Ferguson

[Twig]

Edited to add: Also, Hercules is a racist asshole.

Oh. Oh god. Oh no. I've long been a fan of Sorbules, completely unironically. Ugh that hurts.

 

I know it's really small in the grand scheme of things, especially with all the terrible things that are actually happening in Ferguson, and really my opinion here doesn't matter much, but it really sucks when you find out someone you like turns out to be a major piece of shit. I bet if I look into Kevin Sorbo now, I'd find out he has a history of this kind of shit. Ugh goddamnit.

 

EDIT: It occurs to me that this is probably the most "emotional" post I've written in this thread, which is pretty hilariously awful! I feel weird leaving it at that, so...

 

I said before that I just don't feel qualified to talk about this, but if there's one thing I can say, it's that it fucking makes me angry and sad and I don't know what to do.

[Bjorn]

Oh. Oh god. Oh no. I've long been a fan of Sorbules, completely unironically. Ugh that hurts.

 

I know it's really small in the grand scheme of things, especially with all the terrible things that are actually happening in Ferguson, and really my opinion here doesn't matter much, but it really sucks when you find out someone you like turns out to be a major piece of shit. I bet if I look into Kevin Sorbo now, I'd find out he has a history of this kind of shit. Ugh goddamnit.

 

EDIT: It occurs to me that this is probably the most "emotional" post I've written in this thread, which is pretty hilariously awful! I feel weird leaving it at that, so...

 

I said before that I just don't feel qualified to talk about this, but if there's one thing I can say, it's that it fucking makes me angry and sad and I don't know what to do.

 

After expressing my frustration earlier in this thread with my real life friends about their relative ignorance and silence on Ferguson, I ended up getting several private messages this week from people saying that they appreciated the variety of things I had been posting, even if they disagreed with some of what I was saying.  One of them is a teacher, and he hadn't said anything publicly because he was worried about it affecting him in some way at school.  Others have racist relatives, and don't want to get into a shitty, racist debate with their family on Facebook.  In part, I understand their reasons, but I'm still frustrated with them.  I also recognize my own privileges at work here too.  I'm self employed, I can't get shit from a boss or coworkers for what I say.  I have no financial dependence on any of my family, so I don't care if I piss the racist ones off and they stop talking to me. 

 

One thing you can do is not be silent about it.  You don't have to write essays, or post everyday, but share good pieces on your social networks.  Don't let the people in your life ignore it as easily as they might want to.  Particularly share the words of people of color who have been affected. 

[Twig]

I do some of that, but nobody really pays attention to me, and my social network is really small, anyway. It doesn't really feel like it helps. Blech.

[Merus]

I'm pretty sure that most of my family and friends know that shitty things are going down in Ferguson. The narrative is different here - we find your cops with their guns terrifying, so the reports pay lip service to the police line but they're the ones pointing guns at civilians.

[Bjorn]

My wife kind of got into with one of her old friends on Facebook this morning who dropped the "we don't know all the facts and so shouldn't comment on it" line.  She ended up writing this as a kind of general response to everyone about why she cares, and why we shouldn't be silent. 

 

 

This is why I care about Ferguson. If you care about me or respect me, I'd appreciate it if you'd read it, even though it's long.

I wanted to put my thoughts, experience, and feelings about Ferguson out there. I have some experiences that many of you may not be aware of.

My best friend in the world is a poor black woman who lives in Topeka. She's 58 years old. Most of you probably don't even know that. We've been best friends for 17 years, but she doesn't have a computer or the internet so you don't see her here like you do all my white friends. She has worked her back side off her entire life but still struggles to make ends meet every month. I've watched first hand the bias, bigoted behavior of whites towards her and her family for years. The most recent was when she was in the hospital in April. The social worker that was dealing with her case just assumed she was on welfare. Didn't bother to look at her file to see that she has insurance. The attitude that she must live off the state because she's a sick black lady was infuriating. I've even had to co-sign a lease with her so that she could get a bigger place to live. At the time she was raising four adopted children but because she was single and black, the land lord didn't want to rent to her. He was an ass to her, but oh so sweet to the six foot blonde when I talked with him. It saddens me at how such a loving, caring, beautiful woman can be treated with disrespect, rudeness, and bigotry just because she's black. When I look at the people of Ferguson, I see my friend. They're not perfect. They're human, and deserve the same love and empathy that my friend deserves.

The second reason is that I've personally worked and been educated within the Criminal Justice System. While working as a corrections officer for both adult and juvenile offenders I've seen the disrespect that blacks and Hispanics endure on a daily basis compared to white inmates and suspects. The different treatment they receive. White men and women being given privileges and resources denied to black men and women. The racism of individuals who ensure the system works better from some than others. They are more likely to be arrested, more likely to be profiled. So by not acknowledging that there is a society wide problem as white people we are in turn continuing the cycle.

Finally, we need to be having a conversation about lethal force. There are so many ways to handle a situation that don't require you to kill a person. Where I worked, I was unarmed but dealing with sometimes violent people. I was physically assaulted as a corrections officer. I never wished I would have had a gun, not even then. It probably would have been a worse situation if I'd have had a gun. I had to rely on building a rapport with my community, which happened to be a jail. I had to rely on communicating, and sometimes communicating with large, angry black men who wanted to harm me. I had to rely on less than lethal options, because that was all we had. And it worked. I'm skeptical of why cops need to use their guns in situations that others deal with non-lethally every day.

Being a cop or a corrections officer is an immensely stressful job. I am sympathetic and empathetic to the men and women who go out every day and do that job. I understand the disrespect that officers face every day. I've been spit on. I have been pissed on while frisking a large black woman. I could have ordered her slammed to the ground and restrained in that moment. I didn't. Instead of using physical force, I explained we were going to be spending a lot of time together. She was one of my best behaved inmates. Aggression begets aggression begets aggression. I think cops can cause their own stress, needlessly escalating situations through aggressive behavior until force is the only option left.

It makes me sad. It makes me sad that people can't realize that just because someone is black that they aren't different from the rest of us. They aren't scarier. They're people with kids, home, work. They might be a different color, but they aren't different. If we don't change this, it will keep happening. And it doesn't need to.

[Bjorn]

Jeebus, another area cop has been relieved of duty after a video was found of him ranting about the dangers of women, blacks, gays, Muslims, Obama, pretty much everyone who isn't a white, male Christian.  You can watch it here if you want.  It's...freaking disturbing (I'm not going to embed it here).  I only got about 5 minutes into it and couldn't take more of it. 

 

Also, not as much coverage, but protests are still ongoing in Ferguson.  I'm hoping the HuffPo plan of having regular coverage for the next year from a local journalist works out, even as I'm somewhat uncomfortable with the structure of it.  There are going to be a lot of important and interesting stories out of Ferguson once the protests leave the spotlight, and we need to hear them, so I'm glad that someone is planning that coverage now.  I'm uncomfortable with this because HuffPo is asking readers to pay the salary of their citizen journalist there.  $40,000 is not a significant amount of money to HuffPo.  The content is going to be "open source" (what does that mean for journalist works?).  I'd like to know if that is HuffPo's idea, or the reporter's idea.  Because if HuffPo isn't paying her, she should be able to own the output if she wants.  I love the idea of people paying individual journalists for their work, or to cover a beat, through something like Patreon or Beacon.  I'm just skeptical when a media organization with a reported $100+ million revenue does something like this. 

[Merus]

There's a lot of irony in HuffPo sending a writer to report on people getting screwed by the system. HuffPo are digital sharecroppers.

[MadJackalope]

There's a lot of irony in HuffPo sending a writer to report on people getting screwed by the system. HuffPo are digital sharecroppers.

That does unfortunately seem to be the world we live in. Everyone is against the system until they become a part of it.  

I strongly hope that I can keep my ideals as time goes on. I worry that it is just human nature. 

But yeah seriously this Ferguson stuff is pretty fucked up. 

[Henroid]

From that crazy rant: 

Citing the US declaration of independence’s statement that “all men are created equal”, he said: “That does not mean affirmative action. It means we’re all equal … God does not respect persons so we have no business passing hate crime laws.”

What the actual fuck.

[Bjorn]

The epidemic of white-on-white crime.

 

This is not to say that white people are inherently prone to violence. Most whites, obviously, manage to get through life without murdering anyone. And there are many countries full of white people — Norway, Iceland, France, Denmark, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom — where white people murder each other at a much lower rate than you see here in the United States. On the other hand, although people often see criminal behavior as a symptom of poverty, the quantity of murder committed by white people specifically in the United States casts some doubt on this. Per capita GDP is considerably higher here than in France — and the white population in America is considerably richer than the national average — and yet we have more white murderers.

 

To understand the level of cultural pathology at work here, it's important to understand that 36 percent of those killed by whites are women — a far higher share than you see with black murderers.

[Badfinger]

The epidemic of white-on-white crime.

 

 

Matt Yglesias is a person that thinks phone factories that burn to the ground and kill 200 workers are just the price of capitalism, and the biggest loss is to production.

[Bjorn]

Matt Yglesias is a person that thinks phone factories that burn to the ground and kill 200 workers are just the price of capitalism, and the biggest loss is to production.

 

Is that an actual, serious thing he's presented?  I'm not at all familiar with his work, I rarely visit Vox.  I liked the piece for writing about crime in the same way that the earlier linked piece wrote about Ferguson as though it happened in another country.  It reveals the prejudices and assumptions built into how our media reports on certain subjects.

[Chris]

Matt Yglesias is a person that thinks phone factories that burn to the ground and kill 200 workers are just the price of capitalism, and the biggest loss is to production.

 

Regardless of anything about this (I have no idea about it), it doesn't really have anything to do with the merits of the piece that was linked.

[Badfinger]

Regardless of anything about this (I have no idea about it), it doesn't really have anything to do with the merits of the piece that was linked.

 

All his writing disgusts me equally.

[Gormongous]

I'm getting tired of people making a big deal of the fact that funds raised for Darren Wilson have quickly surpassed funds raised for Michael Brown. Do you mean to tell me that people who support the establishment, however corrupt and cruel, have more money to give than people who oppose the establishment? Color me shocked.

[Henroid]

Over the last couple days there have been stories about the backgrounds of police officers in the Ferguson PD, how they have a paper trail or video record of their racism or corruption. I have a feeling more will come up over the week. It feels like people are splitting the department apart one officer at a time.

 

I'm for it, since many of them gladly signed on with the bullshit tactics.

[tegan]

I'm getting tired of people making a big deal of the fact that funds raised for Darren Wilson have quickly surpassed funds raised for Michael Brown. Do you mean to tell me that people who support the establishment, however corrupt and cruel, have more money to give than people who oppose the establishment? Color me shocked.

 

It's worth noting that far more people donated to the Michael Brown fund, they just didn't have as much to spare.

 

 

 

Also, it's fucking crazy that this is still going on.

[Bjorn]

Over the last couple days there have been stories about the backgrounds of police officers in the Ferguson PD, how they have a paper trail or video record of their racism or corruption. I have a feeling more will come up over the week. It feels like people are splitting the department apart one officer at a time.

 

I'm for it, since many of them gladly signed on with the bullshit tactics.

 

The background on officers just feels like it keeps getting stranger as well.  The latest is about how the force that Darren Wilson started on as a rookie had so many problems, was so corrupt and considered so irredeemable that the city council eventually disbanded their own police force, fired everyone and outsourced policing to St. Louis County.  I've never heard of a town just saying, fuck it, fire them all and start over with their police department.  And at least some of those officers have ended up spread all over the metro area, as other departments were willing to take them on.

 

 

 

It's worth noting that far more people donated to the Michael Brown fund, they just didn't have as much to spare.

 

 

 

Also, it's fucking crazy that this is still going on.

 

To be honest, I hope it keeps going on, the protests and the digging, until something changes, until people can't pretend there aren't systemic problems that have to be addressed. 

[itsamoose]

I'm getting tired of people making a big deal of the fact that funds raised for Darren Wilson have quickly surpassed funds raised for Michael Brown. Do you mean to tell me that people who support the establishment, however corrupt and cruel, have more money to give than people who oppose the establishment? Color me shocked.

I can't decide if this is just the last bit of a dying story, or if it is taking a turn.  We're unlikely to get much more information on the case until the Grand Jury process is over (I'm not a legal scholar, I don't even know how much will come out after), so I really hope we don't start seeing a series of stories like this.  It seems like the outlets reporting this story are really only interested in starting a new fight or further inflaming racial tensions.

[Bjorn]

This weekend, a white 18-year-old guy was shot and killed by Ottawa, Kan., police (this is about 40ish miles from me).  His family says he had a history of mental illness, had attempted suicide that morning, had been held in a hospital for much of the day, but was then released.  Three hours after his release, a confrontation with the police ended in his death.  Family members asked to intervene during the standoff, but were prevented from doing so by the police.  A 911 call said he had a gun, but the police haven't said and witnesses say they didn't see one.  Family members are saying they never could have imagined this happening to them, and now they understand why the people in Ferguson are angry. 

 

The funeral for Brown is today.  A bunch of places are livestreaming it.  Which is...ugh, I don't know.  It's good for people who can't attend and know the family, or have a real emotional connection.  But it also feels gross to me, and that there is a voyeur element to it. 

[Twig]

It's definitely gross, but, I don't know, I think there's a benefit to showing that this kid's death is real and hurt. Doubt it'll do much to change anyone's mind, but there's always hope.

[Henroid]

It's definitely gross, but, I don't know, I think there's a benefit to showing that this kid's death is real and hurt. Doubt it'll do much to change anyone's mind, but there's always hope.

That's pretty much how I feel. As long as Al Sharpton isn't trying to get in front of cameras for it, I'm fine with the idea of the funeral being televised. The family would have had to give consent anyway right?

 

There are Tweets about a helicopter (or two?) in the air, being noisy and generally disrupting the funeral. That's not right.

[tegan]

Interesting compare and contrast I saw on tumblr.

 

Michael Brown, 18, due to be buried on Monday, was no angel, with public records and interviews with friends and family revealing both problems and promise in his young life. Shortly before his encounter with Officer Wilson, the police say he was caught on a security camera stealing a box of cigars, pushing the clerk of a convenience store into a display case. He lived in a community that had rough patches, and he dabbled in drugs and alcohol. He had taken to rapping in recent months, producing lyrics that were by turns contemplative and vulgar. He got into at least one scuffle with a neighbor.

People in Cambridge thought of 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev – "Jahar" to his friends – as a beautiful, tousle-haired boy with a gentle demeanor, soulful brown eyes and the kind of shy, laid-back manner that "made him that dude you could always just vibe with," one friend says. He had been a captain of the Cambridge Rindge and Latin wrestling team for two years and a promising student. He was also "just a normal American kid," as his friends described him, who liked soccer, hip-hop, girls; obsessed over The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones; and smoked a copious amount of weed.

 

 

The first is the New York Times' coverage of Michael Brown's shooting. The second is Rolling Stone's coverage of the Boston Marathon bomber.

[Bjorn]

Interesting compare and contrast I saw on tumblr.

 

 

 

The first is the New York Times' coverage of Michael Brown's shooting. The second is Rolling Stone's coverage of the Boston Marathon bomber.

 

I saw that, and there are quite a few others as well.  It's disappointing to say the least seeing that from the Times.  The worst part is when the describe the way almost every single toddler acts, and then call him a "handful" for behaving exactly the way you expect a 5-year-old to behave. 

[Dewar]

While I don't disagree with the point you're making, both of those quotes are aiming for the same thing, "it's not what you think" journalism. Try and get views by subverting expectations.