Tag Archives: police brutality

The United States as a Police State

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I was just reading this article on JSTOR from right after Jean-Bertrand Aristide was first forced into exile by the Haitian military, and how one way to bring stability back to Haiti at the time is to create a police state, which had already been tried and failed (the other was to build democratic institutions in Haiti through party-list PR elections and an independent judiciary).

I wonder if this applies to us.

Is this how we maintain the semblance of peace while our elections system is below international standards, maintained by at least 50 election regimes who are in jealous, bitter legal conflict with each other, and threatened by a racist party which is willing to sell the postal service for parts and gum up the census returns to exclude noncitizen residents in order to, among other things, ensure their victory at the polls?

Does the larger body of those who have a monopoly on violence – military, reserve, law enforcement and armed partisan civilians – actually maintain a police state?

We have an incredible number of military bases per capita. I wonder if we have the most domestic military bases in the world, in addition to the most overseas military bases.

We have over 17,000 law enforcement agencies across the country, and we have the world’s largest prison population, maintained largely by at least 50 state governments.

We live with the legacies (and ongoing practices) of redlining and housing discrimination, draw up discriminatory districts for elections and for boards of education, segregate against multi-family housing through downzoning, and create whole cities from non-annexed land so that those apartment-dwellers don’t move near and hurt the property value.

We keep people apart by force, and have built our entire political system upon keeping people apart through geographical isolation of the undesirables. And we’re supposed to be OK with this when we see the destruction, waste and resentment caused by this forced isolation? When so many of us deride any semblance of overriding responsibility to other Americans in the name of convenience because we’re not one of those city people, only to be the recipient or cause of someone’s receiving of COVID-19?

When the Third Reconstruction comes, I hope it means we can opt out of being residents of any state and just be citizens of this country. I hope it means that we can abolish state prisons, create a federal voter roll for a single voter registration website, replace the U.S. House’s elections with party-list proportional representation (or, as a half-measure, ranked-choice voting), move to single-payer healthcare, and establish not only an affirmative right to vote, but also an affirmative right to participate in free and fair elections.

VIDEO: I Spoke at Columbus City Council for a Citizens’ Review Board

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Went to the council meeting and spoke in favor of a citizens’ review board with subpoena powers for Columbus, largely from the perspective of Black LGBT people and the high rate of police misconduct we face. Short and sweet speech, in and out.

Touching moments when the widow of Kenneth Walker and the relative of the triple homicide victims in Upatoi area also spoke in favor. I left with Raijeim and Connie when the opposition went on for way too long.

Also talked with the Muscogee County Republican Party chair about, among other things, ranked choice voting. He’s not sold on it but I’d *really* like to talk with him more.

A rare sighting of me outside lol

(White/Cis/Het/Male) Class-first Politics

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So I’m reading this one tweetstorm from an Irish venture capitalist on how to take back power from conservative and white nationalist politics.

Sounds like an interesting thread, but then I see this:

“Let me tell you what you can’t defend: illegal immigrants, Muslim immigration, most identity politics, pronoun-style feminism, world peace.”….

“Things you cannot attack: foreign wars, the police, mass surveillance, 1984-style use of the internet, and expect key escrow and worse.”…..

“All that territory is ceded. There’s simply no way a right wing government will tolerate mass outcry about those issues, or serious dissent.”

Earlier in the thread, he suggests exploiting fault lines between Confederate and Christian demographics and appealing to the latter because they’re the largest demographic in this country. Later in the thread, he suggests the defense of abortion access should be the best cause around which the center and left should rally.

So, if I’m reading this right, intersectional social justice should be put on hold or outright discarded from the program until left-wing politics return to electoral vogue.

Outcry over deaths of unarmed PoC at the hands of police will have to be muted because far-right government. Defense of LGBT employment and public accommodations access will be extremely lowkey because far-right government. Illegal immigration, DREAMers and war refugees will take several way-in-the-back seats because far-right government. Diversity, visibility and empowerment of historically-marginalized demographics in corporate/government/nonprofit boardrooms and employment will be de-prioritized because far-right government. Racial anything – gerrymandering, voter suppression, overpolicing – will be placed on the backburner because far-right government.

But that’s all “identity politics” of the minority. It’s all expendable and trifling to the majority’s fight.

 

Is it Mere “Blackness” or a Violent “Southernness”

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So I was reading an article on Vox critiquing this book by Barry Latzer, “The Rise and Fall of Violent Crime in America”, which blames African-Americans’ import of “violent black culture” for the rise in urban crime following the end of the Great Migration in the 1960s.

Then the article mentions that Latzer ties “Black culture” to violent White Southern culture, also known as the “Southern culture of honor” studied by Richard Nesbitt and Dov Cohen. The article mentions that this hypothesis has been touted by Thomas Sowell.

Really? Thomas Sowell? The Black supply-side conservative academic who has compared President Obama to Hitler more than once?

Oy.

So apparently, Sowell wrote in the title essay of his 2005 book “Black Rednecks and White Liberals” that “black ghetto culture” is a relic of the highly dysfunctional white southern redneck culture which emanated from the “Cracker culture” of Northern England (among the livestock herders of the border between England and Scotland) and the Scots-Irish of Northern Ireland. Sowell attributes the following to this entire cultural lineage from England to Southern Black America:

“an aversion to work, proneness to violence, neglect of education, sexual promiscuity, improvidence, drunkenness, lack of entrepreneurship,… and a style of religious oratory marked by strident rhetoric, unbridled emotions, and flamboyant imagery.”

Sowell contrasts this cultural lineage against the cultural lineage which emanated from farmers and more urbane types in lower England to what became New England, which emphasized a “Protestant work ethic”, literacy, civic participation, entrepreneurship in a wider number of economic activity, and quieter religious observance. He extends this latter culture – positively – to African-American antebellum New Englanders and Afro-Caribbean migrants.

Sowell, Nesbitt and Cohen all attribute to both White Southern and Black Southern cultures a greater degree of possession-driven violence and aggressive mentalities, both of which negatively impacted Black Southern culture through violent racist, anti-Black regimes and led Southern African-Americans to import this violent culture to urban areas in the North in the 20th century.

But I didn’t know that Sowell is of this opinion that “Black American culture” or “ghetto culture” as we know it now is a relic of White Southern culture. I know that he tends to spar against liberal strawpeople to make his point and preach to the choir, but I would say that his indictment of Black American culture can just as well be an indictment of White Southern culture and its political manifestations against generations of African-Americans in the South.

Another Police Shooting of the Unarmed

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There is an early and sudden death that awaits us.

It can come from the police, the road-raging vigilante, or the fool from down the street with a beef.

Our name will be a hashtag, and justice will not come.

We will be told that our minds and bodies are the problem. We will be told that our bodies deserve death because our culture is a problem. We will be tone-policed, gaslighted and denied legitimacy in our rage.

We’re supposed to kiss the asses of the comfortable, to not “erase the history” of the oppressor, to be grateful for basic ethical behavior.

Maybe if we disappeared from this country, if we dispersed from these shores to diaspora far afield, the insults to our intelligence will stop. Maybe the insulting injustice will stop.

To see the day when we’ll stop being the red-headed bastard child who is hated when defiant but idolized when dead. I look forward to this.

#WalterScott #JoeMcKnight

Protests in Oakland Block Interstate Highway Traffic

Pretty bold, unsafe, but bold. Good that cars stopped for the protesters. Lots of angry opinions against blocking interstate traffic for commercial reasons. I hope emergency and emergency-motivated vehicles were accommodated by the protesters.

But playing devil’s advocate: isn’t this part of the art of protest? To disrupt the normal flow of the day and call attention to something that is broken in the city? To non-violently inflict an economic impact upon a broken infrastructure?

We don’t live in the era of bus boycotts anymore. Nonviolent, economically-targeted protests have more impact when they affect and disrupt economic venues. We live in the era of sit-ins, die-ins, occupations and the blocking of traffic. This is just as much a tactic which will not win friends, but will non-violently jar our normalcy.

I don’t understand the wishes of Facebook users to inflict bodily harm on protesters with their cars. Seriously, it’s not worth it. It says more about you than about the protesters.

Corporal Punishment and State Violence in Schools

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I remember clearly when I was slapped in the mouth twice by a teacher at Christian Fellowship Academy in #WarnerRobins in 2000/2001.

Even if I can remember clearly that I had insulted another student and I was wrong for that, the teacher did not have the right to slap me in the mouth. This is what I think about when I see the teacher’s role in the #AssaultAtSpringValleyHigh.

I didn’t tell my mother about this until around 2013, and this is my first time talking about it in public.

Intimidation, between teachers and students, between classmates in different grades, between classmates in the same class, among admin, was rife at CFA from 1999-2005. Paddling was the standard corporal punishment, and it was frequent for me. I don’t think I turned out as I am today because of that experience. I turned out as I am today despite, and maybe in spite of, my time at CFA, and despite the intimidation and bullying in the Houston County public school system that I previously attended.

I still haven’t faced that time because of the trauma and ignorance that came from teachers and admin in both periods. It was worse that this was a predominantly-Black and Black-ran private school inside the predominantly-Black Christian Fellowship Church.

That didn’t protect me from intimidation, violent punishments and the like from teachers and administration, nor did it protect us from student violence and intimidation against each other. Incidents like being slapped in the mouth, admin and teacher intimidation, paddling as a ritualistic, violent punishment, student bullying, gutter homophobia. I haven’t exorcised those experiences at CFA, Rumble Middle, Miller and Russell Elementary from my mind.

I don’t know how to talk about my childhood, because that’s what I remember most. The pain that we traded with each other. And that’s what I see in that #SpringValleyHigh assault video: Organized Pain from above. #Shout.

I fear that one of my relatives will die by the savagery of the police, or by the gun-happiness of their own neighbors. #StLouis is a soul-crushing metro area, and my relatives reflect its unhappiness. I don’t like going there. There’s very little that is redeemable about it. I associate STL with relatives being on drugs or mentally ill or illiterate or in overcrowded, rundown houses or religious crazies or in-and-out of jail; the fried rice from the Chinese corner shops are the sole upside. I’m not surprised that the people are coming to violent blows there. #Ferguson #STL