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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsIn the end, we will remember
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This image - Eric Garner's eyes - from #MillionsMarchNYC #ICantBreathe
3:28 PM - 13 Dec 2014
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025957313
So much outrage from the people that say they are true progressives here. Outrage at this President since he is worse than Bush!!@#$%^ Yet on the reality that black lives matter and white privilege being a huge issue, crickets or unimaginable outrage. I AM NOT A RACIST, when no one ever said you were. Sit down a moment and take a deep breath~ breathe, Eric couldn't. Please take one for him one deep breath. Then could we have a reality check and one hell of an adult conversation on the issue of racism in America. It is a disease that needs to be addressed. It is an American disease and it damn well needs to be cured.
Stop the denial, your silence is deafening. On a Democratic Board I find that frightening. Wake up America!
CaliforniaPeggy
(149,719 posts)These words resonate with me.
K&R
steve2470
(37,457 posts)pkdu
(3,977 posts)Cha
(297,723 posts)brer cat
(24,615 posts)BlancheSplanchnik
(20,219 posts)Dustlawyer
(10,497 posts)sheshe2
(83,929 posts)Yet you know who I mean and they will continue to be silent. Why? Because they sure talk the talk and never walk the walk. They do not give a shit about PoC never have and damn well never will.
This place makes me so very sad. Not one has spoken about this. Not one!
Dustlawyer
(10,497 posts)too late!
I have witnessed this stuff first hand in high dollar fundraisers, and companies like BP bribe Obama with help before the 2010 midterms. Obama gave BP the Coast Guard who did and said whatever BP told them too. They even sprayed the Corexit for BP, but Obama got the money, BP told the media to move on after agreeing to spend billions in advertising and now the victims are getting screwed! America in the 21st century, corporate wet dream!
SunSeeker
(51,726 posts)Major Hogwash
(17,656 posts)Did you hear about the funeral for the girl in Mississippi?
sheshe2
(83,929 posts)lovemydog
(11,833 posts)and a national disgrace. It's getting international attention, as well it should. It's a despicable American problem.
Here at DU, there's more discussion on whether President Obama condones torture (he does not - he ended torture the day after he took office). Many here prefer to play semantic games rather than actually reflect on or discuss what's most important.
The eyes of the world are upon us. Not over most of the other topics posted here. Over this one issue: unarmed black people are being killed by police. Our criminal justice system doesn't do a goddamn thing about it. People are rising up and taking to the streets to protest it and demand change.
I'm delighted that people are publicly protesting this travesty. It must stop.
KingCharlemagne
(7,908 posts)domestically is 'more important' than U.S. government torture (largely against people of color) internationally. I also wonder whether the world's 'eyes' are upon us more for the former than for the latter. Or perhaps both attract equal attention because both are equally important.
Question for you: if President Obama does not 'condone' torture, then why hasn't the U.S. government extradited convicted CIA agent and torture-enabler Robert Lady to Italy to serve his sentence?
Lady, the former United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) station chief in Milan, was arrested in Panama on July 18, 2013. He had been a fugitive from Italian police after being convicted of kidnapping of Egyptian cleric Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr in February 2003, in what the Italian press are referring to as the Imam Rapito (or "kidnapped imam" affair. He was released on July 19, 2013, and immediately boarded a flight directed to the United States.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Seldon_Lady
As a Marxist, I see the police violence and torture as all existing on a single capitalist-imperialist continuum. Malcolm X once famously said, "You can't have capitalism without racism." Were he alive today, I'm confident he would add, "You can't have imperialism without torture" (or words to that effect). As a Marxist, Dem vs. Republican bourgeois political spats take a distant second base to overthrowing capitalism and replacing it with some iteration of socialism (where the means of production are publicly owned and controlled).
lovemydog
(11,833 posts)because i too want serious systemic changes. I understand where you're coming from.
Do I think President Obama or his Administration condones torture? No. He ended it as policy. I recognize that the discussion shouldn't stop there. Extradition and prosecution are also important matter.
I know we don't agree on this one question. But I also know we both condemn police brutality and torture. So I feel a lot more in line with your views than I do with, say, every republican.
KingCharlemagne
(7,908 posts)the word 'condone.' When I argued that Obama 'condones' it, I never meant to suggest that Obama approves of its use. Obama is thus closer to my position than the majority of Americans who in a recent poll said they either strongly approved or mildly approved of its use. I tend to take a very hard line against torture or mistreatment of any detainee anywhere -- even Republican war criminals, should they ever serve time for their crimes -- and, relative to my position, President Obama could be said to 'condone' torture.
But then I got off my duff and checked the definition of 'condone' and I now think you are right and there is no way the President Obama condones it.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/condone
As Hamlet in a moment of frustration says, "Words, words, words." They're all we have and yet they often fail to deliver what we need of them.
lovemydog
(11,833 posts)in expressing the frustrations we feel about the injustices we see around us.
Particularly since some of these issues we discuss here at DU can be so visceral and / or hit close to home.
I enjoy what you write here, as it gets me thinking about lots of things.
Spazito
(50,484 posts)the silence here is deafening AND telling, imo.
lovemydog
(11,833 posts)What you say is so moving and powerful, sheshe2.