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by stillrobertpaulsen » Wed Aug 20, 2014 3:53 pm
by 2012 Countdown » Wed Aug 20, 2014 7:06 pm
by Nordic » Wed Aug 20, 2014 7:59 pm
by justdrew » Thu Aug 21, 2014 2:42 am
by Project Willow » Thu Aug 21, 2014 2:47 am
by coffin_dodger » Thu Aug 21, 2014 3:05 am
by 8bitagent » Thu Aug 21, 2014 3:45 am
by Nordic » Thu Aug 21, 2014 4:42 am
Project Willow » Thu Aug 21, 2014 1:47 am wrote:Justifiable shooting? BULLSHIT. Just another execution in St. Louis.
by BOOGIE66 » Thu Aug 21, 2014 4:43 am
What began as a calm evening in Ferguson with small groups of protesters walking along West Florissant Avenue chanting in unison, "Hands up, don't shoot," briefly turned confrontational when a Missouri couple arrived with posters in support of the police officer who killed Michael Brown.
"People never hear the other side," said the woman, who would give only her first name, Dawn.
by American Dream » Thu Aug 21, 2014 11:46 am
American Dream » Tue Aug 19, 2014 2:33 pm wrote:Yes- slackbastard made a post several hours ago documenting that the so-called "anarchists" were actually members of the loathsome cult of Bob Avakian, known as the Revolutionary Communist Party...
Love Me, Ferguson, I’m A Liberal
by Douglas Williams
How liberals brought an anticommunist slur from America’s past back to life.
A 1979 Communist Workers’ Party-led rally against the KKK that would culminate in the Greensboro massacre.
“Outside agitator.”
These words were spoken by Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett when asked about the Freedom Summer voting registration drive in 1964. They were also uttered by Alabama Governor George Wallace when he was asked about the protests in his state’s largest city, ignobly labeled “Bombingham.”
Bull Connor referred to Martin Luther King, Jr. as one, even though his church was in the state capital, Montgomery. These two words were also uttered by Thomas Jackson, the police chief in Ferguson, as he tried to describe why his mostly-white police force could not stop the protests occurring in the nearly 70 percent black city he was charged with patrolling.
All of these men were segregationists, anticommunists, and purveyors of state-sanctioned violence against African Americans. But now you can also find some prominent liberals using the term, ostensibly in relation to the activities of small pockets of anarchists and the Revolutionary Communist Party in the city.
Both the Daily Beast and Gawker have run pieces on the RCP in the same spirit, Gawker even going as far as to call them “despicable” for “trying to drum up even more tension.” Justin Glawe writes in the Daily Beast that:And while police have rightfully been criticized for their heavy-handed approach to the protests that have gone on since Brown’s death, the intelligence they’ve gathered regarding some of the more riotous protesters has been correct. Those who wish to do physical harm to law enforcement are small in number, and subversive in tactics.
Apparently, the RCP’s new slogan is, “Turning liberals into defenders of the police state, one protest at a time.”
Yesterday, Richard Seymour asked what it means that these liberals, “unthinkingly regurgitate the stuff about ‘outside agitators’ in Missouri.” I think I can answer that.
It is not the RCP that these liberals are scared of. Only a fool would believe that eight to ten sectarians from Hyde Park have the power to tank a demonstration as large as the ones occurring in Ferguson. But these empty protestations from liberals do have a very clear purpose: separating people of color from a spirit of revolutionary community-building and anticapitalist politics.
To be clear, I’m no fan of the RCP — less of an old-school communist party and more of a personality cult centered around Bob Avakian, a one-time Free Speech Movement activist who now lives in “exile” in France:One important aspect of boldly spreading revolution and communism everywhere is the work of building what we have characterized as a culture of appreciation, promotion, and popularization around the leadership, the body of work and the method and approach of Bob Avakian.
If that’s not weird enough for you, then try this blog post about the RCP’s Burning Man dedication to Avakian. Most socialists and communists do but one thing to the RCP in general: ignore them.
by km artlu » Thu Aug 21, 2014 9:32 pm
by 8bitagent » Fri Aug 22, 2014 12:22 am
km artlu » Thu Aug 21, 2014 8:32 pm wrote:A few aspects re Ferguson have emerged for me out of the media fog. A deflating, hopeless sort of feeling came over me as I hesitated to post something about this here at RI. That came from acknowledging the possibility that I'll be misunderstood and wrongly judged. But if not here, where?
This is not about what happened. I don't know what happened. It's about discovering the media's influence on me personally. Because I'm wary of those influences, yet still, for over a week, they efficiently managed my views, I can imagine how well that works with people applying less skeptical filtering.
Again - I'm saying nothing about the incident, only about the influence of media.
Two things:
- "an unarmed teenager"
- "we will pursue a vigorous prosecution"
I've encountered both phrases many times. Taking the latter first, because it's less equivocal…a prosecution proceeds from an indictment. There has at this writing been no indictment.
Thus, that and similar statements presuppose the cop will be indicted. If memory serves, one iteration of that statement came from the governor of Missouri. That is literally prejudice.
On to "an unarmed teenager" - the statement is loaded with influence. It causes me to think of the person so described as being harmless and defenseless. I believe the stats on Michael Brown are 6'4" and 292. Here's another way to describe him: "Michael Brown, a 6 foot 4 inch 292 pound unarmed teenager".
My point here is that it's dangerous, seductive, and irresponsible to consider oneself immune to media spin. I held that smug view of myself until discovering how effective just those two repeated phrases were at working their dark art on my internal concepts.
by 8bitagent » Fri Aug 22, 2014 12:31 am
by seemslikeadream » Fri Aug 22, 2014 10:23 am
Face it, blacks. Michael Brown let you down.
So instead, can someone just shoot Jesus Christ already?
For a moment there, things were looking pretty good. A boy shot multiple times with his hands up. College bound. Poor. Innocent. And in response: helicopters and tanks. Maybe this time, we thought, they would believe us.
But that’s all been ruined.
We now have all sorts of reasons to make us doubt Brown’s humanity. He may have stolen some cigarillos. He may have been facing the officer when he was shot. He got shot in the top of the head, which might mean that he was surrendering, or might mean he was being defiant. He made amateur rap songs. Perhaps worst of all, he’s been caught grimacing at a camera making a contorted peace sign, and it turns out that he was pretty tall.
And Fox News has been trying to cast doubt on whether he was actually going to go to college in the first place.
All signs that his life was worth less than we might have hoped.
It’s like what happened with Trayvon Martin, really. Over the course of a few days, he went from an innocent boy holding a bag of Skittles to a vicious, ruthless thug. We found out that he smoked pot. We found out that he said bad words. We found out that he was wearing a hoodie. We saw a picture of him making an angry face. Zimmerman’s lawyers released his text message logs, and we found out that he didn’t speak the Queen’s English.
And with each new revelation about both of these boys — some true, some false — we let out another collective sigh. We had been let down.
Of course, we knew that our reaction was ridiculous. We know that pushing someone at a convenience store, or being a less than stellar student shouldn’t be a death sentence. And hell, if you think that throwing up a contorted peace sign, or even an actual verifiable ‘gang sign’ means that you are in a violent gang, well, I’ve got a bridge I’d like to sell you, and a few thousand thug white women I’d like you to call 911 about, because there’s an epidemic going on.
But still, it was disappointing.
Not because we believed that these were reasons for the boys to die. But because we knew that so many Americans were itching for a reason, any reason, to condemn the boys to death in their minds. To make it all our fault. And by being simply human, these dead spirits gave them that ammunition.
Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Oscar Grant. They failed us all by not being perfect.
One of the most compelling stories ever told is that of Jesus Christ. It doesn’t matter whether you follow his teachings, or those of his followers — the story is a wonderful one.
A man was born under magical circumstances, lived among the poor and sick, and performed miracles. He was sentenced to a brutal and unjust death, which he accepted, because it was for the good of his neighbors — even those that hated him. He was, literally, perfect.
Maybe that’s why the recent revelation that Jesus may have had a wife is so controversial. People are angry about this, but they shouldn’t be. After all, what’s the matter with having a wife? If you believe, it doesn’t change anything, at all. He still performed miracles. He still died. He still came back. He’s still God’s son. You can still pray to him.
But maybe the issue is that as a (formerly) Puritan society, we need our saviors to be spotless, to be clean. Perhaps that’s what all the fuss is about.
So maybe what all of these terrified racists need is someone that, no matter how hard they try, cannot be dehumanized. Someone beyond human. Someone Christlike.
Someone that can save them from themselves, and wash their souls of fear and hate and judgement. Someone that can bring them into the light of humanity and love and logic.
Maybe what we need is a 5'8, light skinned, Harvard-bound, star tennis player/violinist/poet that volunteers at the local pet shelter, bakes amazing blueberry muffins, speaks with a Mid-Atlantic accent, has a white name, who has never taken a photo with anything other than a thumbs up and a smile, and just recently published a groundbreaking cure for cancer in Science.
And we need him to die. Someone needs to find this boy, and kill him in public. It’s our only hope.
I’d offer myself, honestly. I would. But I got a D in Calculus once, so I don’t think I qualify. I’m not good enough.
A good friend wrote recently about how, whenever he got pulled over, he would slip his college ID over his driver’s license and hand it to the officer. Yes, some of us deserve to be shot in the street, he was saying silently, but this ID proves that I’m not one of them. He feels guilty about this now.
I used to do something similar — I’d ‘accidentally’ hand the officer my college ID, and feign absentmindedness and chuckle over-conspicuously when he reminded me that he needed my driver’s license. It worked sometimes. I don’t feel so guilty about it.
Because thinking back, I realize that this ritual, repeated every few weeks or so, was as much for my soul as it was for my safety. Looking down at that college ID reminded me that I was a ‘good’ human. I was assuring myself that if something went wrong, at least I’d be a pretty decent martyr. I was no Jesus, but at least I could be an extreme Rosa Parks. Better than Claudette Colvin, anyway.
I think that’s also what #IfTheyGunnedMeDown was about. It wasn’t only a criticism of the media. I think somewhere in there, we were all calculating our human worth – on their terms. We were reducing our life story down to a series of numbers, achievements, and soundbites. Ones and zeros. High school graduate, but smoked a cigarette once. Army officer, but likes gold chains. Great big sister, but makes frowny faces in pictures.
Evaluating our humanity on an unfairly weighted scale. Their scale.
Because we know that it’s common knowledge that white killers get treated like little lost lambs, while black victims are immediately demonized. Hell, there are now even listicles about this sort of thing. But we also know that any small flaw, any trace of humanity, will ruin the whole thing. That people, too many people, will be positively giddy at the sight of our blood.
That some people will take the opportunity to lecture us on interacting with police, as if it was failsafe or we didn’t already know.
That some people will collectively donate $150,000 to demonstrate how much they hate us.
That is why #IfTheyGunnedMeDown, like everything else we’ve tried thus far, has ended in failure. That’s why there were so many white kids doing it. It’s not their fault that they didn’t understand.
https://twitter.com/thecityofjules/stat ... 6181323776
We uploaded those pictures, but we were just fooling ourselves. We were preaching to the choir, and we knew that it wouldn’t make a difference.
None of us are good enough to die on that cross.
Be warned: this is a graphic video. A man commits suicide on camera. Read about it here instead.
There’s something I’d like you to understand about black people: we’re like everyone else. We want to leave the world a better place than we found it. So the prospect of leaving unexpectedly, and having your story twisted in such a way as to actually steel the hearts of racists — is a terrifying thought.
I didn’t know Michael Brown, and I don’t know his family. I don’t know what happened on that day (only one of us does). But I do know that he couldn’t be the Christ that White America so desperately needed.
And they do need him. Perhaps more than anyone else in the world right now, they need Jesus.
But, even if we did get our Jesus — even if Michael Brown were that impossibly perfect martyr, even if we had that mythical savior black boy — it probably wouldn’t have helped.
After all, Jesus died an awful long time ago, and things didn’t quite pick up for us. Those who say they love him most do not love us, their neighbors. They reject and fear us. Somewhere, in between the Bible, the politics, and the sermons, the message has been lost.
So, friends: if praying is your thing, go for it. Keep it up. We need all the positive energy we can get. But I’m not sure it’s going to help.
Because if this is how we treat ourselves, I’m not sure if even God can save us now.
by seemslikeadream » Fri Aug 22, 2014 12:13 pm
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