Police Brutality Thread

[Rey Skywalker-Ren]

I didn't bring up this argument because "omg black people!!1!"; I only commented on it because the thought of blocking roads made me a bit uncomfortable especially when law enforcement is involved and that goes for any protest.

I do understand about sideline protests not getting enough attention. The million man march got alot of attention and it wasn't sidelined, same with the running of the bulls protest (i think not in the US but still) that made people aware of the cruel sport. Barricading a street or a few blocks is one thing because there are always ways around it. I only have an issue with blocking every entrance there is.

[Nepenthe]

It is impossible to block every single entrance in a major city because it's both an issue with numbers and planning as well as just outright illegal. Police are a common element of these protests and they are mainly charged with making sure they're taking place in a manner that encourages safety of pedestrians and drivers. There's no epidemic of people dying from not getting to the hospital on time because of these protests and thus this whole thing is nothing more than a disingenuous distraction of the actual issues. Again, if there were, I would expect people here to have an issue with literally every other thing that goes on in a city that nonetheless blocks traffic.

[Osmium]

I can concede that yes it's true ambulances already basically have obstacle courses to travel through but I was picturing more in my head when blocking hospitals was mentioned like groups actually standing in front of hospital doors and blocking them, like emergency room doors from people who may need to get in with urgency. 

[Rey Skywalker-Ren]

My goal was never to distract from the issue. If I did, I apologise.

[Nepenthe]

People literally blocking every single hospital entrance to prevent human entry is not a phenomenon. Not even fucking anti-choice people get away with that shit at abortion and women's health clinics. Why do we think this is a thing? Seriously, where did concern this come from?

[Osmium]

2 minutes ago, Nepenthe said:

People literally blocking every single hospital entrance to prevent human entry is not a phenomenon. Not even fucking anti-choice people get away with that shit at abortion and women's health clinics. Why do we think this is a thing? Seriously, where did concern this come from?

Honestly it's more my ignorance than anything, I'm not the most knowledgeable person ever when it comes to protests so it was just the idea that bugged me and I acted without thinking about it really and I can admit that. Sorry for me wasting people's time with this, I probably shouldn't have gotten involved in here. I should honestly look into this more. 

[Tani Coyote]

3 hours ago, Mikyeong said:

Then again I do have to remind myself there are laws about protests and such so yeah. 

Which raises the question: are human-made laws always worthy of obeying?

There's a rich history of civil disobedience that says no.

Even if what these protesters are doing was illegal, I wouldn't find it immoral. Disruption is the best way to get attention to an issue. And it's certainly miles better than you know, the other way to grab people's attention: burning crap down.

2 hours ago, ShroomZ said:

Honestly it's more my ignorance than anything, I'm not the most knowledgeable person ever when it comes to protests so it was just the idea that bugged me and I acted without thinking about it really and I can admit that. Sorry for me wasting people's time with this, I probably shouldn't have gotten involved in here. I should honestly look into this more. 

In fairness, my original post could be misread as advocating that sort of thing.

Even if it was possible, I wouldn't approve of it and neither would most of these protesters. The primary purpose of these disruptive tactics is to force the issue for consideration, not cause unnecessary injuries or deaths.

Shutting down the transit network is an excellent way to bring attention to an issue. Without transportation, capitalism grinds to a halt, forcing elites to make concessions or gun the unarmed masses down.

If they were stupid enough to try the latter option here on a wide scale, it would remove the deniability they've enjoyed for so long. A person here or there being shot is easily excused as the protester doing something wrong. But if it happens to a large chunk of them, we are no longer America. We are China, North Korea, Iran, or any of those other despotic regimes.

[Dizcrybe]

Besides, the married couple who has to have their baby in their car because they can't get to a hospital in time due to protests is gonna have some wild stories to tell them when they get older.

Real talk, though, America is pretty much bringing this on itself. You can't ignore a group of people's cry for help for so long and not expect them to take matters into their own hands. Don't want people shutting down your roads? Maybe you should've listened the first time. Or the second time. Fifth, ninth, twelfth, etc.

And in the grand scheme, which sounds worse to you: stopping someone from getting to a hospital or shooting police officers dead?

[Rey Skywalker-Ren]

 

Daniel Shaver Killed By Police While Begging For His Life

"Please don't shoot me"— this unarmed man's last words before he was killed by police

Publié par NowThis sur mercredi 30 mars 2016

it was 3 months ago but still relivant. what is with this trend??

[Tani Coyote]

The police have been militarized and have become increasingly less reserved about using force due to a lack of accountability, and the tendency of the public to see them as always being justified.

And even in cases where the defenders of the police might question the death (e.g. Freddie Gray'), the clear bias in the system (with all involved facing no charges) isn't a big enough of an issue for the largely white general public to raise Hell over.

Even when white people are victims of brutality, the public has bought into the conservative ideology that one brings one's fate upon themselves, completely ignoring the fact that in society, we all have effects on each other.

We think of criminals as giving up all their rights as citizens and human beings is the problem. Even if you are doing something illegal, that shouldn't be seen as license for an officer to perform a summary execution. But alas, the masses are too eager to think of any means conceivable to justify these executions.

Respect for the police for putting themselves in danger and upholding the law has gone too far. We have forgotten that they are, no matter how good they may be individually, agents of the state. A free nation requires some distrust towards the government and all its agents. Why is it we are skeptical of what a President, Senator, or even a Governor is up to, but give cops a blank check? They are the ones who carry out those politicians' decrees.

The police (and military) are also the historical means by which a government oppresses its people. We have all these people fighting to have unrestricted access to every firearm imaginable, but those same people (unless they are Libertarian, generally) shrug at the idea of rolling back the police. It goes to show how bullshit the whole idea of "checking government power" is, while quite possibly exposing a subconscious doctrine of racial supremacy within the gun rights movement. Seriously, it stands to reason that if you want to check the government's power... you will reduce how much power it has. Unless of course, you want that government to oppress others but not you. Which fits quite well with Republican ideology, honestly.

Why yes, I am being partisan. Because I think it's obvious at this point which Party is the problem. LBJ gave us Civil Rights. Nixon gave us the police state and states' rights when it became illegal to explicitly oppress African Americans.

[Tani Coyote]

I'm entering this thread again to share something a friend said. There's a lot of fighting over the Black Lives Matter terminology and its All Lives Matter rebuttal. I think he put it excellently with this example (which he grabbed from someone else, but I felt like passing it on).

Imagine there are ten people sitting at a dinner table. Nine people have a meal, but one does not.

The one person goes, "I deserve food as well."

The nine people reply, "We all deserve food!"

That doesn't seem a logical response, does it? Black Lives Matter is not about degrading whites or other non-blacks. It is establishing that blacks are disproportionately victims of violence, and see no real justice for it. It's pointing out the privileged status that whites enjoy in being able to ignore the issue. Never mind, a white victim of brutality is probably going to have an easier time getting some sort of redress.

It's peculiar. Though blacks are a larger proportion, there's not exactly a shortage of white victims of brutality. This should be an issue where we are able to work together splendidly. Though it is intertwined with race, you don't need to be black or even concerned with racial justice to have a stake in this. Unless you're an arms manufacturer or police officer, you stand to benefit from rolling back the police state.

But we're seeing there's more an intersection of gun control and brutality on the subject of race than I thought. When whites gather in a group with firearms like the Bundys, they are protecting their rights. When non-whites do it, holy crap it's a riot send in the boots.

[PSI Wind]

I personally view all the groups as the same as I do ALL groups of this type or size: In certain states or areas, they're great, polite, and level-headed. But then some are arrogant or rude. Instead of supporting a hashtag or name, I support the causes' main goal. For example: From what I can tell, the BLM group in Dallas are great people who have been supportive of the community but will make noise when needed, but BECAUSE of how they treat the community and others, they get more support from others. On the other hand, you have Toronto and what happened at the Pride Parade. It wasn't physically wrong but it was morally wrong of what they did. They acted selfish and prude during an event like that JUST to get attention and I cannot support some of their proposals that the Parade Managers had no choice BUT to sign. I do not like the fact that they want (and did) to shut even the LGBT police out of the parade as that isn't what the parade is about. The way I see it is that LGBT Officers that were in the parade showed that you can be anyone and that the LGBT community is really no different in what they can do. BLM and ALM are both on the same page, but we need to work on BLM's main goal FIRST before we can really work on ALM. ALM theoretically embodies not just Blacks or Whites, but ALL minorities. Black brutality from Police are the biggest in terms of minorities though, so that's what we need to focus on.

[Nepenthe]

All Lives Matter isn't on the same page as Black Lives Matter because it isn't even a movement. Looking up any actual website or other source of consolidated goals and beliefs produces fucking nothing. The people who say this have absolutely no concentrated interest in furthering "pro-life" causes on a generalized scale: nothing about hunger, child protection, crime, war, or hell, even animal welfare (animal lives are lives too). All Lives Matter is literally nothing more than a dismissive and thus inherently racist response to the statement "Black lives matter (too)," and thus it should not be entertained as an equivalently-valid movement.

[PSI Wind]

I don't mean the group, I meant the actual issue at hand here. I don't know if there's a "Minority Lives Matter" so I just group the other minorities under that name. I just explained that police brutality is a real issue for everyone but you need to focus on the majority first. In this case, BLMs goal is the first one we need to go on to solve. When I say ALM, I mean the rest of the people who has been unlawfully abused by police due to their race, religion, or sexual orientation. I COMPLETELY understand that BLM is fighting for everyone but we are focusing on their lives first as we should. If you have a better name to use for others who have been affected, I'm all ears. I don't mean this sarcastically, Nep. I'm being serious. I'm sorry if I angered you, I can see why.

[Nepenthe]

Black Lives Matter- despite its name- is inherently inclusive in its goals because they are fighting against generalized police corruption which isn't limited to black people nor actually committed against them the most in many statistics, and as a result you will see people of all demographics in many of its marches anyway. If you want to specifically focus on other demographics other than black people, then advocate for/join/create movements whose names are etymologically tied to the people you're actually concerned about (Native Lives Matter, Asian Lives Matter, Latino Lives Matter etc.) and allow the affected peoples to define their specific problems with institutional killings and lead their movements, versus trying to reclaim the name of a racist hashtag (again, ALM is not an actual movement) while also consolidating multiple racial groups with their own problems under one broad, unfocused mush of a banner that only seeks to downplay their identities.

[PSI Wind]

Okay, that's better. Thanks. I still stand by my original viewset though that while I support BLM's main goal, it's hard to support groups themselves when there have been times where I simply don't agree with one group's actions at all and find it going against what I think should and shouldn't be done. BLM is more than a simple hashtag or name like ALM, but it still has issues in its own group that I obviously have no right to fight against as not only is it not my problem (in the sense of the groups that cause the issue) but I also don't understand what some of them have been through to make them do it as I've never experienced it. I'll fight against what I believe in, and that's stopping police brutality as its both unlawful and racist or phobic. That's all I really can do anyways. The first step in fixing that problem is, without a shadow of a doubt, stopping police brutality from happening with the majority, which are black people. After that, we can move on to the next minority that's the most vulnerable but that's not what people or even myself should focus on now.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

If you stop police violence from happening to black people, you've already stopped it from happening to practically every other minority group since there will be checks and balances that affect the whole range. So you wouldn't need to move onto the next minority group since the main problem affecting one is something that can affect anyone, provided there isn't some loophole in the practice that can be taken advantage of.

Which is basically BLK's goal in a nutshell.

[Tani Coyote]

I just like how the Dallas shooting and the like is being pinned on groups like Black Lives Matter. It's like saying the Black Panthers' militancy discredits the work MLK Jr. did. It's insane.

http://www.youngcons.com/black-cop-stuns-america-with-a-brutal-announcement-for-black-lives-matter/

This is just disgusting. This isn't the only black police officer who has recently come into the public eye to try and discredit the movement.

Using conservative logic, he makes such arguments as "blacks tend to be their own killers" or "of course blacks get arrested more because they commit more crime" as evidence that there is no discrimination.

This is of course the traditional deflecting tactic that completely ignores the judicial process, where discrimination REALLY comes out. Sure, blacks and whites get shot by police. But notice what happens when the cases go to court. The white victim has a much higher chance of seeing justice. That's to say nothing of harsher sentences for comparable circumstances, which will probably push the black convict into future criminal behavior, thus forcing more interaction with the police. Even if the police themselves were not doing a single thing wrong, the judicial system and the state are creating a situation that will ultimately make the police be aggressive towards blacks more often.

At some point, you need to Occam's Razor this shit. Yes, it is possible it's all purely coincidence with no malicious or racist intent but... really? This often?

[Dizcrybe]

Things I don't understand: blacks being racist towards other blacks.

[Rey Skywalker-Ren]

1 minute ago, Dizcrybe said:

Things I don't understand: blacks being racist towards other blacks.

Easy: they want to separate themselves from those blacks and frankly, I don't blame them for doing it. 

[Dizcrybe]

Just now, Mikyeong said:

Easy: they want to separate themselves from those blacks and frankly, I don't blame them for doing it. 

...wanna run that by me again?

[Toby]

Black man having an opinion that's different from yours = racist black. Gotcha.

[Rey Skywalker-Ren]

Not all black people have the same opinion or output. Hell, I'm half black and a conservative. It doesn't make them racist, hell most of them make fucking sense when it comes to the black community. So most are prejudice against each other because they don't want to be associated with certain types of people.

[Nepenthe]

Before this gets way the fuck out of hand and people's feelings get hurt, the actual sociological answer to Dizcrybe's question is internalized oppression: the belief on part of an individual that the negative stereotypes associated with any groups they belong to are actually true. Regardless of whether or not a person is a minority, they are not immune from picking up on and being indoctrinated by the normal cultural fabric of the society they live in because that's how psychology works. In the case of black people, if you live in a country (or on Earth) that constantly reinforces the belief that black people aren't shit, you're inevitably going to pick up on that and try to distance yourself away from what you believe are the "bad elements" of your group despite the futility of it all. This is why the doll test is a thing or why we like straightening our hair or why Chris Rock didn't understand the issues with this skit until actually doing it and thinking about what it meant.

[Dizcrybe]

I just find it incredibly sad to find that a black person harbors the same hatred of his own kind that a racist white person does.

I was just on another forum mentioning how eyeroll-worthy it is when people attempt to de-legitimize the BLM movement by going "WELL WHAT ABOUT BLACK-ON-BLACK CRIME HUH". At least this guy actually seems to care about it and isn't just using to take the heat off racist police. Maybe.