They should be. But, nothing, no human agency will ever be perfect. Still, I’m not sure how much better they can realistically be. There just isn’t an epidemic of cops murdering young black men. Even if the rates of deaths by cop are disproportionate…How would they be proportionate at this point in history? Not with the demographics of homicide (both offender and victim) being what they are today.
I would like to see fewer interactions between law enforcement and citizen in the first place. This could easily happen with a reevaluation of how we handle drugs in this nation. A few other things. I kind of have a Christian type of conservatism that sees a role for government to help these communities rebuild certain institutions that I believe soften the edges of poverty and provide a better foundation for socioeconomic advancement. Yes, that includes some (more) redistribution and affirmative type of action. But it also includes some social/trad conservatism…
Still, even the peaceful part of the protests, this long after the offending officers have been arrested, seems way overblown at this point. This was a case few disagreed on. It seems…Well, opportunistic. Not with fathers being assassinated while holding the hands of their daughters. Funerals being shot up. Little girls murdered. Young men becoming yet another corpse on a mountain of bodies in our cities.
Feels like majoring in the minors. It feels like the movement is as divisive (in my opinion, more so) as the President. It feels like it’s been appropriated by other agendas (even the organization itself, BLM, is guilty of this) A veneer to usher certain tangential viewpoints while silencing others. And it doesn’t even feel like a black movement anymore. It feels like a wider white leftist movement that appropriated a local crime (the killing of Floyd) in which the criminals were actually arrested.
Some of the murders that happened around these riots/protests would have happened anyways. Pretty easy to put those puzzle pieces together when looking at the who/when/how/what of the murders. Some, like the store owners who died in their shops, were absolutely caused by the riots/protests.
I think that the protests started off with a pretty unified message of preventing police brutality and that black lives matter too. It then moved onto fixing institutional racism within society… but when that was generally accepted across the board without a fight, the masses still had lots of energy and momentum and so people just kept pushing for different or more extreme agendas with these rioters settling on the always popular “Fuck The Man” philosophy that has been around since the 60’s. This sentiment was cemented by some overzealous riot police responses at the begining of this whole thing. And now, we are generally left with small riots and large protests because people are unhappy with our leadership, and especially POTUS and anyone/thing that represents him (eg federal officers). And POTUS is doing what he can to gaslight them because he is losing in the poles and his only hope is to keep throwing gas on the fire and show just how extreme “the leftists antifa democrats” can get.
Its not really a movement anymore. Its an airing of the grievances, while politicians on both sides maneuver and manipulate to take advantage of the situation for political gain.
People should worry about the standards they hold themselves to. The world would be a better place. But this is a generation that wasn’t taught accountability. It’s always someone else’s fault.
There are still rules no matter what is going on, like they can’t open fire on the crowd for something like that. The issue is that the seemingly questionable response of the police is being criticized while ignoring what provoked that response in the first place.
It always seemed like the Michael Brown case was a bad choice for BLM to hang their that on. While Wilson probably wasn’t conducting the best police work possible, he was being threatened by a criminal.
The problem is that when presented with instances of problematic police behavior, the knee-jerk reaction is “yeah, but look how much worse the rioters were being”. It shouldn’t be a “yeah, but” reaction. It should simply be “that is unacceptable”.
The unacceptable behavior of the rioters is discussed to death in here, and for good reason. Its some BS.
When riot police just casually walk by and blast some old guy in the face with pepper spray for doing nothing but yelling at the cops from 20’ away we need to condemn that and not say, “yeah but thats nothing compared to what the cops are dealing with”. The larger scale issue of rioting and rioter violence is condemable, but so are the smaller scale instances of police brutality/overreach/etc. DHS agents headhunting with impact munitions from 30’ away is fucked up. Throwing rocks and fireworks at DHS agents is fucked up. Many comments in here strike me as justifying poor behavior, by saying the other sides behavior is far worse.
The behavior is problematic or not depending on what they are responding to. Beating people and shooting people is fully justified in certain cases. You have to look at both sides of the story, not take the cops’ actions out of context.
I agree with you here, but I haven’t seen this. That’s why I was asking you to post some videos, I don’t know what to look for or where and it’s not in the news that I see here.
Yeah I see what you are talking about. The police have rules they are supposed to follow, you can’t break the law in order to enforce it or you are just another criminal.
Old guy peaceful protestor, yelling at cops from a safe distance, posing no threat (with no angry mob behind him) when a formation of DHS comes out of the blue and nonchalantly blasts him in the face with pepper spray for no good reason, and keeps on marching.
Basically, what i described to chris_ottowa, which is an event he hadnt seen posted.
Did this make the mainstream news where you are? I look at a few different news sites, there was a bunch of stuff about the feds grabbing people in unmarked vans with no visible name tags and using tear gas but nothing of this sort.
Doing stuff like that is counterproductive, in response there are more people rioting and the cops still have to stand there and restrain themselves. Not only that, but it won’t earn them any sympathy.
The “pasty-white, booger eating, communist shitheads” to which you refer is ANTIFA. Yes, they do exist. Yes they are coordinated and yes they exist nationwide. They do not have national leadership they have local cells much like Al Qaeda and they go by a bunch of different names. ANTIFA is an umbrella term. It describes all these groups because they all function under the same ideology. Communism, not merely Marxism, violence and ‘any means necessary’ and use whats called ‘4th generational warfare’ tactics. The ideology and tactics is what unites them. Their local names are nearly irrelevant. That’s done deliberately to hide them from law enforcement and make their structures a little known as possible.
What this is not, is random.
If he was told to vacate that space, then what should they do? Shoot him?
Why are they there in the first place? The truth is, all of those so-called protesters are criminals. All of them. Criminals get treated a certain way, because they are criminals. Hiding behind slogans like BLM, doesn’t make them any less criminal. Even BLM is starting to condemn them.
