ÉTATS UNISEN
Les chauffeurs d'autobus de Minneapolis refusent de
transporter les manifestants de George Floyd en prison
Le travail organisé
dans toute la ville se rassemble en solidarité contre la violence policière au
lendemain de la mort de Floyd.
29 mai 2020, 12h57
MSNBC
Le meurtre de George Floyd aux mains de la police de Minneapolis a
déclenché plusieurs jours de protestations, dont l' incendie d'un poste de police jeudi soir.
In solidarity with protestors, union bus
drivers in Minneapolis signed a petition and refused to
transport police officers and arrested protestors to jail on Thursday, PayDay
Report first
reported and independently confirmed by Motherboard. At one bus garage in
downtown Minneapolis on Thursday evening, some workers refused to drive buses
that were being dispatched to transport police officers.
“We are willing to do what we can to ensure
our labor is not used to help the Minneapolis Police Department shut down calls
for justice,” the petition
reads. “For example,
I am a bus driver with ATU 1005, and I urged people to call MetroTransit and
the Governor the second I heard our buses and members were being organized to
make mass arrests hours before the protests escalated.”
On Thursday, the city of Minneapolis shut down its
light rail and bus services out of concern for employee and rider safety.
More than 400 union workers, including
Minneapolis postal workers, nurses, teachers, and hotel workers have signed the
petition posted on the Facebook group Union Members for #JusticeForGeorgeFloyd pledging not to aid the policing of the
protests with their labor, according to Adam Birch, a Minneapolis bus driver
who wrote the petition.
“I was on my route on Wednesday evening and
there was a message that came over transit control asking for a bus to
transport police officers,” Birch told Motherboard. “I interpreted this as
Minneapolis police department preparing for mass arrests so when I had a moment
on a layover, I created a post on Facebook saying that I’m a metro transit bus
driver, and I don’t feel comfortable assisting the Minneapolis police
department to make arrests. It got a lot of reaction, which was surprising so I
created a petition.”
Since the release of a video earlier this
week showing an officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck until he died,
unions and workers in Minneapolis, a city with a strong organized labor
movement, have condemned the killing. Among them, Minneapolis’s
teacher union and
the Awood Center, which organizes Amazon warehouse workers in
the area, have also issued statements condemning the killing as an act of
racism.
“If we feel if something is unjust, then
workers should have the right not to support the situation or provide their
services,” Ryan Timlin, president of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1005,
which represents the bus drivers and 2,500 public transportation workers in the
Twin Cities, told Motherboard. “This was not a strike."
Many members of Amalgamated Transit Union
Local 1005, which represents 2,500 public transportation workers in the Twin
Cities, live in south Minneapolis, where Floyd lived and was killed and where
recent protests have taken place.
“ATU members live with similar fears on a
daily basis. ATU members face racism daily. Our members live in and work in
neighborhoods where actions like this happen, and where this took place, now
watched in horror across the globe,” a press statement from the Amalgamated
Transit Union Local 1005, said.
“In ATU, we have a saying: 'NOT ONE MORE'
when dealing with driver assaults in some cases have led to members being
murdered while doing their job," the union said. "We say 'NOT ONE
MORE' execution of a black life by the hands of the police. NOT ONE MORE!
JUSTICE FOR GEORGE FLOYD.”
The Minneapolis police department, which has
a history of misconduct allegations and racist violence, is represented itself
by a powerful union. The Minneapolis Police Union has continued to offer “warrior-style
training” to any
officers that want it, despite the city’s mayor putting a ban on the style of
training last year, which was linked to the shooting of Philando Castile in
2016.
When the police shot and killed 32-year-old
Castile in Minnesota, the local
teacher’s union took
action to protest the death of Castile, who was a nutrition services
supervisor, and 14-year member of the Teamsters Local 320, which also
represents law enforcement officials in the Twin Cities.
Birch a déclaré que le groupe Facebook Union Members for #JusticeForGeorgeFloyd organisait une coalition de syndicalistes pour assister à une
manifestation à Minneapolis samedi.
Minneapolis Is Burning:
Protesters Loot and Set Buildings on Fire to Protest Police Killing of George
Floyd
Police used tear gas and rubber bullets on
protesters who gathered outside the precinct where Derek Chauvin, the officer
who kneeled on Floyd's neck until he was unresponsive, worked until this week.
May 28 2020, 8:20am
CARLOS
GONZALEZ/STAR TRIBUNE VIA AP
Minneapolis burned on Wednesday night as
protesters clashed with police for a second night following the death of George
Floyd after a police officer kneeled on his neck until he was unresponsive.
Buildings were set on fire, stores were
looted, and at least one man was shot and killed after protests turned violent
and continued well into the early hours of Thursday morning.
A man was shot to death outside a pawn shop
close to the center of the protests. Video footage of the aftermath of the
shooting, posted on Twitter and reviewed by VICE News, shows a police officer
performing CPR on a body lying on the pavement outside Cadillac Pawn, while
other officers attempted to keep crowds back.
“There’s somebody in there with a rifle. Back
up! Back up!” one of the medics at the scene can be heard saying on the video.
Police say they are treating the death as a
homicide and have a suspect in custody, but the investigation is ongoing.
Protesters began gathering at the 3rd
Precinct police headquarters in the early afternoon. Derek Chauvin, the officer
who was videoed kneeling on Floyd’s neck, and the three other officers —Thomas
Lane, Tou Thao, and, J. Alexander Kueng — who stood back and observed the
incident, were based at the precinct.
The protests began peacefully, but as
darkness fell, tensions rose and police began firing rubber bullets, tear gas,
pepper spray, and flashbangs at protests who had lobbed some water bottles
towards the officers.
“The police are the reason people are there,”
Minneapolis Council Member Jeremiah Ellison tweeted in the early hours of
Thursday. “We failed last night. We are failing our city again. We do not
employ the community. We *do* employ the police. And the police need to leave
the scene.”
The previous night’s
heavy rain had
quelled initial clashes with police, but on Wednesday night protesters broke
into nearby stores, including a Target, and setting fire to the AutoZone Auto
Parts store across from the 3rd Precinct.
Throughout the night and into Thursday
morning, protesters continued setting fire to buildings and vehicles, and
people were seen leaving stores
carrying looted flat-screen TVs, groceries, and clothing.
The situation got so out of hand that
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, who pleaded with protesters in the early hours of
Thursday morning to go home, requested that Gov. Tim Walz send in the National
Guard to help bring the situation under control.
Walz has not commented on calls to bring in
the Guard, but he did confirm that dozens of state troopers would be brought in
to bolster police numbers in the city.
Protesters are demanding swift action against
Chauvin, and their anger at the situation only increased Wednesday when video footage
emergedcontradicting
the police’s official line that Floyd “resisted” arrest. It was also revealed
that Chauvin, who had been an officer for 19 years, was involved in
at least two incidents in which suspects were shot.
In the first incident, in 2006, Chauvin and
other officers killed a man fleeing the scene of a stabbing while allegedly
pointing a gun at the officers. And in 2008, Chauvin was placed on
administrative leave for shooting a man in the torso after he allegedly reached
for the gun of another officer during a domestic assault call.
Chauvin was fired this week, along with the
three other officers who were present during Floyd’s arrest. But the
protesters, Floyd’s family, and elected officials are all calling on
investigators to quickly bring murder charges against them.
“I would like for those officers to be
charged with murder because that’s exactly what they did,” Floyd’s sister,
Bridgett Floyd, told NBC on Wednesday. “I don’t need them to be suspended and
able to work in another state or another county... Their jobs should be taken,
and they should be put in jail for murder.”
On Wednesday night, there were peaceful
protests at Chauvin’s suburban home as well as at the home of Mike Freeman, the
Hennepin County prosecutor who will decide whether to charge the officers.
Mayor Frey put further pressure on Freeman to
resolve the situation quickly.
“Why is the man who killed George Floyd not
in jail?” Frey said at a press conference on Wednesday. “If you had done it, or
I had done it, we would be behind bars right now. And I cannot come up with a
good answer to that.”
Cover: A man poses for a photo in the parking
lot of an AutoZone store in flames, while protesters hold a rally for George
Floyd in Minneapolis on Wednesday, May 27, 2020. (Carlos Gonzalez/Star Tribune via AP)
Keep Reading
Customs and Border
Protection Is Flying a Predator Drone Over Minneapolis
The surveillance drone is flying in a circle above
the city, which has broken out in protests over the police killing of George
Floyd.
May 29 2020, 1:57pm
IMAGE: ADS-B EXCHANGE
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is flying
a Predator drone, military technology used for surveilling and killing
terrorists abroad, over Minneapolis as protesters continue to demonstrate
against police brutality, according to publicly available flight data. The
drone flown over Minneapolis is an unarmed version of the aircraft.
The drone was first spotted on a flight
tracking tool by members of the ADS-B Exchange, a community of flight watchers
who use open-source flight data to monitor America's skies. Presumably, the
drone is surveilling protests there, though CBP did not respond to a request
for comment about what the drone is doing there.
"CBP Predator Drone CPB104 circling over
Minneapolis at 20K feet," Jason Paladino, an investigative reporter at The
Project on Government Oversight tweeted on
Friday. "Took
off from Grand Forks Air Force Base."
These latest protests come after a white
police officer killed George Floyd, an unarmed black man, earlier this week.
The officer and three others involved in the incident were fired; on
Friday, the Associated
Press reported
that the officer who knelt on Floyd's neck had been arrested.
Motherboard verified the flight path of
CPB104 with flight data from ADS-B Exchange, a repository of unfiltered flight data. The
drone took off from the Air Force Base before making several hexagonal-shaped
flyovers around Minneapolis, according to the data. At the time of writing, the
drone is still above the city.
IMAGE: ADB-S EXCHANGE
CBP-104 is a drone with a history. In a 2007 Popular
Mechanics article, author Jeff Wise names that aircraft as a Predator. "CBP-104 has
no pilot on board. The plane is a Predator B, a sophisticated unmanned aerial
vehicle (UAV)," the article says, describing a surveillance action on the
U.S.-Mexico border.
CBP-104 is also named in daily drone flight
logs from CBP from 2012, published by
the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The drone's activities at the time included collecting
synthetic-aperture radar imagery and full-motion video to aid in actions such
as surveilling the border, as well as surveilling and busting cannabis grow ops
and methamphetamine labs. In one instance, the logs note that the drone
continued to circle and feed video to officers until every suspect in a lab
raid was arrested. According to the logs, this ongoing surveillance
"played an invaluable role" in the arrests.
In an online chat with Motherboard, Paladino
also pointed to the aircraft's previous
flights along the Canadian border, its near perfect hexagonal flight path, and its constant altitude of
20,000ft mentioned in the flight data as additional evidence that the aircraft
is a drone.
IMAGE: CBP
Motherboard has previously visited Grand Forks Air
Force base, where remote
pilots fly unarmed MQ-9 Reaper drones (also known as Predator drones) and
Global Hawk drones both domestically and abroad. Its pilots operate out of
trailers there, and Customs and Border Patrol has a presence at the base; it
flies its Predator drones along the US-Canada and US-Mexico borders, but has
also been known to operate them domestically in the interior of the country, as
it is currently doing over Minneapolis.
Do you know anything else about drone use in
the U.S.? We’d love to hear from you. Using a non-work phone or computer, you
can contact Joseph Cox securely on Signal on +44 20 8133 5190, Wickr on
josephcox, OTR chat on jfcox@jabber.ccc.de, or email joseph.cox@vice.com.
Unarmed Predator drones were first used
within the United States in 2012, when the Department of Homeland
Security flew one over
the property of
a cattle farmer named Rodney Brossart to surveil him, and to help end a 16-hour
standoff between him and another rancher over a stolen-cattle dispute. The use
was highly controversial at the time; since then, CBP has used drones hundreds
of times, and has not kept very
good records about
their use.
In 2015, the FBI surveilled Black Lives
Matter protests using aircraft
over Baltimore after
people there protested the police killing of Freddie Gray.
After the publication of this piece, CBP
confirmed it operated an unmanned aircraft over Minneapolis.
“Earlier today a U.S. Customs and Border
Protection, Air and Marine Operations unmanned aircraft system was preparing to
provide live video to aid in situational awareness at the request of our
federal law enforcement partners in Minneapolis. The unmanned aircraft system
provides live video feed to ground law enforcement, giving them situational
awareness, maximizing public safety, while minimizing the threat to personnel
and assets,” a CBP spokesperson wrote.
"After arriving into the Minneapolis
airspace, the requesting agency determined that the aircraft was no longer
needed for operational awareness and departed back to Grand Forks. CBP AMO
routinely conducts operations with other federal, state, and local law
enforcement entities to assist law enforcement and humanitarian relief efforts.
AMO carries out its mission nationwide, not just at the border, consistent with
federal laws and policies. During humanitarian missions AMO regularly deploys
the unmanned aircraft system to assist FEMA in assessing hurricane affected
areas, in coordination with the National Weather Service to capture imagery of
storm impacted areas, and with federal, state and local partners to conduct
search and rescue missions, in addition to its law enforcement mission,"
the spokesperson added.
Mise à jour: cette pièce a été mise à jour pour inclure les commentaires
du CBP.
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