Photo: Wes Schnitker
For Immediate Release 06/30/2020 For More information +1.314.210.1322
New York- St. Louis videographer Chris Phillips and Global Justice Ecology Project photographer Orin Langelle issued statements today regarding the reported display of an assault rifle and handgun by St. Louis based attorneys Mark and Patricia McCloskey during a Black Lives Matter protest.
On the evening of Sunday, June 28, protesters were marching to St. Louis mayor Lyda Krewson’s home to protest her release of names and addresses of individuals supporting the defunding of police.
Phillips was filming the protest. A Reuter’s photograph shows Patricia McCloskey pointing a handgun at Phillips, who is African-American. Phillips, who owns Maverick Media, has documented protests in Ferguson, MO following the police killing in 2014 of Mike Brown in Ferguson, as well as recent protests in Minneapolis over the police killing of George Floyd.
Phillips and Langelle previously released a joint statement regarding the misuse of “less lethal” weapons by police against popular uprisings in the U.S. and Chile respectively. https://globaljusticeecology.org/joint-statement/
Regarding the incident on Sunday, Phillips stated:
“The McCloskeys created a dangerous situation by brandishing weapons at a peaceful crowd headed toward St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson’s home. That was the only reason the demonstrators stopped there. The protest destination was not the McCloskeys, but the home of the Mayor, several blocks away.”
“I reject the McCloskey’s press statement claiming support of Black Lives Matter because if that were the case, they would not have threatened the very lives they claimed to support.”
Orin Langelle stated: “This disgusting display was typical of the wealthy and those who live in mansions versus the ‘others’ in this world who are supposed to wait for some ‘trickle down’ magic that never quite materializes.”
“Thanks to Black Lives Matter, these contradictions are being brought to light and now hopefully the people will succeed in advancing systemic change – politicians only put bandaids on gushing wounds.”
Additionally, less than two weeks ago, Chris Phillips was the guest on Earth Watch, a GJEP partnered show that runs every Thursday on Margaret Prescod’s Sojourner Truth. It is a nationally broadcasted program on Pacific Radio in Los Angeles, CA. https://globaljusticeecology.org/chris-phillips/
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In commemoration of Juneteenth, and the abolition of state-sactioned slavery, but not racism in the United States, GJEP posts this very informative video from Gary Younge. In the video, Younge comments on the latest uprisings across the US and the world following the murder of George Floyd and how they link to the broader need to transform the systems driving injustice. An excerpt from the video:
“When I think about these latest protests, my hope resides in the fact that, first of all they seem to be multi-racial, which in America is no mean thing … and the fact that there has been a cross-pollination of this across the globe, and that it raises people’s consciousness about what black people are living with all the time. And what one hopes is that we can connect that awareness to a broader awareness about what we’re all living with all the time. So that whenever people are questioning Capitalism, the State or racial hierarchies, there’s a chance. And that’s where the hope resides. But it’s not a passive hope. It has to be an active hope. Martin Luther King said the arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice, but it doesn’t bend by itself. That’s for us to put our shoulder to it and make it bend toward justice.”
Gary Younge is an award-winning author, broadcaster and academic based in London. Formerly a columnist at The Guardian he has been appointed Professor of sociology at Manchester University. He is also the Alfred Knobler Fellow for Type Media in America. He has written five books: Another Day in the Death of America, A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives; The Speech, The Story Behind Martin Luther King’s Dream; Who Are We?, And Should it Matter in the 21st century; Stranger in a Strange Land, Travels in the Disunited States and No Place Like Home, A Black Briton’s Journey Through the Deep South. He has made several radio and television documentaries on subjects ranging from gay marriage to Brexit.
Why Blackstone’s proposed CHPE transmission corridor to import more Hydro-Quebec hydroelectricity is not clean energy, perpetuates environmental destruction and supports government-sponsored racism and discrimination against Indigenous and frontline communities in Canada.Gov. Cuomo and Mayor DeBlasio are promoting Blackstone Group’s $3 billion Champlain Hudson Power Express (CHPE) transmission corridor as a climate and economic solution for New York. In reality, CHPE is a bad deal for New York. It is unjust and puts the negative burdens of New York’s energy demand on marginalized Indigenous and frontline communities in Canada. CHPE cannot deliver jobs or help New York’s economy and is a financial boondoggle by Blackstone to tap into government COVID-19 bailout money intended for struggling Americans, not Wall St. financiers.
This webinar will focus on Blackstone’s current attempt to reroute the corridor through public roads and waterways turning them into an energy highway for private profit.
Join our webinar to hear from front line communities and experts about the other side of the “clean” Canadian hydropower story.
PROGRAM:
7 p.m.- 8 p.m.
Meg Sheehan, Coordinator, North American Megadam Resistance Alliance: overview and CHPE rerouting proposal.
Denise Cole, Southern Inuit, Labrador Land Protectors and Grand Riverkeeper Labrador: View from the front lines: Indigenous rights and Canadian hydropower development.
Jacqui Drechsler, Rockland County, New York: what CHPE’s rerouting proposal means for local communities in Rockland County.
Wyldon Fishman, Director, New York Solar Energy Society: conservation, efficiency and local renewable preferences.
Peter Kelly-Detwiler, Northbridge Energy Partners: Hydro-Quebec’s supply constraints, new dams for export and alternative renewable energy options.
8 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.: Q and A
Registration required. Join us for an informative perspective on this important issue!
At this Black Lives Matter protest in St. Louis, a 14 year old girl relates a poem that powerfully describes what it is like to grow up black in the U.S.
Video by Steve Taylor, GJEP Press Secretary.
This video, filmed on 11 October 2019, is extremely relevant in light of the George Floyd murder by the Minneapolis Police Department and the subsequent protests that are happening nationally and internationally.
MOVE is a black liberation group founded in 1972 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania by John Africa. The group suffered two major attacks by the Philadelphia Police Department. In 1978, a standoff resulted in the death of one police officer, injuries to several other people, and life sentences for nine members who were convicted of killing the officer. In 1985, another confrontation ended when a police helicopter dropped a bomb on their row house. The resulting fire killed eleven MOVE members, including five children, and destroyed 65 houses in the neighborhood.
Mike is the son of two political prisoners who were recently released from prison after 40 years. Secretly born in a Philadelphia prison following a police raid on his family’s home, Mike was taken from his mother and placed in an orphanage where he was physically and mentally abused. At age 13, Mike began using his music to raise awareness in the hopes of gaining support to get his parents home; finally on 16 June 2018 after 40 years in prison, Mike finally got his mother released. Four months later on 23 October 2018 Mike got his father released.
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