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[Cheeetar]

Um, quick poll. Who here is actually black?

Would that change your opinion of me or something?

[Levi]

We are all black transgendered poor women living with ebola on the internet.   

[TamerVirus]

Um, quick poll. Who here is actually black?

Would that change your opinion of me or something?

...Who are you again?


No seriously, I don't think we've ever interacted on this forum

[Cheeetar]

I'm a person in this thread. You polled this thread. Does my skin colour matter to you that you would question me about it?

[TamerVirus]

I feel as if background has a lot to do with where people' thought and opinions come from.

Just a little perspective

[scriver]

...I'd honestly say that this isn't even recourse- it's making their movement ridiculous.

The legal system is ridiculous.
But I agree in that their unclear strategic goals aren't helping anything.  Perhaps what they should do is something like declare that police are no longer allowed in these neighborhoods, all homes and apartments in Ferguson are now property of their residents and tenants, all rent and debts of Ferguson residents are nullified, and then dare the police to evict everyone.  A little trickier to pull off, of course.

I would actually expect this to provoke more violence from the police than rioting.

And rightly so! You'd be taking away large amounts of property from people who have jack shit to do with the whole situation. It's ideas like this that discredit moderate leftist ideas, you know? It's now bad to have them, but it's very bad not to have the common sense to immediately recognize its glaring flaws.

I would actually expect this to provoke more violence from the police than rioting.

Yes but it might be more widely popular.  Cops are always going to be violent.  Letting them dictate our actions is just letting the terrorists win.

You can probably tell from the above, but right now I sympathize with the protesters. Not with the looters, but with those who remain peaceful and still work towards eliminating racism in America's law enforcement. If they pulled shit like that, I'd condone most anything short of military action. And I'm the kind of guy that the movement needs to convince - progressive, but fairly moderate, and without too strong an opinion.
Read your sentence again. Do you seriously claim that all law enforcement agents are terrorist? You sound like a strawman anarchist. To be fair, many true anarchists sound like that as well, but that's no reason to talk like that as well.

Nothing I have seen you say say on this forum has ever given me the impression thst you are in any way "progressive".

[Helgoland]

Then you haven't heard me talk about the right stuff, scriver. But I know we disagree more often than not - I do not remember us ever being of the same opinion.

Edit: It may also be that I'm categorizing myself that way with a European definition of the term. But looking at the major American domestic issues, I'm a progressive in the American sense as well, just like most Europeans...

[scriver]

You don't come off as progressive by "European definitions" either.

[Helgoland]

The European standard is more rigorous than the American one... As I said, you probably heard me talk about the wrong things. I'm certainly to the right of Bay12's mainstream, so in any topic that is actually debated I'm likely to take the more conservative side - after all, we have a pretty broad consensus that abortions are OK, that gay marriage should be allowed, that there probably should be more gun control, etc etc, so these topics aren't debated too often.
What issues (issues, not 'coming off') are you thinking of? Perhaps you're thinking about my somewhat militaristic stance regarding Ukraine, but there's no canonical progressive position on these issues.

In any case, should we perhaps move this to another thread before anyone else joins in?

[smeeprocket]

I grew up in Birmingham, Alabama. Some very, very good friends of mine were killed by bombs, bombs that were planted by racists. I remember, form the time I was very small, I remember the sounds of bombs exploding across the street. Our house shaking. I remember my father having to have guns at his disposal at all times, because of the fact that, at any moment, we might expect to be attacked. The man who was, at that time, in complete control of the city government, his name was Bull Connor, would often get on the radio and make statements like, “niggers have moved into a white neighborhood. We better expect some bloodshed tonight.” And sure enough, there would be bloodshed.

So what?

My grandmother lived through both world war should we resent the "Germans" who invaded our country unprovoqued twice?

That’s why, when someone asks me about violence, I just, I just find it incredible. Because what it means is that the person who’s asking that question has absolutely no idea what black people have gone through, what black people have experienced in this country since the time the first black person was kidnapped from the shores of Africa.

And that show that this lady have no idea of what she's talking about. Thread lightly when you talk about violence. Thread very lightly, because you'll either find your "peoples" putting other peoples into mass graves, or be put into those, and faster than you think. It happend countless times and will happen again.

Why not just be out with it and say "we all have our burden to bear"

Go ahead, trivialize the suffering of African Americans, which btw isn't a past event, it is an ongoing saga. There are no peaceful alternatives especially when white people pretend like the issue doesn't exist or that they suffer in some way too.

There is no justice for black people in this country. They have significantly longer prison sentences, they are convicted more often, the police have a disturbing tendency to just shoot them while they are unarmed.

Don't act like you have any idea what it is to be black in America.

Your dismissal of the problem is nothing less than racist. It is erasure.

This is what happens when you crush people for too long, they fight back however they can. All these "meaningful dialogues" that are supposedly going to happen, won't have an effect because the cops have no oversight on this whatsoever, and there are no mandatory records of the number of civilians murdered by police officers.

Nothing is going to change from this, and the WASP community will move on, content that justice was served and people held hands and talked. Things will continue to be oppressive, they will remain the same.

Brown's murderer has gotten sizable donations from the KKK and works with them side by side. I hope he lives the rest of his life in fear, having to change his identity regularly to avoid being killed by angry mobs who want whatever justice they can get. But that would be fair, and life isn't fair.

[Phmcw]

There are no peaceful alternatives especially when white people pretend like the issue doesn't exist or that they suffer in some way too.

I'm not American I don't especially care either way. But you're wrong and doomed. And the majority of white american DO suffer from your system. Even cops got it hard.

[SalmonGod]

There's a difference between justifying violence and pointing it out as a fact of existing circumstances.

This is about institutionalized violence, which is a difficult subject. The problem is it's a constant presence in everyone's lives, but it's invisible until it's experienced first-hand. And then when those who are subject to that violence attempt any genuine form of self-defense, they appear to everyone else to be the only violent group.

But we all believe in self-defense here, right? Does self-defense against institutionalized violence not count? Yes,, there are non-violent methods that need to be explored, and they have been. But when those channels rely on appealing to other people and institutions that dont care and are dead set on marginalizing your problems, what other choice is there but to cause some serious disruption? Condemning any form of violence in self-defense is basically demanding acceptance of victim status.

Ugh... Doing this shit on a phone is so hard. My computer is dead right now. Please excuse if my writing isnt up to it's normal standard.

[Levi]

I come from a city where we had a riot when we lost a hockey game.  Compared to that the Ferguson riots look pretty damned justified.   

I might say otherwise if I saw another solution but nothing else seems to be working over there.  It doesn't sound like the government cares, it certainly doesn't seem like the police force cares.  Apparently the courts don't care so I say they should riot more.  Riot until something breaks or changes.  Riot until somebody at least promises change in exchange to get people to stop causing damage.

Easy for me to say from way over here in Canada though.   

[Phmcw]

Everything is wrong with American police, so it's hard to point one thing and say "this it why it suck". And a bunch of things are deeply wrong in America so that doesn't help to pinpoint one thing either.


There is not enough black cops is a problem for instance. A good trick to boost police acceptance (and thus law accpetance) is to recruit from the community you're policing.


Great let's do that then! Exept, how are the school in the vicinity? Shit and poor? Yeah, and it doesn't help that the police is a good old white boy club. So you can't use even that simple strategy.
And since I never saw an American say that the quality of the social infrastructure shape the society and the peoples themselves, I don't think you'll get a large boost to public school funding anytime soon.


Another good joke is American SWATs. That much is clear for everyone, but no one does anything. Swats aren't supposed to be the local jokers, they are supposed to be the absolute best expert in desescalations, while also being the best fighter available. Belgian Swat are only called for the very worst cases and they hardly ever kill anyone, look them up. Look the German ones up too while you're at it.

[Baffler]

Everything is wrong with American police, so it's hard to point one thing and say "this it why it suck". And a bunch of things are deeply wrong in America so that doesn't help to pinpoint one thing either.


There is not enough black cops is a problem for instance. A good trick to boost police acceptance (and thus law accpetance) is to recruit from the community you're policing.


Great let's do that then! Exept, how are the school in the vicinity? Shit and poor? Yeah, and it doesn't help that the police is a good old white boy club. So you can't use even that simple strategy.
And since I never saw an American say that the quality of the social infrastructure shape the society and the peoples themselves, I don't think you'll get a large boost to public school funding anytime soon.


Another good joke is American SWATs. That much is clear for everyone, but no one does anything. Swats aren't supposed to be the local jokers, they are supposed to be the absolute best expert in desescalations, while also being the best fighter available. Belgian Swat are only called for the very worst cases and they hardly ever kill anyone, look them up. Look the German ones up too while you're at it.

Says the guy from a country the size of Vermont. Try inflating your police horse to the size ours needs to be and see how well it holds up. Belgium has 39,000 people employed in its police horse, total. The US has 800,000 officers, and more than 200,000 civilian others without powers of arrest. And that's not even considering Federal officials and employees. When you're dealing with numbers like that corruption and idiocy are inevitable. I won't deny that there's a problem, but it's far from completely irredeemable.

There are really two problems that get a lot of publicity. The first is the private prison industry and the drug war it fuels, but that isn't really relevant right now. The problem we see here is that instead of pruning the corrupt and idiotic components of the police horse like it should, the law just as often functions as a shield for them. There are plenty of good officers, but they're overshadowed by these sorts of people.