You all heard that gangs in Baltimore had banded together to go after cops. But if you did hear that, you heard wrong. Gangs are universally vilified, and the term "gang" is also used by law enforcement and their other as a euphemism. (For people it is OK to shoot, apparently.) The reality of gangs is far more complex than usually understood.
Anyway, I thought you might like to see this:
Originally posted by WBALTV 11: Members of the Black Guerrilla Family, the Bloods and the Crips talk to 11 News, saying they did not make a truce to harm police officers.
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I was all set to do a big post about the police, but then Kevin Drum went and said exactly what I was thinking:
It shouldn't be too hard to hold two thoughts in our minds at once. Thought #1: Police officers have an intrinsically tough and violent job. Split-second decisions about the use of force…
Trigger warning: Explicit video of a homeless man being executed by the cops.
I strongly recommend that you don't call the police. If you do, because for some reason you have to, get the hell out of there before they arrive. Why? Because our Post-9/11 first responder philosophy is not the first…
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UPDATE: BLM and the St Paul authorities have come to a compromise.
... the Mayor announced that Turner and the St. Paul Black Lives Matter chapter have agreed to refrain from interfering with runners trying to complete the course, as had previously been threatened. Instead…
I was going to put this on my facebook page, but it seemed worthy of a higher status. As it were.
We live in a police state, here in America, in the same way one gives oneself a particular religion or non-religious label. Unless you are a priest, a habitually repentant sinner, or like me, a…
Even worse, the police went after the students:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/the-role-the-police-played-in-sparkin…
It isn't simply the media getting in on the lying :
http://gawker.com/the-nra-is-already-lying-about-whats-happening-in-bal…
Who benefits from the idea that gangs are just scary conspiracies that are responsible for all unfathomable evils?
The NRA benefits of course: fear drives up the sale of arms.
The Wire creator and Charm City resident David Simon talks about indiscriminate police arrests.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/david-simon-baltimore-freddie-gra…
@3. asdf : As wellas the NRA as noted by George, add racists and politicians (esp. right wing ones) who like to use it as an excuse and as a way to whip up fear and hatred, the media who sell the stories and are complicit in telling the falsehoods and exaggerating it for financial gain and the big Multinationals and 1%'s who use it divide and conquer and distract from the real problems that they are causing and benefitting from.
This "benefit" question is a common theme. It is very difficult to prove that someone benefits, or at least, many arguments one could reasonably make can't be turned into solid courtroom provable assertions. Therefore no one benefits, and since no one benefits, it is not a real thing. Therefore racism/sexism/whatever does not really exist.
asdf -- we all benefit, because if gangs are responsible for all of society's ills, then we aren't. Its' really as simple as that -- nobody likes to know that we're responsible for our own problems, so if we can pin it on some group of people who we don't personally know and whom we're told are not very nice people anyway, then it feels a lot more comfortable. Especially to those who don't live near the gangs, because then we can take comfort in knowing it's not in *our* part of town. We're okay here.
And no matter how smug any of us might be about it, we've all been guilty of this type of thinking at some point. It's very human.
Calli, I agree and disagree with you. I think you have a valid point that the average or even maybe the majority of Americans (or all of Western culture) like to blame other people for their problems. I disagree though because that's not how it ought to be; people should take personal responsibility for their actions and if they see a problem, they need to take actions to correct it.