linkspam

[tielan]

Brief thoughts on The Social Contract by bladespark

What White People Can Do Towards Racial Justice. And it's more than just donations: things that individuals can do. The list of civic actions is American, but some of the things are universal (pushing libraries to have a variety of stories, also giving books with black protags as a gift).
(With thanks to thisfinecrew for the headsup.)

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From the Australian side, our history of treatment of indigenous people is rather worse in percentages. Additionally, not a single officer has ever been charged with an offence in a situation where an indigenous person died while in police custody.

If you have any spare: Pay The Rent.

Actually, making sure that reading lists include things like Dark Emu and other authors of colour - books by news presenter Stan Grant are said to be good at explaining things - would work for us, too.

Yes, we had a seminal moment on Masterchef last week (all top five finalists were of Asian background) but that's not the end of it.

I'm probably going to use this as a resource centre for answering other people, particularly the "well, they shouldn't loot and pillage then" crowd.

Comments

[lilysea]

I'm probably going to use this as a resource centre for answering other people, particularly the "well, they shouldn't loot and pillage then" crowd.

A resource I got via Holly:

Lynnell Mickelsen Yesterday at 05:07
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10157238619581272&set=a.454567736271&type=3

"My local dentist in the Linden Hills neighborhood of southwest Minneapolis is boarding up their windows this afternoon. We are a long way from the protests, so let's be clear about what's going on here. We don't have a protest problem. We have a policing problem.

The Minneapolis police do NOT appear to be under the command, much less control, of our mayor or our excellent police chief. For the last couple of days, most of the Minneapolis police have apparently decided to stop doing their jobs until...who knows? Until maybe their union chief, the notoriously and openly racist Bob Kroll, tells them to get back to work?

The police response to peaceful protests has been to:

1) escalate the situation with tear gas and rubber bullets. (It's been wild, folks. There's no discernable police strategy. The cops just repeatedly shoot stuff at protesters.)
2) watch as looters and arsonists---a very different group than the protesters--move in;
3) Vanish as chaos reigns. The odd "disappearance" of the police from any law enforcement activities feels sinister and deliberate---especially as we get more and more reports of groups White young men setting fires all over town, driving around in cars or trucks, some with no license plates or with plates from out of state.

The police strategy seems to be: "Either we get to kill Black men when we feel like it with no criticism from you people........or you don't get any law enforcement it all. Nice little city you got there, pity if something happens to it. Do you miss us yet?"

For context, the Minneapolis police force is overwhelmingly white and male. Ninety-two percent of them live in the suburbs--often the far suburbs. Their union chief is a huge Voldemort supporter. In short, a big subset of our police department looks (and acts) like they were recruited directly from a Voldemort rally. Many of them literally seem to hate this progressive city and most of our residents. And they seem to especially hate Black people.

We all live in our own little bubble. The police have been killing unarmed Black men in Minneapolis for years and getting away with it Their first account of George Floyd's death was to announce that he had a "medical" issue while being arrested and alas, died. (The police neglected to mention the whole knee-on-neck-for-eight-minutes thingy. ) So they seemed to be caught off-guard, first by the cell-phone video and then by the public response to it.

The police were reportedly furious that the four officers involved with killing George Floyd were immediately fired because this rarely happens. They were furious that they were being directly criticized by the mayor and governor (both Democrats) because this rarely happens either. They've behaved with fury at the protests. So the cops have sort of gone on strike here.

With the police openly refusing to do their jobs, they have basically invited the criminals, arsonists and vandals to come into the city and break into anything they want. It's a cynical move to change the discussion away from police misconduct to the need for cops to come in and break heads, so we can have nice things, like law and order.

Hence, businesses even far away from the protests are putting up plywood. What else are business owners supposed to do? The Minneapolis police have basically invited criminals and anyone else with ill-intent to "have at us."

Like so many other issues, the racism and violence of our police force has been a problem for a long time. But it has now become extremely stark--even to White people.

The arrest of the Derek Chauvin, the cop who kneeled on George Floyd's neck, is a good first step. But it's only a baby step. We need to create a policing model that actually works to protect the city residents and this will be a long, hard slog of a task.

Our local politicians are going to need a lot of support and wind at their sails if they attempt to change our corrupt and violent police force. Let's begin."

[tielan]

Ooh, thanks for that.

[monanotlisa]

Oh, I'd missed the list for White people on Medium! Thanks for reminding me.

[tielan]

It's pretty long and there are lots of things for people to do at any level.

[lilysea]

minoanmiss suggests:

"Write a note to oppose violence

To a professional who teaches police to be violent, specifically. One of the major proponents of training police to 'shoot first and ask questions later/never' is William J. Lewinski, whose Force Science Institute conducts trainings all over the US in justifying police violence. Perhaps people should point out to him and his organization their part in the deaths of countless people, including George Floyd and Brianna Taylor.

https://www.forcescience.org/contact/

NYT article https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/us/training-officers-to-shoot-first-and-he-will-answer-questions-later.html

One note might not give them pause, but maybe several thousand would.

(Feel free to share this.)"