More than that, though: the "resistance to race", as Street puts it, even if it's a luxury, is no less progressive for that. One can hardly advocate for a world in which a black writer is a "writer" and not a "black writer" by self-identifying as a "white writer"--and feeling faux-guilty about it. I think the focus on whiteness here is entirely regressive. — jamalrob

Can also serve as a reply to @Judaka.

There's one form of it which I agree is regressive; if we end up talking about white individuals and guilt rather than institutions and oppression, that's not good. Australian aborigines know the value of a sponsored apology; it's just symbolism... It is conceptually extremely stupid to see inherent racial differences, or to essentialise them. A life condition where race has been made to matter is itself a form of injustice against the truth of our common nature. A resistance to race in that context shows solidarity and affirms mutual class interest. But that class solidarity is premised upon acknowledging the reality of systemic discrimination; that what keeps the disenfranchised down disproportionately keeps the disenfranchised racial category down, but it keeps most of the privileged race category down too. Just happens to be whites that built empire.

If you wanna look at how class works in a colonial power - it's going to put the colonised "in their place", as it used to be put in Britain. That members of the colonial power's privileged racial category end up in the same place shows it's not just about race. So there's a discussion of class interest in that.

There's also the other left angle where we talk about how white supremacy and its fascist actors are consistent with the function of capital; even being efficient disciplinary mechanisms for it. And further how the rhetoric of white supremacy and fascism are extremely effective in shifting centrist politics. The legacy of colonialism in a capitalist economy puts everyone in the same economic pressure cooker, it also promotes racism within the pressure cooker. Systemic discrimination being what it is, it keeps the colonised more "in their place" than the privileged race over time.

The creation of historical record is full of white supremacy. Professionalised epistemic injustice.

Let's hope that such scapegoating is recognised for what it is.

Sure, if we took the entire world in aggregate I would rather be white — BitconnectCarlos

Three things that means;
(1) You acknowledge the reality of global systemic racism.
(2) You know that it's almost always white supremacist in nature,
(3) You are aware that it's a social-political-economic matter, and the proximate cause of it isn't anything in "our nature".

Looks to me like you have no substantive disagreements with what I wrote.

Sure, if we took the entire world in aggregate I would rather be white — BitconnectCarlos

:eyes:

We're talking about the US, I take it? — BitconnectCarlos

Whole world mate.

No. But I do agree it can make it a harder sell. In my experience, white people often get uncomfortable whenever whiteness is brought into view in any way, then treat it as someone else's problem.

Edit: ultimately I think it comes from inappropriately personalised guilt - I mean, I'm white, it's easy to start getting uncomfortable when people point out defects tied to my sense of compassion. But the "systemic" part means that, really, unless you're a member of the 1%, your actions are only going to be influential to the extent you can collectivise/organise them - we're so saturated with narratives about the individual, especially with regard to prejudice, that "oh god what if the entire history of colonialism and continued subjugation of the political south is on my shoulders because I'm white" seems more immediate and gripping than "Huh, I guess I've benefitted a lot from those injustices, but ultimately my compassion and my morality side with addressing them"

So when someone talks to me about white supremacy, imperialist expansion and capitalists manufacturing the political landscape for profits, I don't know how to respond. — Judaka

Fair enough. I'll give you something of a worked example of how I see it. After emphasising common ground, I've tried to start somewhere concrete and domestic, and the end of the post is more abstract and international.

Some common ground we already have; systemic discrimination against non-whites. I think we imagine the same kind of thing by that. That's also a form of white supremacy; an interlocking series of incentives and disadvantages that simultaneously affords most whites relative advantages and some whites gigantic relative advantages. Prosaically, the chances of being in a position of economic, social and political opportunity depend heavily on whether one is white or not. That's a systemic effect; in this aspect white supremacy is a name for systemic racism that works against non-whites. It's well named, as it engenders socioeconomic power for whites relative to non-whites. In this sense, if you believe that an economy and a state discriminate against non-whites, then you believe that the state and economy are white supremacist; white supremacy as a practice rather than as a political opinion.

White supremacy as a political opinion was used to justify the continual deprivation of slaves and their descendants. It was also used against the Irish and the Greeks and the Italians, who were later welcomed into the white race when it became politically convenient. Who is and is not white was a matter of great political significance; non-whites who are most palatable to those so empowered were and are more likely to be more included.

That sense of palatability relates to the political issue of which crimes are pursued, which are punished, and how they are punished. A black kid selling weed on the streets to eat gets fucked up by the police, a white kid in a private school gets a slap on the wrist for the same. And even if they were both convicted of the crime, the sentences would be worse for the black kid. You may disagree with the specifics; but we both know this is a thing.

Notice; the crimes that police police are crimes that poor people do; like selling drugs to eat in a community with few legal job prospects. They are supposed to keep "neighbourhoods safe", but they don't prevent crimes in those neighbourhoods which are heavily policed (poor non-white) nor do they address the conditions that lead to those crimes being a thing there. Most of what they do is disproportionately imprison or brutalise people of colour for minor offences or nothing at all; a kind of forced eviction into prison labour.

The crimes which effect those communities every day are like wage theft, discriminatory housing policies, discriminating based on race for business start up loans. But that's not what the police do, if they "keep neighbourhoods safe"; they must do so in a way that disproportionately leads to brutality and conviction for minor offenses while doing nothing about the crimes that their denizens are subject to every day.

The power filter above being what it is, that's also a form of white supremacy; the crimes that prosecutors and investigators could work on to help those communities are not the crimes which are punished, and that's even before we start talking about the ludicrous police violence against POC's and that it's not punished, and that institutional reform was so distant it's taken a giganting uprising to force politicians into even considering it.

So then we gotta go to those politicians; they're not dumb, they know the majority of people live in a way more similar to the subordinate poor than their wealthy and educated fellow politicians. Why is it that it takes a gigantic uprising for institutional reform of the police to be on the bargaining table? But all it takes is someone to fact check the president on Twitter for his administration to force through an unconstitutional executive order. Why is it that politicians don't seem to care about the issues that effect most of their potential voters, but they intimately care about bullshit like that?

Why do they make it easier for vigilante debt collectors to intimidate and traumatise already struggling families of their own accord, but it takes an uprising to consider the obvious condition of oppression POCs find their way in?

So what decides what policies can be brought to the table? Well, "vote with your dollar", thing is a tiny minority of interests has the vast majority of the money; and they leverage it to buy influence - it's a threat. The same flavour of threat that most workers and unemployed face every day; behave adequately or lose what little livelihood you have. People respond to that on a gut level; don't do this or BIG else, "big else" for recipients of large corporate donation is "you lose loads of fucking money". There's another pressure put on; corporate doners will only fund those who are close to their interests; vote with your dollar. So it pays to be an advocate on political issues in favour of the corporate interests that have "voted" for you. Those with the money to fund politicians can shape the policy-advocacy landscape, and they do; a representative politics functioning as it should - those who are represented shape policy with their votes.

That institutionally cultivated indifference of politicians to the concerns of their voter base; that falls along race lines too, just like poverty. The issues that can practically be brought to the negotiating tables of policy are not the issues that need to be addressed for a more functional democracy and a more equal society.

That's all domestic though; and policy isn't just domestic, it's international. When a policy is adopted, it's going to be in a truly represented party's interests. Whose interests did the UK and US trained and sponsored coup of the democratically elected Mossadegh represent? Those who previously owned the oil or relevant company shares, which Mossadegh nationalised. Whose interests did the UK and US trained and sponsored coup of Allende serve? Those who owned the mines and agriculture and their company shares, which he nationalised. What of Lumumba, democratically elected to free Congo of the remnants of colonialism? US and Belgium sponsored the coup. Notice that the same adage about white supremacy being the flavour of our countries' systemic racism applies; the effected people are mostly POCs from the political south. The old power imbalances between colonial countries and colonised countries are still there; but the benefits are accrued through business, and the suppression of their national interest by our agents of corporate interest we call democracies.

If you look at locuses of power; who is truly represented in our "democracies" with their dollar voting regimes; it's corporate interest that shapes policy, both domestic and foreign, and it takes people burning shit down to get domestic reform out of those people.

People look at this stuff, like race separate from class, domestic separate from foreign, when the institutions that drive policy are international agents who use states as international vectors of subjugation and extraction; to the negligible benefit of those in the home territory, but mostly to the benefit of the interests they're payed to represent. If you're a member of the colonial power or its race in a business network of colonised countries; the difference between you and the subjugated is payed in interest on blood money.

And if you say "what about China", the CCP can go fuck itself too.

As for systemic racism, I think I know you well enough, you're smart enough to understand the very complicated set of problems but you decide to simplify it into "evil white men" anyway — Judaka

Your words, not mine.

I have no anxieties about describing demographic features of the wealth and power distribution when it fits and is well evidenced. If you need this to feel comfortable: it is not the fault of "individual white men" or "the white race" or whatever and "white people are not inherently evil".

This time I even agree with you on the lengthy issues and I'm bored of arguing against identity politics so let's skip this round — Judaka

How I see it is ultimately in terms of class. Historically white supremacy is a vouchsafing for imperialist expansion, modern day gigantic wealth+resource transfers out of the political south, a justification narrative for the disempowerment of racialised subjects in the imperial home territories through economic-political exclusion and the colonies through apartheid + puppet statecraft. There is also a media climate that allows it to grow as an ideology; literal outright Nazis (just one form of white supremacy) get invited on the news and Muslims are branded as not just terrorists but a threat to "Western" values. It pays to strategically cultivate white supremacy; an ideological vector of indifference towards the working class that part of the working class will enthusiastically buy into because they're pissed off (from their living conditions), badly educated and media illiterate, or given a genuine economic incentive to (oy you Londoner, good job here, just beat the shit out of strikers and victimise the poor, you'll even get to wear a silly hat!). Divide and rule.

The economic gains of slavery and imperialism were left to "trickle down", effecting very many very little in the home countries, until redistributive measures (like nationalising industries, ensuring very high employment within them, welfare, subsidised education and high progressive taxes) split the blood money slightly more equitably in the home territory because no one wants their reserve army of labourers getting uppity on their doorstep, it's bad for business.

We can both agree that "identity politics" isn't critical enough, I just think it's a start; if you start to question the social construction of identity and its relationship with economics, you start to look into how that works too.

Ultimately; if you're pissed off with how the economic conditions are rigged, support those who the conditions are rigged against as effectively as you can; you share resonant economic and political interests with them as they're in the same boat as you - they face more extreme forms of the same thing and acts of outright, personal racism.

Policies, history, institutional practices perpetuating poverty and disadvantage splitting along race lines is a current reality and a major problem.

Y/N?

Is that perpetuation of poverty and disadvantage splitting along race lines an injustice?

Y/N?

Are the people who are in positions of power actively administrating the perpetuation of these injustices and otherwise failing to address them almost exclusively white men?

Y/N?

I read @Benkei's essay and his posts in this thread. I think you're being quite uncharitable. If you're happy saying that poverty and disadvantage split along race lines, there's the other end of the split; wealth and advantage, and they're white men. Non-whites disadvantaged, whites advantaged. I'm pretty sure you agree with that. And I'm pretty sure you'd say Y to those things above.

What matters for the thread topic is whether and how state-economic conditions behave like fractionating columns for skin melanin content. And you seem to agree that it does.

It just seems you're getting angry that Benkei's called a spade a spade.

I don't care what your skin colour is. — Judaka

No one disagreeing with you is saying that you care about skin colour.

Everyone disagreeing with you is simply saying that poverty does. The policies, history and institutional practices that make poverty and disadvantage continue to split along race lines - that's systemic racism.

Not about you and what you do or do not see.

Just that you agree with everything substantive the people you're criticising are basing their arguments on.

What's ironic about discussions about economic redistribution based on race is that it parallels the very same racist policies that it is trying to help undo the consequences of. The government recognises your right to specific economic and social advantages by virtue of your race. They are specifically crafted advantages based on your race. It's not comparable to interpreted advantages based on statistics on race. — Judaka

States and economies acting in ways that disproportionately disadvantage non-whites is bad.

That's exactly the stuff pointed to by systemic racism critique.

If you make policies that address the needs of the poor and disenfranchised, you will make policies that effect people differently along race lines if the demography of poverty is already race skewed. It is already race skewed.

It would end up being race skewed even if articulated in non-racial terms.

As it is, I see people turning up to tear the statue down in the very fucking clothing that's being made by actual slaves right now. Taking photos of it on phones whose minerals are mined by actual slaves, right now. Telling all their friends about it on social media platforms hosted by companies supporting actual slavery right now. — Isaac

I quite like tearing down statues. Let's not pretend that statues are a neutral form of speech; they're not part of a scientific discourse, they're literal historical monuments.

So what do historical monuments do? I see two functions; firstly and less importantly they are soft historical reminders - little more than an injunction to wonder, maybe someone sees a statue and finds out a bit about the past through the autobiographical detail of who the statue is of.

That past is always written though, it's always been alloy of old stories tempered with current spin therefore it's an alloy of old spin too. So the second function; they are ideological symbols; the cast body of the person stands in for the spinned old stories they're involved with; they're metonyms. But what fucker had enough power to tell stories speaking in statues and plinths? Statues are a history shaping discourse almost invariably told by the interests of the powerful. There's a statue outside Westminster Abbey of William Wilberforce; who in our popular historical myth "ended slavery".

But no statue of Thomas Clarkson; he's a literal footnote, commemorated with a small tablet in the same place in 1996; who was more instrumental in organising the British public against slavery. And even then; it's certainly not an admission of guilt in statue form that the government absolutely loved slavery and indentured servitude until the public was agitated against it, the colonies were revolting and they could sell huge "reparation" payments to the gentry for the resources they were losing (which only ended in 2015). Of all the things they could've commemorated, they choose the guy who the parliament hated until it was convenient to turn him into a symbol of their benevolence, and teach UK kids that it was the fucking parliament that ended slavery, not the slaves, not even the people. (anger not directed at you, anger directed at the UK)

Tearing down a metonym is a way of fighting the injustice in how history's shaped. Destroying shrines to unjust nation-myths is good; but it doesn't suffice.

People responding to you aren't trying to invalidate what you've suffered, they're trying to show you how shallowly you're interpreting why it happened.

You lived in a damn poor place with no social programs; that's a recipe for crime, that's a recipe for victimising each other to get what you need to survive.

And I get that you were really hurt by how you were treated. And you want to hold the people who treated you like that responsible and vent; that's normal. What's inappropriate is how you're contextualising it.

You were put in a pressure cooker; if you were in the housing projects in Glasgow you might've had similar experiences. How you write makes it sound like it's about race on an individual level, you repeatedly wrote "SUPREME BLACK RACE" all the while you're suffering from the same economic discrimination that keeps communities of colour poor and disenfranchised.

Your anger is justified, you simply have the wrong target for what caused you to be treated like that in the first place. People hurt each other when they're hurt themselves. You and the people who victimised you were hurt by the same conditions of life.

You've probably hurt too much to forgive, but don't let that stop you from understanding.

Let's take a moment to look at a couple of conservative argument patterns.

What do conservatives want? Usually for things to stay the same, in some broad sense. It's very difficult to get your run of the mill "conservative moderate" to actually have a clearly stated opinion on anything substantive. But they do do a few things:

(1) "I'm not pro-X, I'm anti-anti-X" - "I'm not for the continued subjugation and alienation from justice of POCs, I'm simply against what activists with those concerns are doing at the moment".

It's the same shit for every prejudice. "I'm not against black people getting the vote, I'm just against the actions the protesters are taking", "I'm not against women's suffrage, I'm just against their activists using extreme tactics", "I'm not for service providers being able to refuse service based on ethnicity/sexuality/gender, I'm just against forcing people to speak in a certain way", "I'm not for maintaining gender and racial equality in hiring practices, I'm just for employers having the right to do things as they see fit.". It's the same shit all the time.

Notice that the argument style never has to offer substantive content on the issues of the effected group. It's an effective way to gainsay any progressive point.

Also note that the argument can be applied universally to all anti-X (antiracist) political agitation while the argument's user can insist that there is some pure, imagined morally unambiguous form of anti-X action. "I just wish anti-X activists behaved in this imaginary way, then they would be vindicated". In discursive function it gainsays anti-X agitation universally, in logical structure its user need not fully commit to the idea so long as they have this ideal state of things in mind, "Yes I'm pro-X, but not like this... Not like this".

(2) "If you're for X, that makes you a stereotype associated with X"; "So you're supporting protesters' decisions to destroy property and loot, that makes you an anarchist/communist/fascist/authoritarian".

Notice that in a less inflammatory context, that would immediately be recognised as a hasty generalisation, and a deflection onto side issues; the IRL political opinion equivalent of thread derailing. Further notice that it's a terrible thought pattern for actually getting at the facts of things. It is tribalist thinking at its worst; "I put you in a box, so I don't have to listen to what you're saying about the substantive issues".

Personal experience; division 1 B&T is one of the most eye opening things I've read in metaphysics. The formal structure of experiential time in Div 2 is profound. Have some frustrations with him:

(1) Scientific/conceptual knowledge being relegated to a present at hand understanding and away from the "core tasks" of philosophy.
(2) How he approached the history of ideas is very fecund (retrojecting; linking discourse analysis and metaphysics), how he equated that with the history of the understanding of being is not.
(3) Little to no politics and social stuff.
(4) There's a lot of "formal structure" that piggybacks off suggestive examples that maybe don't generalise as far as he wants ("ontological moods", the centrality of anxiety and being toward death).
(5) Dasein is mature; there's little discussion of learning and socialisation.

Seeing a human being as "a Dasein" misses out a lot which is relevant, what is "ontic" is not "merely ontic".

Very relevant for broader context. Some of it is on BlackLivesMatter as an international movement.

Also for the discussion about psychiatriy, relevant quote: "One of the things neoliberalism does is take social and economic problems and turn them into emotional and individual problems".

what's the cool intent about? — praxis

Whether @ernestm is relating an extremely painful story and using problematic tropes to lash out vs whether @ernestm has constructed or is using an extremely painful story as a vector of racial discrimination.

If you want my mod decision on it; seeing as ernestm's recent posts don't have a clear history of using discriminatory tropes in that way, I'm inclined to err on the side of caution and charity; I believe he's being true to his namesake, ernestm.

If you want why I think erring on the side of caution in cases like this is a good modding strategy; this is an open access forum. Moderating based on the ideological function of a post rather than its substantive content should only be considered when the poster has a clear history of supporting discriminatory ideologies in that way, and in a manner where the substantive content of their posts demonstrably uses discriminatory tropes for discriminatory purposes with discriminatory intent.

We have to be able to distinguish unfortunate phrasing and problematic opinion from propagandising and alt-right cooption. Attending to a poster's character matters a lot here.

Good luck.

:point:

Poster intent matters.

Eh, if it's an artfully constructed justification narrative for racism, it won't stick around long.

That's fucking tragic. Desperate hurting people hurting desperate hurting people. :sad:

It did raise the value of the houses, which I thought people would like; but I didn't know that most of the houses were rented, not owned, off the official market, and when their landlords wanted more money, they'd bang on my door, sometimes after midnight, shouting how I was a stupid white asshole who didnt appreciate who awful their life was, blame me for their rent increase because I hadn't left the streets full of rotting crap and shit, and always demanding I give them some money. — ernestm

Fuck those landlords.

To be fair, posters here do it too, it's more likely to be explained though.

When I share this on Facebook, I am told I am a 'privielged white sh*t who is exactly causing the problem.' No one at all on Facebook groups even voices any concern that the same happen to other people as happened to me. — ernestm

Let me try and be a more understanding version of a social media hate mob.

There are certain topics; mostly race and gender; where you have to be careful about the position that your utterances have in the conversation. Some examples.

Social media feminist: The gender pay gap still exists and isn't shrinking.
Randomer: Men still get sent to die in war way more than women.
Social media hate mob: Get your prejudice out of here!

Social media anti-racism activist: The legacy of slavery and imperialism leads poverty to split along race lines in every country in the political north.
Randomer: Even though the majority of people in the 1% are white, the majority of white people are not part of the 1%.
Social media anti-racism activist: Stop enabling the exploitation of non-whites across the globe.

People with left politics on social media can have itchy trigger fingers. This is because they're so used to the randomer making those points to undermine their own; the randomer's utterances might be very agreeable, and have the intent to highlight an under-appreciated aspect of complexity in the discussion. But most of the time the use of these statements is as a counterpoint. Even if they're true, the assumption that they are making a counterpoint to the social media hate mob's beliefs is what they're reacting to.

So with you; highlighting that living in a poor mostly black neighbourhood with gang violence problems while you (and your family?) have white skin might be totally fucked in a slightly different way than people appreciate, as well as being totally fucked due to your neighbourhood being on the receiving end of systemic racism... You put that among the wolves like Randomer does above? They're used to seeing such things used to undermine progress in the discourse on the issues they're vocal about.

If you treat it like a counterpoint; if you raise it when you feel underappreciated or neglected make sure you're writing with care and nuance, and that you try your best to do legwork to understand where they're coming from too.

Don't you think 'white grievance' populism is a (not so) new - hyper-mediated - false consciousnes — 180 Proof

Maybe place specific? Some of it is I think. Some of it is scapegoating applied to genuine economic issues (see Chester's talking points for an example).

I grew up in a rare conservative bastion in Scotland; mostly an agricultural community; I didn't even see any POC in person until I was 15. The town's had less and less jobs over the course of my lifetime - more boarded up shops, major industry leaving, no institutions of higher learning, less and less funding for the failing state schools and no private schools in sight. The ruling classes won't touch it with a barge pole; except on their holidays. So there's lots of gentrifying investment; the place has loads of coffee shops and pubs and hairdressers and hotels, each business doesn't last long unless they're franchised. It's a holiday and retirement area for people who made a better living elsewhere.

The racist sentiment there is actually directed towards the worsening economic conditions; it was a poor community before the industries left and before the massive erosion of the welfare state. It's the immigrants' fault that our town is like this; they're coming here taking our jobs (mechanisation killed most of them, industrial flight killed the rest). they're putting a squeeze on farmers' livelihoods (focusing on the price competition from EU food imports rather than the subsidies). It's a scapegoat.

So when some fucker complains about the local travelling folk being unable to get a job, living off government welfare, while the fucker has to work long hours in precarious jobs and put in loads of illegal unpayed work, they're actually interpreting the structural violence of class which they're subject to in terms of an imaginary opposition of class interest along race lines.

In terms of media narrative (or ideological state apparatus), it pays to foster a blame narrative on immigrants and POCs for the same reason it pays to foster distrust along radical/centrist lines in the anti-racist protests; the interests of capital are in you fighting with your allies and not knowing who they are, even when a white working class Brit has way more interest in common with a third gen Indian working class family.

I think whites coming from the lower rungs of the class ladder feel alienated from the centrist/liberal structural racism narrative, because they're actually subject to comparable (though certainly better) conditions.

Maybe it's worthwhile remembering the origin of the term "redneck"; it's a derogatory class signifier against those whites that had to work in the fields. It looks to me in the same ballpark as the "divide and rule" and hate mongering/scientific racism/white supremacy facilitating competition between the indentured servants of the Irish and black chattel slaves, ultimately "justifying" their subordination and subjugation while giving structural incentives/validation to fight between themselves.

Whiteness has always been a justification narrative of the ruling classes, if my fellow pasty skinned celts @Baden weren't necessarily considered white...

@NOS4A2

What changes do you think the police and surrounding legal system need?

Many times the real solution is just to form a new police department. Let everybody go, start from scratch. — ssu

Without addressing the issues that allow police officers to get away with this, and make them really lethal, I doubt that would do much. Cops don't get fired and blacklisted if they've got previous instances of brutality and murder, cops write statements to cover up their crimes, prosecutors go very light on them, police unions resist changes to protect suspects, the new cops would have military grade arms...

Hashtag not all cops?

Yeah me too. Updated list:

(1) Mandatory body worn cameras including audio.
(2) Better police training in threat assessment.
(3) Better police training in arrest making holds; emphasis on safety to person who is arrested.
(4) Misconduct laws regarding failing threat assessment, camera guidelines and arrest technique leading to blacklisting an officer for failing them.
(5) Police have to write their reports independently.
(6) Prosecution and charging of police officers by independent prosecutors. Review of current independent prosecution.
(7) Incidents like this leading to police being fired and blacklisted from law enforcement and private security.
(8) Independent examination of evidence in cases where someone was seriously wounded or died.
(9) Better police training in threat deescalation.
(10) Police demilitarisation.
(11) New laws to restrict police use of force.
(12) Federal investigation of police departments.

Intervention in the communities to make 'em better and not just cop at them are good too,

(13) Investment in community organisations (this worked a lot with Glasgow and knife crime); educating/feeding people.

See here for where the strikethroughs come from. Thanks @StreetlightX for the resource.



If having police brutality on camera doesn't end up making police accountable, the whole thing is rotten.

Indeed. There is a massive double standard.

More on topic: here a few suggestions for people to chew on that would make the police less lethal to minorities and more accountable.

(1) Mandatory body worn cameras including audio.
(2) Better police training in threat assessment.
(3) Better police training in arrest making holds; emphasis on safety to person who is arrested.
(4) Misconduct laws regarding failing threat assessment, camera guidelines and arrest technique leading to blacklisting an officer for failing them.
(5) Police have to write their reports independently.
(6) Prosecution and charging of police officers by independent prosecutors. Review of current independent prosecution.
(7) Incidents like this leading to police being fired and blacklisted from law enforcement and private security.
(8) Independent examination of evidence in cases where someone was seriously wounded or died.
(9) Better police training in threat deescalation.

Even if all these were addressed, it wouldn't address the overall societal conditions that lead to economic disadvantage and crime.

A bad target. I hope he gets justice. Substantive issues surrounding the protest remain unchanged.

I am suspicious, however, since the footage comes from Infowars. The homeless guy was apparently really homeless, though.

Phonesex with webcam/wanking together over webcam.
Alternatively people writing personalised erotica in emotes while wanking, like love letters with read receipts.

Makes sense, sorry for responding out of context!

You have to laugh at the level of idiocy of this administration, tragic as it is. — Baden

I don't think it's idiotic;

(1) Journalists being assaulted in the street.
(2) Army firing on protesters.
(3) Leveraging public panic to try and motivate police action against known dissident orgs.

These are not good signs. :sad:

The article you linked suggested as such, no? It's ambiguous whether the officers heard gunfire and shot someone unrelated to it, or whether they actually shot the person who shot at them. From the statement and subsequent investigation into "parties of interest", it seems like the officers did not know who shot at them and shot into a crowd of otherwise fleeing protesters.

:up:

I'm surprised a surprise shot didn't kill an officer.

Good things he's incompetent. — Marchesk

The base isn't your "average republican", the base is the kind of national guard that would shoot into a crowd. Or a journalist. Or sweep through neighbourhoods with no protests in them and shoot people standing in their door.

That is who he is appealing to. It isn't a bug, it's a feature.

Edit: also, it's not about Trump. This is a side issue, he's just a concentrated form of political legitimisation for the kind of fuckwit that would fire on a crowd of anti-racist protesters. Will the guard be punished? Will there be reforms of the national guard? Or is it more likely that the national guard being called in and shooting dissidents is business as usual? History sides with the latter.

Yes. It's almost like major political support among national guard for a president who wanted the national guard to shoot protesters has predictable effects.