Posted on 05/03/2015 12:04:52 PM PDT by Uhhh
If you read anything tonight, read this.
Some protestors in Baltimore are receiving a lot of criticism from conservatives for the way that they are expressing themselves. I find it interesting that one of the most conservative & most vocal groups, the Tea Party libertarians, are named after an event where colonists destroyed property in Boston in order to make a point about their rights. I find it very interesting that these same conservatives celebrate our violent succession from the motherland, & throw elaborate celebrations on the 4th of July to mark the day of our independence.
I've not once heard a conservative wish that the colonists, who felt they were not represented fairly by the ruling government, had instead held peaceful protests in order that parliament would itself implement changes on behalf of the colonists.
This is full blown hypocrisy.
Fighting for your rights, standing up against an oppressive, non-representative government are the principles our country was founded on. Our bill of rights says that all men were created equal, even when equal rights weren't anything close to a reality at the time, for minorities or for women. But when white people assert themselves, it's patriotic. When black people assert themselves, they're thugs. They're criminals. They're rioters.
Let's all acknowledge that black poverty & much of the resulting crime remains a function of slaves being freed with no education, no family support, & no wealth. And even after emancipation, their humanity went unacknowledged by many. In my mother's lifetime, Emmett Till was lynched in Chicago. Martin Luther King Jr was murdered as my mom graduated from high school. We are all just a single generation removed from integration, from Lester Maddox openly marketing ax handles in opposition to President Lyndon Johnson's assertion of blacks' civil rights.
The protests are about an unarmed black man being violently mistreated & killed while in police custody. And, make no mistake, each & every police officer should be trained to subdue an unarmed detainee without severing his spine. And in such a tragic situation, medics should be called to keep the man from dying, if that's even possible. But this is also about decades of accumulated mistreatment & oppression. This is about manufacturing jobs being shipped overseas. This is about the minimum wage remaining stagnant. This is about broken window policing tactics. This is about economic growth tiptoeing around black neighborhoods. This is about an unjust war on drugs & the privatized industrial prison complex. This is about leaving the lower class behind as wealth inequality soars, & then punishing them for it with harsh policing.
The solution here is obvious. Make examples of bad cops by punishing them for the crimes that they're committing against civilians. But also we have implement policies that grow the lower & middle class, that return upward mobility to the lower rungs of our economy & make the American Dream possible for all. Dramatically increase minimum wage, raise taxes on the rich & punish them for outsourcing jobs. Create infrastructure building/maintaining jobs out of increased tax revenue. Even as the rich continue to get richer, our economy has grown at a laughable 2.2% since the '08 recession because there is very little middle class spending, which is the engine of American economic growth.
Paying taxes was once considered to be patriotic, & the wealthiest tax bracket paid as much as 90% in taxes after World War II (before tax breaks, obviously, but these tax breaks allowed the government to encourage the wealthy to spend money in ways that benefitted the country, rather than pay that money in taxes). This is how our country was built, & how it became the predominant super power that it is.
Today the opposite is true. The rich want no part of taxes, & yet they take all of the credit for building our country. And we're growing ever weaker for it. These protests are exposing cracks in the facade. Quite simply, we are not moving in a positive direction as a country, with giant corporations deciding legislation & most decisions being made at the expense of the majority of us. These are functions of economic inequality.
The Baltimore police ought to respond to these protests by reviewing their policies, implementing real changes in the way that they police the streets in Baltimore, & levying criminal charges against the officers involved in Freddie Gray's death. But it is ALSO our own responsibility to acknowledge what's happening in Baltimore & around the country, & to vote in politicians who will implement policies on behalf of the lower & middle class, restore our economy to health, & end the joyride that the rich are currently taking at our expense.
Those were Rich blacks rioting? Jeez...I thought I saw Ray Lewis looting CVS...
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Thank you so much.
The original Tea Party folks had conviction of cause and were willing to die for it.
These riot fools have no conviction and their only cause is recreational vandalism and theft.
FReepers! Pal! FReepers!
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