[EmperorMagus]

Kanyemander West, on 12 July 2016 - 12:52 AM, said:

North Carolina just passed a law (as in the governor signed it) removing police body cam/dash cam footage from the public record. http://www.acluofnc....age-secret.html

Also, Clickhole nails the whole "advice to black people" thing: http://www.clickhole...people-sho-4607

The NC law is absolutely nonsensical. With so much tension between the police and citizens already, that law only makes the situation worse.
But I guess police unions can lobby too...

[amphibian]

A huge portion of the unrest, the changing of cities, and perhaps the nature of the country itself comes from a growing attitude of distrusting/weakening unions for workers.

They're not always great, but the thing the unions were really good at addressing was keeping inequality somewhat manageable.

[EmperorMagus]

amphibian, on 12 July 2016 - 04:22 AM, said:

A huge portion of the unrest, the changing of cities, and perhaps the nature of the country itself comes from a growing attitude of distrusting/weakening unions for workers.

They're not always great, but the thing the unions were really good at addressing was keeping inequality somewhat manageable.

I'm a firm believer in keeping union money out of politics. Similar to how I don't want corporate money influencing laws. They both cause situations which are profitable to one group of people while being against the public interest.

This post has been edited by EmperorMagus: 12 July 2016 - 04:43 AM

[Una]

Kanyemander West, on 12 July 2016 - 12:52 AM, said:

North Carolina just passed a law (as in the governor signed it) removing police body cam/dash cam footage from the public record. http://www.acluofnc....age-secret.html

Huh? Are they deliberately trying to make the situation worse? Is this some upside-down way of trying to enact social change by fanning the flames, thereby inducing a full blown revolution so that your society can be made anew? Because that's the only way this makes any sense, and that's only if you buy the idea that Americans can't change anything without having a big, bloody war/revolution.

I'm confused. I'm seeing the same footage and I am outraged, but it's not even my country. I get to worry about the poor relationship between the Aboriginals and the RCMP here.

Meanwhile in Canada: I'm not showing this to be smug. It's related to the topic, and it made me smile, so I'm going to leave this here: http://globalnews.ca...counter-online/

[Tiste Simeon]

OK, before you say anything I KNOW Breitbart is a right wing website and as such very skewed and bias. However, I just wanted to know your thoughts on this article (the subject matter rather than the actual content... The website is generally pretty horrendous but this article did make me think.)

http://www.breitbart...ling-limelight/

This seems to be a fairly recent (though I am not 100% sure how recent) trend where, once a tragedy hits, while most people are shocked and appalled, there seems to be a group who start going "Stop thinking about [Tragedy] and come back to focusing on [X cause]" BLM have done it with a couple of the terrorist attacks and there was a video going around at one point where a woman got up at a vigil for Orlando and hijacked it to rant about white people...

The BLM movement obviously has a hugely important message but it seems to me like actions like this are not going to help matters. Not just BLM, too - I have seen people on Facebook going "why are you so sad for France? You should be more sad for Baghdad/Pakistan etc." I have seen it called "Grief policing" and it really annoys me.

Anyway, just thought I would see what you guys think. May or may not be the right thread for this but I figured it could fit into a few of them in the DB.

[amphibian]

These are basically random people talking. None of them are organizers of local Black Lives Matter actions. It's kind of hard to say what Black Lives Matter groups are, as some are way more organized and led by distinct individuals, while others are kind of just people who say BLM and show up if there's something big going on.

It's entirely possible to have one's heart broken by violence and bad things elsewhere and still keep in mind the one issue you're working on. It's a good thing to be empathetic to others of different groups.

MIA is notoriously bad at this, as she's made several weird/awful comments about BLM being irrelevant to her as she "focuses" on the Sri Lankan violence and aftermath.

Edit: there is a valid point to some of the underlying things regarding being active/focused on one issue and actually saying shitty things about other issues. The croc eating a kid tweet that blew up Twitter user femme_esq's life was a case of grief fatigue + a certain insular group of angry women on Twitter who like saying angry things and never walking those back. I saw Imani Gandy (angryblacklady) say that she cares about the uteruses of people in the USA and not about drone strikes. That's an awful thing to say, even if it highlights a pressing concern. It's possible to acknowledge multiple and ever-developing issues and the limits of one's individual capacity to affect change or hold in one's mind without being an asshole about it.

And that particular femme_esq/angryblacklady/chiefelk crowd is toxic because they are hypocritical/wrong in so many ways while being right about certain issues/things. Them being right about terrible things facing women or harassment online makes them feel competent to talk about topics they don't have a clue about - and preach their statements to an appreciative "woke" audience.

There's so much wrong with the MRA crowd, the racists/dogwhistlers, and other groups that this particular bunch looks great in comparison - but they're not.

This post has been edited by amphibian: 15 July 2016 - 10:47 PM

[worry]

Re: the article I pretty much agree with amph. I would add that it's very easy to start with the angle for the article and then search Twitter for examples that support you. You can pretty much write a scathing editorial from any side of an issue and find Tweets that help you.

I think people alternately utilize and attack "shock" humor/irony/etc. depending on their mood, fairly often. We all know it's easy to be glib on the Internet -- and by no means am I ignoring ironic racism/sexism/etc that is just masking the real thing -- but people definitely seem to forgive and defend their own bouts of glibness so much faster than they do anybody on a different side of an issue. That said I also think a few of those people (Chief Elk maybe more than the others you named) cloak themselves in causes in order to bully/be cruel to people. Progress -- however you want to define it, or however even they define it -- comes waaaaaaaaaaaay below blasting people, on their list of priorities. And while I wouldn't call it mainstream or pervasive in Woke Twitter circles, I have seen a weird strain of fin-dom (financial domination) via PayPal for anyone who ticks them off. It's, uh, weird.

Anyway, on another note, a couple recent glimpses into policing. One in audio form, the other in video (neither involves death, btw):

Audio starts about a minute in.


And


I think you can glean from both that there really is a culture problem here. There's this institutional focus on numbers and profiling, and this on-the-street routine flexing authority and retaliatory punishment.

[worry]

Also MIA was just dropped from the Afropunk Festival in UK for the dumb BLM stuff she said. I really do wonder if she learned anything from the debacle.

[amphibian]

There is a commonly used tactic of "Oh, where are your sources?" in online talk. Sometimes it makes sense, if the discussion is in a scholarly context, and sometimes, it is just a time waste because the person asking never goes and reads/watches/listens to the sources.

The financial domination stuff was initially a line of thought to counter the above that went "This is a complex enough issue that explaining this/giving all this info out for free costs me time, brain space, and energy, so pay me and I'll do it. This is labor and working for free for strangers isn't something I want to do lots of."

That kinda makes sense, yet it got taken to extremes fast and turned into a way to leap past objections.

The more prominent BLM people are astoundingly patient with this and regularly share large reading lists of good quality - or ignore them entirely. That's a better set of tactics than the snotty "pay me" tactic.

[worry]

That actually makes sense, since the online opinionsphere is full of freelancers/independent contractors. And to reiterate I'm not trying to hyperbolize the extent to which it happens. I just thought it was a particularly niche co-option of politics/activism.

[Slow Ben]

http://www.cnn.com/2...ting/index.html

Well fuck.

3 more officers killed, this time in Baton Rouge.

[Studlock]

The delegitimization of authority figures because of their collective actions is only going to result in worst and worst interactions between the those injured parties and the authority figures. The police in Baton Rouge need to handle this very, very carefully given it's recent history--this could spiral into something much, much bigger and significant.

[Cause]

Yip Shooting police officers will calm them down!

@Kanyemander West- Your second video. The officers certainly could have acted with greater care and professionalism but I also believe the civilian in question could have acted better as well. Officers can demand you obey any Lawful orders, these orders are so vaguely defined they can get away with nearly anything. The best response is almost always to comply and to complain after. Once 3 officers are pointing tasers at you, you should probably do what they want for sure. He did not give his name, he refused to get out of the car. He could have submitted to an arrest and then demanded they check his ID and walked away no problem in 5 minutes.

[amphibian]

Cause, on 17 July 2016 - 05:36 PM, said:

Yip Shooting police officers will calm them down!

@Kanyemander West- Your second video. The officers certainly could have acted with greater care and professionalism but I also believe the civilian in question could have acted better as well. Officers can demand you obey any Lawful orders, these orders are so vaguely defined they can get away with nearly anything. The best response is almost always to comply and to complain after. Once 3 officers are pointing tasers at you, you should probably do what they want for sure. He did not give his name, he refused to get out of the car. He could have submitted to an arrest and then demanded they check his ID and walked away no problem in 5 minutes.

There's no 5 minute walk away after being arrested.

Most likely, that's a day lost, car towed (expensive), possible absence at a job or with family, and possible violence by cops/other people at the lock-up.

All of that means not getting arrested in the first place is the best thing and so it's worth making a fuss, resisting, yelling, and so on because even if "resisting arrest" is tacked onto the arrest charges, it's the same penalty.

This post has been edited by amphibian: 17 July 2016 - 05:39 PM

[Studlock]

@cause

Who do you think is in danger here? When society falls apart the enforcers are the first to die. The police need to be careful, as authority figures they already been seen as delegitimate upholders of the law for many people in the country--they are feared not respected. This is utterly dangerous for the well-being of society--authority and power are not the same thing, when one lose the illusion of authority they must rely on power, and power is a contested and brutual thing. Given the recent history of the city, and with this tragedy, the police force must be very careful, they must not further lose the illusion of authority, less we descend into rioting, and base violent vengeance.

[worry]

Cause, on 17 July 2016 - 05:36 PM, said:

Yip Shooting police officers will calm them down!

@Kanyemander West- Your second video. The officers certainly could have acted with greater care and professionalism but I also believe the civilian in question could have acted better as well. Officers can demand you obey any Lawful orders, these orders are so vaguely defined they can get away with nearly anything. The best response is almost always to comply and to complain after. Once 3 officers are pointing tasers at you, you should probably do what they want for sure. He did not give his name, he refused to get out of the car. He could have submitted to an arrest and then demanded they check his ID and walked away no problem in 5 minutes.

My response to that is a big fat 'So what?' (not meant rudely toward you). Theoretically he could have behaved a whole host of different ways. The original sin here was the officer's. I have no interest in daydreaming all the different ways victims of violence could have done things differently.

So the point is, forget about care and professionalism. The officer could have acted with more LEGALITY. He and his fellow officers are the ones with utmost responsibility to be following the letter of the law. The 'suspect' did provide his name -- Patrick -- several times, and the officer didn't believe him because he thought -- by his own racist inability to tell two completely different dudes apart -- that he was addressing somebody else. Was Patrick doing anything other than sitting in a car on private property when the cop rolled up? So where was the warrant? Patrick definitely asked to see it.

[Tiste Simeon]

Dang. One of the police officers was black, which is probably not going to help the cause and the police will no doubt use this as an excuse as to why they go in heavy handed...

[Cause]

I believe fully that Patrick was the one in danger not the police. That's why I believe that he should have complied. There was never a need to use a taser or even threaten one but once that started, resistance on his part was going to end in a forgone conclusion.

They asked him his name and he refused, a silly knee jerk reaction probably. Still a quick google shows me that in 50% of USA states the police may ask anyone to stop and identify themselves at any time. The other 50% of USA states give officers the right to demand the name of anyone they have suspicion of being involved, was involved in a crime or whom they are looking for. They had the right to demand his name and his initial refusal set them on guard. It spiraled out of control especially fast. I want to be clear, from my point of view the cops acted with an unnecessary heavy hand. I dont see anyway this situation could have ended up with him in a cell for 24 hours. He could have identified himself, submitted to their authority, they would have found his ID, run it on their police cruiser computer and confirmed and let him go. I dont see how it could have ended any other way once they confirmed he was not the man the warrant sought.

I live in a country in which 50% of all interactions with police offers will end with a request/demand for a bribe. I know all about fearing rather than respecting officers. I know all about their ability to exploit their power. I also know that fighting them alone is a recipe for disaster.

[worry]

In case you didn't see this one last night, the absurdity level is through the roof. Police shoot a behavioral therapist who's trying to address an issue with one of his autistic patients: http://wsvn.com/news...ot-unarmed-man/

The defense?
http://www.miaminewt...onalism-8618405
Cop was trying to shoot the autistic guy playing with a toy truck and missed.

[Tsundoku]

Racism related: UK female judge calls it how she sees it.

http://www.news.com....181c162c713b28e