A
Brandeis student is being
harassed and threatened after having written an article exposing the racist garbage spewed by a cop-hatiner that has a history of tweeting inflammatory incitement on Twitter.
Daniel
Mael wrote his article a week ago, describing the anti-police views of Khadijah Lynch, a
student leader who bluntly tweeted "LMAO" (laughing my ass off) and said she had “no sympathy” for two executed New
York City police officers, Raphael Ramos and Wenjian Liu.
Mael
quoted the undergraduate's hateful tweets in an article he wrote for
Truth Revolt.org, analyzing her current remarks against a history ofher numerous prior racist and hate-filled remarks in other forums.
Among
the remarks tweeted by Khadijah Lynch, were those that questioned "why black people have not burned this country down.”
Another Lynch tweet defined non-violence as “a social justice themed institution grounded
in zionism. Word. Thats a f@#$king fanny dooley.” (sic)
Other
tweets included a comment saying “i need to get
my gun license. asap.” A day later she tweeted: "Amerikka needs an intifada. enough is enough."
Those
who commented on Mael's article posted curses and threats to Lynch,
and in turn Mael bluntly condemned them, publicly, according to an
account on the petition drive.
But instead, Mael himself was targeted with violent threats to his own safety and
well-being by fellow students on campus and others aiming at him for
his report.
An
email campaign has subsequently been started by the “Coalition for A Safe
Brandeis” asking for signatures on the petition calling on BrandeisUniversity to secure Mael's “safety and free speech rights.”
But here's the thing:
The
petition requires not only a signature. It also asks for an email address and
a street address as well. Those who do not want to include a street
address because they fear retribution are advised to enter “World”
instead of “United States” or whichever country they are living
in, and frankly, that is of little use. One can easily be tracked
today via an email address, as any decent hacker knows. Ask Sony.
So
after all the intimidation and threats of violence being leveled at
this young fighter for justice, what would prompt those who fear
retribution to sign such an electronic document?
The
intentions are good, but the method leaves much to be desired. First
amendment rights should always be protected. But sadly, those who
stand up to insist on it these days need to be protected as well, and
it is equally likely that those who defend them will need protection
too. (Yes, I signed the petition.)
A
better way to handle this issue, however, would be at the ballot box -- the source of the problem in the first place. Why
aren't these remarks being regarded as the incitement they so
obviously are?
Perhaps for the same reason pro-Palestinian Authority protesters in Oakland were allowed to simply shut down a port for nearly a week, preventing a ZIM shipping vessel from unloading the cargo intended for people in the area. The ZIM company is only 30 percent owned by Israeli stockholders but apparently that was enough to qualify the boycott, divestment and sanctions crowd from starting up a demonstration at the wharf.
Pr perhaps it was for the same reason cop-hating protesters were politely
requested -- several times last week -- by New York's mayor to please stop their ugly raging across
the city long enough to allow a grieving family and police to lay a fellow officer to rest in peace.
They didn't stop, and you know why? Because they discounted the authority of the mayor. And they knew they had the protection of the police, who are forced by law to protect them, even though they themselves are their targets. This mayor fervently backed them and supported their rights to protest in the first place but it made no difference. So why didn't he enforce his "request" ?
Impotence.
Or worse – fear.
The last time we saw such a mayor in Gracie Mansion, it was David Dinkins. And by August 1991, the streets of Crown Heights, Brooklyn, blew sky-high with a three-day full-scale pogrom. "Let them vent," Dinkins advised his police commissioner, and blocked the governor from calling out the National Guard. Police who came in from different precincts to help cover the nightmare on the streets were unable to back each other up because their radios were set to different bands and frequencies; they could not even communicate with each other. Some of them didn't even HAVE radios. As a result, none intervened when violence broke out, because none wanted to risk their own lives -- and anyway, they had orders to "stand pat."
I wonder what will happen this time, when it will hit, and where, who and how.
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