If it's not racism, then what is it?

[Luminous Animal]

Last edited Wed Jun 19, 2013, 11:55 PM - Edit history (1)

There are communities under attack... many many human beings that won't live the rest of their lives in the lap of luxury hobnobbing with the 1%.

So much energy expended defending the fortunate. So little time seeing the gross militarized police occupation of our most powerless communities.

"If you want to know what’s going to happen to powerless people of any color...
watch what happens in Black America"

Why Aiyana Jones Matters
Mychal Denzel Smith

Weekley was the lead officer in a raid on the home of Chauncey Owens, a suspect in the murder of a 17-year-old. The Special Response Team (Detroit’s version of SWAT) entered the home just after midnight, throwing a flash-bang grenade through the window and kicking down the unlocked door. Aiyana was asleep on the couch. Weekley fired a single shot that struck her in the head and killed her. The police entered on the first floor; Owens lived in the upstairs unit.

Even if what Weekley claims is true, that his weapon was discharged by accident after a tussling with Aiyana’s grandmother, the entire ordeal could have been avoided if the police acted as police should. If it sounds irrational to require a SWAT team to apprehend one man accused of killing one person, that’s because it is—but it has become standard operating procedure. What happened to Aiyana is the result of the militarization of police in this country, itself a byproduct of the “war on drugs.” Over the course of the past thirty-plus years, police have become more and more reliant on military weaponry and tactics (big and small police forces alike have bazookas, machine guns and mini-tanks for domestic use) in response to crime. They hardly pretend to be interested in information gathering, investigating, protecting and serving any longer.

New York City’s Mayor Bloomberg wasn’t being hyperbolic when he said he has own army in the form of the NYPD. The same is true for mayors across the country, and the people most vulnerable to these heavily armed militias just so happen to be among America’s most maligned.

Part of what it means to be black in America now is watching your neighborhood become the training ground for our increasingly militarized police units. The issue is that while, ideally, police would be interested in maintaining peace, when you turn them into soldiers who believe they’re fighting a war they will do what soldiers in a war zone do: harm and kill indiscriminately. Children aren’t exempt.

Read more: Why Aiyana Jones Matters | The Nation http://www.thenation.com/blog/174859/why-aiyana-jones-

[Luminous Animal]

1. Kick.

[Eleanors38]

2. Mayors want gun bans cause they don't want da competition.

[Luminous Animal]

3. Kick.

[Luminous Animal]

4. Kick.

[sabrina 1]

5. What is racism, is using racism as a political tool to try to silence people. But that is so obvious

as Rush Limbaugh does it all the time, that it makes you realize how desperate they are to try to silence people. So the question now is, what are they so afraid of?

It must be way, way worse than what we know already for them to go to these lengths to try to distract people.

I look at them desperately trying to discredit anyone who dares to ask questions of their government, and all it does is make me more concerned about what they are hiding, and more certain that it is something that would probably put a lot of people in jail, important people.

We already know this much, they are conducting the most massive surveillance program in history on the American people, and it seems, even people in other countries. That is bad enough, but since that is already known, why are they so desperate that they would use Rush Limbaugh tactics on Liberals and think it would do anything other than make them even more determined to get to the truth?