Wednesday, December 24, 2014

does occupy 2.0 (blacklivesmatter) have clearly discernable leaders?


WaPo |  THE LEADERS of a protest movement against excessive police force are weighing their next steps, The Post’s Wesley Lowery reported this week. The assessment follows both greater success than anticipated in triggering rallies across the nation and some backlash that blamed the protests (baselessly, in our view) for last weekend’s slayings of two New York City police officers .

As the leaders consider their next moves, we hope they do not lose sight of an early achievement, which will require attention to bring it to fruition. One test of any social movement is its power to inspire legislation. By that measure, the protests that followed the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner already demonstrated strength. Before adjourning, Congress adopted and sent to President Obama a significant bill that could help provide a crucial missing ingredient for reform: accurate information.

The Death in Custody Reporting Act would give state and local law enforcement agencies incentives to report to the Justice Department all deaths of people, for any cause, while they are under arrest, in the process of being arrested, detained or incarcerated. Agencies that want to retain federal funding would have to fill out a brief form for each case, including the name, age, gender and race of the deceased, along with a short explanation of the circumstances. While the statute would cover nonviolent deaths, and even deaths from illness, as well as violent ones, the main hope is that it will enable data-crunchers to analyze patterns in the use of force and thereby spot potentially unjustifiable trends at particular departments. 

To be sure, the measure is not exactly brand-new. A version passed in 2000 but expired in 2006; in only three of those years did the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics have authority to require quarterly reports — a requirement with which compliance was less than total. Since then, voluntary reporting has continued but also has proven spotty. A recent investigation by the Wall Street Journal found that nearly 45 percent of the justifiable homicides tallied by the nation’s 105 largest police departments went unreported to the FBI between 2007 and 2012. Florida and New York, two of the largest states in the country, accounted for 290 of 580 missing cases analyzed by the paper.

8 comments:

Tom said...

#3. You're missing my point on fairy tales, at least in your response. Did the English occupation kill off a million Irish people by starvation? Sure. Were the Celts uniquely trusting people who never did anything similar? That second part is the fairy tale.

makheru bradley said...

#1. Yes. So you are saying the success of people fighting for justice depends on forging alliances with people whose wealth, power, and privilege depends to maintaining injustice. And these fruitcakes are calling me idiotic--LOL. For the record, I will form alliances as long as the sun shines, and the waters flow, with out of the mainstream people like Marilyn Buck.

#2 Chaka’s wars of conquest and unification are considered by many historians to be as cruel and barbaric as any conqueror. The major difference between what Diop calls the Northern Cradle and the Southern Cradle is behavior towards others. [By the time the first white traders arrived at Port Natal in 1824, Shaka was in control of a centralized monarchy, which spanned the entire eastern coastal belt from the Pongola River in the north to the lands beyond the Tugela in the south. That year, Henry Francis Fynn and Francis Farewell visited Shaka. In 1825, when Lieutenant James King paid him a visit, Shaka sent a goodwill delegation to Major J Cloete, Cape government representative at Port Elizabeth. Shaka accorded the white traders most favoured treatment, ceded them land, and permitted them to build a settlement at Port Natal... During his lifetime, there were no conflicts between the whites and the Zulus, as Shaka did not want to precipitate clashes with the military forces of the Cape colonial government. H F Fynn, who knew him well, found him intelligent and often amiable, and mentioned occasions that leave no doubt that Shaka was capable of generosity.] Ayi Kwei Armah says a “curious opening we had,” and that opening proved to be devastating the Afrikan and the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas. Never again.

“Marimba Ani is smart. But she is not an African wise woman…” Dood, you wouldn’t know an Afrikan wise woman if she was sitting on your face.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrWoq11uz0Q

makheru bradley said...

I suppose that’s why you never said who the “we” referred to in your statement: “The Soldier's Rebellion scared TPTB worse than anything else we'd done in the 20th century.” Critical factors you neglected to mention: the expansion of the welfare state contributed to the destruction of the Black family--the family being the fundamental power unit in any community; the massive introduction of drugs (from Afghanistan & the Golden Triangle) preceded the war on drugs; the erosion of the US (blue collar) manufacturing base and massive Black male urban unemployment; the government’s war on the Black Liberation Movement; the evolution of the bastards of the party facilitated in particular by the assassinations of Bunchy Carter and Fred Hampton.

“Young militant activists started a fight…” That is a total misreading of history. We decided to defend ourselves. With the possible exception of RAM, every action leading up to the Black Liberation Army was defensive. We never capitulated. Never did, never will.

“In ancient times, those who governed well did not arm, those who were armed well did not set up battle lines, those who set up battle lines well did not fight, those who fought well did not lose, those who lost did not perish.” The Art Of War

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lht9EKmcbZg

CNu said...

I suppose that’s why you never said who the “we” referred to in your statement:

Black folk in America. (excepting the professional and managerial class of black folk who took the proceeds of the civil rights movement and focused on their work, their kids, and living well)

Which brings us to the paradox of blackness in America. A sizable slice of black america spared itself both economic privation and the overseer's increasingly harsh and hostile truncheon.the expansion of the welfare state contributed to the destruction of
the Black family--the family being the fundamental power unit in any
community; the massive introduction of drugs (from Afghanistan & the
Golden Triangle) preceded the war on drugs; the erosion of the US (blue
collar) manufacturing base and massive Black male urban unemployment;
the government’s war on the Black Liberation Movement;

ken said...

Merry Christmas to you guys too.

CNu said...

lol, Lawrence is a classic Jack and Jill type - and to make matters worse - he's only about 5'3" with all the issues that that entails. When I was a junior, I effortlessly and disdainfully took his girlfriend. I suspect that's why his wife is seated in that family portrait. smdh.., all the money in the world won't overcome the profound genetic shortcomings he passed on to his progeny.

Vic78 said...

I told my brother about this story a while back and his eight year old son laughed his ass off. How does one raise his son to be such a pansy?

CNu said...

Yeah I did. Eugene has needs brah (^;

Not only that, but I'm a po'boy from flyover country who used to have a chip on his shoulder as big as Manhattan. Before I matured, mellowed, and became circumspect, disrespect guaranteed you unwanted retributive attention. In retrospect, I occasionally wonder how any spoiled rotten bourgeois geets survived that moment of confusing the "world as they'd like it to be" with the world that is...,

Master Arbitrageur Nancy Pelosi Is At It Again....,

🇺🇸TUCKER: HOW DID NANCY PELOSI GET SO RICH? Tucker: "I have no clue at all how Nancy Pelosi is just so rich or how her stock picks ar...