This is why folks don’t trust democrats to have their backs on this. Youre more concerned about defending the honor and rightness of your camp as if this is some binary good VS evil war with the GOP than even trying to understand why people would be upset with this.
Or maybe its because white democrats literaly said “we have your backs on this tell us what to do” and youre excoriating them for doing it?
You present democrats with no option for which they can get your support. if they do things to get your support you accuse them of pandering. When they follow the lead of their black colleagues they’re appropriating and if they compromise for the greater good theyre corporate shills.
Perhaps consider that their black colleagues are not infallible.
Go to any online resource of your choosing and dig for a while to see what reactions have been to that gesture. I've gone through a bunch, and I'm seeing far more negative reactions than positive from people who are clearly on the side of BLM and seemingly identify as Democrats, liberals or leftists. The reaction from the right is uniformly negative but what the fuck ever.
Oh my god, is this win so goddamn important to you that you’ll happily skip past 400 plus years of American power dynamics regarding the institutions of slavery, white supremacy, Jim Crow, segregation, etc. that brought us to this point?
It's also crappy because the defense here really starts getting into a sort of "Black people are a monolith" style politics to defend powerful white folks wearing a garment that isn't part of a culture they've been part of or had much interaction with, such as appeals to the Congressional Black Caucus as an authority on what is and is not appropriate... well, appropriation for white people to engage in, even when black americans without the clout and power of the CBC look at it and go "what the hell."
First, having ties with the president of Ghana doesn't count as a connection, because it ignores American history.
Second, having ties with the American CBC doesn't count as a connection, because it ignores the people of Ghana.
And also, the fact that Pelosi and several members of the American CBC -- including John Lewis (Life long civil rights crusader) and Ilhan Omar (native of Africa) -- all traveled together to forge diplomatic ties with the President of Ghana doesn't count either. Because Pelosi is white.
This is why folks don’t trust democrats to have their backs on this. Youre more concerned about defending the honor and rightness of your camp as if this is some binary good VS evil war with the GOP than even trying to understand why people would be upset with this.
No, I'm telling you that maybe you shouldn't take a far right wing propagandist who probably disagrees with everything you believe at face value just to score political points. Or at the very least, don't ignore evidence that she's making things up.
Pointing out that some people think they look ridiculous is not the same as offensive cultural appropriation. The African agencies mentioned in the article seemed to applaud the gesture.
This is why folks don’t trust democrats to have their backs on this. Youre more concerned about defending the honor and rightness of your camp as if this is some binary good VS evil war with the GOP than even trying to understand why people would be upset with this.
Or maybe its because white democrats literaly said “we have your backs on this tell us what to do” and youre excoriating them for doing it?
You present democrats with no option for which they can get your support. if they do things to get your support you accuse them of pandering. When they follow the lead of their black colleagues they’re appropriating and if they compromise for the greater good theyre corporate shills.
Perhaps consider that their black colleagues are not infallible.
Go to any online resource of your choosing and dig for a while to see what reactions have been to that gesture. I've gone through a bunch, and I'm seeing far more negative reactions than positive from people who are clearly on the side of BLM and seemingly identify as Democrats, liberals or leftists. The reaction from the right is uniformly negative but what the fuck ever.
Their black colleagues are indeed fallible. But if they failed then attack them for it. You might notice that the quotes you provide dont do that. And i dont suspect youre going to find a lot of traction there because if John Lewis failed in making a gesture with his inclusion of Kente cloth I highly doubt it was because he was insinscere.
The people you quoted are also fallible. Maybe they did not realize that Pelosi was following the lead of the CBC and not acting on her own?
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KetarCome on upstairswe're having a partyRegistered Userregular
This is why folks don’t trust democrats to have their backs on this. Youre more concerned about defending the honor and rightness of your camp as if this is some binary good VS evil war with the GOP than even trying to understand why people would be upset with this.
Or maybe its because white democrats literaly said “we have your backs on this tell us what to do” and youre excoriating them for doing it?
You present democrats with no option for which they can get your support. if they do things to get your support you accuse them of pandering. When they follow the lead of their black colleagues they’re appropriating and if they compromise for the greater good theyre corporate shills.
Perhaps consider that their black colleagues are not infallible.
Go to any online resource of your choosing and dig for a while to see what reactions have been to that gesture. I've gone through a bunch, and I'm seeing far more negative reactions than positive from people who are clearly on the side of BLM and seemingly identify as Democrats, liberals or leftists. The reaction from the right is uniformly negative but what the fuck ever.
Their black colleagues are indeed fallible. But if they failed then attack them for it. You might notice that the quotes you provide dont do that. And i dont suspect youre going to find a lot of traction there because if John Lewis failed in making a gesture with his inclusion of Kente cloth I highly doubt it was because he was insinscere.
The people you quoted are also fallible. Maybe they did not realize that Pelosi was following the lead of the CBC and not acting on her own?
That's what I'm referring to. An award-winning, bestselling black author saying, "Honestly shit like this is why a lot of CBC legislators are getting primaried from the left, and they damn well should be. This old respectability shit doesn't work anymore."
She doesn't ever mention Pelosi. She does quite specifically mention the CBC. (I can provide more, similar posts as well, but this is what I posted earlier and referred back to)
I don't even know what you're referring to at this point? Like, what other people did I quote? Are you confusing me with someone else?
God arguing about the bill I can understand, but the photo op? The most charitable thing I can say about it is that it's pretty useless. Maybe it's not as bad as some here say but it's certainly not good by any stretch. The bill was already a signal of your intentions! The other stuff just feels like your treating the protesters like children! "oh if we don't kneel and wear African garb they won't get that we're on their side" man fuck that. If they wanted a gesture that people will respect just join the protest like other politicians are doing and be in the front line!
PSN: jrrl_absent
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
Andrew Yang is a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate.
So now that movement towards police abolition/disarmament/disempowerment is being stymied as much as possible by Democrats, I'm wondering if people are going to forget what they've learned, what's been done to them, and what they were promised in order to make them go home and allow the pigs time to regroup.
It's being stymied by democrats because... more and more democrats are starting to agree?
Like, I realize the most important thing in the entire universe is to dunk on Warren, but maybe think about how if your movement grows, eventually people you do not afree with 100% will be part of it.
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daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
Man, I hope that that the Democratic Congressional group doing the kneeling made it very clear that the Kente cloth was the CBC's idea, because when I saw the picture I immediately thought that was some 'hello fellow kids' pandering bullshit. There's movies out there that have that sort of scene as a cringe humor gag FFS.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
Man, I hope that that the Democratic Congressional group doing the kneeling made it very clear that the Kente cloth was the CBC's idea, because when I saw the picture I immediately thought that was some 'hello fellow kids' pandering bullshit. There's movies out there that have that sort of scene as a cringe humor gag FFS.
I'm sure they would, except attention spans are so short right now that no one will remember this in two days.
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EncA Fool with CompassionPronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered Userregular
Ok, after reading a the last seven pages or so of this argument, I have one very serious and genuine question to ask the folks who are anti-Democrat and anti-electoral politics. I think I understand your side of things now, it does feel like things have either been consistently failing or just too little too late at every stage of the game. I get that as much as a white, cis-gendered, privileged male can can (which is to say, not enough but I'm trying). What I don't understand is the action steps. My understanding here is that we all get that the Republicans are fascists that will attack all of our civil liberties when given the opportunity, that's a given. I'm learning that the Democrats self-sabotage their own more progressive constituents to play toward a game where much is said about equality but little is done to disrupt the status quo. And, frankly, historically I've been one of the folks both here and elsewhere that defended that status quo Democrat stance and I'm really seeing how harmful that can be on a personal and political level when that is the majority. I've first hand seen how the Democrats will pull funds from a LGBT candidate in a local election for a white candidate across the city because it was a "lost cause" before the election season truly began. I've worked with a few campaigns and looking back I am starting to see that endemic problem from a new light, and it doesn't look good.
But what is the alternative? I'm not asking this as defeatist or trying to change your mind. I'm not trying, or wanting, to defend the Democratic establishment with this question. I genuinely want to know. Aside from voting in local elections and primaries, I don't have a lot of agency to actually create change, and my voting options have always been D or R. We rarely even have a third party candidate in my state, and historically third party candidates don't win elections in fist-pass-the-post.
So what should folks like me do beyond support the protests financially and by showing up? Who should I vote for in November when my choices are Biden or Trump? How can I influence downticket beyond showing up at each primary?
Andrew Yang is a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate.
So now that movement towards police abolition/disarmament/disempowerment is being stymied as much as possible by Democrats, I'm wondering if people are going to forget what they've learned, what's been done to them, and what they were promised in order to make them go home and allow the pigs time to regroup.
It's being stymied by democrats because... more and more democrats are starting to agree?
Like, I realize the most important thing in the entire universe is to dunk on Warren, but maybe think about how if your movement grows, eventually people you do not afree with 100% will be part of it.
To do away with racist paramilitaries and the state terror they commit will require more than America has ever been capable of.
That kinda depends on how you define fascism. Fascism isn’t exactly the product of deep political thought. Its origins are basically Mussolini saying whatever he thought would work to get him power, and it hasn’t changed much since then. To quote Umberto Eco In his Ur Fascism essay, “ Mussolini did not have any philosophy: he had only rhetoric.” Speaking of Eco and his fourteen features of Ur Fascism, one thing to note about them is that he himself says that not all of the fourteen features need to be present for fascism to emerge: “it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it.”
And of course, other people have defined fascism differently over the years. Common threads among scholars tend to be recognizing that fascism has no ideology of its own and then defining it by feature set, or defining it as extreme nationalism or as extreme populism. I respect the first idea, disagree with the second, and agree with the third of those. I see fascism as being extreme populism that is best defined by its feature set rather than any actual ideology. That is, nationalism is just a handy add-on to rally people around, but nationalism isn’t necessarily the only thing that can be rallied around. It could just as easily be religion, race, or class, or more likely a combination of all of those things.
My own view on fascism from the perspective of Eco’s article is that Eco’s third, fourth, sixth, eighth and thirteenth features are the most critical, though I disagree slightly about his direction on the fourth and eighth features. They are the cult of action for action's sake, disagreement is treason (Eco positions this as a response to modernism, but I think that it’s a more generalized feature), that Ur-Fascism derives from individual or social frustration, and that their enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak (though I think that the critical thing isn’t the strength of the enemy, but simply that there be an Enemy to rally against), and that Ur-Fascism is based upon a selective populism. My view is that fascism is ultimately when a frustrated nation or group puts forward someone who says that they’ll get rid of your current ineffective leadership, that they’ll make the bad things stop, the plan to make the bad things stop is to attack the Enemy, and if you disagree with any of that then you’re part of the Problem.
If you consider aspects like syncretistic cultures of tradition, rejection of modernism, overt nationalism, contempt for the weak, and machismo to be necessary parts of fascism, then sure, it’s pretty much impossible for a left wing organization to become fascism. Having said that, even if you disagree that those five features are sufficient for fascism to coagulate around them, hopefully we can agree that a left wing movement could be built with those five features of Ur Fascism woven into its DNA, and that such a thing would be problematic.
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
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MonwynApathy's a tragedy, and boredom is a crime.A little bit of everything, all of the time.Registered Userregular
That would be the thing the Minneapolis City Council did where they lied about wanting to abolish the police force in order to make people think they won. They're already backpeddling.
No, they aren't, they said they need to figure out how to transition
You cannot on the one hand day "will define the police actually means hiring a bunch of social workers to take care of the shirts of issues cups deal with now more appropriately, not the cohorts removal of any sort of defense against cringe" and on the other be pissed that is going to take a minute to, you know, figure out how to do that
Why does the assumption in some places seem to be that a majority of black people want the police to be completely abolished?
I haven't really seen any polling on that and assuming leftist activists are necessarily representative of what the community as a whole wants to solve the issue is iffy at best
Edit: This is from 2016 and things could easily have changed since then and opinions will vary a ton from place to place, but the polls don't scream like the majority would want police completely abolished.
Edit 2: This isn't a reason not to push for it as a way to change public opinion or put pressure on politicians, but it does make it odd to act like politicians aren't just going with the majority when they don't agree with proposals like defund the police or abolish the police. Generally, politicians are unlikely to support policies that less than 20% of their party support in polls.
Why does the assumption in some places seem to be that a majority of black people want the police to be completely abolished?
I haven't really seen any polling on that and assuming leftist activists are necessarily representative of what the community as a whole wants to solve the issue is iffy at best
Edit: This is from 2016 and things could easily have changed since then and opinions will vary a ton from place to place, but the polls don't scream like the majority would want police completely abolished.
The recent yougov poll found 1/3 of black respondents supported defunding the police (cut funding for police departments), 36% opposed and the remainder were not sure. It seems fairly implausible to infer anything like a black majority in favor of abolishing the police
That would be the thing the Minneapolis City Council did where they lied about wanting to abolish the police force in order to make people think they won. They're already backpeddling.
No, they aren't, they said they need to figure out how to transition
You cannot on the one hand day "will define the police actually means hiring a bunch of social workers to take care of the shirts of issues cups deal with now more appropriately, not the cohorts removal of any sort of defense against cringe" and on the other be pissed that is going to take a minute to, you know, figure out how to do that
Here's the thing. I watched John Oliver's bit on Monday and it was good. But just a day or two previously, I'd seen John Stewart do basically the exact same thing about Eric Garner back in 2014; and if I bothered to look I could probably find similar coverage of Freddie Gray, Tamir Rice, Sean Bell, etc. All the way back to Rodney King in '91, if it weren't for the fact that TDS didn't start until 1996. That's a whole lot of years of officials saying they heard people's demands and that reforms were going to be implemented that would make things better. Except it's multiple decades later and Things. Aren't. Better. So I'm going to be very suspicious of any talk about forming a committee to make recommendations that will then be blah blah blah. I've seen this movie before and it has not improved on repeated viewings.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
I'm just getting caught up on this but if I understand correctly the Democrats did a photo op wearing kente cloth at the suggestion of the Congressional Black Caucus and now everybody's mad about it?
A white acquaintance of mine wore traditional garb at the behest of his wife's family for their wedding, but I guess he should have refused seeing as it would have made Twitter mad.
That would be the thing the Minneapolis City Council did where they lied about wanting to abolish the police force in order to make people think they won. They're already backpeddling.
No, they aren't, they said they need to figure out how to transition
You cannot on the one hand day "will define the police actually means hiring a bunch of social workers to take care of the shirts of issues cups deal with now more appropriately, not the cohorts removal of any sort of defense against cringe" and on the other be pissed that is going to take a minute to, you know, figure out how to do that
Here's the thing. I watched John Oliver's bit on Monday and it was good. But just a day or two previously, I'd seen John Stewart do basically the exact same thing about Eric Garner back in 2014; and if I bothered to look I could probably find similar coverage of Freddie Gray, Tamir Rice, Sean Bell, etc. All the way back to Rodney King in '91, if it weren't for the fact that TDS didn't start until 1996. That's a whole lot of years of officials saying they heard people's demands and that reforms were going to be implemented that would make things better. Except it's multiple decades later and Things. Aren't. Better. So I'm going to be very suspicious of any talk about forming a committee to make recommendations that will then be blah blah blah. I've seen this movie before and it has not improved on repeated viewings.
Don't quote me police reform. I co-chaired the committee that reviewed the recommendation to revise the color of the book that reform's in.
Buffalo protester shoved by Police could be an ANTIFA provocateur. 75 year old Martin Gugino was pushed away after appearing to scan police communications in order to black out the equipment. @OANN
I watched, he fell harder than was pushed. Was aiming scanner. Could be a set up?
You know, the thing about provocateurs is that you should avoid being provoked by them.
Couscous on
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VariableMouth CongressStroke Me Lady FameRegistered Userregular
That would be the thing the Minneapolis City Council did where they lied about wanting to abolish the police force in order to make people think they won. They're already backpeddling.
No, they aren't, they said they need to figure out how to transition
You cannot on the one hand day "will define the police actually means hiring a bunch of social workers to take care of the shirts of issues cups deal with now more appropriately, not the cohorts removal of any sort of defense against cringe" and on the other be pissed that is going to take a minute to, you know, figure out how to do that
Here's the thing. I watched John Oliver's bit on Monday and it was good. But just a day or two previously, I'd seen John Stewart do basically the exact same thing about Eric Garner back in 2014; and if I bothered to look I could probably find similar coverage of Freddie Gray, Tamir Rice, Sean Bell, etc. All the way back to Rodney King in '91, if it weren't for the fact that TDS didn't start until 1996. That's a whole lot of years of officials saying they heard people's demands and that reforms were going to be implemented that would make things better. Except it's multiple decades later and Things. Aren't. Better. So I'm going to be very suspicious of any talk about forming a committee to make recommendations that will then be blah blah blah. I've seen this movie before and it has not improved on repeated viewings.
I'm sorry, you've seen the movie before where a major american city says they want to disband their police department? I missed that one.
now, I -have- seen the one where we ban chokeholds, because choke holds have been banned in some places for years, but that doesn't mean shit since cops are untouchable by the law.
Buffalo protester shoved by Police could be an ANTIFA provocateur. 75 year old Martin Gugino was pushed away after appearing to scan police communications in order to black out the equipment. @OANN
I watched, he fell harder than was pushed. Was aiming scanner. Could be a set up?
You know, the thing about provocateurs is that you should avoid being provoked by them.
No, it's literally what the police and I think mayor or DA or somebody claimed.
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VariableMouth CongressStroke Me Lady FameRegistered Userregular
Why does the assumption in some places seem to be that a majority of black people want the police to be completely abolished?
I haven't really seen any polling on that and assuming leftist activists are necessarily representative of what the community as a whole wants to solve the issue is iffy at best
Edit: This is from 2016 and things could easily have changed since then and opinions will vary a ton from place to place, but the polls don't scream like the majority would want police completely abolished.
The recent yougov poll found 1/3 of black respondents supported defunding the police (cut funding for police departments), 36% opposed and the remainder were not sure. It seems fairly implausible to infer anything like a black majority in favor of abolishing the police
yes anyone who thinks a majority of any group is going to agree with something most americans just heard about for the first time this week is crazy. there's work to do but we can get there.
NEO|PhyteThey follow the stars, bound together.Strands in a braid till the end.Registered Userregular
Ah yes, communication scanners, those things that definitely require getting in shoving range of cops to function.
It was that somehow, from within the derelict-horror, they had learned a way to see inside an ugly, broken thing... And take away its pain.
Warframe/Steam: NFyt
I'm just getting caught up on this but if I understand correctly the Democrats did a photo op wearing kente cloth at the suggestion of the Congressional Black Caucus and now everybody's mad about it?
A white acquaintance of mine wore traditional garb at the behest of his wife's family for their wedding, but I guess he should have refused seeing as it would have made Twitter mad.
There is a very specific group of people who would never have been satisfied. They pop into threads and the general content of their posts is how shitty democrats are. Then the thread spins wildly off tangent.
Buffalo protester shoved by Police could be an ANTIFA provocateur. 75 year old Martin Gugino was pushed away after appearing to scan police communications in order to black out the equipment. @OANN
I watched, he fell harder than was pushed. Was aiming scanner. Could be a set up?
You know, the thing about provocateurs is that you should avoid being provoked by them.
I am not going to post the Madeline Kahn gif... but you know the one I am thinking of.
Just... how can he find ways to disappoint me even further, every time. Blaming the victim on video bleeding from the head. The sheer cruelty of it.
There's no plan, there's no race to be run
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
Buffalo protester shoved by Police could be an ANTIFA provocateur. 75 year old Martin Gugino was pushed away after appearing to scan police communications in order to black out the equipment. @OANN
I watched, he fell harder than was pushed. Was aiming scanner. Could be a set up?
You know, the thing about provocateurs is that you should avoid being provoked by them.
The blood packs stuffed in his ears was some real commitment to the act. /s
I expect that polling for absolutist abolish / defund the police will be surprisingly low in a lot of minority communities and not nearly the 'almost universal support' a lot of people seem to assume. While minorities are far and away the most likely to be victims of police brutality, they are also more likely to be victims of and have experience with violent crime.
It's the same reason that you had fairly broad support for the 94 crime bill in the non-youth demographics in black communities. I can definitely understand why someone who lived / worked in Compton or Red Hook at the time - when police would only show up during the day and in force - might not like or trust the police and strongly support reform or oversight, but also have a 'devil you know' attitude. As bad as the cops are - and I'm definitely not going to deny that - there is still a level of predictability in most interactions that you don't get with the neighborhood gangs that a lot of people see as the alternative option to law enforcement.
I haven't lived with it myself, but I've had enough second and third hand discussions that in most cases I recognize that when we say 'gangs in blue' or 'organized crime with a badge', day to day police still don't approach the capricious violence of street gangs and organized crime towards almost everyone in the community.
I think there is an element of privilege in supporting an absolutist abolish the police with no nuance. There is privilege in being white or young and living in communities where you don't have to worry about what may or may not fill a power vacuum left by the police. And when a lot of people are saying 'yes, ACAB, but what's the PLAN' there needs to be more than a few slogans.
#defundthepolice is a great hashtag / slogan, but it needs to be followed by 'and fund XYZ' in a way that XYZ is practical and something that can actually be accomplished in our current power structures. Because if your plan is 'defund the police and restart LBJ Great Society', fantastic...let's see how we get there. And don't say the nuance is there already, when many of the people in this thread who are likely far, far more aware of the issue than the general public who will need to get behind the plan are calling for that nuance or plan and saying it's not that simple.
This is definitely setting itself up for some proper 1984 style nonsense, with a organised enemy that could be anywhere or anyone and has no clear membership criteria other than being against "whatever example we can use to link you to it". Also concerning that it seems to indicate that Trump has added OANN to his cable news diet.
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VariableMouth CongressStroke Me Lady FameRegistered Userregular
I'm just getting caught up on this but if I understand correctly the Democrats did a photo op wearing kente cloth at the suggestion of the Congressional Black Caucus and now everybody's mad about it?
A white acquaintance of mine wore traditional garb at the behest of his wife's family for their wedding, but I guess he should have refused seeing as it would have made Twitter mad.
people are mad at the photo op unattached to more progressive legislation and that they seem entirely out of touch more than the 'cultural appropriation' side, but that IS a good way to totally dismiss people's concerns by making it sound like a LOLTUMBLR issue.
This is definitely setting itself up for some proper 1984 style nonsense, with a organised enemy that could be anywhere or anyone and has no clear membership criteria other than being against "whatever example we can use to link you to it". Also concerning that it seems to indicate that Trump has added OANN to his cable news diet.
It’s been on there for a long time, ever since FOX showed the slightest intention of not being utterly obsequious.
This is definitely setting itself up for some proper 1984 style nonsense, with a organised enemy that could be anywhere or anyone and has no clear membership criteria other than being against "whatever example we can use to link you to it". Also concerning that it seems to indicate that Trump has added OANN to his cable news diet.
I find his tweet almost helpful, because if they can retroactively decide (after several days AND a lie about him tripping) that actually this guy is antifa, it should be very easily to show the non-delusional that this is just a scare tactic to justify state violence against anyone they decide. again, retroactively.
not talking about trump fans, but for folks in the middle that don't fucking get it yet.
Buffalo protester shoved by Police could be an ANTIFA provocateur. 75 year old Martin Gugino was pushed away after appearing to scan police communications in order to black out the equipment. @OANN
I watched, he fell harder than was pushed. Was aiming scanner. Could be a set up?
You know, the thing about provocateurs is that you should avoid being provoked by them.
No, it's literally what the police and I think mayor or DA or somebody claimed.
But also yes, probably, since the premise of Antifa as an organization out there dispatching operatives is basically fruit from the far-right internet tree.
(And fruit of which the powers-that-be are quite fond)
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zepherinRussian warship, go fuck yourselfRegistered Userregular
Ok, after reading a the last seven pages or so of this argument, I have one very serious and genuine question to ask the folks who are anti-Democrat and anti-electoral politics. I think I understand your side of things now, it does feel like things have either been consistently failing or just too little too late at every stage of the game. I get that as much as a white, cis-gendered, privileged male can can (which is to say, not enough but I'm trying). What I don't understand is the action steps. My understanding here is that we all get that the Republicans are fascists that will attack all of our civil liberties when given the opportunity, that's a given. I'm learning that the Democrats self-sabotage their own more progressive constituents to play toward a game where much is said about equality but little is done to disrupt the status quo. And, frankly, historically I've been one of the folks both here and elsewhere that defended that status quo Democrat stance and I'm really seeing how harmful that can be on a personal and political level when that is the majority. I've first hand seen how the Democrats will pull funds from a LGBT candidate in a local election for a white candidate across the city because it was a "lost cause" before the election season truly began. I've worked with a few campaigns and looking back I am starting to see that endemic problem from a new light, and it doesn't look good.
But what is the alternative? I'm not asking this as defeatist or trying to change your mind. I'm not trying, or wanting, to defend the Democratic establishment with this question. I genuinely want to know. Aside from voting in local elections and primaries, I don't have a lot of agency to actually create change, and my voting options have always been D or R. We rarely even have a third party candidate in my state, and historically third party candidates don't win elections in fist-pass-the-post.
So what should folks like me do beyond support the protests financially and by showing up? Who should I vote for in November when my choices are Biden or Trump? How can I influence downticket beyond showing up at each primary?
I know it’s a typo but fist past the post is how it feels sometimes.
I'm just getting caught up on this but if I understand correctly the Democrats did a photo op wearing kente cloth at the suggestion of the Congressional Black Caucus and now everybody's mad about it?
A white acquaintance of mine wore traditional garb at the behest of his wife's family for their wedding, but I guess he should have refused seeing as it would have made Twitter mad.
people are mad at the photo op unattached to more progressive legislation and that they seem entirely out of touch more than the 'cultural appropriation' side, but that IS a good way to totally dismiss people's concerns by making it sound like a LOLTUMBLR issue.
Ah, okay, that's more context than what I was seeing argued about in thread.
Buffalo protester shoved by Police could be an ANTIFA provocateur. 75 year old Martin Gugino was pushed away after appearing to scan police communications in order to black out the equipment. @OANN
I watched, he fell harder than was pushed. Was aiming scanner. Could be a set up?
You know, the thing about provocateurs is that you should avoid being provoked by them.
The blood packs stuffed in his ears was some real commitment to the act. /s
It seems unrealistic to me that they would go with "He was a secret spy with a magic raygun meant to disrupt the police" but here we are...
Posts
Perhaps consider that their black colleagues are not infallible.
Go to any online resource of your choosing and dig for a while to see what reactions have been to that gesture. I've gone through a bunch, and I'm seeing far more negative reactions than positive from people who are clearly on the side of BLM and seemingly identify as Democrats, liberals or leftists. The reaction from the right is uniformly negative but what the fuck ever.
First, having ties with the president of Ghana doesn't count as a connection, because it ignores American history.
Second, having ties with the American CBC doesn't count as a connection, because it ignores the people of Ghana.
And also, the fact that Pelosi and several members of the American CBC -- including John Lewis (Life long civil rights crusader) and Ilhan Omar (native of Africa) -- all traveled together to forge diplomatic ties with the President of Ghana doesn't count either. Because Pelosi is white.
No, I'm telling you that maybe you shouldn't take a far right wing propagandist who probably disagrees with everything you believe at face value just to score political points. Or at the very least, don't ignore evidence that she's making things up.
Pointing out that some people think they look ridiculous is not the same as offensive cultural appropriation. The African agencies mentioned in the article seemed to applaud the gesture.
Their black colleagues are indeed fallible. But if they failed then attack them for it. You might notice that the quotes you provide dont do that. And i dont suspect youre going to find a lot of traction there because if John Lewis failed in making a gesture with his inclusion of Kente cloth I highly doubt it was because he was insinscere.
The people you quoted are also fallible. Maybe they did not realize that Pelosi was following the lead of the CBC and not acting on her own?
...
That's what I'm referring to. An award-winning, bestselling black author saying, "Honestly shit like this is why a lot of CBC legislators are getting primaried from the left, and they damn well should be. This old respectability shit doesn't work anymore."
She doesn't ever mention Pelosi. She does quite specifically mention the CBC. (I can provide more, similar posts as well, but this is what I posted earlier and referred back to)
I don't even know what you're referring to at this point? Like, what other people did I quote? Are you confusing me with someone else?
PSN: jrrl_absent
It's being stymied by democrats because... more and more democrats are starting to agree?
Like, I realize the most important thing in the entire universe is to dunk on Warren, but maybe think about how if your movement grows, eventually people you do not afree with 100% will be part of it.
I'm sure they would, except attention spans are so short right now that no one will remember this in two days.
But what is the alternative? I'm not asking this as defeatist or trying to change your mind. I'm not trying, or wanting, to defend the Democratic establishment with this question. I genuinely want to know. Aside from voting in local elections and primaries, I don't have a lot of agency to actually create change, and my voting options have always been D or R. We rarely even have a third party candidate in my state, and historically third party candidates don't win elections in fist-pass-the-post.
So what should folks like me do beyond support the protests financially and by showing up? Who should I vote for in November when my choices are Biden or Trump? How can I influence downticket beyond showing up at each primary?
To do away with racist paramilitaries and the state terror they commit will require more than America has ever been capable of.
That kinda depends on how you define fascism. Fascism isn’t exactly the product of deep political thought. Its origins are basically Mussolini saying whatever he thought would work to get him power, and it hasn’t changed much since then. To quote Umberto Eco In his Ur Fascism essay, “ Mussolini did not have any philosophy: he had only rhetoric.” Speaking of Eco and his fourteen features of Ur Fascism, one thing to note about them is that he himself says that not all of the fourteen features need to be present for fascism to emerge: “it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it.”
And of course, other people have defined fascism differently over the years. Common threads among scholars tend to be recognizing that fascism has no ideology of its own and then defining it by feature set, or defining it as extreme nationalism or as extreme populism. I respect the first idea, disagree with the second, and agree with the third of those. I see fascism as being extreme populism that is best defined by its feature set rather than any actual ideology. That is, nationalism is just a handy add-on to rally people around, but nationalism isn’t necessarily the only thing that can be rallied around. It could just as easily be religion, race, or class, or more likely a combination of all of those things.
My own view on fascism from the perspective of Eco’s article is that Eco’s third, fourth, sixth, eighth and thirteenth features are the most critical, though I disagree slightly about his direction on the fourth and eighth features. They are the cult of action for action's sake, disagreement is treason (Eco positions this as a response to modernism, but I think that it’s a more generalized feature), that Ur-Fascism derives from individual or social frustration, and that their enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak (though I think that the critical thing isn’t the strength of the enemy, but simply that there be an Enemy to rally against), and that Ur-Fascism is based upon a selective populism. My view is that fascism is ultimately when a frustrated nation or group puts forward someone who says that they’ll get rid of your current ineffective leadership, that they’ll make the bad things stop, the plan to make the bad things stop is to attack the Enemy, and if you disagree with any of that then you’re part of the Problem.
If you consider aspects like syncretistic cultures of tradition, rejection of modernism, overt nationalism, contempt for the weak, and machismo to be necessary parts of fascism, then sure, it’s pretty much impossible for a left wing organization to become fascism. Having said that, even if you disagree that those five features are sufficient for fascism to coagulate around them, hopefully we can agree that a left wing movement could be built with those five features of Ur Fascism woven into its DNA, and that such a thing would be problematic.
No, they aren't, they said they need to figure out how to transition
You cannot on the one hand day "will define the police actually means hiring a bunch of social workers to take care of the shirts of issues cups deal with now more appropriately, not the cohorts removal of any sort of defense against cringe" and on the other be pissed that is going to take a minute to, you know, figure out how to do that
I haven't really seen any polling on that and assuming leftist activists are necessarily representative of what the community as a whole wants to solve the issue is iffy at best
Edit: This is from 2016 and things could easily have changed since then and opinions will vary a ton from place to place, but the polls don't scream like the majority would want police completely abolished.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/06/03/10-things-we-know-about-race-and-policing-in-the-u-s/
Edit 2: This isn't a reason not to push for it as a way to change public opinion or put pressure on politicians, but it does make it odd to act like politicians aren't just going with the majority when they don't agree with proposals like defund the police or abolish the police. Generally, politicians are unlikely to support policies that less than 20% of their party support in polls.
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
The recent yougov poll found 1/3 of black respondents supported defunding the police (cut funding for police departments), 36% opposed and the remainder were not sure. It seems fairly implausible to infer anything like a black majority in favor of abolishing the police
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
Here's the thing. I watched John Oliver's bit on Monday and it was good. But just a day or two previously, I'd seen John Stewart do basically the exact same thing about Eric Garner back in 2014; and if I bothered to look I could probably find similar coverage of Freddie Gray, Tamir Rice, Sean Bell, etc. All the way back to Rodney King in '91, if it weren't for the fact that TDS didn't start until 1996. That's a whole lot of years of officials saying they heard people's demands and that reforms were going to be implemented that would make things better. Except it's multiple decades later and Things. Aren't. Better. So I'm going to be very suspicious of any talk about forming a committee to make recommendations that will then be blah blah blah. I've seen this movie before and it has not improved on repeated viewings.
A white acquaintance of mine wore traditional garb at the behest of his wife's family for their wedding, but I guess he should have refused seeing as it would have made Twitter mad.
Don't quote me police reform. I co-chaired the committee that reviewed the recommendation to revise the color of the book that reform's in.
We kept it gray.
You know, the thing about provocateurs is that you should avoid being provoked by them.
I'm sorry, you've seen the movie before where a major american city says they want to disband their police department? I missed that one.
now, I -have- seen the one where we ban chokeholds, because choke holds have been banned in some places for years, but that doesn't mean shit since cops are untouchable by the law.
No, it's literally what the police and I think mayor or DA or somebody claimed.
yes anyone who thinks a majority of any group is going to agree with something most americans just heard about for the first time this week is crazy. there's work to do but we can get there.
Warframe/Steam: NFyt
There is a very specific group of people who would never have been satisfied. They pop into threads and the general content of their posts is how shitty democrats are. Then the thread spins wildly off tangent.
I am not going to post the Madeline Kahn gif... but you know the one I am thinking of.
Just... how can he find ways to disappoint me even further, every time. Blaming the victim on video bleeding from the head. The sheer cruelty of it.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
The blood packs stuffed in his ears was some real commitment to the act. /s
It's the same reason that you had fairly broad support for the 94 crime bill in the non-youth demographics in black communities. I can definitely understand why someone who lived / worked in Compton or Red Hook at the time - when police would only show up during the day and in force - might not like or trust the police and strongly support reform or oversight, but also have a 'devil you know' attitude. As bad as the cops are - and I'm definitely not going to deny that - there is still a level of predictability in most interactions that you don't get with the neighborhood gangs that a lot of people see as the alternative option to law enforcement.
I haven't lived with it myself, but I've had enough second and third hand discussions that in most cases I recognize that when we say 'gangs in blue' or 'organized crime with a badge', day to day police still don't approach the capricious violence of street gangs and organized crime towards almost everyone in the community.
I think there is an element of privilege in supporting an absolutist abolish the police with no nuance. There is privilege in being white or young and living in communities where you don't have to worry about what may or may not fill a power vacuum left by the police. And when a lot of people are saying 'yes, ACAB, but what's the PLAN' there needs to be more than a few slogans.
#defundthepolice is a great hashtag / slogan, but it needs to be followed by 'and fund XYZ' in a way that XYZ is practical and something that can actually be accomplished in our current power structures. Because if your plan is 'defund the police and restart LBJ Great Society', fantastic...let's see how we get there. And don't say the nuance is there already, when many of the people in this thread who are likely far, far more aware of the issue than the general public who will need to get behind the plan are calling for that nuance or plan and saying it's not that simple.
people are mad at the photo op unattached to more progressive legislation and that they seem entirely out of touch more than the 'cultural appropriation' side, but that IS a good way to totally dismiss people's concerns by making it sound like a LOLTUMBLR issue.
It’s been on there for a long time, ever since FOX showed the slightest intention of not being utterly obsequious.
I find his tweet almost helpful, because if they can retroactively decide (after several days AND a lie about him tripping) that actually this guy is antifa, it should be very easily to show the non-delusional that this is just a scare tactic to justify state violence against anyone they decide. again, retroactively.
not talking about trump fans, but for folks in the middle that don't fucking get it yet.
I didn't know riot helmets also functioned as police scanners.
But also yes, probably, since the premise of Antifa as an organization out there dispatching operatives is basically fruit from the far-right internet tree.
(And fruit of which the powers-that-be are quite fond)
Ah, okay, that's more context than what I was seeing argued about in thread.
It seems unrealistic to me that they would go with "He was a secret spy with a magic raygun meant to disrupt the police" but here we are...