Renewable Revolution

Quote from: RE on May 04, 2016, 12:24:28 pm

98% Wins this Game.

The problem of course is getting the group in the 2 standard deviation above the mean to realize that they belong with the average people and those below average, and not with the group 3 standard deviations above the mean.

RE

An observation:
The self-evident truth of this accounts for the class division and racism as a tool of social control that has obtained in the FSoA ever since Nathaniel Bacon rose up against the British Governor Berkeley, leading an armed rabble of malcontent whites and black freedmen.

A litlte googleization of Bacon's rebellion will reward the curious on this theme. What people often fail to realize is that institutionalized racism is not meant to only control blacks (and other peoples of color) but also to control white people.

Why white people need to be controlled and how the system of institutionalized racism does just that is found in the annals of colonial court houses. Some scholars have traced the origins of institutionalized racism back to colonial days, before the actual construction of black slavery was finalized, to a time when black and white bond-servants worked and slept together – and ran away together. Sounds pretty remarkable, but records indicate this was so. Not surprisingly, Howard Zinn's remarkable, People’s History of the United States thoroughly documents how a a system of racial slavery was created to address the needs of the colonial elite for a system of control.

It is hard to imagine such a time, when colonial elite had to fear not only nearby hostile Indian population, but also in the southern colonies a fear of slave revolt which seems to have been a permanent facet of plantation life. Plus they had to contend with the class anger of poor whites:  indentured servants, tenants, the propertyless, the soldier and sailor. Scholars have documented that there were about 250 instances where at least 10 slaves joined in revolt or in a conspiracy to rebel. And time to time, whites were involved in the slave resistance. Generally, when apprehended, all were duly convicted and executed.

A well defined class system arose from North to south, which sought to preserve social arrangements of Mother country. They controlled trade and commerce, dominated the politics of the residents through church and town meetings, through intermarriage alliances, and formed a reasonably inpenetrable oligarchy.

In Virginia, the House of Burgesses declared that white servants were loathsome, as since many were from past wars,  if given arms “we have just reason to fears that they may rise upon us.” So class fear among the elites was explicit. This was at a time when “hopes of leveling” – equalizing the wealth, was the cause of countless actions in colonies of poor whites against the rich in all the colonies in the century and half before the Revolution.

To elides many years of history and jurisprudence, eventually the elite passed the slavery codes, forcing all blacks to be slaves and all whites to be non-slaves. The elite had discovered that if they constructed a racially-based system of slavery, and gave the white servants just a bit more than the black servants received, they could effectively “buy-off” the Europeans. But they had to create a “white race” in order to achieve this. That lilt in Jamaican patios is a remnant of poor Irish overseers... or so I am told.

Historian Edmund Morgan nailed it when he said:

Quote

Only one fear was greater than the fear of black rebellion in the new American colonies. That was the fear that discontented whites would join black slaves to overthrow the existing order.

Of course, divide and conquer has worked since before Roman times, and maybe since the Cro-Magnon walked into Neanderthaler lands, for all I know. But as we can see from our current day, it's alive and well in the FSoA.

So good luck getting people to identify with those they perceive as "their lessers." Class division has a long and ignoble pedigree.

Yup. 

South American tribes have denounced the call from American academics Kim Hill and Robert Walker for forced contact with uncontacted tribal peoples in the Amazon, warning of the catastrophic consequences such contact would bring.

Speaking in a video as part of Survival’s Tribal Voice project, Guajajara Indians rejected the idea entirely. Several members of the tribe, known as the “Guajajara Guardians,” have acted to protect nearby uncontacted Awá people in the absence of greater government support.

The leader of the Guardians, Olimpio Guajajara, said: “We are here… Monitoring the land and defending the uncontacted Indians and the Guajajara who live here. Why? Because there are some people, some anthropologists in other countries who want, once again, to violate the rights of the uncontacted Indians in the country.”

He added: “We are aware that some anthropologists have been calling for ‘controlled contact’ with the uncontacted Indians… We will not allow this to happen because it will be another genocide of a people… of an indigenous group which doesn’t want contact.”

Video: Olimpio Guajajara criticizes proposals for ‘controlled contact’ with tribes

The Guajajara are the latest of many indigenous peoples in South America to reject the idea. Davi Kopenawa Yanomami, known as the “Dalai Lama of the rainforest,” has long campaigned for the rights of uncontacted tribes to determine their own futures after witnessing the devastating impacts of contact on his people, the Yanomami, in the 20th century.

Under the Brazilian constitution, all indigenous peoples have the right to their land, including uncontacted tribes. In 1987 FUNAI, the indigenous affairs department, adopted a policy of not making contact with uncontacted tribes and continuing to demarcate their territories and enforcing protection of them.

All uncontacted tribal peoples face catastrophe unless their land is protected.

The policy of not forcing contact with uncontacted tribes is supported by Brazilian NGOs like CIMI, ISA and CTI, as well as Survival International.

Uncontacted tribes are the most vulnerable peoples on the planet. Whole populations are being wiped out by violence from outsiders who steal their land and resources, and by diseases like flu and measles to which they have no resistance.

Last month, Survival’s global campaign for the Kawahiva, an uncontacted tribe in Mato Grosso state, succeeded in securing a protected territory for the tribe.

Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said: “When are people going to start listening to tribal peoples about what they want, rather then presuming to know what’s best?

The attitude of some academics like Hill and Walker is dangerous and neocolonial. This so-called ‘controlled contact’ could be devastating for uncontacted peoples and would only play into the hands of South America’s logging and ranching mafias, who want to steal the tribes’ land and don’t care about human rights.

It is for tribes to determine their relationship to the wider world, not academics.”

Read this online: http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/11257

 
The Brazilian government’s Indigenous Affairs Department (FUNAI) has severely criticized the authors of a controversial editorial in Science magazine who called for forced contact with uncontacted tribes.

In an open letter criticizing controversial anthropologists Kim Hill and Robert Walker, uncontacted tribes experts at FUNAI stress the threats facing uncontacted peoples. These include violence from outsiders who steal their land and resources, and diseases like flu and measles to which they have no resistance. They reject what Hill and Walker   call “controlled contact” as “a severe violation of these peoples’ right to determine their own lives."

They added: ”We feel compelled to express our disagreement with the ideas of some anthropologists… that ‘controlled contact’ is the only possible strategy for protecting these peoples.

“There is never absolute control in contact situations, even in cases when the teams have all the resources they need to operate efficiently.”

In the editorial Hill and Walker acknowledged the devastating impact first contact can have, but claimed that “controlled contact” is “a better option than a no-contact policy” and should be initiated after “conceiving a well-organized plan.”

 
FUNAI has joined the international call, led by tribal peoples, to protect uncontacted tribes’ land rights and to give them the chance to determine their own futures. Several Brazilian NGOs, including CIMI, ISA and CTI, as well as Survival International, are campaigning for this right to be upheld.

Speaking as part of Survival’s Tribal Voice project, Olimpio Guajajara, an indigenous man from the eastern Amazon, rejected forced contact, saying: “We are aware that some anthropologists have been calling for ‘controlled contact’ with the uncontacted Indians… We will not allow this to happen because it will be another genocide of a people… of an indigenous group which doesn’t want contact.”

Earlier this year, Survival’s global campaign for the Kawahiva, an uncontacted tribe in Mato Grosso state, helped secure a protected territory for the tribe.   

Campaigners are now hoping that this statement from FUNAI will keep pressure on the interim Brazilian government to effectively protect uncontacted peoples.
Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said: "Claiming that missions to forcibly contact uncontacted tribes, even when “well-planned”, can save lives is naive, and flies in the face of history:

first contacts across South America have almost always resulted in death, disease or destruction for the tribe involved.

Why should it be any different in the future?

The short answer is that it won’t be.

Let’s be clear, forced contact is likely to be a death sentence for uncontacted tribes. Uncontacted tribal peoples face catastrophe unless their land is protected and we’re doing everything we can to secure it for them."

http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/11347

By Daniele Selby on  July 27, 2016


In the past month, police shootings of black men and the subsequent shooting of police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge have revived conversations about police brutality and racism in the US. From NYC to LA, protesters are carrying signs and chanting “black lives matter” and in many instances, especially on social media, they have been met with the controversial response “all lives matter.”

The fact is, all lives do matter. So why is responding to “black lives matter” with “all lives matter” problematic? Because the purpose of the Black Lives Matter movement is to highlight the way in which black lives are not currently being treated as though they matter. Black Lives Matter aims to draw attention to a specific problem — the discrimination and social injustice that black Americans have suffered and endured for hundreds of years.

Former NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani said that Black Lives Matter is “inherently racist” because it narrowly focuses on problems that affect one group of people; however, Black Lives Matter aims to spark social change and remedy a larger systemic problem. To do that, it necessarily singles out black Americans and their plight.

6:57 PM - 7 Jul 2016  Obama: All lives matter, but "the data shows black folks are more vulnerable to these incidents."

Read more: Why Black Lives Matter Is a Global Issue

In doing that, Black Lives Matter’s approach to creating social change is not unlike that of the UN’s Global Goals.

These goals aim to tackle the world’s biggest problems — poverty, hunger, education, gender inequality — by focusing on specific problems that impact specific populations. The ultimate aim of the Global Goals (the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development) is to eradicate “poverty in all its forms and dimensions” and to “realize the human rights of all.” Yet the Agenda specifically mentions “extreme poverty” when talking about freeing the human race “from the tyranny of poverty.” It emphasizes the “empowerment of all women and girls” when mentioning “the human rights of all.”

Does that mean girls and women and those in extreme poverty deserve special treatment? Perhaps. Does that mean boys and men and those who live on more than $1.25 a day are excluded from the agenda? Not at all.

Put it this way: you go to the doctor because you have a pain in one particular organ — let’s say, your heart — aside from this heart problem, you are relatively healthy.

In terms of keeping you healthy as a whole, all of your organs matter. But the doctor treats your heart because that is where the present problem is. Once your heart problem has been solved, she may mention that your body needs some TLC overall, but she likely didn’t extol the benefits of sunscreen while you were clenching your chest in pain.


Saying “black lives matter” is like telling the doctor “the pain is in my chest.” The goal is to draw her attention to a particular problem that urgently needs to be addressed so that your whole body will feel better. But just because you tell her you’re having heart troubles doesn’t mean there aren’t other things happening in your body. Saying “all lives matter” is akin to telling the doctor “my chest hurts, but all of my organs are important — so go ahead and give me something for each of my organs on top of those heart meds.”

Read more: Global Barriers to Girls Education

Well why not just treat all your organs while you’re at it? Because equal treatment does not lead to equal outcomes.


If we don’t address the most urgent problems first, then the larger system is likely to deteriorate. Neglecting to address the social injustices that black Americans experience hinders the progress of the US as a whole. If the agenda didn’t specifically target extreme poverty and challenges faced by girls and women, it would be extremely difficult to fulfill the broader Global Goals.

That’s why it is important, in this moment, to focus on black lives and not all lives, and why the Global Goals focus on ending extreme poverty and not making the whole world a little richer. Saying “all lives matter” is optimistic at best. It presumes that everyone has been, up to this point, treated equally. In the image above it would mean that everyone started out the same height and needed to be equally elevated above the fence to see. But that’s not the case.

Read more: You Are Not Allowed to Read This

In theory, all people have equal claim to all human rights. But in actuality, there are groups of people who experience systemic discrimination, which disadvantages them from the outset.

When we talk about female genital mutilation (FGM) is it not to the exclusion of other harmful bodily practices. When we talk about equal access to education for girls, it does not inherently mean that we’re taking education opportunities away from boys. When we say “black lives matter,” we in no way negate the value of other lives.

Read more: 14 Million Reasons to Care About Education for Refugees

Approximately 10.7% of the world’s population lives below the extreme poverty line ($1.25 a day), that’s a relatively small minority. So why do they deserve special mention if the goal is to eradicate poverty overall?

People living in extreme poverty — like girls and women, and black men in the US — have been discriminated against and excluded by societies and institutions that sought to treat everyone equally without recognizing pre-existing inequalities. They are, through no fault of their own, starting life at the “bottom.” The discrimination and unequal access to opportunities these groups face mean they not only start at the bottom, but if there’s no conscious effort to change the systems that reinforce these inequalities, they are likely stuck there.

By singling out certain sets of people like those who live in extreme poverty, we’re simply drawing attention to problems within our society that need to be addressed to raise society up as a whole. We’re talking about treating heart problems to restore health to whole bodies.

The solution to the problems pointed out by Black Lives Matter and recognized by the Global Goals is not necessarily equal treatment — but rather treatment that makes us all equal.


To say “all lives matter” to people who are starting at the bottom does not help them “move up” or improve their situation. It merely shifts the whole system — relative inequalities and all — up (recall the illustration from above).

The Global Goals are presented in broad terms, but the accompanying written Agenda specifically mentions the “needs of the most vulnerable” when it talks about making the world a better place for all. Because some of the world’s biggest and most pressing challenges affect the most vulnerable — that’s where the “pain” is. The Global Goals aim to elevate those who have been systematically kept down — starting the most disadvantaged, those who have been pushed to the very bottom — to the top. Not to create a new upper echelon, but to equalize circumstances so that everyone has the same initial opportunities.

Watch: 14-Year-Old 'White Boy' Poem Is a Searing Critique of Privilege

The ultimate global goal is equality, but in order to achieve that some problems will require more attention and resources than others in the present. 

The Black Lives Matter movement is highlighting a problem that requires special attention and resources today, so that we can not only boldly proclaim that “all lives matter,” but we can also proudly practice it tomorrow.

We focus on ending FGM and other barriers to girls education because girls are disproportionately denied their rights. We do that today, so we can talk about providing equal access to quality education for all — and know that everyone will be starting at the same point — tomorrow.

We talk about the particular needs of refugees today, so that tomorrow we won’t call them refugees — just people. 

“All lives matter,” that goes without saying. Fundamentally, we know that all people are equal and equally deserving of human rights. Unfortunately, many people are still prohibited from exercising their human rights.

In order to get to a point where we are all truly equals who are free to exercise our rights, we sometimes need to put the spotlight on one particular issue — but that does not automatically negate the importance of other issues.

“Black lives matter” is not a step away from “all lives matter,” but a step toward it, and a step toward fulfilling the Global Goals. 

https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/all-black-lives-matter-global-goals/

Agelbert NOTE: Daniele Selby is absolutely right about every single issue she brought up.

The problem with all of this is the FACT that this systemic inequality and inequity is CAUSED by an insidious MENS REA modus operandi.

A patriarchal and bigoted power structure is behind all of these injustices that perpetuate unearned privilege under the color of Law. IOW, things are not the way they ARE by ACCIDENT or INATTENTION; they are QUITE (see: Mens Rea                ) DELIBERATE.

The "all Lives Matter' PROPAGANDA campaign to discredit the Black Lives Matter movement is a clever departure from outright ridicule for the purpose of making the Black Lives Matter supporters appear to be 'uncaring, unrealistic, and wasting everybody's time'. IOW, it's a SLICK form of RIDICULE by the empathy deficit disordered ASS HOLES that want to PERPETUATE the current injustices for privilege and profit.

The power structure pecking order is designed so that those on a higher rung, even if they are poor Whites only a rung or two from the bottom (but still more privileged than the brown/blacks) getting shafted day in and day out by their 'betters' far above them, will always resort to ridicule and accusations of "wild eyed conspiracy theorist paranoia" that they were/are methodically taught through FREQUENT REPETITION by the power structure propaganda machine.

But the conspiracy by White European Elite Males to keep the brown/black people down (who certainly ARE NOT the "minority" on this planet), and women everywhere with less pay for the same work a man does, is an irrefutable fact of life that perpetuates the misery of many  and the privilege and comfort of the empathy deficit disordered few.





 

Brazil: Amazon fires threaten to wipe out uncontacted Indians

18 August 2016

 
Forest fires are raging in an indigenous territory on the edge of the Brazilian Amazon, threatening to wipe out uncontacted members of the Awá tribe.

Small groups of neighboring Guajajara Indians were forced to spend days attempting to contain the blaze in the absence of government agents, until an Environment Ministry-led fire-fighting operation began last week.

Forest fires started by loggers destroyed over 50% of the forest cover in the territory in late 2015. The Environment Ministry has stated that the situation is “even worse this year.”

Zezico Guajajara warned the NGO CIMI that the flames are approaching the uncontacted Awá, and said: “We’re in a real battle here and we need help.”

Campaigners are concerned that the current wave of fires could wipe out the tribe and are calling for urgent action.

 
Uncontacted tribes are the most vulnerable peoples on the planet. Tribes like the Awá are being wiped out by violence from outsiders, and by diseases like flu and measles to which they have no resistance. Unless their land is protected, they face catastrophe.

Among those fighting the fires are members of the “Guajajara Guardians,” who live in and frequently patrol the area in an attempt to crack down on illegal logging, and protect their uncontacted neighbors who are living on the run.

Olimpio Guajajara, the leader of the group, said: “We are defending our territory, so that the uncontacted Awá can survive. We have managed to reduce the number of loggers on our land and we hope to force all of them out. Otherwise, the Awá could be wiped out.  We just want them to be able to live in peace.”

The Guajajara Guardians are receiving very little support from the Brazilian government, despite promises of assistance. Unless they have the resources they require to conduct their expeditions, the territory remains open to invasion.

 
Tribal peoples like the Guajajara and Awá have been dependent on and managed their environment for millennia. Evidence proves that tribal peoples are better at looking after their environment than anyone else. They are the best conservationists and guardians of the natural world.

If properly protected, tribal territories are the best barrier against deforestation.

Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said:

“This is an urgent and horrific humanitarian crisis. The Brazilian authorities know that fires are going to break out in the dry season, and that they could decimate uncontacted peoples.

Brazil needs to take its eyes off the Olympics and focus proper attention on stopping the annihilation of its tribal peoples.”

 http://www.survivalinternational.org/awa

Posted on Sep 16, 2016

By Jerome Irwin
 
Water protectors at Sacred Stone Camp in Cannon Ball, N.D., with a replica of the flag that Gen. Custer’s force (at article link) carried into battle.  (Rob Willson / Bold Alliance)

Major kudos go out to the Texas-based crude oil company Energy Transfer Partners and its multitude of Wall Street financiers. The lineup reads like a Who’s Who of banksters in the world: Sunoco, Bank of America, HSBC, UBS, Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, U.S. Bank, Barclays, Wells Fargo, Bank of Nova Scotia, Citibank, Credit Suisse, Royal Bank of Canada, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Morgan Stanley, Royal Bank of Scotland, Bank of Tokyo, Société Générale, Intesa Sanpaolo, BBVA Compass, Phillips 66, Enbridge and Marathon, to name a few of the 30-plus international funders of over $10 billion dollars. Their collective contributions to the Dakota Access pipeline are in keeping with the time-honored, ruthless American tradition of racism, fascism and corporatism toward people of color and the sacredness of land and life.

The moguls of the petroleum industry and reckless abusers of the earth’s finite resources are now intent upon creating an underground pipeline wall 1,172 miles long that winds back and forth across the Missouri River, through North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa and Illinois, with pipeline connections to the Gulf of Mexico and many international destinations beyond. The penchant among politicians and corporatists alike to constantly build walls—whether above or below ground—of various kinds between nations makes this current pipeline controversy especially poignant on the eve of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, as voters struggle to decide who is the lesser evil regarding the support of Wall Street, the Pentagon and the establishment’s environmental destruction and warmongers in the world. One wonders what relevant, pithy commentary will be forthcoming from presidential candidates Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Jill Stein and Gary Johnson?

Energy Transfer Partners and its coterie of fat cats recently sent in a fleet of Caterpillar tractors to destroy the culturally sensitive, sacred burial grounds of the Standing Rock Sioux people before their legal representatives could address relevant state and federal protocols in a court of law, or North Dakota’s State Historic Preservation Office could do a proper survey of the area. One could either call it a stroke of genius or stupidity, matched only, perhaps, by the diabolical craftiness of North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple, who called in the National Guard and stirred tribal memories of muzzling dissent.

 
Meanwhile, the brutality and ruthlessness continues at the hands of those like the Frost Kennels of Ohio and their ex-police and military dog handlers who’ve been hired to sic their trained German shepherd guard dogs on peacefully protesting men, women, elders and children from all races and nations who have begun to gather in ever-greater numbers to protest what is going on.

This confrontation in the distant, isolated northern plains and prairie lands of the Lakota and Dakota Sioux people has all the earmarks of a potentially brewing, historic Wounded Knee. Will it end up becoming yet another massacre of 1890 or siege of 1973?

Will America and the fat cat corporatists and politicians ever learn to live in peace and harmony with those so different from themselves, who live on ancestral lands they consider forever sacred?

A hopeful answer to that question has been put forth by recent dramatic, stunning interventions. The Obama administration’s departments of the Interior, Justice and Army stepped in to provide a temporary halt of construction. This action is meant to ensure meaningful Sioux tribal input to the dispute and show respect for its treaty laws and natural laws of life, suggesting that some sanity has begun to prevail and a window of higher spiritual consciousness and awakening has been **** ajar.

The world holds its breath as it waits to see if this window can be thrown wide open.

Jerome Irwin is a Canadian author. During the 1960s and early ’70s, he lived with the Dakota and Lakota peoples on the Crow Creek Sioux and Oglala Sioux reservations in South Dakota. He later published “The Wild Gentle Ones: A Turtle island Odyssey,” a book that documents these tribes’ historical plight and those of other indigenous peoples on Turtle Island.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/wall_street_prepared_to_destroy_sacred_sioux_indian_burial_grounds_20160916

Posted on Sep 25, 2016

By Chris Hedges

PAGE 1 of 2
 
The corporate state, no matter how many protests take place in American cities over the murder of unarmed citizens, will put no restraints on the police or the organs of security and surveillance. It will not protect the victims of state violence. It will continue to grant broader powers and greater resources to militarized police departments and internal security forces such as Homeland Security. Force, along with the systems of indoctrination and propaganda, is the last prop that keeps the corporate elites in power. These elites will do nothing to diminish the mechanisms necessary for their control. 

The corporate state, by pillaging the nation, has destroyed capitalism’s traditional forms of social control. The population is integrated into a capitalist democracy by decent wages and employment opportunities, labor unions, mass-produced consumer products, a modest say in governance, mechanisms for marginal reform, pensions, affordable health care, a judiciary that is not utterly subservient to the elites and corporate power, the possibility for social, political and economic advancement, good public education, arts funding and a public broadcasting system that gives a platform to those who are not in service to the elites. These elements make possible the common good, or at least the perception of the common good.

Global capitalism, however, is not concerned with the cohesion of the nation-state. The relentless quest for profit trumps internal stability. Everything and everyone is pillaged and harvested for profit. Democracy is a mirage, a useful fiction to keep the population passive and compliant. Propaganda, including entertainment and spectacle, and coercion through state-administered surveillance and violence are the primary tools of governance. This is why, despite years of egregious police violence, there is no effective reform.

Propaganda is not solely about instilling an opinion. It is also about appropriating the aspirations of the citizenry into the vocabulary of the power elite. The Clintons and Barack Obama built their careers mastering this duplicity. They speak in words that reflect the concerns of the citizenry, while pushing through programs and legislation that mock those concerns. This has been especially true in the long campaign to curb excessive police force. The liberal elites preach “tolerance” and “professionalism” and promote “diversity.” But they do not challenge the structural racism and economic exploitation that are the causes of our crisis. They treat the abuses of corporate oppression as if they were minor administrative defects rather than essential components of corporate power.

Naomi Murakawa in her book “The First Civil Right: How Liberals Built Prison America” documents how the series of “reforms” enacted to professionalize police departments resulted in placing more money and resources into the hands of the police, giving them greater power to act with impunity and expanding legally sanctioned violence. All penal reform, from President Harry Truman’s 1947 Committee on Civil Rights report to the Safe Streets Act of 1968 to the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 to contemporary calls for more professionalization, have, she notes, only made things worse.

The fiction used to justify expanded police powers, a fiction perpetrated by Democratic politicians such as Bill Clinton and Obama, is that a modernized police will make possible a just and post-racial America. White supremacy, racism and corporate exploitation, however, are built into the economic model of neoliberalism and our system of “inverted totalitarianism.” A discussion about police violence has to include a discussion of corporate power. Police violence is one of the primary pillars that allow the corporate elites to retain power. That violence will end only when the rule of these elites ends. 

The calls for more training and professionalization, the hiring of minority police officers, the use of body and dash cameras, improving procedures for due process, creating citizen review boards, even the reading of Miranda rights, have done nothing to halt the indiscriminate use of lethal violence and abuse of constitutional rights by the police and courts. Reforms have served only to bureaucratize, professionalize and legalize state abuse and murder. Innocent men and women may no longer be lynched on a tree, but they are lynched on death row and in the streets of New York, Baltimore, Ferguson, Charlotte and dozens of other cities. They are lynched for the reasons poor black people have always been lynched—to create a reign of terror that serves as an effective form of social control.

The wreckage left behind by deindustrialization created a dilemma for the corporate state. The vast pools of “surplus” or “redundant” labor in our former manufacturing centers meant the old forms of social control had disappeared. The corporate state needed harsher mechanisms to subjugate a population it condemned as human refuse. Those on probation and parole or in jails or prisons grew from 780,000 in 1965 to 7 million in 2010. The kinds of federal crimes punishable by death leaped from one in 1974 to 66 in 1994, thanks to the Clinton administration. The lengths of prison sentences tripled and quadrupled. Laws were passed to turn inner-city communities into miniature police states. This had nothing to do with crime.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/police_killings_wont_stop_20160925

http://dailycaller.com/2016/09/26/blm-founder-policing-is-problematic-so-we-need-police-free-communities/

Since policing is a problem, the police should be removed from communities altogether, according to Black Lives Matter founder Alicia Garza.

Garza argued that the United States gives too much respect to police officers, explaining that when police do wrong, a few bad cops are blamed, rather than a “corroded and corrupt system.”

“Quite frankly, many of our [Black Lives Matter] members are continuing to investigate what it would mean to have police-free communities. I think what we'’ve continued to see over time is that no moral appeal is actually stopping the deaths of black people, whether they be armed or unarmed.” Garza told Complex.

Garza also claimed that the Charlotte riots are a natural reaction; they occurred because people had been denied housing and good schools.

“How do we stop violence, looting, and riots? The way that we stop that is by making sure that people have the things that they need to thrive,” Garza said. “When people are systematically denied their right to adequate housing, adequate schools, to adequate food, to dignity —this is a response and a reaction that we should absolutely expect.”

People also should pay attention to the black women killed by police, Garza said.

“This is a perfect moment for us to have each other'’s backs, to call out the names of people who have been killed like the brother who was killed in Charlotte and the brother who was killed in Tulsa, but to also remember that this isn'’t just a problem impacting black men, but it’'s a problem that is impacting black people. For us to advance on this front, we have to bring everyone along with us,” Garza said to Complex.

Agelbert NOTE: It is good to know that there are many people in this country who do not blame the victim AND in addition, recognize the systemic problem of racism and brutality in the police. 

 
Photo by Elizabeth Hewitt/VTDigger