I have a pat answer when a fundie asks me if I’ve accepted Jesus as my personal lord and savior: “No thank you, I’m heterosexual.” And “Come to Jesus”? “No thank you, I don’t watch porn.”
On to other things. In Baltimore, the Baltimore PD killed a dude named Freddy Gray with a “black dog” run. What’s a “black dog” run? Well, if they had to work hard to arrest someone, they give them a “rough ride” in the paddy wagon. The paddy wagon has an all-steel interior with no seat belts. So they get up to a good speed, then jam on the brakes, sending the prisoner flying against the front of the paddy wagon. Smash! Wash, rinse, repeat. Lots of black dogs crossin’ the road that they had to brake hard in order to avoid hitting them!
So, another dead black dude killed by the cops. Just another day in Baltimore MD, ho hum. Except this time the negroes be tearin’ shit up and burnin’ shit down. At which point…. whoa! What is going on here? Don’t they know that violence only frightens their allies?
At which point the black population of Baltimore says, “What allies?”
And they’ve got a point. Nonviolence worked for MLK Jr. because he had white allies, white allies who’d seen that apartheid and second class citizenship was wrong, white allies who were plentiful enough to get shit done at the national political level. But the black population of Baltimore — what allies do they got? Not the cops, the cops consider the black population of Baltimore to be porch monkeys, niggers, apes, whatever slur you want to talk about. Not the politicians, they’ve known about “black dog” runs for a long time, the city’s been sued over them dozens of times over the past two decades and paid out millions to people injured this way, the politicians don’t give a shit. What about the voters in Baltimore? You mean the same voters who keep putting those politicians who don’t give a shit into office? Yeah right. What about the Department of Justice? Suuuure, pull the other one, right?
So why *not* burn shit down? Will it distract people from the fact that cops in Baltimore can murder black men with impunity? But fuck, people *already* don’t give a shit about the fact that cops in Baltimore can murder black men with impunity, so how can you make them care *less*?
The reality is that if you make non-violent system change impossible, as has been done in Baltimore, you’re going to get violence. It’s as simple as 1+1=2. The majority of people can be mighty patient if there seems a possibility of obtaining justice without violence. But if it seems that there’s no chance of justice… why not violence? After all, if you shut down the city and cause the state to spend millions of dollars sending in the National Guard to restore order… well, that millions of dollars ain’t equal to a human life, but it’s not *nothing* either, and that’s what the black population of Baltimore was getting in exchange for one of their own murdered by the cops, so why the fuck *not*?
Those who make peaceful change impossible are the ones who cause violence, in the end. Because if all avenues for peaceful change of a system that murders black men have been cut off… well. The end result is not pretty. As we saw today.
– Badtux the Change Penguin
Yep. Right after Rodney King was beaten w/in an inch of his life one of the security people (a former police ossifer, & of the African-American persuasion) at the Fascist Insect Bank where I worked at the time told me that L.A.P.D.’s Devonshire Division were well known for beating the crap out of anyone they caught who had lead them on a merry chase.
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Peaceful rallies aren’t enough. Nor is rioting. Yet both are good signs; the first, of principles, the second, of energy. The trick is integrating the two.
How about massive sit-ins at police stations? Shut them down, and bring lots of camera-phones to record the police over-reaction.
Thanks for the black-dog explanation of Freddie Gray’s broken back.
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Thing is, the lots of camera phones things has been tried, and didn’t work, because other than us few “useful idiots” who replayed it, the footage was utterly ignored by the mainstream media and utterly ignored by the vast majority of the population who doesn’t want to know things that might require them to get off their fat lazy asses and do something.
Clearly rioting is not going to accomplish any change in the system in and of themselves. But if I were a black person who had seen for a fact that nothing *else* is accomplishing any change in the system either, and at least rioting made it expensive for cops to kill black people especially in states like Maryland where the life of a black man has been set at $200,000 (no, I’m not kidding, kill a black man in Maryland, be a survivor who successfully sues the cops for doing so, that’s the max award you can get)… why the fuck not?
Those who make peaceful change impossible, make violence inevitable. We need a system of prosecuting cops who kill people that doesn’t rely on prosecutors with a built-in conflict of interest. We need cops who don’t view the citizens they’re supposed to serve as animals, brutes, savages, subhumans, untermenschen, niggers. Right now, do you see any peaceful means of making this happen? A peaceful means that will actually *work*, I mean? If so, please share.
– Badtux the Human Nature Penguin
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Are there any cops left who don’t see the world as “Us” vs. “them”?
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Everything you said about the ineffectiveness of peaceful protests by anti-police violence blacks also applies to the anti-war protesters before IraqAttaq II in 2002-3. Millions demonstrated around the world, the invasion went ahead anyway, and disaster ensued. Maybe if people burn enough shit down before the next unnecessary war (Ukraine?) then TPTB will listen. If for no other reason, because they have to divert enough troops to enforce order in the streets that they won’t have adequate killing power to invade wherever the fuck they had been planning on.
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Reminds me of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kttCi2jOcOo
Can someone pass this on to EB Misfit for me?
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maha: like I said, Occupy BPD. The camera-phones are for insurance and publicity; but the main point is to shut police stations down. No cops in, no cops out; an exercise of people’s power. Meanwhile have citizen’s patrols keep order in the neighborhoods. Make it expensive for the police, and the police alone. Of course this is a high-risk strategy, but the rioters are in the right mood for risk-taking. And of course this requires organization and discipline; the peaceful rallyers have those chops. So I think Occupy BPD is doable.
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http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/04/30/freddie_gray_investigation_leak_medical_examiner_allegedly_says_van_wall.html
“Rough Ride” (or “Black Dog”) theory confirmed.
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