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For all you "What about the BLM protests" folks

alaskanseminole

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See! We can have justice for both, it doesn't have to be an either or. U.S. Citizens can find both the BLM riots and the January 6th attacks to be criminal acts.

During George Floyd Protests, 2 Lawyers' Futures Went Up in Flames​


NEW YORK — Colinford Mattis’ trajectory from a working-class upbringing in East New York to the Ivy League and corporate law abruptly ended at about 1 a.m. May 30, 2020, when a Molotov cocktail ignited the center console of an empty police car during a Black Lives Matter protest.

On Thursday afternoon, Judge Brian Cogan of U.S. District Court in Brooklyn sentenced Mattis, one of two young lawyers who burned the vehicle during the protests days after the murder of George Floyd, to 12 months and a day in prison and a year of post-release supervision.

Mattis, 35, has lost his law license, having pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit arson and having acknowledged he had broken the law he had sworn to uphold. Now he may lose much more: the guardianship and planned adoption of three foster children. The oldest is 14.


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On Thursday evening, the Brooklyn courtroom was crowded with Mattis’ friends and family.

“I’m deeply sorry and embarrassed about the things I did and said in May 2020,” Mattis told the judge. He said he recently reread his text messages from that day. “I am more than horrified at the words I used,” he said.

“I am sorry that I hurt my three children that my mother had entrusted to me,” he added.

The judge told Mattis that the country needed attorneys to bolster faith in the rule of law and to reassure Americans that the legal system would hold Floyd’s killers to account. He told Mattis that his hard work had changed his station in life.

“You’re not one of the oppressed,” Cogan said. “You’re one of the privileged.”

Spectators in the gallery gasped at the judge’s words. “To make that comment, you’re not seeing the same things that I’m seeing,” said Taaj Reeves, a friend of Mattis’, after the hearing.

In November, the judge had sentenced Urooj Rahman, Mattis’ friend and a fellow lawyer, to 15 months in prison and two years of supervised release for the same crime. She was the primary caretaker of her aging mother. Cogan called the sentence one of the most difficult he ever had to impose. After a lifetime of hard work and conscientiousness, he said, Rahman’s conduct was a violent aberration.

“You are a remarkable person who did a terrible thing on one night,” the judge told her.

Cogan said Thursday that Mattis got a lighter punishment because he had not been the main instigator of the attack.

The sentences close a case that stunned the city, devastated two families and exposed deep fissures between the police and the community. They reflect a long negotiation with the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn, which at first sought steep charges and had pushed to deny bail to Rahman and Mattis, both first-time offenders.

Rahman and Mattis had been high achievers, children of immigrant families who were raised in New York. Rahman pursued public interest law, co-authoring a paper on police reform in 2014 and working at Bronx Legal Services. Mattis followed a more lucrative corporate path. But he was already teetering in his career and personal life when the protests occurred.

The events that led to their downfall began in an unsettled spring.

Mattis had been furloughed in March from his job as an associate at the law firm Pryor Cashman, and the pandemic had cut him off from outside support as he took care of the children, his lawyer wrote.

Then, on May 25, video of Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man who died in Minneapolis after his neck was pinned to the ground by Derek Chauvin, a white police officer, ignited protests. There were demonstrations in at least 140 cities across the United States.

In New York, peaceful protests turned into confrontations with police. Throughout the weekend, demonstrators clashed with officers in Union Square in Manhattan and outside the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, resulting in injuries and hundreds of arrests.

On May 29, according to court documents, Mattis had been drinking throughout the day as he exchanged despairing messages over the murder of Floyd with friends, including Rahman, who were mobilizing to join a protest. That evening, Rahman, who was 31 at the time, met Mattis after he made stops to buy supplies, including gasoline, and joined a swell of protesters in Brooklyn.

Shortly after midnight, with Mattis at the wheel, according to court filings, they drove in a tan minivan to a police precinct in Clinton Hill. After trying to persuade a bystander to throw a bottle that she was holding, Rahman got out of the van herself, walked toward an empty police patrol car that had already been damaged by protesters and threw the Molotov cocktail through its broken window before fleeing.

She and Mattis were arrested shortly afterward and held in jail for several days before they were released to home confinement.

It was a politically fraught moment after New York police officers had arrested hundreds of people during the protests, many on charges of disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and unlawful assembly. District attorneys said they would not prosecute many of the nonviolent cases.

Brooklyn federal prosecutors, then part of the Trump Justice Department, appealed twice to keep them behind bars, saying that the two lawyers had tried to incite others to similar attacks. But more than 50 former federal prosecutors signed a public letter urging the appeals court to reject the U.S. attorney’s office’s argument for detention, saying it contradicted settled bail law.

In June 2020, a grand jury returned an indictment against Mattis and Rahman that included seven counts, including arson, use of explosives and civil disorder.

In November 2021, after President Joe Biden had taken office and new leadership had taken over in the Department of Justice, Rahman and Mattis each pleaded guilty to one count of possessing and making an incendiary device. Last June, those charges were dismissed as part of a deal with prosecutors, and both pleaded guilty to a count of conspiracy to commit arson.

At Rahman’s sentencing, she faced up to five years under federal guidelines, and the government had asked for 18 months to two years. Her lawyer, Peter Baldwin, asked the court to impose only supervised release, saying his client had experienced “a dangerous and reprehensible lapse of judgment.”

“Urooj’s emotions — her anger, her despair, her rage — got the better of her,” he told the judge. Since the incident, Rahman had been in therapy and Alcoholics Anonymous, Baldwin said.

Rahman was born in Pakistan and grew up in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn; she graduated from Fordham Law School and had always been drawn to public interest work, a commitment for which Cogan praised her.

When she addressed the court, Rahman cried as she spoke about her mother’s grief. “I don’t think there are enough words to express my sorrow and regret,” she told the court. “My sole intention was to lend my voice to other New Yorkers in the pursuit of justice. I completely lost my way in the emotions of the night.”

She is to report to federal prison in Connecticut on Tuesday.

Mattis has already spent nearly a month in jail, has taken a leadership role in his Alcoholics Anonymous chapter and is at no risk of reoffending, his lawyers said in the memorandum to the judge.

Sabrina Shroff, his defense attorney, told Cogan in a presentencing letter how Mattis, the son of immigrants from Jamaica and St. Vincent, grew up in a chaotic home. Although early on he struggled academically, he went on to graduate from boarding school, then attended Princeton University and New York University’s law school.

When he was in his second year of law school, his father, Kingcolinford Mattis, was stabbed to death during a robbery in St. Vincent. His son used alcohol to dull his pain, Shroff wrote.

After law school, when he took a job at a law firm in 2016, he was often late or absent, court documents said. His yearslong dependency on alcohol worsened. He was asked to leave the firm just as his mother was diagnosed with uterine cancer, and he became her primary caregiver until her death in 2019, even as he worked at another firm.

After she died, Mattis took over her role as the foster parent for the three children he is now in the process of trying to adopt. He is also the primary caretaker for his 15-year-old nephew.

Shortly after the pandemic hit in March 2020 and Mattis was furloughed, his drinking increased, according to court filings.

On May 29, 2020, hours before he joined the protests, Mattis watched the video of Floyd’s murder for the first time and began to cry.

Within hours, court records said, Mattis was driving the minivan quickly away from the burning police sedan with open bottles of Bud Light, a funnel, a half-full red gas can and rolls of toilet paper.
 
See! We can have justice for both, it doesn't have to be an either or. U.S. Citizens can find both the BLM riots and the January 6th attacks to be criminal acts.
The riots during BLM protests were criminal acts. And, has been demonstrated, at least some of the vandalism was perpetrated by white supremcist individuals and groups like the Proud Boys. All criminal. And on a level COMPLETELY different from 1/6. Not even worthy of being in the same conversation.
 
One might argue the police station was empty because it was abandoned because it was under attack from an angry violent mob. But it totally sounds like a peaceful protest so…
 
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The riots during BLM protests were criminal acts. And, has been demonstrated, at least some of the vandalism was perpetrated by white supremcist individuals and groups like the Proud Boys. All criminal. And on a level COMPLETELY different from 1/6. Not even worthy of being in the same conversation.
Why do you and you "ilk" continue to say ya but and what-a-bouts? Crime is crime and just because some criminals vote the way you do, doesn't make the crimes they committed less valid. I'm sure the family businesses that were destroyed and the tax payers that had to replace the burnt police cars, could care less how the perps vote.
 
One might argue the police station was empty because it was abandoned because it was under attack from an angry violent mob. But it totally sounds like a peaceful protest so…
The angry mob members who were with the Boogaloo Bois that set it on fire?
 
Why do you and you "ilk" continue to say ya but and what-a-bouts? Crime is crime and just because some criminals vote the way you do, doesn't make the crimes they committed less valid. I'm sure the family businesses that were destroyed and the tax payers that had to replace the burnt police cars, could care less how the perps vote.
He's literally saying they are both the same and should be prosecuted.
 
One might argue the police station was empty because it was abandoned because it was under attack from an angry violent mob. But it totally sounds like a peaceful protest so…
OR one might KNOW that the police described the protest as relatively peaceful in a search warrant they issued looking for a white supremacist:
'the protests ... had been "relatively peaceful." '
 
Why do you and you "ilk" continue to say ya but and what-a-bouts? Crime is crime and just because some criminals vote the way you do, doesn't make the crimes they committed less valid. I'm sure the family businesses that were destroyed and the tax payers that had to replace the burnt police cars, could care less how the perps vote.

Are there people arguing that crimes weren't committed during the BLM riots?
 
The riots during BLM protests were criminal acts. And, has been demonstrated, at least some of the vandalism was perpetrated by white supremcist individuals and groups like the Proud Boys. All criminal. And on a level COMPLETELY different from 1/6. Not even worthy of being in the same conversation.
Oh, it's quite relevant on this board and others. Anytime someone brought up that 1/6 was more than just some protest that got out of hand, the deflection was always, "BUT WHAT ABOUT THE BLM PROTESTS" rather than just owning exactly what 1/6 was. My point is simply that both were criminal and it's not hard to recognize that fact--it doesn't have to be an either or.
 
Oh, it's quite relevant on this board and others. Anytime someone brought up that 1/6 was more than just some protest that got out of hand, the deflection was always, "BUT WHAT ABOUT THE BLM PROTESTS" rather than just owning exactly what 1/6 was. My point is simply that both were criminal and it's not hard to recognize that fact--it doesn't have to be an either or.
They were both criminal yes. At least one of them wasn't based on a lie perpetrated by a crybaby who lost an election. What many somehow fail to grasp is that in one scenario, people had a REAL (not made up) reason to be angry. The other tried to overthrow democracy. These are not the same.
 
OR one might KNOW that the police described the protest as relatively peaceful in a search warrant they issued looking for a white supremacist:
'the protests ... had been "relatively peaceful." '
right up until people starting throwing fire bombs into the police station...
 
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There have been hundreds of arrests nationwide in 2020 and a few indictments against rioters. I don't see the point of you righties, other than what aboutism because trump and his boys attempted an insurrection.
 
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In the Summer of 2020, BLM riots in Chicago led to
stealing from the expensive stores on Chicago's Miracle
MIle. The rioters backed up U-Haul trucks and took
expensive merchandise while trashing the stores.

A spokesperson for BLM said that the stealing was
justified because the store owners had insurance to
cover their losses. Yet, crimes were committed by BLM
and there is no way to justify it.
 
Well as far as I'm concerned, BLM still owes the U of I well over a million dollars, and as @torbee would say, the taxpayers of Iowa...

IOWA CITY - The University of Iowa is spending $1 million to remove from its campus buildings - including the 178-year-old Old Capitol and 93-year-old Field House - spray painted messages Black Lives Matter protesters left earlier this summer.

In doing so, the UI Libraries is promising to capture and preserve images of the graffiti 'to ensure the messages are not forgotten and can help guide campus in its work to make meaningful changes,” according to the UI Office of Strategic Communication.

Hundreds of protesters who have gathered on the Pentacrest, marched to Interstate 80 and trekked to Kinnick Stadium left in their wake graffitied social justice messages, including 'BLM” initials and other symbols and tags.

The $1 million cleanup aims to remove spray paint from the exteriors of the Old Capitol, its neighboring Schaeffer and Macbride halls on the Pentacrest, Kinnick Stadium and the 112-year-old President's Residence overlooking an Iowa River bluff along a historic brick road.

The project - employing five Iowa companies - also will clean up graffiti on the UI Hospitals and Clinics campus; the Voxman Music Building; the Campus Recreation and Wellness Center; the historic Field House; Van Allen and Phillips halls; Pappajohn Business Building; Psychological Brain Sciences Building; and biology buildings.

‘Archiving the movement'​



To preserve the messages, UI Libraries will collect photos in an 'institutional archive” that will grow and expand with additional documents, video clips, sound recordings and first-person narratives, according to UI officials.

The Old Capitol Museum and Stanley Museum of Art will work with UI Libraries to ensure the collection is not static, 'but becomes a platform for interactive engagement, collecting and retelling first-person stories of individuals whose contributions to the campus community are underrepresented in the archives.”

Images of the graffiti eventually will be made available online, according to Margaret Gamm, head of the UI Special Collections and University Archives.

'This process ensures the photos will be easy to access and will raise the visibility of the vital information they contain: the voices of marginalized people,” she said in a statement.

UI Libraries archivist David McCartney acknowledged the process will take time.

'As archivists, we are keenly aware of potential pitfalls in a white institution rushing to collect materials about marginalized communities of color, problems such as collecting to ‘check the box' or collections that hurt or mischaracterize communities of color,” McCartney said. 'We also recognize the problems with archival silence.

'Our efforts to document the protest will be a slow process as we listen carefully to the Black community, actively working to expand relationships, engagement, and partnership over time in an authentic and ethical manner.”

UI Provost Montserrat Fuentes highlighted the balancing act between recognizing the protesters' messages, honoring their 'grief and anger at systemic racism,” while preserving the campus.

'We also have a responsibility to care for the property and landmarks that have been entrusted to us, and it is important that we proceed with careful cleanup and restoration,” Fuentes said in a statement.

Although Iowa City and UI police did not make widespread arrests of protesters blocking roads, vandalizing buildings and tearing down fences during demonstrations, officers in June did charge one of Iowa City's protest leaders Mazin Mohamedali, 20, with related offenses - including a felony for destroying a $5,000, 8- foot-tall fence protecting the Old Capitol.

That charge - plus others for unlawful assembly and disorderly conduct - later were dropped, and Mohamedali now is living in a local halfway house on an unrelated conviction.

In response to the recent demonstrations and demands, city and UI officials have announced policing changes, internal reviews and audits. The university additionally created a 're-imagining campus safety action committee” tasked with helping to 'develop a new future of public safety for the campus that further prioritizes campus diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.”

Former Iowa Freedom Riders leader awaiting trial in murder case arrested again on drug charges​

March 19, 2022 Tommy Lang Local News

Lang
3/18/22
A former leader of the Iowa Freedom Riders awaiting trial relating to an Iowa City murder case has been arrested again…this time on drug charges.
Iowa City Police were initially called to 412 South Dodge Street at 7:15 Thursday night for a reported burglary. Arriving officers found 21-year-old Mazin Mohamedali of South Lucas Street at the scene.
Police say Mohamedali had an active warrant for his arrest. He allegedly resisted being taken into custody and tried to throw a baggie of marijuana from his person as he was being arrested.
Mohamedali allegedly claimed the marijuana belonged to somebody else and he was only going to be holding it for about five minutes. A pill for which Mohamedali does not have a prescription was also found on his person.
Mohamedali is charged with a Controlled Substance Violation, Possession of a Controlled Substance – 2nd Offense and Interference with Official Acts. If convicted on all charges, Mohamedali faces a maximum of over seven years in prison.
Mohamedali faces a May 10th trial on an Accessory After the Fact charge after police say he lied to police investigating the shooting death of 19-year-old Quincy Russom in Mohamedali’s Governor Street apartment in February of 2021. Mohamedali allegedly gave false descriptions of made-up suspects and failed to call 9-1-1 to report the shooting in a timely manner.
Mohamedali faces a maximum of two years in jail, if convicted. The onetime Iowa Freedom Riders leader also faces a May 3rd trial on numerous felony charges after police say he sold drugs out of the residence.
Mohamedali’s alleged crimes would violate his probation on a 2018 armed robbery conviction.
University of Iowa Police charged Mohamedali with a felony in 2020 for destroying $5,000 worth of fencing around the Old Capitol Museum during Black Lives Matter protests. He allegedly recruited other protesters to help him, and was seen celebrating when they got the fence down. The charge against him was reduced to Disorderly Conduct charge and he was given credit for time served.
 
The riots during BLM protests were criminal acts. And, has been demonstrated, at least some of the vandalism was perpetrated by white supremcist individuals and groups like the Proud Boys. All criminal. And on a level COMPLETELY different from 1/6. Not even worthy of being in the same conversation.

The summer of 2020 was far more costly, violent and deadly and it's not even close. Those are FACTS.

Both events were horrible and deserve condemnation.
 
The rioters were not a group of Dems. Many people don’t follow a party or even vote.
Nobody is defending their methods but they had a valid cause.
The Jan 6 insurrectionists were maga republicans. 100% voted Republican. They were trying to overturn an election they lost.
It’s a stupid comparison to both side something only one side is guilty of.
 
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The summer of 2020 was far more costly, violent and deadly and it's not even close. Those are FACTS.

Both events were horrible and deserve condemnation.

Are people saying that the 2020 riots weren't bad/costly/violent and overall wrong? The January 6th rioters had a distinct political affiliation and motivation. 1/6 rioters were wearing Trump shirts and waving Trump flags. They were incited to riot by Trump. Those are facts.

People on the right seem to believe that the democratic party was behind the riots of 2020 which is not reality.
 
Are people saying that the 2020 riots weren't bad/costly/violent and overall wrong? The January 6th rioters had a distinct political affiliation and motivation. 1/6 rioters were wearing Trump shirts and waving Trump flags. They were incited to riot by Trump. Those are facts.

People on the right seem to believe that the democratic party was behind the riots of 2020 which is not reality.

The left was absolutely all in during the summer of 2020. To suggest that it was not politically motivated is just naive. Fanning the flames of unrest in the lead up to the 2020 election.
 
Are people saying that the 2020 riots weren't bad/costly/violent and overall wrong? The January 6th rioters had a distinct political affiliation and motivation. 1/6 rioters were wearing Trump shirts and waving Trump flags. They were incited to riot by Trump. Those are facts.

People on the right seem to believe that the democratic party was behind the riots of 2020 which is not reality.
You mean to say that people are the right are making claims that aren't real? Almost seems like a trend!
 
Are people saying that the 2020 riots weren't bad/costly/violent and overall wrong? The January 6th rioters had a distinct political affiliation and motivation. 1/6 rioters were wearing Trump shirts and waving Trump flags. They were incited to riot by Trump. Those are facts.

People on the right seem to believe that the democratic party was behind the riots of 2020 which is not reality.

People like Northern are just upside down on logic. Comparing localized civic disordered with a planned, coordinated attack on the U.S. Capitol is how stupid? The January 6 Insurrection required coordination from the White House to Congress to the Pentagon through multiple communication/media networks.

It is not surprising the uninformed can't put pieces together to for an educated opinion. But there is too much information available by too many sources for anyone to not be aware of the vast information flow of the news cycles. It then must be concluded that available information is ignored and Northern and others accepting the premise of the January 6 Insurrection and civil riots being on the same level is absurd.
 
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The left was absolutely all in during the summer of 2020. To suggest that it was not politically motivated is just naive. Fanning the flames of unrest in the lead up to the 2020 election.

I don't recall Biden cheering on the rioters but maybe I missed that. My definition of "all in" may also differ from yours. The only connection I see to "the left" is that the protests were about racial injustice and we know which side cares about that.
 
Provide the facts please.
Per Wiki (for George Floyd Protests):
...the violence by early June 2020 had resulted in two deaths, 604 arrests, an estimated $550 million in property damage to 1,500 locations, making the Minneapolis–Saint Paul events alone the second-most destructive period of local unrest in United States history, after the 1992 Los Angeles riots. About 60% of the local financial losses were uninsured.



Per Google (for Jan 6th)
According to a May 2021 estimate by the Architect of the Capitol, the attack caused approximately $1.5 million worth of damage to the U.S. Capitol building resulting in one death.


Also per google ($30 mil)
 
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Oh, it's quite relevant on this board and others. Anytime someone brought up that 1/6 was more than just some protest that got out of hand, the deflection was always, "BUT WHAT ABOUT THE BLM PROTESTS" rather than just owning exactly what 1/6 was. My point is simply that both were criminal and it's not hard to recognize that fact--it doesn't have to be an either or.
Broken windows vs burned out cities.
 
Oh, it's quite relevant on this board and others. Anytime someone brought up that 1/6 was more than just some protest that got out of hand, the deflection was always, "BUT WHAT ABOUT THE BLM PROTESTS" rather than just owning exactly what 1/6 was. My point is simply that both were criminal and it's not hard to recognize that fact--it doesn't have to be an either or.
It never was an "either or". It was - as noted - a deflection. It's like comparing 9/11 to a road rage murder. And, again, they don't belong in the same conversation. At all
 
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