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I think the whole system there is broken, everyone has access to automatic weapons and more, the Police have become heavy handed because they're argument can always be "the suspect may have been carrying a hand gun/automatic rifle etc", gun crime just breeds more gun crime, and there does not seem to be much in way in of investigation when it does go wrong, with systemic racism seemingly the norm in many Police forces.
You then have a penal system run as a big business with a hugely disproportionate number of black prisoners, essentially locked up to work in factories producing goods for sale in private jails providing a free work force.
Finally you have a President who projects an image that this is reasonable, that gun crime is part of constitution and all it takes is a bible and "thoughts and prayers" to appease his followers.
I was stationed on an American base in Germany for a while and remain friends with some of the guys, all Trump supporters, and some of the comments over the last few days have been a real eye-opener.
nickc,
Thanks for hat Killology link. The US police are literally bandits. With homeowners losing more to asset forfeiture than burglary, you are more likely to get robbed by the police than the robbers.
I mentioned Ferguson on here a few days ago, and the degree to which the police had robbed the public there (up 500% in the year before Mike Brown's murder.) It was also where we saw the full extent of police militarization. US police declared war on the (black) public some time ago. The police are an army without the training. Bandits.
US police declared war on the (black) public some time ago. The police are an army without the training. Bandits.
That sounds hyperbolic to me. At least make some demands. Revolution is for the irresponsible and adolescent.
That sounds hyperbolic to me. At least make some demands. Revolution is for the irresponsible and adolescent.
Oppression is for sensible adults?
Revolution is for the irresponsible and adolescent.
No, it’s for the desperate.
rydster,
Like me sat here in the UK making demands is going to change anything! I'll give it a go though, just for you.
Put an end to voter supression, which denies citizens (particularly of colour) their citizenship.
Appoint police chiefs and sheriff's, don't put these positions up for election as those that vote them in always end up voting for Judge Dredd.
Curtail the power of police unions.
De-militarise the police, take their toys away from them.
Stop funding the police through the fining of the public and asset forfeiture.
Make it impossible for fired police officers to get re hired by other police departments.
Dismantle the prison industrial complex.
All of these things are the cornerstones of police brutality and State oppression. By state oppression I mean not only the Federal State but the individual States. The lack of Federal oversight of policing is perhaps the biggest systemic reason that the US is so plucked up.
Is that hyperbolic enough for you?
As I posted earlier, peaceful protest is an oxymoron.
Someone posted a link here that put it more eloquently.
'The only thing worse than rebellion is that which causes rebellion'
Unless you have a demand then your 'protest' is either a pose or wantonly destructive.
It's all well and good saying that racism must end but there is no consensus as to what racism actually is.
Civil rights movement wanted equality before the law for example re ending segregation and equal voting rights.
BLM has a bonkers wish list of nonsense.
I'm not saying there aren't real issues to be addressed but they need properly articulating.
It’s all well and good saying that racism must end but there is no consensus as to what racism actually is.
There’s certainly a consensus amongst most lucid people. It’s hardly complicated
noun prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior
BLM has a bonkers wish list of nonsense.
Source for the list please
There’s certainly a consensus amongst most lucid people. It’s hardly complicated
noun prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior
That doesn't address the issue of so-called systemic racism perpetrated by social structure and institutions. This is one thing the protests want 'abolishing'.
I'm not saying this doesn't exist but it also can't be pinned down unproblematically either. For example, Critical Race Theory says that core economic and social systems in the West such as Capitalism and liberal-democracy are immanently racist by being built on racist meta-narratives. That's interesting but it's also not clear what can be done short of setting fire to everything if that's true.
There are many in the humanities who think that race should be abandoned as a concept because it's so protean and nebulous. There is no academic consensus regarding what race is.
rydster.....
You say 'civil rights movement wanted equality before the law, the ending of segregation and equal voting rights.'
Let's start there shall we? Is this not what the protesters today are demanding.... still?
You've answered your own question. The 'demands' of the Civil Rights movement have not been met. Those gains that were achieved 50 years ago have been back pedaled ever since. The same thing happened after the abolition of slavery, within 50 years, by the 1930's a new tyrany had been legaly set up to reverse many of the freedoms achieved.
Outrageous demands..
BLM’s #WhatMatters2020 will focus on the following issues:
- Racial Injustice
- Police Brutality
- Criminal Justice Reform
- Black Immigration
- Economic Injustice
- LGBTQIA+ and Human Rights
- Environmental Conditions
- Voting Rights & Suppression
- Healthcare
- Government Corruption
- Education
- Commonsense Gun Laws
If those objectives are an issue, then you are the issue. How they are achieved is up to governments to resolve, and if they don't then the situation that has arisen is what happens.
The ‘demand’ is that the problems get fixed.
How they get fixed is a job for a progressive government through policy decisions and engagement with the communities and people they serve. Understanding the problems and defining them is part of that job but step one is to acknowledge there is a problem and genuinely start the job of fixing...
It isn’t and shouldn’t be up to protesters to define the solution detail by tiny detail, their goal is to demand change and for their voice to be heard.
Revolution is for the irresponsible and adolescent.
It’s not, unfortunately it is a necessary catalyst for long lasting change as history has shown. Not always for the better I hasten to add. Calling it irresponsible and adolescent is rather, well, irresponsible and adolescent really.
There are many in the humanities who think that race should be abandoned as a concept because it’s so protean and nebulous. There is no academic consensus regarding what race is.
I think that’s what us non-academics have largely reached a consensus on and like to describe, in non-nebulous fashion, as a right load of old bollocks
You’ve as much chance of abandoning race as a concept as you have of abandoning breathing as a concept. As Trumps America is presently demonstrating on a global scale
Probably just me, but it seems that in England a police officers attitude is ‘I uphold the law’. Whereas in America the attitude seems to be ‘I AM the law’
It's even deeper than that.
Pretty much all of American society is based on power, and the heirarchy associated with that. Now I don't get my knowledge of America exclusively from TV, but it's interesting to see the subtle things that come out in the cultural output. For example - you can be summarily fired from your job pretty easily. This means that your boss has a lot of power over you. So you get things like 'ooh don't say that about the boss' and the powerful person has to be pandered to because he'll fire you. Countless movies contain the 'you'll never work in this town again' threat, because people have power and they can get people to do whatever they want without accountability. I've had so many conversations in which threats are thrown into the language as a matter of course, I don't think many speakers even realise they do it. Look at how often the day is saved in movies by violence from the good guys against the baddies.
This manifests itself in many ways but rampant machismo is very obvious. People threaten each other with violence and other reprisals all the time - it's about threats and domination. So men (it mostly is) are all trying to dominate one way or the other. This is why there are so many gun nuts - they crave power, and they think the guns give them that. Even 'responsible' gun owners talk about the battle they'll have with the baddie who tries to get them. Why would they talk about it? Because they are fantasising about it. Guns are an absolutely massive part of this. US drivers don't shout and swear at each other, mostly. Once whilst driving I beeped at someone and gesticulated, my then GF said 'don't do that - he might have a gun'. So people are living under constant threat of violence from people who wish to dominate.
This is the behaviour that Trump and the cops are displaying. They wish to dominate by force and threats, because that's how society works there to a large extent.
An interesting dichotomy at play - lots of videos of US cops being docks, but also some of US cops being cool, taking a knee, imploring colleagues to join them, etc. Also some vids of agitators getting pinged by protestors - lots of stuff going on...
It isn’t and shouldn’t be up to protesters to define the solution detail by tiny detail,
Governments make laws and policy. We should be very clear what they can and can't deliver.
If I protest about 'economic justice' and demand the gov deliver it for me we have a problem of 'economic justice' being ill-defined and under-articulated. How will I signal to the government what it is substantively than they need to achieve? What does success look like formally?
It’s not, unfortunately it is a necessary catalyst for long lasting change as history has shown
It's my experience that westerners talking glibly about revolution have never experienced one.
I’m not talking glibly, just stating it as a historical fact. Revolutions have happened throughout history as catalysts to massive change. France, Russia, Haiti, Cuba, China, Austria, Iran, Italy etc. Are you disputing that fact?
Where I’m from has absolutely no bearing on it. Although I’m from Europe where there has been a shit tonne of revolutions over the years. Were they all irresponsible and adolescent? How different would the world be if they hadn’t have happened?
It’s my experience that westerners talking glibly about revolution have never experienced one.
Surely ‘westerners’ have experienced plenty of revolutions, as they have a tendency to be on the receiving end of them?
Or are academics now saying we should no longer recognise colonialism as a concept?
If I protest about ‘economic justice’ and demand the gov deliver it for me we have a problem of ‘economic justice’ being ill-defined and under-articulated. How will I signal to the government what it is substantively than they need to achieve?
It would start with a government saying:
We hear you, we understand that there is a problem, let’s engage with the groups affected to fully understand the problem, and then we’ll describe how we intend to change/invoke policy to fix it, if you agree with those changes (either by voting that gov in/back in to power) then we can move forward. Along with constant review and engagement with those people that are affected.
Or words and actions to that effect.
A big part of the problem is that there have been decades of the ‘we hear that you’re angry’ bit without much of the rest, or even worse, a demonstrable worsening of the situation.
Demanding individual changes is all well and good but won’t do much to tackle a systemic societal issue, and could even run the risk of a ‘we did the bit you asked for why aren’t you happy now?’ situation.
Real leadership and a genuine desire to tackle issues at a societal level are what’s needed, nobody is offering that (yet), and very few in power are even willing to entertain the idea of it.
So you want the gov to figure out what you want?
If they don't figure out "stop killing black people", we're in trouble.
The devil is in the detail though. You want the police to never kill a black person? That is probably something that can't be delivered by a government.
A few years ago a Canadian police officer talked a man with a gun into putting it down. An American police official said the Canadian officer should be disciplined for not shooting the man with the gun.
The attitude is wrong from the start which then becomes magnified with regard to particular groups of citizens.
The devil is in the detail though. You want the police to never kill a black person? That is probably something that can’t be delivered by a government.
Just feels a bit like you're refusing to accept the obvious.
It’s just deflection, distraction, and discrediting.
None of it done very well either.
Before we go too deep on what US politicians can or should do to address the problem, consider the options facing you as a Black American citizen, you can either vote for Trump, a man convicted of race discrimination as a landlord and a promoter of white nationalism, or Biden.
Biden himself wrote the crime bill legislation that passed under the first Clinton administration. The crime bill that introduced 3 strikes and your out, the crime bill that led to the trippling of the US prison population, that extended the list of crimes punishable by death to include drug offences, the crime bill that has bought an apocalypse on black America.
The same administration introduced the legislation that allowed the police to purchase surplus military equipment in the name of the 'war on drugs,' (code for war on black people) As the governor of Arkansas, Clinton signed orders that sent over 50 people to the electric chair, a record I think. How many of them do you think were black? And how many do ypu think were innocent?
Clinton's pitch for the presidency was a pitch to be tough on crime, and particularly crime related to black people, seeing it as the only way for a Democrat to get votes from the South. Meanwhile, Hilary was busy buiding a relationship with the united daughters of the confederacy. This, in part explains Trump when he said 'what have you got to lose?'
What is obvious? Yes the US has a big problem with violence in general and police violence, plus there is a big problem with racial inequality (plus inequality in general). What to do about these problems is another matter.
rydster
MemberRevolution is for the irresponsible and adolescent.
Revolution is for when all else fails.
I said earlier that there's a reason people remember Rodney King's name- the riots and property damage ensured that, and caused people to look seriously at police racism for the first time in a long time.
And today? Is it better? Well, in some ways. But in others, well, this rioting and protesting wasn't caused by a man being beaten up by the police. It says everything that to generate a similar level of outrage and response, it now takes a murder.
And if there were only peaceful protests? How long would George Floyd's name be remembered? How many people would even have heard it? How long til the next one and the next peaceful protest? (how many people remember Michael Noel, or Anthony Ashford? Not me)
Doing it the "right" way- by which I mean, the way the government and the police want you to do it- has not worked. Worse than that- just look at "taking a knee", peaceful protest leads to the President telling your boss to fire you. Protest peacefully but NOT LIKE THAT! Not where we can see you!
FYI: Good discussions with sources in https://www.reddit.com/r/NeutralPolitics/ if anyone is interested.
That's because taking a knee isn't a formal demand. It's hard to complain that something isn't being done when you don't articulate what that something has to be or has to achieve.
Not sure I agree. The everyday person on the street can't be expected to come up with brilliant policies. They just want to feel that government is just, something is being done, and that people are making a decent effort to improve things.
The person on the street is aware of the outcomes of policy, and can reject those, but they aren't obliged to come up with an alternative as it is literally not their job, nor are they equipped to be able to do it.
rydster
MemberThat’s because taking a knee isn’t a formal demand.
I find it incredibly difficult to believe that you think this is true. I'll just leave this here:
"If a player wants the privilege of making millions of dollars in the NFL,or other leagues, he or she should not be allowed to disrespect our Great American Flag (or Country) and should stand for the National Anthem. If not, YOU'RE FIRED. Find something else to do!"
That is 100% an attack on Kaepernick for daring to protest. It is not a critique of his manifesto, or a complaint that he's not set SMART demands. It is HOW DARE YOU PROTEST PEACEFULLY. Kaepernick was not attacked for not making a "formal demand" and it is beyond absurd to claim that's the case.
What is obvious? Yes the US has a big problem with violence in general and police violence, plus there is a big problem with racial inequality (plus inequality in general). What to do about these problems is another matter.
Again, I feel like I'm being sucked in by someone playing devil's advocate, but instruct your overseers to not make assumptions based on skin colour and treat all with humility and respect, and if they DO do something shit like kneel on a man's neck for eight minutes until he's dead, when he's telling you he can't breath, when bystanders are asking you to stop, when even one of your colleagues takes a pulse and can't find anything, then they het called to account straight away, instead of waiting for days for public pressure to bring in the lightest possible charge for the perp and ignore the other three who stood around and did ****-all.
Just for starters, like, if it wasn't previously obvious.
The problem is even in a non-racist society it would still be possible for a black person to die at the hands of police. It can surely not be a demand for another black person never to die again. It's no more realistic than the hope of eliminating any other sort of crime.
Man - you ARE on a wind-up, and I fell for it. 🙁
You appear to be trolling now rydster. Nobody is saying that. George’s case isn’t exactly an isolated incident now is it? There is clearly an overriding issue with racism and brutality towards black people in some police forces in the US.
The problem is even in a non-racist society it would still be possible for a black person to die at the hands of police.
FFS man stop talking bollocks. You're making pedantic academic points on a subject which is plain as day for everyone else, and for what motive I have no idea. It's really quite simple, people are outraged that a man could be killed by police in plain sight of others, whilst on camera, and while others are begging them to stop, and the man himself is begging for mercy and no threat to them. That in itself would be bad enough, but when you add the fact that the police would only ever do this to a black man it makes it much, much worse.
The demand is simple, that police shouldn't be able to murder black people and get away with it. That police shouldn't be able to murder anyone and get away with it. That police shouldn't act like faceless mercenaries against the people they're supposed to serve. That people should be treated with basic human respect from a political and economic system which currently treats them as slaves. The entire system is broken and corrupt, and it seems pretty clear to me that those protesting in the US have had enough and want it to change. If you can't see that then you're not looking.
There is clearly an overriding issue with racism and brutality towards black people in some police forces in the US.
No doubt, but if the purpose of taking a knee is to express a sentiment then fine, but as a demand it isn't very clear. I've always found that if you want something from someone it helps to clearly state what that something is.
Cool - what are you after?
And another thread disappears down the shitter.
A black man was murdered in plain sight by a white police officer with a track record of unwarranted violence.
A justified outpouring of concern, resentment and complaints about racist police.
An opportunity for, let's call them, *troublemakers* to de-rail the peaceful protests resulting in violence on both sides, innocent people being hurt, police/national guard showing no restraint too often, wanton destruction.
A president who defiles his job title and is an enabler for white supremacists; unable or unwilling to accept that there is a deep rooted problem of racism in american society; every utterance makes matters worse.
It might be an appropriate time to discuss all of this, and more, in an adult and rational way.
Many of the posts above tell me there is little interest in anything other than scoring points.
You're taking a simplistic and obtuse view of things, rydster, this has exploded due to systemic problems in a spontaneous manner. It's a developing movement and it will coalesce into something. Give it time.
The obvious change that should happen, well you can get a hint from the civil rights investigation they've announced in Minneapolis. That kinda thing is what should be happening country wide. But with their conclusions implemented with the force of law behind them. It's pretty clear the entire US police system needs independently investigated and changed.