Former Mistreatment is Outdated.

"Give it a fucking rest. You don't have to remind everyone of the date and time of Greg's death. You fucking Facebooked it and less than 6 months later, you're fucking someone else. Saying pretty words doesn't change that shit."

 

This comment was left for me by an anonymous source. Of course it was. I wouldn't want to be accountable for this statement either. But I do think it has some merit and wanted to address it. I'm pretty sure whoever wrote this (and I have my suspicions) is not the only one who has assumed the worst of my behaviour in this regard.

When Greg died, I had the impression that a lot of people expected my grief to somehow equal the amount of love we shared, as if that's even possible. People judge how people should behave all the time, but it is an interesting thing when someone dies. There is weird protocol that is laid out but never divulged. Everyone wants you to feel & act a certain way. People gauge your mourning period like it somehow validates how you cared for the deceased. Some don't want you to be happy until they feel you should be, because otherwise you must not have valued your loved one enough.

Enough. It is impossible to be enough for some people.

 

Some expected me not to get out of bed for months. Some expected me not to laugh for weeks. Some thought I would obviously be alone for the rest of my life, eventually dying of heartbreak.

This could have happened. I could have allowed myself to do exactly what I felt like doing and let my life and my soul just waste away. But I have said it before and I mean it: Greg would never have allowed himself to be with me if he didn't know that I was strong enough to make it without him. In fact, we discussed whether or not he would want me to date/marry/fall in love if he passed away. He was astonished I would have even asked such a question. 

 

"I would want you to be happy."

And that is what I have been striving for. Not just for me- for us. For the Sheena and Greg that still exists and is still very real to me. The Greg and Sheena that still have beer at the Druid and laugh and make jokes at our own expense. The Sheena and Greg that embrace even the abhorrent and turn it into appreciation. We were greater than the sum of our parts. And this will be a fiber of my being until I die.

I will be Sheena and Greg for the rest of my life.

But beside that, I am still me. I am still the girl that makes off coloured jokes and says shit you should never say at funerals and dinner parties. I am still the one who cries at pictures of baby meerkats. I am still the girl that burns grilled cheese sandwiches. I am still the girl who can't fall asleep without noise. I am still the girl that tweets like it's going out of style and makes friends and thinks people are the most amazing things ever.

I'm still the girl that loves. Often. Liberally. With abandon.

And I will continue to. I will continue to love men. And women. And affection. And sex. And this may upset people that can not understand how I can exhibit such behaviour after six short months. People may not understand how I can be happy with another after the relationship that I had with Greg. They have even expressed that they don't understand how I can adore one and mourn the other.

Let me assure you, I can. And do.

People do not have to appreciate or respect my fumbling attempt at normalcy. But people are also in the fortunate position to not have to feel the void and longing that sits like a vacuum inside of me every fucking minute I am not asleep or ensconced in the love and support of my friends and family. I am still aching. I am tired of my own voice. I am still in healing and may never not be. But certain things lighten the load of this weight. And the love and affection and beauty of people are invaluable to me.

So, while I do not feel the need to justify my behaviour, let alone to someone unwilling to even sign their name to such a vile and insipid comment, I do understand that death is a muddled emotional area and insight is valuable. People want to know that Greg's name and memory has not been disavowed. They want to know that he is still as big to me in death as he was in life. People want me to honour him the way he so deserved.

And I just wanted to assure you all that if he were able, he would ease your minds. He would tell you he is just as loved and brilliant in my life as he was the first day I ever met him.

And then he'd tell you to see the new Star Trek trailer. It's awesome.

Memory is a Terrible Thing When You Use it Right.

I haven't blogged in a while. Dictating and recording a life is a little difficult when you are attempting to survive it. But I do feel remiss. Things have happened. This post won't be pretty, but I will do my best to make it beautiful.

By now, everyone is aware that the love of my life died June 30th, 2012 at 1:36pm.
Yes. I recall that date, that time, every few hours, every day. And not just because I have his time of death as an reminder on my phone. This tragedy shut me down a little. It changed me. It altered how I see the world. This is assumed. This is obvious. This is not surprising. This is not what this post is about.

This post is about the miscarriage I suffered throughout the month of December and how I manage to convince myself that there is some reason to still get out of bed in the morning.

It wasn't a huge surprise. Nothing in my life ever really seems to be. All I knew to do was exhale. What better woman to be growing life inside her than the broken doll that felt life drain from her hands mere weeks before. In keeping with tradition, this development was not a secret to the people in my life. We made jokes. I was self-deprecating. There were deep conversations. There was more laughter. I cried. It was all we knew how to do.

But at the end of November, I started bleeding. Again, not surprising. I was having trouble keeping myself sustained, I was shocked my body had even gotten as far as it had in growing new life. It was barely keeping the old one afloat.
I went to the hospital. No heartbeat. I nodded. They gave me the list of warning signs and told me that there wasn't anything to do that nature wouldn't take care of on it's own. Come back if you have a fever. Watch your bleeding. Sorry for your loss. I didn't even get a pamphlet. The bleeding continued. Not a lot, but enough. My breasts stopped feeling sore. They never grew in size. I stopped gaining weight. I had no additional symptoms. My body just... quit.

I knew the feeling.

Weeks passed. The bleeding and the fatigue and the emptiness continued but never really got any better, nor any worse.Until one night when there was a additional gush of blood. Most normal people at this point would have been concerned. Concerned about their own health and safety. Concerned about the possibility of a mistake. Most people would have asked someone for help.
I, of course, did not.

Because tragedy was not a surprise.

So I called and ran over the list of symptoms and the nurse explained that "every woman is different." That was an under-statement in my case. I let it go. I stopped eating. I stopped drinking. My sleeping was a mess. I constantly cried and laughed and felt generally horrible. I had financial setbacks. The holidays were killing me. I wanted to quit my life. Noting out of the ordinary or surprising and yet everything felt too new to predict or control. So I decided not to fight it. And I continued to bleed. Every day.

"How are you feeling?"
"You look tired."
"How are you holding up?"
"Can I get you anything?"
"What do you need?"
"It will get better."
"You are so strong."
"We love you, Bee."

Between the holidays, my disintegrating new dating life, general pity, and my health, I couldn't decipher when one symptom bled into another only to become actual blood and what, if anything, I could do about any of it. Every fiber of my being was a sullen extension of a dying woman that finished sentences and told jokes.

After an excruciatingly long and hard month, I was ready for a reprieve. I had Christmas plans, I finally purchased gifts a week before Christmas day... it was almost over. 2012 was almost fucking over. I just needed to hold out a couple of more weeks.
A friend from Prana Holistic here in Edmonton came by one night to give me reflexology. She was aghast at my physical reaction to her treatment and explained that something was definitely not okay. I agreed. Nothing was okay.

That night I started to get a fever. I made the joke that her witchcraft was killing me and she was fired. The fever hit 103 degrees. Thinking it was sepsis from the miscarriage, I took the necessary precautions. If every woman was different, I was unrecognizable. I was sure this was par for the course. After all, wasn't everything? Nothing surprised me. So I slept and waited. Waited to get better. Waited for health. Waited for the holidays to come and go. Waited for my energy and my life to feel like mine again. I laid there thinking something wasn't right. I looked around and realized that nothing was right. So, I tried to sleep.

"How did you not know you were miscarrying this whole time?"
"Didn't you feel something was wrong?"
"How did you not go seek help?"
"We love you, Bee." 

Christmas eve, as I was waiting for my friend to show with eggnog so we could ring in Santa's birthday in style, I began to feel cramping. Not hugely painful, but not quite ignorable either. I said aloud, "Well, that's a feeling I haven't felt before..."
But nothing surprised me anymore. I went to the washroom.

I froze.

All I could see were tiny fingers amongst the bowl of my own blood, waving like a greeting and a good bye.

I immediately felt the life of us both drain from the room. 

"How are you feeling?"
"You look tired."
"How are you holding up?"
"Can I get you anything?"
"What do you need?"
"It will get better."
"You are so strong."
"We love you, Bee."

I could go into detail about retrieving it, mourning it, burying it. And I have considered it. Considered going into all the detail I so desperately longed for when I spent nights on websites and message boards digging for answers. And maybe one day I will. For the woman in small town Saskatchewan or Ontario or Minnesota three years from now who wants to know how different a woman she has to be before something is deemed wrong enough to worry about.

It was hard to move like a hollow shell through the next few days. I only told the necessary people I needed to and let the rest enjoy their Christmases as much as they could. People asked me how I was doing as the first Christmas without Greg would be the hardest one. I agreed and smiled. I told them I was okay and I wondered if I was lying.

"Can I be done now?", I weeped.

I thought it was over. Except it wasn't.

I proceeded to have what can only be described as labour alone in my bathroom as my body writhed in pain in an expedited attempt to eject what was left of the life previously distilled. The pain and blood were indescribable. At one point, limp and ruined in a dark bathroom, I gave in to the reality that I may die. I even said good bye. Aloud. To no one. After four hours, I opened my eyes and could actually see again. The bathroom may have resembled a murder scene, but I was still alive. I would like to say I was relieved but something happens when you give up on your own life. Especially after you have witnessed a smaller life give up on you.

The last few weeks I have experienced the typical physical, emotional, and hormonal adjustment period. Nothing surprising. I have had support. I have had love. I have had moments of laughter and joy. As with the tragedy of Greg's death, I feel I owe my sanity and my soul's armor to those around me who refused to let me whither and die. No matter how many times I decided to give up.

Because that is what I have realized. Life doesn't have boundaries. It can't be contained in a dying body, or a forming child, or a listless woman in a pile of tears on the floor. It resonates and undulates in everything and everyone. The life force from my friend's fingers into my feet; the life force in the soup or slurpee brought to my door at midnight; the life injected through the hugs, the tears, the kisses, the gestures made by even people I have never met. Life has changed forms a lot in the past six months, but it hasn't left me. It hasn't quit.

And neither have I.

"We love you, Bee."

So for now, I will let the woman who still looks at the pictures of her dead child every day look inside for a while at the life she has left. I will let her feel the love and the life that has kept her afloat while surrounded by death and the disintegration of the world she knew.
Maybe she can heal first before she attempts to heal the world. Or recreate it.




Maybe she can start to surprise herself.

Hunted.

As I wander through this apartment

it feels like walking through time

Not forward, as most believe

Not sideways, as I believe

But backward 

Every morning the world looks imposing

Like I am getting further away

By mere inches

Things seem to weigh a bit more

Lifting them becomes more difficult

By mere grams

Time that used to feel so weightless

Time that used to feel so expansive

It is hunting me now

"I look at myself, I did not see me anymore..."

"At the twilight, a moon appeared in the sky;
Then it landed on earth to look at me.
Like a hawk stealing a bird at the time of prey;
That moon stole me and rushed back into the sky.
I looked at myself, I did not see me anymore;
For in that moon, my body turned as fine as soul.
The nine spheres disappeared in that moon;
The ship of my existence drowned in that sea..."

"Better by far you forget and smile

Than you should remember and be sad.."

Thank you, friends. Friends who somehow know I am up at 2:30am in need of sweet words.

https://twitter.com/Mike_FTW

"Life is Slippery. Here, Take My Hand."

If I put this entry off any longer, I will never write it.

I still don't really know what story I want to tell here. The one about the love I had with Greg, the one that tells the tale of his last days, or the one that describes how it is getting harder to get out of bed every day rather than easier. I feel I may run out of words. Or will.

So this will be part one. The days leading up to his death. The technicalities. Some of the answers to the questions such as 'how did it happen?' and 'how did he go so quickly, he was doing so well?' The moment of his death is a chapter all its own, and I will do my best to summon the emotional strength to delve into that pool one more time for you.

On Monday the 11th he was having a lot of trouble breathing. After seeing his doctors, they upped his anti-rejection meds and steroids and the line between his sickness and his side effects started to blur. It was a hard week. He barely slept. He had to sit down from breathlessness from just going to the washroom. He didn't eat. He was miserable and uncomfortable all the time.
"I have a follow up appointment on Tuesday, Mee. Let's just give it the weekend for the meds to do their thing..."
So we did.

The last photo he ever took with the caption "Good morning sunshine #nofilter #rejection?"
http://ink361.com/#/users/1125425/photos

On Saturday evening while he was sitting at our kitchen table, I caught an expression on his face. One I had never seen before.
"Baby, are you scared?" I asked him.
He started to tear up and he nodded.
"I just don't want to leave you."
Leave me. Not die. He was never afraid to die. But this was the first time I had ever seen him afraid that he might not make it. And it terrified me.

On Monday I came home from work at 10am. He was having what I can only describe as an escalating panic attack from not being able to catch his breath. I called the ambulance. Once they came I packed his overnight bag, as I always did when he had to stay at the hospital, and went to meet him in Emergency. On the 15 minute drive to the hospital I saw three dead animals on the road. I started to cry.

When we got in to see him, there was something not quite right. He was agitated. He wasn't faintly smiling like he always did. He looked worried. These are things Greg almost never expressed when he was in the hospital. It was always much more important for him to feign casual comfort for the emotional stability of his family. He would always fake a smile, crack a joke, anything just to see me smile, too. And he could barely look at me.
"It's just because he hasn't gotten any sleep and he has been miserable this entire week," James said. I nodded.
But that wasn't it.

By the next morning the doctor decided it would be best to sedate him while the body healed. This is also known as putting someone in a medically induced coma. It was for the best, they said. It will just be for a couple of days, they said.

This was the last text I ever received from him.

That was the last time I saw him awake. The last time I told him I loved him and knew he could hear me. The last time I felt him squeeze my hand back.

In lieu of telling the same minutia of medical and emotional drama that followed the next 2 weeks, I will share with you excerpts of the Evernote I was sharing with Greg titled "The Hospital Diaries." My plan was to document life as he slept so when he awoke he would have stories and something to fill in a few of the blanks he may have. Excuse the typos. I have left it unedited for posterity.

Note: The Evernote audio files are usually just me singing our silly songs to him and telling him I love him through muffled tears and outright sobs until I compose myself and apologize and tell him I will try to do this again tomorrow. It always ended up the same way.

Note: I still have the plastic piece. I sits on a statue of Thor with a lock of his hair. It took me a week to move it from the floor after he died.

And that was as far as I got before it started to become much too scary for me for carry on. I couldn't conceive of documenting anything as just getting through the day was a feat. There were complications, "set backs", improvements, and the unexpected. It was a fucking ridiculous roller coaster and every day became a bit more grim than the last.
Until the Friday when they said that his prognosis had stabilized and his oxygen was excellent. They took the dialysis machine off of him, they had quit his plasmapheresis and it looked like they could start taking him off sedation by Saturday. The family was so excited we went to the Tymofichuk's for a celebratory barbecue. We raised our glasses for Greg and my heart felt lighter than it had in weeks.

And then James got off the phone with the hospital.

"Greg had a stroke."

By the time we got there, the doctors explained that the stroke may have been bleeding for days. The damage was "extensive." They couldn't guarantee that he would have the brain function to keep himself alive on his own.

I recall standing beside Greg's bed, reading Tina Fey's Bossypants to him and laughing, when the devastating reality was explained to us. Behind me, I heard Marie collapse in wails. I heard Randy, the rock of the family, reduced to tears. I heard James start repeating "no... no..." until they, too, became ruined sobs. I rested my head beside Greg and stroked his hair, softly telling him that I loved him and that I would be okay and that he could go. I didn't even believe that I would be okay, but I knew that the only thing that would keep Greg clinging to this life was his desperation to stay with me and take care of me. I was so intent on making sure he knew he could move on that I don't even think I remembered to cry myself.

"You have to make a decision..." the doctor said. We knew what she was talking about.

As soon as it became clear that the Greg we knew had already slipped through our fingers, we left for a sleepness night only to return in the morning with a unanimous decision.

"I would love that man if the only part of him that remained alive was his left foot but I would never do that to him."
The family agreed.

We were all together the next morning; Randy, Marie, James, Anne, and his best friend Nathan. The shock and sadness was trumped only by the overwhelming love and support everyone had in that room for each other. And for Greg.

"Leave it to Greg to wait until we could all be together before he passed..." I said.
"He was always so fucking considerate."

It was good to hear everyone laugh.
It would be awhile before we would do it again.



cont...

Suspected University of Alberta HUB Gunman Still on the Loose.

 

 

 

 

Police have released a photo of a “person of interest” in an overnight robbery attempt that saw three armoured truck personnel killed and a fourth critically injured at the University of Alberta’s HUB Mall.

Travis Brandon Baumgartner, 21, is believed to be one of several employees of G4S Cash Solutions Canada who was at the HUB Thursday night. He is believed to be in a dark blue Ford F-150 pick-up truck with AB plate ZRE 724.
Two men and a woman died and a fourth victim, a man, is in hospital, city police Staff Sgt. Erik Johnson said early Friday. Police continue to look for a suspect or suspects after receiving reports around midnight of gunshots at HUB, a combined residence and shopping mall that runs the length of several blocks along 112th Street.

It’s arguably the deadliest armoured car incident in Alberta history.

Luka Magnotta, National Treasure.

Just got a glimpse of his murder, dismemberment, rape, cannibal video. 1 Lunatic 1 Icepick.
Found another earlier video of him killing 2 kittens by putting them is a plastic bag and sucking the air out with a vacuum hose. 1 Boy 2 Kittens.

Couldn't bring myself to watch either one of them. The videos are extremely hard to find as the RCMP has been diligent in getting them removed. I won't be linking them. No one should have to experience that.

2 videos 1 disenchanted bee.

He kept posting nude "modelling" pictures of himself to sites such as Buzzfeed and Reddit and would then 'like' them. He wanted fame. He found infamy.

What the fuck is wrong with us?

I am never living in Australia. EVER.

VICE MEETS: Issei Sagawa. An interview with a Cannibal.

 On the afternoon of June 13, 1981, a Japanese man named Issei Sagawa walked to the Bois de Boulogne, a park on the outskirts of Paris, carrying two suitcases. The contents of those suitcases, to the lament of a nearby jogger, was the dismembered body of a fellow student – a Dutch woman named Renée Hartevelt, whom Sagawa had shot three days prior and had spent the days since eating various parts of her body. He was soon arrested. According to reports, Issei uttered, “I killed her to eat her flesh,” when they raided his home, whereupon they found bits of Renée still in his fridge. Sagawa was declared insane and unfit for trial and was institutionalized in Paris.
His incarceration was to be short, however, as the French public soon grew weary of their hard-earned francs going to support this evil woman-eater, and Issei was promptly deported. Herein followed a bizarre and seemingly too convenient set of legal loopholes and psychiatric reports that led doctors in Japan declaring Issei “sane, but evil.”
On August 12, 1986, Sagawa checked himself out of Tokyo’s Matsuzawa Psychiatric hospital, and has been a free man ever since.
This is where the real story begins.  
VBS met up with him to find out what he’s been up to in the 30 years since.

Casey Anthony: "Finally I have something that I can call mine."

Yes.
It, indeed, has been a long time since you have had something that you can call yours.
But maybe try not to kill this one.

RIP Jesse.

“Morris was diagnosed with a major depressive disorder at an early age and suffered from panic attacks…Little information surrounding the cause of death is available though Morris suffered from depression and attempted suicide by hanging in September.”

He was 27.

Final Post: Jamie Hubley Leaves Suicide Note on His Tumblr Account.

Jamie Hubley, a 15-year old gay teen in Ottawa, committed suicide on Friday after experiencing bullying at school, Andy Towle notes. “Hubley documented the final month of his life in heartbreaking and painful detail” on his blog, noting, “I hate being the only open gay guy in my school … It fucking sucks, I really want to end it.”

http://catchmeblondy.tumblr.com/

First ‘official’ statement from the Occupy Wall Street movement.

FIRST OFFICIAL STATEMENT FROM THE OCCUPY WALLSTREET MOVEMENT.

As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.
As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.
They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.
They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.
They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.
They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.
They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless nonhuman animals, and actively hide these practices.
They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.
They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.
They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.
They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.
They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.
They have sold our privacy as a commodity.
They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press.
They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.
They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.
They have donated large sums of money to politicians supposed to be regulating them.
They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.
They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantive profit.
They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.
They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.
They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.
They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad.
They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.
They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts.*
To the people of the world,
We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.
Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.
To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.

Thank you, Jack Layton.

July 18, 1950 – August 22, 2011

Charlene Strong- It Wasn't Enough.

Charlene Strong's heartbreaking story of what it meant to her to have same sex relationships recognized by the state. But it wasn't until after the love of her life had passed away. Get a box of tissues.

Casey Anthony Found Not Guilty of First Degree Murder.

And this made the injustice worth it.
(Not really, but this is pretty fucking funny.)

Newsweek's Princess Diana Cover & Accompanying Facebook Page.

What exactly was Newsweek trying to accomplish with these promotional ideas?
Because all they do is creep everyone the fuck out.

Stanley Cup Riot 2011; Vancouver, Beautiful British Columbia.

http://vancityriotcriminals.tumblr.com/




There were 70,000 raging lunatics in the streets last night.  It is rumoured that one Bruins fan was tossed over a bridge and killed. Luongo, from what I have read, is still unharmed, so figure that shit out.



In the above video a man tried to deter people from smashing windows of businesses, shouting "This is MY city!!" and he, in turn, was beaten.

Credit: Getty Images. Journalists are now looking to identify the loving couple.

Credit: Dan Foreman facebook page; originally posted by Dave Whitney.

But there were 1300 (and counting) lovely Vancouverites up bright and early to help clean up the remains of the chaos and embarrassment that occurred:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Post-Riot-Clean-up-Lets-help-Vancouver/215683225132481

Credit CBC.

Credit: CTVBC.

Credit: Metro.

Unfortunately, the looting is still pretty widespread as the police try to keep up with the people of Vancouver who need widescreen TVs and Hudson's Bay blankets to keep them warm after the loss of the cup:
http://www.theprovince.com/opinion/Riot+substantially+under+control+looting+widespread/4953623/story.html

Credit: Twitter.  This is circulating trying to take this guy down.

Of all of the shame and disgusted comments I have read on Twitter, Facebook, and various comment boards, I think this one sums it up pretty nicely:

"I don't think I'm going to move to Vancouver after all.  It's not the city I thought it was."

Narces Benoit Video of Police Shooting That Killed Raymond Herisse and Injured 7 Others.

Man who recorded a police shooting hides the memory card in his mouth as the police hold a gun to his head and smash his smart phone and intimidate him and his girlfriend into silence about the incident.

< Images of last week's fatal police shooting in Miami Beach have been released.
Here you see footage recorded on a cell phone by Narces Benoit.
The police are surrounding a car driven by Raymond Herisse. Then they started firing at the 22-year-old.
Herisse was killed, three officers and four bystanders were injured.
Benoit and his girlfriend, Ericka Davis, are accusing authorities of destroying evidence and intimidation.
They say the only reason this video is still around because they were able to hide a memory card before authorities smashed the phone that captured this incident.
They have hired a lawyer, saying they "want the right thing to be done." >

Gil Scott-Heron Dies at Age 62.

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED.

Scott-Heron was HIV positive and battled drug addiction through most of his career. He spent a year and a half in prison for possession. In a 2009 interview he said that his jail term had forced him to confront the reality of his situation.

"When you wake up every day and you're in the joint, not only do you have a problem but you have a problem with admitting you have a problem."

Yet in spite of some "unhappy moments" in the past few years he still felt the need to challenge rights abuses and "the things that you pay for with your taxes".



"If the right of free speech is truly what it's supposed to be, then anything you say is all right."