The initial encounter was captured on tape and the recording has been released. Both acted in character. The first words were as follows:

Sgt. Crowley:  All-right, you black bastard come out of there with your hands up and three forms of identification.

Gates:  Is that you, Crowley?  You racist Nazi.  Your mother didn’t bring you up to talk like that.

After Gates saw Crowley’s statement given in front of Crowley’s house,  Gates is willing to forego the apology if Crowley will tell him the name of his gardener.

If we want to break down racial barriers, we need to stop separating ourselves by race. African-American, Chinese-American, Mexican-American, etc. Why not just Americans? You can use these labels with all the good intentions in the world, but the fact is, when you use them you automatically put yourself in a category. When you’re in a category, someone else can consider you fair game. We are all one. We are no different. We all want the same things. Hate crime legislation just throws fuel on the fire. Instead of fighting each other, we need to team up on the laws holding all of us down.

And there was the cold blooded murder of Oscar Grant that should have infuriated people. A cop pulled basically the same stunt in Greece, and it nearly brought down the entire government.

Also Oakland is in the process of hiring private mercenaries to take over many law-enforcement duties. They were about to hire International Services Inc. but I guess because of some scandal, they are looking at other companies now.

“To use Malachy McCourt’s example, “If you are ignorant and behave this way, well that can hbe changed with education.  If you continue, then you are ignorant and stupid.”

Well Garth, the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said it this way:

“Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” That pretty much says it all. You’re right, the since ignorance can be corrected with knowledge/education. Conscientious stupidity is exactly that. This cop is just a racist because he chooses to be. If we, as a society, don’t start calling these people out, nothing will change.

While there is certainly a strong racial aspect to this case, I think the assumption by police that they could simply barge into someone’s home and order people around shows that, beyond the fact of continuing racism, we are degenerating into an authoritarian society, a police state.  Everyone is becoming an N-word, except, of course, the cops and other authorities.

Sergeant Crowley who responded to the call was previously a Harvard Police man.  He should’ve known better.  As Harvey Silverglate pointed out, these police are more “Police” than they are Harvard or Cambridge.
To use Malachy McCourt’s example, “If you are ignorant and behave this way, well that can hbe changed with education.  If you continue, then you are ignorant and stupid.
From personal interactions with the Cambridge Police, I can say that some are good cops and some are bad cops.  Most are professional.

Oakland, California is a multiracial city with no clear majority, and is comprised of African-Americans, Whites, Latinos, Asians, Native Americans, Gays, Lesbians and others. The police department is disproportionally White, and full of skinheads. Racial profiling goes on all the time, and recently several officers were shot and killed by a man who would have gone down as a parole violator under “3 Strikes.”

The man who killed (and was in turn killed) was African-American. The City held a huge public funeral attended mostly by mostly White officers from throughout the West, along with a pointed failure to invite Oakland’s mayor, who is Ron Dellums, an African-American.

Was the Dellums snub racist? You bet it was; and the media only broadcast the side of the police, who said his presence would be “disrespectful to the families.” They found a token African-American woman to interview to muddy the racial connotations.

I heard several Oaklanders comment that all those police in one building presented quite an opportunity. They were growers, and had been harassed throughout their lives by these pigs. I’m nonviolent but understood how they felt, as do the majority of Oaklanders who want community police, not White Rightwing Fascist ubertroopers.

But nothing happened, and the Police State continues unabated and unchallenged.

PS Forgot to say, there’s good video of Carl Dix speaking at a
protest rally, with others, outside the NAACP Convention on
Sixth Ave., Man. last week on
http://www.wbaix.org WBAIX is WBAI-in-Exile Go to ON-DEMAND
section for it, if it’s not running when you get there.

Racial profiling is national. 
There’s a good article on the NAACP at its 100th Anniversary on BlackAgendaReport http://www.blackagendareport.com.

This morning, DemocracyNow had a segment with Dr. Cornel West and Carl Dix being interviewed by Amy Goodman, host of DemocracyNow http://www.democracynow.org

Carl Dix is co-founder of the October 22 Coalition
Against Police Brutality.  Do see their material about their long time, national ongoing, Stolen Lives
Project - people killed by police and security forces in the US.  Their list Killed by NYPD Since Amadou Diallo is exceptional and great. I use it for my art “Amadou Diallo and Since” - due to volume and
secrecy of NYPD, supported by corporate media.  It’s too hard for me to ferret out the info and http://www.october22.org does the job very well.  A sad task.

The corporate media supports the police “no matter what”.  I was (almost) surprised when I heard a radio
host and caller, as I rolled past on the AM dial and
heard talk about Prof. Gates’ arrest - actually blame
Gates for “losing his temper”.  WOR AM radio in NYC.
Right wing corporate media. Blame the victim and “spin”.  And the host was an alleged liberal.

In the ‘70’s we sang:

We insult her every day on TV
And wonder why she has no guts or confidence
When she’s young we kill her will to be free
While telling her not to be so smart we put her down for being so dumb-John Lennon, “Woman is the “N” of the World”

In the 21st century the Palestinians have become the ‘N’s’ of the world-meaning their human rights/civil rights have been denied.

In November 2006, Father Manuel, the parish priest at the Latin Church and school in Gaza warned the world:

“Gaza cannot sleep! The people are suffering unbelievably. They are hungry, thirsty, have no electricity or clean water. They are suffering constant bombardments and sonic booms from low flying aircraft. They need food: bread and water. Children and babies are hungry…people have no money to buy food. The price of food has doubled and tripled due to the situation. We cannot drink water from the ground here as it is salty and not hygienic. People must buy water to drink. They have no income, no opportunities to get food and water from outside and no opportunities to secure money inside of Gaza. They have no hope.

“Without electricity children are afraid. No light at night. No oil or candles…Thirsty children are crying, afraid and desperate…Many children have been violently thrown from their beds at night from the sonic booms. Many arms and legs have been broken. These planes fly low over Gaza and then reach the speed of sound. This shakes the ground and creates shock waves like an earthquake that causes people to be thrown from their bed. I, myself weigh 120 kilos and was almost thrown from my bed due to the shock wave produced by a low flying jet that made a sonic boom.

“Gaza cannot sleep…the cries of hungry children, the sullen faces of broken men and women who are just sitting in their hungry emptiness with no light, no hope, no love. These actions are War Crimes!”

“Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we’re being run by maniacs for maniacal ends. I believe that as soon as people want peace in the world they can have it. The only trouble is they are not aware they can get it.”-John Lennon

excerpted from:
Viva, Fast, March for Gaza: Lennon, MLK and X

http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1339&Itemid=222

I hope Professor Gates runs classes and publishes large on this issue. Clearly a lot more awareness needs to be instilled in the general populace. Now, who is this woman that called the cops? She didn’t even recognize her own neighbor. And the arresting officer needs to be made some sort of example of for his overzealous arresting for “disorderly conduct”.

Yes, the woman and the police officer SHOULD have “known who he is”. Exactly. And he presented his proper i.d. to the p.o., who should have backed down and apologized on the spot. (I am wondering about the p.o.s in the photo. One white, the other black. Did both make the arrest? What gives here?)

Come back from a long flight from China, have to open the back door to get back in your own house, and then be victimized by your idiot neighbor and a policeman. And now the professor has a crime record.

Oh, this is going to be good. Raise the roof, Professor Gates!

“According to the Cambridge [Mass.] Police report, a white woman saw the two black men attempting to enter the home and called police.”

And there we have it…the reason why the NAACP and the Southern Poverty Law Center are still so sadly needed. Even after 100 years of attempting to educate the US population, we still have white women seeing black men engaged in what are every day activities for the majority of the population, (entering and leaving one’s residence - preferably through doors in the dwelling) and report it as some sort of illegal action because if black guys are doing it, it must be criminal.

I wonder if people like this woman and the countless others that think that way, like the responding police officer, ever realize how incredibly STUPID they appear to anyone with a clue?

Still, here we are 100 years later, and this stuff is still happening….