Minneapolis Social Injustice and Related

[Mark Kelly]

Trump responds by tweeting that he will declare "Antifa" a terrorist organisation.

Meanwhile, the KKK has never been declared a terrorist organisation..

[Corso]

7 years of college down the drain...

I'm watching live TV in Boston, where one police suv is now destroyed, bottles, rocks, etc are being thrown at police, one downtown store window broken, minor looting---it's been pretty peaceful up until now- and even now it's nothing compared to other cities of late. A minority of the larger (peaceful) group hanging out and being assholes. I'm going to bed, and hope it fades and doesn't escalate.

Boston Police showing a lot of restraint. Even when idiots trying to wrestle police batons out of their hands.

[mjbabcock]

Jeep runs down two women during protest in Visalia

Access Denied

Running people down...isn't that what terrorists were doing in Canada and the UK not long ago? Seems like terrorism to me, and should be treated as such.

[Clean39T]

But let's not get it twisted, what happened to Chris pales in comparison to institutionalized state sanctioned violence against minorities in this country. If that cell phone video didn't exist, none of us would know George Floyd's name. And he'd still be dead.

I refuse to have the missteps in a visceral, emotional reaction from the community overshadow the real crime here. Cops have two different sets of rules for white and minorities in this country, and increasingly police communities through violence and intimidation, leading to horrible, completely avoidable deaths for a not insignificant segment of our country.

And as much as we are loathe to admit it, yeah, sometimes violence is the answer.

+1

But I'm struggling with what's going on here in Portland. Non-minorities seem to be co-opting the protests and tearing apart the city, but they are just amplifying the violence the police are instigating when cracking down on lawful and peaceful protesters. And then we have the red-hat, slack-jawed, all-truck-and-no-chainsaw yokels descending from the ex-urbs to make it all worse.. Meanwhile we have a small black and minority population that's been shit on for years (by the police, the city council, gentrification, and legacy racism in this sunset town) who are having their voice and legitimate grievances drowned out - or so it seems... It's a giant clustersuck. I don't have any answers. I'm just sad, and unsure what to do with my born-on-third privilege about any of it. Donations. Liking posts. It all seems so trite.

[thollandpe]

Majority of Minneapolis-St. Paul riot arrests are from Minnesota

Reports seem to vary.

Why is the Attorney General of the United States of America lying about it?



The head of our Department of Justice. He’s lying. Deliberately. Why?

[beeatnik]

Rodriguez, Salazar, Bustamante and Oh.

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[gregl]

Why is the Attorney General of the United States of America lying about it?

The head of our Department of Justice. He’s lying. Deliberately. Why?

Because he's desperately trying to hang on to his job. If his boss isn't re-elected, there will be congressional investigations, potentially special prosecutors appointed, and grand juries empaneled next year to investigate his conduct. The potential for criminal charges makes men desperate. Reminds me of another Attorney General by the name of John Mitchell.

Greg

[TRuth]

Trump has finally come out and proclaimed himself a fascist.

The destruction of property as collateral damage, while truly unfortunate, pales in comparison to the loss of life and systemic disenfranchisement of a race of people.

[choke]

Why is the Attorney General of the United States of America lying about it?


The head of our Department of Justice. He’s lying. Deliberately. Why?

That video is from Saturday and at that point the Governor of MN and the Mayor of St. Paul were saying the same thing. I would guess that Barr got his info from MN and was repeating what he was told. I think it's a stretch to say that he was deliberately lying.

@beeatnik - Anyone who has had training with "less than lethal" weapons was told repeatedly that when using fired weapons (rubber bullets, bean bags) not to aim at the head or torso. If they were aiming at the head as stated that is seriously wrong; people have been killed by hits to the head or torso.

[vertical_doug]

I'm afraid that the suggestion that these problems, killing unarmed and frequently black people all across the country, are attributable to a few bad apples has lost all credibility with me. The aggressive punitive policing in our communities is a net minus for all of us. It is expensive, and produces a ripple effect of bad outcomes including periodic spasms of mass violence. (and yes it is wrong to destroy property and it is wrong to injure and kill innocent people and it is especially terrible when the state does it. All who do those things should be punished justly.)

Here is a simple suggestion that might help. What if we gave up the terms "they" and "them" when talking about broad sections of our communities? I live in a western suburb of Detroit- the idea that there is a problem in Detroit that does not affect me is like a passenger on the Titanic being not worried because the iceberg gashed the other side of the boat. We are all in this together.

We had an exchange student a few years ago from Barcelona and when he asked about health care in our country and I did my best to explain it, he got this puzzled look on his face and said, "don't you care about each other?"

Do we?

I thought the value of fellow Americans were as a potential mark to make a buck on. If I can't make a buck of you because you have no money, you need to be incarcerated so my privatized prison system can make a buck of you so there is some residual
value.

Isn't this the current system?

[guido]

Police targeted journalists covering the George Floyd protests - Vox

"On Friday night, photojournalist Linda Tirado was shot in the eye by a rubber bullet while covering an anti-police brutality protest in Minneapolis — one of more than two dozen incidents of journalists experiencing violence while covering the recent demonstrations.

Tirado says she’s permanently blind in her left eye. (She is thankful she uses her right eye to take photos, so the injury is not career-ending.)"

[jclay]

Pinched from elsewhere and slightly modified but for my money, spot-on.

The problem is that white culture sees racism as nothing but conscious hate when it is vastly more complex than that. Racism in the USA is an insidious system of social, economic and political machinery set up generations ago to work on the behalf of whites, at other people’s expense. It exists and operates whether white people know it, or like it, or not. Racism is a cultural disease. It is so insidious that it doesn’t care if you're a white person who likes black people or has black friends; it’s still going to find a way to infect how you deal with or feel about folks who don’t look like you. Racism looks merely like hate, but hate is just one manifestation. Privilege is another. Access is another. Ignorance is another. Apathy is another. Accumulated, consolidated wealth is another. The inability or unwillingness to see the plight of black folks, another. And on, and on, and on. It is a monstrously powerful system, a fluid into which we are born, raised and live. We are breathing it, swimming in it, and subject to its infections until we die. It’s not a cold that you "just get over". There is no anti-racist certification class, no quick and easy fix. It’s a set of socio-economic traps and cultural values that are in constant play. It’s something you have to keep fighting, bailing out of the boat of your life and our culture in order to keep from drowning in it. It’s hard, never ending work, but it’s the price we pay for our history, our culture, our power, our ownership of everything, and it's what we need to do to make our country a better place. And it extends to how we treat the rest of the world, too.

I want to hear every police chief and police union in this country commit to a never ending fight against police brutality, and I want to see the proof. I want to see body cams and car-cams required of absolutely every cop and police vehicle. I want to see abusers fired, lose their benefits, arrested and prosecuted at least as vigorously as any citizen. I want to see a police culture that is vastly different from what we have. I want to see a police culture that has zero tolerance for abuse of power and "protecting it's own" abusers.

If for nothing other than selfish self interest we should demand that and address other social/economic problems, because if we don't then this country is going to come unglued in a very ugly fashion; but we ought to be doing it because it's the right thing to do.

These are just a few of many posts with which I agree. They are QED evidence and I am seething with anger at the reality.

Trump responds by tweeting that he will declare "Antifa" a terrorist organisation.

Meanwhile, the KKK has never been declared a terrorist organisation..

Respectfully I disagree. I believe that we can say the entire policing system is broken today. To many dubious acts of harassment and murder of innocent Brown People by Cops with essentially zero accountability.

If a bunch of white guys with long guns enter a state capitol and threaten elected officials, our President says "negotiate with them" and there are no arrests. When the same crowd is brown, out comes the rubber bullets and tear gas with calls to have National Guard troops shoot to kill. This then spills to create further action in the insane right wing/KKK/Fascists who then proceed to shoot Brown people down in the street or today try to run people over in their race for their rapture of an all out race war. We've been led into this pit of hell since the Reagan era through systematic elimination of a national conscious that has been replaced with identity politics and a current political party in charge that has abdicated. The police are complict with their passive/active support of the racially motivated policies and behavior. Being a racist is like pregnancy, you either are or you aren't. Right now we have to decide what America means.

I'll stop there as my blood is boiling right now.

Dudes with rifles show up, force their way into the state capitol, and cause the state legislature to stop conducting business, and don't get tear gassed? We know why, and it ain't because it's a "peaceful" demonstration. The threat of violence is rather explicit when guys show up strapped with AR-15s.

Sorry, that dog don't hunt.

Again, there's two sets of policing rules for minorities, specifically African Americans, and whites in this country. We have two rather high profile examples to prove it.

[Sbti]

That video is from Saturday and at that point the Governor of MN and the Mayor of St. Paul were saying the same thing. I would guess that Barr got his info from MN and was repeating what he was told. I think it's a stretch to say that he was deliberately lying.

Yes, I think Minnesota politicians went with some wrong data in the chaos without confirmation. Since then, the St. Paul mayor said that early number was wrong.

Pretty much the same thing as this from the resident and his problem with numbers, right?
“You have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, “Well, it will go down to zero, ultimately."
He soon walked that back didn't he?

Oh, unrelated but from Saturday, resident:“MAGA loves the black people.” Whatever the fuck that means.

[ides1056]

Police and NG marching in the streets and "lighting up" its residents:

Please make this go viral. I am begging you. Police and National Guard patrolling neighborhood and shooting civilians on their own property. Make America see this, I beg you. [Minneapolis] : Bad_Cop_No_Donut

[e-RICHIE]

Police and NG marching in the streets and "lighting up" its residents:

Please make this go viral. I am begging you. Police and National Guard patrolling neighborhood and shooting civilians on their own property. Make America see this, I beg you. [Minneapolis] : Bad_Cop_No_Donut

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

[ides1056]

I know. Looks like a really bad part of town, doesn't it?

[Tom]

I haven't read this thread, so I don't know if this is smart to be posting... but a couple of years ago Karen and I had a Schenectady police officer pointing his gun right at us for a few minutes. It's relevant, I think.

The circumstances are that when Karen and I went out to dinner we'd take Uber rides because we like to have a couple of glasses of wine or maybe cocktails and we aren't going to drive after we've done that.

So one Saturday evening we got dressed up and used the app. Pretty soon the ride arrived, the driver was a young man of color. We were having a pleasant ride, he was telling us he just moved up from the city with his wife, they were renting in the next town over and hoped to buy a house. He was asking how the schools were and if houses were affordable in Schenectady when at a red light all of a sudden we were surrounded by three police cars. The officer behind us got on his loudspeaker and ordered the driver to shut the car off, open the door from the outside, keep his hands where they could see them and when he got out to walk backwards toward the officer. The driver was immediately frozen with fear. Karen talked him through getting out of the car. Meantime I saw the officer on the other side of the street on the other side of his car elbows braced on the hood pointing his gun right at us in the back seat.

As soon as the driver got out of the car the officer on the loudspeaker told him he was going to be OK, everything was alright with him. He asked who was in the back seat. "My clients." "Your clients??" "I'm an Uber!"

The ordered us out. As soon as they saw Karen come out with her hands up - she was on that side - dressed, bejeweled and perfumed they relaxed and when I clambered out they started calling out "Mistaken identity!"

They went through procedure, though, asking us to repeat where we came from, where we were going and they did look behind the back seat to make sure nobody was hiding there. They told us they were pursuing somebody and got information they got into that vehicle. I think the driver's previous fare was sketchy and they just missed whoever that was. Until we got back in it didn't register with us that the rear windows were tinted and they couldn't see us in there.

But the point. At no time during the event was I truly scared. I was bewildered and apprehensive but I thought "We didn't do anything. We'll be fine". But for the driver? It was a completely different experience. He was terrified. He was crying when he got back in the car. He could barely drive, the half mile to the restaurant was more frightening than the police situation.

For some people, a police encounter like that, it doesn't matter to them that they didn't do anything. I bet that young man thought that the best outcome possible was that he was going to be face down in the street.

And note: if that ever happens to you, tip the Uber driver in cash. The app won't let you tip enough for a situation like this one.

[RSCROSS]

We should be ashamed.....

Where is our countries leadership when we need them - golfing (he cheats) or tweeting out some random crap that means nothing

Grow a set dumphead

[Sbti]

We should be ashamed.....

Where is out countries leadership when we need them - golfing (he cheats) or tweeting out some random crap that means nothing

Grow a set dumphead

Well he and the head fluffer went down to watch the super duper rocket. And I guess yesterday Hair Furor spent some time in the bunker. Scared of his vicious dogs, I guess. Not sure if Melanie or Ivanka Braun was with him.

[thollandpe]

That video is from Saturday and at that point the Governor of MN and the Mayor of St. Paul were saying the same thing. I would guess that Barr got his info from MN and was repeating what he was told. I think it's a stretch to say that he was deliberately lying.

The specific mention of left-wing extremists using antifa-like tactics was all Barr. And a departure from what the governor and mayor were saying. It’s a lie, and a setup for the selective and uneven application of “justice.”