Police harassing Black Lives Matter activists in SE
On the 16th of August, reports surfaced on Twitter of multiple instances of police harassment of Black Lives Matter activists in DC over the past year. An activist using the handle @agoggans has been repeatedly harassed by police, including at her home when police harassed a Black Joy Sunday event at her home last year. On August 16th she was harassed again, officers with badge numbers 3344 and 2520 were both involved and are reported to be harassing her every chance they get.Overt surveillance is also being reported and the overall situation should be considered a dangerous threat.
There is a video somewhere on twitter of one of these incidents (SAME cops), those who understand Twitter more than I do should be able to find it. One of the cops in that video, in turn, was involved in another incident at MLK Ave SE & Mellon. The 7th District police department is refusing to provide the names of these two cops, but just like Darren Wilson their names can be and will be found by others.This is what happens when the same police repeatedly harass any member of the activst community: other activists get involved. Mess with one of us anywhere and you will have to face all of us everywhere.
If any Black Lives Matter organizer is seriously harmed in any way by police, whoever replaces Cathy Lanier (who just left MPD to head up NFL football security) should expect to have more trouble than ever before with streets being blocked by protesters and upscale chain stores from Chinatown to Georgetown losing money as shoppers are kept away by massive traffic jams. These protests have happened many times before when people have been murdered by police, so it is reasonable to expect that police doing harm to activists would make this even more personal than it already is, possibly triggering an all-out, no-holds-barred campaign of protests, street blockaded, and disruption.
Shutting down that FOP conference in Baltimore and laying siege to their lobbying office here in DC were just the beginning. Same for protests at the home of Geoff Griffis, that thet roach and bedbug loving slumlord who owns the Congress Heights apartments. Same for the related campaign against the now-tabled WMATA land giveaway that torpedoed Geoff's and City Partners' dreams for luxury apartments over the Congress Heights Metro. Police are harassing activists because they fear the power of this kind of activism, but the only thing harassment will do is make activists "fight harder" as one Twitter post put it. This is like throwing rocks at a beehive: the more stones you throw, the more bees will come out and sting you.
