Rolling 2017 Thread on Race

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/06/20/john-cunningham-not-safe-one-safe/OrlwvXMRMd3T13qUKWgxGN/story.html?event=event25#comments

But what he does not have is a green card, and so the federal agents brought him to the jail in South Bay and put him in a cell with the rest of the common criminals. Because in Donald Trump’s America, that’s what John Cunningham is, a common criminal.
[...]
Chris Lavery, Cunningham’s lawyer, told me there is no underlying criminal charge. Cunningham was grabbed for overstaying the 90-day visa he received 18 years ago.
Lavery was trying to determine whether Cunningham missed a court hearing after a customer filed a complaint that Cunningham took and cashed a deposit check for more than $1,000 for electrical work he didn’t perform. That would have produced a warrant for his arrest, but not by immigration agents.
"You would think a guy like him, with no criminal convictions, would not be a priority," Lavery said.

good ol' Boston, where taking money for services you never provided isn't a criminal activity if you're Irish

Happy 5th of July pic.twitter.com/jyvsaTqY9b

— Kate Horton (@ladymisskate) July 5, 2017

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qkkd43/eddie-huang-on-why-immigrants-need-to-charge-customers-full-fucking-price

This is probably not new to you all (and maybe belongs in the police brutality thread) but thought I'd share anyway:

A good friend just got back from a 10 day holiday in NY/NJ area. One of those ten days was spent mostly in jail. He had been speeding, 5 or 6 miles over the limit, and was caught by police on the highway urging him to stop. He drove on for 1.5/2 miles or so to find a safe place to stop (custom over here) but they really advised him next time to stop immediately. When he did stop he got out: also a big no no according to the cop, so they put him on the hood and took him in.
Anyway, after being in custody with 12 other guys for five hours or so, they let him go. A white cop at the station told my white friend. "It's a good thing you aren't black; you might not have survived it."

Your friend should write about his experience, particularly that quote.

We met in passing (grocery store) today but I am encouraging him to do just that. He was genuinly shook. I've got a paper so will see if I can fit in there somewhere.

paper=newspapwer I mean

http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/02/us/naacp-missouri-travel-advisory-trnd/index.html

I have been reading about this because I have relatives in the St Louis area. Ultimately I don't think this impacts them any more than just living in MO has already but it's still worrisome.

Gary Romine, the guy who sponsored the awful SB 43 law, which the NAACP calls a "Jim Crow bill", is the state Senator representing the town where i grew up. Here is how Gary Romine spends his spare time:

In March 2015, a man who used to work at Show-Me Rent to Own in Sikeston, Missouri, filed a lawsuit alleging that his supervisor regularly used racial slurs against him, telling him, among other things, to "quit acting like a n*gger" — and that a map on the wall of the store circled a majority black neighborhood with the words "do not rent" written next to it.

The owner of the business is state Senator Gary Romine (R-Farmington), and in response to the suit, his lawyers acknowledged that, yes, a map in the back of the store had those very words written upon it. Everything else, he pretty much denied.

https://www.riverfronttimes.com/newsblog/2017/04/12/sued-for-discrimination-missouri-senator-pushes-law-limiting-discrimination-suits

After Charlottesville, I hope we can muster the energy for some introspection, then action.

Trump is a figurehead in all of this. He is not the instigator and he is not the driver. His actions align with the alt-right/neo-Nazi/white supremacist movement and is part and parcel of how his campaign was successful but he did not invent or architect any of what happened in Charlottesville. That was a grass roots movement that deserves a grass roots response.

I wrote this on Facebook, which I will reproduce here with one important edit:

I have nothing pithy or profound to say about the events in Charlottesville this weekend. The white supremacists are wrong, any violence they suffered is just, any protester who counter-demonstrated is a hero, Heather Heyer should not have died, James Fields Jr should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, and our President will not condemn racism without adding enough qualifications to make his condemnation useless and hollow.

If anything positive comes from this weekend, I hope it's that the Americans who had fooled themselves into believing that we live in a post-racial society are starting to realize how strongly the unsavory parts of American history still resonate today and take an active stand in their lives against it. Denounce racism whenever you see it. Do not accept it from yourself. Do not accept it from your friends. Do not accept it from your family. Do not accept it from your coworkers. Do not accept it in random encounters. Do not accept it; do not make excuses for it. Do not wait for it to die off or grow up. Resist.

At this point, it is not enough to denounce Trump. He is a lightning rod that is sucking up all of the attention and the space. These people are in our cities, extending and amplifying the poison inherent in American culture. We need to acknowledge that poison. We need to acknowledge that these people aren't a few fringe voices no one really pays attention to. Whenever they assemble, we must make sure they understand that we have heard their message and it is unwelcome. How you contribute to this is up to you; I can't speak to anyone's capability for protest and/or violence, nor do I think it is my place to tell you the most effective way to reject and counter this message. What I can say, what I feel in my bones, is that if we focus on elections to the detriment of responding directly to these groups, their message will win. If you look at these rolling threads over the past few years and see how so many of these situations have played out, their message is already winning. We shouldn't allow that to happen.

mega otm

like for instance, this upcoming rally http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/14/us/texas-white-nationalist-protest-trnd/index.html

ugh.

clap emoji

xp

Kessler's next stunt is next month in Boston iirc

There's something happening here on Saturday, not by this same group AFAIK but by people adjacent to it. We have plans outside of town for the late morning/early afternoon but I intend to drop my family off at home and go into town to at least see what is happening (presuming of course I can get in; even if it isn't violent, the number of people possible for turnout could make getting into Boston impossible).

yeah, this thing

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DHDNu9eXgAUSrpa.jpg

note first speaker, all you VICE fans

remember the good ol days

Momus (Momus) wrote this on thread I hate this generation on board I Love Everything on Oct 2, 2003

One important difference between conservatives and liberals, it seems to me, is tied up with their different attitudes to play and authenticity. Gavin McInnes and I are absolutely on the same side (and, I suspect, on the side of almost all Vice readers) when it comes to our desire to play, to pose, to try stuff out. We know that the only people that behaviour pisses off are conservatives, people for whom social meanings are fixed and cannot be monkied with.

There was both a vigil last night and a less sombre solidarity rally this morning here in Toronto, about 70-100 folks apiece, mostly Americans. some alt righty asshole was filming and asking questions at the rally; had he shown up at the vigil he'd have gotten a beating for sure.

how were they winning? the statue was being taken down. why not let them hold their inconsequential rally?

abandoning politics in order to control the narrative is short-sighted and pointless. we do not decide laws based on who is louder and more aggressive, for good reason.

Next week, not next month.

yeah sorry I didn't remember that correctly until I dug up the flyer

how were they winning? the statue was being taken down. why not let them hold their inconsequential rally?

Read up through this thread to see how they are winning. Read through the 2016 thread. Read through the 2015 thread. Read through the police brutality thread. Ask yourself why I, black American with at least to ancestors I know of who were lynched by police officers, would say that it is unacceptable to allow people who rally around the neo-Nazi movement and who romanticize and celebrate the time when my forebears were property without vehement, negative response.

abandoning politics in order to control the narrative is short-sighted and pointless. we do not decide laws based on who is louder and more aggressive, for good reason.

Where did I say that we need to abandon politics in order to control the narrative and where did I state or imply that fighting a grass-roots attack with a grass-roots response is not a political action? Also, which portions of American history are you looking at here to decide that we do not decided laws based on who is louder and more aggressive. Bear in mind that we fought an actual war in order to become a sovereign country, killed large numbers of the people who already lived here to claim their land, utilized slaves to build wealth, had another war when half the country decided slavery was too enmeshed in its economic power to give up, then built up a policing structure designed to funnel a large number of the formerly enslaved back into forced labor, and this isn't even touching on everything we have done in this country under the auspices of our own laws.

literally toxic racism from Exxon:

https://theintercept.com/2017/08/13/exxon-mobil-is-still-pumping-toxins-into-black-community-in-texas-17-years-after-civil-rights-complaint/

xp i plan to be there on Saturday as well, Dan. let me know if you want a brief report on what's going down before you go.

Absolutely.

Where did I say that we need to abandon politics in order to control the narrative.

What I can say, what I feel in my bones, is that if we focus on elections to the detriment of responding directly to these groups, their message will win.

all of last year was the message winning so much and it amounted to nothing. it amounted to way worse than nothing, it amounted to this.

2018 is almost a year away. where are the fresh new candidates for the left? skip the nazi rally and run for office.

oh ok

where are the fresh new candidates for the left?

Dems are fielding candidates in record numbers last time I checked but thx for false equivalencies

So basically, you don't understand English.

I'm much more likely to trust a candidate with a strong track record of protesting nazi rallies.

"Don't do x to the be exclusion of y" does not and will never mean the same thing as "Do not do x, do y instead." I am saying we need to do both. You are yelling at an argument that I not only haven't made but would NEVER make.

If you're going to swing in here all disdainful dick-swinger and denigrate a person of color's argument that the white audience he is talking to needs to do more to fight neo-Nazis, at least demonstrate a basic ability to read.

tbf to adam white supremacy is literally inconsequential to him since he is white

this is what white privilege is adam

we do not decide laws based on who is louder and more aggressive, for good reason

cf your unshakable belief in "law"

do i need to make of list of laws that help you and hurt me and/or dan?

spent a long time on the internet today arguing with a white southern law professor who kept saying things like "my fundamental principles are intellectual liberty and the rule of law which is why i reject political violence"

it's easy to make your prime motivation intellectual liberty when your basic physical safety isn't an issue, it's easy to believe in the rule of law when the law is literally always on your side

thank you ILE for recognizing when someone (me) is triggered and stepping back politely

i say this with absolutely zero sarcasm - i really appreciate it

we sling around "tone deaf" as an insult here but really this place is about 10^6 times better than most of the internet

it's easy to make your prime motivation intellectual liberty when your basic physical safety isn't an issue, it's easy to believe in the rule of law when the law is literally always on your side

i whole-heartedly agree. i didn't want to argue w someone who i largely agree with plus it's true, im white, as a white man in a system of white male supremacy, i am privileged, so its def not my place to dominate the conversation. i dont want to claim to speak for anyone else. i can only offer my own viewpoint. fwiw i dont want to make a big deal out of that (for fear of mansplaining/centering the conversation on me) or how much i understand the plight (cos i can never truly understand, i can only try).

do i need to make of list of laws that help you and hurt me and/or dan?

the list would be far too innumerable, if not fully comprehensible and anyways it doesn't seem restricted to certain laws, it includes laws designed to help that have been abused by a crooked system and crooked individuals. even a well-meaning law exercised by a hateful person can still do harm.

i think a list of solutions, laws/policies we can support, would be a good way forward. what is the best way to make progress? educational reform? justice reform? prison reform? there is a lot of potential energy for doing good. the 60s civil rights era seems like a good model for organizing boycotts, building networks, and my faith for the potential for the non-violence and rule of law to do some good.

much <3 and thanks, adam

tbh I don't have a ton of faith in non-violence and the rule of law, and a fair amount of that is rooted in the object lessons from the 60s civil rights era. I said it on the alt-right thread, but non-violence as a political tactic only works when the goal is to appeal to an audience or portion of the opposition that is capable of shame (like the British, or Rockefeller Republicans). The modern-day GOP is not capable of shame, esp Trump's hardcore base of racist morons. It is not in their psychological make-up. There is no line that their fearless leader or his supporters can cross that would make them question their commitment. It isn't going to happen. Pictures of Trump and his supporters violently beating/murdering/assaulting non-violent protestors will *not* alter this basic calculus, unfortunately. It won't even make McConnell or Ryan or Meadows or anyone else in the GOP turn on him or their party. These fools are all in.

I guess I'm arguing ultimately that a variety of tactics are valid and will need to be employed, depending on the context and the situation. I opted to go to the Swing Left phone bank this Saturday instead of Joey Gibson's "Patriot Prayer" provocation at Crissy Field, because I think in this case it's likely to ultimately be more productive. Sometimes we are going to win by appealing to the courts, but not always. Sometimes we are going to be able to appeal to law enforcement, but not always. Sometimes some Nazi's going to be driving a car at you, and if the best option is to throw a brick through his window than that's totally defensible imo, even if it is technically a crime and as a responsible citizen you should be willing to bear the consequences of it.

Where's this 'British are capable of shame' thingumma coming from?

Jus 'avin a laugh guvnor

(Altho tbf read Gandhi because appealing to shame was central to his ethos)

I don't think Churchill knew the meaning of the word.

the word reform always sounds so toothless

question -- i am finding the silence of my white friends completely horrifying. what do i do?

Get new friends

send them a link to an interfaith vigil

they love those

links

Xp @ LL

I don't know. I think I can only tolerate fictional white people and the occasional ilxor right now. The non-Americans are okay too.

From my end I was all full of furious bluster and rage and it contributed to ruining my vacation and now I feel like I can't think about this anymore for a little while. I realize that option is totally white privilege.