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With the recent events of police of whats been going on with Eric Garner and Mike Brown, I have been silent about these sensitive and very frustrating issues. Since I try to be as pragmatic as possible about these issues rather than jump the gun and be too liberal or conservative. There's no secret that police brutality and racism is very real, very alive and very active. I don't care if you're White, Black, whatever, its real, its evident and if you don't think so you're probably some very privileged White person who doesn't understand any struggle and much less the struggle of people in lower economic backgrounds and especially non-white poor peoples struggle or you're just delusional.
Its NOT to say all police are bad and corrupt. I have 2 friends and a family member in the police force and they are genuine people who join the force because they want to make a change in any way they can. And my experiences with police have been okay since I tend to interact with them in polite and intelligent matter. On the flip side, yes, I have also had experiences with policemen who aren't the most model citizen. This isn't my point though.
Growing up in the inner cities of NYC, I know how people in the ghetto can be. There's always this "no snitching" policy amongst the goons and the people who fear and/or look up to them. And there's DEFINITELY a huge mistrust with police. Its a hard situation to comment on because I have seen police activity at its worse and finest and I can understand why some don't have faith in the police. On the same token, I feel a lot (key word: A LOT, NOT ALL) people in the ghetto make it hard for police. These goons, thugs, hooligans always want to flaunt how "big and bad" they are, terrorize the neighborhood, sell dope, crack and other drugs, ruin their surrounding environment and make it hard for the people in the ghetto who DO work, go to school and make an honest living.
They're the first to shoot rap videos, sag their pants, do all sorts of suspicious activity but once confronted, caught, busted by a police officer for selling drugs or just simply for violating certain laws (I.E. loitering in front of the buildings or bodegas/delis/markets, whatever you choose to call it) they have to make a big stink out of it and complain they're being treated unfairly. And like the lots of zombies they are, the people who support these scum join in on protesting that cops are treating them unfairly.
I'm bringing this up because this is the case of Eric Garner and Mike Brown. I have also been hesitant because I know its a very sensitive subject and some people can't seem to use logic with such sensitive topics. However, not to say they should have died or that they deserved too but I really don't understand and I am highly exasperated that they are being martyrs. Many might argue that they are being martyrs because it show cases police brutality and I can understand that. Either way, I at least feel the Mike Brown case is just all sorts of convoluted and Eric Garner...Well, I'll get to that.
What exasperates me is that ESPECIALLY the White, liberal, hippie protesters-first of all-wouldn't want anything to do with Mike Brown or Eric Garner if they knew them in real life. And Mike Brown and Eric Garner wouldn't give two craps about them. Yet, all these White, liberal, hippies want to act like they would have held hands and sang kumbaya with these low lives.
If Mike Brown would have went into your store robbed any of you White hippies, physically harassed, you'll be the first to send for the man. And Eric Garner, a man with 30 prior arrest--some which consist of assault and grand larceny--is the type of man you wouldn't want marching about in your nice gentrified neighborhoods. And Erice Garner simply shouldn't have tried to resist arrest. I have seen people like him in the hood who continuously sell drugs or do other illegal activities time and time again, and every time they are confronted by the police, they resist arrest, scream they are being "abused" and then make a big case out of it.
And it baffles me how the Latinos and Black people of the inner cities make goons like this martyrs. Its not like these guys were future Martin Luther King Jrs's, Roy Innis's are some political and/or civil rights activist, humanitarian who were vested in the future and betterment of the current and next generations of Blacks, Latinos or everyone for that matter and were gunned down or assassinated. Nor was it like it was some completely innocent man who didn't do anything at all (even if he did have checkered past) and was gunned down or choked out without any good reason. Like the guy in Brooklyn who got gunned down in the staircase because the cop got "spooked".
Its not to say they deserved to die but its also very tiring that guys like this, who I am 90% sure, if they were alive wouldn't give 2 flying fits about anyone who is out there protesting for them-would be worrying about you.
Its a frustrating topic to discuss because these issues further divide the country and divert us from the many other sinister issues that are at hand in this country. We shouldn't be so blind but instead try to understand both sides of the issue.
Eric Garner didn't have any violent criminal convictions. Arrests for suspicions of violent crimes, yes. But there was a time in American history where smugglers and tax-thwarters were the heroes of this country for standing up to tyranny. Some of them even fought off royal navy ships or beat up soldiers on the streets of Boston, for which they were immortalized in local papers as asserting their rights. Now, we expect polite compliance with authority. What happened?
Location: where you sip the tea of the breasts of the spinsters of Utica
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Excellent post, Lital. The only difference I have is that Garner should be a kind of poster boy for how police brutality cases in general are handled ....... the particular travesty of justice was in not indicting him, and that has a lot more to do with prosecutors being in bed with cops, and the American people being so vehemently against being "soft on crime" that no one dares to indict a cop. It really comes down to the voters, and the voters go overboard in electing some true a-holes. However the amount of police brutality and killings is minuscule in a country this size, statistically speaking, so it's not a huge problem in my opinion.
I'm a liberal in most ways, but I certainly don't think that there is extensive racial discrimination by cops, and yes they are needed so that honest people can have a decent life without looking over their shoulders constantly. The only people who disagree with that are themselves criminals, or have been sheltered from life in gated communities and universities.
To stretch a point: as the old saying goes, "liberals are just conservatives who haven't been mugged yet."
Excellent post, Lital. The only difference I have is that Garner should be a kind of poster boy for how police brutality cases in general are handled ....... the particular travesty of justice was in not indicting him, and that has a lot more to do with prosecutors being in bed with cops, and the American people being so vehemently against being "soft on crime" that no one dares to indict a cop. It really comes down to the voters, and the voters go overboard in electing some true a-holes. However the amount of police brutality and killings is minuscule in a country this size, statistically speaking, so it's not a huge problem in my opinion.
I'm a liberal in most ways, but I certainly don't think that there is extensive racial discrimination by cops, and yes they are needed so that honest people can have a decent life without looking over their shoulders constantly. The only people who disagree with that are themselves criminals, or have been sheltered from life in gated communities and universities.
To stretch a point: as the old saying goes, "liberals are just conservatives who haven't been mugged yet."
And both are libertarians who just haven't read Rothbard yet.
Two thugs not worthy of the time that I took to type this sentence.
I'm not gonna dispute the Mike Brown thing. But Eric Garner sold untaxed cigarettes. He'd be a hero to revolutionary America for working his way out of taxes. New York juries wouldn't even convict anyone of smuggling to bypass the Navigation Acts for almost 60 years. You even had merchants that would announce their point of sale to royal inspectors, and dare them to stop it. These people were considered heroes for standing up against tyranny. Why is it that this day and age is different? Now, if you're unwilling to bow down to authority, and your pants are baggy and you like rap, you must be some sort of cold-hearted thug whose only intention is to pillage the good people of the world? Please...
Funny how guys like Pat Buchanan say the same thing as you. He himself was arrested in the 50's for actually beating up a cop. Nobody on the right has a word for him though.
Get your head out of the propaganda machine and formulate your own thoughts. Mike Brown, I'll give you. He was obviously a robber. Eric Garner, though, you don't get. America is not about ubiquitous deference to anyone in a government costume. In fact, this country was founded on the exact opposite.
Bottom line --- the chokehold cop in the Garner case should be facing involuntary manslaughter charges at the very least, although 3rd degree murder might even be appropriate. We need to start frying these out-of-control, maniac cops before our country reaches the point of no return (ie, 1930's Nazi Germany police state).
This country has a larger percentage of its population in prison than did Germany in '39. It is the pre-eminent police state on planet Earth at the moment.
After hearing about all the atrocities committed by CIA "torture specialists" at black sites in Europe, I believe we are headed for the darkest period in our entire history. We may never recover from this downslide.
That was nothing. I wasn't moved by the torture report. We've known since 2005, for instance, that Binyam Mohammed had his genitals sliced with a razor to extract a confession at a CIA black site in Morocco in 2002, and then was found to be completely innocent of all charges by MI6 in 2008.
There was another guy, I'll try and dig up his name, who alleged that interrogators at another CIA-run prison had played a tape of a young girl screaming in the interrogation room over. He had a daughter who was about 10 at the time, and the interrogators told him she was being raped in the other room until he confessed.
And then there was always this guy, who Bush and Blair paid off to torture their dissidents in even worse ways, like boiling them alive, so they could claim their hands were clean:
I hate the Daily Kos and their wacko liberal agenda, but that piece was pretty decent and relatively free of demagoguery. Plus, Bob Parry was the one who broke that story anyway. And basically anything that guy writes I'll believe, so solid is his credibility.
Amen,marilyn220. We have a process for both justice and boundaries even cops are not supposed to cross. That is what these cases are about. Boundaries. Boundaries that separate the 1st world from the 3rd world.
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