In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up!
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Now I'm with everybody else in thinking the situation is a crock of bull, but let's actually do discourse rather than senselessly bashing.
Which, I might add, is half the problem. Every time this kind of shit happens, everybody gets furious, does a few protests, maybe a riot, and then gets on with their lives having changed nothing. If we get cops to wear cameras, great, that's a policy proposal everybody can get on board with. But it's obviously insufficient, and we need more policies that address the root problems of institutional racism and police impunity. That means Democrats have to agree not to reflexively cave to police unions, and that Republicans need to get on board with reforming parts of the criminal justice system they have resisted touching. The police brutality is a symptom, and arguing about the limits of force helps a little, but leaves the core ailment unaddressed. It is the criminalization of a broad swath of Americans (and corresponding immunity from the law enjoyed by the privileged) that causes all this woe. Solutions must be proposed, and they must be specific, enactable policies.
Here's one: empower/encourage police to go after college kids for drug offenses with the same aggressiveness used in the inner city. Hell, while we're at it, do the same for rape. This bullshit of colleges dealing with crimes as disciplinary infractions means that privileged people have a messed up sense of how this all plays out for everybody else.
if anyone is taking the above comment seriously, check yourself.
I don't know if I should laugh or cry at your comment. and after that having the audacity to question mine. I would add a third one with police officers. let's see how it works out with the trigger happy comment then and the absurdity of it.
if anyone is taking the above comment seriously, check yourself.
But the girl in the middle is violating the rule of "don't point a gun at anything you don't intend to destroy". Boys in second picture are all clear in that regard so it's 1-1.
if anyone is taking the above comment seriously, check yourself.
But the girl in the middle is violating the rule of "don't point a gun at anything you don't intend to destroy". Boys in second picture are all clear in that regard so it's 1-1.
? She's clearly in front of the other girl, the gun is pointed at the wall....
On December 04 2014 17:58 Yoav wrote: Now I'm with everybody else in thinking the situation is a crock of bull, but let's actually do discourse rather than senselessly bashing.
Which, I might add, is half the problem. Every time this kind of shit happens, everybody gets furious, does a few protests, maybe a riot, and then gets on with their lives having changed nothing. If we get cops to wear cameras, great, that's a policy proposal everybody can get on board with. But it's obviously insufficient, and we need more policies that address the root problems of institutional racism and police impunity. That means Democrats have to agree not to reflexively cave to police unions, and that Republicans need to get on board with reforming parts of the criminal justice system they have resisted touching. The police brutality is a symptom, and arguing about the limits of force helps a little, but leaves the core ailment unaddressed. It is the criminalization of a broad swath of Americans (and corresponding immunity from the law enjoyed by the privileged) that causes all this woe. Solutions must be proposed, and they must be specific, enactable policies.
Here's one: empower/encourage police to go after college kids for drug offenses with the same aggressiveness used in the inner city. Hell, while we're at it, do the same for rape. This bullshit of colleges dealing with crimes as disciplinary infractions means that privileged people have a messed up sense of how this all plays out for everybody else.
Lots more on that list of changes instead of riots. Here's one about better responses from elected and appointed leaders. Milwaukee county sheriff on Holder's and Sharpton's BS.
Are we trying to create a humanity devoid of any racist bias, or are we trying to stop cops from shooting black men? The two aren’t the same. A world without racism would be a world without dirt. A world where episodes like what has happened just this year to Garner, Brown, John Crawford, Akai Gurley, and Tamir Rice is much more plausible. We need special prosecutors, body cameras, and, if you ask me, an end to the war on drugs.
I also think more cities need to use more community-based policing, which has been very effective according to the LAPD.
Police credit the absence of killings to a combination of efforts, including those of community activists and gang interventionists. There are also security cameras in the developments to capture criminal activity. But in 2011, LAPD, along with funding from the housing authority, launched a program called the Community Safety Partnership, which places officers on the ground in the housing developments in Watts and in Ramona Gardens in Boyle Heights. Each development is staffed with about 11 officers who walk foot beats, patrol and connect with the community through various activities like youth sports.
The other developments in the Community Safety Partnership have seen only four homicides in the past three years. In each case, an arrest was made within two weeks thanks to help from the community, Tingirides said. Police didn't see any retaliatory shootings.
Watching the cops say "it wasn't a choke" and "if he could talk he could breathe" and defend the cops standing around watching Eric Garner die, right next to medical professionals basically calling their bullshit is not helping cops look better.
One of the cars parked on the streets near my house in Washington, D.C. has a magnet on the side reading: "Stop killing our black men. Jesus loves them and we need them." This has been a terrible year for police brutality against African-Americans.
Except it hasn't. Because before Eric Garner and Michael Brown, there was Kimani Gray. And Kendrec McDade. And before that Rodney King. And so many others. That magnet has been on that car in my neighborhood for years—as long as I've lived here. More African-Americans will be killed by American police officers before it is removed.
African-American activists have pointed this out repeatedly during the heated coverage of events in Ferguson and now New York City. The protests have never been about one incident. They've never been about one particular tragic death. These are protests against unceasing, unaccountable violence over many years. These are protests responding to a systemic failure that has roots as deep and as old as American chattel slavery.
Which is another way of saying that this wave of public attention—would that it were "public outcry"—is really a response to a failure of the American criminal justice system. And in a country like ours, failures in meting out justice are really failures of the broader American political experiment.
Sadly, this is why police violence against African-Americans has been so pervasive for so long without attracting much attention from white conservatives or progressives. To acknowledge that American police routinely brutalize African-Americans and their communities would be to admit that the United States has failed—is failing—at some of its core promises. For if our police behave so and our systems of judicial oversight are toothless to hold them accountable, that would mean that equality before the law is a mirage.
These are uncomfortable truths to face. And they are more damning than more quotidian forms of systemic racism. It is one thing to disproportionately assign African-American children to ineffective, under-resourced schools. It is quite another to kill African-American men without ever facing a trial (let alone a conviction).
the police attitude is diverse across the country. in the south there may be real entrenched racism, but in the north the animus is directed against 'ghetto' as a cultural type. although, there is no corresponding white cultural hate type to ghetto.
So I've heard/seen that Eric Garner was selling loose cigarettes and that's why he was being placed under arrest, but I've also heard/seen reported that he was 'known' to do such, but there was 0 evidence he was doing so on the day he was killed. Anyone know for sure which is true?
Re igne: first, it wrongly conflates some cases, like Michael Brown, with cases of actual brutality. If there was no racism at all in the slightest form, there would still be black people killed by white police officers, because crime would still be there.
The behavior's roots aren't in chattel slavery; police unaccountability has a history in the entire past of mankind, or at least everything past the small tribal stage. And it's certainly not unique to blacks, other groups have suffered as a result of it. If the protests aren't about just a few incidents, it would be a lot clearer if they more frequently talked about the history of that, than about the few incidents. While mentioned some time, too much of the attention still seems focused on the few cases.
The system is getting better and more accountable, and has been for many decades, on the whole.
It's long been known that there are inequalities before the law (e.g. being rich, or well connected). The goal is to work on them; it's a never-ending quest for improvement.
I question his assertion that blacks are assigned to worse schools, as opposed to simply being in the area with worse schools; but dont' have direct evidence, and would like to see his evidence for such an assertion.
Those are my main objections to the points in the quoted section, I'm sure other areas contain other objectionable points. It's good rhetoric, but its' connection to truth is only approximate.
Fast-food workers and other low-wage employees in nearly 200 cities across the country took part in a strike and protests Thursday, demanding a base wage of $15 per hour and the right to form unions in the latest in a series of day-long labor actions coordinated through a nationwide coalition of workers’ groups.
The protests in cities including New York City, Chicago and Philadelphia — organized under an umbrella organization called Fight for 15 — are believed to be the most expansive of such demonstrations to date, increasing to about 190 cities from 150 in a similar event in September. No arrests have so far been reported, according to Reuters.
Strikes and walkouts at fast-food restaurants were staged by workers at McDonald's, Burger King and Wendy's locations as well as at major airports including New York City's John F. Kennedy International Airport. Organizers said gas station employees and home care workers were also joining.
The actions are backed by unions including the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), are part of a push to increase the minimum wage from $7.25, where it has held since 2009.
In Philadelphia on Thursday, about a hundred protesters — including a mix of fast food workers, airport attendants who make less than minimum wage, and steel workers — walked down Broad Street through downtown, following a spirited group of marching band drummers.
"All I want for Christmas is $15 and a union!" the demonstrators chanted outside the Arch Street Methodist Church, where local organizer groups including Fight for Philly and others started the rally for workers who said the wages they earn aren't enough to make ends meet or provide for their families. They then marched south through the courtyard of Philadelphia's iconic City Hall and turned right onto Walnut St., home to many of the city's high-end retail stores.
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