Official Current Affairs & Politics thread

[MrDollarBills]

http://www.clevescene.com/scene-and-heard/archives/2016/09/30/video-lorain-police-slam-suspects-head-on-windshield-hard-enough-to-shatter-the-glass


This article contains a video that is now at the center of a civil rights lawsuit.

The police smashes this guy's head so hard it cracked the windshield. But yeah, this is perfectly acceptable behavior.

[Prokorov]

^exactly. The All Lives Matters folks just want black people to stop disturbing their privilege. I have seen a lot of posts about what happened to that child, in fact a black lives matter activist's facebook page is how I found the horrific video of what those animals did. To see that boy slumped in that front seat, gushing blood was one of the worst things I've ever seen. Anyone with a shred of empathy in their body doesn't see skin color at that point, you just see a boy who is dead and a father who is barely clinging to life. and the follow up for that story is even worse because the piece of **** cop was stalking this man's wife so the entire situation could have been personal. And that's not an isolated incident. Cops harass and intimidate people for their own personal reasons eve ar damn day and get away with it.

Spot on... people just want to go back in there bubble in their nice neighborhoods and not have to face the reality of what is happening all over the country,

All Lives matter 100% misses the point by a mile.

all lives SHOULD matter, but they dont. thats the entire premise of Black Lives matter. that their lives should ALSO matter. but in way too many instances, it doesnt. for the ignorant living in their bubble it might be better to call it "Black lives matter too"

Blue Lives matter is a joke. not because cops lives arent important, but because cops lives have ALWAYS matter. when a cop is shot and killed there is a massive investigation, not stone is left unturned in finding the killer and bringing him to justice. in many cases funds are set up for the cops family, and there are plenty of ceremonies in their honor.

white lives have always mattered. rich lives have always matter.... but black lives, not so much. thats why there has been this much traction with the movement. because due to technology its hardered to ignore, harder to cover up, and easier for those who believe in the movement to communicate and get their message out.

[Prokorov]

I

Nobody is even talking about the stand off between the US and the Native Americans currently happening in North Dakota over the illegal pipelines. We're not even talking about the gas shortage happening in the south or what about Flint?

those things are all being talked about.

[ChokeFasncists]

So it seems like there are two interpretations of all lives matter. One is an antithesis of black lives matter and is critical of it; the other is that all lives matter therefore black lives matter.

I support the latter.

[shakendfries]

So it seems like there are two interpretations of all lives matter. One is an antithesis of black lives matter and is critical of it; the other is that all lives matter therefore black lives matter.

I support the latter.

I suppose your position is valid, but what's the point? If your position is "all lives matter therefore black lives matter" why are you dwelling with the semantics? If you (and anyone for that matter) wants to engage with any of these issues beyond the superficial level, we have to get past simply picking sides, blm vs alm, dem vs rep, gsw vs cle.

The position "all lives matter therefore black lives matter" is redundant. If you were to walk up to someone and say all lives matter their response would probably be "well, duh". That's because saying everyone matters is not a strong stance. It's is something that most good natured human beings can all agree on. However, historically speaking, it's no secret that black (and brown) lives specifically have not been valued by American society at large.

Thomas Jefferson wrote in the constitution that all men were created equal (= all lives matter) but founding a country that depended on slavery. However, for a person like Thomas Jefferson to promote the belief that all lives are equal, while owning slaves himself and participating in a system that explicitly dehumanized a particular group of people in the country, is a hypocritical stance. At this moment of early American history, saying all lives matter as a blanket position ignored the critical ways that people of color (black people as well as Native Americans) were mistreated in the country because, at the time, they didn't matter in America.

Fast forward to today, where historians and scholars have studied and concluded that the current criminal justice system has snowballed into being a financial industry that largely profits from targeting people, mostly people of color, and placing them in circumstances that their lives are essentially ruined forever. The system allows for small towns and cities to drive a large portion of their revenue from levying fines against the poorest people in their communities. Penitentiaries are called "correctional facilities", but for many of the people inside who couldn't get a job before incarceration, it does anything but correct the circumstances that they'll be in once they serve time. The system has also become a magnet for those who suffer from mental illness and drug addiction, and preys upon all of the poor, while extremely and overwhelmingly impacting black lives in the country at rates unseen anywhere else in the modern world.

I'm not even a black lives matter supporter. To me, the movement tends focus on the problem, using the shock of disturbing images and videos where their emotionally charged content tends to get people to respond emotionally, getting them to focus on picking sides, and having meaingless arguments like black lives matter versus all lives matter - like they're choosing a sports team to root for, rather than evolving into a discussion of the real issues and potential solutions.

So while saying all lives matter might be an admirable position in the utopian sense (yes, everyone matters) it really isn't saying much. It does not count as a social or political stance, because America was built by people who said the same thing, that they believed everyone mattered, while ignoring the rape, murder, and brutalization of people of color that would contradict their position.

To clarify, I am not insinuating that black people are in prison because of slavery in any way whatsoever. I am not denying that there are a lot of people in prison because they made the wrong choices. I am just bringing attention to the fact that systems/laws/things that society allows that disproportionately target specific minorities at a very extreme rate are historically similar to institutions like caste systems, and Jim Crow Laws that devalued human lives on the basis of race in the past.

Let me put it this way: if I made a set of laws that made it a misdemeanor (meaning, you get a ticket and have to pay a fine) for anyone who has more than two body piercings or any visible tattoos, made it so that anyone fitting this description or driving a motorcycle can get stopped and frisked by a police officer, tell officers that they need to stop and frisk at least 100 tattoo/pierced bikers a week, made it so if you get fined and can't afford it you'll get sent to jail, made a law that the possession of a small amount of narcotics of can get you 5-10yrs in prison, made it so going to prison means you will never get hired for anything other than a minimum wage job, made it so public schools statistically suspend kids who wear all black, have piercings, or tattoos at triple the rate of all other students, made it so most pierced/tattooed kids grow up in poor communities with underfunded schools, made it so any person walking around with a tattoo or piercing anywhere will look suspicious to everyone else, can you honestly say the rules are fair for everyone?

What if I told you that because of these rules, at this rate 1 and 3 tattooed/pierced people born in America today will end up in prison? What If I told you America imprisons more tattooed/pierced people than anywhere else in the entire world?

As always, feel free to share thoughts

[MrDollarBills]

So it seems like there are two interpretations of all lives matter. One is an antithesis of black lives matter and is critical of it; the other is that all lives matter therefore black lives matter.

I support the latter.

I suppose your position is valid, but what's the point? If your position is "all lives matter therefore black lives matter" why are you dwelling with the semantics? If you (and anyone for that matter) wants to engage with any of these issues beyond the superficial level, we have to get past simply picking sides, blm vs alm, dem vs rep, gsw vs cle.

The position "all lives matter therefore black lives matter" is redundant. If you were to walk up to someone and say all lives matter their response would probably be "well, duh". That's because saying everyone matters is not a strong stance. It's is something that most good natured human beings can all agree on. However, historically speaking, it's no secret that black (and brown) lives specifically have not been valued by American society at large.

Thomas Jefferson wrote in the constitution that all men were created equal (= all lives matter) but founding a country that depended on slavery. However, for a person like Thomas Jefferson to promote the belief that all lives are equal, while owning slaves himself and participating in a system that explicitly dehumanized a particular group of people in the country, is a hypocritical stance. At this moment of early American history, saying all lives matter as a blanket position ignored the critical ways that people of color (black people as well as Native Americans) were mistreated in the country because, at the time, they didn't matter in America.

Fast forward to today, where historians and scholars have studied and concluded that the current criminal justice system has snowballed into being a financial industry that largely profits from targeting people, mostly people of color, and placing them in circumstances that their lives are essentially ruined forever. The system allows for small towns and cities to drive a large portion of their revenue from levying fines against the poorest people in their communities. Penitentiaries are called "correctional facilities", but for many of the people inside who couldn't get a job before incarceration, it does anything but correct the circumstances that they'll be in once they serve time. The system has also become a magnet for those who suffer from mental illness and drug addiction, and preys upon all of the poor, while extremely and overwhelmingly impacting black lives in the country at rates unseen anywhere else in the modern world.

I'm not even a black lives matter supporter. To me, the movement tends focus on the problem, using the shock of disturbing images and videos where their emotionally charged content tends to get people to respond emotionally, getting them to focus on picking sides, and having meaingless arguments like black lives matter versus all lives matter - like they're choosing a sports team to root for, rather than evolving into a discussion of the real issues and potential solutions.

So while saying all lives matter might be an admirable position in the utopian sense (yes, everyone matters) it really isn't saying much. It does not count as a social or political stance, because America was built by people who said the same thing, that they believed everyone mattered, while ignoring the rape, murder, and brutalization of people of color that would contradict their position.

To clarify, I am not insinuating that black people are in prison because of slavery in any way whatsoever. I am not denying that there are a lot of people in prison because they made the wrong choices. I am just bringing attention to the fact that systems/laws/things that society allows that disproportionately target specific minorities at a very extreme rate are historically similar to institutions like caste systems, and Jim Crow Laws that devalued human lives on the basis of race in the past.

Let me put it this way: if I made a set of laws that made it a misdemeanor (meaning, you get a ticket and have to pay a fine) for anyone who has more than two body piercings or any visible tattoos, made it so that anyone fitting this description or driving a motorcycle can get stopped and frisked by a police officer, tell officers that they need to stop and frisk at least 100 tattoo/pierced bikers a week, made it so if you get fined and can't afford it you'll get sent to jail, made a law that the possession of a small amount of narcotics of can get you 5-10yrs in prison, made it so going to prison means you will never get hired for anything other than a minimum wage job, made it so public schools statistically suspend kids who wear all black, have piercings, or tattoos at triple the rate of all other students, made it so most pierced/tattooed kids grow up in poor communities with underfunded schools, made it so any person walking around with a tattoo or piercing anywhere will look suspicious to everyone else, can you honestly say the rules are fair for everyone?

What if I told you that because of these rules, at this rate 1 and 3 tattooed/pierced people born in America today will end up in prison? What If I told you America imprisons more tattooed/pierced people than anywhere else in the entire world?

As always, feel free to share thoughts

Well said. Not to make blanket statements (and I am not a BLM supporters, I am anti police brutality/systemic racial oppression on my own terms) but the people who just throw out All Lives Matter just want blacks to shut up despite day after day of being bombarded with footage of murder and brutality of PoC. They don't want to be concerned with this stuff because they think "well it won't happen to me, i'm not black, i'm not a criminal". Problem is, when you start seeing unarmed, defenseless men who aren't even involved in criminal acts being killed without hesitation, it's hard to accept that if you've got any empathy or if you're black (or hispanic/latino, who are also being killed in the same manner by police).

People who scream all lives matter also grossly underestimate the psychological impact that seeing this stuff is having on people. Seeing someone that looks like you or is in the same minority group as you, or a fellow minority being murdered and left to bled out while police routinely escape justice due to cronyism between the LEOs and the prosecutors is naturally going to make you distrustful, angry, and afraid of the police. This is why if all police murders were glorified across the board, the discourse would change drastically, there would be less inclination to dehumanize a victim of police if they share similar traits with you...it's very easy for these people to dehumanize a Tamir Rice, but I bet if Jeremy Mardis was a house hold name these same people wouldn't even attempt to dehumanize him or make excuses for him being murdered. I've seen three instances alone where a white person, unarmed, was murdered recklessly by cops and not a peep from the media about it. All Lives Matter folks are under the impression that this is STRICTLY a minority or black problem because they don't see it happening to people like them.

anyway...great commentary by John Oliver on this topic:

Watch on YouTube

[shakendfries]

Relevant

45 YEARS AFTER ATTICA UPRISING, PRISONERS ARE REBELLING AGAIN



LAST MONTH, INMATES across the country embarked on what organizers have called the largest prison strike in U.S. history, an ambitious mass protest against prison labor and inhumane prison conditions. The strike, which was the culmination of a series of renewed efforts at prison organizing in recent years, kicked off on September 9, in tribute to one of the bleakest moments in the country’s history of incarceration, the uprising at the Attica Correctional Facility in upstate New York.

On September 9, 1971, prisoners at the overcrowded prison seized an opportunity to gain control of the facility and took a number of hostages, inspired by earlier prison and jail uprisings and by the momentum of the liberation movements raging outside the prisons’ walls. But prisoners at Attica were mostly driven by growing desperation over unbearable conditions inside: constant abuse by guards, medical neglect, lack of showers and toilet paper. Four people — one guard and three prisoners — were killed in the early hours of the riot. Then, for the next four days, a group of leaders who emerged out of the initial chaos attempted to negotiate a peaceful surrender with state officials, demanding amnesty for actions conducted during the riot, as well as access to classes, religious freedom, and fairer disciplinary practices.

Despite recommendations from all sides that he do so, New York state Gov. Nelson Rockefeller — who two years later shaped the future of New York’s criminal justice system when he signed his infamous drug laws — refused to visit Attica. Instead, on September 13, he ordered state troopers to “retake” the prison.

By the end of the assault, 39 people — 29 prisoners and 10 hostages — had been killed by police, who entered the prison protected by a thick fog of tear gas and armed with state-issued weapons as well as personal guns and hunting rifles. Dozens of other inmates were injured and tortured in the hours that followed. But as the state regained control of the prison, officials told reporters waiting outside that prisoners had killed the hostages, sometimes embellishing those accounts with fabricated details that shocked public opinion, like when they said an inmate castrated one of the guards and shoved his testicles into his mouth.

What followed was an enormous cover-up, as 62 prisoners and zero law enforcement officials were indicted over the massacre. The cover-up was partially exposed in subsequent decades, but the magnitude and callousness of it all is something we are just now beginning to fathom thanks to “Blood in The Water,” a monumental account of the uprising and its aftermath by historian Heather Ann Thompson, published earlier this year.

Thompson’s book documents the Attica violence in painful detail: the circumstances leading up to the uprising and the lengths to which the state went to hide its responsibility. Thompson makes the case that the Attica massacre, and the lies that Americans were told about it, played a pivotal role in justifying the dehumanization of prisoners and providing political support for the mass incarceration binge the country embarked on in the decades that followed. While Attica continues to inspire resistance among prisoners, the uprising’s most lasting legacy has been one of exacerbated repression, as corrections officials stifled prison dissent and organizing and the general public turned its back to prisoners’ continuing demands for human rights and dignity.


Photos show the body of James Robinson, an inmate killed during the retaking of Attica. In the second image, a weapon was planted on the scene — one of dozens of pieces of evidence that later emerged to discredit the state’s account and reveal the extent of the cover-up. Photo: Elizabeth Fink Papers

“Even though the extraordinary violence that took place in 1971 was overwhelmingly perpetrated by members of law enforcement, not the prisoners, American voters ultimately did not respond to this prison uprising by demanding that states rein in police power,” Thompson writes in the book. “Instead they demanded that police be given even more support and even more punitive laws to enforce.”
Today, Attica remains a prison rife with abuse rather than a monument to a massacre. Prisons nationwide are significantly more crowded today than they were in 1971, and they are often more punitive and less humane. The racial inequality that defined the prison experience then, and that essentially enabled the lynching that was the retaking of Attica, remains a defining factor of prison life and abuse. And today prisoners are once again rebelling, while states go to great lengths to silence them.

As the current prison strike, barely noticed by the public or acknowledged by corrections officials, entered its third week, The Intercept spoke with Thompson about what’s changed in prisons since 1971, and what hasn’t.

One of the running threads in your book is the state’s refusal — to this day — to open the books on Attica and allow the public to know what really happened 45 years ago. But accessing prisons remains incredibly challenging for the public today. Why is it so hard, for instance, to get accurate information on the current strike?

It’s really an outrage. These are public institutions, and not only can the media not get access, but neither can the families of those inside. Neither can state senators — elected officials find it incredibly difficult to get information out of the prison system. It was not my intention to make my book so timely, but if you know anything about Attica you understand that what you don’t know is always much worse than what you might imagine. These prison strikes have been happening for days and corrections officials were denying them. Now corrections officials are reporting that there have been incidents, but we don’t know how many people are involved, we don’t know what the repression is. Frankly, the only reason we know about Attica today is that reporters and law students and lawyers didn’t give up. They just insisted, came back again and again and again, filing injunctions, beating down the doors, insisting that their state legislators come in, and that’s the only reason why we have any idea that basically 1,300 people were tortured as long as they were.

It is unconscionable that prisoners in states across this country are protesting the conditions under which they live and are forced to work and the media cannot be told who they are, how many of them there are, what their demands are, and what the repercussions of their acts have been. The fact that we cannot get any of those questions answered by public institutions is outrageous and unforgivable given the support we give them.

Some prisoners today are trying really hard to reach out to people outside, even to connect to the broader movement for justice that we have seen resurface in recent years. But even when they are able to get their story out, increasingly through social media, there seems to be limited interest in their struggle. Why?

There’s no question that by the time Attica happened we were in the midst of a pretty deep social movement, that lots of young people took time off of their day jobs to tell prisoners’ stories and to demand prisoner justice. But that took a long time — there were prisoner atrocities going on for a very long time in many of these prisons. Martin Sostre had to file a federal suit to stop the solitary confinement he was suffering in Attica long before the uprising. The southern prisons were hell holes, they had nobody paying particular attention.

I think we’re in the beginning of that movement again. I feel like that energy and that interest is starting again. But the fact that we have perhaps more access to prisoners through social media, you have to remember that that is being mitigated against by the fact that prisoners do far more time in solitary than they ever did. They are on lockdown in their cells far more than they ever were, and frankly, the punitive nature of the parole system and the sentencing rules mean that many of them get cut off. They have been away for so long that it’s only a core few who manage to keep their outside networks up.

The Attica uprising came as a movement for prison justice was beginning to take hold. What happened afterward?

The movement didn’t die out at all. However, what happened after 1971 is that the police retook Attica, they did all the killing, they did all the maiming, they did all the torture, but then the state stepped out in front of the nation and said that it was prisoners that killed the hostages. And when they did that, they gave the emotional fuel to this punitive system we have today. They had already started down that path but Attica turned people, the broader nation, against prisoners’ rights. And it made possible shutting down prisoner access to the federal court system, with the Prison Litigation Reform Act. It made possible the amount of solitary confinement that happens today. In the Martin Sostre case, in 1969, a federal judge said it was cruel and inhumane to keep someone in solitary for 365 days. We now hold people in solitary for 10 years or longer. Prisons became much more punitive, but that’s not because they managed to shut down resistance, they actually managed to “shut down” the prisoners themselves.


“Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy,” by Heather Ann Thompson Photo: Knopf Doubleday

When you write about prisoners’ rights, you invariably will get someone saying, “They’re prisoners, they deserve it.” How do you trace this attitude toward prisoners to what happened at Attica?
At the height of Attica, if you look at public opinion polls, there was quite a notable degree of support for prison reform and for better guard training and more humane conditions in prisons. After Attica, that door closes. The carceral state was a backlash to the civil rights movement, and Attica was the pinnacle of that link between the civil rights movement and the prison rights movement. Today, people are still very hostile to the idea that prisoners are people. But I feel like we’re in a changing moment right now. I don’t want to be too optimistic, but I feel like it’s very significant that prisoners are resisting despite enormous odds, higher odds than they faced in 1971. They are going on strike, they are refusing to be warehoused. And I think that the broader public is beginning to understand that these are people we’re talking about.

But prisoners are once again protesting the same conditions they rebelled against in 1971. Or are they worse?

They’re much worse now. They’re much worse because what should have happened after Attica and what was undoubtedly on the way to happening was a humanizing of prison conditions. We were moving toward community corrections. We were moving away from warehousing, and after Attica we reversed that trend in horrifying ways and now the chickens are coming home to roost. And by the way, we’re not waking up because politicians all of a sudden got a conscience. We’re waking up because of Ferguson and Baltimore and Chicago and Charlotte. We’re waking up because people are saying enough and now they’re even saying enough in prisons. I think this moment is a new civil rights era.

Is the current resurgence of prison activism tied to the movement for black lives outside prisons? And how does that compare to the way the Attica uprising came on the heels of the civil rights movement?

If you look at a snapshot of 1970, it looks as if activism for civil rights in the streets and activism in the prisons are all happening simultaneously and people understand the connections. But it took a decade of enormous work and of both prison uprisings and urban rebellions before those connections were made. Today, we know intellectually that you wouldn’t have mass incarceration without excessive policing in black communities, but people erupt where they are. It’s not surprising to me that the first eruptions are going to be in the communities, because that’s exactly where they were in the 1970s. It’s in 1964 that we get rebellions in Philadelphia and Rochester and Harlem, but it’s not until the later ’60s and the early ’70s that prisons start rising up and that people are mobilizing both communities. I see the fact that we’re having these things just now starting up in prisons as a very interesting sign.

In the immediate aftermath of Attica, the media disastrously failed to see through officials’ lies. Today, with some notable exceptions, prison coverage continues to be limited and lacking, even as the movement for prison reform gains some ground. Why are we not covering prisons more aggressively?

The way that we need to start leaning on the broader media is to say: These are public institutions. We spend an incredible percentage of our tax dollars and give a considerable amount of our good will and faith to institutions we are literally barred from understanding. And those institutions are in charge of our nation’s most vulnerable citizens, the poorest people, the most mentally ill. From a purely investigative journalism point of view, this is a question of access to public information and I feel that it was that spirit that led reporters in the 1960s and 1970s to uncover some of the worst abuses. It wasn’t that they were leftists or radicals, it was that they were journalists and they felt that they had a right to the information. I think that spirit is crucially important and I feel that journalists today have lost much of that; they think the story is what the press office gives them. Your job is not what the press office is giving you, your job is what the press office is not telling you.

Your book was made possible, in part, by the mistake of a courthouse clerk in Buffalo who erroneously gave you access to thousands of pages of documents that the state did not mean for anyone to see — and that have since disappeared. (Officials have even denied that those documents were there in the first place.) What does the fact that it’s so hard to get government to talk about something that happened 45 years ago say about government-perpetrated injustice that continues to go on today?

For one thing, it says that every time we have a police shooting the public needs to insist that the grand jury process is more transparent, and that there have to be independent prosecutors, that is to say, prosecutors who never have to rely on the police any other time. Also, Attica was 45 years ago, but there’s no statute of limitations on murder. For many decades it was the very active fear of prosecution that motivated the state’s police unions to show up and to not let the records be disclosed. But I think that everybody understands that this is not old history. These records say something fundamental about race and justice and equal justice under the law, not just in New York but in America. What’s being protected is the legitimacy of the state, the idea — or the fantasy — that politicians are above this ugliness and that state officials do the right thing. What’s being protected goes to the fundamental nature of how society works — if you don’t have legitimacy of government you don’t have anything.

I’m not sure what we can do about the past; we should still push for these records, and frankly, there still needs to be a truth and reconciliation process for what happened at Attica. That’s what the survivors want, that’s what they deserve. But what I hope the book does, in addition to rescuing their history, is make all citizens much more cynical, skeptical, curious, and cautious about these days we walk in right now. Because these things are still with us. Attica is not that unusual. Attica is just emblematic of prisons everywhere; there have been uprisings at almost every prison in America. What might be happening right now at Holmes correctional facility in Florida makes me shudder. It just keeps going on and on until we shine a light on it.

[Paradise]

I

Nobody is even talking about the stand off between the US and the Native Americans currently happening in North Dakota over the illegal pipelines. We're not even talking about the gas shortage happening in the south or what about Flint?

those things are all being talked about.

It's not the major promoted stories. Everyone that I know has not heard of anything on the Project Pipelines or the recent updates on Flint.


Sent from my iPhone using RealGM mobile app

[shakendfries]

Please share updates on both issues if you have info 'dise, I'd love to learn more

[ChokeFasncists]

So it seems like there are two interpretations of all lives matter. One is an antithesis of black lives matter and is critical of it; the other is that all lives matter therefore black lives matter.

I support the latter.

I suppose your position is valid, but what's the point? If your position is "all lives matter therefore black lives matter" why are you dwelling with the semantics? If you (and anyone for that matter) wants to engage with any of these issues beyond the superficial level, we have to get past simply picking sides, blm vs alm, dem vs rep, gsw vs cle.

The position "all lives matter therefore black lives matter" is redundant. If you were to walk up to someone and say all lives matter their response would probably be "well, duh". That's because saying everyone matters is not a strong stance. It's is something that most good natured human beings can all agree on. However, historically speaking, it's no secret that black (and brown) lives specifically have not been valued by American society at large.

Thomas Jefferson wrote in the constitution that all men were created equal (= all lives matter) but founding a country that depended on slavery. However, for a person like Thomas Jefferson to promote the belief that all lives are equal, while owning slaves himself and participating in a system that explicitly dehumanized a particular group of people in the country, is a hypocritical stance. At this moment of early American history, saying all lives matter as a blanket position ignored the critical ways that people of color (black people as well as Native Americans) were mistreated in the country because, at the time, they didn't matter in America.

Fast forward to today, where historians and scholars have studied and concluded that the current criminal justice system has snowballed into being a financial industry that largely profits from targeting people, mostly people of color, and placing them in circumstances that their lives are essentially ruined forever. The system allows for small towns and cities to drive a large portion of their revenue from levying fines against the poorest people in their communities. Penitentiaries are called "correctional facilities", but for many of the people inside who couldn't get a job before incarceration, it does anything but correct the circumstances that they'll be in once they serve time. The system has also become a magnet for those who suffer from mental illness and drug addiction, and preys upon all of the poor, while extremely and overwhelmingly impacting black lives in the country at rates unseen anywhere else in the modern world.

I'm not even a black lives matter supporter. To me, the movement tends focus on the problem, using the shock of disturbing images and videos where their emotionally charged content tends to get people to respond emotionally, getting them to focus on picking sides, and having meaingless arguments like black lives matter versus all lives matter - like they're choosing a sports team to root for, rather than evolving into a discussion of the real issues and potential solutions.

So while saying all lives matter might be an admirable position in the utopian sense (yes, everyone matters) it really isn't saying much. It does not count as a social or political stance, because America was built by people who said the same thing, that they believed everyone mattered, while ignoring the rape, murder, and brutalization of people of color that would contradict their position.

To clarify, I am not insinuating that black people are in prison because of slavery in any way whatsoever. I am not denying that there are a lot of people in prison because they made the wrong choices. I am just bringing attention to the fact that systems/laws/things that society allows that disproportionately target specific minorities at a very extreme rate are historically similar to institutions like caste systems, and Jim Crow Laws that devalued human lives on the basis of race in the past.

Let me put it this way: if I made a set of laws that made it a misdemeanor (meaning, you get a ticket and have to pay a fine) for anyone who has more than two body piercings or any visible tattoos, made it so that anyone fitting this description or driving a motorcycle can get stopped and frisked by a police officer, tell officers that they need to stop and frisk at least 100 tattoo/pierced bikers a week, made it so if you get fined and can't afford it you'll get sent to jail, made a law that the possession of a small amount of narcotics of can get you 5-10yrs in prison, made it so going to prison means you will never get hired for anything other than a minimum wage job, made it so public schools statistically suspend kids who wear all black, have piercings, or tattoos at triple the rate of all other students, made it so most pierced/tattooed kids grow up in poor communities with underfunded schools, made it so any person walking around with a tattoo or piercing anywhere will look suspicious to everyone else, can you honestly say the rules are fair for everyone?

What if I told you that because of these rules, at this rate 1 and 3 tattooed/pierced people born in America today will end up in prison? What If I told you America imprisons more tattooed/pierced people than anywhere else in the entire world?

As always, feel free to share thoughts

Thanks for your thoughtful and informative post. I must admit that I haven't been following the events much and when I made my first post wasn't aware that All Lives Matter could be used by racists to attack Black Lives Matter. I certainly do not condone that stand and didn't mean to offend anyone. It was just a random expression, it wasn't really a conscious choice. OTOH, after I have read up on it a little bit, I still feel like All Lives Matter is a pretty valid statement and does not warrant negative assumptions, as evident by examples such as:

LeBron
http://www.theroot.com/articles/news/2016/09/lebron-james-tells-media-all-lives-matter-will-stand-for-anthem/


Venus Williams
http://atlantablackstar.com/2016/09/30/venus-williams-states-all-lives-matter-response-serenas-heartfelt-post-police-brutality/

Laila Ali
http://www.westernjournalism.com/laila-ali-stands-tall-amid-criticism-proclaims-all-lives-matter/

Kevin Gates
http://cjonline.com/blog-post/floyd-lee/2016-10-03/advice-black-hip-hop-rapper-all-lives-matter

Keke Palmer
http://atlantablackstar.com/2016/07/14/keke-palmer-fiercely-defends-all-lives-matter-tweet-while-christina-milian-opts-for-damage-control/

http://www.breitbart.com/sports/2016/10/03/jock-journalists-condemn-all-lives-matter-protestor-as-racist-then-cops-take-off-his-gorilla-mask/


They are making good points it seems.


A few points in response:

- As I said earlier, I wrote it spontaneously, probably saw it somewhere, so I don't think I am dwelling with the semantics. As you said, it is a somewhat meaningless argument having to choose side and isn't whoever that is attacking the other side apparently the ones who are dwelling with the semantics?

- Isn't the fact that you need to use (and brown) signifies the fact that All Lives Matter could be as useful but just different?

- I'm not sure it's very wise to take All Lives Matter for granted. Before Thomas Jefferson etc during the enlightenment, equality wasn't necessarily something everyone can agree on. History usually changes gradually and at least it has gotten better. If not for Utopian ideals the Civil War might not have happened. It seems to be just as utopian to assume that everyone must be abide by it? It is something that needs to be constantly reminded of. Things could easily turn for the worse.

- I have no intention to make a All Lives Matter vs Black Lives Matter, I feel like they could be complimentary.

- Maybe some of the people who write All Lives Matter just want "blacks to shut up despite day after day of being bombarded with footage of murder and brutality of PoC", but I'm sure not all of them have that intention, (I don't) and could be "anti police brutality/systemic racial oppression" as well.

- So what concrete feasible (meaningful) solutions are there to be in place of a valid but more mild stance?

[MrDollarBills]

yeah, i mean you'd have to research what the #alllivesmatter rhetoric encompasses. their focus was mainly to downplay the cries of injustice, paint the Black Lives Matter movement as a terrorist group (which is garbage, even though i am not a BLM supporter), and to dehumanize black victims of police brutality and murder.

the #alllivesmatter trolls are also silent on police brutality against whites. they don't care because these people are usually in socioeconomic positions to the point where they believe they are above the stuff that happens to people that get caught up in run ins with cops. they just want the blacks to shut up, and the "SJW" whites to stop caring for them. It's honestly very sadistic when you look deeper into this stuff.

[ChokeFasncists]

yeah, i mean you'd have to research what the #alllivesmatter rhetoric encompasses. their focus was mainly to downplay the cries of injustice, paint the Black Lives Matter movement as a terrorist group (which is garbage, even though i am not a BLM supporter), and to dehumanize black victims of police brutality and murder.

the #alllivesmatter trolls are also silent on police brutality against whites. they don't care because these people are usually in socioeconomic positions to the point where they believe they are above the stuff that happens to people that get caught up in run ins with cops. they just want the blacks to shut up, and the "SJW" whites to stop caring for them. It's honestly very sadistic when you look deeper into this stuff.

That's not right. Good to know tho, so one would be more discreet, it's kinda like using a symbol like the swastika which is totally benign but had been used for bad actions.

[NyCeEvO]

yeah, i mean you'd have to research what the #alllivesmatter rhetoric encompasses. their focus was mainly to downplay the cries of injustice, paint the Black Lives Matter movement as a terrorist group (which is garbage, even though i am not a BLM supporter), and to dehumanize black victims of police brutality and murder.

the #alllivesmatter trolls are also silent on police brutality against whites. they don't care because these people are usually in socioeconomic positions to the point where they believe they are above the stuff that happens to people that get caught up in run ins with cops. they just want the blacks to shut up, and the "SJW" whites to stop caring for them. It's honestly very sadistic when you look deeper into this stuff.

Spot on MDB. Agree 100%. I notice this too and it's really bothersome.

[MrDollarBills]

Well, the New York Times did a piece, following this release, asking men if this is common, things they say and talk about in locker rooms, when they’re surrounded by other men and think no one else is listening. The result, as expected, was mostly “Nope.”

One person they asked for a comment was Nets guard Sean Kilpatrick, and he too was among the majority of men who thought that Trump’s language was something that completely crossed the line.

As he arrived for an N.B.A. preseason game on Saturday, Sean Kilpatrick, a guard with the Nets, said Mr. Trump’s comments strayed well beyond locker room talk.

“That’s too much,” Mr. Kilpatrick said. “Especially for what he’s trying to run for now. You don’t want America judging you on something like that.”

He added, “We kind of get a bad rap and a bad name for it because everyone thinks it’s cool to say, ‘Oh, it’s just locker room talk.’”

The people that chalk up what Trump said about grabbing a woman's vagina and getting away with it as locker room talk are being obtuse or are complete sickos.

Yes, men have conversations with other men about women that can trend toward lewd or inappropriate if overheard by women. Yes, we will say amongst ourselves if an attractive woman is in view something about her looks/physical appearance. It happens

"Man she's got some nice legs..."

"Oh wow, what a nice set of tits!!"

"Damn! She has a really fat/nice ass"

"Dude, I would so hit that".

You'd hear that in conversations. That in itself is "locker room talk" if its guys talking to other guys, most men aren't going to say that kind of stuff in front of women, but it happens. But never, have I ever been in a conversation with another man where someone openly brags about sexually assaulting a woman like its NORMAL. that's not "locker room talk", thats a sexual predator openly talking about what he feels he can do to a woman without permission. People will excuse anything

[ChokeFasncists]

Well, can a politics thread not be bumped tonight?

[shakendfries]

I'm personally waiting on the results so I can post the best crying Jordan memes


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[shakendfries]

Read on Twitter

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[MrDollarBills]

SORRY can't engage in politics on here. i'm not talking about the nets forum mods, but there's legit racist moderators on here. RealGM isn't a safe space for open political discourse by any means.

[shakendfries]

The creator of Dilbert provides a pretty articulate and reasonable argument on how he feels the tensions that have been amplified by the media could play out in the results tonight

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[shakendfries]

RA the Rugged Man goes in the opposite direction with his prediction, but points out the blatant corruption on the Democratic side

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