Angry is good. Far more people should be angry. About police brutality and numerous things in the modern society.

it’s been striking how many people are making the connection between this latest police murder and the economic structure of the city. the biggest demonstrations have been in shopping areas; today’s midday event is based on a call to shut down wall street. it’s kinda exciting to folks like me who see the connections between white supremacy, capitalism and the state as both strong and important to struggle against in overlapping ways. this didn’t happen when diallo was murdered, or when malcom ferguson was murdered (in part for participating in the diallo demonstrations), or when patrick dorismond was murdered, etc, etc. i’m not sure why it’s happening now, but it is, i think, a very important part of the story.

there has been one high profile police murder of a whiter person in nyc in the past few years - compared to dozens of muders of african americans, latin@s, and other people of color. gidone busch, an ashkenazi jewish man, was gunned down in brooklyn in the fall of 1999. i mention it not because it’s any more important than any other police murder, but because the results of the protests and legal actions around busch’s murder were the same as they’ve been for diallo, ferguson, dorismond, etc. which is to say - white supremacy is more important in determining who gets killed by cops than in cops getting away with murder. though busch probably wouldn’t've been murdered if he had been less visibly observant, and thus definitively an ethnic if not racial ‘other’. it’s also important to say that the folks of color who’ve led the nyc movements against police brutality came out in solidarity with busch & his family, as did the jewish radicals and progressives who’ve been allies in that fight. conspicuously absent was the ‘mainstream’ jewish leadership - the ‘jewish community relations council’ wouldn’t even make a statment that they thought the murder was wrong.