It is very tiring indeed to always be considered the "enemy"...

[MrScorpio]

[coffeenap]

1. It must truly be....

[heaven05]

2. +1000

truth absolute.

[helpmetohelpyou]

3. Times are a changing

[calimary]

7. I sure hope so, helpmetohelpyou.

I sure hope so. I hope more of us come to understand what young black boys and men and their families have to go through - shit - sometimes even just to cross the street! The American system of justice supposedly dictates that one is innocent until proven guilty. That never seems to apply to blacks. I'm so tired of this awful "tradition" - another weeping mother. Another soft black face glistening and slicked down with tears. Another older black man with that stricken look on his face upon the news his son is gone.

It's sickening. It's just sickening. When is enough enough? Hell, even our President knows how it feels to be young and African-American and be treated like an automatic suspect - just because.

I'm a mom myself so it just nauseates me to see another mother grief-stricken like that. Hurts me too. Makes my heart ache.

It has to STOP.

[mopinko]

4. i'll say it again

somethin happenin here.
what it is aint exactly clear.

[tblue37]

5. KnR. nt

[7962]

6. EVERYBODY is being told the same thing

My own experience; the exact same thing. "just do what they tell you and there wont be a problem". NO, do your JOB correctly.
Are we supposed to let the police inspect our homes & cars for no reason also? If you're not doing anything wrong, there's nothing to worry about, right? Believe it or not some people actually think thats ok!! NO!!
Maybe when cities are sued into oblivion they will start to get a handle on WHO they hire. Thats the only way to get change; hire better people and not power-hungry idiots.

[calimary]

8. Too bad it has to come to that but maybe it has to.

Because it doesn't seem like there are any other penalties. It doesn't seem like there's any other recourse. What else can a family do to get some sort of justice and closure - when the "justice" system never seems to deliver any?

[treestar]

14. People will do wrong

all kinds of people in all kinds of places. They should not, but they do. This puts the cart before the horse. Nobody should ever do anything wrong, but they do. If a cop is mistreating you, stay alive to complain about it later. I really don't see that if we adopted this attitude, it would do any good. There should be no racism. There should be no crimes committed by anyone black or white. But humanity doesn't play along with that.

[A Simple Game]

23. So when a cop does wrong what punishment do you recommend for them?

A day off without pay for a minor infraction? A week off without pay for a worse infraction? Firing for a major infraction? Suspension with pay for a day, a week? How about a good butt chewing then get to laugh about it in the locker room?

I think you are right, we should use the correct processes and let the system work for us. Equal laws and justice for everyone. Does that sound good? You harass me then you get the same treatment I would get if I harassed you. You get charged and then a trial. You assault me you get jail and then a trial and if guilty more jail. You arrest me with no cause, you get charged with false arrest and go to jail then trial.

You shoot and kill an unarmed person that is no threat to you, you go directly to jail, get no bail then a trial. You are also subject to the same punishments the rest of us are subject to. If we have to go through the system then so do the cops. What better way to show us we have to work with the system than by proving no one is above the law and that the law is equal for everyone.

[rhett o rick]

9. It would be much easier to "follow the cops orders" if they were delivered in a calm manner.

Often they are screaming the orders and in some cases, different cops are shouting different orders.

When will we figure out that when cops scream and attack the natural reaction is to defend yourself. Then they call it resisting.

[certainot]

10. michael savage calls for plumbers w/pipes to deal w/protestors on 100's of stations

on christmas eve i heard radio asshole michael savage called for pipe-wielding plumbers to deal with the 'communist vermin' protestors yesterday. the guy's on hundreds of radio stations and maybe a hundred (more than 200 limbaugh stations do) piggyback our publicly-funded college sports teams.

the discussions on race, white privilege, police brutality, etc, will continue to be distorted by that republican radio PSYOPS until democracy loving americans stop ignoring it.

how many cops hear this shit, which is OK because democracy-loving americans ignore give it and give it a free speech free ride? which is okay because it's endorsed by the state pro and college sports teams?

400 talk radio gods/blowhards working for the rw think tanks have been doing their racist best to sell the hate and fear that builds prisons, keeps the drug war going, and passes legislation to suppress the vote.

moving ahead on any major issue will require the left to stop ignoring rw radio

[Dustlawyer]

15. This is one of the many reasons to bust up the media oligopoly!

Big banks as well! Fight for Publicly Funded Elections to get our Representative Democracy back and we could then fix these problems! That's why Bernie Sanders needs massive support because he has made this his #1 issue. The corporate and 1%'s propaganda machine needs to be stopped!

[certainot]

17. don't think it will happen as long as the left ignores rw radio, the biggest

offender in the rw media monopoly

and bernie and warren are a much bigger longshot as long as the left gives republican radio a free speech free ride to take unchallenged potshots at them all days long.

[MelungeonWoman]

22. Perhaps we could start by reclaiming the word 'communist'.

I'm proud to be a communist: a white person who is happy to live in a community with black people on an equal basis.

In this context Savage is not describing the person who supports public roads, schools, libraries, art and post office (although I do support all those things, so maybe I really AM a communist), he is describing white people who want to build a community with black people. That's what he is hating. It seems to have the entire right wing distraught. The soccer moms have developed a distaste for blatant racism. What has happened to their middle class support? Perhaps the middle class, sufficiently beaten down sees themselves as 'next' and no longer want to play the game.

What happens when plumbers start thinking how tiring it must be to always be considered the enemy? What happens when plumbers become communists?

[certainot]

24. start with reclaiming 'liberal'. he's the only radio blowhard i've heard use it

(communist) regularly. most, following limbaugh, use 'liberal' to mean communist, who is the deadly enemy of dollars and tv and hotdogs and cheap gas the baby jesus and other true amurkan freedoms.

[Cha]

11. Good for Preston Mitchum.. mahalo Mr Scorpio~

[Elmer S. E. Dump]

12. I SO understand the problem

Which is why I'm so dejected.

[treestar]

13. Challenge them in court, not on the street.

Simply because it won't end as well there. I don't think it is meant to say give in to oppression. But it can be challenged, and the courts do not always side with the police and can find their arrests and searches unlawful. I don't see the value of bringing the argument to the street - the courts are slow and frustrating, but they basically function.

There is a whole line of cases about prosecutors striking black jurors, for example, and the courts did find that prosecutors are not supposed to do that. It's not always hopeless.

Nobody should resist arrest for their own sake. We'd all have to do that. That cops harass black people more can be dealt with as a legal matter.

[jtuck004]

18. Sounds like good advice, but the jails are full of black folk who went to court, but were there

for doing the same thing white folk did who were allowed to walk.

And it starts early - ask the black kids in Chicago public schools what it is like now going to jail for the things white kids did in years past.

They will not win in the streets or in the courts until white folk decide not to be racists or "non-racists", aka "good people", who allow racists to flourish.

[sabrina 1]

19. Boycotts and strikes work also. Huge boycotts of advertisers on Right Wing hate radio and Faux

WORK.

Street protests are fine, but now that they send out their militarized army to beat people up and throw them in jail, and INFILTRATE the peaceful protests to make them look bad, seems to me that the best thing to do is DENY them that opportunity.

But don't buy stuff from those who advertise on Rush Limbaugh et al. And make it a nationwide boycott.

Change tactics, they love the street protests because they get overtime, they get to be 'in charge' and act like the authoritarians they are.

But they can't force anyone to buy stuff and they can't break down every door where people are organizing these strikes and boycotts.

And they can't send out their 'anarchists' to provide footage for the Corporate media.

And yes, sue them until they are bankrupted.

[brush]

21. I like this, work against the racists with every tactic we can think of

Boycotts work.

The repugs have a broad strategy to suppress voting that ranges all the way from SCOTUS to caging to diseminating misinformation to 24/7 propaganda on radio/TV to intimidating bullies stationed at the polls and whatever I'm leaving out — they use every dirty trick they can thing of.

We should use every LEGAL tactic we can come up with to rebuff the right wing racist bullies.

We can't just rely on street demonstrations.

[Cha]

16. K!

[freshwest]

20. Recently, I have begun to consider blacks as POWs. Tell me I'm wrong. And what the war was for.

Do the people who espouse the view that blacks deserve this kind of treatment, are they willing to go to war for it?

This mindset should have gone out with the Civil War. And I do believe for most Americans, those with such views were so shamed and ridiculed that they had no real influence.

Then along comes Nixon, et al and the race baiting of Rush, Hannity, O'Reilly and most of the GOP. Really, they could not make their animus any clearer.

It became mainstream to be racist, moreso than it was for over a full century. Yet they were kept out of the larger places of power for so long that the soft racism of the grinding down and the degradation has never ended in some quarters.

Now it is about their liberty and 'rights' to oppress others. Now it is just as full of lies as it was when Nixon and Reagan put out their propaganda. And that was followed up by attacks on government jobs...

That was significant, because many black people got into the middle class and above by virtue of education and hard work as Obama espouses, but were still confronted by racism in the private sector. So those attacks on their union jobs with penions and benefit with the government was the escape valve for black people to free themselves of poverty.

In the middle of so many who were stealing their land, wages and their hearts, really. They had to depend on government to get fair recognition of their work ethic. They were true believers in a fair shake, not like the nepotism endorsed by the right solely to keep those not of their 'tribe' off the playing field.

It has been their of the Tea Party path of continuing to rule by exclusion and making null and void equal opportunity. This has hurt many millions of people and left the field to those who had more wealth.

MLK, Jr. said he feared that when the dream equality would be realized, those in power would make certain nothing remained. That POC would inherit a burned house when they should have rewarded for their labor.

That is exactly what the right has been steadily doing. Rather than share power, they have sought to destroy democracy. Not that they ever believed in it to begin with, it was only a cash cow for them.

Just sayin'