AGAIN - Virginia Beach Mass Shooting

#StandAgainstNRA a domestic terrorist organization.

"What makes the Virginia Beach shooting different from other massacres" PBS NewsHour 6/3/2019

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  In Virginia Beach, thousands of city employees gathered Monday to mourn friends and colleagues killed in Friday’s mass shooting at a government building.  Police haven’t yet shared a motive for the attack but have revealed details about the shooter's weapon.  Amna Nawaz talks to former Homeland Security official Juliette Kayyem about what made this shooting different and how the law should react.

"Remembering those killed in the Virginia Beach massacre" PBS NewsHour 6/3/2019

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SUMMARY:  An Army veteran and Red Sox fan.  A soccer coach.  A “prankster” who entertained his colleagues.  A city veteran preparing to retire.  Parents, grandparents, neighbors and friends.  The 12 people killed in Friday’s shooting at a Virginia Beach government building were all these things, and so much more.  We take a moment now to honor the victims, with memories and tributes from those who knew them best.

UNDER ATTACK - Transgender Americans

"Why violence against transgender Americans is a crisis that’s under reported" PBS NewsHour 5/24/2019

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SUMMARY:  A recent series of murders of transgender victims is causing growing concern, particularly for trans women of color.  It comes at a time when trans celebrities are more accepted in pop culture than ever before -- but also as the Trump administration aims to roll back Obama-era discrimination protections for transgender people.  Amna Nawaz talks to the Anti-Violence Project's Beverly Tillery.

DOCUMENTING HATE - A Win Against Hate

"Once Defiant, All Four White Supremacists Charged in Charlottesville Violence Plead Guilty" by A.C. Thompson, ProPublica 5/6/2019

Guilty pleas last week by two prominent members of the Rise Above Movement [RAM] came after pledges to fight federal charges and claims that those jailed were political prisoners punished for their controversial views.

This story was co-published with Frontline PBS.

Last year, when federal authorities arrested and charged four members or associates of a white supremacist gang for their roles in the infamous 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, the men and their supporters struck a defiant tone.

The men proclaimed their innocence, and their backers described them in social media posts as “patriots” and “political prisoners.”  The gang, known as the Rise Above Movement and based in Southern California, set up an anonymous tip line for people to share evidence that might exonerate the imprisoned members, and it established a legal defense fund, with donations taken via PayPal and bitcoin.

But in the following months, the men, one after the other, have pleaded guilty.  Last Friday saw the final two guilty pleas, including one from Ben Daley, 26, one of the group’s leaders.  He was joined by Michael Miselis, 30, a former Northrop Grumman aerospace engineer.  The men pleaded guilty to conspiracy to riot.

“These avowed white supremacists traveled to Charlottesville to incite and commit acts of violence, not to engage in peaceful First Amendment expression,” U.S. Attorney Thomas T. Cullen said in announcing the guilty pleas.  “Although the First Amendment protects an organization’s right to express abhorrent political views, it does not authorize senseless violence in furtherance of a political agenda.”

The Rise Above Movement and its role in the violence in Charlottesville in 2017 and at rallies in other cities was the subject of reporting by ProPublica and Frontline, work the authorities have credited in taking action against the men.  Federal prosecutors in California are pursuing charges against four other RAM members, including its founder, Robert Rundo.

The plea documents filed during Friday’s court proceedings in Charlottesville lay out a detailed narrative of what the authorities say were RAM’s repeated acts of violence two years ago.

The narrative chronicles RAM’s combat training and the visual evidence capturing its members attacking protesters, including in Charlottesville, where, the authorities spell out, they “collectively pushed, punched, kicked, choked, head-butted, and otherwise assaulted several individuals, resulting in a riot.”

In pleading guilty, the authorities said, Daley and Miselis admitted their actions were not in self-defense.

In the contemporary white supremacist scene, RAM had positioned itself as the violent vanguard of the movement, a successor to the volatile and hyper-aggressive skinhead gangs that were prevalent during the 1980s and 1990s.  Since its formation in 2016, the group has recruited several members of the Hammerskin Nation, the largest skinhead gang in the country, which has been tied to numerous killings, including the massacre of six Sikh worshippers at a temple outside Milwaukee.

Though RAM has eschewed the skinhead style — combat boots and bomber jackets — in favor of a more mainstream look, its members have embraced the bloody tactics of the Nazi skinhead gangs.

Miselis, a onetime engineering student at UCLA, was fired from his job at Northrop Grumman after ProPublica and Frontline exposed his membership in RAM.  In a companywide email, then-CEO Wesley Bush said he was “deeply saddened yesterday to see news reports alleging that one of our employees engaged in violence as part of the Charlottesville protests.”  Miselis held a government-issued security clearance while at Northrop, a major defense contractor, though the company has so far declined to say what projects Miselis was assigned to.

Rundo, who was living in Orange County at the time of his arrest, has also portrayed the federal prosecutions as a miscarriage of justice.  “The rioting charges brought against us have not been used in 70 years,” Rundo said in a jailhouse interview posted on YouTube in February.  “This has little to do with rioting and all to do with censorship and silencing anyone that they deem too radical by today’s standards.”

In the interview, Rundo blamed the media for demonizing RAM and described the group as a self-improvement club for white men.

Rundo has pleaded not guilty, and he could be headed to trial.

The RAM prosecutions have become something of a cause celebre for the racist right.  Augustus Invictus, a fringe political figure and attorney, has set up a legal defense fund to solicit donations for the RAM members facing charges.  “The federal government has taken an absolute political hard line against the right wing,” Invictus said in a 53-minute YouTube video discussing the case.  The video has generated more than 22,000 views and nearly 700 comments, most of them sympathetic to RAM and many of them racist, anti-Semitic and Islamophobic.

One of RAM’s most infamous supporters is Robert Bowers, the Pennsylvania man accused of murdering 11 congregants at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh last October.  Shortly before the massacre, Bowers posted a message decrying the RAM prosecutions on Gab, a far-right social media platform.  Bowers has pleaded not guilty in the unfolding case.

WARNING SIGNS - New Report on Sandy Hook

#NeverAgain  #StandAgainstNRA

"New report offers chilling picture of Sandy Hook killer’s troubled mind" PBS NewsHour 12/14/2018

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SUMMARY:  Six years since the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, a new report from The Hartford Courant paints a chilling picture of the killer, who struggled with loneliness, disdain for humanity, and multiple psychiatric problems.  William Brangham talks with reporter Josh Kovner about whether the new revelations could offer lessons for preventing future violence.

AGAIN - Thousand Oaks Mass Shooting

#StandAgainstNRA  #NeverAgain

"Thousand Oaks community ‘on edge’ after deadly mass shooting" PBS NewsHour 11/8/2018

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SUMMARY:  In Thousand Oaks, California, a bar’s “College Country Night” turned into carnage as a gunman opened fire on revelers.  Frantic patrons used bar stools to smash windows and escape, but 12 people were killed before the shooter apparently turned the gun on himself.  Police identified the gunman as a 28-year-old former Marine who had served in Afghanistan.  Mary MacCarthy of Feature Story News reports.

VIOLENCE IN AMERICA - Chicago's Pain

"Chicago police:  Spike in gun deaths represents ‘clear failure' of criminal justice" PBS NewsHour 8/29/2016

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SUMMARY:  Nykea Aldridge was walking her baby in a park on Chicago's South Side when she was killed in crossfire.  The tragedy has sparked a conversation about rising gun violence in the city, where homicides exceed those in New York and Los Angeles combined.  John Yang speaks with Chicago Life's Rev. Jedidiah Brown and Lori Lightfoot, president of the Chicago Police Board, for more on the crisis.

HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour):  More than 80 people have been killed in Chicago this month.  And more than 400 have been shot in August.  It's part of a weekly and even daily pattern of violence plaguing big and often impoverished sections of the city.  So far, it's a crisis that has eluded major solutions.

John Yang has the story.

JOHN YANG (NewsHour):  One of Chicago's bloodiest weekends this year ended the city's deadliest month in 20 years.  Among the victims, Nykea Aldridge, a cousin of basketball star Dwyane Wade, now with the Chicago Bulls.

Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson:

EDDIE JOHNSON, Superintendent, Chicago Police Department:  She wasn't aware that her short life would stand as an example for what is a clear failure in the criminal justice system here in Chicago.

JOHN YANG:  Aldridge was caught in crossfire as she pushed one of her four young children in a stroller near a school on the city's South Side.  The surge in gun killings has largely been concentrated there and on the West Side.

Two brothers, Darwin and Derren Sorrells, are now charged with first-degree murder in Aldridge's killing.  Both are convicted felons on parole, and police said Derren Sorrells is a gang member.

EDDIE JOHNSON:  This reprehensible act of violence is an example of why we need to change the way we treat habitual offenders in the city of Chicago.  When will enough be enough?

JOHN YANG:  Gun violence has fueled a jump in Chicago homicides this year to more than 449, nearly as many as all of last year.  More than 2,300 shootings have been reported since January.  And police have seized nearly 6,000 illegal guns, roughly one every hour.  So far this year, Chicago has seen more homicides than New York and Los Angeles combined, even though both are larger.

This weekend may have been especially bad, but in many ways, it is no different than many other summer weekends in Chicago.

We are joined from Chicago by Jedidiah Brown.  He's a community organizer who's seen this violence firsthand, president of Chicago Life, a community advocacy group.  And by Lori Lightfoot.  She's the president of the Chicago Police Board and the head of the Police Accountability Task Force.  They join us, both, from Chicago.

VIOLENCE IN AMERICA - Film "Chi-Raq"

"Women take a stand against violence in Spike Lee’s ‘Chi-Raq’" PBS NewsHour 12/4/2015

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SUMMARY:  "Chi-Raq," the latest film from Spike Lee, uses satire to explore the problem of gun violence in America.  The movie is set in Chicago, a city that's been wracked by tensions with police as well as a very high number of murders.  The director sits down with Jeffrey Brown.

JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour):  The urgency behind Spike Lee’s new film is announced right at the top.

MAN:  Homicides in Chicago, Illinois, have surpassed the death toll of American special forces in Iraq.

JEFFREY BROWN:  It’s called “Chi-Raq.”

MAN:  Welcome to Chi-Raq.

JEFFREY BROWN:  The title mixes Chicago and Iraq.  The film mixes social satire and deadly serious issues of gang violence.

In a Washington, D.C., movie theater recently, Lee told me why he felt compelled to make the film.

SPIKE LEE, Director, “Chi-Raq”:  We, as Americans, shouldn’t be OK with our young people being shot down in the street.

The South Side of Chicago is a mass murder capital of the United States of America.  Chicago is the canary in the coal mine.

JEFFREY BROWN:  The emergency Lee sees, guns in America used by black men to kill other black men, while the gap grows between rich and poor communities even within the same city.

VIOLENCE IN AMERICA - Mass Shootings?

"Why Counting Mass Shootings is a Bad Way to Understand Gun Violence in America" by Lois Beckett, ProPublica 12/4/2015

It glosses over the broader reality of who is most at risk of being murdered with guns.

According to articles this week across the Internet, there has been an average of one mass shooting every day in the United States: 355 so far this year.  It's a jarring statistic, and one that has gone viral in the wake of this week's massacre in San Bernardino, California.

But there are two problems with the number:  It doesn't actually provide a clear estimate of how often the country has seen shooting rampages like the one in San Bernardino.  And it obscures the broader reality of gun violence in America.

Counting “mass shootings” is notoriously complicated and contested, since there is no standard definition of what they are.  Is it best to count shootings that injure or kill a certain number of people?  Or should the definition focus more narrowly on attacks in which the motivation of the shooter “appears to be indiscriminate killing?”

Mother Jones, which has been tracking mass shootings since 2012, has counted just four mass shootings this year, and a total of 73 since 1982, as Mother Jones editor Mark Follman has noted in The New York Times.

In 2014, the FBI released its own count of “active shooter” incidents, focusing on events where law enforcement and citizens may have the chance to intervene and change the outcome of the ongoing shooting.  It tallied a total of 160 of these events from 2000 to 2013–including high-profile shootings at Virginia Tech, Fort Hood, and Sandy Hook Elementary School– with an average of 11 per year.

The “355 mass shootings this year” that has been rocketing around the Internet comes from a crowdsourced Reddit initiative that gathers media reports of shootings in which four or more people were shot.

The Reddit count includes many incidents that Mother Jones, the FBI, and others leave out; for instance, a home robbery, a drive-by shooting, and a gang fight.

The Reddit project's organizers suggest this broader approach does a better job of capturing the burden of gun violence–including the suffering and costs of treating people who are shot and survive.

“The most obscene incidents of gun violence usually do not make the mainstream news at all,” the project's introduction says, citing a nightclub shooting in Tennessee in which 18 people were shot and only one person killed.  “We believe the media does a disservice to mass shooting victims by virtually ignoring them unless large numbers are killed.”

Yet bundling together all incidents in which four people or more people are shot doesn't capture the bigger picture.

As ProPublica detailed last week, gun murder in America is largely a story of race and geography.  Half of all gun murder victims are black men.  The gun murder rate for black Americans is dramatically higher than it is for white Americans.  And the burden of violence tends to be concentrated in certain neighborhoods of certain cities.

Reddit's Mass Shooting Tracker does not include any breakdown by race.  In response to questions about the group's numbers, one project organizer, GhostofAlyeska, wrote, “Our intent is not to analyze the causes or cures for gun violence, but simply to expose the available data.  We're volunteers working from a Reddit community, nothing more.”

The Reddit project cites 462 people killed under its broad definition of mass shootings.  The number of gun homicides of black men killed in 2013, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: 5,798.

Baltimore alone has seen a total of 316 total homicides so far this year–the vast majority of them shooting deaths of black victims, according to the Baltimore Sun's homicide map.  The city's homicide rate is now at a record high.  The Reddit tracker captures eight of those deaths.

San Bernardino has two entries in this year's Mass Shooting Tracker; yesterday's attack, and a nightclub shooting reportedly linked to gang violence.  The area has long struggled with poverty, gangs, and homicide.  “My son was shot to death with an AK–47.  My nephew was murdered and his body was burned and buried,” San Bernardino resident Marisa Hernandez told Vice News on Wednesday.  "This type of mass shootings happens everyday here to our kids and nobody stops it, nobody does anything.”

VIOLENCE IN AMERICA - Ferguson, Again

"How peaceful Ferguson anniversary protests turned violent" PBS NewsHour 8/10/2015

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SUMMARY:  Police critically wounded an 18-year-old black man overnight in Ferguson, Missouri, where mostly peaceful protests marked the anniversary of the killing of Michael Brown.  Authorities say Tyrone Harris Jr. and others shot at officers, who in turn shot back, wounding Harris.  Judy Woodruff learns more from Yamiche Alcindor of USA Today.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  Authorities in Saint Louis County, Missouri, imposed a new state of emergency today after police critically wounded an 18-year-old black man overnight.

It happened at the end of protests in the town of Ferguson marking the death of Michael Brown one year ago.  Police said a late-night demonstration got rowdy, and Tyrone Harris Jr. and others opened fire on them.  They said officers shot back, wounding Harris.

The incident drew the attention of U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who was at a police convention today in Pittsburgh.

LORETTA LYNCH, Attorney General:  I strongly condemn the violence that was perpetrated against the community, including the police officers, in Ferguson last evening.  Not only does violence obscure any message of peaceful protest.  It places the community as well as the officers who are seeking to protect it in harm’s way.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  There were new protests around Ferguson and Saint Louis today.  Some 100 people rallied at the county courthouse.  Nearly 60 were arrested.

I spoke a short time ago with reporter Yamiche Alcindor, who’s covering the story for USA Today.

Yamiche, welcome.

What is the situation right now?

YAMICHE ALCINDOR, USA Today:  Well, moments ago, several protesters were arrested outside a federal courthouse building.

And some of them are really people that are really prominent protesters, along with Cornel West.  So, right now, they’re being processed at that federal courthouse and they’re actually facing federal charges.  But it’s going to be really a $125 fine.  They wouldn’t really say whether or not it’s a misdemeanor or a felony, but of course it’s a $125 fine.

So, it’s not — it’s still a summons.  It’s not going to be anything too serious, but this is still part of the Moral Monday that people had here today, where it was really a series of civil disobediences that they wanted to have in coordination and really in memory of Michael Brown.

VIOLENCE IN AMERICA - The Killing Season

"Gangs and guns fuel Chicago’s summer surge of violence" PBS NewsHour 7/20/2015

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SUMMARY:  In Chicago, the number of shooting deaths has climbed in 2015 after falling the last two years.  Vonzell Banks was one of the victims -- a 17-year-old church choir drummer, who got caught in the crossfire during a family outing over the July 4th weekend.  Special correspondent Chris Bury reports on what’s driving the violence.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  In Chicago this summer, police are dealing with an unsettling spike in violent crime, after a drop in the homicide rate over the last two years, this weekend, 11 dead and 34 injured.

More now from special correspondent Chris Bury.

CHRIS BURY (NewsHour):  In Chicago, this is the season of sorrow and grief.  Every summer, tears flow as the body count climbs with the temperatures.  This is the killing season.

Many of those killed are kids filled with promise, including Vonzell Banks, just 17.  For his family, the pain is unbearable.  But so many young people like him are dying that the whole city is grieving, too.

MAYOR RAHM EMANUEL, Chicago:  Do you think it’s too much for a city to let parents see their kids graduate?

CHRIS BURY:  Even Chicago’s hard-charging mayor, Rahm Emanuel, had to choke back his tears.

MAYOR RAHM EMANUEL:  I will tell you this as a father of three.  This is not natural.  This is not right.  They deserve better.

CHRIS BURY:  By all accounts, Vonzell Banks deserved better, too, playing by the rules, staying out of trouble, spending time at church.  They called him drummer boy for his talent keeping the beat for the choir.

For his pastor, Derail Smith, the pain is personal.  He watched Vonzell grow up.

REV. DERAIL SMITH, Pastor, Cosmopolitan Church of Prayer:  He was brought up in a traditional type family where it was yes, sir; yes, ma’am; and thank you very much, and I appreciate you, those type of things.

So, therefore, there was never any indication for me to see that he had any type of interaction with drugs or with any type of violence.  He wasn’t that, no, not at all.