Let’s talk about Tyre Nichols
➕ Losing Tyre Nichols, your belonging's in the floods, your mind ❤️🩹
Coming at you after another WET day in Auckland (I basically had to drive through a lake to get to the office, and on second thought perhaps I should have turned around at that point…) On another note - it’s our boy Harry Styles’ birthday in the UK today, so happy Harry day to all who celebrate. Hope you’ve all entered our competish to win over $400 of Pleasing goodies (open to all our paying supporters!!) You’ve got a week to enter so there’s plenty of time!! (Details at the bottom of this newsy.)
Squish and I have just recorded you a new ep of The Shit Show (for tomorrow) and I’m excited because I get to see him and my little brother Ben this weekend (we’re going to catch the Waiheke Island Sausager.)
Love you all, have a magic day xxx
Let’s talk about Tyre Nichols
🔔Bel Chimes In: On Losing things 🔔
Andrew Tate's appeal against detention was rejected by Romanian judges
Tom Brady is retiring… again
💅Win a box of Pleasing goodies!! 💅
Let’s talk about Tyre Nichols
Content warning: police brutality.
I’ve spent a few days trying to decide what I should/ could say about Tyre Nichols that would feel meaningful or necessary coming from me. I still don’t know the answer to that, but, as with any other Hard and Bad Thing, I figured the least I can do is make sure we’re all informed and across what happened. Then we get to decide what we do with our feelings.
For those who missed it, Tyre Nichols was a 29-year-old Black man from Memphis who died after police pulled him over at a traffic stop. He was allegedly pulled over for ‘driving erratically’ (not shown in any video evidence), but things escalated into a brutal beating which resulted in Nichols’s death at St. Francis Hospital on the 10th of Jan.
The city of Memphis has since released over an hour of footage detailing what happened, and while I haven’t watched them (and do so at your own discretion) I have read about what went on:
“Officers say that they did not film the initial encounter with Nichols, and the footage begins after an officer has already pulled Nichols out of his car and backup is arriving at the scene. The officers appear to Taser Nichols, at which point he frees himself and runs from the officers. After a brief chase, officers pepper-spray Nichols before beating him.
Multiple video clips show police kicking Nichols in the head, beating him with a baton, and punching him while restraining him.”
The disturbing video footage at times shows officers restraining Nichols as an officer kicks him in the upper body and head, beating him with a police baton, and punching him. At points, Nichols staggers or attempts to stand and screams for his mother. In one video, an officer says he’s going to “baton the fuck out” of Nichols; video footage also shows officers speculating that Nichols was high during the encounter. No drugs were found in Nichols’s car, according to an officer on the scene, and police claims that Nichols reached for one of the officers’ guns as he attempted to run away are also not supported by the video evidence.
An initial police report states that it was only a ‘confrontation,’ but the videos show the complete opposite. At one point, after the beating, a video “shows Nichols waiting more than 20 minutes to be transported to a nearby hospital, slumped over and propped up beside a police car.” An autopsy report found that Nichols “suffered excessive bleeding caused by a severe beating.”
So what’s happening to the cops?
As per this (very good) Vox article:
The five police officers, all of whom are Black and all of whom have been fired, were charged with second-degree murder, aggravated assault, aggravated kidnapping, official misconduct, and official oppression on Thursday; if found guilty, they each face up to 60 years in prison for the murder charge alone.
There was also another officer - a white officer named Preston Hemphill - who was placed on desk duty directly after the attack and was later suspended as he is seen in the footage using a stun gun on Nichols.
After Mr Nichols fled the scene of the traffic stop, the attorneys allege, Mr Hemphill could be heard saying: "I hope they stomp his ass."
What Tyre leaves behind
Tyre leaves behind not only his loving mother and stepfather but a 4-year-old son and “a community of skateboarders and friends in his native Sacramento.” He loved photography, and on the night he was stopped and beaten by police, he was driving home from a night taking photos of the sky at a local park.
“Nichols can be heard in the video attempting to deescalate the situation and return to his family’s house, telling officers, “I’m just trying to go home.””
Here’s a little bit more about how we should remember Tyre (warning, I was in tears reading this.)
🔔Bel Chimes In: On Losing things 🔔
This section is written by my crush, the refreshing-as-a-house-chardonnay-on-a-steamy-day, Bel Hawkins. She also writes our Saturday newsletter ‘No News is Good News’ which all our paying supporters receive. Upgrade your plan to get her newsy here!
Mōrena besties,
Woosh, it's been a wild time since we last spoke, and I've been thinking a lot about how to write this carefully and respectfully in light of the bleak apocalyptic flooding we've had here in Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland). There's definitely a weird energy in the air here, reminiscent of lockdowns or The Day After Tomorrow, and everyone can't help but be incredibly confronted with climate change, political inaction of our governments and this exasperating feeling of... what next?
I try to make these Chimes each week feel kinda fresh and funny and like they ring true in some small or big way. So I'm super weary of bringing ~ neg vibes ~ when it feels like the most challenging thing right now is feeling resilient and hopeful about a future we don't know we'll have/what it will look like.
Disasters are weird as well because if they don't happen to you, they feel very far away. Like an exotic, bad plot in a movie or a story you heard about someone someone you know knows. When it's close to home and affecting you, you experience a type of loss or horror that opens you up to a whole new understanding about how fragile our existence is, how precious the good moments are, how swiftly change can launch into our lives. How can we make meaning from it all? Ooof, a life's work. I sat in my favourite food court with some of my besties over hot pho on Monday afternoon trying to figure that out.
Because losing things, on any level, is awful. When I was seven, my family had a house fire in the middle of the day (not to conflate this with anything major you've been through!). I remember my teacher driving me up our road after school, and I asked - what have we lost? She replied, 'maybe everything, maybe nothing, we never know, but what you'll always have is everything inside'.
Sounds a bit like live laugh love for a week of gnarliness, but I've come to know that sometimes you need something a bit soft that cuts to the feeling like that to get you through. Leaving you on a little climate change poem I wrote a while ago to send you off on something sweet.
As always — love you, love this, love us and speaking of love, I'll be delving deep into the concept of Romantic Love this Saturday in our No News Is Good News newsy. Give me a glass of buttery chardonnay, and I won't stop talking about it.
Til next week! (Or Saturday for the hotties)
xx
Andrew Tate's appeal against detention was rejected by Romanian judges
For those who might have forgotten, Andrew Tate and his brother are currently in custody after being arrested last month “on suspicion of human trafficking, rape and forming an organised crime group.” I should note that there have been no charges laid against the brothers by the police yet.
They have just lost their latest appeal against detention and are going to remain in custody for another month. More on this story here!
Tom Brady is retiring… again
This feels like deja vu - I literally remember writing this when he retired last time (after the 2021 season) but then like a rash or a boomerang - the man came back! But this time - after 23 seasons - Brady insists that he’s retiring ‘for good.’
💅Win a box of Pleasing goodies!! 💅
It's our boy Harry's birthday today and because we love him (and you!) we wanted to give away a whole box of Pleasing goodies worth over $400NZD!!! We were sent these by Pleasing, but feel like they are better in your hands than in ours!!
All you have to do is answer the questions below, and the best answer will win the prize!
The goodies include:
The Super Magic Family Time Polish Set
Pleasing x Marco Ribeiro Incrível Marrom Fosco Polish
The Pleasing x Marco Ribeiro Gloss Medium
Hand + Nail Balm
The Pearlescent Illuminating Serum
The Pleasing Spritz Probiotic Soothing Tonic
The Pleasing Pen Special Edition Gold
We’re running this competition as a thank you to all of our paying supporters for sticking by us (and sharing our Harry Styles obsesh) and it’s open for a week so there is still time to become a paying supporter and get in the draw!