It’s ludicrous to claim that cops would have opened fire if Black people were involved in a chaotic incident similar to the Great White Riot that occurred at the U.S. Capitol Building. In fact, we should stop pretending how cops, or white people in general, would react “if a Black person...” did anything.
It’s “when Black people...”
On November 22, 2018, Hoover, Ala. Police Officer David Alexander shot and killed 21-year-old Emantic Bradford in the back. According to surveillance video, Bradford, a veteran and legal gun owner, pulled out his gun during the ensuing chaos after a suspect opened fire at a Hoover mall on Thanksgiving Day 2018.
Police initially blamed the mall shooting on Bradford. Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall later removed the county’s first Black district attorney from the case because of a photo taken with an activist who protested the shooting. After a brief investigation, Marshall ruled that Officer Alexander “reasonably exercised his official powers,” concluding that the actions of police were “justified and not criminal.”
“Officer 1 identified E.J. Bradford as an immediate deadly threat to innocent civilians and thus shot Bradford to eliminate the threat,” Marshall said, adding: “Officer 1 reasonably determined that E.J. Bradford’s demeanor— i.e. sprinting toward the initial shooting site and its victim, while everyone else ran away—made him an immediate threat, rather than an innocent bystander.”
That same “law and order” Republican is in charge of the organization that helped organize, plan and promote the Coup Klutz Klan insurrection.
Marshall chairs the Rule of Law Defense Fund, the policy and fundraising arm of the Republican Attorney General Association, an organization composed of GOP attorneys general whose goal is to get GOP candidates elected to their states’ highest law enforcement position. In charge of enforcing the law. RAGA members famously joined a lawsuit to void the election results from Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Georgia that was smacked down like a negro at a protest by the Supreme Court.
Shortly after the Battle of Bunker Hillbillies, Marshall and other RAGA leaders said their group had no involvement whatsoever in the Charge of the White Brigade’s attempted government overthrow. But a new report by Documented, a project investigating corporate influence in public policy, seems to contradict RAGA’s statement, revealing that the fundraising arm Marshall chairs “helped organize the protest preceding the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol that took place on January 6, 2021.”
Documented reports:
RLDF appeared in a list of groups “Participating in the March to Save America” on the March to Save America website alongside entities including Stop the Steal, Turning Point Action, Tea Party Patriots and others. (MarchtoSaveAmerica.com has been taken down but an archived version of the website can be accessed through the Internet Archive Wayback Machine.)
RLDF also sent out a robocall detailing where and when the protest would take place.
Through the RLDF, the group is allowed to accept unlimited contributions without revealing the names of its donors. However, donations from Koch Industries, Walmart, Home Depot and Amazon fund RAGA’s campaign to undermine the results of the 2020 election.
Because of RAGA’s sponsorship, planning calls and organizing efforts, Marshall is backtracking on his group’s initial statement that they had “no involvement in the planning, sponsoring or the organization” of the Battle of Bullshit Run. Using the “it wasn’t me” defense pioneered by noted legal scholar Shaggy, Marshall now says he had no clue the association he leads was doing the most, promising to find the people responsible for the assault on democracy.
“I was unaware of unauthorized decisions made by RLDF staff with regard to this week’s rally,” Marshall said in a statement that was different from the first statement. “Despite currently transitioning into my role as the newly elected chairman of RLDF, it is unacceptable that I was neither consulted about nor informed of those decisions. I have directed an internal review of this matter. As I said yesterday, I condemn, in the strongest possible terms, the actions of those who attempted to storm the U.S. Capitol, a place where passionate but peaceful protestors had gathered and lawmakers debated inside. Our country is built upon the foundation of the rule of law. American democracy guarantees the right of peaceful protest. Those who chose to engage in violence and anarchy should and will be held accountable under the law.”
Wait...
There’s an option to hold people who “engage in violence and anarchy” accountable under the law? That’s what we’ve been asking for all along! Maybe we should make that a permanent position. Perhaps that person should even be an elected official who is charged with overseeing law enforcement and—
Oh, I see. He wasn’t talking about holding himself responsible.
Never mind.
“Attorney General Marshall’s account of his involvement in Wednesday’s insurrection is not credible,” SPLC Action Fund CEO and President Margaret Huang said in a press release to The Root. “He’s asking the public to believe that he was completely unaware of his staff’s work to organize the rally and insurrectionist efforts urged by the disgraced President Trump. It appears he is lying to his constituents – the Alabama people – and the American public at large about the outcome of the 2020 election and his role in the failed yet deadly coup.”
“EJ” Bradford Jr. could not be contacted for a response.
Clarification: A portion of this article was changed to clarify that Koch Industries, Walmart, Home Depot and Amazon contribute to the Republican Attorney General Association, and not directly to RAGA’s Rule of Law Defense Fund.