You Should Join Us

It has been extremely cool to watch the preparations commencing for SPM's 'Day of Unity', and the release of The S.O.N. Dope House hosted a preliminary meeting on 8/24, and it looks like it went very well. There is video of some volunteers handing out flyers here.

I want to tell those of you who have just found the blog, and remind those of you who have been around awhile, that by advocating justice for Carlos Coy we are speaking out for the rights of every citizen. No matter your position on his guilt or innocence, a cursory examination of Coy's trial reveals disquieting truths about his case, and Harris County's justice system in general.

A few examples include how testimony changed during the trial itself in SPM Responds 8 ...testimony about the family of the accuser that never did make it's way into the criminal trial, but was laid out at the civil trial in SPM Responds 12 ...and questions about whether or not Coy was even physically capable of committing act he was convicted for in The Neverending Letter part 2

I believe that Coy is innocent, but I freely admit that I can't prove it.What can be proven, and one day, God willing, will be proven, is that his trial was not just. If the verdict is allowed to stand in this case, or in the many like it all over Texas, we're accepting that injustice is acceptable, as long as it gives us the illusion of safety. Please, add your voice to those already committed to saying no.

https://www.facebook.com/spmretrial

Weekend Reading 86

It looks like there will be a prep meeting August 24 (tomorrow) at the Dope house. If you're interested in getting involved, stop by!

For more information, check out https://www.facebook.com/spmretrial

Grand Jury, meet Ham Sandwich

Anyone who has not been living under a rock for the past week probably knows that the governor of Texas, Rick Perry, was recently indicted for coercion and official oppression.

http://www.click2houston.com/news/texas-gov-rick-perry-to-turn-himself-in-on-abuse-of-power-charges/27613524

We’ve talked a little about Texas’s Grand Juries and how they work, as far as I understand it. You can see that here: http://www.spmaftermath.com/2013/05/grand-jury-rigged.html

Perry’s indictment presents a unique opportunity. He is a Republican, and a law’n order, throw-the-book-at-'em one at that. His politics are about where mine were a few years ago, and his supporters are the type of conservative right-wingers that reflexively support law enforcement. They are facing a conundrum; it’s likely that they will see these charges as politically motivated, which means that the system has failed.

The challenge will be to illustrate that this is not an example of the system being abused; Perry’s indictment is simply how the system works.

The excellent legal blog Popehat summed it up best:

“As I have discussed before, my fortunate clients are the most outraged at how they are treated by the criminal justice system, and most prone to seeing conspiracies and vendettas, because they are new to it — they have not questioned the premise that the system's goal is justice. My clients who have lived difficult lives in hard neighborhoods don't see a conspiracy; they recognize incompetence and brutal indifference and injustice as features, not bugs. "Justice system" is a label, not a description. The furnace on a steam locomotive bound for San Francisco does not have a goal of reaching San Francisco; the furnace just burns what you throw into it to move the train along.”

http://www.popehat.com/2014/08/07/the-allure-of-unquestioned-premises-the-internets-own-boy-the-story-of-aaron-swartz/

If They Gunned Me Down

The Michael Brown shooting is all over the news right now. Normally I would stay away from such a topical post, as SPM’s situation has little to do with a young man being gunned down, wrongly or not, by a police officer. However, a hashtag inspired by the post-mortem coverage piqued my interest.

If you don’t know what the #IfTheyGunnedMeDown hashtag is, this article has as good an explanation as any: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/08/11/after-michael-browns-killing-iftheygunnedmedown-shows-how-selfies-shape-history/

I don’t want to point out the intricacies of the trend so much as the general acceptance of this; that the media portrays what it pleases them to portray. You can chalk it up to fear-mongering, racism, or just an attempt to catch the attention of an already-jaded audience, but the truth is that ‘if it bleeds it leads; if it doesn’t bleed, well, maybe we’re not looking at it from the right angle.’

How do you fight this? By humanizing the subject. Pocos Pero Locos has posted a series of video recaps that feature SPM talking about the history and stories behind his music videos. Please watch them, share them, talk about them with your friends. 

Weekend Reading 86

Technically, Weekend Listening. Check out SPM's answer to 4 questions here: https://soundcloud.com/incandesio/spm-aftermath-questions1

S.O.N.shine

Just a short post tonight; you may recall a prediction that the release of The S.O.N. would not be imminent until we began to see some Dope House advertising and media engagement. Well, it appears that may be happening now; @Officialjar, Dope House’s twitter account, released photos from a commercial they’re shooting here: http://instagram.com/p/rIeTfKuLLI/

@SPMlives,  the new official SPM twitter account ran a contest last night: https://twitter.com/SPMLives/status/496816950165504001

...And you can find semi-regular updates at @Marimar568, Marisol Garay’s twitter, and Trey Coy’s twitter, @Screwstonskater.