police beat the shit out of 12 year old girl (they mistook her for a prostitute), charge her with assault

I would echo the comments I've read on the internet: I don't know why the national media isn't on this story. I found out about it from boing boing here. It has received some internet coverage over the past month, and you can read the facts for yourself at the Houston Press blog, and The Agitator.

In August, 2006, a 12-year-old girl in Galveston, TX, Dymond Milburn, was sent out into her front yard at 7:45 in the evening by her mother to flip a circuit breaker. Four plainclothes police officers jumped out of a blue van and grabbed her, saying "You're a prostitute. You're coming with me." She hid behind a bush, grabbed onto it, and started screaming for her Daddy.

The police were responding to a call about suspected prostitution 2 blocks from Dymond's house. They were looking for three white prostitutes who were supposedly soliciting a white man and a black man. Dymond is a black little girl, who was in her front yard 2 blocks away. They said they thought she was a prostitute because of the "tight shorts" she was wearing.

As Dymond held on to the tree, these four men beat and slapped her on the head, face, and throat with a flashlight -- she was hospitalized that night with two black eyes, head injuries, a ruptured eardrum, nosebleeds, and countless bruises, lacerations, and sprains all over her body. Her parents came outside and begged the police to stop, saying she was their daughter and she was 12; they said they didn't care if she was 22, 32, or 46. Her 5-month-old puppy ran outside and started barking at the officers; they threatened to shoot it.

Her father was arrested the next day and charged on very sketchy evidence with drug possession and assaulting an 'officer of the peace' -- when it doesn't sound like, from the court record, ever actually touched the cops. He pled guilty to the lesser charges in order to get the assault charges dropped.

And three weeks later, the police came to Dymond's school, where she was an honor student, and arrested her for assaulting a public servant in front of all her classmates. She was tried for assault once and the case ended in a mistrial on the first day because of a remark made by an officer on the witness stand (the remark obviously isn't in the public record but I would love to know what it was). She was tried AGAIN, for assault, this week, and her trial ended today in a mistrial -- 5 jurors wanted to acquit her of the charges but ONE holdout would not relent - that person wanted to see her convicted of assault.

Her family has a high-profile ACLU lawyer - thank god - and has filed a federal suit, which you can read in full here. The details of the beating and the psychological trauma she continues to undergo from it are even more sickening than what I've just written out, so be warned.

Does something like this even need my commentary?

I could write something about how No -- even though we have this wonderful President who got elected even though he's black and everybody loves him, we do NOT live in some kind of 'post-racial society.' About how the number of people bandying around that phrase, coupled with the reality of what has (surprise!) kept happening since Obama's election, in Galveston and in Oakland, makes me want to puke. I watched the video of the point-blank execution-style murder of an unarmed man lying on his stomach on a BART platform (also be warned: it's really horrific), and now the cop who did that is out on bail when he already tried to flee the state once.

Do I even need to comment on the outrage of four cops seeing a 12 year old black girl and thinking "prostitute" -- because of her "tight shorts," that was their excuse -- when they were specifically looking for white prostitutes?

There's a lot that's really suspicious about the dad's subsequent drug charges, as well as the possibility, if you look at the entire court record, that these narcotics officers were actually trying to kidnap the girl to interrogate her about her father or just to get access to him by provoking him.

What this says about children, about little girls resisting when strangers try to grab them from their house, about race and the law and parents trying to keep children safe, depresses me beyond words.

The liberatarian magazine Reason ('Free minds and free markets') has done substantial coverage of this as a violation of constitutional rights, and to their great credit, even they are saying things like, 'I hate to say it, but I honestly believe if this family was white, this wouldn't have happened.' The commenters on Reason who have expressed (honest, Texan) sentiments 'wishing Mr. Milburn had had a clean shot' at the cops and attesting that if they were in his place, 'there would be a bunch of dead strangers decorating the front lawn' have even been called out and reminded -- NO, this family was black and there would have been no defense, no sympathy.

This story makes the most perverse contrast to the back-and-forth exchange about children and violence I was recently reading on this well-known mommy blog, in which parents end up agreeing that they want their kids to be taught smart, watchful self-defense tactics and encouraged to "use your fists, heels, knife, whatever you've got" if, god forbid, they were grabbed by a stranger. That that basic right to self-protection is a privilege only white parents can safely teach their kids makes me sick.

Four men jump out of a blue van, grab your 12 year old daughter, and tell her she's a prostitute and she's coming with them -- what would you want her to do? Law enforcement officers damn near killed this 12 year old girl as she held on to a tree, screaming for her father, then charged HER with assault and defended their assessment of her as a prostitute by her SHORTS -- and we wonder, when we hear about a girl or woman being raped, why she didn't "just report it"?!

Oh, and one of the cops who did this was named a Galveston Police Dept. "Officer of the Year" in June (from Reason - p.5, here).

awesome stuff the fed. govt. has bought with our money

Watch the beautiful slide show and read this great article about how American socialism has gotten us some truly excellent stuff!

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/02/06/new_deal/

Forward to anyone in your family and community you hear bitching about the so-called 'pork' or 'tax and spend'-ing or 'socialism' yadda yadda in the stimulus package!

You also might want to forward them this - 'Throwing Schools Out the Window':
http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/06/throwing-schools-out-the-window/

and this - 'GOP's Nutso Anti-Stimulus Stance':
http://www.slate.com/id/2210570/

As my friend M. recently opined in her facebook status update, 'Republicans - the train has left the station!'

blogging for choice a day late

Hooray to President Obama (god, how beautiful those words look!) for UN-GAGGING THE FREAKING GLOBE today:
http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/2009/01/23/gag_rule/

This insane so-called 'policy' from 1984 has always been one of the #1 reasons I could never stand to hear my friends on the left talk about how maybe a moderate Democratic candidate like Hillary Clinton, if nominated, or even Obama, if he ran too close to the center, needed to lose the Presidency in order to 'send a message'...

LIVES -- thousands, probably millions, of women's and babies' LIVES WILL BE SAVED in the (god-willing) eight years and more that we will not have this literally murderous colonialist policy governing what basically every health-outreach organization ON THE PLANET can and cannot do for its clients. We -- the world, humans, who care about the suffering of other humans -- could not have afforded for America not to get a Democrat back in office.

And what a Democrat! Check out our President's spiffy new website, including the awesome feminist agenda for "Women":

http://www.whitehouse.gov/agenda/women/

I myself feel willing and ready and able to bring a new person into this world now, in this new political climate, in a way that I would not necessarily have felt if we had not won this election.

This is my blog for choice post, cribbed from a pair of text messages I received from my friend A., on Election Night:

OMG our future children will most likely be OBAMA BABIES!

But if we do not want those Obama babies we will not be forced to have them!!

Amen to that. God bless America, and may every child in it be a wanted child.

Obama is cheap! AND - they care about DC!

Two relatively unsung bits of the Obamas' interview on 60 minutes that I LURVE:

1) The President-Elect is one cheap-ass motherfucker! Watching this with my husband, he was like, "He's cheaper than you!"

On the hovel he lived in in DC, which nearly burned down (but he moved back in after the fire!):
Michelle Obama: It reminded me of a little better version of the apartment you were in when we first started dating. That was a dump too.

Mr. Obama: Right near Harold’s Chicken Shack.

Michelle Obama: Yeah.

Mr. Obama: Yeah. That’s when I had the car with the hole in it.

Michelle Obama: And you could see the sidewalk, because the rust had gone through.

Mr. Obama: The air-conditioning.

Michelle Obama: So that was my side. I would look and see the ground going past.

I [HEART] a President who uses shit till it FALLS APART.

2) -- and this one seriously makes me stop and have one of those 'Whoa, we really get this President!?' moments -- We're going to have a President who gives a shit about DC!

Michelle: I, both Barack and I, believe that we can have an impact in the D.C. area. You know, in terms of making sure we’re contributing to the community that we immediately live in.

Do you guys get that, what she said just there? The President is going to care about DC. The President is going to give a shit about that poorest, blackest, most fucked-over, disenfranchised colonial territory of the federal government -- the junkies and tranny prostitutes and immigrants and service workers and struggling families who don't even get an autonomous city government or representation in congress -- the fucking President of the fucking United States is going to GIVE A SHIT what happens to them, how they are.

I was making my coffee this morning and I remembered this, as it crosses my mind periodically, and I stopped - as I stop every time I remember it - and just sobbed. I'm crying right now, at my keyboard. The President is going to give a shit about DC. Unless you're way older than I am, you've never seen that. I don't know if we've EVER seen that in the whole history of this republic and that poor, fucked-over city.

I love cities; the very best of America to me is embodied in its cities. To have a President who is of the city, who is aware of the city he lives in, and who loves cities too -- well, it's even better than having a President who once drove a car with a HOLE in it (and that's pretty great)!

It still seems too good to be true, y'all, but it isn't -- we worked our asses off and we earned ourselves the chance to make a new country.

It's still Rock Obama Day in our hearts...

yay! swoon.

http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/feature/2008/11/17/60_minutes/index.html

http://gawker.com/5090639/obama-and-his-kids-single+handedly-prop-up-print

one of the most heart-wrenching: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMEEP4uLZzk
of a pretty fucking cute genre: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DMiAeUG0IM

election-year weltschmerz

IS OVER!!! We fucking won, everybody! We CHANGED THE DEFINITION OF WHAT IT MEANS TO BE AN AMERICAN. We MADE it CHANGE. We saved our country, and took our future back from the haters and warmongers. Good job, everybody!

Yes We Can, Except for Californians who voted for Proposition 8 -- Seriously, you guys suck the worst of all. Fucking bigots.

awesome post about gross old racists and how much better we are than them! :)

this will warm your heart, thrill you, and get you fired up for your GET OUT THE VOTE EFFORTS, whatever they may be:

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/10/big-empty.html

SERIOUSLY PEOPLE, EVERYONE WHO IS NOT A CONFIRMED EVIL -- GET OFF YOUR ASSES AND TAKE YOUR COUNTRY BACK! Go here now:
http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/actioncenter

Happy Election Day weekend. It's been a long time coming - I'm headed to Las Vegas to get out the vote tomorrow!