Officer William Salyers, Officer Lauren Bacha, Officer Zachery Moody, Officer George Romero, Officer Deborah Dennison, and Officer Bryan Wood. Chattanooga Police Department, Chattanooga, Tennessee. A young black man named Alonzo Heyward was drunk and extremely upset after a late-night party. He grabbed a rifle and pointed at himself late at night and started talking about killing himself. His family and his girlfriend were trying to talk him down like civilized people do when someone is not in his right mind and threatening to hurt himself; unfortunately, in the meantime, some bystanders saw what was happening and they called in the Chattanooga city government’s police force — who proceeded to Take Control Of The Situation by means of escalating belligerence, by surrounding Heyward, by pointing guns at him, by hollering orders, and then — when he didn’t snap to and immediately obey their bellowed commands — by tasering him down to the ground. And then lighting him up with 59 shots after he’d already been knocked to the ground when he moved to get up.

Cops claim they felt threatened by the way he moved his rifle after he’d already been knocked to the ground by a 50,000-volt electric shock. The three non-cop witnesses on the scene (Heyward’s father, his girlfriend, and a neighbor) say they never saw Alonzo Heyward threaten to hurt anyone other than himself. They also say that Heyward was lying prone on the porch on top of the rifle when the cops first opened fire. While the cops were stopping to reload — they fired three volleys of gunfire before they decided Heyward was dead enough — the non-cop witnesses say they heard Alonzo Heyward ask the cops Why are you shooting me? Since he certainly never posed a threat to anyone other than himself before the cops showed up, and almost certainly posed no threat to the cops, either, in spite of their belligerent escalation of the situation, it’s a good question.

Meanwhile, the six cops who lit up Alonzo Heyward — Officer William Salyers, Officer Lauren Bacha, Officer Zachery Moody, Officer George Romero, Officer Deborah Dennison, and Officer Bryan Wood — were given a seven day paid vacation by the Chattanooga city government’s police force (so that they could take some time to see a shrink at taxpayer expense). They are now back on the streets. The boss cops insist that their hired muscle acted properly; Police Chief Freeman Cooper told a Chattanooga radio station that the hail of bullets used to mow down Alonzo Heyward shows that our people did what we trained them to do. No doubt. Eugene O’Donnell, a former government cop and government prosecutor who now teaches up-and-coming government cops how to be cops at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice [sic] in New York City, defended the hail of gunfire, saying that there is no magic number of shots to fire and that Unfortunately this is replicated all over the country. (Well, yeah.) When you send the police they bring deadly force with them. They come armed and they come predisposed to use force. No doubt. Which is precisely why legally unaccountable, heavily-armed twitchy government cops shouldn’t be sent into volatile situations where a person hasn’t threatened to harm anyone other than himself.

ALLies,

In honor of the first anniversary of the weekly Vegas Anarchist Cafe, and in connection with the opening of a new school year on UNLV’s campus, Southern Nevada ALL has helped organize a line-up of special programming for the A-Cafe’s Free Speech Soapbox Series.

This week — specifically, TOMORROW, Thursday, 3 September 2009 — Anarchist Cafe will feature the second event, during the first hour of the meeting, from 6:00–7:00pm. I will be hosting a freewheeling Q&A session, called Ask An Anarchist!, which will give A-Cafers, guests, and random looky-loos the chance to fire away with any question they may have about Anarchy, Anarchism, or Anarchists. As our advertising handbill puts it:

Are you curious to learn more about Anarchy, Anarchism, or Anarchists? Have you got questions about Anarchist ideas, the history of Anarchism, how Anarchism has affected mainstream culture, Anarchist solutions to contemporary social problems, or how Anarchists believe that a free society would work without government? Want to know whether the picture of Anarchism that you’ve gotten from the mainstream culture is accurate or based on misconceptions? Want to try and stump an Anarchist? Bring all your burning questions this Thursday, and our speaker will do his best to answer any question you care to ask. Come on in and fire away!

This event is for anyone curious about the ideas of philosophical Anarchism, or interested in conversation. All are welcome to attend.

The Soapbox event will run from 6:00–7:00pm. An informal meet-up and discussion will follow from 7:00–8:00pm. If you're in the Vegas area (or even if you're not), it'd be great to see you there. If you know anyone around abouts who might be interested in a talk about Anarchism, then please do forward the announcement on to them.

• WHAT: Ask An Anarchist! Q&A with Vegas ALLy Charles Johnson.

• WHERE: Weekly Anarchist Cafe at the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, Running Rebel Plaza (4550 S. Maryland Pkwy, right across the street from UNLV), Las Vegas, Nevada

• WHEN: This Thursday, 3 September 2009, 6:00pm – 7:00pm. The regular A-Cafe informal meet-up and discussion will continue after the talk, from about 7:00pm to 8:00pm.

• WHO: Anyone curious about the ideas of Anarchism, or interested in conversation.

Hope to see y’ALL there!

See also:

• GT 2009-08-26: Rad Geek Speaks: a talk on Anarchism and its ideas
• GT 2009-05-19: Rad Geek Speaks: Motorhome Diaries interviews me on agorism and counter-economics
• GT 2009-03-04: Rad Geek Speaks: Ask An Anarchist!
• GT 2009-01-27: Rad Geek Speaks: a talk on Anarchism and its ideas
• GT 2009-02-03: Southern Nevada ALLy Kelly Patterson speaks at Las Vegas Anarchist Cafe: We Need The Wobblies Now More Than Ever! A Brief History of the Industrial Workers of the World.
• GT 2009-02-11: Rad Geek Speaks: a recording of my talk What Is Anarchism? at the 28 January 2009 Las Vegas Anarchist Cafe

Two things.

First, a shout-out on behalf of the ALL Ad Hoc Global Organizing Committee. Are you yourself, or do you know anybody who is, an individualist anarchist, agorist, mutualist, left-Rothbardian, or otherwise on the libertarian left, who happens to live in or nearby any of the following metropolitan areas?

• Walla Walla, Washington
• Pensacola, Florida

Are you yourself, or is the ALLy that you know, interested in meeting like-minded people and getting (more) involved in local activism and organizing? If so, please drop me a line with your or their contact information. I have some requests from prospective local organizers who are looking for people to start locals for the Alliance of the Libertarian Left. I would love to be able to put interested ALLies in contact with each other.

Second, it’s Sunday Sunday Sunday. Let’s get Shameless Shameless Shameless.

What have you been up to this week? Write anything? Leave a link and a short description for your post in the comments. Or fire away about anything else you might want to talk about.

Matt C. at the Young Americans for Liberty blog wants to know why there aren’t more libertarian women. By which he apparently means that he wants to know why more women don’t read his own personal libertarian blog and why more women don’t go to the libertarian political events that he personally goes to. (Which is actually a separate question, although men posting Where’s the women? posts never quite seem to recognize that.)

The first point in Matt’s discussion is to ask whether this might be the result of intractable forces predisposing women to be anti-libertarian. (Along with a link to an LRC article arguing, based purely on anecdote and appeal to conventional wisdom, that women are instinctually anti-libertarian because they are too emotional and mostly incapable of abstract thought.)

The second point in Matt’s discussion is to wish for more women to show up for his Sausage Party because libertarian men are currently being driven insane by the lack of young libertarian women to hit on.

But I do know that a proportional increase in libertarian women would do well to preserve the sanity of libertarian men. As it stands, the young female “itinerary” [sic! –R.G.] is mostly composed of Obama zombies, fully-blown Marxists, and “murder-all-Iranians” type chickenhawks. This undoubtedly needs to change.

The first commenter, Anonymous, adds: Most women/girls are more emotional than logical. The ones who think with their brain and not their heart are libertarians. But at the same time most libertarian women have a hard time being libertarian with ALL issues.

The third commenter, John M., adds: I think many of the libertarian women that read this site would take offense to being labeled as more emotional than logical. A more scientific distinction would be to argue that the ratio exists because men are naturally more skilled at mathematics and science whereas women are more skilled in the disciplines of reading and writing. This gives men an advantage at comprehending and anaylzing the ramifications of policies. But he does want more women in the movement, because he believes (based on the experience of Sarah Palin, who he insults as having little … brain-power or charisma) that having a few women on the ticket (a few women who he believes will need to be politically educated by libertarian men) they will be useful for getting out the vote.

Commenter Jack, in reply to John M.’s mention of a female professor who once chewed [him] up for saying that women are more emotional than logical, adds: LOL. More indoctrination. I hate to hear stories of culturally marxist academia. It would be one thing to politely disagree, but professors these days will eat you up if you try to say that any two people are different than each other in any way. Matt C. comes back around to use this as an opportunity to tell us what he thinks is wrong with the modern women’s movement: The result of the egalitarian, denialist feminist indoctrination of the last few decades has been a generation of guys afraid to act like guys, and women who hate most of us for being fakers.

Matt Co. also comes back around to mention that he opposes a woman’s right to abortion, and that he considers this position compatible with the politics of individual liberty.

Sometimes, when women don’t show up for your parties, the best thing to do is not to ask whether there’s something wrong with women that makes them naturally predisposed not to dig the things you think they should dig. Because, dude, sometimes the reason that women don’t want to hang out with you is because there’s something wrong with you. And, specifically, because there’s something wrong with the way that you treat women.

And if you want a good example, why not start with the way you approached your original question?

Incidentally, be sure to read through the comments thread on the original post — not because the bulk of the comments are enlightening or even maginally original, but rather because radical feminist, left-libertarian Drunkenatheist’s commentary on the bulk of the comments is. Props.

(Link thanks to Drunkenatheist [2009-08-28].)

See also:

• GT 2008-08-08: Proof by ostention

WASHINGTON — If you’re planning a garage sale or organizing a church bazaar, you’d best beware: You could be breaking a new federal law. As part of a campaign called Resale Roundup, the federal government is cracking down on the secondhand sales of dangerous and defective products.

The initiative, which targets toys and other products for children, enforces a new provision that makes it a crime to resell anything that’s been recalled by its manufacturer.

Those who resell recalled children’s products are not only breaking the law, they are putting children’s lives at risk, said Inez Tenenbaum, the recently confirmed chairwoman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

The crackdown affects sellers ranging from major thrift-store operators such as Goodwill and the Salvation Army to everyday Americans cleaning out their attics for yard sales, church bazaars or — increasingly — digital hawking on eBay, Craigslist and other Web sites.

Secondhand sellers now must keep abreast of recalls for thousands of products, some of them stretching back more than a decade, to stay within the bounds of the law.

. . . Scott Wolfson, a spokesman for the agency, said it wouldn’t be dispatching bureaucratic storm troopers into private homes to see whether people were selling recalled products from their garages, yards or churches.

We’re not looking to come across as being heavy-handed, he said. We want to make sure that everybody knows what the rules of engagement are to help spur greater compliance, so that enforcement becomes less of an issue. But we’re still going to enforce.

— James Rosen, McClatchy (2009-08-20): Seller, beware: Feds cracking down on garage sales

Like most invasive government regulations, the rules of engagement for this particular war hurts all of its targets — that is, they ratchet up fixed costs for all resellers, hurting them directly and also hurting their ability to provide a cheaper alternative to their main competitors (in this case, mainly big discount retailers like Wal-Mart). But within the resale market, it hurts some players more than others:

Staffers for the federal agency are fanning out across the country to conduct training seminars on the regulations at dozens of thrift shops.

Even before this law, we had good mechanisms in place for pulling recalled products, said Jim Gibbons, the chief executive of Goodwill. The law just kicks it up a notch, so Goodwills around the country will continue to improve our process.

Goodwill uses $2 billion in annual sales at its 2,300 thrift shops nationwide to pay for its job-training and employment placement programs.

— James Rosen, McClatchy (2009-08-20): Seller, beware: Feds cracking down on garage sales

Those of us who want to resell old toys but don’t have $2,000,000,000 in annual sales to dip into for regulatory compliance and who don’t get training seminars from the United States federal government may have a harder time kicking it up a notch. As usual, regulation props up big established incumbents and hurts grassroots, ad hoc, or just plain small-time players; state corporatism artificially enforces consumerism by burning out reuse markets, and props up the strip mall by burning out the bazaar.

See also:

• FURB, Fr33 Agents (2009-08-23): U.S. Gov’t to Crackdown on Garage Sales?