Reply #1: When it happens to "you," it suddenly matters [View All]

[frazzled]

Think about all the people much worse has happened to, every day ... for many years. People who have been shot and killed by law enforcement, who were doing nothing. The most famous in recent years was Amadou Diallo, an innocent, unarmed man who was gunned down with 41 shots by 4 plainclothes police officers on the steps of his own building. But you read about it in your local papers (well, many probably don't get a local paper) every day. Being stopped for "driving while black" and being shot by an officer who claims to have felt threatened. Being a young teenager who moves the wrong way and gets beaten up or worse.

I've been to enough protests in my life to know that you go to these things with the expectation of getting ticketed, arrested, or even tear-gassed. You are committing an act of civil disobedience (breaking a law) on purpose, specifically in order to be apprehended. That's no excuse for the occasional excessive force being used by police, but I think the discussion here has gotten a little too overwrought and decidedly "NIMBY."

I don't see many threads ever bemoaning police brutality that goes on in our (predominantly black or Hispanic) inner cities every single day of the year. These people are part of the 99%, too. People who are living their lives, for the most part, and not blocking a bridge or shutting down a port, but just committing the crime of being "suspicious" looking. Until I hear some outrage about that, I can't feel too sorry.