I 'm just trying to make sure that the reporting of events stays balanced. I don’t know that people here even realize that there was another police shooting last night. I just found out about it myself a few minutes ago. The claim is this guy was armed, but it’s unknown if he was a protestor or not. It may not be related to the other shooting. Some of the late night protestors have been throwing lit bottles and things at the cops, so it’s anyone’s guess.
I don’t pretend to speak for any contingent of Black America or the LGBT movement. Those that do seem to think that telling me that only Blacks and LGBT have done anything sounds like divisive bigotry/chauvinism to me.
But all of this is off topic. The topic should be: Which way is it to Ferguson?
This probably doesn’t belong anywhere near here, but the phrase “peaceful protest” has always sounded ‘off’ in my head, mainly because it’s an assumption. You can plan for a peaceful protest, and exhort the participants to refrain from violence, but until it’s over, you can’t be certain. It’s the same with “routine procedure” or “controlled demolition”.
Whoa, just over the radio stream that somebody got shot at the protest (not sure if it was from a less-than-lethal) and that person is being sent to the hospital
I wasn’t trying to report the headline - just the story. Note how I wrote it up. I only linked to an available source I could find quickly because I was on omw to the grocery store.
It’s true, you simply cannot count on the police to remain peaceful when you threaten their absolute domination of everything within their line of sight, with your opinion.
Any person not in uniform, or who has any interest in dissent is therefore probably a radical, and probably dangerous.
The police only have military grade hammers now, so we are all just nails now. But we can starve the bastards, and we must.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the human ego lately, and how hard it is for some people to admit when they are wrong, particularly when it’s something very serious; I’m willing to bet these guys (and the cop who basically started all this) are subconsciously making lots of excuses and self-assuring explanations for why they are doing the right thing. It’s not going to be easy for them to step back and see themselves from the outside.
There is also the fact that police live in kind of a bubble, telling each other that they are the good guys-- consider those “thin blue line” stickers you see on cars, a not-so-secret admission that they think they are above the law when it comes to traffic/parking violations. I sometimes get the impression that a lot of people who join the police aren’t interesting in the law or criminology, or “protecting and serving” the community, they are people who like to be in control of the situation and boss others around (I could be wrong, I’m certainly not saying all cops are this way.)
Ultimately the militarization of local police forces is just the tip of the iceberg, the issues run a lot deeper, but giving them all this military gear is certainly exacerbating the situation.
there were two places, both rumored to have called the cops on mike before he was killed. there are a lot of reportbacks floating around, most notably on anarchistnews.org (beware heavy trolls). many people only post things there.
