This might be the time to pee on the sidewalk in NYC if you ever wanted to. The NYPD is on an undeclared & illegal work stoppage with ticketing down 94% for public drinking, peeing, & other minor offenses. The coast is still not clear for shoplifters so keep your sticky fingers off the goods.

The police Benevolent Association has mandated two patrol cars must respond to all police calls so this means slower response times to non-emergencies like burglaries or car crashes without injuries–or whatever in their petulant state cops deem non-emergency.

One cop said he’s not writing tickets because he ‘won’t stand there & let someone shoot him or hit him in the head with an ax.’ Another said, “I’m concerned about my safety. I want to go home to my wife & kids.” What a contrast to their reckless disregard for the lives & human rights of Black teens. File those complaints under “Cry me a River.”

Police Commissioner Bill Bratton is feeling emboldened enough to hit the media trail. On NBC’s “Meet the Press” he claimed the NYPD is suffering low morale & that cops across the country “feel under attack,” including from the government. All that big-assed military equipment & no one to shoot without a civil rights movement in your face!

Bratton addressed the conflict as if were between the NYPD & Mayor de Blasio. That’s where the cops are focusing their fury when the real tension is between the NYPD & Black community & its supporters. Cops want their old impunity back. But police don’t run NYC or any other city in the world. They’re guns for hire by the political forces that do control things.

It’s a dangerous course to let the cops run wild & call the shots. And it’s a danger mostly to the emerging civil rights movement. The only way to defend the right of public protest & support the Black community in defense of their children is to make the new movement massive & mighty & intransigent. The police suffer no threat whatsoever to their lives or safety from this historic movement for social justice. But it is the end of the line for their reign of terror in the Black community.

This photo from Ferguson, Missouri was also chosen by the Guardian-UK as one of the best from 2014. The photojournalist doesn’t give a date but because the protester is wearing mittens we can assume it’s part of ongoing protest this winter & not from last summer. The photographer also doesn’t seem to get what is going on in Ferguson since she said, ““I took this picture the day after the violent protest turned into riots in Ferguson, Missouri. The police were trying to disperse a crowd & warning they would arrest anyone gathering on the street.” What interested her in the shot was the contrast between the iconic gesture of “Hands up, don’t shoot” & the police lights. Maybe one ought not cover such events if aesthetics are of more concern than the momentous & historic.

This woman protester defied police orders & moved into the middle of the street before the police advance & was arrested. Protests which stand on the Bill of Rights to defend Black youth from police violence don’t get violent or riotous until militarized riot cops attack them. If the photographer doesn’t get that, she should stick with kitty portraits.

We should take a moment to honor the Black community in Ferguson for changing the political landscape in this country, for exposing for all the world to see the crimes being committed against Black teens by police, government, & school officials. The NYPD & media are now crying crocodile tears that the emerging civil rights & Black power movement is endangering the cops. That movement in Ferguson, NYC, & elsewhere is responding to the charge with the derision & contempt of a Bronx cheer (Also called a raspberry & done with the mouth it makes the sound of a fart. Nothing could be a more appropriate response.). They aint seen nothing yet.

Judging by our selection of political leaders & US military policy, many people around the world think the US population not just slow on the uptake but genetically & politically damned in some way. Ferguson has changed that too, showing that opposition to injustice & tyranny is not just part of our history but is possible again.

(Photo byJewel Samad/AFP)

This photo was chosen as one of the Guardian-UK’s best for 2014. It stands as another denunciation of Israel’s pernicious claim that Palestinians in Gaza used their children as human shields. That claim was echoed in an ad placed in several newspapers, including the Guardian-UK, by Elie Weasel. The Weasel once said he “swore never to be silent whenever & wherever human beings endure suffering & humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” He can stuff his self-serving grandeur now that he’s exposed for helping & encouraging the oppressor by pretending Israeli war crimes against children are justified.

The photographer explained this child was killed by Israeli bombing of the family home in Gaza City on July 20th. The young man crying over his body is his brother, Rafik Ashraf Ayyad. Their father, who was also injured in the bombing, was in the same hospital & they carried the body to him so he could say goodbye. The child was buried without funeral ceremony due to the continued intensity of the bombing.

There is no more powerful damnation of Israeli war propaganda than this photo except to say ‘may those who repeat it rot in hell.’
May the child RIP. And may we continue to build the economic & cultural boycott of Israel (barcode beginning 729) & demand no military aid to Israel.

(Photo by Mustafa Hassona/Anadolu/Getty Images)