ACAB (formerly G Floyd) - Tyre Nichols video released, it's bad

Politics & News
776

I know, and I didn’t mean to imply that you did. I was elaborating on my earlier comment.

“Only violence gets things done”, and “violence always gets things done”, and “violence is always the best way to get things done (by any reasonable metric)” aren’t credible claims. I don’t feel that @ microbet was making those claims. But he’s the most prolific of UnStuckers, and he can speak for himself.

“Sometimes violence gets things done” is what I feel @ microbet was getting on about.

But my response wasn’t to his comment, I was responding to your comment. Which I’d paraphrase as…

  • “I feel history shows non-violence is more effective than violence (given any reasonable metric)”.

And my response was that you might find your feelings are not confirmed if you take a dive into the actual research that has been done. My further elaboration was that this is a false dichotomy. History could well show that a “mix” of non-violence and violence is more effective than -both- non-violence only -and- violence only (given some reasonable metrics)".

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777

The purpose of activism isn’t to mirror the status-quo. SMH. The purpose of activism is to change the status-quo.

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778

I’m reading Angela Davis’ book Are Prisons Obsolete. Because of the intertwinedness of the various institutions within the so called criminal justice system, there are some points that she makes that can be related to police abolition.

“The prison is one of the most important features of our image environment. This has caused us to take the existence of prisons for granted. The prison has become a key ingredient of our common sense. It is there, all around us. We do not question whether it should exist. It has become so much a part of our lives that it requires a great feat of imagination to envision life beyond the prison.”

"While public discourse has become more flexible, the emphasis is almost inevitably on generating the changes that will produce a better prison system. In other words, the increased flexibility that has allowed for critical discussions of the problems associated with the expansion of prisons also restricts this discussion to the question of prison reform.

As important as reforms may be–the elimination of sexual abuse and medical neglect in women’s prisons, for example–frameworks that rely exclusively on reforms help to produce the stultifying idea that nothing lies beyond the prison. Debates about strategies of decarceration, which should be the focal point of our conversations on the prison crisis, tend to be marginalized when reform takes the center stage. The most immediate question today is how to prevent the further expansion of prison populations and how to bring as many imprisoned women and men as possible back into what prisoners call “the free world”. How can we move to decriminalize drug use and the trade in sexual services? How can we take seriously strategies of restorative rather than exclusively punitive justice? Effective alternatives involve both transformation of the techniques for addressing “crime” and of the social and economic conditions that track so many children from poor communities, and especially communities of color, into the juvenile system and then on to prison. The most difficult and urgent challenge today is that of creatively exploring new terrains of justice, where the prison no longer serves as our major anchor."

“If we are already persuaded that racism should not be allowed to define the planet’s future and if we can successfully argue that prisons are racist institutions, this may lead us to take seriously the prospect of declaring prisons obsolete.”

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779

Yeah.

As far as my point with the picture of the burning police station, I wouldn’t over-generalize that. I submit that the more radical (either property damage or obstruction) protests have been more impactful and absolutely essential for any of the police budget cuts.

I would guess that if all the protests were like the women’s marches of 2017, all we’d be seeing now are commissions, blue ribbon panels, and then more spending on police - ostensibly for training, but ultimately perhaps misused. (Like the moderate centrist response to the horrors on the border)

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And yet black folks overwhelmingly picked HRC and Biden over Bernie. Maybe because a lot of them actually lean towards the center-left on policy, and on some level they don’t trust ultra far left white politics. Maybe they fear what will happen to them in a chaotic marxist revolution could actually be worse than their current situation + fighting for incremental change.

That or they’re mistaken and white leftists really do know what’s best for them better than they do.

782

I’m not really sure how my point could be more clear. I trust black folks’ own take on which movements they can trust more than white leftists on the internet. They have a lot of experience in this area.

Black people as a group have had a chance to pick Bernie twice and rejected him. And even Bernie isn’t proposing stuff nearly as radical as the solutions in this thread. You don’t have to search very hard to find bernie bros complaining about black people not knowing what’s best for them.

There is a passage by James Baldwin in his essay “Journey to Atlanta” that I believe explains some of the apprehension about Sanders’s grand plans in a way that I could never equal, and although it is long, I’m going to quote it here in full.

Of all Americans, Negroes distrust politicians most, or, more accurately, they have been best trained to expect nothing from them; more than other Americans, they are always aware of the enormous gap between election promises and their daily lives. It is true that the promises excite them, but this is not because they are taken as proof of good intentions. They are the proof of something more concrete than intentions: that the Negro situation is not static, that changes have occurred, and are occurring and will occur — this, in spite of the daily, dead-end monotony. It is this daily, dead-end monotony, though, as well as the wise desire not to be betrayed by too much hoping, which causes them to look on politicians with such an extraordinarily disenchanted eye.

This fatalistic indifference is something that drives the optimistic American liberal quite mad; he is prone, in his more exasperated moments, to refer to Negroes as political children, an appellation not entirely just. Negro liberals, being consulted, assure us that this is something that will disappear with “education,” a vast, all-purpose term, conjuring up visions of sunlit housing projects, stacks of copybooks and a race of well-soaped, dark-skinned people who never slur their R’s. Actually, this is not so much political irresponsibility as the product of experience, experience which no amount of education can quite efface.

Baldwin continues:

“Our people” have functioned in this country for nearly a century as political weapons, the trump card up the enemies’ sleeve; anything promised Negroes at election time is also a threat leveled at the opposition; in the struggle for mastery the Negro is the pawn.

Even black folks who don’t explicitly articulate this intuitively understand it.

History and experience have burned into the black American psyche a sort of functional pragmatism that will be hard to erase. It is a coping mechanism, a survival mechanism, and its existence doesn’t depend on others’ understanding or approval.

However, that pragmatism could work against the idealism of a candidate like Sanders.

Now maybe some black Marxist leader will emerge and galvanize the black community behind the cause. But until that happens I’m skeptical that white leftists really speak for, know, or care that much about what’s best for black folks. I think their position is more about hitching a ride on the BLM movement to achieve their own dreams of revolution.

783

Black Marxist leaders are killed or put behind bars

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784

True. But that doesn’t change the rest of this. Black people overwhelmingly do not want to abolish the police. But white leftists are basically saying, “trust us, this time it will be different, we know what’s best for you”.

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785

Black people on the whole pick terrible people to vote for. Not nearly as bad as white people, but still terrible.

And thinking you know what’s best for everyone is what voting is all about.

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786

I’m not sure this is definitely what happened but I think similarly to the way Donald Trump was known because of TV and The Apprentice and shit, Bill was very popular so Hillary was more well known and Biden was Obama’s VP: so duh. We all know Trump voters are not voting in their best interests.

788

More outside agitators ITT !!!1! It’s patronizing to imply that black folk can’t develop class consciousness on their own.

And… we’re back to the conspiracy theory that BLM Portland have been cooped by those pesky white leftist kids again. SMH.

792

There’s also a pretty lol-tastical feedback loop here…

  • Liberal: Everyone needs to vote for the LCD Donkey… because otherwise it’s end of times.

  • Liberal: Everyone voted for the LCD Donkey… therefore whatever LCD policies the Donkeys spew is what everyone wants.

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793

The movement in Portland is overwhelmingly popular.

"Around 70% of those surveyed said they hadn’t participated in any protests since June and another near 70% said they didn’t have a close friend or relative who works in law enforcement. The majority of participants said they approved of demonstrations in the city, with 92% supporting “non-violent protests” and 67% in favor of what was described as “these protests.”

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794

Yeah that’s kind of my point. The movement that started about BLM somehow has its longest sustained protest carried out by mostly white protesters in one of the whitest and most liberal major cities in the country. The same pool of mostly white antifa protesters that were clashing with Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer a while back. Going back to the WTO anarchists protests I’d bet it’s a lot of the same crew.

I feel like they’re just doing what they’ve done for a long time, but slapping a BLM label on it for now.

Someone like Sabo to me is a good example. I’m sure he truly believes a Marxist revolution will be the best thing for black people. But still, for him it’s mostly about the revolution. Ending police brutality is just one expected outcome of the revolution he wants.

For the vast majority of the BLM protesters nationwide - it’s 100% about ending police brutality and zero % about any kind of revolution. I feel like this thread should be about what the vast majority of BLM protesters want - and not every pragmatic solution met with “just abolish the police, it’s that simple” - which is my main point. We already have a thread just for abolishing the police.

It’s frustrating not to be able to suggest what I see as real potential solutions (like sane gun laws) w/o having to argue whether the police should even exist - every single time.

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796

It’s definitely a trust issue from everything I’ve read. Black people watched Biden play second banana to Obama for 8 years. Black people trusted Bill Clinton apparently enough to extend it to HRC.

797

Besides being gibberish, this is just incredibly rude. Why are you speculating about my internal thought processes? Why are you accusing me of bad faith? It’s just as rude X doing something Y would rather she not, and Y responding by whining that X is “throwing a tantrum”. Here at UnStuck, where we are strangers on the interwebs, there is never any reason to speculate about other’s internal mental states.

This is the second unprovoked, off topic, and gratuitous personnal attack you’ve made upon me in the last two days.

I’m going to as you politely: stop doing this.

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801

Rochester has had huge protests everyday for over a week.

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803

You’re better than this post.

804

When I first read this sentence I didn’t parse “center-left” and was absolutely certain you were talking about abolitionists here. My proposal is that the functions of police be reduced, one at a time, and replaced by specialist agencies not armed with guns. The abolitionist proposal is that we completely overhaul the social and governmental structure of the United States, as a step one of doing anything about out of control police. I’m kind of speechless about which side you think is demanding “a holistic framework covering all human activity” here lol.

This is just stupidity. All the white people you organize with are leftists as well. This has everything to do with the sort of people you mix with and nothing to do with what Black people in general want.

This is also true of white politicians vs white “intellectuals and activists” and reflects the fact that “intellectuals and activists” are 1) iconoclasts by nature, that’s the job and 2) that leftists define “intellectual” ideologically. For example, Sam Harris is a public intellectual by any reasonable definition, but if I say so, you will have a conniption, because you disallow that description for anyone who doesn’t share your politics.

It’s amazing to watch people sit here and argue that their echo chambers are reality and the way people actually vote in real life is some sort of mirage. No self awareness whatsoever.

805

To the liberals, life is like ordering off a menu. They’d like a bowl of capitalism, not to spicy so leave out the slavery and sharecropping… and for sure they want to hold all of the r-word-ism.

They want it that way. Unfortunately for them, it’s the other.

As J.Muir said, in a different context: “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe”. And as M.King said in exactly this context: “We must see now that the evils of racism, economic exploitation and militarism are all tied together… you can’t really get rid of one without getting rid of the others”.

The takeaway is, of course, this part: you can’t really get rid of one without getting rid of the others.

And it’s not just r-word-ism, capitalism, and war mongering that are different faces of the same demon. Another good example is environmental justice.

Environmental activists are, in fact, a demographic that contains a lot of relatively privileged white folk. Environmental justice activists are constantly hearing the same kinda screed that some of the liberals are spewing ITT. Such as (and to write a little fan fiction)…

These white big city limousine liberals don’t really care about the poc folk who live near the petrochemical plants. They’re only interested in the fairy darters and turtles and enjoying their hikes. They don’t care about working poc folk. They’d shut down all the jobs if we let them. These white coastal elite dandies are nothing but outside agitators !!!1!

Of course, and just like BLM, if we examine how actual environmental justice activists see things, we get a different pix. Here is how activist E.Yeampierre phrased things…

For us, as part of the climate justice movement, to separate those things is impossible. The truth is that the climate justice movement, people of color, indigenous people, have always worked multi-dimensionally because we have to be able to fight on so many different planes.

When I first came into this work, I was fighting police brutality at the Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund. We were fighting for racial justice. We were in our 20s and this is how we started. It was only a few years after that I realized that if we couldn’t breathe, we couldn’t fight for justice and that’s how I got into the environmental justice movement. For us, there is no distinction between one and the other.

Notice the exact same takeaway points as M.King above…“to separate those things is impossible… For us, there is no distinction between one and the other”

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