Laws are just a consequence of an actual cultural change, and can only succeed (and not precede) the conversion of hearts and minds. Voting and democracy should not become a device to placate the dissatisfied masses into silence, make them lineup for ballot, to choose a lesser evil who, in most likelihood, will turn out to be a egotistical power-seeker. We shouldn't conflate voting with "will of the people."
https://www.crmvet.org/docs/otheram.htm
See the bit starting with: "Now there's another notion that gets out, it's around everywhere. It's in the South, it's in the North, it's In California, and all over our nation. It's the notion that legislation can't solve the problem, it can't do anything in this area. And those who project this argument contend that you've got to change the heart and that you can't change the heart through legislation."
To summarize it, he disagrees with you.
Notice MLK is talking about specific legislature, and the poster above was talking about electing officials. They are correct that merely electing politicians is neither necessary nor sufficient--the laws must change.
"Even though it may be true that the law cannot change the heart, it can restrain the heartless"
I never read MLK much and just realized how awesome of an orater he was.
Can't take the mote out of your brother's eye until you remove the beam in your own. This applies to everyone, even anti-racists.
There is this "damping" factor like a mechanical system, that takes the energy out of the people's hands and dampens it with lobbying, dishonesty, unaccountability and complete neglect for public interest. The response of the system is now steady state with little change. We need a public roster of each politician and their promises written in notarized documents, that can be used to strip them of relection and penalize them in some way so that future politicians cannot weasel their way out of promises.
I would also vote for public presentations with slides + data by each politician instead of these stupid debates and speeches. They should be documented and scrutinized for accuracy of data and their claims. We have startup decks, but yet politicians don't have to make presentations. Instead they trade blows on a debate stage with polished repertoire which has now become an entertainment show, at least at the presidential level.
I’m not sure what penalty would be appropriate that would be better than standing for re-election and having the people weigh in. Voters who were strict-Y or any-Z might choose to not vote to re-elect. Voters who care about and got more X than par and a little bit of Y would be inclined to re-elect.
You can’t remove officials for not fulfilling their promises. They can also delay until it’s too late by saying, “I’m working on it.” Then once out of office, they are accountable for nothing.
Job safety is built into the position for good reason. However, it’s been perverted to allow officials to do whatever they want. Fixing this balance is not simple, but I believe would be a crucial step towards realizing a functional democratic system.
One solution to this is more direct democracy. When people can propose initiatives and vote on them in referendums, it is harder for politicians to ignore that agenda. This works pretty well in Switzerland.
What else should you expect when people are limited to only two political parties? It could be worse with only one political party.
We don't need more political parties, we need solutions to manage the incompatibility.
Well I hate to break it to you, most of the protests, and police abuse seem to originate in major cities that have largely been controlled by a single political party for longer than most people have been alive...
So I partially agree with you - there must be a certain culture change happening, but it can and it should be supported by law in order to happen faster.
Because the people who were on the "no" side of things weren't really affected by it (because the were never going to do those things anyway) and the sky didn't fall when other people did. You see this same thing happen every time a state loosens its abortion, gun, alcohol, drug, etc, laws. People say the sky is gonna fall and then it doesn't.
According to Pew, gay marriage was supported by more people than opposed it in 2010, a full five years before legalization.
Not even leaders for the liberal party, like Obama and Hillary Clinton supported it until a few years later.
https://www.pewforum.org/fact-sheet/changing-attitudes-on-ga...
mandatory body cams rolling at all times unless they are in a bathroom.
turning off or a malfunctioning camera during the act of a police brutality event immediately pierces the qualified immunity defense and they are tried as citizens.
have an outside investigative body that has zero ties to the police department investigate any reports of abuse.
have another outside investigative body that has zero ties to the police department randomly sampling police stop footage to see if there are any instances of impropriety.
I am sure this list is non-exhaustive but it's a start. also, while we are here, fix the issue of civil asset forfeiture. the clear "we get to take your money because it looks suspicious and then keep it for the police department" is a huge conflict of interest.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quis_custodiet_ipsos_custodes%...
Sadly, no they didn't.
It took until the pictures of uninvolved white women bleeding from rubber bullets for a whole lot of people to say "Holy shit. That could happen to ME!"
In addition, you had videos of cops with their badge numbers covered and press getting arrested.
These protests threw the fact that the police do this all the time and expect to get away with it into the faces of people who don't normally see it.
It also showed that certain police departments can handle this and really do function better thus undermining the arguments of police departments who refuse to change.
Most laws making moderately dangerous things illegal or hard to get fall into that category.
Especially when races can be so close and you have to wait up to 6 years to vote someone out. 6 years is a much different time frame politically today than it was in the 18th century. A term that long doesn't shield senators from political pressure, but it allows lobbyists to get more bang for their buck and further the power imbalance between rich and the rest of us.
Do you agree with Barack Obama on everything?
Taboos around violence for political are one of the crucial building blocks for a functioning democracy. If those taboos are broken, even for a good cause, you set a precedence that violence works. And the next cause won’t be as good. One only has to look at the lessons of the Roman Revolution that started with the murder of Grachus, and ended with an Emperor who everyone acclaimed as they were so tired of the bloodshed.
The non-violent protests of Colin Kaepernick were mocked and used to rally the other side and just weren't effective.
The problem here is not the violence, but a policing system that is so fundamentally damaged and has not been effectively reformed fast enough.
The MLK quote is trotted out pretty often, but "a riot is the language of the unheard".
MLK Jr was unequivocally non-violent. That quote was in the context of explaining the root cause of the rioting, not condoning or endorsing it.
Don't trust anyone trying to tell you MLK Jr would have supported violent protests.
They are either trying to manipulate you or sadly ignorant (or both, of course). In either case they have it wrong, in terms of history and in the implication that violent protest will lead to any kind of progress or justice.
I don't think this is a good thing. The office involved should be charged or arrested based on the circumstances and evidence, not to appease angry protesters and to attempt to quell riots.
In this case, it appears overwhelmingly clear that the office should be charged; but arresting people because their actions have inspired protests or riots is very dangerous.
Trotted out by ignorant woke dummies. In his 1967 Stanford speech MLK also says: "Let me say as I've always said and I will always continue to say, that riots are socially destructive and self-defeating. I'm still convinced that nonviolence is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom and justice."
Using MLK to defend or advocate violence is astonishingly ahistoric.
Does anyone really believe this applies in this case? Lots of protesters are openly condemning the riots as "patently not about justice but only personal greed and appetite for violence".
> The problem here is not the violence, but a policing system that is so fundamentally damaged and has not been effectively reformed fast enough.
Both? I don't understand this "either or" mentality. "Why is everyone condemning the riots instead of condemning Floyd's murder?" Literally everyone is condemning Floyd's murder. Even the police unions are condemning Floyd's murder. It's the one thing everyone agrees on. Murderer was arrested and charged. The "debate" is about the merits of burning/looting/shooting-up communities (with an apparent preference for poor, minority communities) on top of the criminal prosecution.
I am deeply critical of this line of thought. There are so many negative consequences of properties destruction and looting that counterweight the benefits.
As far as I am concerned this is an argument that only someone that did not have a riot outside of their own house can espouse.
I apologize for the hyperbole of that argument, but it is something that I would personally say to everyone condoning the destruction, the looting, and the violence; even knowing that in some instances I will be wrong.
I a couple of months there will be one less evil cop around and also quite few stores destroyed, livelihood evaporated, family savings lost, destroyed buildings in historically minority and poor neighborhoods.
Once the dust settles hundreds of people will be in far worse conditions that they would have been otherwise AND those will not be the protesters, those will be the people, families, kids, that had the protest happen around them.
Why, is there evidence of this? It isn't very obvious to me that he wouldn't get arrested and charged otherwise, this case is way clearer than any other controversial police killing I've seen.
It is especially important for people to condemn violence that leads to outcomes they are in favor of. Otherwise, groups that are in favor of something else, decide "hey, violence works, voting doesn't" and you descend into horror as different groups all use violence to get their ways.
But it's not clear that the violence/property damage component was worth it. Nationwide protests and all of the public outcry could have been enough. Hard to tell at this point.
Even if so, 90% of the protests and property damage were after the arrest, so... they're pointless?
The problem is there has been ZERO actual reform to policing at all, there have been at best some lipstick measures but there has been zero real reforms to the fundamental structure of policing in this nation. Which includes the Paramilitary style, training, order, and even ranking with in the various dept's
The Militarization of the police force has been going on for decades, and this is what happens when you use a military for policing. It never works out well for anyone
I have no hope that the police departments of this nation have any desire to roll back that militarization at all, and I have no hope that the legislatures of this nation have any intention to force that rollback to occur.
For example, the bar owner that killed a protestor in Omaha, NE was arrested right after the incident. Tonight he has been released because the investigation determined the shooting was self-defense.
Omaha will burn brightly tonight.
In particular, the Gracchi violated an unspoken and unwritten compact that governed the behavior of the Roman aristocracy. In particular, they attempted to secure power for themselves using avenues not considered "in bounds". There was no institutional mechanism in place to process violations of that unwritten compact (social opprobrium had worked for hundreds of years), so the senators (Scipio Nasica in particular) immediately transitioned to personal violence.
Once the taboo against aristocrat-on-aristocrat violence vanished, Rome descended into waves of high aristocrats raising private armies to secure their personal power. It was, more or less, a game of last man standing that Augustus "won".
These riots are targeted at innocent civilians. Destroying peoples livelihoods, setting fire to residences with people still inside (including children), etc.
I would not be so quick to draw such a comparison.
This is incoherent. You can't claim to not condone violence and in the same sentence say but actually it works.
Violence like that does not work by itself. It only works if you have "legitimate" institutions that are willing to excuse or downplay the violence that occurs.
/s
But...
I feel the complete opposite of “hopeful” when I see these riots, when I see people so angry they will destroy their own cities.
Because it accomplishes the exact opposite of they hope it will accomplish:
1. Those who side with heavy-handed police tactics feel vindicated for their prejudices.
2. The communities of those who feel unheard and left out are torn down even further.
3. Every civilian-police officer interaction post-riot will be even more contentious, thus making violence more likely.
Don’t get me wrong I believe there are corrupt officials and police officers. Obama is right about how to fix that on the local level.
About the actual problem being protested: One of the themes of the protests is to say the names[1] of those have been killed at the hands of the police. Just using common sense tells me that if you can name off the victims it means the problem isn’t widespread or systemic across the country.
Try naming the victims of rape or suicide or even murder.
Name the police officers killed in the line of duty in the last ten years. You can’t there’s way too many.
George Floyd should not have died. And the police officer(s) who contributed to his death should be held 100% accountable for their actions.
But there will always be unnecessary deaths in law enforcement situations. Rioting and burning down your own city will not make that fact go away.
So, I feel a loss of hope when I see these riots. To me, it means we are so far from working together to fix the problems that can be fixed. It creates a bigger divide in our society.
[1]https://www.npr.org/2020/05/29/865261916/a-decade-of-watchin...
true, but the counterpoint is the problem is not the volume of errors, its how the errors are handled. people know those names because the issues were never closed. Public servants like police officers should be open kimono; if someone dies, it should be a big deal. where's the brutally honest post-mortem? we expect this out of meaningless things like $SaaS, why in gods name not our police forces?
I did however never fear ending up on death row.
The goal is to bring that number as close to zero as possible.
> Name the police officers killed in the line of duty in the last ten years. You can’t there’s way too many.
First of all, the number of people killed by US police is an order of magnitude higher than the number of police officers killed in the line of duty. I have provided sources about this here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23373468
Of course, not every death caused by police is unjustifiable. But let's keep the whole picture in mind.
Second, I don't think any reasonable person is arguing that police officers nonchalantly murdering random black citizens is the systemic issue. What is systemic is police misconduct and brutality, as well as bias towards minorities especially black people. In extreme circumstances, this can result in loss of life; but most of the time, it won't.
You may have heard of Heinrich's law. If you have not, please take a look at the Wikipedia page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accident_triangle
The gist of Heinrich's law is that for each accident causing serious serious injury or death, tens of accidents had occurred previously causing minor injury. For each accident causing minor injury, there had been tens of accidents causing no injury. For each accident causing no injury, there had been tens of unsafe acts. To give an example, a drunk driver killing someone had probably driven drunk hundreds of time before. He had scraped the paint on his car a couple of times, and the rest, he had driven without any accident of any sort.
For every death on that list, how many people have suffered life altering injuries and permanent disabilities at the hands of the police, e.g. blindness [1] or paralysis [2]? For every person suffering life altering injuries, how many have suffered serious yet healable injuries, e.g. broken ribs, ruptured spleen, etc.? For every person suffering serious yet healable injuries, how many have suffered minor injuries, e.g. broken nose, broken teeth, bruises, cuts, etc.? For every person suffering minor injuries, how many have been harassed, targeted, unjustifiably arrested or carded?
This is the systemic issue people are protesting against.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/30/us/minneapolis-protests-p...
[2] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/assault-charges-d...
I don't disagree that there is a likely (especially in some places) a systemic police brutality or at least heavy-handed approach. I don't know how widespread. Probably a small minority of cops create a large majority of the problems.
And that needs to be rectified at the local level. Just like Mr. Obama said in his article.
I also believe that there a small minority of police officers who either already are prejudiced or have developed an unhealthy prejudice as a result of doing their jobs.
Because let's face it, if you get a job policing an inner city predominantly African-American community and you are not African-American, you are going to have many opportunities to develop prejudice. The obvious reason is that you are going to deal with the worst people from the community on a regular basis. It would work the same if a black police officer was assigned to work a rural, low-income white neighborhood. It's natural to start building a stereotype in your mind. In fact, it might be a self-preservation tactic.
I think one path to a solution (which once again has to be developed at the local level) is that the police need to do more in the communities than just enforce the law. If there was some community involvement it would create a trust between the police and the community. This would cause the interactions between officers and law breakers to maybe not start out with such animosity. If you knew the officer's first name and he knew yours because you had been in the community you'd be a lot less likely to have negative interaction during a traffic stop.
I am confident that this reality check for people who are somewhat blindly supporting their ideologies will benefit everyone. Beginning with the wealthier people who supported these protests and are now seeing their gated communities burn and their "progressive" newspapers destroyed.
"President Obama, who hoped to sow peace, instead led the nation in war"
In short I think it’s crucial to get an accurate (not “lost cause of the valiant confederacy”) appreciation for how bloody it was and the real stakes (slavery, not “states rights”). How progress was made politically. How there were a few years of positive change before the US backslid into racial patterns of old due to moral exhaustion fighting the south.
The period after Lincoln's death until Grant's election is nearly unbelievable. Johnson was an avowed racist and openly apologistic to southern gentry. The south and a sizable percent of the population was under armed guard and were essentially in military dictatorship under Grant. Grant was the obvious next pick for president and, wisely, was quiet about being the 'real' power in the US, physically right next to Johnson.
Then, as Johnson can't help himself but to be a bullheaded moron, he gets impeached by the radical left wing of the house: the 'newish' Republican party. His trial is wild, by the way. He gets impeached, and is then sent to the senate. Where the southern states, still under the war department, can't vote or sit; it's all Union states. Bribing was rampant in the senate, but not publicly known. Johnson misses conviction by one vote. The left-wing Republican senators that vote to acquit never serve in public office again.
Again, Grant is a dense read, but Chernow did a fantastic job on it. Big recommend
Ok, and one third of the people support those policies and one third doesn't, and both thirds will fight each other tooth-and-nail. What then?
Edit: I should say "disappointed" instead of "surprised". Agree with the responses, there is no expectation anymore from the Whitehouse after 3 years of incompetency.
There are four years of precedent of the leadership specifically and intentionally dividing and radicalizing the nation to directly drive electoral support to maintain power. Cruelty to outside groups is historically a very effective means to consolidate power. This is completely in line with past behavior and will more than likely continue.
Here is a protestor in NY claiming that looters were actually undercover NYPD detectives https://twitter.com/AndrewSolender/status/126693546402143027... Another example I can think of is the video of Jon Jones taking the spray cans from couple of rioters. These rioters are caucasian and we can only assume that they were more interested in wreaking damage than on "protesting" and hence can only be incidentally related to the movement. While strictly anecdotal, this simply disproves the false narrative on conservative circles which are inevitably going to focus on the rioting / looting rather than how to improve society.
black arrests (all crimes) a year: 2.2 million
white arrests (all crimes) a year: 5.6 million
black deaths by police: 4.5 per 100k
white deaths by police: 1.5 per 100k
USA black population: 13%
USA white population: 75%
Again, If someone has numbers that tell a different story I am all ears
Here’s my summary:
1. Pick a complex issue.
“racial bias” in policing
2. Pick a (single) year. / Ignore history.
2017
3. Pick a metric, any metric.
“deaths by police”
4. Write conclusion to match your preconceived notions.
5. Congrats, you’re now “data-driven”.
You're just asking questions right?
If times the police use force are correlated to violent crime, then it’s unclear that blacks are over represented in deaths by police — they may actually be safer than whites, once controlling for the distribution of crimes they’re arrested for.
One problem I’ve had in this analysis is that the ~60/1000 deaths per year that aren’t justified (fortunately) aren’t enough to do an analysis on that subset.
Of course, 60 deaths is tragic — but 60 wrongful deaths among 8+ million arrests may not be the problem the media portrays it as.
You’re an order of magnitude less like to wrongfully die from police while being arrested than you are to die from a car crash this year. Overall, police are safer than many things in society.
60/8M // 30k/320M = 8%
The FBI has been making some efforts on the issue, but it's quire recent: https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/fbi-announc...
But as has already been pointed out, it's way more than 30%. The numbers given in the original comment hide the real impact of the bias, since "arrest" was implicitly being treated as a fair event (which it isn't; as just one example, blacks in particular are many times more likely to be subject to a traffic stop than whites, while they tend to have contraband on their possession less often [1][2][3][4]).
Moreover, this isn't just about deaths in police custody. This is about inhumane and repressive policing practices that perpetuate a longstanding effort to deprive blacks of meaningful political power [5]. It is both foolish and cruel to see an entire population struggling and assume it's because they are bad people.
[1] https://sfdistrictattorney.org/sites/default/files/Document/... [2] https://chicagopatf.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/PATF_Fina... [3] https://www.aclu-il.org/en/press-releases/traffic-stop-data-... [4] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/25/us/racial-disparity-traff... [5] See Michelle Alexander's book, The New Jim Crow
I was thinking at the very least to get a citizen right where you can request to have any encounter with the police recorded.
‘Officer I request my right to have this encounter recorded’.
The problem right now is that excessive use of force by an LEO rarely results in actual, hard time or fines for that officer. Consider the death of Eric Garner [1]. The city of New York paid 5.9 million to his family and the arresting officer was fired from the NYPD. Additionally, the Department of Justice declined to bring criminal charges against [the arresting officer] under federal civil rights laws.
If we reorganized our justice system to actually pursue officers who use excessive use of force, perhaps officers would be more careful about using it. But the current state of affairs has no penalties for the officers if they do use excessive use of force when it is not justified.
What do these cops do when these situations happen and there is no video recording of the encounter? They all back each other up and write up some bogus police report justifying the need for force. That’s exactly what would have happened if we didn’t get the recording this time around. These four cops would have straight lied.
Let’s say we effectively deter them from doing so with liberal use of cameras. I think if they are really rotten, they will find ways to drum up other charges.
There are two paths of discussion here, one path assumes the cops are mostly good and do bad things in very intense, escalated situations. The other is they are rotten, and do something bad in any situation such as wrongfully detain, concoct charges, forge evidence, or justify a violent escalation.
If we’re dealing with a rotten police community, where they operate with a clear power complex and mafia—esque collusion amongst each other, then we must confront that word, systemic.
Violence is just one by-product of a systemic problem. Lying, manipulation, imposition of unrestricted authority in any/all contexts, and so on.
If systemically there is a 20% prevalence of rotten behavior, numbers straight out of my ass of course, we’re talking 1 in 5 interactions are tainted with the public. We have to find out what the real number is, because I do believe that number exists and it ain’t below 10%.
Asking the police to provide us this data is about the same as asking the CCP for police data. We need serious transparency into this organization.
2. Limit the use of force
3. Independently investigate and prosecute
4. Community representation
5. Body cams / film the police
6. Training in de-escalation
7. End for profit policing
8. Demilitarization of the police force
9. Fair police union contracts that remove provisions within police bill of rights that impose barriers to accountability
Look here:
Https://bit.ly/3cosVXM
I don’t think a cop can psychologically hold up being on the street for years on end without losing some perspective. The job fundamentally blasts you with the worst of people, and it’s easy to develop a rotten world view if measures are not taken to handle that input.
A maximum limit of X months per year on the street or something, the other half in some other duty.
My take on the Floyd murder was there was definitely an element of a power complex that the cop devolved into over years.
Additionally, this thread lists actual legislation that has been proposed and, in some cases, passed in cities and states to address police violence: https://twitter.com/samswey/status/1266855519425384450
1. Body cams mandatory for all police inside & outside of the station, and they stay on 100% of the time and batteries should last the whole shift. No ifs/buts/maybes. If the need arises, bathroom breaks can be edited out after the fact.
2. National ID card, in all states and mandatory for everyone over 13/16. Put all biometric, facial and possibly DNA data on file, encrypted and only available for searches. Be creative.
3. Remove the need to arrest people for any non-violent crimes. People are positively ID'd via some tech (insert something wild here if you want). Cop files a report, includes evidence of positive ID, person needs to appear in court as they will be notified by SMS/Email/letter/lawyer-visit because that stuff should all be on-file and up to date. Send them warnings if they don't appear in court, meanwhile block their access to everything like cell-phones, bank accounts, etc. Start pro-actively messaging their family, or them, and let them know about the additional time/fines they are racking up by missing court dates. 3.a) Assume they're guilty if they don't show up for court and don't have a valid reason.
4. Disallow police from forcibly cuffing people for arrest. Procedure should be to throw two pairs of cuffs at the person while they're being pointed at with gun/taser, and they have to put it on themselves. Procedure allows for x minutes of that, then by default they have to taze this individual into submission and just arrest them. Once they're cuffed, just carry them in a car/van, or wait for support.
5. Punishment for disobeying orders by a policeman to do the above.
6. Very strict guidelines and sets of laws being broken that justify physical arrest. The default should be to just tag the person and tell them to appear in court. If it's a grey-area, just block their cellphone, bank-accounts, cards, etc.
7. Track all cell-phone locations, strongly-linked and verified to individual identities, and store permanently. Store it securely and allow court-orders to open for case investigations. Allow anonymized access to information-based researches that are told to investigate crimes. This one alone could solve so many crimes in my view that I am saddened to no end that people prevent it from happening safely at the recurring expense of innocent lives.
One could go on and on. But guaranteed the above sets of actions/laws are very unpalatable for the majority of people, and it would cause "human rights lawyers" to salivate at the potential for litigation and for "human rights activists" to salivate in protestual anger.
The goal of policing should be to make the community safe. If the goal of policing is to rack up violations, and you basically streamline it where a cop can go around and rack up tons of alleged infractions, then that’s what will happen. In fact, that’s exactly what happened when some police departments enforced quality of life infractions. Suddenly every cop had the mandate to write you up to meet their quotas, and they are able to internalize their value system organically since the word from above is zero-tolerance for even the smallest infractions.
I don’t want to live in that kind of society honestly. Take a look at this reddit thread if you want to see examples of this, and get anecdotes of how people get harassed by cops (regardless of race) for the smallest things (and this type of policing is a vector for physical escalation):
https://www.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/gu8xlv/cops...
This one here is particular infuriating:
Your point #1 is a must, tech has to really step up and make this one happen.
This basically just gives people a license to steal whatever they want and stalk and harass anyone they want, so long as they don't lay a finger on a person. The only consequences are fines, and non-payment of a fine is not a violent crime and thus not cause for arrest.
People stop it from happening (to some degree and at great cost) because this would hurt far more than it would help. Imagine if the police could do this now. They would use it to drag everyone who had been in the vicinity of the protests out of their homes and lock them up (at best). "Secure" and "court orders" would never hold up in practice, but "permanent" certainly would. Plus, all criminals would need to do to avoid it is not bring cell phones to crimes, or bring someone else's. Unless you want to mandate carrying government tracking beacons at all times? I'm no libertarian, but this is one of the worst proposals for fixing police brutality I've ever seen.
FWIW, this is not a truism. First, the current administration in particular has been consolidating power.
Also, by many measures (ads, canvassing, town halls, discussion on community-based forums), the local elections get pretty much the same attention as the federal in my area.
> Moreover, it’s important for us to understand which levels of government have the biggest impact on our criminal justice system and police practices. When we think about politics, a lot of us focus only on the presidency and the federal government. And yes, we should be fighting to make sure that we have a president, a Congress, a U.S. Justice Department, and a federal judiciary that actually recognize the ongoing, corrosive role that racism plays in our society and want to do something about it. But the elected officials who matter most in reforming police departments and the criminal justice system work at the state and local levels
So I am actually quite up to date about what goes on locally
Worth reading to familiarize oneself with leftist views on institution of Policing. Likely some eye-opening viewpoints for most.
I already was familiar with the argument that the police are more often deployed in the service of protecting private property rather than public protection (eg. these protests) but it was surprising just how blatant the relationship was between capitalists being scared of labour power and new police forces being created.
I need to look into it more.
For example, unlike the media, Obama avoids saying that violence is partially justified, or claiming that some groups have a higher chance of being killed by police, and instead talks about the "recurrent problem of racial bias in our criminal justice system".
Indeed, people on the center and center right sometimes use the FBI crime stats to argue that there is no racial bias in police killings: since African Americans make up 27% of the arrests while constituting 13% of the population, it is consistent with the fact that they are twice as likely to get killed by police.
Much fewer people, however, would argue that there is no bias in the criminal justice system, given the evidence.
So I am hopeful that by making more moderate arguments, Democrats will be able to squeeze perhaps the extra 1-2% which is all is indeed to defeat Trump.
I agree with you except on the "defeating Trump" part. Moderation is not enough IMO. Everyone with a progressive agenda who is not stongly distancing themselve from the rioters right now will have his cause collaterally defaced by them, just as they collaterally deface these neighbourhoods.
Disclaimer: Not a US-citizen nor resident.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/quebec-police-admit-they-went...
https://www.ctvnews.ca/quebec-police-defend-officers-actions...
So instead of condemning the few who 'incite violence', it might be useful to ponder if the game isn't rigged and external malicious actors could be acting as agent provocateurs.
Racism is an issue, but I wonder in the case of police the abuse the issue could be more generally described as one of class?
There was an incident a few years ago in my state were police picked a white guy up who had been convicted of methamphetamine possession a few times. I'll describe the guy as a "scraggly white guy". He was dirty, unkempt, skinny, poor spoken in an old vehicle. The cops I believe were Hispanic. So the decide he is hiding meth on him, search him, push him around a little. Then they drive him to the hospital and force several enemas on him. Which turn up nothing. Then the hospital sends him a bill for the "service". It's egregious and he is rightfully suing. Is this a race issue?
If George Floyd had looked like Obama or OJ Simpson, had been driving a nice car in nice clothes and was well spoken and had no priors would he have been treated the same? I don't think so, particularly if it appeared he had means to get a good lawyer.
Please don't misunderstand, I'm not saying racism isn't an issue. It is and it exists. But the problems with police brutality seem almost as much a class issue. In fact you can see no shortage of black cops. But the problems still keep happening. Addressing this is long overdue but perhaps the lens should be expanded?
Thought #2:
People believe and are suggesting to make their voices really heard engaging in violence and unrelated property destruction is appropriate. I guess the thinking goes this will force systemic change.
Here's the systemic change I see coming from that. Increased support for surveillance. Scaring the average joe middle class person into voting for law and order candidates. A few hundred people rioting aren't going to overturn capitalism. Capitalism is well embedded and a little scratch isn't going to harm it, nor is this kind of behavior likely to change public sentiment. However it does make it easier to lump everyone (rightfully) upset with police brutality into the camp of crazy destructive anarchists. So I think it's going to turn out to be a counterproductive move. The massive peaceful marches were much wiser and also get effects believe it or not. When elected politicians see that many folks that energized they ignore at their own peril.
- A student protest was beaten by the police, which shocked the nation. More mass protests were organized. You're at that point now.
- A week later, there was a general strike. It was more a symbolic one (I think it was a day). I think it's good to organize it because it signals to the elites and everybody - this is serious, and the citizens are willing to solve the problem peacefully and constructively. The protests can be easily misconstrued in the media, the general strike cannot.
- In our case, the general demands (IIRC) were as follows:
1. Make constitutional changes to remove the single party (the communist party) from power.
2. Organize a free, special elections, which would allow newly formed parties and other candidates to run.
3. Free all the political prisoners, and honor the general declaration of human rights in practice.
- As a result of this, a provisional cabinet (kind of compromise between the current elites and opposition) was established, which realized these goals in the timeframe of half a year.
I think in your case, you should organize a general nationwide strike, and demand the following:
1. A constitutional reform to end dual-party system in the US, i.e. allow more candidates and parties to run, forbid all the shenanigans around voting (like electoral college and gerrymandering and queues at polling stations and obscure voting methods and machines), reform the campaign financing.
2. A special elections (starting on federal level, going down eventually) under this better system.
3. A constitutional police reform, which will put more oversight over all the civilian and military intelligence agencies that you have in the U.S., both federal and state level. (Possibly from an independent, randomly drawn body of citizens.)
I believe these are demands that most Americans can agree on, so the real change is possible.
What makes you think this wasn't written by a professional speech-writer/think-tank?
https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/obama-administration-...
Please don't.
FWIW, I see little relevance of the article you just linked in what appears to be a conversation of the former president's writing abilities.
I read one of Hanson's books. He recalls that he didn't like academia because, unlike his own farm, he couldn't order people with whom he disagreed off his land.
After reading this article, I think Hanson probably is disappointed that there are not more lefties thrown out of helicopters, but I am not more informed as to what his counter-suggestions to "reform at the local and state level" may be.
Pat Buchanan, in my opinion, was a much more convincing National Review columnist.
Obviously they differ on how to get there, but can the US right agree with the US left on "with liberty, and justice, for all"? It's an excellent sounding ideal.
Having no direct or indirect involvement with "class warfare" and "culture clashes", I think most individuals are trusting that government representatives (who many want to vote out anyways) will not milk a crisis for every penny, but instead inact meaningful reform.
Once we see autonomous delivery of work (physical production, not digital) spread in the developed world, it will be a great relief knowing that everybody can make a living without having to interact with groups that choose not to (if they desire).
The solution will provide a safety net for everyone (females, single parents, working aged adults, etc) and keep the emotions out of the equation.
Its already sickening...
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/george-floyd-cup-foods-police...
It was all over a shop owner losing $20.
Fortunately, creative WFA solutions will allow individual freedoms to blossom again.
Time is still the most valuable Commodity in the 1st world.
If you're looking to take an actionable step to help with racial injustice consider supporting the Equal Justice Initiative. (eji.org). Inspiring org and a leader we would all be proud to support. I donated and my grad school class is pooling in together to do the same.
I'm also talking to my children about the role they can play in quelling racism when they see it. I need to do better myself. Change starts with us.
Malcolm X conceived of things much more honestly than Barack Obama: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiSiHRNQlQo
The current environment is one of crisis mounting on top of crisis, each with increasing urgency and each never getting solved.
Just to count them
- issues of executive power concentration (pre trump even..), now alongside corruption and ignoring rule of law
- US overextended and largely illegitimately engaged militarily across the world
- mass surveillance without consent
- covid & associated economic devastation
- racial justice
- unending sense of riots, damage etc..
A friend of mine lived in East Germany when the Wall came down. I recall there was one event after another that eventually culminated in the collapse of East Germany and communism.
Is the US experiencing something similar? Not just in terms of government effectiveness but even legitimacy?
The “imperial presidency” is part of an ongoing trend of increasing executive power for decades. High unemployment from Covid is objectively true. Ineffectiveness combating Covid at a Federal level is hard to debate...
Politics is about compromise and deal making yes, but it should also be about looking at the problems that plague society and trying to find a solution that does the most good while incurring the least harm.
But when decisions are made that significantly affect the lives of a group of citizens is there any effort made to consult with them? Or do they just get to find out when their life get's turned upside down?
How much of the process is about what's convinient for who's currently in power or currying favour with them than trying to take apart problems that affect the citizenry and make a best effort at a solution?
Part of my thinking on this came from reading about and hearing how vTaiwan was used to try and decide how to legislate how Uber would be treated there.
Full disclosure, I've only read around the topic, I may get details or points wrong. I'm only mentioning it here because I've not spotted it being discussed and I think it's relevant.
An overview is here for you to look at [0], however please read around it yourself if you want more detail =)...
At a high level, they broke the process down into several stages: 1) Contact the stackholders and inform them a decision is being made and provide a place for engaged citizens to participate. This encompases fact finding as well as translating complex areas like legal information to be understandable to the general public. 2) Allow people to air concerns and highlight potential issues. Try and understand what groups exist and what they want, ensure that participants who will be significantly affected have a proportional voice. Treat this as a period of relflection so people can get a deep understanding of where things are. 3) Take subject matter experts as well as appropriate voices in industry and have them study what was produced in the prior stage, then have them put together a series of briefings and Q/A sessions designed to dispell common misconceptions brought up during the prior stage and put together a series of clear proposals that can be enacted outlining the pros and cons as such as feasible. This will help educate the public as well as give them a much clearer idea what the state of possible outcomes are. At this point the public are actively able to question and ask for more detailed information around the proposals on offer. 4) Take the proposals that were the outcomes of the prior stage and turn draft it into a law.
Note that I'm not saying tech is the solution here, just that we might want to think more broadly about what the problem is.
And now it's way past my bedtime, I'll respond to any replies after I get up =)...
- [0]: https://www.centreforpublicimpact.org/case-study/building-co...
I'd argue that current events have a direct impact on all of us and this absolutely warrants discussion. Furthermore, I'm not sure I know of any instance where a President has disseminated writing like this. It's an interesting change, since it means that former Presidents can continue exerting influence.
I actually agree with you, but given that the article was posted by mwseibel, I wanted to see what everyone's thinking was. Just because he's a significant YC partner doesn't mean he knows/has authority over HN. It's a valid discussion to have.
But what's the appropriate line? A hard line with no room for interpretation, even in significant events? Where does Coronavirus land in that then? It certainly affects tech/hacking, but it definitely is being tainted by politics and belief structures. Are the only valid articles ones that talk about remote work?
Similar thing related to civic action. Keeping politics out of HN is a good rule, but man, that line is never going to be discrete.
Those responses clearly produced no real change from those turning-point moments. Why would we hope they will in this one?
obama spends the first 7 paragraphs explaining the ideals of government and the vulgarity of violence, and somehow ends up on this "bottom line": let's both (peacefully) protest and politic.
with all due respect, his perspective is subverted by the unique privilege and prestige that only comes with being a past president, from having played the game and won, and reads as out of touch with the needs and desires of most black folks. those folks are tired of waiting and being told to be nice and polite and civil while the police kill members of their community at random.
let's appreciate the need to work the political system the way it was designed--to be slow, deliberate and inefficient--but let's not lose touch with the long violence and oppression of the system against people of color, principally black and brown folks. let's not lose touch with the immediacy and direction of the need that necessarily supercedes slowly meandering civil discourse.
I understand your emotion, but saying that the police walks in the street killing random black people is also unproductive.
You can imagine folks on the right showcasing your post as an example of the "loony left", then starting a discussion about the fact that more whites are killed by police, and so on.
Each time that happens, you lose a tiny bit of support, and that hurts what Obama thinks is important - the election outcome.
It's unfortunately true though. We have seen countless examples in the last few years alone where the victim was murdered by a cop. And those are only the ones that were recorded and managed to go viral.
you demonstrate my exact point: obama cares about elections and the slow, meandering civil process. he's insulated from the consequences of having that position, unlike the people on the streets.