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Black Kos, Week In Review: A call for justice for Brianna Grier [1]
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Date: 2022-07-29
Brianna Grier, a 28-year-old mother of 3-year-old twins died after "falling out" of a police car. Say her name.
Commentary by Black Kos editor JoanMar
Here’s what Brianna Grier is not accused of: She’s not accused of killing anyone, she’s not accused of threatening to kill anyone, she’s not accused of trying to overturn the duly elected government, she’s not accused of fraud, she’s not accused of rape, she’s not accused of sex trafficking.
Here’s what she’s accused of:
The report said Grier was beating on her parent's door. Deputies said she seemed to be drinking, and her parents asked them to take her to the hospital. According to the reports, Grier refused to go and sat on the ground before curling into the fetal position. The deputies cuffed her hands in the front. The report said she told deputies “she was not going to jail and that she was going to kill herself when she gets to jail.” (my bold)
And yet, after an interaction with police, this 28-year-old mother of 3-year-old twins is dead.
But when sheriff’s deputies arrived at their home in Sparta, Ga., late one night this month, they told Grier they smelled alcohol on her breath. And after she admitted she had been drinking, they placed her in handcuffs, loaded her into a patrol car and told her that they were going to detain her for intoxication, her father recalled.
The mass murderers who killed a combined total of 57 people in Parkland, Buffalo, Charleston, and Uvalde are all still alive. Zimmerman is alive and free as a bird. Kyle Rittenhouse is alive, free, and enjoying the good life of a celebrity. Brianna Grier’s parents are grieving today and her children are motherless. It makes me wanna holler.
You won’t find Brianna’s name on the list of the 617 people killed by police year-to-date, but she sure as hell should be. They are — wilfully or with wanton, malicious negligence — responsible for her death. I do not give them the benefit of the doubt. They have not earned the right to be given the benefit of the doubt. And they lied.
After putting her into the back seat of the vehicle, and failing to secure her with a seatbelt, a deputy believed they closed the passenger-side door but in fact did not, according to GBI. After driving “a short distance, body-camera footage reveals the deputies had no other contact with Grier from the time she was placed in the car until she fell out of the moving car,” the agency said…. When deputies started to handcuff Grier, her father recalled her saying: “No, no, no, no. I haven’t done anything for y’all to arrest me. I’m not going to jail.”
The initial police report claimed that the handcuffed mother had kicked open the door and thrown herself out of the moving vehicle. When that proved to be a scientifically impossible feat, they were forced to admit that they had thrown her in the back of their squad car without securing the seat belt and without locking the door. Who does that? What ghoul masquerading as a human being does that to a living breathing woman while she’s at her most vulnerable? Someone who needed tender-loving care is instead treated like rotting garbage. Her poor mom. Her poor father. Her children.
In the early morning hours of July 15, police were back at their front door, telling Grier’s mother the 28-year-old had “kicked the back door in and jumped out” of the patrol car, her father said. He said police explained she had sustained a head injury and was taken to the hospital
From her mom:
“If I had known it was going to turn out like this, God knows I wouldn’t have called to come and get her,” Grier’s mother, Mary Grier, told WMAZ.
Contrary to popular belief, cops are not legally bound to protect citizens from harm. They are, however, constitutionally mandated to protect those who are in their custody.
“Neither the Constitution, nor state law, impose a general duty upon police officers or other governmental officials to protect individual persons from harm — even when they know the harm will occur,” said Darren L. Hutchinson, a professor and associate dean at the University of Florida School of Law. “Police can watch someone attack you, refuse to intervene and not violate the Constitution.” The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the government has only a duty to protect persons who are “in custody,” he pointed out.
May the cops rot in jail.
Brianna’s loved ones describe her as “a smart, loving family member who loved to dance, sing, eat at cookouts, and spend time with her daughters.” May she Rest in Peace. Condolences to her mom Mary, her father Marvin, her two beautiful babies, and her siblings.
We call your name, Brianna.
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Advocates say emphasizing that the virus outbreak is primarily among "men who have sex with men" could further harm an already vulnerable LGBTQ+ population. The Grio: Is the public framing of monkeypox (MPV) stigmatizing the Black LGBTQ+ community?
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LGBTQ+ advocates, elected officials and medical professionals are sounding the alarm over concerns they have about how the medical response to the monkeypox outbreak is stigmatizing the LGBTQ+ community.
Since the onset of the 2022 outbreak, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) — which recently declared the rare infectious disease a public health emergency — have noted that cases of monkeypox are most prevalent among men who have sex with men, also referred to as “MSM” in the medical community.
But while scientists and doctors may be simply following and reporting the data, advocates say doing so could cause harm to gay, bisexual, trans, and non-binary people — suggesting that monkeypox is a disease that is exclusive to them.
U.S. Rep. Mondaire Jones, D-N.Y., told theGrio exclusively that he agrees with WHO that monkeypox is a global public health emergency that should be addressed before “the health and safety of our most vulnerable communities are further compromised.”
However, Jones, the first openly gay Black member of Congress, added, “I’m also concerned that stigma not be cast upon communities like mine — queer communities of color — given the intersectional discrimination we routinely face.”
Jones, who has used his seat in the U.S. Congress to call for equitable access to the HIV-prevention drug PrEP, said a lot can be learned from the “poorly” mishandled HIV/AIDS crisis in the 1980s and early 1990s.
Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-NY) speaks during a press conference
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At the peak of the Omicron wave, Covid killed Black Americans in rural areas at a rate roughly 34 percent higher than it did white people. New York Times: In Rural America, Covid Hits Black and Hispanic People Hardest
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The coronavirus pandemic walloped rural America last year, precipitating a surge of deaths among white residents as the virus inflamed longstanding health deficits there. But across the small towns and farmlands, new research has found, Covid killed Black and Hispanic people at considerably higher rates than it did their white neighbors. Even at the end of the pandemic’s second year, in February 2022, overstretched health systems, poverty, chronic illnesses and lower vaccination rates were forcing nonwhite people to bear the burden of the virus. Black and Hispanic people in rural areas suffered an exceptionally high toll, dying at far higher rates than in cities during that second year of the pandemic.
In towns and cities of every size, racial gaps in Covid deaths have narrowed. That has been especially true recently, when major gains in populationwide immunity have tempered the kind of pressure on health systems that appears to hurt nonwhite Americans the most.
With coronavirus deaths climbing, though, and health officials bracing for an even deadlier winter, scientists warned that efforts so far to close the racial gap in vaccination rates had not been enough to insulate nonwhite people from the ravages of major Covid waves. Nowhere were those difficulties more pronounced than in rural areas. Black, Hispanic and Native American people in those places recorded the deadliest second year of the pandemic of any large racial or ethnic groups anywhere in the United States, according to the new research, which was led by Andrew Stokes, an assistant professor of global health at Boston University.
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A former U.S. Marine being held in Russia also would be part of the proposed exchange, an official told CNN. The Grio: Biden administration offers convicted Russian arms trafficker for Brittney Griner, report says
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The Biden administration has offered to exchange convicted Russian armed trafficker for WNBA star Brittney Griner and former Marine Paul Wheelan, CNN reports.
The move is “part of a potential deal” to bring both Americans home after Griner was arrested on drug possession charges in February and Wheelan was arrested for alleged espionage in 2018.
A prisoner swap, generally opposed by the Department of Justice, would release Viktor Bout, who is serving a 25-year sentence in Illinois for “conspiring to kill U.S. nationals and selling weapons to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia,”
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Sara Eklund hopes the cups will help reduce stigma and shame in a country where a quarter of women lack access to period products. The Guardian: ‘Customs officers thought they were car parts’: the woman bringing menstrual cups to Ethiopia
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Car parts,” says Sara Eklund, shaking her head. “They had no idea what they were, so they took a wild guess.” Eklund had hurdles importing the first menstrual cups into Ethiopia, but she hadn’t anticipated having to explain to confused customs officials what the small, pink silicone cups were used for.
She had finally got a green light to bring an initial 200 Noble Cups into the country, only to have them confiscated by the Ethiopian Revenue and Customs Authority (Erca) – over apparent paperwork issues. But Eklund was not deterred. “I thought: go big or go home.” So she went for 5,000 in her second shipment.
There was a new hitch. Erca categorised the product as a luxury item, and imposed a 69% tax. “It was madness,” says Eklund. “The system is made to infuriate and frustrate.”
With some determination from Eklund, Noble Cup is now on sale in more than 30 shops across the capital, Addis Ababa, with plans to expand.
At 230 birr (£3.50), the cups are prohibitively expensive for most women and girls in Ethiopia, where only 28% of women report having “everything they need” to manage their periods, and 25% do not use any form of sanitary product, relying instead on whatever they can find: rags, newspaper, even cloths filled with ash.
Eklund hopes that promoting the product will help encourage a more open discussion, and reduce the stigma and shame around menstrual health. “This is something every single woman goes through every month,” she says.
But shame is deeply embedded, says Mekdim Hailu, campaigner at WaterAid Ethiopia. “Pharmacists still hand sanitary pads to customers in newspaper and a plastic bag. Even as young women in an urban area, my friends and I still use code words for periods.”
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WELCOME TO THE FRIDAY PORCH
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