Leid Stories – 11.30.15

Laquan McDonald Killing: Protest, Yes, But Political Punishment Is Needed
Prosecuting Egregious Police Crimes: When the Law Is Out of Order
The indictment last week of Chicago Policer Jason Van Dyke on first-degree-murder charges for shooting to death 17-year-old Laquan McDonald on Oct. 20 last year has ignited a renewed groundswell of grassroots protest against police brutality and the double standard of justice that favors rogue cops when prosecuting such cases. Leid Stories in a commentary explains why vigorous protest not only is appropriate, it should include organized political punishment—of the Democratic Party in particular.
Jury selection begins today in Baltimore City Circuit Court in the trial of Officer William Porter, the first of six officers charged in the death of Freddie Gray, 26, who died on April 19, a week after suffering traumatic injuries while being transported to a stationhouse in a police van. “Attorney at War” Alton H. Maddox Jr., who has litigated several precedent-setting police-brutality cases in New York, discusses key issues with the prosecution of Porter and Gray’s other alleged killers.

John Whitehead – Public School Students Are the New Inmates in the American Police State

In the American police state, you’re either a prisoner (shackled, controlled, monitored, ordered about, limited in what you can do and say, your life not your own) or a prison bureaucrat (police officer, judge, jailer, spy, profiteer, etc.). When you’re a child in the American police state, life is that much worse. Microcosms of the police state, America’s public schools …

John Whitehead – The Raping of America: Mile Markers on the Road to Fascism

“Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”–Martin Luther King Jr. There’s an ill will blowing across the country. The economy is tanking. The people are directionless, and politics provides no answer. And like former regimes, the militarized police have stepped up to provide a façade of law and order manifested by an …