypocrite. I agree, we are living on stolen land…so according to what Critical Eye feels, we should all go back to our ancestral homes…back to Africa, back to Central/South America & back to Asia…the whites can go back to Europe and leave North America to the Native Americans…that is a great idea. Then you can see with your own UNEDUCATED EYES that indeed – America is not the only country that has a problem with violence. Then perhaps you will finally see just how lucky we, as Americans, are. Have you EVER lived in a 3rd world country Critical Eye? I doubt it. Have you ever looked into the history of the slave trade??? Have you noticed that slavery has effected every culture on the planet and all races have been enslaved by another culture at some time. As a black woman who struggles every day with raising my children right, in Oakland, I decided LONG ago to stop making excuses for my problems and start taking the bull by the horns and making my life what I want it to be. I will not sit on my butt and cry about what society has done too me….society has not done anything to me…but I will and my children will add to this American society and make it a better place. Your life and your happiness are your responsibility, stop blaming outside forces. We can not live in the past anymore, MLK Jr. would be extremely saddened if he read comments on this page by the people who want to keep the unrest and anger alive. Live by the Golden Rule…did your mother not teach you that?
Yoli: “…killing ANYONE is WRONG!!!”
Was it wrong to kill the Nazis during WWII???
Was it wrong to kill invading/attacking fascist soldiers from Japan and Italy during WWII???
Was it wrong to kill their pilots who respectively bombed England and Hawai’i and Ethiopia?
Was it wrong to kill head Nazi leaders, sentenced to death, during Nuremburg and Mussolini?
Was it wrong for the Vietnamese liberation fighters to kill Japanese, French and American soldiers who were mass murderously trying to take over and colonize Vietnam?
Was it wrong during American slavery for the Union to kill attacking Confederate troops during the U.S. Civil War?
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Yoli: “Then you can see with your own UNEDUCATED EYES that indeed – America is not the only country that has a problem with violence. Then perhaps you will finally see just how lucky we, as Americans, are.”
Obviously you’ve never been overseas (except maybe only in the military, if that). A woman can walk home (or to a friend’s place, or to a restaurant, or to her job) by herself on the streets of many Western European and Asian villages, towns, and cities (like in Seoul, a city of 13 million people) in the middle of the night with about 99% safety — unless she is near any American military base that might be there where she (even very young teenage girls in the evening) risks a much higher potential of being kidnapped and/or raped and/or murdered.
Also, in many Western, and especially Northern, European countries the average standard of living (including the social safety net) is much higher than that in the U.S..
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Yoli: “Have you noticed that slavery has effected every culture on the planet and all races have been enslaved by another culture at some time.”
Nope…, not true. Many communal cultures did NOT have slavery.
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Yoli: “… there [are] only a few bad cops, the majority are good. … As a black woman…in Oakland…”
Then you must be on CRACK!
adamfreedom, on March 31st, 2009 at 3:29 am said:
“This is the first thing that pops into my mind…. If folks in Iraq or Afghanistan kicked the US out of their country, I’d be happy because the occupation is unjust. But I don’t think I could cheer the death of US soliders in the process.”
I BET THAT PLENTY OF IRAQIS AND AFGHANS DO.
ABOUT THE ONLY TIME YOU SEE IRAQIS / AFGHANS CHEERING AND DANCING IN THE STREETS (especially the Iraqi resistance fighters — as opposed to that staged propaganda play organized by the U.S. military and perpetrated by a handful of Iraqi sellout compradors, Chalabi-ites, when Saddam’s statue was pulled down) WAS/IS WHEN AMERICAN SOLDIERS ARE KILLED.
Most of the ordinary whites who fought in the Confederacy didn’t even own slaves! They were fighting for the rich plantation owners — the slavery version of *agricorp*! The U.S. doesn’t even get most of its oil from the Mideast (most of it comes from Africa and South America). And the American ground troops who fight as mass murderers and cannon fodder for the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan don’t even own an oil well or an oil pipeline: it’s the young and the poor fighting for the old and the rich.
You’re either on the side of the oppressor or the oppressed — on the side of either domination or liberation. And if you’re fighting for the oppressor (killing men, women, the elderly, the infirmed, boys, girls, babies, phosphorus bombing refugee camps, hospitals and entire small/medium cities), then you gotta die. Unlike our *victims* in imperialist / colonialist wars, you know what?: *WE* have a choice.
As Tracy James of “Slave Revolt Radio” says (see online), “IT’S *SLAVE REVOLT* TIME!!”
Using Joseph Anderson’s twisted logic every black man in America should pay with lives for the sins of their fellow blacks. After all, blacks kill and commit violent crime at a vastly disproportinate rate. That’s insane though, just as mocking the murder of innocent men who’s only crime was protecting the public is despicable.
Kevin, on April 11th, 2009 at 2:23 am said: “After all, blacks kill and commit violent crime at a vastly disproportinate rate.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.: “I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to THE GREATEST PURVEYOR OF VIOLENCE IN THE WORLD TODAY — MY OWN GOVERNMENT.”
OTHER THAN THAT, WE’LL JUST LET “KEVIN’S” _RACIST_ AND FACTUALLY INCORRECT COMMENT SPEAK FOR ITSELF.
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OHHH, THE *SCALLOPS* at Auberge du Soleil in Napa Valley *WERE*, POSITIVELY, TO-DIE-FOR!
Joseph Anderson, Berkeley, CA
November 10, 2007 | 2:11 pm
Leslie Sbrocco opens the show every week by saying that this is a restaurant review show by “ordinary San Franciscans / Bay Area people”: she should stick to that format.
I’ve never been a fan of celebrity San Franciscans appearing on this show because it doesn’t then reflect the real-world treatment of “ordinary people”. (Like my African American dinner party being almost literally shoo’d off even before we could finish our after dinner tea at Tadich Grill in San Francisco or how long another party of mine was once kept waiting for our table –with advance dinner reservations– at Oliveto in Oakland. Needless to say, we never went back.)
For one, the celebrities and other rich folks usually have tons of money for going out and like to brag about how often they go to Postrio or someplace that’s at the very least $50-$75 and over –without drinks. For two, of course, they’re often unconsciously snobbish (like Liam Mayclem, supposedly “a man of the people”, yet are surprised that reservations aren’t normally made at a +/-$10-$12 average entree place, unless you have a large group) and they’re used to personally special treatment at very expensive restuarants who already know them well as “special customers” who get service, treatment and food exactly the way the restaurant knows the celebrity likes it. Of course, when everyone (the owner, manager and staff) knows you as a celebrity or someone else rich who has deep pockets, you’re going to get the best service, food and treatment all around.
Finally, the celebrities and other rich regulars take it so *personally* when someone else doesn’t especially like “their [the celebrity’s] restaurant” — and then they use the whole show trying to get back at the other person and often butting heads with them — or back-&-forth with each other if they other person is a local/minor celebrity too and/or financially fairly well-off in his own way.
It’s sometimes fun to see that the really expensive restaurants often rely more on the posh, exclusive, *expensive* furnishings, decor & atmosphere, rather than really concentrate those expensive prices on on positively, utterly memorable, “I’ll-never-forget-it”, “somthing-to-write/call-home about” food, while still having a lovely restaurant. (Like, the good service, the good but-not-great food, and the just awful greasy calimari appetizer my party once had at Scotts *Seafood* Restaurant.) And while I tend to avoid the over-dependency on the poshness of those kinds of restaurants, if *they* can’t give you fantastic food at those prices, well then it is ironic and sad. But you know what?: they often don’t — just an overly small portion of some chefs kid’s Lego idea of a small portion of food piled ‘architecturally’ high. And as for “bland food”, as two of the well-off guests complained about at each other’s restaurant choice, of course they get their food fixed just the way the staff knows they like it, and of course it’s a place filled with the old/older money people who can regularly afford such places; so the food is often going to be blandly seasoned.
Leslie, let your show stick to the kind of real-world people who have to actually stretch their wallet/purses to do to an expensive “destination restuarant” (and then not even a Farallon, Aqua or French Laundry at about $150-$200-a-head) as a special occasion, not as their regular so-called “neighborhood restaurant” hangout.
Joseph Anderson, Berkeley, CA
November 12, 2007 | 3:03 am
I just had to add this (as I check my weekend email after arriving home late Sunday night) about Tadich Grill (also okay/good, but not great, food –especially for all the wait and the money, given so many other, and wonderful, San Francisco restaurants (rather than this business expense account and ‘tourist trap’ kind of restaurant): one of my Asian friends, who likes to go out to upscale restaurants, quiped, when I told her that my African American dinner party was almost literally shoo’d off before we could even finish, hell barely even *start*, our planned-to-be-brief after-dinner tea (but, of course, *after* the check, and a ~20% tip, had already been paid — i.e., *after* Tadich and the waiter got their money), that, “Looks like your African American dinner party got some ‘old-fashion *treatment*’ in that old-fashioned restaurant.” You can see my more expensive review and saga at yelp.com restaurant reviews, or Yahoo/Google search “tadich grill”+joseph. I called the owner of Tadich the next day and left a voicemail, but, of course, this ‘tourist trap’ restaurant owner couldn’t be bothered to return my call.
Some VERY expensive restaurants *CAN* get it all right, for all the priceyness: I do want to say that the SCALLOPS — OHHH, THE *SCALLOPS* — I had at Auberge du Soleil in Napa Valley *WERE*, POSITIVELY, TO-DIE-FOR! — TO MATCH THE VIEW FROM THE OUTDOOR BALCOLNY! The EXCELLENT food at Tre Vigne was quite positively memorable and worth every cent too, as was the EXCELLENT food at Domaine Chandon, as well as the EXCELLENT food at Farallon (a VERY EXPENSIVE, almost over-the-top but kind of cool and definitely novel, place with noticeably a lot of fashionable young skinny blondes, often in red or silky designer dresses, at the dinner tables of silver-/white-haired men: the people-watching is great and will much add to the dinner conversation)! But, I’m really a big fan of *moderately* priced restaurants with *character* than can create very memorable food (now *that* combination is more sporting), or just tastey food that you really like, that you can go back to time and time again — in the same year!
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Huh. No one cares about you Charles.
NAPA COPS ARE CORRUPT!!! they torture, lie and abuse their power on a daily basis. PAUL PANIAGUA is a corrupt Napa police officer!!!! There is no internal affairs department and officers are not held accountable for their actions. The District attorney protects these corrupt cops! The entire system is built on the worst “good ole boy” system in California.
I heard he had a web site called “thoughts inside my mind” the people of Napa should see what he thinks of women on that site!! I looked it up….what a loser!!!
Why does Paul Paniagua have a naked guy doing a pole dance on his blog site?? Is he gay? Paul Paniagua is a corrupt Napa cop. Napa promotes it’s corrupt cops. He’s a community service winner…None of the people that promoted him ever saw his weird sexist site! Napa is ignorant of his unstable personality.
I saw Officer Paul Paniagua stalk a young african american girl, she looked like 13 or 14 years old. He followed her across a parking lot and then followed her into a food joint where he got in line behind her. I saw Paul Paniagua touch her hair and then smell his hand…..it was creepy!