A few weeks before Christmas in 2005, John McNeil, an African American homeowner killed a trespasser, Brian Epp. McNeil, a middle-class businessman, claimed that Epp reached in his pocket (where aut
horities found a folded knife) and charged at him. McNeil shot a bullet in the ground, backed away from Epp, and urged the intruder to stop. According to an eye witness, Epp charged forward and was shot in the head.
Earlier in the day, McNeil’s son called his dad to report a trespasser on the family’s property. The McNeils and other homeowners had experienced violent outbursts from Brian Epp, a home builder. Indeed, the McNeils had employed Epp to build their new home. But, according to witness testimony, Epp had a temper. Indeed, at…
Trayvon Martin’s tragic death last month focuses attention on Florida’s “Stand Your Own Ground” self-defense law as well as racial profiling as many people believe that George Zimmerman’s fatal shooting of the boy was out of racial anxiety, if not animus, rather than fear for his life. Indeed, the enhanced 911 call undermines statements made by Zimmerman’s attorney that race was not a factor in the shooting. Throughout much of the past two weeks, attention has been on Zimmerman—what was his state of mind on that night? Why was he stalking the boy? Why did he leave his automobile after a warning by the police to remain in the car? Why did Zimmerman intervene when police advised him not to do so, particularly with law enforcement on the way? Was he psychologically unstable prior to shooting Trayvon?
Absent from much of this discussion are probing questions…
Trayvon Martin was murdered last month, but this week the case gained national attention. Martin, an African-American teenager, was gunned down by George Zimmerman, an individual who identifies as a white male. The controversy in the case involves not only race: Zimmerman apparently left his car, stalked the youth, because he thought Martin looked suspicious and “out of place,” and gunned him down. Zimmerman’s supporters claim that had Trayvon—who was on his way back to a family member’s home, carrying a pack of Skittles and ice tea—answered Zimmerman by identifying himself and explaining why he was in the neighborhood, this tragedy might have been averted. But, there is no duty to explain oneself while walking down the street. As a constitutional matter, individuals need not answer the police: You have the right to remain silent.
Within modern society, there are two things that cannot be acknowledged. Dirt and death. These represent the abject, that which we refuse to see, except when it slips into view, and then we experience revulsion and disgust.
As Anne McClintock says in Imperial Leather, “nothing is inherently dirty… dirt is what’s left over after exchange value has been extracted.” In other words, dirt is the visual evidence of manual labor- slave labor, domestic labor, sweatshop labor, etc.-and because modern economies were founded on the myth that non-manual labor- like banking- is worth the big bucks, dirt must be erased. Death represents a different sort of disruption. As Mary Shelly made so beautifully clear in Frankenstein, death brings the progress narrative of modern science to a monstrous halt.
So Burlington, Vermont, where I live, may be the place where the Occupy movement ends as death …
November 9, 2011 may be another turning point in the relationship between the occupation movement and campus activism.
Students have played a leading role in the occupations at Wall Street and around the U.S., not to mention the occupation of Cairo’s Tahrir Square, the Spanish indignado movement, and the ongoing student struggles against austerity across Europe. In fact, the “occupy everything” meme first gained purchase on this side of the Atlantic via building occupations at the New School and NYU and across the UC and Cal State systems in 2008 and 2009.
However, Wednesday’s U.S. student actions are on a grander scale than earlier events. They may represent the first major sustained campus occupations in the post-Tahrir, Occupy Wall Street era.
California Is Burning Again Some 3000-4000 occupiers were assembled at UC…
My last guest post on the Wall Street occupation came way back on day three. In the intervening three weeks, occupations and/or general assemblies have sprung up all over the U.S., from Maine to San Diego, Portland to Buffalo, Oakland to Charlottesville, Va. I’ve spent a lot of time in the week and a half at occupied Dewey Square, across from Boston’s South Station, and one of the first occupations to spring up beyond Wall Street.
Like the Wall Street occupation, protesters in Boston are a diverse group of anarchists and libertarians, socialists and liberals, college students and laid-off construction workers, homeless veterans and anarchosyndicalist grad students who’ve found each other in massive general assemblies, Yom Kippur services, musical performances, and “Free School University” seminars—on such matters as the…
Across the country—in New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago, and San Francisco, and over 100 other locations—marches, organizing meetings and tent cities have begun. Thousands are marching. Hundreds have been arrested.
Above, see an interesting example of our friends at The New York Times (NYT) spinning their coverage. Interestingly, I’ve just had an exchange on the subject of that paper’s self-proclaimed “impartiality,” which it used as an excuse to formally reprimand Chris Hedges, whose blistering op-ed adorns the front page of the Occupied Wall Street journal.
Regular readers know that I’ve previously questioned the NYT’s bias, particularly on education issues.
Updated Monday, 2:30 am EST. On Saturday afternoon, using the illegal crowd-control tactic called kettling, police riot squads swept the sidewalks near Union Square with orange construction nets. In the same way that ocean trawlers capture indiscriminately, officers penned hundreds of peacefully marching Occupy Wall Street protesters together with bystanders, pedestrians, reporters, and neighborhood residents. Witnesses called police targeting of detainees “random.” Freelance photographers snapped this photo of a handcuffed PBS correspondent clearly displaying press credentials on a lanyard around his neck. At least 80 of those detained were eventually arrested. Large crowds joined the protesters Sunday as reports of the arrests circulated.
Detained Women Assaulted and Maced Citizen photographers captured graphic images of unprovoked police violence, including this disturbing 4…
Amy Goodman of Democracy Now: “In a just world, with a just economy, we have to wonder: Who would be out in the cold? Who would be getting arrested?”
Chanting “Who do you protect? Who do you serve?” the protesters occupying Wall Street are digging in for a fifth day and circulating graphic images and video of escalating police violence and harassment.
There are several reports of injuries, including at least one hospitalization due to brutal arrest tactics, such as this one showing a protestor tossed headfirst to the pavement from atop a pile of equipment. Police were using the pretext of protesters’ having covered their media gear with a tarp to claim they’d illegally erected a tent on city sidewalks.
Never mind that it wasn’t a tent, wasn’t on a sidewalk, and that every media professional in New York covers their gear when it rains without the police uttering a word, much less…
Posts on Brainstorm present the views of their authors. They do not represent the position of the editors, nor does posting here imply any endorsement by The Chronicle.
is an evolutionary biologist, professor of psychology at the University of Washington, and author of more than 30 books, most recently Homo mysterious: evolutionary mysteries of human nature.
directs the program in history and philosophy of science at
Florida State University. His forthcoming book is Science and
Spirituality: Making Room for Faith in the Age of Science.
is a professor of journalism and sociology and chair of the communications program at Columbia University, and a prolific author whose most recent book is a novel, Undying.
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