I’m still not caught up with the thread but this right here is what the defund police movement is about.
A couple of days into this protesting I had to self censor myself because my rage at police on rampage against the citizens they are sworn to protect was so high, al I could think was, “The only solution to this is to burn all of the precincts to the ground.” I censored that thought because it was too inflammatory and was a product of my rage but the Camden solution, which Minneapolis seems to be considering, seems to be the right one. Dissolve the police forces and make them reapply while at the same time dramatically scaling back their responsibilities and shifting those resources to institutions more appropriate to the public welfare.
This doesn’t mean no police. It means less police, new police, new rules and a fundamentally different structure for our broken system of criminal justice. Because the current system is broken and bandaids isn’t going to fix it at this point.
No, I know Nesrie is black, and I never tried to “school” her. I continue with my reasoning because it’s… reasonable?
I did jump into this thread recently and have posted far more than normal. My stance is as anti-racist as they come and I believe that many areas could be successfully explored under the Black Lives Matter movement, some of them near and dear to my heart.
That was never meant to detract or deflect the horrible experiences Nesrie has had, or say they were caused by anything besides racism rooted in our past. I’m sorry she took it that way.
Being labeled conservative nutjob based on the subject of my posts and without knowing who I am was a new experience for me. I didn’t like it.
As a white person raised by a Christian mother and Jewish father who went to a high school that was 80% minority where every February we had the opportunity to watch Eyes on The Prize from start to finish, my life has been filled with a burning hatred of bigotry, racism and injustice. My whole life I’ve been trying to convert racist white people. I don’t know if it’s ever worked either but I know it was worth trying and I know that I won’t stop.
Her speech left me in tears.
Oliver did a great job covering many of the issues discussed in this thread. If anyone here hasn’t watched it yet, they should.
I have a Facebook friend, an retired Marine who I become friends with on a hockey board. I’ve never heard him say a mean word but he’s conservative and votes Republican. He’s the sort of guy who I could see saying “All lives matter,” not out of any malice but out of sheer ignorance as to why that is so offensive. (For the record, I’ve never heard him say it.). He’s the kind of guy who would put a blue lives matter sticker on his truck and think that it was merely a way of supporting the police. (Clueless white privilege in other words. And, again, I don’t know if he has a Blue Lives Matter sticker on his truck - I’m stereo typing.)
Anyway, I bring him up because this week he posted a meme that may or may not be based on an actual Christian parable where a shepherd with 100 sheep loses a sheep and prays to God for that sheep And the other 99 sheep say, “What about us? Don’t we matter?” And the shepherd says, of course you do but you’re not the ones in danger at the moment.”
Which is to say that that guy, who seems squarely in the All Lives Matter demographic, after this week, that guy gets it.
We’re never going to reach the deplorables but there are a lot of ignorantly people who have lived sheltered lives of privilege who are having their eyes opened somewhat. The murder of George Floyd rattled anyone who isn’t a complete piece of shit and the relentless police violence against protestors (many of whom are white) is making a whole lot of people who haven’t been laying close enough attention go, “Oh shit, maybe we should have been listening this whole time.”
I do believe that this has the potential to be a watershed moment for our county. It’s why the protests need to continue. We can’t let the pressure off and let people sweep this back under the rug because that is the psychological default, to crave a return to normalcy, which is a nice comfortable place for anyone who is privileged and a deadly place for everyone else.
The numbers are indeed impressive and important …
… But I have to admit, I’m actually posting this because Frank Luntz just provided the most perfect textbook example of bathos you can imagine.
Nesrie
4683
I am not labeling you a conservative nutjob for that or anything else at the moment, but yeah… when it comes to Black Lives Matter, slavery and racism consider me… prickly. Also when it comes to BLM, which again doesn’t have a national footprint, it’s not as if these three incidents occurred and then I took interest. I have literally been pointing out hat black lives matter via the Black Live Matter platform for years, and there are number of local groups that are focusing defund the police or whatever they want to call it. And the police piece has been heavy in the QT3 conversation for years although the other things come up. In addition, yes the black community is not a hive mind, so the videos, articles, and interviews are covering multiple generations, men and women, children and… different income levels but racism… it’s a problem for everyone that lifting the poverty of all people in the USA or just making the lower income brackets more tolerable and reasonable as a nation isn’t going to fix racism, hell I am not even sure it will even dampen it.
My brother is one of those. He’s a Republican, voted for Trump (unhappily, I’m pretty sure…when Trump came up last summer at a family get-together he just grimaced) but he’s not all that political. He owns a small business and is pretty religious, so he’s a Republican. Goes with the territory.
Anyway, a couple nights ago he texted me a video of a protest that he witnessed. Some dingleberry in a MAGA hat was standing next to him shouting “White Lives Matter” at the top of his lungs over and over, and my brother captioned it “This guy is one of the reasons protests are necessary.” For my brother, that’s pretty damn woke.
Thrag
4687
Wow that’s a bad lawyer. If I were the client I’d be looking for new representation after that.
Good on Cuomo to call WTF on that.
Thrag
4690
Well, IBM does have experience with having their technology used towards terrible ends.
Thrag
4691
Christ, what an asshole.
But at least he’s onboard with cracking down on payday lenders.
Thank you for writing that, along with everything else, and things I read elsewhere recently, it really helped me understand the problem with talking about economic equality. Some other time that we discuss I might not make a fool of myself, I never intended to say (a while back) that it solved anything, I’m sorry if I (also) frustrated you.
KevinC
4693
Tucker gets more orange by the day.
Tman
4694
So the Portland police Chief, a woman, has decided to step aside and promote one of her black lieutenants, to take over. Interestingly enough, she’d only been on the job for 6 months.
It’s pretty unprecedented. She said “He’s the exact right person at the exact right moment” and that “he’s the most compassionate, humble genuine to the core” person who never set out to be police chief.
Good on her. I think this will be good.
EDIT: However, the PPB has had many black police chiefs in its past, so time will tell I guess.
ShivaX
4695
Sacred Fence down.
So far Seattle has been fine. The cops retreated from their precinct, but the people seem to get it.
Also saw a bunch of locals run a Fox News anchor out of Seattle for trying to paint the peaceful demonstration as violent. So that’s probably what will make the news over at Fox: people were mean and rude, not the lies they were trying to spread.
