This post isn’t so much about George Floyd in particular, but the next George Floyd, and the one after that. And the person before George Floyd, and the person before that.
Here are a couple of good reads related to police actions and hopes for police accountability. Once encouraging, one descriptive of the world that black people live in – all day, every day.
Maryland enacts landmark police overhaul, first state to repeal police bill of rights.
Maryland enacted historic police accountability measures Saturday, becoming the first state to repeal its powerful Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights and setting new rules for when police may use force and how they are investigated and disciplined.
The Democratic-majority legislature dealt Republican Gov. Larry Hogan a sharp rebuke, overriding his vetoes of measures that raise the bar for officers to use force; give civilians a role in police discipline for the first time; restrict no-knock warrants; mandate body cameras; and open some allegations of police wrongdoing for public review.
Each bill had been hailed by criminal justice advocates as having the potential to make policing in the state fairer and more transparent. Democrats, who hold large majorities in the legislature, made enacting them a top priority after months of protests over the police-involved deaths of unarmed Black men and women.
Opinion: Being Black in America is exhausting, by Jonathan Capehart
“Tired” doesn’t just refer to the trauma of the Derek Chauvin trial or seeing replays of the video of the former Minneapolis police officer killing George Floyd. Nor does “tired” just refer to seeing Daunte Wright being shot by a Brooklyn Center, Minn., police officer after being pulled over because of an air freshener dangling from his rearview mirror, as his mother has said. Or because of expired tags, as the police said. No, “tired” is all of that, plus whatever personal trauma we carry with us.
There is no one way to be Black in America, but there is one way we live while Black in America. No matter our gender, age or socioeconomic status, we are viewed as threats. As a result, we live under siege.
SiubhanDuinne posted this in a comment last week, in a thread I finally read a few days later.
As seen on David Gray’s Facebook:
“I need to drive my two-year-old to daycare tomorrow morning. To ensure we arrive alive, we won’t take public transit (Oscar Grant). I removed all air fresheners from the vehicle and double-checked my registration status (Daunte Wright), and ensured my license plates were visible (Lt. Caron Nazario). I will be careful to follow all traffic rules (Philando Castille), signal every turn (Sandra Bland), keep the radio volume low (Jordan Davis), and won’t stop at a fast food chain for a meal (Rayshard Brooks). I’m too afraid to pray (Rev. Clementa C. Pickney) so I just hope the car won’t break down (Corey Jones).
When my wife picks him up at the end of the day, I’ll remind her not to dance (Elijah McClain), stop to play in a park (Tamir Rice), patronize the local convenience store for snacks (Trayvon Martin), or walk around the neighborhood (Mike Brown). Once they are home, we won’t stand in our backyard (Stephon Clark), eat ice cream on the couch (Botham Jean), or play any video games (Atatiana Jefferson).
After my wife and I tuck him into bed around 7:30pm, neither of us will leave the house to go to Walmart (John Crawford) or to the gym (Tshyrand Oates) or on a jog (Ahmaud Arbery). We won’t even walk to see the birds (Christian Cooper). We’ll just sit and try not to breathe (George Floyd) and not to sleep (Breonna Taylor).”
These are things white people simply do not have to think about.”
-David Gray
The only thing that’s missing is the guy who apparently looked at a cop wrong as he was riding by on his bicycle. I guess that’s fair since he was harassed, but not killed. Nope. That’s not true. After I typed that, I thought I should look up the incident so I could describe it accurately, and immediately found this from September of 2020. Los Angeles Police Shoot Black Man on Bicycle.
We have to change this. How do we do it?
The answer to the question “How do you eat an elephant?” is “one bite at a time.” So what’s the first bite? What can regular people like you and I do?
Cermet
Maryland just showed how one starts – now more states (New York and Calif.) need to join in. This is the essential first start.
Xavier
Good for Maryland, but also New Mexico, which eliminated qualified immunity this session.
Xavier
Too many incidents with mentally ill people too.
germy
germy
lollipopguild
Things will change when enough people get tired of the status quo. We have legal gay marriage because enough people got tired and worked to make it happen. We are getting legal mary jane in some states-slowly, because enough people wanted their state to change. Look at the difference an average Joe makes in running our federal government. I think we are getting close to major change in how police act, I hope.
WaterGirl
@lollipopguild: I have noticed that every TV show I watch that has any kind of law enforcement in it is addressing the lack of police accountability and the changes that are being proposed to address the lack of accountability.
It’s everywhere on TV, I think that speaks to a new level of awareness. Awareness isn’t change, but it is part of the process.
Sister Golden Bear
That Facebook post by David Gray is really good. Do you have a link to the it?
I had a similar eye opening experience when a Black friend drove me home from a surgery. I noticed she was carefully driving just below the speed and then the penny dropped — oh shot, that’s why.
An ability I use when talking with other white women is that I had, at best, an intellectual understanding of the safety issues women face. It wasn’t until started moving through the world as a woman that I truly experienced down to my very bones how it’s a constant part of our daily existence and how draining it can be.
JPL
Well in the Austin, TX area they are looking for a former law enforcement person, who killed three people. Stay safe folks.
Tony Plohetski (@tplohetski) / Twitter
BREAKING: Three confirmed dead; Authorities ID suspect as Steven Broderick, 41. He is at large. Officials concerned he may take hostages.
West of the Rockies
We need police. Some of them get into the biz for the right reasons and stay honest and lawful. Too many of them do not. How do we get and promote the good ones?
I have suggested requiring a BA. In some states, cops have a high school diploma and passed the academy. Here in CA that is 22 weeks. Is that really enough time? I bet beauty college is more rigorous.
Is it psychological screening with yearly reviews?
I suspect there is not one solution. It will take wholesale change on a federal level.
germy
@West of the Rockies:
Drug testing for steroids?
Lawsuits paid out of police union funds?
germy
https://www.statesman.com/story/news/2021/04/18/3-injured-austin-active-attack-shooter-incident-ems-says/7277348002/
He’s the archetype of the “bad cop” distilled to its purest essence.
WaterGirl
@Sister Golden Bear: i do not have a link, and I don’t do Facebook, but if some enterprising Facebook person wants to find the link, I will gladly post it.
trollhattan
Oh goody, Tweety is publishing a book on American history. I presume it’s 300 pages of Tip and Ronny knocking back whiskey shots and laughing at Jimmy Carter.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08QJQTHR4?tag=youwonnowwhat&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1
ByRookorbyCrook
This is not an African American problem. The Black Community cannot solve police randomly killing members of their community. The police devaluing life is clearly a white community problem. The white community may view it philosophically wrong or ethically wrong, but they don’t view it as a matter of survival. The urgency is not there. It needs to be urgent to us. It is 500 years of continued oppression. We changed the way we interact as a culture due to COVID in less than a year. Anti-maskers are noticed and called out because they are a small portion of our community. Hundreds of years of state sponsored killing has not moved the needle. Even video evidence has not moved the needle. So we better start taking bigger bites than the nibbles we have been taking and campaigning for the removal of qualified immunity is a good start.
WaterGirl
OT, but I will throw this in anyway as we are still toward the top of a thread. This coming January will be 20 years for Balloon Juice. When Another Scott posted the link to the mustard thread this weekend, it reminded me that I would like to collect links in advance of that occasion, for some of the classic threads over the years. So if you have a link to a classic thread, Subaru in the field, faxing credenzas, and even other classics that aren’t quite so famous, please send me an email with the link(s) so I can start putting a list together. *end of PSA
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@germy:
good god
WaterGirl
@ByRookorbyCrook: I agree with much of what you said. Just like men can do more about the rape culture than women, white people haves to stand up against this. I think that started to happen last summer, but it needs to not be a flash in the pan.
I disagree with you about video evidence – it may not have moved the needled in terms of officers being charged and convicted, though I hope that changes this week – but it has certainly raised awareness in the white people that you are saying need to recognize the urgency.
karen marie
@West of the Rockies: Beauty college is not only more rigorous but one has to pass a certifying exam to get licensed, and that certification has to be renewed at intervals – something not required of police.
Rob
I’m glad for Maryland (my state!)’s move and to read about it here. Then I read SiubhanDuinne’s post and that took away my happiness.
JPL
@WaterGirl: Oh my.. I’ll have to think about it, but Red Kitten posted a lot. I think we all paced when she gave birth to her first child who is probably a tween now.
evodevo
@WaterGirl: This is what I found… https://www.facebook.com/DavidGrayNOLA
mali muso
Has to be seen to be believed.
JPL
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I assume they didn’t take his weapons away, because it’s Texas.
germy
@trollhattan:
How can we miss him if he won’t go away?
trollhattan
@mali muso:
Am beginning to question the whole concept of “Minnesota nice.”
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
Make your voices heard. Silence gives consent. That’s why the cops always tear down the memorials – they’re looking for the silence their absence implies. Let those who represent you at every level hear you loud and clear – make sure they know that YOU know they’re wrong to accept it.
And don’t let up, because as with a great many things in this country, it will take enough of you choosing change to make change happen.
trollhattan
@germy:
So incompetent he cant even go away correctly.
James E Powell
@lollipopguild:
My take is that Karl Rove’s 2004 strategy of putting gay marriage on swing state ballots to drive RW voters to the polls may have worked in 2004, but it put the subject of gay marriage in the front and people started to think about their gay & lesbian family, friends, and co-workers – and especially about their children – and said, why the hell not?
We have to keep up the public pressure on police & mayors to hold police shooters accountable. I do not know the right or the best phrases – defund doesn’t help because it sounds like all or nothing. But we need a national campaign. Like Mothers Against Drunk Drivers.
James E Powell
@West of the Rockies:
I would also recommend rotating them off the streets for extended periods of time.
Dmbeaster
It’s a white people problem, and a huge number deny that there is a problem. Changing that awareness is the first step toward change.
Then it’s a police problem where even good cops protect the bad ones. Someone like Chauvin has been violating rights for years, and showing new cops that there is no consequence. If cops shut that crap down earlier, you do not end up with violent indifference.
germy
@Dmbeaster:
Good cops who don’t protect the bad ones don’t stay cops for long. It’s a culture of fear.
Michael Cain
@West of the Rockies:
The Denver suburb where we lived for 30 years requires a four-year degree w/o exception and gives no sort of credit for time spent in military police. The one time I had a chance to ask an officer about it, he told me, “We still get assholes, but it’s a different kind of asshole.” Four years ago they also added their first mental-health co-responders. Everyone including the sworn officers seems to be pleased about the co-responders.
WaterGirl
@JPL: That was a classic event. I remember that vividly. Just don’t recall the date or even the timeframe.
WaterGirl
@evodevo: Thank you!!!
Link added up top.
WaterGirl
@mali muso: Holy shit. Brown shirts and storm troopers.
I thought the black mayor was in charge of the police now. Hard to believe he would have approved that.
WaterGirl
@Dmbeaster: Good cops the protect the bad cops are not good cops.
SiubhanDuinne
@Sister Golden Bear:
@WaterGirl:
I hope someone else can find a source, because I sure couldn’t. When I first saw and posted it, I had just seen it on somebody’s FB page — nobody I know, possibly a three-degrees-of-separation friend of a friend of a. Have seen it two or three times since then, again with no link or attribution beyond the authorial name David Gray, but it seems to be going somewhat viral.
Dan B
@James E Powell: I had a great discussion with the guy who got Marriage Equality going. He was tight on message discipline and mass communication. He pushed the term Marriage Equality instead of Gay Marriage. Focus group testing showed people associated ‘gay’ with sex and our Calvinist streak made that a poor choice.
I believe we need some communication reforms as well as policing reforms. Defund the Police appeals to people who are already convinced but it’s like Gay Marriage in that it doesn’t move potential allies.
The other aspect of communication is to place regulatory oversight on our current mass communications methods. My partner’s family 90 miles from Seattle were terrified the city was flaming rubble during CHOP. Their FOX News feed was pervasive and grossly slanted. It, and other bot boosted media, will paint reform efforts into welcoming parties for hardened criminals and pedophiles. We stand little chance against neo-fascist propaganda platforms.
Cameron
@trollhattan: I can’t bust on him too much (even though I’d never watch him or listen to him). He made a fundraising video for free for the food bank I worked for. Dunno how much it helped, but he’s a Pennsylvania boy and (I think at the time) well-known, I appreciate.
Woodrow/asim
@James E Powell: Forgive me — I’m using your post as a jumping off point; this is a general topic, something I see here and elsewhere. It’s not directed, specifically, at you, James.
That Gay Marriage situation, and how it played out, also cost a lot of people a lot of pain and agony. What is politically valid has a cost, and it’s crucial that we — the Good “Guys” — ensure that we, to the best of our ability, mitigate harm when we talk about these approaches, much less live in real-world situations where they are ongoing.
Indeed, I remember when this very blog’s comment section was battered with calls for Obama to kill DADT, as rapidly as possible, via Exec Order. He did the right thing, in many ways, demanding Congress do the lifting — we saw that with the situation around Trans folx in the military, with Trump — but he extended a lot of pain, doing it that way. I’m sad that, at the time, I didn’t see that side of the position.
When we say “this can all end up well, in time, with work” it also feels like the work done just over a year ago around the why of Black Lives Matter, of anti-racism, might have been lost. Those resources speak, again and again, about how allyship is hard work, and why people need to step up in ways we who follow politics aren’t always accustomed to.
Literal blood is being poured onto streets, as with #BLM. People are losing homes and families, as Trans folx endure every damn day. Those are tragedies far bigger than standard politics can absorb, hence why we’re in the mess we are, today.
Shaping our response to those issues, large or small, underlines for others how crucial, how important, it is to fix them. Giving not a back-seat political cost-benefit analysis, but a powerful statement of advocacy, does make a difference, I think, even on this top-1000 Political blog.
WaterGirl
@SiubhanDuinne: evodevo found the link and I posted it up top.
WaterGirl
@Dan B: That’s why I call it Police Accountability.
JoyceH
Something I’ve been curious about and I don’t know who would have an answer – I recall years ago when tasers were a new thing and the police were adopting them, the theory was that the non-lethal weapon would reduce the incidents of police shootings. There would be this other method to stop people, see, and the police would not have to shoot them. Well – has that happened? Have police shootings dropped since the police started carrying tasers? Because if not, then tasers aren’t performing as advertised and have turned out to be just a portable torture device, and maybe they ought to be discontinued.
zhena gogolia
@JoyceH:
I remember that too.
PaulWartenberg
The one thing that cops argue for the need to carry sidearms and approach every interaction as though it will escalate, is that there are so many guns out there that they risk getting into a shooting fight. So the cops’ urge to shoot first has gotten baked into their survival instinct. The first thing I would do to reduce cop violence is GET RID OF THE FUCKING GUNS, and end the requirement for every cop to pack a piece in the first place.
Mike in NC
Per today’s Washington Post, Republicans in Congress are going to do everything they can to obstruct an investigation of the Capitol insurrection. Looks like it’ll be entirely in the hands of Speaker Pelosi and AG Garland.
SiubhanDuinne
@karen marie:
That is astonishing, and very, very troubling.
SiubhanDuinne
@Rob:
I’m sorry. It took away my happiness, too, when I read it.
Ruckus
It is all a part of the whole.
We all can have guns, so cops are scared for their lives.
We have a massive history of racism, so there are a lot of racists among cops.
We have a history of not really having reasonable policing, so we have few reasonable police.
We have a history of saying one thing and doing another, so why would police be different.
We have a history of claiming to be a democracy, while often being undemocratic, so why would cops be different.
We want equality but have a system that effectively isn’t equal, so why should cops be different.
We have all of the above because we are human, so why should police be different.
Some of the above is going to piss off a lot of you but I ask you to reread those things that do and tell me why I might be wrong in my conclusions. I’m not saying we shouldn’t be far better, obviously a lot of us want to be better. But we are all human, with some level of learning and ability to learn wrong rather than right and to appreciate that wrong, with the strong human trait to be unable to admit that we are. That is one of the traits that make governing so difficult, especially as there become more to be governed. We as humans all like money, because it makes life easier/possible in this day and age. But so many of us, while we understand currency, we don’t actually understand the concept of money, that it is a variable object, rather than fixed. We as humans like freedom. But many of us don’t understand that freedom has limits, because there are some of us who want the freedom to do things that harm others, often as a gain for ourselves.
Just a few thoughts.
Ohio Mom
Just got off a Zoom with Ohio Dad’s side of the family — I came in after they started and the topic I walked in on was the Indianapolis shooter.
My BIL announced that the shooter looked like the sort of mentally ill person who would be a mass murderer.
Then my SIL, the retired newspaper editor added that the conservatives emptied out the mental hospitals to save money but the liberals were at fault too because they thought it was a violation of their civil liberties.
And then she concluded,
“So it was both sides.”
Really, she said that, she said “both sides.” I guess forty plus years in the news business does that to you.
I don’t even know where to start unpacking this. It was the huge breakthrough development of antipsychotic drugs that made it possible for people to go back to their communities. The Carter administration had big plans for networks of community centers and other supports that Regan promptly tossed. As with so much else, he is the ultimate villain here.
The courts have found that it IS a violation of civil rights to institutionalize people; mentally ill people are much, much more likely to be the victims of crimes than the perpetrators; the reason that we have so many homeless people is not that “we closed the mental hospitals,” it is that we don’t provide them with housing.
I will somewhat agree with my BIL though. The shooter’s face is disproportionate, there is something biological going on — maybe Fetal Alcohol Syndrome? IAN a geneticist or psychiatrist however.
ETA: and of course it is ultimately that we are a gun happy nation.
JillR
A multi-pronged approach will be necessary:
Better training and recertification- a BA degree or better, yearly certification or licensing, drug testing- for anabolic steroids as well, get rid of the training that insists they should be terrified / ready to pull out a gun for no reason
Database of bad cops so they don’t get hired elsewhere once they wear out their welcome
Financial deterrence- get the cops themselves invested in getting rid of bad cops- malpractice insurance?, taking at least part of money for financial settlements out of the police department?-
Demilitarizing police departments
Separate social worker role from police roles, or train/ pay police better if they fill those roles
Civilian oversight / public notification about complaints if upheld
What else?
Rob
@SiubhanDuinne: :-(
I went and read the Jonathan Capehart piece afterwards. More sadness.
Woodrow/asim
No, because Policing in America is, far too often, about Power Over Others, and tasers (as a number of people foresaw) was just another way to express power.
Even if Policing’s origins weren’t steeped, in whole or part, in Black Slave Blood, we’ve seen, time and again, how the very same media manipulation that invokes fears of (Black) crime against (White) honest citizens, has allowed the police to burnish and polish up their creds until they, at one point, shined brighter than America’s military, I suspect.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence, exactly, that Webb’s DRAGNET hit the hardest in terms of being a pro-police narrative, about the same time the Vietnam narrative was sinking how we saw our military.
Sorry — to get back on topic, there’s no public system of expressing Power quite as politically and personally potent as Racialized violence. Defunding Police is saying that, very directly, and it strikes me as…interesting how many people wish to restate this phrase. I think people feel that, if the right focus-group built term came around — a Shazam-like Magic Word if you will — that phrase will suddenly make the people currently neck deep in Privilege, who’s entire lives are built around leveraging it (consciously or otherwise) suddenly stop using it, and start to work to disband it.
(NOTE: Re: DRAGNET, please don’t take this as some kind of weird-assed conspiracy, either. I think the boosting of police happened to fill a void, moreso than anything else.)
jackmac
My great fear is that there will be one or two jurors — white Trump supporters perhaps — who will vote to acquit even in the face of overwhelming evidence against Derek Chauvin. And they’ll do it just to please their hero, The Former Guy. Then what? There’s the likelihood of severe — and justified — reaction and unrest not just in Minnesota, but everywhere.
mali muso
@WaterGirl: Yeah, it sounds like the cops are completely off the chain and this “Operation Safety Net” is emboldening them. From a friend who lives locally in the Twin Cities….
Carlo
What if the pithy slogan were “Disarm The Police” instead of “Defund The Police”?
I don’t think it’s that crazy. There’s no reason for traffic stops to be made by armed cops, and there’s no reason an organized force with cars and radios needs guns to apprehend a fugitive on foot. British Bobbies make do very nicely without any iron on their hips – they keep all the cans of serious whup-ass back at the station ready for dispatch to situations where it’s really required. And they actually train their cops to recognize when that kind of force is, and isn’t required.
That seems like an important point to me. US cops can’t be trusted with lethal weaponry, because they appear to be trained in how to use it, but not in why, or why not. Taking at least most of their guns away might force some kind of re-think.
Ruckus
@JillR:
That’s not a bad list to start on, it has to be a multi pronged approach.
No one thing is going to work.
The problem is partially of politics. We have one party that has embraced racism as a founding point, and almost a point of pride. And while racism has a huge part in crappy policing, it is not the total of it.
The problem is partially guns. A cop never knows who is going to shoot them and who won’t. And many cops think all blacks are criminals, because of the racism. Which also feeds a portion of all of the guns.
The problem is partially money. From at least 2 directions. First the racism affects job possibilities, therefore money is an issue. Second the money to pay for bad cops doesn’t come from the cops, it comes from the rest of us who essentially have zero say for the most part in how cops do their jobs, so money to payoff wrong doing should come from cops, likely their retirement funds but I’d say also directly from the bad ones.
The problem is partially responsibility. We give cops the life and death job and the tools to do the death part, but leave out the life part. We’ve taken away from society a lot of the ability to protect itself from people who actually work to harm others, financially, racially, politically.
JoyceH
@Carlo: If traffic law compliance and requests for assistance with mental health issues were taken away from the police and given to agencies better trained to deal with them, that would take care of a HUGE portion of police-involved fatalities right there!
Mousebumples
@Ohio Mom: related to this, and only tangentially related to the topic at hand (unless we expand the topic to White People with Guns), i had to run to the mall-attached Target recently, and I was *nervous*, knowing that the mass shooters are out again.
We have a serious gun prevalence problem, and as alluded to by others above, we need to fix it.
I was never nervous to go to Target before. I think the year+ “break” on mass shootings made my brain even more aware that what we have going on in this country is Not Normal.
Emma from Miami
@mali muso: Jesus Christ. It looks like… I don’t know. Tiananmen Square? Soweto?
cain
@mali muso:
Completely unacceptable. Fire the top brass, and then start a 15% replacement every 6 months of new officers with a higher requirements.
But we voting public have power too – the sheriff, the mayor, and various others need to be voted in with a mandate. They should be judged by how hte police behave under their term. We most of all should hold ourselves accountable.
Starting now I will be very much be involved in the sheriff races and mayoral races. Hard questions must be asked.
In Portland, the police come from vancouver – part of that is that officers should be paid enough to live in Portland and within the community they police.
Wapiti
@cain: I can see courts overturning some laws that require cops to live in a specific city, but a different state? That makes no sense at all, since these people carry and have police powers off duty.
cain
I wouldn’t use that – I would use something like “re-envision the poilce” – I think that provides a more powerful vision – accountability like gay marriage and asserts something negative.
But here we are re-thinking policing which has its root sin white supremacy and racism. We want to change how we think about policing and I think more people would be onboard with something like that – especially if youre from law enforcement families and military families.
It’s hard to dis-associate yourself from “law and order” – so we have to be more clever.
Woodrow/asim
@Carlo: What if, instead, we focused on solving the damn problem?
In the 80s, well-funded and backed “Conservatives” managed to demonize first the term Liberal, then the ACLU. I was much younger but remember both situations, real damn well.
You think picking the right phrase’ll fix Black Blood being poured out onto the streets? Really?
There are people talking real solutions in this thread, that will take real work, real advocacy and struggle, to implement. I suggest energy be directed there.
cain
@Wapiti:
They should not be allowed to live in Vancouver, but I can also understand that – rampant housing costs would make it difficult to live in other places. Vancouver is significant cheaper place than Portland.
Suzanne
@JillR: Incentives — good ones — for narc’ing on another cop.
cain
@Mike in NC:
We really need to start a very strong messaging that if you support the insurrection you are a traitor. They are trying to gas light the whole thing – because they know they are guilty. I know I can trust the Democrats here because they were close to deaht – and it’s not something they are going to let go so easily – it is personal to them.
James E Powell
@Ohio Mom:
I was low level staff person working on exactly that in the Ohio House in 1979-1980. Before Reagan was elected, the grand plans to deinstitutionalize mental health care and build range of transitional care facilities ran smack into the property tax revolt. Gov Rhodes just said no. Other states, then the federal govt under Reagan followed along and the movement – the very idea of society providing care to mentally ill people – never recovered.
Giving a shit about other people remains popular as long as it’s an abstract concept. Actually doing it is not so popular.
JoyceH
Off topic, but I need to vent, somewhere other than Facebook where people would probably know who I’m talking about.
I took my dog for a walk, and ran into a neighbor walking her dog. When we meet like that, we walk together and converse for a while. We’re both vaccinated, but both put on our masks – her husband is immuno-compromised. I forget what he’s got, but there’s no cure, though a bone marrow transplant is expected to get him a few more years. Her dad died of COVID this winter.
And she can’t talk her adult son and daughter into getting vaccinated! She’s told them that they can’t come visit and see their dad until they’re fully vaccinated, and they know their grandfather died from the thing they’re refusing the vaccine for – but they won’t do it.
Gaaah! People!
Josie
@evodevo:
Thanks for finding this. I never post on Facebook, but I shared this. It is something, however small, that each of us can do. This painful essay should be shared far and wide to make people look at what is happening, whether they want to or not.
Dan B
@Woodrow/asim: Focus group testing is one aspect of messaging. It’s not magic. It’s part of proven techniques of mass influence and propaganda. It’s important to move all the levers that determine successful outcomes. The well thought out police accountability reforms won’t get far without a great many citizens hearing impactful words and stories. We have few stories about successful policing transformations. Camden, New Jersey did succeed. I’d like to hear more about the Denver suburb that succeeded. Instead we hear from right wing media about terrible crime waves. We hear about gun violence in Chicago and how gun “control” doesn’t work. We rarely hear how 2/3 of guns in the city originate in states with lax regulation. We hear the phrase gun “control” which has authoritarian connotations but rarely hear about responsible gun ownership.
Marriage Equality’s success was about endless attempts, telling personal stories, bringing people together who were allies with great stories and charisma, and it was about coming together in tears when another initiative failed. The tears were not ficus group magic. They were simple non-verbal communication. And they were reinforced by the word equality which was the goal.
Every tool in the toolkit can make a difference but sloppy message discipline can derail the best legal and political campaigns.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
@Ruckus: Outstanding observations, succinctly expressed.
You should write for the blog. Seriously.
Suzanne
@JillR: Fewer laws, especially around drugs and traffic, to eliminate pretexts for stopping people. Probably fewer men on the force. Make traffic ticket funds go to education, not back to the force.
Cermet
@Carlo: Rather, use the slogan “De-militarize the police!”
The swat teams, armor vehicles and heavy weapons do not belong in civilian police hands. If they feel they are out armed – good. Maybe then they and their unions will finally support gun control (which they almost uniformly do not.)
topclimber
@JillR: Great list.
My only nitpick is with the notion that a BA means more than an associate degree, or even a high school one. Develop a cop curriculum that includes paid time to meet with community groups regularly; develop a course on Jim Crow; and encourage discussion of philosophical issues like: If there is suspected abuse, when should a cop witness break from the blue wall of silence?
Candidates with a basic integrity and respect for citizens are more important than those heavy on paper credentials. They will learn enough, if the cop curriculum insists.
cain
@JoyceH:
Ugh, I’m so sorry to hear that. I don’t understand how you can’t do this for their dad. It’s not a big deal to get it.. what is the issue ? We have a huge problem with facebook/whatsapp – this company controls so much of the right wing media.
I feel we really need to do something about them. This is a national security risk.
Ruckus
@JoyceH:
Sorry about stupidity. I think it’s almost an impossibility to fix willful stupidity.
Along those lines, think Rupert Murdoch and his bullshit. We’ve had 30 yrs of faux news and all it’s done is support the decline of the conservative side of our government that existed long prior to it.
Conservatism is about never changing the way of life and government from some point in time. And it is always a point in time that gives much higher power to some. Always.
In our case, as is usual with conservatism, it’s white and money that has the power. But go back in time and look at every government/country that has started a war and what that war was really about. It is always who stays in power and who gets the money.
Woodrow/asim
@Dan B: So much of this damn discourse, here and elsewhere, is “let’s rename ‘Defund The Police'”. It literally came up, post-Election cycle, time and again as “the/a reason Democratic polling was below expectations,” in thread after thread on this very blog. Presented as discussion, not as observable/debatable fact.
It came off, in other words, as a way for folx to blame black folx for the election not being up to polling. You can understand I ain’t here for that, not without a mountain of evidence that never showed up.
It damn near pushed me to leave this place, a space I’ve been at since Shivao(sp), at least.
As a Black Man, it’s exhausting to see your at-Risk life folded into a series of messaging discussions. It’s beyond disheartening to see people you think might be on your side, spend more time telling you how to promote a slogan, than helping you avoid getting DEAD.
And I say this, with love for this community: Damn few of the people I’ve seen critiquing it, appear to be Black. Much less are the Black and Brown people who came up with the slogan.
Are any/all of you who have said “it’s a bad slogan” ever in contact, in discussion, in dialogue with the BLM groups in your community? If you feel so goddamn strongly about changing it, why the hell not? What makes you and your “I read an article or three” discussion more important to me and other Black folx than the people getting tasers and arrested while trying to save my life?
And, again — I’ve been saying this _on here_ for months, now. This is not a new discussion on my end.
I don’t want to sound mean. Yet I’m OK being the Angry Black Man around this point (and those who know, know why I’d use that exact phrase): This is really, honestly, the last damn time I want to hear this messaging discussion without someone actually putting in some work to see if the BLM folx are open to it. Otherwise? Respect the people doing the work, on the ground, and ask them how you can help stop Black people dying.
It’s possible, as with me, to feel some trepidation on the process/approaches they provide, but to also respect the work they’ve put in, and the goal to avoid more damn bloodshed…
…including, very directly, my own life.
So you’re welcome to this discussion. But I’m telling you, it’s not in isolation, and that context — both in terms of a (so far as my decades here tell me) majority-white online space dictating slogans to a majority-Black one, and then the blame game as well — damn well matters.
STOP IT.
Dan B
@Michael Cain: I wish we had more stories from officers and residents in that Denver suburb who experienced the transition. It seems that even a two year training with regular professional training requirements would be a great improvement if we can get academies certified by boards with a majority of citizen members.
The dominant narrative is how dangerous the world would be with “no police”.
Suzanne
@topclimber: We need some way to screen out the impatient and the rageaholics on the force, not just the stupid. I don’t know if a BA/BS is a good filter for the first two issues I just listed (probably not), but maybe it is for the third.
I mean, I would make, like, a 120 IQ a minimum.
bluefoot
Related to that David Gray post, what I’ve been telling my white friends is: How you’ve been feeling through the pandemic? You plan when to go to the grocery store, you have a checklist in your head of: mask, hand sanitizer, most efficient way of getting the groceries you need to minimize close contact. But you still worry if some random person you encounter won’t be wearing a mask, or will purposely cough on you, and what if I bring the virus home and infect someone I love? That feeling, that constant checking, constant worry that even if you do everything on your long checklist right, you might still get sick and die? That is what POC live with every day, all the time, every time we step out of the house. Our whole lives.
Mallard Filmore
@Mike in NC:
What can Congress add to the criminal proceedings?
The Republicans are saying “We already know what happened and we don’t need your help to cover it up.”
Ruckus
@topclimber:
A long time ago I was a local mental health clinic counselor. We talked on the phone and in person. Each staff member worked one 5 hr shift per week and we also met in a group with a psychiatrist to discuss our cases and refresh our 6 months of training to be a counselor. I did this for almost 4 yrs. This was during the time that so much of the mental health system was changing, often for the worse or for the nothing at all. Yes there were things that needed changing, there always are in the healthcare field. People spend an inordinate amount of time learning and like people everywhere are reluctant to change. But change is often massively necessary, because we go down roads that don’t lead in any good direction. It’s how we gain knowledge, we have to find out the good and the bad. It’s failure to recognize the bad that’s the problem.
I bring all this up to show that often cops really don’t get the training, support, review that is really necessary in a job like law enforcement, or mental health counseling. Law enforcement is often treated like “We’ve always done it this way, so we are going to continue to do it this way.” And that is almost always wrong, given that so much changes in humanity over time. We have people on this blog who have lived being the subjects of racism for every day of their lives. They live with the economics, the law enforcement, the laws, the every single bit of it. We still have oppression in this country, oh boy do we still have oppression. And hate. And that solves absolutely nothing, makes life and death issues out of nothings, and that has to change to make everything else possible. Hate is an emotion, we all have it in us to hate and to hate for hates sake. We can’t just change one thing to fix policing, we have to change the basics and all the bits and pieces that make up the term law enforcement.
debbie
@JillR:
Psychological screening every year. Yearly recertification and updated training every year. End qualified and any other kind of immunity. Unless they end their undermining and subversion of local laws, abolish police unions.
Citizen Alan
@JoyceH:
How would you handle issues of traffic law compliance without people in patrolling vehicles with the authority to pull over drivers suspected of noncompliance? And if those non-police traffic personnel aren’t armed, what happens on those occasions when a traffic law violation really does escalate into a violent situation initiated by an armed and dangerous driver who got pulled over for a minor violation? I’m genuinely curious what the response to those questions would be.
WaterGirl
@Woodrow/asim: I deliberately didn’t reference Defund the Police because I don’t want to talk about what to call it; I want to talk about what we do to change the situation.
Dan B
@Woodrow/asim: I’m not criticizing Defund the Police. It’s a great phrase for getting people organized. That is vital at the moment. Early Gay Liberation slogans were wild. Marriage Equality was a great phrase for a later phase. It met with huge resistance from LGBTQ activists because it seemed weak compared to how we were feeling after AIDS and the GOP adopting the religious right. I have no sage advice for BLM. I know people involved but haven’t been due to Covid.
I am distressed with groups, like many Democrats, who resist message discipline and mass communication. I feel that there will be different strategies for each target audience. Defund is fine with me for its target audience. I do not have a problem with it but I know it may be useless for white soccer moms. They may be an important constituency for political pushes in the future.
Kent
No need for police at all in most instances. We have the technology to install red light cameras and speeding cameras in places where traffic violations are especially problematic (people going 60 in school zones and residential neighborhoods, etc.)
To the extent that traffic laws need to be enforced, we have plenty of technological alternatives.
Uncle Cosmo
Here’s an idea: Accessories after the fact. Every time those SOBs start obstructing investigations or making excuses for those half-arsed stormtrooper-wannabes, call them that. It’s no less than what they are.
Kent
I disagree. Organization if pointless if it doesn’t result in legislation and that requires broad majorities. “Defund the Police” will not generate widespread support sufficient to produce legislative change. To the contrary, it will make it less likely.
As for “Black Lives Matter” I think the slogan would have been more effective if they had added “too” to the end. Which is really what we are actually talking about here: “Black Lives Matter Too”
Just because some activist somewhere coined the phrase “Defund the Police” doesn’t mean we all need to use it.
WaterGirl
Stopping people for having air fresheners hanging from their rearview mirrors is bullshit. It’s a pretense for stopping people they want to stop. Specifically, black and brown people.
Besides the big things, there are many, many low level things that could limit the ability of police to stop people to harass them.
All these cops who are harassing and murdering black people? It makes me wildly angry, and I really want to find some constructive things that we can all do to make this stop.
PJ
@Dan B:
It’s a counterproductive slogan if you want to convince most Democrats, as polling has shown. Anytime you have to explain that your slogan doesn’t mean what it says it means, only to have some people chime in that it means exactly what it says, you’ve lost on the messaging front.
WaterGirl
@Kent: I am not directing this at you personally, but whenever I see people who aren’t doing the work focusing on the terminology we should use, it feels like a deflection of the problem at hand.
Sometimes I feel like that crazy right-wing guy – was it Breitbart? – who was screaming STOP RAPING PEOPLE!
Only I want to scream STOP KILLING BLACK PEOPLE. And I am not crazy.
karen marie
@Suzanne: Firing their fucking asses the first time they’re caught lying in a report, endangering the public, and then barring them from working in law enforcement in any capacity elsewhere, would be a good place to start.
The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion
Haven’t had time to wade through all the comments, so forgive me if this is something that has already been said, but one concrete action we can take right now is to watch every interaction between cops and African Americans, all the way through the encounter. Film, if possible, but at the very least stop and watch. Make sure that cops know we are paying attention. Don’t look away.
WaterGirl
@PJ: Maybe some people, maybe even many people, don’t like the phrase Defund the Police, but I don’t think we lost a single vote in 2020 because of that.
Anyone who voted R in 2020 – ostensibly because of that – was just looking for an excuse.
Kent
Not any more it isn’t significantly cheaper. Vancouver prices have gone up lock-step with the rest of the Portland metro. And honestly Vancouver is no different from any other Portland suburb on the OR side like Clackamas or Tigard.
Yes it is likely illegal to require them to live within the neighborhoods that they work in. We don’t require that of any other municipal worker like teachers. But if it was really worth it to the city, they could establish incentives to encourage cops to live locally. Housing bonuses and such if they choose to live in Portland.
Suzanne
@karen marie: Y.E.S.
Safety of the public is more important than due process. You fuck up, you are outta there.
Kent
Fine, but what is your actual plan for change? What “work” are you actually doing? I fight to put progressives into power and then fight to hold their feet to the fire when it comes to legislation. Not just on policing but climate change, education, and a suite of other issues that I find important.
What I don’t do is endlessly march and sloganize in downtown Portland. That has been going on for 9 months now to absolutely zero effect as far as I can see.
J R in WV
@bluefoot:
I withhold my opinion of mouth breathers and people unable (too stupid, evil or moronic) to figure out how to wear a f’in’ mask. Some people are too stupid to get a clue, and I understand that, I know some country folks too dumb to hold any kind of job.
BUT — Someone deliberately spews their snot, saliva, mucus on me during this plague had better be prepared to eat a 24 oz can of stew, can included~!!~
Actively attempting to contaminate me? No holds barred then asshole..
Dan B
@Kent: My feeling is BLM is at a point where getting lots of people on board and in people’s faces has merit. It will be necessary for a broad majority of the public to get on board. Then the communication strategy will change or the RWNJ’s and ugly racists will have a field day.
Gay Liberation got the attention of the public, a public that had no awareness or bigoted information. It was not the right set of slogans, legal fights, and stories to get political buy in. It is still tenuous as the attacks on trans people and the lack of an equality amendment make sadly clear.
At the moment police violence towards POC has expanded to all protestors, journalists, medics, and anyone at the demonstrations. It’s being amplified by the fear that social media, Faux, and their spinoffs disseminate. My in laws buy it and they know that 85% of our neighbors are POC. Until we get a handle on the disinformation we will remain hamstrung. Slogans like Defund the Police have very little impact one way or the other but they do energize a lot of people.
Hopefully Biden / Harris will thread this needle.
Omnes Omnibus
JFC, it’s almost as though Woodrow/asim’s comment about Defund the Police triggered a shitload of people to do exactly what caused his comment in the first. Well done, folks. As far as the subject of the post, I really don’t know. I just know this – I am not calling the police to any incident involving POC because I sure fuck do not want any part in getting someone killed.
J R in WV
When a cop is involved with a violent arrest, anyone has a bloody nose, a black eye, any complaint, that cop needs to pee in a test kit immediately, with the lawyer (or a designated other party selected by tat lawyer) for the accused watching the pee hit the test kit.
Way too many of these officers are doing steroids to build muscle at the gym, or other recreational drugs that keep them from behaving rationally. Was Chauvin tested for steroids after he tortured Floyd to death on camera? I bet not, it would have been mentioned by now in the trial. My money is on that guy was high as a kite on something — maybe just adrenaline, but I don’t think so. And we will never know, will we?
Listening to one of the recent cop encounters the other day, the cop couldn’t speak for the fear he was feeling, his quavering voice made his statements incomprehensible. That guy has no business being in law enforcement at all.
Gvg
@Woodrow/asim: I am sorry you feel that way. I thought the defund the police message being a crappy message critique was blaming conservatives and privileged white people, not at all blaming black citizens.
I think it is a bad slogan because it turns white people off that I am trying to persuade. Several others reported the same thing early on. We need more numbers of people to be solidly on the side of reform, to get that reform. This means messaging matters. In America, defunding something means it is gone. I don’t know many people who are actually for no more police at all. I have been robbed, held up at gun point and I know many many women who have been raped. We need a police force. I just think the ones we have are doing it mostly wrong.
Talking about ideas here helps me. I do think we need some specific reforms that lots of people think would help, in order to have specific things to discuss beyond slogans with people we are trying to persuade to vote our way.
I know it is too slow, but what choice do we have?
Ruckus
@WaterGirl:
The messaging is important. But I’d bet it’s far less important than actually making the necessary changes. Or even trying to figure out how to make the necessary changes. And as has been seen on this one post, we waste way too much time talking about the words to use to talk about the possibility of change that the actual change never gets made. I wonder if a part of that is the money involved, not even the actual money on the police side as on the side of the people. I lived/owned a small business in the wealthiest county in CA. And a number of people I met in that business had actually earned the money they had, rather than being born into it. And they were still very afraid of losing money. They were afraid of any change, because that would change the amount of money and therefore also any prestige they would have. Now not all of them, but a fair number that I knew thought that. And that translates to we shouldn’t even talk about it, so that nothing changes. And at some point (realistically a point long ago in history) it has to change. But talking about change is nowhere as close to actual change as it needs to be. My life is on the downslope side of whatever it turns out to be but I know one thing I’d like to see in it and that is to, at the very least, get a lot damn closer to being the equal democracy that it pretends not very vigorously to be.
Dan B
@Kent: I understand your point about non-stop demonstrations in Portland. My experience of demonstrations was groups that had a strategy. They built alliances and had messages for a broader audience.
Our friends who were so excited to move to Portland last year want to move back to peaceful Seattle. Unfortunately Pramila* bought their house.
*Jayapal, in case it wasn’t clear.
Woodrow/asim
I got that impression, but, again: it’s a Black and Brown slogan. You don’t like it, in this case, it’s a critique of Black and Brown activities.
And that’s not inherently unfair! But you have to own up to that, and actually address it directly, preferably by actually engaging the activists at the heart of this — not logging spitballs from a top-1000 blog.
Trying to say that the phrase being crappy messaging is Rose Twitter and/or Alt-Right’s fault is just dodging responsibility.
Kent
@Dan B: My wife works in a medical clinic with a LOT of Filipino nurses and doctors, mostly women and we have them over to the house socially quite a bit. This is the Vancouver WA area. And while they are sympathetic to the notion of police reform, I can promise you that there is zero interest in defunding or abolishing the police. These are not white people, they are immigrants and people of color. They work in a relatively crappy part of Vancouver and they actually have to call the police on frequent occasions to deal with armed and unstable patients showing up at the clinic, abusive assholes trying to follow their abused victims into the clinic, cars being prowled and broken into in the employee lot, etc. etc.
WaterGirl
@Kent:
You said: “Fine, but what is your actual plan for change? What “work” are you actually doing?”
I thought it was clear. At the moment, I am trying to start a conversation about what people like us can actually DO to help make the change. From up top:
Ruckus
@J R in WV:
It also might have been the adrenaline. I’ve been involved in an accident that tore my rotator cuff, broke the thumb on the same side, tore the meniscus in the opposite knee in half and that had ended with me head first under the bumper of a truck. I walked away from that and felt no pain for about 5 minutes. On about minute 6 I couldn’t actually move, and had to scream for help. That’s all adrenaline, it is an amazing thing to have and to have in control of your body, but it can also be completely destabilizing when it wears off. And it always does.
Kent
@WaterGirl: Change is brutally hard. You usually achieve it by attaining majorities and sometimes through the courts like Brown v. Board of education. And even that was largely a failure because white populations weren’t on board and did white flight instead. I’m not aware of any shortcuts.
Messaging also does not exist in a vacuum. There are two sides. You have to message against the other side that is using this issue for it’s own purposes.
I don’t know what the perfect and most effective campaign against police violence would look like. But I’m pretty sure it doesn’t involve setting shit on fire and breaking windows. Which is pretty much what happens here in the Portland area on a nightly basis. Honestly, if you don’t want your protests to be hijacked by criminal mischief, don’t hold them at night in the dark and instead hold them in the middle of the day when people are out and about
As for what can WE do? Holding our representatives’ feet to the fire would be a good start. The OR legislature is currently in session. What are they doing to tackle this issue? I honestly don’t know. But sometimes they spend a lot more time on performative bullshit like plastic grocery bag bans than tackling hard issues like police reform.
PST
@PJ:
That seems irrefutable to me. So the question is whether messaging matters, which of course it does when everything necessary to get the job done requires mobilizing public opinion. Regardless of how unfair it is, regardless of how it should not be the job of the victims of police violence to convince a majority of the need to take difficult steps to produce change, the change will not happen absent successful persuasion. And since the majority will always worry about its own safety first and will be getting conflicting messages from the worst people in the world, the messaging has to be good, even if it shouldn’t.
Dan B
@Omnes Omnibus: It was assumed I was talking about Defund the Police. I was talking about how most progressives go to policy fixes and put the communication and messaging on the bottom rung, if it’s near the ladder at all.
Joe and Kamala, with able assistance from Jen the Bomber (!), and Nancy Smash, Jim Clyburn, Maxine, etc. seem to be doing a good job of pointing out GOP obstruction and hypocrisy. I’d like more white progressives to talk about how they feel about Police violence in addition to changes to policing. A few political staffers can craft some great policy if there is a thunderous roar for change from the public.
brantl
@The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion: And be LOUD, when you see something wrong, call every other witness’ attention to it.
brantl
@Omnes Omnibus: DEFANG the police?
Woodrow/asim
I really need you to stop taking whatever the fuck is happening in Portland, and speaking as though it’s status quo for BLM protests across the nation. You think broken windows got Maryland to vote in the changes they did?
Frankly, I also need you anti-sloganeers to stop talking down to the Black and Brown folx who made up that slogan, and now want to dance around your dislike of it.
There’s a discussion and debate on this. That’s all damn fair and right.
Yet: Right now, I’m frankly too angry and pissed off at many of you to have it. I’m putting this out, so it’s clear that some of what you folx are saying is not at all kosher, and you really need to check where you’re coming from.
Kent
@Woodrow/asim: I have no idea what is going on everywhere else in the nation. I do know that what has been happening here in Portland hasn’t budged the needle one bit in Portland or the surrounding suburbs.
Policing and police budgets is mostly a local issue and sometimes a state issue. Potentially a national issue if you can get Congress off it’s ass to pass some sort of comprehensive police reform legislation. Portlanders can’t fix policing in MN any more than MN folks can fix policing in Portland
I also have no idea what motivated the MD Legislature to do the right thing and pass police reforms. But I doubt very much that it had to do with any sort of slogans. I expect it had much more to do with very hard lobbing and holding legislator’s feet to the fire. And probably also a wide variety of different interest groups and community groups coming together to agree on what measures to put forward and get behind. That takes a LOT of hard work.
rikyrah
@Mike in NC:
That works for me. Get a Special Prosecutor
Dan B
@Kent: What’s happening in Portland is weird. It seems as though Portland PD pushed a lot of young white guys over the edge. It also seems that the strategy of taking the protests to residential neighborhoods outside downtown has frightened many allies. It seems like cointel pro in Chicago in the 60’s and 70’s but there doesn’t seem to be any clear evidence of that.
Of course it doesn’t matter much to rational discourse if a single nut smashes windows or if one city’s BLM supporters, if they are actually supporters or just your guys who want to fight, start fires and damage property. We’ve seen how bots have turned people against vaccinations. People can be driven nuts, or they grab the steering wheel and drive themselves there.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Woodrow/asim:
Oh for fuck’s sake! Dan B gave you an example of where messaging can be fucking effective in Marriage Equality
geg6
@Woodrow/asim:
Thank you for your honesty and, really, your trust in us to say what needed to be heard by us. I’m listening and keeping my mouth shut.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
You know what, this comment was stupid and knee-jerky. Sorry, woodrow
debbie
@Mike in NC:
Seems a little treasonous, no?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@debbie:
Yup. What do they have to hide?
redoubtagain
@Kent:
But a Federal level Department of Justice, with teeth, can fix both right now. If the state of Minnesota is in violation of the First and Fourth Amendments of the Constitution (and one could argue it is in the way it’s “handling” protests), or if the state of Oregon is violating civil rights, that’s a national issue.
Being Black in America means you’re the canary in the coal mine. ‘Cause if they’ll do it to them (us), they’ll do it to you. Just a matter of time.
The Moar You Know
If you score over 100 on a standard IQ test here in San Diego, you cannot be a regular/beat cop.
That might be a problem.
Kent
I’ve been living in or around Portland off and on since I was in college here in the 1980s. There has ALWAYS been a white hyper-radical activist movement here. For a while it was the Earth First eco-terrorist types who would blow up or burn logging equipment and occupy trees in old growth forests and sometimes do more stupid shit like burn down the Center for Urban Horticulture at UW in Seattle because they though genetic engineered trees were being developed there (wasn’t even true). Divestment from South Africa was a big issue then, which brought out some big downtown protests that I attended as a college student.
A few years later it was the massive anti-globalism WTO protests in Seattle which drew up the same anarchist activist types to Seattle. Which eventually morphed into “Occupy Wall Street” Essentially there has been at least 3-decades of white radical organizing in Seattle and Portland that honestly had very little at all to do with race or policing. Except for the “Free Mumia” posters that would show up at every protest on any topic. And of course the ANTIFA folks who weren’t so much about Black Lives as they were about taking on white right wing thugs in their own private battles.
When the BLM movement took root last summer this whole large contingent of young white radicals was locked and loaded and ready to go. And so we ended up with nightly battles against the police that were largely young white radicals and not actual BLM folks. They were doing the big daytime marches.
At least that’s my take, having lived here and dabbled in politics off and on since at least the early 1980s.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@The Moar You Know:
Wait, wtf? What’s the stated rationale behind that?
CatFacts
@Woodrow/asim: Thank you for speaking out. I am pale as a fish, but earlier this week I was in a work meeting about changing some policies that were having a negative effect on a historically marginalized group. A decent chunk of the meeting involved people in Privileged Group saying, “Why don’t we do X” and people in Marginalized Group saying, “No, that perpetuates the exact same problem pattern we already have!”
As you said, it happens here too, and I’ve seen it happen here in other contexts. I had not realized that Defund the Police was a slogan developed by Black and Brown people. I will keep that in mind going forward. I thank you — and I’m sorry you had to do the mental work of educating the rest of us, which is fucking exhausting. Thank you.
cain
@Dan B:
Let’s call it what it is – white rage. This what they always do. They don’t know any other way to express themselves.
As Kent mentioned above – these people are always here ready to co-opt any protest. They still want to express their rage at the “system” and they show up during marches and start riling up everything. The only time they couldn’t co-opt a march was the women’s march here -and they got their ass kicked by 65+ year old women.
cain
@Kent:
Yes, I agree – and more than that you’re attacking businesses and neighbors who are your allies.
Protest all you can, but keep it during the day because other elements are coming in and taking over and co-opting it and we start losing allies.
Ramalama
@WaterGirl: The facebook post reminded me a little of Damon Young’s What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker. Loved this book. So funny and bell-ringing and heartbreaking that I did the usual slow-walk while reading because I did not want it to end. Author is a Black man who knows how to write incredibly well / translating his experiences as a guy from Philly or Pennsylvania and how he strategizes to live as a normal human being (jobs, girlfriends, apartments, etc) into further strategies for staying alive while living as a Black man in the USA.
Link
I bought the book out of curiosity – so many great blurbs on the back cover. So glad that I have it now on hand to re-read (again).
WaterGirl
@Woodrow/asim: Your comment made me wonder how Maryland did come to be the first in the nation on some of this.