Less than Lethal

I keep waiting to hear on mainstream media that Linda Tirado is dying.

She was here in the Twin Cities in 2020 to cover the uprising after Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd, when she was shot in the eye by a Minneapolis cop with a "less than lethal" round.... what they euphemistically call a "rubber" bullet. She wasn't the only journalist who was shot by the cops, and she was one of the ones who won compensation in a lawsuit against MPD for their tactics.

However, that was not enough, because the damage was even worse than the blindness in one eye she was left with. It caused brain damage, and the brain damage is killing her. She has entered hospice. 

The cop who did it has not been identified, when he should be charged.

At this point, I want mainstream journalists to call this out in their mainstream public places — not just on social media. A U.S. cop has caused such dire injury to a U.S. journalist that she is going to die. 

Less than lethal. Like Tirado's earlier explanation of the effects of tear gas and why it should not be used, these projectiles are too dangerous for use, and are a measure of the increasingly militarized police state we live in.

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Tirado is the author of the book Hand to Mouth: Living in Bootstrap America.