Civil Rights & Social Justice
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The funeral of Tyre Nichols was held in Memphis, and Vice President Kamala Harris delivered remarks along with the Rev. Al Sharpton calling on officials to deliver justice.
The funeral service was held on Wednesday (Feb. 1st) at the Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church in Memphis, with hundreds attending. Nichols’ family was front and center, mourning the 29-year-old who died three days after being beaten to death by police officers during a traffic stop on January 7th. Other attendees included the families of those who also lost their loved ones to police brutality, including the family members of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Botham Jean, and Eric Garner who were there with officials from the city. Director Spike Lee was also in attendance along with Nichols family attorney Ben Crump.
Members of Nichols’ family took the podium to share their love for him. His mother, RowVaughn Wells spoke tearfully about her son. “Tyre was a beautiful person and for this to happen to him is just unimaginable,” she said. “I guess now his assignment is done. He’s been taken home.”
Vice President Harris spoke at the podium, first honoring Tyre Nichols’ parents before calling out the violence and police brutality that was the source of Nichols’ death. “This violent act was not in pursuit of public safety,” she said. “Was he not also entitled to the right to be safe? Tyre Nichols should’ve been safe.” Harris continued by demanding that Congress pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, created to increase accountability for misconduct by law enforcement nationwide, in addition to banning acts of excessive force such as chokeholds. “Joe Biden will sign it and we will not delay, and we will not be denied,” she said as Ms. Wells wept and clapped. “It is nonnegotiable.”
The Rev. Al Sharpton delivered the eulogy, forcefully calling out the five Black police officers involved in Nichols’ death. “In the city that Dr. King lost his life, not far away from that balcony, you beat a brother to death,” he said. “There’s nothing more insulting and offensive to those of us that fight to open doors than you walked through…and act like the folks we had to fight for to get you through them doors.”
He also called for an end to qualified immunity and echoed Harris’ calls for the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act to be passed. “Why do we want the George Floyd in Policing Act passed?” Sharpton asked. “You’d have to think twice before you beat Tyre Nichols. You’d think twice before you shoot someone unarmed.”
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Ciara tried to talk sense into white nationalists’ favorite Black bobblehead, Jason Whitlock, who can’t seem to stop himself from going out of his way to make stupid remarks regarding the police-involved death of Tyre Nichols.
Recently, Jason Whitlock sat down with the Calvin Candie to his Stephen, Tucker Carlson, and erroneously blamed Nichols’ violent death on Black single mothers.
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“Everybody involved in this, on the street level, was either 24 to 32 years old. Everybody, it was a group of young Black men, five-on-one. It looked like gang violence to me. It looked like what young Black men do when they’re supervised by a single Black woman, and that’s what they got going on in the Memphis Police Department.”
“They’ve elected—or put some Black woman in charge of the police force, and we’re getting the same kind of chaos and disunity and violence that we see in a lot of these cities that are run by single mothers,” Whitlock continued, in reference to Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn “CJ” Davis. “If we want to discuss the breakdown of family that leads to disrespect for authority, that causes you to resist the police and run from the police and not comply with the police, because you resist authority at all times, because there was no male authority in your home, let’s have that discussion.”
Yeeeeah—this is beyond a reach.
Whitlock is clearly using Nichols’ death to arbitrarily take shots at single Black mothers, which makes no sense since Nichols had a stepfather in his life. Rush Limbaugh’s Black doppelganger also appears to be insinuating that if a Black woman is a single mother she couldn’t possibly be qualified to run a police department (or anything, for that matter).
Anyway, Ciara called him all the way out on his misogynoir and general anti-Blackness, but Whitlock is a dedicated house negro and he would not be dissuaded from his special brand of self-loathing.
“As a black man to get on national tv and say something like this is irresponsible,” Ciara tweeted. “A lot of amazing kids have come from single mothers. For you to also undermine single black women in the midst of this tragedy is so sad. This woman just lost her son! Do better!”
“Appreciate the feedback, Ciara. But at some point, we are going to have to deal with the negative impact of baby-mama culture,” Whitlock replied. “It’s destructive and unsustainable. Come up out of the denial. Denial won’t fix the problem. Thanks.”
Again, what does “baby-mama culture” have to do with Nichols? What do Black single mothers have to do with this story at all? It’s like Whitlock is throwing them under a bus that wasn’t even driving down their street.
WTF is wrong with this man?
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The specialized SCORPION police unit whose officers were charged for the death of Memphis black man Tyre Nichols, was shut down permanently over the past weekend.
According to a statement from the Memphis Police Department issued Saturday (Jan. 28), Chief C.J. Davis met with officers of the SCORPION (Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods) Unit. All agreed “unreservedly” to disband the unit in order to foster more healing and work with the community. Chief Davis also called for a review of all other specialized units in the department to take place. The full statement was later issued via their Twitter account.
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The permanent abolition of the unit was one of the demands of the family of Tyre Nichols, protesters and other city officials as more details of the brutal beating became known. Attorneys Ben Crump and Antonio Romanucci, who represent the Nichols family, released an official statement later that afternoon.
“The Nichols family and their legal team find the decision to permanently disband this unit to be both appropriate and proportional to the tragic death of Tyre Nichols, and also a decent and just decision for all citizens of Memphis. We hope that other cities take similar action with their saturation police units in the near future to begin to create greater trust in their communities,” the statement said.
The SCORPION unit was created shortly after Davis was hired as chief of police in 2021 as a way to lessen the number of homicides in the city with a focus on other crimes including reckless driving. Twenty-nine-year-old Nichols was confronted by five black officers from the unit at a traffic stop Jan. 7. Nichols was allegedly driving reckless and was pulled over.
Chief Davis would later state to NBC News that they were unable to find evidence for that stop on video. The five officers – Demetrius Haley, Tadarrius Bean, Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills, Jr., and Justin Smith – brutally beat him. Nichols was taken to the hospital in critical condition. He died of his injuries Jan. 10.
The city released the footage of the assault Friday evening (Jan. 27), sparking further outrage. That same day, all five cops posted bond and are out of jail ahead of their Feb. 17 court appearance.
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The family of Tyre Nichols and their lawyers including Benjamin Crump are speaking out against the Memphis police after seeing footage of him being brutally beaten at a traffic stop, leading to his death.
On Monday (Jan. 23), members of Tyre Nichols’ family and their lawyers spoke to the press about his death after privately viewing video footage of a confrontation with police officers from Jan. 7 when he was confronted at a stop 80 yards from his home. According to attorney Benjamin Crump, Nichols was beaten for three minutes, asking “What did I do?” Nichols would die of his injuries three days later.
Standing alongside Nichols’ mother, RowVaughn Wells, attorney Nicholas Romanucci, denounced the incident. “He was a human piñata for those police officers,”, he said. “Not only was it violent, it was savage.” He detailed seeing the officers restraining the 29-year-old, using a stun gun and pepper spray on him in the video footage.
The five Memphis police officers on the scene – Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills and Justin Smith – were all fired after an internal investigation by the department found that they used excessive force. They, like Nichols, are Black. Crump stated in the press conference that this factor was immaterial to the case.
“It is not the race of the police officer that is the determining factor of the amount of force, it is the race of the citizen,” he said. “It is about the Black and brown citizens that get dealt excessive force from the police officers, whether they are Black, white or brown, and it has to stop.”
Investigations by the FBI and the Department of Justice in addition to those by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigations have already commenced. The city of Memphis has promised transparency, which has led many to question when the footage of the incident will be released to the public.
“Family and the attorneys we have will not stop until we get justice,” said Nichols’ stepfather, Rodney Wells. “And like I said from day one, justice for us is murder one, and anything less than that we will not accept.” Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy said in a statement that he expects the video to be released either this week or next.
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In 2021, Los Angeles County returned prime beachfront property back to the descendants of the Black couple who purchased the land back in 1912 only to have it unlawfully seized by the city of Manhattan Beach through white supremacy, or as they called it at the time, “eminent domain.”
Now, the owners of Bruce’s Beach, named for Willa and Charles Bruce, will sell the property back to the county in exchange for $20 million in what LA County Supervisor Janice Hahn considers to be “reparations.”
From Reuters:
The Bruce family has informed county officials that they have decided to sell Bruce’s Beach to the county for the estimated value of the Manhattan Beach property, Janice Hahn, chairperson of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, said in a tweet on Tuesday.
“This fight has always been about what is best for the family, and they feel what is best for them is selling this property and finally rebuilding the generational wealth they were denied for nearly a century,” Hahn wrote.
In July, county officials transferred the deed to the 7,000 square feet (650 square meters) property to the great-grandsons of Willa and Charles Bruce, who owned the land before officials claimed eminent domain over it in 1924.
The movement to return the land to the family was part of a wave of reparative justice that has gained traction in parts of the United States to make amends for decades of exploitation of Black Americans by predatory developers, exacerbated by segregation and a lack of access to the legal system.
Bruce’s Beach Was A Resort For Black People
Before the land was taken from Willa and Charles by white people who hated Black joy, Black neighbors and Black property ownership as much as they hated the prospect of minding their own business, Bruce’s Beach was a resort where Black people lounge, dance, enjoy the beach without some establishment owner pointing one finger at the “whites only” sign and another at the gun on his hip he’d use to enforce the discriminatory policy. It was a rare thing of luxury that was afforded to Black people exclusively.
Now, the Bruce family descendants say allowing the county to re-purchase the property is another step toward restorative justice, according to Hahn.
“They feel what is best for them is selling this property back to the county for nearly $20 million and finally rebuilding the generational wealth they were denied for nearly a century,” Hahn said in a statement to the Los Angeles Times. “This is what reparations look like and it is a model that I hope governments across the country will follow.”