Discussion for article #231576
“I just wanna be safe.”
5 words that cut to the quick while the rest of us blather on. What a profound reflection of our abject failures we should see in that mirror he’s holding up.
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"Someone bigger than Santa needed to see this letter. I thought the president of the United States needed to see it,” DiGiacomo told the paper.
The profundity of the letter itself will soon be drowned out by the right wing condemnation for Obama, who, they will claim, thinks he’s “bigger than Santa Claus.”
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7th grader believes in Santa Claus?
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The shame of America is that there aren’t more adults willing to listen to young kids, comfort them when needed, encourage them always, and work to give them a better chance in a better world when they grow up.
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How can we feel any pride in our country when children like Malik, living one of our largest and richest cities can’t safely go out and play?
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If HE hAD a GUn HE’d feEL safER.
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Dear Malik,
It must be difficult for you as a 7th grader when you look like you’re 25 years old.
If you want to stay alive, your best bet is to not hang out on street corners in front of liquor stores and when the cops approach you, remember: they are just doing their job. Just do what they ask you to do and don’t argue with them.
If they are racist KKK members who want to abuse black people, playing the role of sidewalk lawyer isn’t going to make any difference. Don’t start yelling about what you think your rights are. Your’re probably wrong because you’re only in 7th grade.
As annoying as it might be, and as angry as you may feel with your 7th grade hormones raging, THEY WILL KILL YOU if you resist and they are acting within the law.
The sidewalk is not the place to assert your “constitutional rights.” That is what court rooms and judges are for.
Continue to study math. We need more scientists and engineers. You have a bright future if you don’t screw it up.
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Speaking from experience?
I really hope this is snark. Peaceful assembly and protest is a constitutional right. If that sidewalk is public property he has a right to stand there and express his unhappiness with his government, be it local, state, or federal. He should not be afraid of injury or death at the hands of government authority.
The answer to the police brutality problem is not to run away from it. These thugs need to be confronted and drummed out of police forces. Good cops need to stand up for their profession, not for their corrupt colleagues.
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Does he look like a 7th grader to you? He looks like a grown-ass man to me.
It doesn’t matter what he looks like. And to a bad cop it wouldn’t matter if he looked his age. They appear to have no problem murdering a child without even so much as a warning.
An organized protest is one thing. I’m talking about a phenomenon we see all to often where a police officer conducts a routine traffic stop, or approaches someone on the street and that person immediately starts screaming about how they don’t have to identify themselves. If they’re in a car they refuse to show ID or exit the vehicle.
While laws vary from state to state, in most places the cops have the right to ID you. In every state they have the right to ask you to exit a vehicle.
The cops are there to stop crime and keep people safe. I think most of the misunderstandings arise because people are very bad at understanding numbers and statistics. If a suspect is described as a white male between 16 and 35, that isolates about 30% of the US population. If a suspect is identified as a black male between 16 and 35, that isolates about 2% of the US population. THAT is why blacks get stopped and questioned. Racism has nothing to do with it. It’s a numbers game. If your suspect is described as black, it is worth stopping any blacks you see because there are so few blacks in general. If your suspect is described as white, you’re shooting in the dark.
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You are as likely to be killed by a police officer as you are to be struck by lightning. Don’t believe me? Look it up with the FBI and the National Weather Service respectively. There is no epidemic of police violence. That’s just Al Sharpton paying for his silly-ass hair-do.
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You’ve seriously got to be kidding.
So your reasoning for not stopping every white person between 16 and 35 is that there are just too many of them to bother? And there are few enough black people that it’s worth stopping them all just in case? That’s complete bullshit.
Let me give you a real world example that doesn’t involve a suspect. I had a coworker once who was a minority. I’m a white male. We were both about the same age at the time - early 30s. We would both on occasion have to drive a company vehicle - a white minivan - between Nashville and Memphis. I made the trip maybe 10 times over the course of 6 months, and my coworker made the trip four times over that same time period.
Driving from Nashville to Memphis and back takes you along I-40. I-40 is also a major corridor for drug trafficking. As such, there was always a DEA presence - several black SUVs parked in groups along the route. I would usually see at least one car stopped on my trips.
How many times was I stopped myself? Zero. How many times was my coworker stopped? Every. Single. Time. It became so traumatic for him that he refused to make the trip anymore. This was a college educated architect, making a trip required by his job, and who was breaking no laws. The only discernible difference between the two of us was that I was white and he was darker skinned.
It may not be racism, either by the DEA or by local police forces. But it sure as hell is racial profiling, and that’s just as bad if not worse.
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Tell that to the families of the unarmed men and boys who died at their hand. Look them in the goddamned eye and just fucking man-splain it to them.
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You could say the same thing about people killed by lightning. I’m not saying their families shouldn’t be sad.
The big difference is that you can choose not to fight the police.
He could do quite a bit worse in my opinion, Eustace. He could have believed in the Crips or Bloods. Or heroin. Believing in Santa is inoffensive, but to only want safety and nothing else? That’s pretty desperate.
And once again Obama shows why he’s the adult in the room. I think we’ve underestimated our President.
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The “War on Drugs” is ridiculous and should be stopped. That being said, I bet the DEA has some intelligence that identifies black street gangs. I suspect they were looking for cocaine in that operation. If they were looking for methamphetamine they would target white people.
This is a fascinating interpretation of the law, and might indeed have some validity if we were living in a police state.
However, we are not, despite efforts by police to create one. So, first things first, Malik, ignore all letters from knuckleheads like John_Boner.
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