George Floyd protests

[JimC]

How easy is it to get rid of a bad union cop? Probably too hard.Unions are the problem... because the cops will act in union to protect bad cops.

There is some truth in that, although any large group of employees needs a union to stop cavalier treatment by bosses. If there was tough, independent oversight of police actions, then police unions could arrange defence lawyers for accused officers, but if the evidence clearly points to wrong-doing, then out they go...

[Tero]

It's hiring and firing and contracts. Any cop should be fired for their actions. Send them off with 6 months pay. It's partly the management's fault for hiring personnel that abuse power. But things being what they are, just use money.

Also, cities protect property a bit too much. It's just stuff. Get insurance for it.

[Tero]

And sue Trump personally. He told cops to beat the shit out of criminals:
The comments come in contrast to Trump's law-and-order campaign — a stance he has echoed as president. In 2017, he told an audience of law enforcement officers, "Please don't be too nice" when arresting people. Last week, in response to the protests, he encouraged governors to deploy National Guard units, he said, "in sufficient numbers that we dominate the streets."

https://www.npr.org/sections/live-updat ... le-fashion

[laklak]

Oh lord, Nancy Pelosi et. al. taking a knee. They honestly have no shame, these people. They look like a badly choreographed amateur theatrics production in an old age home.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52969375

[Seabass]

America, This Is Your Chance

Our democracy hangs in the balance. This is not an overstatement.

As protests, riots, and police violence roiled the nation last week, the president vowed to send the military to quell persistent rebellions and looting, whether governors wanted a military occupation or not. John Allen, a retired four-star Marine general, wrote that we may be witnessing the “beginning of the end of the American experiment” because of President Trump’s catastrophic failures.

Trump’s leadership has been disastrous. But it would be a mistake to place the blame on him alone. In part, we find ourselves here for the same reasons a civil war tore our nation apart more than 100 years ago: Too many citizens prefer to cling to brutal and unjust systems than to give up political power, the perceived benefits of white supremacy and an exploitative economic system. If we do not learn the lessons of history and choose a radically different path forward, we may lose our last chance at creating a truly inclusive, egalitarian democracy.

The Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky famously said that “the degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.” Today, the same can be said of our criminal injustice system, which is a mirror reflecting back to us who we really are, as opposed to what we tell ourselves.

Millions of us watched a black man in Minnesota lie on the ground for nearly nine minutes, begging for his life and calling out to his dead mother, while a white police officer pressed his knee into his neck, killing him, with his hand casually resting in his pocket — all in broad daylight in front of people screaming for the officer to stop.

Everyone knows that the police officers who killed George Floyd never would have been fired or arrested if a courageous black girl had not filmed the incident on her phone and posted it to social media. Deep down, we already knew this kind of thing happens to black people. All of us knew it when we watched Amy Cooper call the police on a black man who calmly asked her to put a leash on her dog. We knew it when we watched two white men in a pickup truck ambush Ahmaud Arbery and shoot him to death while he was jogging in a neighborhood outside Brunswick, Ga. And we knew it before George Zimmerman stalked and murdered a black teenager named Trayvon Martin.

We know these truths about black experiences, but we often pretend we don’t. As Stanley Cohen wrote in “States of Denial,” many people “know” and “not-know” the truth about oppression and suffering. He explains: “Denial may be neither a matter of telling the truth nor intentionally telling a lie. There seem to be states of mind, or even whole cultures, in which we know and don’t know at the same time.”

In 1963, images of racist white police officers spraying fire hoses and siccing police dogs on young black protesters in Birmingham shocked the world and propelled many white Americans to join civil rights activists in challenging racial segregation. A similar dynamic has occurred with the images of George Floyd’s death. Our nation suddenly caught a glimpse of itself in the mirror and people of all races poured into the streets to say “no more.” Now the president seems to be itching for another civil war.

I will not pretend to have a road map that will lead us to higher ground. But for those who are serious about rising to the challenge, I will share a few of the key steps that I believe are necessary if we are to learn from our history and not merely repeat it.

We must face our racial history and our racial present. We cannot solve a problem we do not understand. Donald Trump would not be the president and George Floyd would not be dead if, after the Civil War, our nation had committed itself to reparations, reconciliation and atonement for the land and people that colonizers stole, sold and plundered. Instead, white people who enslaved blacks were granted reparations for the loss of their “property” while formerly enslaved blacks were given nothing — not even the 40 acres and a mule they were promised. Ever since, our nation has been trapped in a cycle of intermittent racial progress followed by fierce backlash and the emergence of new and “improved” systems of racial and social control. These cycles have been punctuated by various movements, uprisings and riots, but one thing has remained constant: A majority of whites persistently deny the scale and severity of racial injustice that people of color endure.

It’s not enough to learn the broad outlines of this history. Only by pausing long enough to study the cycles of oppression and resistance does it become clear that simply being a good person or not wishing black people any harm is not sufficient. Nor is voting for Democrats or diversifying police forces. In fact, those efforts have not made much of a dent in ending abusive policing or mass incarceration.

[...]

No matter what you think about Bernie Sanders as a man or as a candidate — and I wish he was much better at addressing racial issues like reparations — we all owe him and countless organizers a debt of gratitude for pushing universal health care, paid family leave, free college education, a $15 minimum wage and many other economic rights into the mainstream. As Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor has explained, the coronavirus crisis proved that Mr. Sanders was right all along — that health care and other economic rights should be considered part of our social contract, not special benefits for those who are lucky enough to be employed by companies that grant discretionary benefits. Nobody would have benefited more from Mr. Sanders’s political revolution than black people, and yet the generational divide among black voters affected his campaign.

Younger black people seem to understand that the neoliberal Democratic politics of the past will not take us where we need to go, and they supported Mr. Sanders by significant margins in polls. We must work to create an economic system that benefits us all, not just the wealthy. If our nation was not so deeply divided along racial lines — and if so many white people were not revolted by the idea of their tax dollars helping poor people of color obtain education, housing and social benefits — we would most likely have a social democracy like Norway or Canada. Achieving economic justice requires we work for racial justice, and vice versa. There is no way around it.

[...]

full article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/08/opin ... -race.html

[JimC]

I am constantly amazed at the fragmented nature of both American politics and law enforcement. Every city with its own independent police department, sheriffs galore out in the country, plus separate State police, the FBI, Federal Marshals and lord knows what else. Here in Australia, there is simply one police organisation per state, period. Whether it be a tiny police station in the country, big stations in the city or specialised squads, they are all part of the same force, with the same training, procedures and uniform, with a Chief Commissioner and a State Police Minister in overall charge. Sure, there is also the Federal Police, but they are relatively small, with a rather specialised role. Now, I'm not saying there are not problems here, especially in terms of relationships with indigenous people, but given the political will, change can occur across the whole organisation, rather than (as in the US) the police department of Bumfuck, Ohio, going its own sweet way...

[Tero]

Trumpist runs down protesters
CNN
A man who is accused of driving his car through a group of protesters in Virginia is an "admitted leader of the Ku Klux Klan and a propagandist for Confederate ideology," according to the Henrico County Commonwealth's Attorney.

Harry Rogers, 36, is charged with attempted malicious wounding, felony vandalism, and assault and battery, and is being held without bond. He was arraigned in court on Monday morning, according to online court records.
CNN

[JimC]

He should have had the guts to do it wearing full KKK regalia...

[laklak]

People just don't have the courage of their convictions these days.

[JimC]

People just don't have the courage of their convictions these days.

Scot would, because Dutch courage is the best of all!

[Tero]

Yeah but Jim, can you carry muskets? We can, our constitution says so.

[JimC]

Sure, but I can carry Muscat!

[Seabass]

I just hope Pelosi starts showing up to work in a dashiki.

[Hermit]

Here in Australia, there is simply one police organisation per state, period. Whether it be a tiny police station in the country, big stations in the city or specialised squads, they are all part of the same force, with the same training, procedures and uniform, with a Chief Commissioner and a State Police Minister in overall charge. Sure, there is also the Federal Police, but they are relatively small, with a rather specialised role. Now, I'm not saying there are not problems here, especially in terms of relationships with indigenous people, but given the political will, change can occur across the whole organisation, rather than (as in the US) the police department of Bumfuck, Ohio, going its own sweet way...

Australian police have been notorious for their corruption ever since the New South Wales Corps arrived with the Second Fleet in 1790 to replace the original lot that arrived on our shores as prison guards and enforcers of the law with the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788. The replacement became known as the Rum Corps because it controlled the lucrative trade of that spirit. It became so powerful that it staged a coup d'état, aka the Rum Rebellion, deposing the governor, William Bligh (yes the same bloke who was the captain of the Bounty of Mutiny on the Bounty fame 19 years earlier) in the process. Bligh was trying to wrest control of the rum trade from the corps in order to win the long running feud he had with its Lieutenant, John Macarthur, who actually headed the monopoly.

Bligh finished up back at the old dart where he performed well under Nelson against the French navy. Twice promoted, finally to the rank of Vice Admiral, he died in 1817. Macarthur was banished by the new governor, Lachlan Macquarie, returned to the UK a filthy rich man, managed to organise a pardon, returned to Sydney and resumed making more money, this time in the wool and horse trades. His wealth bought him an appointment to the New South Wales Legislative Council in 1825, from which he was ejected in 1832 on account of going insane. He died three years later. The Rum Corps was broken up and sent back home in disgrace, but the corruption continued unabated, albeit in different forms. Suffice to say a lot of officers became unaccountably wealthy and influential.

[JimC]

I'm absolutely not defending past actions of our state police forces (although I think we have moved on from the Rum Corps, and even the notorious corruption in NSW and Queensland in the 70s). My main point was to point out the incredibly localised and parochial nature of US law enforcement, and suggesting that this makes needed reform much harder.