In this StoryCorps interview, Alex Landau remembers a 2009 encounter with Denver law enforcement when he was pulled over for making an illegal left turn. Landau, an African American man raised by white adoptive parents, hadn’t experienced issues with police until the night he was beaten to within an inch of his life.
“I figure everything is okay… I’ve already been patted down and plus there’s three officers on the scene,” Landau, who was cooperative, recalls thinking just before he was attacked. According to a lawsuit filed against the officers, who were not criminally charged, Landau was beaten with fists, flashlights, and a radio. He received 45 stitches. (Two of the officers have since been fired for using excessive force in other cases).
When Landau’s mother found him at the police station, she screamed.
Watch Landau and his mother discuss how that night changed their worldview, in the interview below. (Warning: This video contains disturbing images and quotes racist language).
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We’ve borne witness to a chaotic first few months in Trump’s presidency.
Over the last months, each executive order has delivered shock and bewilderment — a core part of a strategy to make the right-wing turn feel inevitable and overwhelming. But, as organizer Sandra Avalos implored us to remember in Truthout last November, “Together, we are more powerful than Trump.”
Indeed, the Trump administration is pushing through executive orders, but — as we’ve reported at Truthout — many are in legal limbo and face court challenges from unions and civil rights groups. Efforts to quash anti-racist teaching and DEI programs are stalled by education faculty, staff, and students refusing to comply. And communities across the country are coming together to raise the alarm on ICE raids, inform neighbors of their civil rights, and protect each other in moving shows of solidarity.
It will be a long fight ahead. And as nonprofit movement media, Truthout plans to be there documenting and uplifting resistance.
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