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'The Confederacy of California': life in the valley where Robert Fuller was found hanged
'The Confederacy of California': life in the valley where Robert Fuller was found hanged
Racism has been sewn into the fabric of southern Californias Antelope Valley for generations. But a national reckoning with police brutality offers hope
Vivian Ho in Antelope Valley, California
Sat 27 Jun 2020 06.00 EDT
(Guardian UK) In a corner of desert country at the northernmost edge of Los Angeles county, Black boys have grown up watching their fathers handcuffed by sheriffs deputies during routine traffic stops. Black girls have had racial slurs shouted at them from passing cars and been warned not to go out by themselves at night.
They have stood in line at the grocery store alongside white men with swastika tattoos. They have organized to protect themselves when they felt no one else would. They have learned which streets to not drive down to avoid law enforcement traffic stops. Some have stopped driving at night al together.
The Confederacy of southern California is the Antelope Valley, said Ayinde Love, a longtime Lancaster resident and organizer.
When the body of Robert Fuller, a 24-year-old Black man, was discovered hanging from a tree near Palmdale city hall earlier this month, it plucked at a trauma that had been etched into the Black community for generations. Just over a week before, the body of Malcolm Harsch, a 38-year-old Black man, had been found hanging from a tree just 50 miles east. Together, Fuller and Harschs deaths ignited a firestorm of fear in the region, of white supremacist hate group violence and police conspiracy, during a time of racial reckoning nationwide.
.....(snip).....
In 2015, the US justice department settled a lawsuit against Lancaster, Palmdale and the Los Angeles sheriffs department for targeting black people with discriminatory enforcement of the federal housing choice voucher program. The investigation that preceded the settlement found that deputies in Antelope Valley engaged in a pattern of misconduct that included pedestrian and vehicle stops in violation of the fourth amendment, stops that appear motivated by racial bias, unreasonable use of force and discrimination against residents on the basis of race. A review of use-of-force cases from 2010 to 2011 in which the only charge was obstruction-related resisting arrest found that 81% involved black or Latino subjects. .........(more)
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/27/california-racism-policing-robert-fuller-antelope-valley
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'The Confederacy of California': life in the valley where Robert Fuller was found hanged (Original Post)
marmar
Jun 2020
OP
hatrack
(59,439 posts)1. William Finnegan wrote about this in "Cold New World" 30 years ago . . .
And apparently nothing has changed in the town the local minority kids referred to as "Klancaster".
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/198992.Cold_New_World