Reminder on why cigarettes matter (CW: SA, death, lynching, poison).

In 2014 in Staten Island, Eric Garner was strangled by the pig Daniel Pantaleo on accusations Garner was selling otherwise-legal single cigarettes.

Garner had been targeted for violence by pigs over cigarettes and their own opaque discretion multiple times in his life, including at least one occasion seven years before where he was sexually assaulted on the street under the euphemisms “strip search” and “cavity search”.

On Sept. 12, 2007, while being held in the Otis Barnum Correctional Center on Rikers, he wrote on a court form document: “On September. 1, 2007, at approx.. 7:30 p.m. on the corner of Castleton Ave & Heberton Ave [a police officer] and his team stopped me for reasons of there own. I was ordered to place my hands on the black SUV in which they were riding in.

“I complied with no problem. [The officer] then patted me down by ways of going through my pockets and socks and not finding anything illegal on my person. [The officer] then places me in handcuffs and then performs an cavity search on me by ways of ‘digging his finggers in my rectum in the middle of the street.’ “

Garner claimed the officer unzipped his shorts, and pulled out and inspected his genitals “in the middle of the street, all the while there are people passing back and forth. I told [the officer] to stop and if he wanted to do a strip search on me I’m willing to go to the police station if he wanted to because I had nothing to hide, my request was ignored.

“I then told [the officer] that I was fileing charges for him violating my civil rights, I was then hit with drug charges and told by [the officer] ‘that I don’t deserve my city job due to the fact that I’m an convicted felon on parole.’ (I work for the New York City Park Department.”

Under the “injuries” category, Garner claims “the injuries I received was to my manhood in which (the officer) violated” through the search of his rectum and genitals “for his own personal pleasure. (The officer) violated my civil rights.”

Seven years later in 2014, what Pantaleo did to Garner to kill him was already against NYPD policy, in addition to human decency; but Pantaleo faced no criminal penalty for killing a man who repeatedly informed the pig that the pig was killing him. Pantaleo was employed by NYPD until 2019, continuing to make $120,000 per year. He only lost his lawsuit to regain employment in March 2021.

Ramsey Orta, who filmed the extrajudicial executions, was arrested by NYPD on weapons charges the following year, and poisoned while in jail as prosecutors fought the legitimacy of his crowd-funded bail. He was sentenced to four years in prison after pleading guilty to stop prosecutors from targeting his mother. Orta was only released in 2020 due to Covid.

Remember, Biden campaigned on making sure nothing would fundamentally change except that cops would get more money.

How it started: How it's going: pic.twitter.com/rI75xrrfr9

— ✡️ A socialist from NYC (@TheNYSocialist) April 30, 2021