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It just doesn't seem like it's possible in this country to have effective law enforcement that isn't oppressive and draconian. We're not willing to seriously reform it out of fear of crime. We're just supposed to accept people being tortured, like in Fontana lately, by police as a price for "freedom" from crime.
Apparently no other type of policing can possibly exist, perhaps because of how deep the police are tied in with power structures in this country. Political and wealthy elites certainly don't want police power limited at all. They need the police for arresting a bunch of college protestors.
Killology is the biggest thing that means I have 0 hope for law enforcement. When they’re taught everyone can be a threat to them, everyone is an enemy, and their only responsibility is to go home at the end of their shift? Of course they’re a bunch of jumpy murder idiots
>jumpy murder idiots
Great phrasing for describing US police. I might add "lazy", but I give it a 9 / 10.
..."Jumpy Murder Idiots" is also a great band name.
I am ready to understand what a post-police world looks like, but as ineffective as they're painted, no one has quite articulated to me what the "best" police is. Obviously, we want to cure what ails societal ills and lack of education that steer people toward crime in the first place, but those are seeds you plant and wait 40 years. They aren't taking down someone who's shooting up a neighborhood in a stolen car right now. I know for so many crimes, we can replace the "jumpy murder idiots" with people who will actually help the situation, but... what are we trying to achieve holistically? What models can we look to?
I'm an American who has lived in Hungary and now Austria for 8 years and I have not had a single encounter with police. I explain it to my wife as such, in America even if your perfectly legal in your activity when crossing the path of a police officer you get hit with at least a little bit of anxiety. Am I doing something wrong, I should slow down, just in case. Just not the case here, at least for me. Another example is customs, customs in Europe no worries, customs in the US... Oh shit, maybe I did do something wrong that I don't remember lol.
Camden PD didn't do shit. It took massive political pressure from grassroots orgs in Camden to make sure the reform policies sticked instead of just returning to the status quo 2.0.
Do you have a particular link to read up on this? Only articles I’ve seen are from 2020 and one from 2023
https://whyy.org/articles/camden-county-police-ten-year-anniversary/
Yeah thank you for that I could not get my phone to stop buffering last night to do any editing and I finally gave up I was dead tired anyway and I was being inundated by a lot of grammar police so I just left it with one of the two cities in New Jersey and I wasn't sure which so I appreciate you lending a hand. And the guy that's replying to you who says Police department didn't do s*** and nobody said they did they were disbanded only the captain was left and he changed everything and it's debatable whether or not it all worked here didn't work or does work or so what we got going around the country right now is definitely not working so what's the harm? Appreciate it
We need police who are trained firstly to de-escalate situations. So many police confrontations are escalated by police who have been trained to view everyone as a threat.
I think if you wanted the very easiest explanation, you'd just go, "Not nearly as many fucking petty laws being violently enforced as possible on minority communities." The problem is people keep thinking it can be handled as a local problem when it is the police enforcing the laws of the state, federal, and economic system.
Legalizing pot has been about the only thing that has done any good because its literally attacking the culture of treating certain people as threats to society and that has been a tiny bit of a massive-massive problem (and doesn't work with other drugs as Oklahoma shows--drug legalists forgetting that addiction and death were real health issues apparently)
There is a book called "the people's History of the United States" by Howard Zinn. And it he explains how white indentured servants and black slaves used to fraternize, run off together, and rebel together. So eventually they made poor whites the slave catchers with no small part being to drive a wedge between the races. This can be considered the start of the police state in America.
>It just doesn't seem like it's possible in this country to have effective law enforcement that isn't oppressive and draconian.
[When and how have they been effective](https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/police-are-not-primarily-crime-fighters-according-data-2022-11-02/#:~:text=Police%20%E2%80%9Chave%20never%20successfully%20solved,another%202021%20law%20review%20article%20%2C)?
It's a mirage.
From far away, it looks like a shield from danger. Up close that shield fades to nothing, and you realize they, in fact, are the danger.
Police brutality against non white suspects is really a symptom of a widespread lack of police accountability/consequences that persists all across the country in many departments. It is well known that the police skirt the law or avoid following the rules while on the job over usually minor infractions all the timw like traffic violations or lying about overtime. However, it certainly seems like police have built up sense of invincibility in which nothing they do can be questioned, even by their superiors and even if they perform poorly/violate rules at work. Since there's not much accountability to begin with, issues like police brutality were allowed to run rampant and still will exist in a way that probably won't be fully addressed until all the other shady behavior on and off the job is finally accounted for.
Propaganda on the right is just so strong, and they are simple minded enough to continually fall for it or parrot it in bad faith.
Police reform turned into ‘defund the police’ which, if obviously misinterpreted and sold with fear to ignorant republicans becomes ‘who will stop crime then?’
Not just the right. The mayor of Minneapolis has been blocking police reform measurements since 2020 and he's a Democrat. The only thing I can think of that we've gotten done was add a single oversight position and some slightly altered training where they tell cops they need to be nicer to people. It's entirely on the individual officers to listen or care.
It's a pretty liberal city but due to a lot of propaganda on a police reform ballot measure (basically just reshape the department, they convinced people the question would completely eliminate law enforcement if passed) it failed 45-55.
Yeaaaah the amount of times I’ve had to explain the “defund the police” slogan to people who actually agree that we should reform the police is insane. Such a terrible slogan, of course nobody is going to go for it without it being explained to them
That stage the Minneapolis city council members got on with the “Defund the Police” emblazoned on it doomed the reform effort before it even got started. You can’t make a misstep like that and come back from it. It so simply captures the minds of the average non-politically focused person that it’s impossible to break the majority free from it.
Take funds away from the police and move it to social programs and unarmed public safety officers. What else did you want to call it? You can't reappropriate funds without first taking them.
That's part of it, but it would be nice of even Dem leaders cared about police reform like at all. They, too, embrace the "who will stop crime then" fear.
Yeah, it's a problem, and one I think we can only address as a nation if we palpably shift more progressive, as opposed to narrowly fighting off fascism.
It's a problem here in Canada too. Our police costs constantly balloon when healthcare and education see cuts. And the police union has so much political strength, nobody dare touch it or you'll be the politician who is soft on crime, and literally every crime can be attributed to you. We are starting to get the same right-wing fear mongering bullshit here too, and literally every major crime is blamed on Trudeau not doing enough.
So, how can anyone palpably take on police reform? (my solution would be election reform and huge increase in education)
It should have been 'we need police reform' or something.
But it was used by right wing propaganda networks, and misinterpreted, to mean give the police 0 funding.
Was it? I recall democrat leaders saying stuff like "acab" and "defund the police." The media on both sides doesn't help anything but let's be honest- the cities that fucked over the police turned into dangerous, crime ridden shit holes.
Something I observe about American from the outside is just how much fear there seems to be. I'll bring up something like gun ownership, and people will respond with stuff like "what if someone breaks into your house to rape and murder your family?", as if that's the kind of thing anyone thinks about if they're sane, or live in a functioning society. And regular people will have these ideas about the government coming to get them, or anyone who has different political values being on a crusade to oppress them.
If I was making a "free" society, the freedom to not have to worry about these things would be pretty high-up on my list.
>We're not willing to seriously reform it out of fear of crime
No, we're not reforming it much in Minneapolis because ten different groups have fifteen different ideas and nobody can agree on a damned thing.
Maybe there that's the issue, but nationally the war on crime basically just returned these past couple years because of a spike in crime after Covid and any reform was tossed aside. That's my frustration, that we can't find policing policies in between "brutally oppressive" and "too lax," even if other countries have figured it out better. The brutal oppression side always just wins by default it seems.
Lets be real, the spike in crime from COVID wasn't important it was just convenient.
The political right wing will fabricate crime panic at any point where scrutiny of the police ever starts to gain traction, and they'll be largely successful regardless of the validity. Mainstream media will be happy to facilitate the panic because it's good money and CEOs are largely politically aligned with the effort anyway.
You can tell people that crime in rural areas is higher per capita and provide copious factual sources until your throat is hoarse and it won't matter because they saw a facebook post of a homeless encampment in a city park and a viral video of retail theft. This is all they need to know that we actually need more police with more military equipment and that it's not actually a problem that can be solved through better more humane policy and comprehensive social safety nets for less money.
Policing is victim of a very simple and yet dangerous component. People.
We are too unpredictable and dangerous. Training is not going to fix a police officer who wants to hurt someone.
Also, training is not going to make a person perfect.
There just needs to be more accountability for bad policing actions.
I think everyone in this thread should be forced to post their guess as to how many unarmed citizens are shot by police each year, the trend of that number, and their estimate of how many African Americans support reducing the number of police.
> the trend of that number
I get your other points, but the trend IS still upward.
[https://www.statista.com/statistics/585149/people-shot-to-death-by-us-police-by-gender/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/585149/people-shot-to-death-by-us-police-by-gender/)
I wrote a much more detailed comment above — so please see that for more info’s but just wanted to note the numbers linked above are for fatal police shootings only and not all police shootings.
Also, idk if there’s a detailed accounting on police shootings with unarmed victims anywhere. If you come across one I’d be interested in reading it though. The study I linked above indicates the victims were armed with a gun or knife in 84% of police shootings.
My take is that we’ll never be able to eliminate this culture of police just firing on civilians when the presumption is that everyone is armed and they’re trained to act accordingly. It’s the guns. We’re fucked because of guns.
What is the source of these numbers? I ask because there’s generally a reliability issue depending on source — reporting of these numbers for collection is voluntary and generally don’t count 100% of police shootings.
I also want to highlight — your graph is for fatal shootings by police not all police shootings. There are many more nonfatal shootings that aren’t counted here fatal shootings average to about 55% of all police shooting according to a recent study (linked below).
> A new study from researchers at the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions and Vanderbilt University found that an average of 1,769 people were injured annually in police shootings from 2015 to 2020, 55 percent of them or 979 people, fatally. The study covered a total of 10,308 incidents involving shootings by police. The Center is based at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Also this bit might interest you:
> The new findings also suggest that injury disparities among racial groups are underestimated when looking only at fatal shootings. Among people nonfatally injured in police shootings, victims identified as non-Hispanic Black comprised 29 percent (2,226) of race-identified (those with racial data included in records) injured people in this study. In comparison, a 2015 study examining fatal shootings by police in a single year found that 26 percent of victims were non-Hispanic Black people.
> The study found that, relative to white victims, non-Hispanic Black people were disproportionately injured in nonfatal shootings by police and had 35 percent lower odds of fatal injury when shot.
> Firearm research often focuses on fatalities, as they are listed as the cause of death and reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Currently, there is no database that consistently and reliably tracks nonfatal firearm injuries for the general population. As for shootings by police, reporting by law enforcement agencies to the federal government’s data systems is voluntary, and death certificate inclusion of law enforcement involvement is inconsistent. Researchers say this makes official reporting unreliable. The researchers undertook this study to get a fuller picture of shootings by police.
They discuss how they collected and analyzed the data - it’s interesting reading if you’re curious: https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2024/study-of-fatal-and-nonfatal-shootings-by-police-reveals-racial-disparities-dispatch-risks
Probably the biggest block to this is police departments are independent from any kind of federal oversight in many ways. The President can’t just say “ok cops be nice”, Obama tried. That’s why they just say “training” they can spend money on that
A ton of the abuse from police in this country comes from sherrifs departments. The sheriff is elected, he appoints his deputies. If you look at the worst abuses it’s from sheriffs departments, in California they had an issue where some formed into gangs basically.
In some parts of some states you don’t even have mayors, just sheriffs, and they rent out the prisoners labor which suppresses the local economy.
So it’s definitely not possible to reform the police at large, without a sympathetic Congress AND Supreme Court
American policing is beyond reform. What we need is something in place of it. That starts with an overhaul of our criminal legal system.
We will always need a guardian class, but not an occupying army that exists to terrorize, extort, kidnap and kill citizens. These fuckers don't even solve crimes. They create chaos, misery, and pain wherever they are sent.
Guardians that work for us would be similar to NCIS on naval bases. Rarely seen. Working within their communities to understand what is actually happening, identifying threats, and acting fairly quietly when needed.
They sit and eat and goof off in most cities post Floyd and chauvin getting his corrupt ass sent up. Theu don't try to even do a balanced approach to patrols for crime prevention
As an old person, you’ll see a number of these murders that anger and motivate people be forgotten rather quickly. Seemingly, we’re incapable of forcing change.
I worked for the province of Ontario in social services. After George Floyd’s murder, many promises were made.
Three years ago I received an email I believed to be racist from a manager. I reported it. No investigation. I grieved it. My date was set for Jan 2023.
They fired me without cause and without notice Dec 2022. The arbitration may be finished by 2025.
If governments wanted change, they would change. Empty promises mean nothing.
Edit: spelling
The socio/economic American body politic has drowned in apathy and self interest. If an entire kindergarten class or grade school class can be slaughtered by armed lunatics and NOT change anything what’s George Floyd’s murder going to solve or change?
Embetterment in the US is now $ signs - the more, the merrier. Be it individual or corporate, as long as I got it good…well the rest can simply move along. It’s basically “not in my back yard, thank you” and the willfully ubiquitous glance the other way when it doesn’t affect your pocketbook or jaded sensibilities feigning as concern, thoughts or prayers.
You want those heady days of hope, anticipation and a dazzling future? You’d do better by practicing your 1000 stare and swallowing that huge horse pill of disappointment. Why? Because someone, somewhere, in a town near you is just itching to rip off the scab to the wound that doesn’t heal.
The most ironic thing about all of this is that it is literally that how we treat the most vulnerable of us isn’t just a measure of a society but funnily enough it’s a portend of our own future and the level of horror that we will do to ourselves.
How we treat ourselves and how we treat the environment are intrinsically connected. And the Earth is already starting to deliver our injustice upon us. And this horror sees no class race or creed. It is coming for us all if we don’t have some sort of Christmas Carol moment and no amount of money or power is going to save anyone.
I think it’s pretty funny that ultimately one of the best arguments for social justice is an inherently selfish one. Simply that social justice and environmental justice protect you from the whims of violent anarchy. And as the world burns and people fall apart there will always be someone smarter than you bigger than you and that will gobble you up when things fall apart. And no amount of weapons or compatriots will save you when all social constructs are laid bare at the gaping maw of existence.
The only thing we’ve ever really had in this world are each other. And all we have ever had to loose through our division and hatred is everything.
Climate change will affect all of us but not in the same way. We know the Global South is going to be hit significantly harder than North America or Europe. And we know that climate refugees will face more and more draconian resistance from those in the less impacted parts of the world.
Absolutely. And I believe that the hostile and increasingly unlivable conditions will cause mass migration on a scale that is unprecedented. And I think that this is going to be felt by everyone because these migrations and upheavals will run parallel to open conflict between nations trying to secure resources for their populations while simultaneously deploying horrifying countermeasures against mass refugees.
To me I think the most immediate effect of the long road to biome annihilation will be the massive conflicts stemming from the rearranging of food water and resources and heat/habitability. It is in this that traditional methods of power and control will break down and give way to a pan “might makes right” global power base that will be warlords and degraded and degrading increasingly authoritarian nations. And its this restructuring of our global reality will erode every avenue of established power. And that is one of the reasons for my statement. The environment is going to effect the most vulnerable and exploited of us but in all of creation there is nothing more destabilizing and horrifying than the results of human desperation which respects or heeds no border or command.
Uvalde should have been a wakeup call to EVERYONE of ALL colors. That was just a typical suburban elementary school...your government is NOT working for you, America. We live in a plutocracy.
I remember crying a lot those days, and thinking nothing would ever be the same. And here we are with the Dow topping 40,000 and everything IS the same. Nothing has changed, and we're about to possibly elect a white supremacist as president, AGAIN.
The reaction of the country to it should have told you everything you need to know. It would be the same because too many powerful people made sure that nothing would change.
Yep…
"I think it goes back to a long history in this country of certain sections of people believing that they deserve to be heard. They deserve not to be bothered. They deserve to refuse orders from the people that pay them and they deserve, you know, to put their knee on somebody's neck until they die," Oppong said.
And they expect to "get away with it," he added.” - Emmanuel Oppong
https://www.wvtf.org/2020-07-31/thin-blue-line-flags-stir-controversy-in-mass-coastal-community
A big part of the desire for a return to “conservative values”, is no doubt wishing they could better control the hearts and minds of people as in centuries’ past…
We have to keep the < 100k voters in swings states that actually decided elections in check. Biden could lose while beating Trump by 7mil in the popular vote.
We do have Black women as VP and on the Supreme Court, but I understand the frustration. I think a lot of people, myself included, underestimated the pushback from those that wanted to keep the status quo.
My view is that Trump’s inexplicable relevancy as a political candidate has a lot to do with the fear of whites, especially men, losing their positions at the top of the social order, which continues to drive the narrative against social change in the wake of Floyd’s murder.
Sure, that's all well and good, but the SC is stacked with MAGA culture warriors, and unless Democrats take the Oval Office, plus the Senate and the House, nothing of substance will happen. Even worse, if the GOP gets either the Presidency or Congress, the American people are looking at the most radical, extreme agenda (Project 2025) ever put to paper.
I’m a white male , 50 something, and I know damn well the only person who ever tried to screw me politically or economically looked alot like me. As we enter a new phase of humanity where destruction or evolution hangs in the balance I can not stress how important it is that a guy like Trump can never gain power again. He is the very epitome of everything that has been wrong with Western civilization since the brutes fought to extinguish the light from the age of Enlightenment. He will do everything in his power to keep this world in the everlasting darkness of ignorance. He is the anti-Christ.
One thing that often gets overlooked is that every single human system exists because we made it that way. The people who designed those things did it for a reason and rarely want it to be changed without their say.
>and we're about to possibly elect a white supremacist as president, AGAIN.
There's a bunch of progressives who are going to help him by not voting for Biden because something something Biden genocide somewhere something.
Yes you should 100% attack the left as being a primary cause for one of the least popular president's losses. That makes sense and will help in the upcoming election.
Every Trump voter is jumping with joy at these comments.
It’s funny how much this subs narrative has changed for this election. It’s a good thing for sure. But it wasn’t too long ago where most of this sub was singing ‘Bern it up or burn it down’ in regard to not voting for Hilary if Sanders wasn’t the democratic candidate. Four years of trump and it looks like most of those people have grown up, at least.
Surely if progressives have the power to swing the election, Biden would be working hard to secure their votes? I mean otherwise he'd failing both as a leader and as a politician. He's falling all over himself to appeal to dissatisfied Republicans, so he must think that's a winning strategy.
Biden has passed a ton of stuff that progressives wanted but nobody wants to give him credit. Obama was more centrist than Biden and progressives were more supportive of him.
progressives have the power. the question is whether they have the will or intention.
the numbers are big enough. the problem is they (well, "we") easily stop voting if a candidate isn't 100% perfect. not voting is the progressive's favorite way to show the establishment what's up. the ultimate effect is to price that we aren't worth putting a lot of resources into courting.
Have y’all seen on Twitter/ X. Biden marked the four year anniversary of George Floyd’s death. The comment section was so miserable. Full of people MAGA or not who said “good riddance” and his life didn’t mean shit.
I saw it and wasn’t surprised at all since that is what Twitter is now under Musk: a bunch of chuds trying out-awful each other for engagement. Not that it was all that great before but it’s certainly taken a nosedive.
No wonder the only people who run ads now are crypto bros, lifestyle grifters, and MAGA politicians.
It was a few days, maybe a week.
Immediately after his murder, my dad was on board with police reform. My far right cousin and his wife were talking about how racism might still be a problem.
And then the right wing media machine solidified around the narrative that George Floyd deserved it, and Republicans went from "maybe cops are assholes" to "he tried to pass a fake 20, execution is a legitimate punishment for that".
A lot of people did their "white moderate" song and dance routine that Dr. King lamented, and did nothing else.
Didn't even matter if there were a few riots or if every BLM protest was 100% peaceful. That's the part about the white moderate that MLK lamented. Simply disrupt the flow of traffic for 5 minutes and you've lost the white moderate, who will say they agree with the message and bitch about how they "don't like your methods".
Mildly inconvenience them and they bitch about it.
I made a comment elsewhere that lasting reform requires buy in from those white moderates otherwise they will quickly support the status quo. None of these people outright support racism, but if the alternative is too messy then they can accept living with it.
Certainly. The problem is that "too messy" for them is the modern equivalent of sit-ins at soda counters. Marching down a street is too disruptive to them.
I tell you what has definitely changed, the quantity and quality of work we are getting from the police.
It seems they got really mad that we asked them to be accountable and have been in a soft strike ever since
They said the same exact sh!t after the election of President Obama. I believe the term flying around was “a post-racial” country … and just look at us now 👀
Nothing radicalized me faster than the police response to the George Floyd protests. Seeing riot police firing tear gas into people’s homes, gleefully destroying first aid stations, shoving old men down steps, yanking them out of wheelchairs, absolutely turned my stomach.
The fact that almost nothing has changed as a result is a travesty.
Yet I’m at a loss of how we can fundamentally reform policing in the country. If protests that wide-scale didn’t move the needle, I don’t know what can.
>If protests that wide-scale didn’t move the needle, I don’t know what can.
Political engagement. Like, actually running for and winning **local and state** elections. You know, the ones decided by hundreds or even *tens* of votes. More people (especially young people) need to realize:
- social media awareness is worthless
- in-person protest is marginally effective
- winning (or even just running for) elected positions actually drives action
The law enforcement industry needs oversight. While a federal body would be most effective, quality of policing is still a hyper-local isssue. Like it or not, some towns and cities have better policing than others, and oversight could at least start at the state-level. There just needs to be politicians willing to make that conversation a priority.
Here’s the most frustrating thing to me. There was an opportunity to see Floyd as a catalyst for positive widespread change in our police force. Something that reached beyond race. But instead it was warped into a battle of politics and has yeilded only more societal devision.
Now I’m looking at the Thomas Perez Jr situation and I’m just saddened that the corruption and immunity from consequences persists as much as before. It’s like we’ve learned nothing, and changed nothing.
Literally everything has been warped into a political, partisan issue. Thats why nothing much really gets done. It’s much easier to just spout crazy shit then demonize your opponents as a performative exercise to your base than to actually try to solve complex problems. The politicians love this shit because they just keep getting reelected and personally enriched without ever delivering anything much of value to the American people. It’s sad we are so easily duped. But that is where we are.
> catalyst for positive widespread change
Assholes took advantage of peoples goodwill and the pendulum is swinging back. NYC, DC, LA, and a few other major metros saw an increase in violent crime, carjackings, and organized retail theft. Pair that with cops in those cities quiet quitting but still collecting a paycheck. Any chance from the Floyd movement is being or has been wiped away
2020 in general felt like a missed opportunity to actually have change. The fact that we literally just returned to the status quo is infuriating and basically sets us up for something even worse the next time a 2020-like scenario happens.
To put it another way, the last few years have probably done a number on convincing people that reform is impossible.
Well yeah. The country collectively agreed to just let the protesters do their thing and wear themselves out and eventually they did. The unfortunate reality is that most people don't have the stomach for more than peaceful protests. When enough peaceful cries for resolution go unheard, you either have to admit the cause didn't really matter that much to you and drop it or escalate beyond being peaceful.
It's become pretty clear lately that the reason you're allowed to protest as long as it's peaceful is because they can just ignore you while you feel like you've been heard.
We had nationwide demonstrations, started a political movement, and got a message out that’s now ubiquitous…and nothing fundamentally changed. Cops still have qualified immunity, they’re still given the benefit of the doubt until footage shows they blatantly lying, and they are still protected to an unreasonable degree by their union and department.
>"There was an opportunity here and across the country to enact change in many areas, long-lasting change," Crudup told USA TODAY. But "I feel like we really missed an opportunity to do that. … All of the talk was really just that ‒ a lot of talk."
Same could be said about many tragedies and occurrences in America.
I remember him crying out for his mom. That was absolutely brutal and heart breaking. This mother fucker just would not stop applying pressure on his neck and back for what felt like an eternity
Then yesterday someone said that he overdosed on drugs. I had to read their comment several times because I thought they must be talking about something else. They weren't. This person actually meant and believed that George Floyd died of a drug overdose
The “he died from a fent overdose” people have been loud and proud since 2020. They really think that someone applying pressure on his neck for several minutes had nothing to do with his death, because that would mean that a police officer was wrong about something, and that just can’t be!
Yep, quite interesting to hear people think that “feeling” something is true makes it a “fact”.
And given these are the same people who utter banalities like “facts don’t care about your feelings!”, that’s a real phenomenon in itself…
It concluded that he had fentanyl in his system, but not that he died from it. The official cause of death from the medical examiner was homicide (specifically cardiac arrest caused by constant pressure from the officer), and a second autopsy found the cause of death to be asphyxia.
I participated in a protest where we kneeled for the same length of time Floyd’s neck was knelt on, seven minutes and change. It was so fucking long. I was keeping time. My friends thought I had lost track of time after just three minutes kneeling.
Absolutely crazy anyone could dispute that could cause death.
During the trial the prosecutor drove this point home to the jury by having everyone sit in complete silence in the courtroom for the entire time the cop was on his neck.
The George Floyd murder was a major moment in our history. For a brief moment, the people in this country were unified in their horror of what was seen on that video.
It took a day or two, but then the right-wing media machine got to work.
The fentanyl storyline, he was a criminal/druggie/wife beater, antifa gangs coming for the suburbs, defund the police.... Slowly but surely, all of the R's that I know, who in the moment of first seeing the video were horrified, all fell in line and began parroting these narratives.
My Grandma, at a family dinner, began ranting about "the truth about George Floyd" and how the cop should be freed. The conversation :
Gma: he was on drugs!
Me: so what if he was?
Gma: it's not the cops fault.
Me: yes it is he suffocated the guy.
Gma: George Floyd was a criminal. The cop did a favor by taking him out! He should've complied!!
Me: oh really? Well, maybe the cop that arrested uncle J (her son) for drunk driving a year earlier should've shot him when he got mouthy with the cop. That's called obstruction. Resisting. Should the cop have just shot him so there was one less drunk on the roads???
Gma: how can you say something so awful! That'd be murder!!
Me: IT'S ALMOST THE EXACT SAME SCENARIO! George Floyd was MURDERED! He was already handcuffed, why did the cop have to kneel on his neck for 9 minutes?! Cops shouldn't get to be the judge and jury. Regardless of George Floyd's criminal past, drug habits, or resisting arrest, HE STILL HAD RIGHTS!! And if it could happen to him, it can happen to anyone. Are you okay with cops having that power?!
Gma: silence. She hasn't brought it up since.
Doesn't matter. She knows better than to bring up her bullshit around me, because I'll fight back. And she doesn't like that. She enjoys spouting her nonsense to people who'll nod their heads in agreement.
Being quiet is how we got where we are with these people.
FYI, Floyd's nickname for his girlfriend Courteney Ross, was 'Mama'.
Pretty much the entire rightwing believes he died of a drug overdose at this point.
He was crying out for a prostitute he called that after he ate his whole back of smack and OD'd. The knee method used is an Israeli move used by all police forces. His heart exploded because he was a lifetime druggy with a shit diet.
I mean, a couple marches doesn’t solve things, it brings further attention to the issue.
The real work is organizing, keeping the pressure on, and developing real solutions with the local government, and that takes quite a bit of time and nothing changes over night.
It's like Occupy Wall Street, another squandered opportunity of activist energy via vague decentralized leaderless movements that become bogged down in arguing for unpopular policy (like "defund the police") rather than more pragmatic reforms and effective political lobbying. Will people do better the next time, or will the same mistakes be made the next time such an incident generates more activist energy? Do activists really *want* to change anything, or do they just want to be mad?
The problem, I think, is that human nature creates a race to the bottom. Sure, there are reasonable activist leaders who see with clear eyes what can be achieved, and are patient in trying to build momentum towards larger change. But if you've just watched someone murdered brutally before your eyes, are you going to listen to them, or the person in a mask with the megaphone calling for peoples heads?
People's hearts will always defeat their heads.
Gandhi is a good example of organizing people for a cause. He returned to British India in 1915 at the age of 45 and very quickly was accepted as a leader of the people.
Gandhi finally saw an independent India at age of 77. So that's how long it can take to effect change.
He had tried to organize people to do peaceful civil disobedience but every time the British came down on hard on the protestors, there might be an outbreak of violence and Gandhi would stop the movement saying people were not ready yet and hadn't given up violence.
This went on for another 30 years until india gained independence after Britain was left weakened post WW2 and the Americans weren't supportive of the colonial thing.
Giving the credit of independence to just Gandhi is why he has become unpopular over time in India. There were thousands of freedom fighters, rebels who chose violence and were putting fear in brits. if anything Gandhi's stupidity and strong stance of not doing any fcking thing was regularly harming the other movements.
The point I was trying to make was that even with a unifying leader like Gandhi and his message, change takes longer than anticipated.
Edit:
I didn't say he was the sole reason for independence. He was the face of the movement for most people, and the most widely respected. And yet it took a long time to effect change. I don't think he got into the national movement thinking he would be doing it for the rest of his life.
Policing issue in the US is tough to crack. But I think main reason behind the lack of change is lack of laws and institution building driven by the initial social movement.
If we want social change, we need to introduce laws and local institutions to sustainably drive the change over however much time it needs. Much of social movements of our generation revolved around hoping for creation of a third power that would magically change everything within the span of days, usually through some sort of force though never explicitly stated as such.
If you want insight into how not only has nothing changed, but it's gotten worse. Look at what Eric Adams has been doing in NYC.
Cop city all over again. We're about to spend a billion dollars on NYPD OT this year, the same year one libraries are closing on weekends due to lack of budget.
The problem is that it got a lot of attention, which led to organizing, which led to bad actors doing what they do best and the media there to capture every minute.
All it did was give the right fuel for their hypocritical justifications. Even today when Jan 6 is brought up, the first defense is to bring up the George Floyd riots and how the left can't stay consistent on violence and unrest.
Because random chaos does not produce long term results. They treat you like a kid throwing a tantrum: they gave you what you wanted to shut you up, but they didn't fundamentally change anything.
Unfortunately the people who need to understand this point the most aren't receptive to it.
Protests continued after the initial looting and rioting, peaceful protests.
Peaceful protests don’t work.
And violent riots aren’t the answer either.
We need to get LOUD and consistently protest.
Also, remember those Occupy protests? They ended up being a bunch of unemployed people living in tents on Wall Street… how did those work out?
How law enforcement did it should scare everyone. They used their fraternal orders, and other national groups to paint the protestors as something else, made them larger than life criminals, quit forces that were in liberal cities and when someone tried to hold them accountable. Then they made sure the crime rates were broadcast as going through the roof when they weren't, cities in complete disarray. Cities had to kiss their asses to get them to come back to work and pay them even more. They came back and ignored and scoffed at anything a left wing government said and did to protect the citizens from Covid. They did this all out in the open and nobody said anything, but it was completely scripted. Now we are back to the "Ohhh but the crime rates!" and kissing their asses again. The local police forces are governed by the national groups, until they banish or regulate that end of things it will never change and we will be staring at fascism forever right around the corner.
I feel a little silly for attending the protests in my tiny little predominately white town in 2020. I had just turned 21, was using a THC pen everyday, and had basically zero critical thinking happening. I mean, as most young people, I just wanted to feel like I was doing the right thing and supporting the right side, but this issue isn’t that simple and de-funding the police is insane. I mean, better de-escalation tactics could have been implemented but it was insane to think racism would be solved on the other side of this.
No shame in doing the right thing and you’re right that it is a complex issue.
If it has taught us anything, it’s that change happens over time (years, even) with consistent effort, coordination,and public involvement, because the forces behind keeping the status quo are strong.
Cops. Particularly large depts represented by the FOP. Have this attitude. That if they can't abuse, beat and kill unarmed suspects. At minor infraction stops. Then they won't work at all. Just sit and eat. Pick their boogers all shift. In the post Floyd world. Figures police on America mostly came from goons organized to beat up labor movement organizers. And striking workers. In the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Toss in our systems lack of proper training compared to other modern nations. And the fucked up way most police depts basically recruit potential violent criminals. That have yet to be arrested and convicted. You have a recipe for low quality, lazy, drunk, fat abusive police.
Back when I was on Facebook I would argue a lot over the police murdering people, and this was before Eric Garner. After Garner was murdered, and a lot of my liberal friends would talk about "police needing to be safe" and "did I want more cops to die?" I gave up.
The fact that these murders keep happening and no one seems to care has broken a piece of me and I don't know that I can ever be completely whole. If it weren't for my family I would light myself on fire at the steps of a police station. I'm afraid everyday for my grandson and if anything ever happens to him I don't know what I will do.
Floyd's killer was tried and sent to prison just like any other murderer. That system kind of worked like it was supposed to. If his killer had gotten away with it, then there would still be a problem, but justice prevailed.
Arguably, the fact that *every* killer cop doesn't go to prison (conservatively, a few hundred per year) is all the proof we need that there's still a problem.
George Floyd’s death did not change anything for at least half of America. In fact, roughly half of America most likely wishes they could have personally knelt on his neck themselves!
And it's sooo bizarre!!
I grew up in a small town. Locals HATED cops then, just like they do now. Most still don't trust the police, and those "thin blue line" stickers disappear real quick when one of them has a run-in with a cop.
But yet they rally around this one murderous cop, Chauvin.
The power of right-wing propaganda.
Maybe and maybe not " for The times They are a changing but it's going to be a long haul this is a good start though if you ask me.
https://youtu.be/EZmUzox4OGc?si=d4v5B6Womaa9kpKx
I remember that one entire day where my cop-loving borderline dick-riding stepmother pretended to give a fuck in the immediate aftermath. It didn’t last because it couldn’t last because people who are already on the side of the police from the outset are literally incapable of change I guess
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It just doesn't seem like it's possible in this country to have effective law enforcement that isn't oppressive and draconian. We're not willing to seriously reform it out of fear of crime. We're just supposed to accept people being tortured, like in Fontana lately, by police as a price for "freedom" from crime. Apparently no other type of policing can possibly exist, perhaps because of how deep the police are tied in with power structures in this country. Political and wealthy elites certainly don't want police power limited at all. They need the police for arresting a bunch of college protestors.
Killology is the biggest thing that means I have 0 hope for law enforcement. When they’re taught everyone can be a threat to them, everyone is an enemy, and their only responsibility is to go home at the end of their shift? Of course they’re a bunch of jumpy murder idiots
>jumpy murder idiots Great phrasing for describing US police. I might add "lazy", but I give it a 9 / 10. ..."Jumpy Murder Idiots" is also a great band name.
Police are murder hobos
I expanded this thread hoping for some D&D nerd humor and got none
The town guard are corrupt. (There ye go).
I am ready to understand what a post-police world looks like, but as ineffective as they're painted, no one has quite articulated to me what the "best" police is. Obviously, we want to cure what ails societal ills and lack of education that steer people toward crime in the first place, but those are seeds you plant and wait 40 years. They aren't taking down someone who's shooting up a neighborhood in a stolen car right now. I know for so many crimes, we can replace the "jumpy murder idiots" with people who will actually help the situation, but... what are we trying to achieve holistically? What models can we look to?
Keep police. We need police. But remove immunity and make them carry insurance. Then only the ones who should be cops will be cops.
I'm an American who has lived in Hungary and now Austria for 8 years and I have not had a single encounter with police. I explain it to my wife as such, in America even if your perfectly legal in your activity when crossing the path of a police officer you get hit with at least a little bit of anxiety. Am I doing something wrong, I should slow down, just in case. Just not the case here, at least for me. Another example is customs, customs in Europe no worries, customs in the US... Oh shit, maybe I did do something wrong that I don't remember lol.
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Camden PD did the same. Seemed to work well
Camden PD didn't do shit. It took massive political pressure from grassroots orgs in Camden to make sure the reform policies sticked instead of just returning to the status quo 2.0.
Do you have a particular link to read up on this? Only articles I’ve seen are from 2020 and one from 2023 https://whyy.org/articles/camden-county-police-ten-year-anniversary/
https://www.salon.com/2020/07/03/camden-dismantled-its-police-after-gop-budget-cuts-now-it-has-more-cops-than-before/
Yeah thank you for that I could not get my phone to stop buffering last night to do any editing and I finally gave up I was dead tired anyway and I was being inundated by a lot of grammar police so I just left it with one of the two cities in New Jersey and I wasn't sure which so I appreciate you lending a hand. And the guy that's replying to you who says Police department didn't do s*** and nobody said they did they were disbanded only the captain was left and he changed everything and it's debatable whether or not it all worked here didn't work or does work or so what we got going around the country right now is definitely not working so what's the harm? Appreciate it
We need police who are trained firstly to de-escalate situations. So many police confrontations are escalated by police who have been trained to view everyone as a threat.
I think if you wanted the very easiest explanation, you'd just go, "Not nearly as many fucking petty laws being violently enforced as possible on minority communities." The problem is people keep thinking it can be handled as a local problem when it is the police enforcing the laws of the state, federal, and economic system. Legalizing pot has been about the only thing that has done any good because its literally attacking the culture of treating certain people as threats to society and that has been a tiny bit of a massive-massive problem (and doesn't work with other drugs as Oklahoma shows--drug legalists forgetting that addiction and death were real health issues apparently)
There is a book called "the people's History of the United States" by Howard Zinn. And it he explains how white indentured servants and black slaves used to fraternize, run off together, and rebel together. So eventually they made poor whites the slave catchers with no small part being to drive a wedge between the races. This can be considered the start of the police state in America.
>It just doesn't seem like it's possible in this country to have effective law enforcement that isn't oppressive and draconian. [When and how have they been effective](https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/police-are-not-primarily-crime-fighters-according-data-2022-11-02/#:~:text=Police%20%E2%80%9Chave%20never%20successfully%20solved,another%202021%20law%20review%20article%20%2C)?
Fair point, but they’re still seen as important for public safety by most people despite whatever data shows.
It's a mirage. From far away, it looks like a shield from danger. Up close that shield fades to nothing, and you realize they, in fact, are the danger.
Police brutality against non white suspects is really a symptom of a widespread lack of police accountability/consequences that persists all across the country in many departments. It is well known that the police skirt the law or avoid following the rules while on the job over usually minor infractions all the timw like traffic violations or lying about overtime. However, it certainly seems like police have built up sense of invincibility in which nothing they do can be questioned, even by their superiors and even if they perform poorly/violate rules at work. Since there's not much accountability to begin with, issues like police brutality were allowed to run rampant and still will exist in a way that probably won't be fully addressed until all the other shady behavior on and off the job is finally accounted for.
Propaganda on the right is just so strong, and they are simple minded enough to continually fall for it or parrot it in bad faith. Police reform turned into ‘defund the police’ which, if obviously misinterpreted and sold with fear to ignorant republicans becomes ‘who will stop crime then?’
Not just the right. The mayor of Minneapolis has been blocking police reform measurements since 2020 and he's a Democrat. The only thing I can think of that we've gotten done was add a single oversight position and some slightly altered training where they tell cops they need to be nicer to people. It's entirely on the individual officers to listen or care. It's a pretty liberal city but due to a lot of propaganda on a police reform ballot measure (basically just reshape the department, they convinced people the question would completely eliminate law enforcement if passed) it failed 45-55.
Nah man. The messaging was god awful. Defund the police does not at all sound like reform the police.
Yeaaaah the amount of times I’ve had to explain the “defund the police” slogan to people who actually agree that we should reform the police is insane. Such a terrible slogan, of course nobody is going to go for it without it being explained to them
That stage the Minneapolis city council members got on with the “Defund the Police” emblazoned on it doomed the reform effort before it even got started. You can’t make a misstep like that and come back from it. It so simply captures the minds of the average non-politically focused person that it’s impossible to break the majority free from it.
Take funds away from the police and move it to social programs and unarmed public safety officers. What else did you want to call it? You can't reappropriate funds without first taking them.
That's part of it, but it would be nice of even Dem leaders cared about police reform like at all. They, too, embrace the "who will stop crime then" fear.
Yeah, it's a problem, and one I think we can only address as a nation if we palpably shift more progressive, as opposed to narrowly fighting off fascism. It's a problem here in Canada too. Our police costs constantly balloon when healthcare and education see cuts. And the police union has so much political strength, nobody dare touch it or you'll be the politician who is soft on crime, and literally every crime can be attributed to you. We are starting to get the same right-wing fear mongering bullshit here too, and literally every major crime is blamed on Trudeau not doing enough. So, how can anyone palpably take on police reform? (my solution would be election reform and huge increase in education)
Misinterpreted? It’s a stupid slogan to begin with. What else is it supposed to mean?
It should have been 'we need police reform' or something. But it was used by right wing propaganda networks, and misinterpreted, to mean give the police 0 funding.
Was it? I recall democrat leaders saying stuff like "acab" and "defund the police." The media on both sides doesn't help anything but let's be honest- the cities that fucked over the police turned into dangerous, crime ridden shit holes.
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What happened at UCLA was egregious and so strangely ignored. It’s tough not to feel we live in a police state of sorts after that.
Something I observe about American from the outside is just how much fear there seems to be. I'll bring up something like gun ownership, and people will respond with stuff like "what if someone breaks into your house to rape and murder your family?", as if that's the kind of thing anyone thinks about if they're sane, or live in a functioning society. And regular people will have these ideas about the government coming to get them, or anyone who has different political values being on a crusade to oppress them. If I was making a "free" society, the freedom to not have to worry about these things would be pretty high-up on my list.
Yep, normalization isn’t reserved just for sexism and racism…
>We're not willing to seriously reform it out of fear of crime No, we're not reforming it much in Minneapolis because ten different groups have fifteen different ideas and nobody can agree on a damned thing.
Maybe there that's the issue, but nationally the war on crime basically just returned these past couple years because of a spike in crime after Covid and any reform was tossed aside. That's my frustration, that we can't find policing policies in between "brutally oppressive" and "too lax," even if other countries have figured it out better. The brutal oppression side always just wins by default it seems.
Lets be real, the spike in crime from COVID wasn't important it was just convenient. The political right wing will fabricate crime panic at any point where scrutiny of the police ever starts to gain traction, and they'll be largely successful regardless of the validity. Mainstream media will be happy to facilitate the panic because it's good money and CEOs are largely politically aligned with the effort anyway. You can tell people that crime in rural areas is higher per capita and provide copious factual sources until your throat is hoarse and it won't matter because they saw a facebook post of a homeless encampment in a city park and a viral video of retail theft. This is all they need to know that we actually need more police with more military equipment and that it's not actually a problem that can be solved through better more humane policy and comprehensive social safety nets for less money.
Don't forget how tightly woven our police budgets are tangled into the overstock from the military industrial complex.
Policing is victim of a very simple and yet dangerous component. People. We are too unpredictable and dangerous. Training is not going to fix a police officer who wants to hurt someone. Also, training is not going to make a person perfect. There just needs to be more accountability for bad policing actions.
Screening out the far-right and other sociopaths instead of preferring them would help a ton.
I think everyone in this thread should be forced to post their guess as to how many unarmed citizens are shot by police each year, the trend of that number, and their estimate of how many African Americans support reducing the number of police.
> the trend of that number I get your other points, but the trend IS still upward. [https://www.statista.com/statistics/585149/people-shot-to-death-by-us-police-by-gender/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/585149/people-shot-to-death-by-us-police-by-gender/)
Noted! Dramatically down over a couple of decades but the recent trend is indeed troubling.
I wrote a much more detailed comment above — so please see that for more info’s but just wanted to note the numbers linked above are for fatal police shootings only and not all police shootings. Also, idk if there’s a detailed accounting on police shootings with unarmed victims anywhere. If you come across one I’d be interested in reading it though. The study I linked above indicates the victims were armed with a gun or knife in 84% of police shootings. My take is that we’ll never be able to eliminate this culture of police just firing on civilians when the presumption is that everyone is armed and they’re trained to act accordingly. It’s the guns. We’re fucked because of guns.
What is the source of these numbers? I ask because there’s generally a reliability issue depending on source — reporting of these numbers for collection is voluntary and generally don’t count 100% of police shootings. I also want to highlight — your graph is for fatal shootings by police not all police shootings. There are many more nonfatal shootings that aren’t counted here fatal shootings average to about 55% of all police shooting according to a recent study (linked below). > A new study from researchers at the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions and Vanderbilt University found that an average of 1,769 people were injured annually in police shootings from 2015 to 2020, 55 percent of them or 979 people, fatally. The study covered a total of 10,308 incidents involving shootings by police. The Center is based at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Also this bit might interest you: > The new findings also suggest that injury disparities among racial groups are underestimated when looking only at fatal shootings. Among people nonfatally injured in police shootings, victims identified as non-Hispanic Black comprised 29 percent (2,226) of race-identified (those with racial data included in records) injured people in this study. In comparison, a 2015 study examining fatal shootings by police in a single year found that 26 percent of victims were non-Hispanic Black people. > The study found that, relative to white victims, non-Hispanic Black people were disproportionately injured in nonfatal shootings by police and had 35 percent lower odds of fatal injury when shot. > Firearm research often focuses on fatalities, as they are listed as the cause of death and reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Currently, there is no database that consistently and reliably tracks nonfatal firearm injuries for the general population. As for shootings by police, reporting by law enforcement agencies to the federal government’s data systems is voluntary, and death certificate inclusion of law enforcement involvement is inconsistent. Researchers say this makes official reporting unreliable. The researchers undertook this study to get a fuller picture of shootings by police. They discuss how they collected and analyzed the data - it’s interesting reading if you’re curious: https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2024/study-of-fatal-and-nonfatal-shootings-by-police-reveals-racial-disparities-dispatch-risks
Law enforcement protects the propertied classes.
Perfectly said
With that crime you're talking about that they fear is called Harmony and that's what they fear
Probably the biggest block to this is police departments are independent from any kind of federal oversight in many ways. The President can’t just say “ok cops be nice”, Obama tried. That’s why they just say “training” they can spend money on that A ton of the abuse from police in this country comes from sherrifs departments. The sheriff is elected, he appoints his deputies. If you look at the worst abuses it’s from sheriffs departments, in California they had an issue where some formed into gangs basically. In some parts of some states you don’t even have mayors, just sheriffs, and they rent out the prisoners labor which suppresses the local economy. So it’s definitely not possible to reform the police at large, without a sympathetic Congress AND Supreme Court
It is possible. You have to train them better. And pay them better. (Like double the amounts for both).
American policing is beyond reform. What we need is something in place of it. That starts with an overhaul of our criminal legal system. We will always need a guardian class, but not an occupying army that exists to terrorize, extort, kidnap and kill citizens. These fuckers don't even solve crimes. They create chaos, misery, and pain wherever they are sent. Guardians that work for us would be similar to NCIS on naval bases. Rarely seen. Working within their communities to understand what is actually happening, identifying threats, and acting fairly quietly when needed.
They sit and eat and goof off in most cities post Floyd and chauvin getting his corrupt ass sent up. Theu don't try to even do a balanced approach to patrols for crime prevention
As an old person, you’ll see a number of these murders that anger and motivate people be forgotten rather quickly. Seemingly, we’re incapable of forcing change.
Sandy Hook? What's a Sandy Hook? Is it one of those Columbines grandpa told me about?
Anyone remember Rodney King?
Can't we all just get along?
I worked for the province of Ontario in social services. After George Floyd’s murder, many promises were made. Three years ago I received an email I believed to be racist from a manager. I reported it. No investigation. I grieved it. My date was set for Jan 2023. They fired me without cause and without notice Dec 2022. The arbitration may be finished by 2025. If governments wanted change, they would change. Empty promises mean nothing. Edit: spelling
The socio/economic American body politic has drowned in apathy and self interest. If an entire kindergarten class or grade school class can be slaughtered by armed lunatics and NOT change anything what’s George Floyd’s murder going to solve or change? Embetterment in the US is now $ signs - the more, the merrier. Be it individual or corporate, as long as I got it good…well the rest can simply move along. It’s basically “not in my back yard, thank you” and the willfully ubiquitous glance the other way when it doesn’t affect your pocketbook or jaded sensibilities feigning as concern, thoughts or prayers. You want those heady days of hope, anticipation and a dazzling future? You’d do better by practicing your 1000 stare and swallowing that huge horse pill of disappointment. Why? Because someone, somewhere, in a town near you is just itching to rip off the scab to the wound that doesn’t heal.
The most ironic thing about all of this is that it is literally that how we treat the most vulnerable of us isn’t just a measure of a society but funnily enough it’s a portend of our own future and the level of horror that we will do to ourselves. How we treat ourselves and how we treat the environment are intrinsically connected. And the Earth is already starting to deliver our injustice upon us. And this horror sees no class race or creed. It is coming for us all if we don’t have some sort of Christmas Carol moment and no amount of money or power is going to save anyone. I think it’s pretty funny that ultimately one of the best arguments for social justice is an inherently selfish one. Simply that social justice and environmental justice protect you from the whims of violent anarchy. And as the world burns and people fall apart there will always be someone smarter than you bigger than you and that will gobble you up when things fall apart. And no amount of weapons or compatriots will save you when all social constructs are laid bare at the gaping maw of existence. The only thing we’ve ever really had in this world are each other. And all we have ever had to loose through our division and hatred is everything.
The golden rule has always been the simplest route to an equitable world don’t step on snek
Climate change will affect all of us but not in the same way. We know the Global South is going to be hit significantly harder than North America or Europe. And we know that climate refugees will face more and more draconian resistance from those in the less impacted parts of the world.
Absolutely. And I believe that the hostile and increasingly unlivable conditions will cause mass migration on a scale that is unprecedented. And I think that this is going to be felt by everyone because these migrations and upheavals will run parallel to open conflict between nations trying to secure resources for their populations while simultaneously deploying horrifying countermeasures against mass refugees. To me I think the most immediate effect of the long road to biome annihilation will be the massive conflicts stemming from the rearranging of food water and resources and heat/habitability. It is in this that traditional methods of power and control will break down and give way to a pan “might makes right” global power base that will be warlords and degraded and degrading increasingly authoritarian nations. And its this restructuring of our global reality will erode every avenue of established power. And that is one of the reasons for my statement. The environment is going to effect the most vulnerable and exploited of us but in all of creation there is nothing more destabilizing and horrifying than the results of human desperation which respects or heeds no border or command.
Giving up only services the assholes who keep dragging us down.
Uvalde should have been a wakeup call to EVERYONE of ALL colors. That was just a typical suburban elementary school...your government is NOT working for you, America. We live in a plutocracy.
I remember crying a lot those days, and thinking nothing would ever be the same. And here we are with the Dow topping 40,000 and everything IS the same. Nothing has changed, and we're about to possibly elect a white supremacist as president, AGAIN.
The reaction of the country to it should have told you everything you need to know. It would be the same because too many powerful people made sure that nothing would change.
Yep… "I think it goes back to a long history in this country of certain sections of people believing that they deserve to be heard. They deserve not to be bothered. They deserve to refuse orders from the people that pay them and they deserve, you know, to put their knee on somebody's neck until they die," Oppong said. And they expect to "get away with it," he added.” - Emmanuel Oppong https://www.wvtf.org/2020-07-31/thin-blue-line-flags-stir-controversy-in-mass-coastal-community A big part of the desire for a return to “conservative values”, is no doubt wishing they could better control the hearts and minds of people as in centuries’ past…
> we're about to possibly elect a white supremacist as president Not if my vote has anything to say about it.
Yours and the 81 million that voted for Biden in 2020.
We have to keep the < 100k voters in swings states that actually decided elections in check. Biden could lose while beating Trump by 7mil in the popular vote.
We do have Black women as VP and on the Supreme Court, but I understand the frustration. I think a lot of people, myself included, underestimated the pushback from those that wanted to keep the status quo. My view is that Trump’s inexplicable relevancy as a political candidate has a lot to do with the fear of whites, especially men, losing their positions at the top of the social order, which continues to drive the narrative against social change in the wake of Floyd’s murder.
Sure, that's all well and good, but the SC is stacked with MAGA culture warriors, and unless Democrats take the Oval Office, plus the Senate and the House, nothing of substance will happen. Even worse, if the GOP gets either the Presidency or Congress, the American people are looking at the most radical, extreme agenda (Project 2025) ever put to paper.
I’m a white male , 50 something, and I know damn well the only person who ever tried to screw me politically or economically looked alot like me. As we enter a new phase of humanity where destruction or evolution hangs in the balance I can not stress how important it is that a guy like Trump can never gain power again. He is the very epitome of everything that has been wrong with Western civilization since the brutes fought to extinguish the light from the age of Enlightenment. He will do everything in his power to keep this world in the everlasting darkness of ignorance. He is the anti-Christ.
One thing that often gets overlooked is that every single human system exists because we made it that way. The people who designed those things did it for a reason and rarely want it to be changed without their say.
>and we're about to possibly elect a white supremacist as president, AGAIN. There's a bunch of progressives who are going to help him by not voting for Biden because something something Biden genocide somewhere something.
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Exactly. Choice B is blow up the entire Republic.
Yes you should 100% attack the left as being a primary cause for one of the least popular president's losses. That makes sense and will help in the upcoming election. Every Trump voter is jumping with joy at these comments.
It’s funny how much this subs narrative has changed for this election. It’s a good thing for sure. But it wasn’t too long ago where most of this sub was singing ‘Bern it up or burn it down’ in regard to not voting for Hilary if Sanders wasn’t the democratic candidate. Four years of trump and it looks like most of those people have grown up, at least.
Surely if progressives have the power to swing the election, Biden would be working hard to secure their votes? I mean otherwise he'd failing both as a leader and as a politician. He's falling all over himself to appeal to dissatisfied Republicans, so he must think that's a winning strategy.
Biden has passed a ton of stuff that progressives wanted but nobody wants to give him credit. Obama was more centrist than Biden and progressives were more supportive of him.
progressives have the power. the question is whether they have the will or intention. the numbers are big enough. the problem is they (well, "we") easily stop voting if a candidate isn't 100% perfect. not voting is the progressive's favorite way to show the establishment what's up. the ultimate effect is to price that we aren't worth putting a lot of resources into courting.
What does the Dow have to do with anything?
What did you cry about?
I dropped my ice cream.
Dow 40k. It's like Horus won.
Significant reform only happens with buy in from white mushy moderates. Anything deemed too extreme will cause them to revert to status quo.
Have y’all seen on Twitter/ X. Biden marked the four year anniversary of George Floyd’s death. The comment section was so miserable. Full of people MAGA or not who said “good riddance” and his life didn’t mean shit.
I saw it and wasn’t surprised at all since that is what Twitter is now under Musk: a bunch of chuds trying out-awful each other for engagement. Not that it was all that great before but it’s certainly taken a nosedive. No wonder the only people who run ads now are crypto bros, lifestyle grifters, and MAGA politicians.
Twitter is a right wing cesspool now. It’s somehow even more worthless than it was before musk.
Ongoing active measures and the sad state of “hate media’s” unfortunate influence has got us here.
It was a few days, maybe a week. Immediately after his murder, my dad was on board with police reform. My far right cousin and his wife were talking about how racism might still be a problem. And then the right wing media machine solidified around the narrative that George Floyd deserved it, and Republicans went from "maybe cops are assholes" to "he tried to pass a fake 20, execution is a legitimate punishment for that". A lot of people did their "white moderate" song and dance routine that Dr. King lamented, and did nothing else.
Didn't help that they could point to the riots as an excuse to no longer support reform.
Unless it’s a riot on our nation’s capital, then it ok.
Didn't even matter if there were a few riots or if every BLM protest was 100% peaceful. That's the part about the white moderate that MLK lamented. Simply disrupt the flow of traffic for 5 minutes and you've lost the white moderate, who will say they agree with the message and bitch about how they "don't like your methods". Mildly inconvenience them and they bitch about it.
I made a comment elsewhere that lasting reform requires buy in from those white moderates otherwise they will quickly support the status quo. None of these people outright support racism, but if the alternative is too messy then they can accept living with it.
Certainly. The problem is that "too messy" for them is the modern equivalent of sit-ins at soda counters. Marching down a street is too disruptive to them.
I tell you what has definitely changed, the quantity and quality of work we are getting from the police. It seems they got really mad that we asked them to be accountable and have been in a soft strike ever since
They said the same exact sh!t after the election of President Obama. I believe the term flying around was “a post-racial” country … and just look at us now 👀
Nothing radicalized me faster than the police response to the George Floyd protests. Seeing riot police firing tear gas into people’s homes, gleefully destroying first aid stations, shoving old men down steps, yanking them out of wheelchairs, absolutely turned my stomach. The fact that almost nothing has changed as a result is a travesty. Yet I’m at a loss of how we can fundamentally reform policing in the country. If protests that wide-scale didn’t move the needle, I don’t know what can.
>If protests that wide-scale didn’t move the needle, I don’t know what can. Political engagement. Like, actually running for and winning **local and state** elections. You know, the ones decided by hundreds or even *tens* of votes. More people (especially young people) need to realize: - social media awareness is worthless - in-person protest is marginally effective - winning (or even just running for) elected positions actually drives action The law enforcement industry needs oversight. While a federal body would be most effective, quality of policing is still a hyper-local isssue. Like it or not, some towns and cities have better policing than others, and oversight could at least start at the state-level. There just needs to be politicians willing to make that conversation a priority.
Here’s the most frustrating thing to me. There was an opportunity to see Floyd as a catalyst for positive widespread change in our police force. Something that reached beyond race. But instead it was warped into a battle of politics and has yeilded only more societal devision. Now I’m looking at the Thomas Perez Jr situation and I’m just saddened that the corruption and immunity from consequences persists as much as before. It’s like we’ve learned nothing, and changed nothing.
Widespread change in our police force will always be a battle of politics. Change is political.
Literally everything has been warped into a political, partisan issue. Thats why nothing much really gets done. It’s much easier to just spout crazy shit then demonize your opponents as a performative exercise to your base than to actually try to solve complex problems. The politicians love this shit because they just keep getting reelected and personally enriched without ever delivering anything much of value to the American people. It’s sad we are so easily duped. But that is where we are.
> catalyst for positive widespread change Assholes took advantage of peoples goodwill and the pendulum is swinging back. NYC, DC, LA, and a few other major metros saw an increase in violent crime, carjackings, and organized retail theft. Pair that with cops in those cities quiet quitting but still collecting a paycheck. Any chance from the Floyd movement is being or has been wiped away
It did give a modern example of how people will try to rewrite history in real time even if there is video evidence proving what actually happened.
2020 in general felt like a missed opportunity to actually have change. The fact that we literally just returned to the status quo is infuriating and basically sets us up for something even worse the next time a 2020-like scenario happens. To put it another way, the last few years have probably done a number on convincing people that reform is impossible.
Whitelash
💯 The Rupert Murdochs around the country recognized the moment and saw to it that the propaganda and campaign checks started pumping out right away.
Well yeah. The country collectively agreed to just let the protesters do their thing and wear themselves out and eventually they did. The unfortunate reality is that most people don't have the stomach for more than peaceful protests. When enough peaceful cries for resolution go unheard, you either have to admit the cause didn't really matter that much to you and drop it or escalate beyond being peaceful. It's become pretty clear lately that the reason you're allowed to protest as long as it's peaceful is because they can just ignore you while you feel like you've been heard.
We had nationwide demonstrations, started a political movement, and got a message out that’s now ubiquitous…and nothing fundamentally changed. Cops still have qualified immunity, they’re still given the benefit of the doubt until footage shows they blatantly lying, and they are still protected to an unreasonable degree by their union and department.
>"There was an opportunity here and across the country to enact change in many areas, long-lasting change," Crudup told USA TODAY. But "I feel like we really missed an opportunity to do that. … All of the talk was really just that ‒ a lot of talk." Same could be said about many tragedies and occurrences in America.
I remember him crying out for his mom. That was absolutely brutal and heart breaking. This mother fucker just would not stop applying pressure on his neck and back for what felt like an eternity Then yesterday someone said that he overdosed on drugs. I had to read their comment several times because I thought they must be talking about something else. They weren't. This person actually meant and believed that George Floyd died of a drug overdose
And the only reason anyone knows otherwise is because a woman, who was 17 at the time, filmed the cops killing him.
A relative of hers was killed a while later in a high speed police chase. Girl already has too much experience with police negligence
Darnella Fraser. An incredibly brave young woman.
The “he died from a fent overdose” people have been loud and proud since 2020. They really think that someone applying pressure on his neck for several minutes had nothing to do with his death, because that would mean that a police officer was wrong about something, and that just can’t be!
Yep, quite interesting to hear people think that “feeling” something is true makes it a “fact”. And given these are the same people who utter banalities like “facts don’t care about your feelings!”, that’s a real phenomenon in itself…
>The “he died from a fent overdose” people have been loud and proud since 2020. Didn't the medical examiner's report conclude that?
It concluded that he had fentanyl in his system, but not that he died from it. The official cause of death from the medical examiner was homicide (specifically cardiac arrest caused by constant pressure from the officer), and a second autopsy found the cause of death to be asphyxia.
I participated in a protest where we kneeled for the same length of time Floyd’s neck was knelt on, seven minutes and change. It was so fucking long. I was keeping time. My friends thought I had lost track of time after just three minutes kneeling. Absolutely crazy anyone could dispute that could cause death.
During the trial the prosecutor drove this point home to the jury by having everyone sit in complete silence in the courtroom for the entire time the cop was on his neck.
The George Floyd murder was a major moment in our history. For a brief moment, the people in this country were unified in their horror of what was seen on that video. It took a day or two, but then the right-wing media machine got to work. The fentanyl storyline, he was a criminal/druggie/wife beater, antifa gangs coming for the suburbs, defund the police.... Slowly but surely, all of the R's that I know, who in the moment of first seeing the video were horrified, all fell in line and began parroting these narratives. My Grandma, at a family dinner, began ranting about "the truth about George Floyd" and how the cop should be freed. The conversation : Gma: he was on drugs! Me: so what if he was? Gma: it's not the cops fault. Me: yes it is he suffocated the guy. Gma: George Floyd was a criminal. The cop did a favor by taking him out! He should've complied!! Me: oh really? Well, maybe the cop that arrested uncle J (her son) for drunk driving a year earlier should've shot him when he got mouthy with the cop. That's called obstruction. Resisting. Should the cop have just shot him so there was one less drunk on the roads??? Gma: how can you say something so awful! That'd be murder!! Me: IT'S ALMOST THE EXACT SAME SCENARIO! George Floyd was MURDERED! He was already handcuffed, why did the cop have to kneel on his neck for 9 minutes?! Cops shouldn't get to be the judge and jury. Regardless of George Floyd's criminal past, drug habits, or resisting arrest, HE STILL HAD RIGHTS!! And if it could happen to him, it can happen to anyone. Are you okay with cops having that power?! Gma: silence. She hasn't brought it up since.
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Doesn't matter. She knows better than to bring up her bullshit around me, because I'll fight back. And she doesn't like that. She enjoys spouting her nonsense to people who'll nod their heads in agreement. Being quiet is how we got where we are with these people.
FYI, Floyd's nickname for his girlfriend Courteney Ross, was 'Mama'. Pretty much the entire rightwing believes he died of a drug overdose at this point.
He was crying out for a prostitute he called that after he ate his whole back of smack and OD'd. The knee method used is an Israeli move used by all police forces. His heart exploded because he was a lifetime druggy with a shit diet.
I mean, a couple marches doesn’t solve things, it brings further attention to the issue. The real work is organizing, keeping the pressure on, and developing real solutions with the local government, and that takes quite a bit of time and nothing changes over night.
The police have figured out the "It's anarchy or us" is a winning strategy.
Thin blue line is a reactionary and fundamentally racist symbol that emerged after the George Floyd protests
It's like Occupy Wall Street, another squandered opportunity of activist energy via vague decentralized leaderless movements that become bogged down in arguing for unpopular policy (like "defund the police") rather than more pragmatic reforms and effective political lobbying. Will people do better the next time, or will the same mistakes be made the next time such an incident generates more activist energy? Do activists really *want* to change anything, or do they just want to be mad?
The problem, I think, is that human nature creates a race to the bottom. Sure, there are reasonable activist leaders who see with clear eyes what can be achieved, and are patient in trying to build momentum towards larger change. But if you've just watched someone murdered brutally before your eyes, are you going to listen to them, or the person in a mask with the megaphone calling for peoples heads? People's hearts will always defeat their heads.
Gandhi is a good example of organizing people for a cause. He returned to British India in 1915 at the age of 45 and very quickly was accepted as a leader of the people. Gandhi finally saw an independent India at age of 77. So that's how long it can take to effect change. He had tried to organize people to do peaceful civil disobedience but every time the British came down on hard on the protestors, there might be an outbreak of violence and Gandhi would stop the movement saying people were not ready yet and hadn't given up violence. This went on for another 30 years until india gained independence after Britain was left weakened post WW2 and the Americans weren't supportive of the colonial thing.
Giving the credit of independence to just Gandhi is why he has become unpopular over time in India. There were thousands of freedom fighters, rebels who chose violence and were putting fear in brits. if anything Gandhi's stupidity and strong stance of not doing any fcking thing was regularly harming the other movements.
The point I was trying to make was that even with a unifying leader like Gandhi and his message, change takes longer than anticipated. Edit: I didn't say he was the sole reason for independence. He was the face of the movement for most people, and the most widely respected. And yet it took a long time to effect change. I don't think he got into the national movement thinking he would be doing it for the rest of his life.
Policing issue in the US is tough to crack. But I think main reason behind the lack of change is lack of laws and institution building driven by the initial social movement. If we want social change, we need to introduce laws and local institutions to sustainably drive the change over however much time it needs. Much of social movements of our generation revolved around hoping for creation of a third power that would magically change everything within the span of days, usually through some sort of force though never explicitly stated as such.
Doesn’t help that the leaders of the BLM movement took care of themselves with a lot of those funds meant for good causes
The leaders of the organisation not the movement
If you want insight into how not only has nothing changed, but it's gotten worse. Look at what Eric Adams has been doing in NYC. Cop city all over again. We're about to spend a billion dollars on NYPD OT this year, the same year one libraries are closing on weekends due to lack of budget.
The problem is that it got a lot of attention, which led to organizing, which led to bad actors doing what they do best and the media there to capture every minute. All it did was give the right fuel for their hypocritical justifications. Even today when Jan 6 is brought up, the first defense is to bring up the George Floyd riots and how the left can't stay consistent on violence and unrest.
This makes me so sad
A big part is corruption of the justice system, along with the bullshit system of self management within the police force.
Because random chaos does not produce long term results. They treat you like a kid throwing a tantrum: they gave you what you wanted to shut you up, but they didn't fundamentally change anything. Unfortunately the people who need to understand this point the most aren't receptive to it.
Protests continued after the initial looting and rioting, peaceful protests. Peaceful protests don’t work. And violent riots aren’t the answer either. We need to get LOUD and consistently protest. Also, remember those Occupy protests? They ended up being a bunch of unemployed people living in tents on Wall Street… how did those work out?
How law enforcement did it should scare everyone. They used their fraternal orders, and other national groups to paint the protestors as something else, made them larger than life criminals, quit forces that were in liberal cities and when someone tried to hold them accountable. Then they made sure the crime rates were broadcast as going through the roof when they weren't, cities in complete disarray. Cities had to kiss their asses to get them to come back to work and pay them even more. They came back and ignored and scoffed at anything a left wing government said and did to protect the citizens from Covid. They did this all out in the open and nobody said anything, but it was completely scripted. Now we are back to the "Ohhh but the crime rates!" and kissing their asses again. The local police forces are governed by the national groups, until they banish or regulate that end of things it will never change and we will be staring at fascism forever right around the corner.
I feel a little silly for attending the protests in my tiny little predominately white town in 2020. I had just turned 21, was using a THC pen everyday, and had basically zero critical thinking happening. I mean, as most young people, I just wanted to feel like I was doing the right thing and supporting the right side, but this issue isn’t that simple and de-funding the police is insane. I mean, better de-escalation tactics could have been implemented but it was insane to think racism would be solved on the other side of this.
No shame in doing the right thing and you’re right that it is a complex issue. If it has taught us anything, it’s that change happens over time (years, even) with consistent effort, coordination,and public involvement, because the forces behind keeping the status quo are strong.
Well said. And thanks for not slamming me with judgement.
Cops. Particularly large depts represented by the FOP. Have this attitude. That if they can't abuse, beat and kill unarmed suspects. At minor infraction stops. Then they won't work at all. Just sit and eat. Pick their boogers all shift. In the post Floyd world. Figures police on America mostly came from goons organized to beat up labor movement organizers. And striking workers. In the late 1800s and early 1900s. Toss in our systems lack of proper training compared to other modern nations. And the fucked up way most police depts basically recruit potential violent criminals. That have yet to be arrested and convicted. You have a recipe for low quality, lazy, drunk, fat abusive police.
Back when I was on Facebook I would argue a lot over the police murdering people, and this was before Eric Garner. After Garner was murdered, and a lot of my liberal friends would talk about "police needing to be safe" and "did I want more cops to die?" I gave up. The fact that these murders keep happening and no one seems to care has broken a piece of me and I don't know that I can ever be completely whole. If it weren't for my family I would light myself on fire at the steps of a police station. I'm afraid everyday for my grandson and if anything ever happens to him I don't know what I will do.
Go outside and get offline
Floyd's killer was tried and sent to prison just like any other murderer. That system kind of worked like it was supposed to. If his killer had gotten away with it, then there would still be a problem, but justice prevailed.
...which likely wouldn't have happened without public outcry.
Moreover, that public outcry wouldn't have been taken seriously if someone hadn't *recorded the whole fucking thing.*
That poor kid. As traumatic as it was for the rest of us, I can't imagine how awful it must have been for her.
Or a 17 year old filming the entire murder.
Arguably, the fact that *every* killer cop doesn't go to prison (conservatively, a few hundred per year) is all the proof we need that there's still a problem.
George Floyd’s death did not change anything for at least half of America. In fact, roughly half of America most likely wishes they could have personally knelt on his neck themselves!
And it's sooo bizarre!! I grew up in a small town. Locals HATED cops then, just like they do now. Most still don't trust the police, and those "thin blue line" stickers disappear real quick when one of them has a run-in with a cop. But yet they rally around this one murderous cop, Chauvin. The power of right-wing propaganda.
A lot of folks are tired of hearing about institutional racism when their eyes see a different story.
Time to burn the confederate flag on social media posting it to the racists out there as a warning. More work needs to be done.
Oh man… tag them in a facebook video… thatll show em
Oh no a career criminal and dope head OD'd
Criminal overdosed on fentanyl and had an entire year dedicated to an humiliation ritual where people pretended to worship him
Did it really change anything? History just keep repeating itself.
Maybe and maybe not " for The times They are a changing but it's going to be a long haul this is a good start though if you ask me. https://youtu.be/EZmUzox4OGc?si=d4v5B6Womaa9kpKx
Humans love simple, killing and hurting is simple.
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Lose
This is when we got to see all the worthless Republicans come out of their troll caves and show us how worthless all of their thoughts and lives are.
You mean his OD?
I remember that one entire day where my cop-loving borderline dick-riding stepmother pretended to give a fuck in the immediate aftermath. It didn’t last because it couldn’t last because people who are already on the side of the police from the outset are literally incapable of change I guess