Once again my beloved President has to talk about the fatal shootings of two young black men. When are good white people going to stand up en masse and demand justice for black people. I am so ashamed We have been silent for too long. I don;t know how we stand up and demand change but maybe demand that our legislators to do something and perhaps voting them out of office if they donât. I see many white faces in Minnesota standing up and demanding action which gives me hope but but something has to be done to train police better and when they do murder innocent people, then there has to be consequences instead of the same bullshit of getting off scott free
He said that being concerned about these types of shootings wasnât being âpolitically correct,â but âbeing American.â
Thank you Mr. President.
Chammy all I can say is I feel your pain, itâs humiliating for us all as a country, itâs obscene. Thank god everyoneâs got a video camera in their pocket, and a lot of them back up to the cloud right away so they canât just confiscate them and make it go away. And once again Obama nails it.
I wish the president would issue an executive order requiring local police get the same training that federal officers receive. Something has to be done. How do police officers allow white men wielding guns and rifles the opportunity to lay down their guns, even talking them down yet they have no problem shooting black men. Someone posted a story above and this is just one amongst many. I am sick to death of this and I canât even begin to imagine how black people feel
I know you do. I know for sure that if it was black cops killing white kids, this would be a totally different story
It was a brilliant and thoughtful speech, an attempt to keep the peace and show Americana a way to change at the same time,an extremely difficult task, and so important. He is a true leader. I can think of no one who could have done it better.
When the Supreme Court and courts down the line decide to be non-judgmental because black.
When education and acceptance rule the day instead of fear of the âother.â
Can you imagine walking down the street and having someone look at you with fear because you werenât like him or her? Real fear.
Grrrrr.
Ya mean a republican in that seat?
There have to be more effective hiring practices. Paying cops more money makes the job more competitive. There has to be better selection, training, supervision, and sorry to say discipline.
Youâve mentioned training, but I have really lost hope that training is going to change that clique. The problem is that RACISM itself is popular with a huge swath of the country. This is the Great America they want back. They support these lynchings. This is murder, a hate crime under color of authority. This should be the worst crime on the books, with mandatory life sentence without parole. A white cop murders an innocent black person, it should trigger the strongest punishment available. And the feds need to move in right away to prevent destruction of evidence like videos, audio recordings, text messages, emails.
And what is the difference between this happening now and, say, before the 2000âs? The ubiquitous video evidence taken by bystanders with cell phones. Prior to that, of course, all the eyewitnesses, however numerous, and despite telling identical stories, were lairs.
I agree with the sentiment, of course, but I donât think itâs an American issue, I think itâs a human issue. Though Iâm well aware that disagreement about semantics is profoundly unnecessary at the moment.
If all lives truly matter, then the lives of those black adults and children being routinely targeted by police? They matter. They are lives. They matter.
The sadness I feel about my country, and the state of our humanity, is palpable. Mass murder happens in Orlando and people rush to defend the ârightâ to carry assault weapons. Summary execution by cop happens on video and people rush to tarnish the reputation of the victim. Football players are caught raping and people fall all over themselves to proclaim their love of football. There is something seriously wrong going on here.
I hope beyond hope that there has to be sanity and decency somewhere in the universe, maybe on some other planet, because thereâs precious little here.
I have taught for 37 years, 16 of those as a member of a union. I chafe at criticism of teachers as much as the next educator. That said, my professionâbecause it offers proximity to childrenâcan be a haven for pedophiles. However, the fact that such people are teachers does not mean that vilifying them and advocating for their incarceration represent an animus toward teachers in general.
The purposeful murder of black citizens by police has been allowed to continue because legislators, prosecutors, and judges are loath to attack murderous cops lest they be labeled as hostile to police in general. This free pass must stop, and the FOP must stop advocating for killer cops in the same way that the AFT and NEA would not support pedophiles in their ranks.
Many parts of our society are in a hideous rip tide of negative perceptions pulling further and further away from sanity - the prejudices and biases both overt & subliminal have skewed the outlooks and reflexes of even good cops - when there are so many guns in a society that law enforcement officers have to work with the mind set of âassume everyone is armedâ they are inclined to anticipate what often is not there - and react to what they anticipate - not what is reality -
They say the life of an airplane pilot is endless hours of boredom interrupted by moments of shear terror - Police have some similarities - they have days and days of mundane stuff - and then encounter a situation that potentially has tension - and if their instincts are amped up & block out rational responses - disaster strikes.
I shudder to think about how many cops who, when confronted with a high tension situation, just start firing at anything & everything for no reason other than they were startled - by a movement , by a sound , by a flash of light - the situation then gets magnified 100x when bigotry, prejudice, or simple fear of others unfamiliar to them enters in.
The biases of any culture against its historical minorities are deeply engrained. Ours institutionalized a legal system of human chattel for over 300 years. It took the bloodiest war in our history to end it, only to replace it with Jim Crow and lynchings.
A century since the Civil War, we still havenât purged this poison from the body politic. (It makes the Brexit even scarier, knowing Europeans are only a few generations from the Shoah.)
The racists, enablers, and deniers have been on the ascendance since the 2008 election. And now, even more so, thanks to Trumpâs two-step footsie with unabashed racists and hate groups.
As a child in the '60s, I never wouldâve believed this could be commonplace in the 21st Century. Truly shameful and horrifying.
I would argue itâs been on a roll since October 7, 1996; curious that thatâs the same day FOX News was founded, huh?!
I think youâre mistakenly marking its ascendence with the exchanging of dog whistles with good old GOP-approved referee whistles. But now that âthe presumptive nomineeâ is using one of these
to charm, inspire and mating-call the Rethugliklan base to rally around â nevermind that itâs a flag draped oâer a kerosene-soaked burlap-sack enrobed cross ⌠with additional tastefully chic bunting, from the Hallmark store!!! â only the language has changed. Hell, Reagan signaled the revolution in Philadelphia (Mississippi) in 1980.
In short, irasdad, as a child of the mid-50âs, who became truly conscience watching the evening news and seeing men, women and children washed down the street with firehoses (Iâll leave out the part about the dogs) I see too little has changed. But there has been incremental progress. And that too is changing rapidly because of that newfound tool: Video.
Shots fired at police in Dallas during a protest march there
Live coverage
http://www.wfaa.com/news/protests-of-police-shootings-in-downtown-dallas/266814422
ETA, 10:30: 10 officers shot, one of whom just died.
ETA, 10:40pm: 3 officers dead
2 snipers, in higher level floors, opened fire at end of protest march.
I can relate to being a young person in the 60s and it almost felt like we were making real changes. I don;t know what itâs going to take to change the police culture but something has to be done.
Unfortunately too there has been a huge shooting incident in Dallas a sniper has shot and killed several DART officers (now reported two snipers) The protest was peaceful but the problem started with the snipers shooting at officers, Several officers are dead an other civilians injured, What a mess we have in this country
Yes I am watching. It is truly horrible. I would venture to guess from what I have seen, the shooters are taking their revenge on the police officers. This is just going to make things worse i