San Francisco: “Baghdad by the Bay” for People of Color
By Rebecca Gordon, who teaches in the Philosophy department at the University of San Francisco. She is the author of Mainstreaming Torture: Ethical Approaches in the Post-9/11 United States and the forthcoming American Nuremberg: The U.S. Officials Who Should Stand Trial for Post-9/11 War Crimes (Hot Books, April 2016). Originally published at TomDispatch
In the photo, five of Beyoncés leather-clad, black-bereted dancers raise their fists in a Black Power salute. The woman in the middle holds a hand-lettered sign up for the camera, bearing three words and a number: Justice 4 Mario Woods. Behind them, the crowd at Levis Stadium, home of the San Francisco 49ers, is getting ready for the second half of Super Bowl 50, but the games real fireworks are already over.
The women in the photo had just finished backing Beyoncés homage to the Black Panthers and Malcolm X during her incandescent halftime appearance, when two San Francisco Bay Area Black Lives Matter activists managed to grab a few words with them. Rheema Emy Calloway and Ronnisha Johnson asked if theyd make a quick video demanding justice for Mario Woods. From the look on the faces of the dancers, theyd already heard about the case, Calloway told the Guardian.
Who was Mario Woods and why did Calloway and Johnson want the world to know that his life mattered? The answer: on December 2, 2015, Mario Woods was executed in broad daylight by officers of the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) and the event was filmed.
Woods was a 26-year-old African American, born and raised in San Franciscos Bayview district, one of the citys few remaining largely black neighborhoods. (In 1980, right before I moved to San Francisco, African Americans made up almost 13% of the citys population. Today, the figure is around 6% and shrinking.) Woods died when police attempted to arrest him because they believed that, earlier in the day, he had stabbed another man in the arm. Like many victims of police violence, Woods had mental health problems. Indeed, his autopsys toxicology report showed that, when he died, his system contained a powerful mix of medications (both prescribed and self-administered) including anti-depressants, speed, and marijuana.
But it was the way he died that brought Mario Woods a brief bit of posthumous notoreity. His death was, like Beyoncés dancers, captured on video. A crowd of people watched as what CNN described as a sea of police officers surrounded Woods and shot him dead. At least two people recorded cell-phone videos of what looks eerily like an execution by firing squad. .............(more)
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/02/san-francisco-baghdad-by-the-bay-for-people-of-color.html