Elizabeth Warren On Ferguson: 'This Is America, Not A War Zone'

[DonViejo]

Source: TPM

By TOM KLUDT Published AUGUST 14, 2014, 9:42 AM EDT

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) weighed in Thursday on the growing chaos in Ferguson, Mo., where violence has erupted after an unarmed black teenager was fatally shot by a police officer last weekend.

The Massachusetts senator addressed the surreal condition of the St. Louis suburb, which has seen a week filled with tear gas and rubber bullets following the death of 18-year-old Michael Brown.

Elizabeth Warren ✔ @elizabethforma
Follow

This is America, not a war zone. The people of #Ferguson just want answers. We all want answers.

9:04 AM - 14 Aug 2014

Police in Ferguson have come under heavy criticism this week for what has been seen as an overzealous response to the protests over Brown's death.

-snip-

Read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/elizabeth-warren-ferguson-war-zone

---

Rep. Amash On Ferguson: 'Is This A War Zone Or A US City?'

By SAHIL KAPUR Published AUGUST 14, 2014, 10:00 AM EDT

Libertarian Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI) reacted strongly on Thursday to the chilling events in Ferguson, Missouri, which include police firing tear gas at protesters and arresting two reporters.

Justin Amash ✔ @repjustinamash
Follow
Images & reports out of #Ferguson are frightening. Is this a war zone or a US city? Gov't escalates tensions w/military equipment & tactics.

10:12 PM - 13 Aug 2014

###

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/justin-amash-ferguson-war-zone

[Autumn]

1. At last. Some one speaks the truth and shames the devil.

Recommended. This is America, not a war zone.

[zonkers]

2. She minces no words.

[billhicks76]

28. What About Hillary???

She seems to use everything else as an opportunity to forward herself. Why so silent on this?

[candelista]

37. "Minces"? It's a tweet!

There aren't enough words to mince.

[zonkers]

38. I know, sometimes I post sleepy.

I do like Elizabeth... a lot!

[JackRiddler]

3. Thank you Sen. Warren.

This is America, however. Always been a war zone, next door to but usually safely removed from a white settlement. Out of sight, out of mind, until the always-mysterious eruptions.

[L0oniX]

4. This is a country that is based on war. It will always be at war even if there isn't one.

[freebrew]

5. +1...

[longship]

6. The situation definitely needs a federal response, even if only verbal.

Where's President Obama?

Apparently Martha's Vineyard.

[movonne]

18. Are you saying that Obama is just laying around in Martha's Vineyard...or

maybe he shouldn't take a vacation...

[longship]

22. My post was sarcasm.

Probably should have used the smilie.
( )

However, if Repub Congress critters are going to criticize him, that will be their narrative... while they have had more vacation than work this year.

My apologies.

[Baitball Blogger]

7. Run, Elizabeth, Run!

[think]

8. Thank you Senator Warren.

Are any of our other leaders addressing the situation in Ferguson?

[democrank]

9. A rare politician...

straightforward and honest. What a refreshing change. Thank you, Senator Warren.

[Fred Sanders]

10. Warren and Sanders voted to support the REAL war on Gaza, how do we explain that?

[Ed Suspicious]

13. Not to change the subject, but you seem to be changing the subject.

[Fred Sanders]

16. Worshipping both as solid champions of humanity took a bit of a hit with their support of and now

silence towards the slaughter of innocents.

I stand to be corrected, have either spoken out?

Other than in tweets?

[Iamthetruth]

11. Remember when

Cops had side arms and a shotgun in their truck? Now they carry around machine guns and walk around with masks on.

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

12. This country hasn't been America since Kent State.

[12AngryBorneoWildmen]

15. Good Point.

[frazzled]

14. What I hate about Tweets

140 character comments are fine ... but where are the solutions?

I don't think either of these brief comments from legislators are particularly helpful: they're about what we can see for ourselves. We need a longer format and more thoughtful platform to address what can be done to change the situation. Congress could pass a law, for example, to prevent the sale of certain military equipment to local police departments. That's one thing. (Though not all police departments who own such equipment have deployed such tactics: this is about the Ferguson department in particular.) But there are also much broader issues regarding racism that are highly complex ... and lots of people, in local, state, and federal agencies, as well as think tanks and independent nonprofit organizations, that have been grappling with these issues for decades. Who is reading their reports or cheering their on-the-ground efforts? I guess those studies and reports are just too long to read.

140 characters is neither courageous nor particularly helpful. Nothing to cheerlead about. It's safe and easy to make a comment about this situation (we all do it here every day). Doing something about it is hard.

[JDPriestly]

20. I don't like tweets either, but they are better than nothing.

Hillary and Obama are in the news because of their statements on Syria and foreign policy. One of the things I like about Elizabeth Warren is that she can think about more than just foreign policy.

I appreciate the fact that Elizabeth Warren who is a senator, not the president, is thinking about the militarization of and the police state on the streets of America.

The problem here is whether the response of the police in St. Louis is appropriate to the problem.

But gone are the days when people read long books.

[frazzled]

21. I think you are perhaps overly impressed

What has she said is what everyone has been saying. It's mundane.

And if you think the black president of the United States isn't thinking about this, you're extremely naive.

[JDPriestly]

23. The black and white president may be thinking about this, but it took him a long time to

do much more than "think" about Wisconsin and look how that turned out.

We need a president who is as focused on what is going on in middle America as he is on what is going the Ukraine or on Wall Street.

[frazzled]

24. Google "most racist city in America"

and you will inevitably come up with Boston. (And I lived there for five years; I can attest to it. I can even tell stories, like when my husband invited an esteemed professor of French literature as his guest, who happened to be an African, to visit, and they were asked to leave a Cambridge hotel restaurant: they wouldn't serve the African professor a second beer because, they claimed, he "smelled." No shit, Sherlock. My husband had to lodge a complaint about racism. And remember when Skip Gates was arrested "breaking into" his own home? Did the senator have anything to say about that in her home town?) Maybe the senator should try tweeting closer to home. She's lived there enough years to have tried to do something about it.

C'mon, really? You are equating a stupid "tweet" with some sort of laudable action? I'm going to guess you will be among the first to decry whatever Obama says at 12:15 pm as "just words."

[HenryWallace]

26. methinks you doth protest too much!

“My husband had to lodge a complaint……” that seems neither courageous nor particularly helpful!

[12AngryBorneoWildmen]

17. It IS happening here!

http://www.amazon.com/It-Can-Happen-Here.../dp/0312379307 and Sinclair Lewis's 'It couldn't happen here.' Local police are arming themselves in a maxed out military fashion to unprecedented degrees around the nation. The ever increasing subjugation of all but the top 1 to 10% is a ticking time bomb. One store was looted in Ferguson and one store was broken into. Big Wowie! You shot a fucking kid with arms raised, in the front and the back. I loved seeing the white people in the footage last night. And President wannabe Rick Perry sends the National Guard to the border to protect us against 9 yr old Guatemalan boys and girls that WANT to surrender. Iraq vets have said that they weren't as well armed as the Ferguson/St Louis County cops. "You go to war with the army you have, not the army you want.", Donald Rumsfeld. The economy and the stagnant wages (or decreasing ) wages and the climate and the deteriorating health of the population and the erosion of democracy with rampant voter suppression and unlimited funding of political puppets, AAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!! These are the darkest days. And to quote an unlikely source-John McCain-"It's always darkest before it goes pitch black."

[Clyde Tenson]

19. If you dress up for battle, arm yourself with warlike weaponry...

...drive around in armoured vehicles, point your high powered, military-grade weapons DIRECTLY at human beings under serious stress, while shitting on their constitutional rights of assembly, YOU ARE INVITING A RESPONSE. The decisions the Ferguson police chief is making are pouring gas on a volatile situation. His aw-shucks grandfatherly demeanor is fooling no one. If not in Ferguson, sooner or later shots will ring out. Then, for the first time, we will see carnage visited on the streets of an American city.

Somewhere in Hell, Bin Laden is pissing himself with laughter.

[kiranon]

25. Agree. It looked like Egypt and not the US.

[warrant46]

41. I wouldn't be happy if

A Mob was first looting and then burning down my business

Nor would I be in a hurry to rebuild it once I received my insurance check.

I also doubt the insurance company would later insure my business IF I rebuilt it in Baghdad on the Mississippi.

[Dems to Win]

27. Warren can say it straight, why not Obama?

Wish Obama would have made such a strong, straightforward statement against the militarization of the police. His statement was very weak, and ignored the well-armed elephant in Ferguson. Not even a mention of the armored personnel carriers and police in body armor on the streets of America!

[BumRushDaShow]

30. Oh please

And the minute he does what you fantasize about, the entire media machine will lurch around to take its focus off the volatile situation of poorly trained hyperactive police who need to be exposed for what they are, and they WILL make it all about "Obama" instead.

[woo me with science]

39. Because his administration has been instrumental in militarizing the police in the first place.

ACLU launches nationwide police militarization investigation
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/06/aclu-police-militarization-swat_n_2813334.html

It's almost certain that if the police agencies cooperate, the ACLU will find that the militarization trend has accelerated since Kraska's studies more than a decade ago. All of the policies, incentives and funding mechanisms that were driving the trend then are still in effect now. And most of them have grown in size and scope.

The George W. Bush administration actually began scaling down the Byrne and COPS programs in the early 2000s, part of a general strategy of leaving law enforcement to states and localities. But the Obama administration has since resurrected both programs. The Byrne program got a $2 billion surge in funding as part of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, by far the largest budget in the program's 25-year history. Obama also gave the COPS program $1.55 billion that same year, a 250 percent increase over its 2008 budget, and again the largest budget in the program's history. Vice President Joe Biden had championed both programs during his time in the Senate.

The Pentagon's 1033 program has also exploded under Obama. In the program's monthly newsletter (Motto: "From Warfighter to Crimefighter&quot , its director announced in October 2011 that his office had given away a record $500 million in military gear in fiscal year 2011, which he noted, "passes the previous mark by several hundred million dollars." He added, "I believe we can exceed that in FY 12.”

Then there are the Department of Homeland Security's anti-terrorism grants. The Center for Investigative Reporting found in a 2011 investigation that since 2001, DHS has given out more than $34 billion in grants to police departments across the country, many of which have been used to purchase military-grade guns, tanks, armor, and armored personnel carriers. The grants have gone to such unlikely terrorism targets as Fargo, N.D.; Canyon County, Idaho; and Tuscaloosa, Ala.

Link to the final ACLU report on militarization of police in America
https://www.aclu.org/criminal-law-reform/war-comes-home-excessive-militarization-american-police-report

[Dems to Win]

40. Thanks for the info

Here I was, so happy about the Stimulus funds that re-paved the main road near my house. I guess there were some not-so-nice expenditures in that package, too.

[olddad56]

29. this is America and many part of many cities in America are becoming war zones.

[ymetca]

31. Where are the Gadsen Flag boys?

Curious, I am, that there are no "don't tread on me folks" with "second amendment solutions" slung over their shoulders, marching right along side those protesters in Ferguson, protecting them from the "jack-booted thugs" they so often decry.

Curious, I am...

[blkmusclmachine]

32. The U.S. IS a war zone. The Police are militarized, and they see the 99% as the ENEMY.

They are paid thugs/goons/henchmen for the 1%.

[tomp]

33. america is not a war zone?

war takes many forms. at the very least it is a battleground.

[Earth_First]

34. It IS a war zone...

It's been raging for thirty years.

It is a Class War.

Thirty years later, they are reaching for the last remaining available remnants of what we do own, now with a militarized presence.

They want it ALL.

Oh yes my friends...it is a war zone.

[Yavin4]

35. Well, She's wrong.

There's been an active war on the middle class and the poor since 1980. Guess who is winning.

[candelista]

36. Politics by tweet?

Well, I guess that's her approach. A formal statement would be more appropriate.

[quadrature]

42. she is needed in Ferguson ...nt

[Uncle Joe]

43. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, DonViejo.