Why are People Taking to the Streets?

[sheshe2]

|By nadinabbott on December 9, 2014 •


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Dec. 9, 2014 (San Diego) People are getting inconvenienced. Civil disobedience tends to do that. We have seen multiple closures of interstates across the country. Yesterday saw a first, Amtrak service was stopped near Berkeley, California. So what’s the beef? Why are people so angry and for some, the police and the courts have no credibility, worst, have no standing? Well, first we need to peel the onion.

The first layer of the onion are the raw statistics. According to the Sentencing Project, 60 percent of African-American without a High School diploma have served time in prison. “And while blacks and latinos together comprise 30 percent of the general population, they account for 58 percent of prisoners.” These raw statistics are at times used to suggest that these two minorities, African-American and Latinos, are far more violent than their white counterparts.

This is the outermost layer of the onion. Since this is where many people stop. If they are in prison at such high rates, they must be violent right? Not quite. The second layer of the onion is policy. This has been the result of how we have chosen to enforce laws, and who we have chosen to enforce it on. The drug laws are the best example of this. We know from studies that African-American and whites use drugs at the same rates. Yet, more African-American people are in jail. Why? It is how the system deals with this.

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Here is the onion peeled for you. As annoying as it may be, next time somebody, or likely a large group close down an interstate, or roads in San Diego, this is why. They are not trying to inconvenience you. They are trying to get a conversation started. This is not my view. It is the view of many of the people who are in the streets, becuase they are tired of the treatment they are getting from law enforcement, the courts, the system. They are chiefly tired of their youth becoming criminals before they graduate from high school, and truly, of having to watch their Ps and Qs because people are afraid of them.

Read More

http://reportingsandiego.com/2014/12/09/why-are-people-taking-to-the-streets/

Photo Gallery: UTSA students hold ‘die-in’ to protest #EricGarner, #Ferguson deaths


Posted on December 10, 2014 by SouthernGirl2

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UTSA senior Chris Brown initiates the event by falling first to the ground Wednesday Dec. 10, 2014 during a Die-in in honor of Michael Brown and Eric Garner

UTSA senior Chris Brown initiates the event by falling first to the ground Wednesday Dec. 10, 2014 during a “Die-in” in honor of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, where they laid for 15 and half minutes at Sombrilla Plaza. The event was sponsored by the UTSA NAACP chapter in an effort to shed light on police brutality and injustice, with about 80 people participating.

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See More

http://3chicspolitico.com/2014/12/10/photo-gallery-utsa-students-hold-die-in-to-protest-ericgarner-ferguson-deaths/

Links NadinAbbott and 3chickspolitico~

Did you hear that? "They are trying to get a conversation started."

ARE YOU LISTENING OR JUST INCONVENIENCED? Wake the hell up America. It is past time for WHITE AMERICA TO TAKE THE LEAD AND CORRECT THE WRONGS that were committed and still being committed against PoC. Please wake up America, you do her a grave injustice when you remain silent.

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[PM Martin]

1. Because a cop murdered a civilian on camera?!?

That cop was not charge with anything.

[sheshe2]

2. Thanks for the speed read. nt

[BlueJazz]

3. LOL!

[BlueJazz]

4. I've been inconvenienced this past week due to protesters.

Don't mind it at all and I'm mighty proud of them.

[sheshe2]

5. Thanks BlueJazz.

I am proud of them too.

[UTUSN]

6. Because voting is too subtle but the long range way to get the desired results.

I'm an old fringe-non/Hippie & what the demonstrations then were largely about were the Draft, not the ostensible reasons. Notice how there weren't that level of protesting over non-Draft Iraq?

[arcane1]

7. There were HUGE protests over Iraq, much higher in numbers. But they were all permitted.

Literally, as in permits were purchased for permission to hold marches and protests

[sheshe2]

9. K~

If The Supreme Court Says Racism Is Pretty Much Over, Why Are So Many People Still Being So Racist?

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in June that a key provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act designed to prevent racial discrimination in certain voting laws was no longer necessary. The majority opinion, authored by Chief Justice John Roberts and joined by Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, stated that “things have changed dramatically” in the South and that the "country has changed" since the Voting Rights Act was passed. The court argued the law had successfully defended against discrimination, but was no longer needed. Racism, the court majority appeared to suggest, was over, and laws created during a time when such hatred was in its heyday served now to place unjust "burdens" on certain states and jurisdictions that wished to pass new voting laws -- laws, of course, that had nothing to do with trying to suppress minority votes.

Last week, the Supreme Court sided with Michigan's ban on affirmative action, passed by voters in 2006, saying it was the state's prerogative to decide how it wanted to handle race-conscious admissions policies. Justice Sonia Sotomayor disagreed with her colleagues' view that "examining the racial impact of legislation only perpetuates racial discrimination," and criticized what she characterized as their decision to "sit back and wish away, rather than confront, the racial inequality that exists in our society."

Referring to a 2007 opinion authored by Roberts, in which he declared that the "way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race," Sotomayor wrote that the "way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to speak openly and candidly on the subject of race, and to apply the Constitution with eyes open to the unfortunate effects of centuries of racial discrimination.”

For some Supreme Court justices, the history of racism that guided this discrimination is a thing of the past. But for anyone who's been paying attention in the past year alone, you know that's just plain wrong. Here are some people who prove that not only has racism not been eradicated in the South, it still exists in the upper echelons of power -- even in the judiciary.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/29/racism-isnt-dead_n_5232080.html

Any comments?

[NJCher]

16. well, of course

Roberts replaced Rehnquist.

Rehnquist is the effing idiot who wrote a decision that makes it so difficult to convict a police officer that it will never happen, or happen only in extreme circumstances:

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The court’s 1989 ruling in Graham v. Connor spelled out a legal standard that shaped how juries weigh evidence when considering charges of excessive force.

“The question is whether the officers’ actions are ‘objectively reasonable’ in light of the facts and circumstances confronting them, without regard to their underlying intent or motivation,” Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote in the opinion.

“The ‘reasonableness’ of a particular use of force must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight,” Rehnquist explained in the opinion. “The calculus of reasonableness must embody allowance for the fact that police officers are often forced to make split-second judgments — in circumstances that are tense, uncertain, and rapidly evolving — about the amount of force that is necessary in a particular situation.”

The word “objective” is important. It means a jury can’t take into account an officer’s subjective beliefs, including his prejudices and biases, when deciding if his actions were reasonable or not.

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Anyone who knows anything about attribution theory will tell you what a foolish decision this is.

This debacle can be laid squarely at the feet of conservatives.

Read the entire article. which I posted a few days ago:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/12/04/why-its-so-difficult-to-charge-police-officers-who-kill/



Cher

[LiberalElite]

12. Really?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_the_Iraq_War

[mopinko]

8. because nothing gets america's attention like mucking with their right to drive cars.

a real poke in the private place.
i love it.

[Brigid]

10. Because nothing else is working?

[pinboy3niner]

11. EarlG: The American tradition of inconveniencing motorists...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1017&pid=230315

[sheshe2]

13. Thanks pinboy.

EarlG captured it all there. Sports Shopping and Ducks are far more important than Black Lives.

[mindwalker_i]

14. they just hate America

Or did they hate us for our freedoms? I can never get those straight.

[zentrum]

15. You know what "I...

...can't breathe" reminds me of? Water Boarding.

[sheshe2]

17. To me it means PoC have been unable to breathe for centurys.

Their life has been sucked out of their souls when the slave owners beat them, debased them, raped them and fucking owned them. WE DID THAT!

They look over their shoulders and see men in white hoods with a noose in their hands. Look out for that gun over there. Stay meek your momma and papa say to you, be respectful, never look them in the eye, not that it will save them. They can not drive while black, they can not walk while black, they can't live while black.

So do not derail my goddamn thread by talking about water boarding by the Bush Administration! Or are you blaming the black man in the Oval Office for this as well?

[zentrum]

18. No, not derailing.

The same forces that created state torture in our name in the CIA are the same forces that have created police states and neo-nazi mentality here and now and in 2003 and in 1800 and 1700. It's all torture. No need to calm down but at least realize that I agree with you and am just drawing links between all our illegal, soul sucking policies.

We need to be charged in the World Court for violating the Geneva Conventions and we need to have Truth and Reconciliation Hearings here at home over our slavery past, and current systemic racism and make official reparations.

This is all connected in my view.

[steve2470]

20. derailing ftl nt

[steve2470]

19. big kick and big rec! nt