Black Lives Matter, The Police, etc.

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Anondson
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Re: Interstate 35W

Postby Anondson » December 4th, 2014, 5:58 pm

This feels like inarticulate rage, and I deeply sympathize. And this doesn't impact me as its not my daily route, but I know I'm human and no matter how much I'm aligned, if I'm delayed picking up my child from school, or delayed from a job interview, or delayed getting to the hospital, because of something like this highway protest the human in me would have pure anger towards this.

It feels like a better target for shutting down in protest are criminal courts, city halls, the state Capitol, and most especially the police unions.

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Re: Interstate 35W

Postby mulad » December 4th, 2014, 6:05 pm

Please try to keep cool, folks. I believe at least one of the recent posters has a job that requires a lot of driving -- and there are a number of different jobs out there where people need to have a car or truck to get things done. Even if we had a huge shift in mode share, that would still be the case for some positions.

I'll say that I lean in favor of the protesters' opinions here -- marching down the Interstate is not something I'd personally choose to do, but I prefer to have an exit that doesn't need a mile-marker attached. I've seen and been in protests that have gotten a fraction of the attention they deserved, so this has been one tactic to force the normally complacent news media into paying greater attention. Just as remodeling your kitchen is a traumatic experience, fixing deep systemic issues in society will bring its own flavors of discomfort.

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Re: Interstate 35W

Postby EOst » December 4th, 2014, 6:10 pm

I have mixed feelings on this. FIRST, the fast food protesters are crazy thinking they are entitled to $15/ hour. Sorry, but no way dude. Get some in-demand skills or education then talk about your job hunt.
Jesus, you've clearly never been in a bad situation. Check your privilege. How about you try to "get some education" when you're working twelve-hour days with kids?

nordeast homer
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Re: Interstate 35W

Postby nordeast homer » December 4th, 2014, 6:19 pm

What I said should have been benign. I never said there should not be a protest, I never said I thought a bunch of cops should restrain a guy to the point that he dies.
I do think that the protesters could have made the same point outside city hall or any number of places in the city.
I think they are very lucky nobody got killed and apparently I should be throttled because I didn't like the fact that my livelihood was impacted while some of you say in your offices cheering it on. How about I take money out of your wallet and prevent you from making money for your family, while I protest in your office?

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Re: Interstate 35W

Postby a_tribe_called_chris » December 4th, 2014, 6:36 pm

I have mixed feelings on this. FIRST, the fast food protesters are crazy thinking they are entitled to $15/ hour. Sorry, but no way dude. Get some in-demand skills or education then talk about your job hunt.
Jesus, you've clearly never been in a bad situation. Check your privilege. How about you try to "get some education" when you're working twelve-hour days with kids?
You can take your privelige talk and shove it up your backside bro.

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Re: Interstate 35W

Postby FISHMANPET » December 4th, 2014, 6:36 pm

If you're mad about being delayed on 35W, imagine how mad you would be if a cop murdered a family member and wasn't charged with anything.

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Re: Interstate 35W

Postby a_tribe_called_chris » December 4th, 2014, 6:42 pm

I have mixed feelings on this. FIRST, the fast food protesters are crazy thinking they are entitled to $15/ hour. Sorry, but no way dude. Get some in-demand skills or education then talk about your job hunt.
Jesus, you've clearly never been in a bad situation. Check your privilege. How about you try to "get some education" when you're working twelve-hour days with kids?
I don't know but last time I checked having your parents house raided from one's drug related business isn't a nice situation. Having a juvenile file thicker than a dictionary and only receiving 30 days in YA and intense probation to your 18th birthday must not be a bad situation. Although I didn't get murdered in the raid so I would chalk it up to "white privilege."

Sleeping in my car since I was homeless for a week wasn't very cool either.

Wait, the time some busters tried to rob me but their gun jammed so when I attacked them back and had a bottle broken over my head that was not a bad situation either.


I suppose getting my GED and working through college with a young son wasn't difficult either. You are right I have no clue what a life of adversity is like.... Queue sarcasm

Get a clue kid. If you are working a dead end job for 12 hour days and you have kids then who is raising them and why is it my fault you made a sequence of poor choices in your life? Don't like your situation? Then take control of your life and make it better.
Last edited by a_tribe_called_chris on December 4th, 2014, 6:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.

nordeast homer
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Re: Interstate 35W

Postby nordeast homer » December 4th, 2014, 6:49 pm

I would be mad, why do you think I wouldn't? That's a stupid assumption. But, I wouldn't close your office to make my point. The interstate is essentially my office. It has nothing to do with privileges, or hummers, or autos versus public transportation.

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Re: Interstate 35W

Postby a_tribe_called_chris » December 4th, 2014, 7:00 pm

If you're mad about being delayed on 35W, imagine how mad you would be if a cop murdered a family member and wasn't charged with anything.
I am mad about the situation too.

I've long known that are police forces have been militarized since I had my teen years impacted by heavy handed raids in the name of the war on drugs.

The police are so out of control and act as if they are at war with the communities they are supposed to serve.

Our little liberal haven of Minneapolis leads the state for marijuana arrest disparities between blacks and whites. Ditto for the enforcement of other low level crimes like loitering.

Hell, capitalism and the American economy would have never reached its heights without slave labor and the brutally extracted efficiencies of enslaved Africans. The war on drugs has created the new Jim Crow.

How do we stop it? Neuter the damn police unions. Require residency for the officers. Hell, we need public approval for hiring and review of misconduct.

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Re: The Police

Postby FISHMANPET » December 4th, 2014, 7:05 pm

And at this point people are either ignorant about what's going on, or they just don't care. For those that don't understand, hopefully the media coverage on something like this will inform them. For those that don't care, well we should inconvenience the hell out of them.

I don't think there's any level of mad or annoyed at stopped traffic I could be that would make me say "we should clear this instead of letting people protest for their civil rights."

Anondson
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Re: The Police

Postby Anondson » December 4th, 2014, 7:25 pm

How do we stop it? Neuter the damn police unions. Require residency for the officers. Hell, we need public approval for hiring and review of misconduct.
I'll throw this out there:

Remove immunity. Double pay. Require liability insurance coverage as a part of employment. The moment LEO's can't carry liability insurance they lose their job.

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Re: The Police

Postby a_tribe_called_chris » December 4th, 2014, 7:30 pm

How do we stop it? Neuter the damn police unions. Require residency for the officers. Hell, we need public approval for hiring and review of misconduct.
I'll throw this out there:

Remove immunity. Double pay. Require liability insurance coverage as a part of employment. The moment LEO's can't carry liability insurance they lose their job.
I love it! Nurses and Doctors need malpractice insurance. Police should have to do the same.

In pretty much every officer involved shooting it seems paid adminstrative leave is the norm.

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Re: The Police

Postby EOst » December 4th, 2014, 7:47 pm

You can take your privelige talk and shove it up your backside bro.
Classy "bro."
I don't know but last time I checked having your parents house raided from one's drug related business isn't a nice situation. Having a juvenile file thicker than a dictionary and only receiving 30 days in YA and intense probation to your 18th birthday must not be a bad situation. Although I didn't get murdered in the raid so I would chalk it up to "white privilege."

Sleeping in my car since I was homeless for a week wasn't very cool either.

Wait, the time some busters tried to rob me but their gun jammed so when I attacked them back and had a bottle broken over my head that was not a bad situation either.

I suppose getting my GED and working through college with a young son wasn't difficult either. You are right I have no clue what a life of adversity is like.... Queue sarcasm

Get a clue kid. If you are working a dead end job for 12 hour days and you have kids then who is raising them and why is it my fault you made a sequence of poor choices in your life? Don't like your situation? Then take control of your life and make it better.
Okay, you've had negative experiences. How then can you have such a total lack of empathy?

I'm glad you pulled yourself up by your bootstraps; that's great, I'm glad you were able to do it. But the belief that everyone can and should do if they want to get out of grinding poverty is one of the biggest problems in America today, and it profoundly sets us back in a thousand different ways. Yeah, you did it, but you're the exception; you're smart, you're driven, and you're probably pretty lucky. Most people who try, fail. The fact that they fail shouldn't condemn them to permanent poverty.

Also, I'm not your "kid." You don't know who I am, or what my past was. If you want to pretend to be an adult here, you should try acting like one.

a_tribe_called_chris
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Re: The Police

Postby a_tribe_called_chris » December 4th, 2014, 8:57 pm

You can take your privelige talk and shove it up your backside bro.
Classy "bro."

Okay, you've had negative experiences. How then can you have such a total lack of empathy?

I'm glad you pulled yourself up by your bootstraps; that's great, I'm glad you were able to do it. But the belief that everyone can and should do if they want to get out of grinding poverty is one of the biggest problems in America today, and it profoundly sets us back in a thousand different ways. Yeah, you did it, but you're the exception; you're smart, you're driven, and you're probably pretty lucky. Most people who try, fail. The fact that they fail shouldn't condemn them to permanent poverty.

Also, I'm not your "kid." You don't know who I am, or what my past was. If you want to pretend to be an adult here, you should try acting like one.
Likewise on all points. You had no issue assuming things about me, from the jump.

To rebutt your statement about failing and being condemned to poverty, let's get real. Not everyone deserves a ribbon for showing up. If someone fails then that's their result. They can try again or not but it is not somebody else's duty to carry the weight of that failure for them. The poverty sentence can be pardoned if they continue to work at it. Compared to other countries poverty in the USA isn't so bad. How do you think life is like in Somalia or a Brasilian favela?

I appreciate what seems to be a compliment of me rising above my circumstances but I feel that applies to everyone who wants to improve their situation.

Lastly, I have empathy for others. Those who want to better themselves but can't get financial aid due to a drug conviction, those who are discriminated for the color of their skin and are subject to police harassment and employment discrimination all have my deepest empathy.

So to make it clear where I stand - I support those seeking to fix our broken police state. I believe black and brown lives matter just as much as white ones. I am fed up with the police being able to kill black men without consequence. I recognize that "white privelige" is how John Holmes was taken into custody alive after shooting up the Aurora Theater but a 12 year old boy in Cleveland gets murdered for having a fake toy gun. I believe everyone deserves an equal chance in life with access to a good education and a supporting community.

This doesn't ensure success for all. So to the fast food workers who think they deserve $15 an hour I don't agree that your skill set is worth that. I did agree that raising the minimum wage in Minnesota was appropriate. I believe sick days should be legally mandated as well especially for fast food workers.

Do you think that raising the wage for fast food workers would have no impacts? Would menu prices increase? Would the current workers get squeezed into more unfavorable labor as a higher quality labor pool now sees this sector as enticing? Would automation eliminate positions to keep the franchisee's profits up?

Raising the wage sounds great in theory but how does it work in the real world?

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Re: The Police

Postby David Greene » December 4th, 2014, 9:05 pm

Relevant:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gina-cros ... 69255.html

This shouldn't be about guilt and blaming. It's about a system we must change for the benefit of EVERYONE.

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Re: The Police

Postby David Greene » December 4th, 2014, 9:15 pm

They can try again or not but it is not somebody else's duty to carry the weight of that failure for them.
In my faith tradition, it absolutely, absolutely is.
This doesn't ensure success for all. So to the fast food workers who think they deserve $15 an hour I don't agree that your skill set is worth that.
Thank you for explaining your thoughts in more detail. It's helpful. To me it's not about skill set at all. It's about whether we want people to be able to live. Why do we allow multi-billion-dollar corporations to not pay people enough to live? The consequence is that we all pay in the end whether it is via food stamps, emergency room costs, foreclosure costs or any of thousands of other externalities that result from poverty wages.

It is not only wrong for CEOs to make hundreds of times what their workers make, it's bad for society. An inequitable society is an unstable society.
Raising the wage sounds great in theory but how does it work in the real world?
You share the wealth. We used to have income tax rates of over 90% for the top income tiers. That money got used for things that generally benefited society. Our most prosperous decade in our history came at a time when our income taxes were the highest ever on the upper earners.

We've got to attack the problem on both ends. Those with excessive wealth drive up prices for everyone else and those on the low end can't even afford things at the old prices. Raising wages does not necessarily lead to higher inflation. It leads to people being able to obtain necessities they couldn't before. The people on the low end aren't going to be buying goods at such a high rate as to push prices up significantly.

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Re: The Police

Postby Minneboy » December 4th, 2014, 9:19 pm

Some of you people need to have a warning or get outright banned and I hope it happens. Shutting down an interstate, for that matter protesting anywhere without a permit is plain illegal. Most often it is not enforced and people will have the right to free speech. Getting back to blocking a freeway, if in anyway prohibits an emergency vehicle delay causing a death you should be considered a hypocrite. I don't condone running over anyone as that idiot did last week near the 3rd Precinct and believe that guy should go to jail as he assaulted someone with a deadly weapon intent to cause harm. Anyone who believes this protest on 35W is just you have your priorities all wrong.

See no name calling.

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Re: The Police

Postby Mdcastle » December 4th, 2014, 9:21 pm

The Strib cut off the comments, small wonder. I'm not sure I agree with calling for them all to be arrested, but issuing citations and telling them to protest someplace where it is legal seems to me a good thing. The old "my rights stop where yours begin". Your free speech doesn't give you the right to yell fire in a theater or shut down an interstate.

As for $15 wages, watch drive through order taking being outsource to India (if you don't like having to understand some Indian guy when you call tech support, wait till you have to do it to order a big mac), cashiers be replaced by kiosks, and mechanized hamburger flippers be developed. The problem isn't that service industry workers aren't handsomely paid, but there's no alternatives since eveything from screws to iPods are made by sweatshops in China, not good American jobs.
Last edited by Mdcastle on December 4th, 2014, 9:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.

David Greene
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Re: The Police

Postby David Greene » December 4th, 2014, 9:23 pm

Driving is not a right.

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Re: The Police

Postby FISHMANPET » December 4th, 2014, 9:23 pm

Shutting down an interstate, for that matter protesting anywhere without a permit is plain illegal.
Murder is also illegal.

I don't really get this idea that if black people just ask nicely for their civil rights we'll be more than happy to hand them over, and they just haven't asked nicely enough yet.


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