BEATINGS[col. writ. 7/7/14] © ’14 Mumia Abu-Jamal The scenes are, unfortunately, all too familiar. A person is beaten, ruthlessly, relentlessly, by a cop (or group of cops). A video is released, and, at least initially, public sympathy flows to the beaten figure on the bottom. Before long, however, the counter-narrative emerges, the beaten was belligerent, combative, resisted arrest -or, worst of all, was on drugs! Then, the story goes away. Done! In California, a 51 year old grandmother is pummeled by a cop, throwing something like a dozen punches in bunches. He is hitting her like she’s a man. In occupied Palestine, a teenager, 15 year old Tariq Abu Khdeir is seen punched, kicked and stomped by black uniformed cops, who then place the child, now beaten into a stupor, into a waiting vehicle. The grandmother? Police say she was playing in traffic. The teenager?  Cops said he was with boys with knives. Yeah. So they beat them. The videos are chilling. They are Rodney King, without the batons. They are Delbert Africa, without the rifle butts. And they are SOP (standard operating procedure). It’s what cops do. Until people saw actual tapes of police in action, the police and the media were able to play it down. But this is the age of social media. And you see what you see. Pigs in action; beating women and children -- because they can. --© ‘14maj