Channeling My Inner Good German
May. 29th, 2020 11:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_camera
White privilege in action:
Police arrested a CNN reporter and his support crew early this a.m. at the scene of the Minneapolis riots.
The arrest took place about a block away from the police station that had been set ablaze. The CNN crew identified themselves and told police they would move anywhere the police wanted them to move.
The police arrested them anyway.
Later, police claimed the crew hadn’t identified themselves, had refused to move.
But the reporter’s camera, which he’d set on the ground, had continued to roll, and so, the actual incident had been caught on tape.
This CNN reporter is black and Hispanic.
Another CNN reporter at the scene was also approached by police. He identified himself, and police told him, Okay, you’re allowed here.
This CNN reporter is white.
Doesn’t get more blatant than that.
###
The situation in Minneapolis is practically unbearable—not just because of what it is but also because of what it resembles: the ’92 Rodney King riots in LA.
The cop who killed George Floyd reportedly worked with George Floyd at a place called the El Nuevo Rodeo Club, so it’s hard to imagine that he didn’t recognize Floyd when he brutalized Floyd, hard to parse the incident in any other way than that he was using his official position to get personal revenge on Floyd—for what, I wonder?
My imagination sez they had a heated conversation about Colin Kaepernick, and the NFL, and taking the knee. I mean, just the way that cop brutalized Floyd—who the hell kneels on someone’s neck for eight long minutes? This is not a maneuver that’s taught in any Police Academy. So where did it come from?
And why haven’t they arrested this man?
###
I keep looking for the spark that’s gonna burn this whole thing down.
The tinder is everywhere.
I look at things, and I think, France in 1788. Russia in 1916.
Forty million people unemployed. A plague that mostly threatens the lives of minorities and the economic underclass.
When it happens, it happens fast…
###
The awfulness of it all is practically paralyzing.
Makes it very difficult for me to focus on anything.
In one of my more poignant exchanges with my mother as she was dying, she told me, “I sit, and stare out of my window a lot. Watch all the people living their crummy little lives. That’s all I’m asking for, really. The chance to live my crummy little life.”
That’s what George Floyd wanted, too.
That’s what I want.
That’s what everyone wants.
I’m a current events junkie, but at this point, I’m thinking it would be wise to insulate myself from all news. It’s just so uniformly horrible. No Heisenberg Effect in evidence, either: It goes right on horribly happening whether I’m aware of it or not; my observation of it is not a force for good, changing it for the better.
So why do I have to know about it?
Maybe this is how those Weimar Republic Good Germans desensitized themselves in the buildup to the death camps: They stopped tracking news.
I totally understand the temptation.
Meanwhile, I have a long list of Things To Do. I don’t feel like doing any of them. But needs must.
no subject
Date: 2020-05-29 06:33 pm (UTC)I just wonder how many anyone can take.
no subject
Date: 2020-05-30 01:07 pm (UTC)I don't think he'll walk.
Minnesota is one of a handful of states that has the very strange statute "third-degree murder" in its legal code.
Basically, third-degree murder covers situations where the perp acted in a "depraved" manner that resulted in an unintentional death. It doesn't carry the death penalty, and I think this cop will be convicted—providing they can find 12 people who haven't heard of George Floyd and the subsequent riots. Paging all Minnesota citizens who were in a coma on May 25, 2020! 😀
It remains to be seen whether the three other cops will be charged with anything. I don't know whether third degree murder has the same accessory-to language that other homicide charges carry.
no subject
Date: 2020-05-30 02:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-05-30 02:35 pm (UTC)Remains to be seen if or what they charge the other three with. A new video has emerged that shows all four kneeling on Floyd (although not on his neck—which means there may be some dispute over whether their actions resulted in murder.)
no subject
Date: 2020-05-29 09:19 pm (UTC)I really enjoyed this morning's Academic Minute in the way you enjoy things that support your own ideas: in this case, that the way to deal with a corrupt, racist, unresponsive-but-also oppressive state is through establishing a mini-state within the state, which becomes the one you turn to for aid, support, protection, etc. It's got lots of room for problems of its own (any entity will have its biases), but to my mind it's a way of having a system of support--and lots of other things: education, even justice, whatever you can organize to do--in spite of the oppressor state. .... But it's all just armchair statebuilding/resistance; IDK. But I'm happy when I see it works in places.
no subject
Date: 2020-05-30 01:12 pm (UTC)Sadly, I see it as my civic—and also, in a bizarre way, moral—responsibility to keep up on all current events.
Most of the time, I am quite successful at curtailing my news intake to an hour of reading newspapers (online!) every morning over coffee.
But the last few days have been so eventful that I'm spending wayyyyyy more than an hour on them.
To the detriment of my always precarious mental health.😀
no subject
Date: 2020-05-30 06:58 am (UTC)This is a pretty astute observation. It is all unbearable; it's just this time folk like me won't let it go. Prague and Warsaw will be our examples.
I will not go gently. And I will join with whomsoever to oppose that particular horror. So I'm watching and rather hoping it's all going to get better rather than worse.
no subject
Date: 2020-05-30 01:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-05-30 07:38 am (UTC)And I find myself thinking Get rid of him! Get rid of him, America!
It seems like an illegitimate feeling; he's not my president, and even if he was, what happened in Minneapolis isn't connected to him beyond the way he seems to have been a megaphone for racism across the world.
But this last does count for something. Maybe Derek Chauvin always was a racist, maybe he was a colossal twunt long before P45 took office. But his ilk have felt stronger, louder, more confident in the past few years.
I also worry that the US, grown fearful of the protests, may elect Trump back into power as their own 'strong man.'
It would be a better world with both of them in jail
no subject
Date: 2020-05-30 01:01 pm (UTC)Unfortunately, that's a very real possibility.
Most people in the U.S. do not vote. I'd love to be able to run a survey, thrust a microphone at the protestors, Excuse me sir or ma'am: Did you vote in the last election?
My guess is that 80% of them would say, No.
I'm not sure that violent protests are ever legitimate, but they're much less legitimate if people haven't participated in other ways to improve the society they live in.
Trump and The Ominous Weapons
Date: 2020-05-31 07:26 am (UTC)That tweet about the vicious dogs etc really does make him look weak, hiding behind threats. If I was a revolutionary determined to set the US on fire, I would smile at it.
I've been at some protests that turned violent; in those situations I must admit the police seemed to be doing all they could to make it turn nasty, but this was back in day on Maggie's Farm. I do think there is a point when folk can bear no more, and a wise political class works to make sure that day never comes. In the end, Police against the People gives the first battles to the cops, but if enough people rush at the gates, those gates break open.
Protests become violent when folk believe that nothing else works. It's galling when they don't use their vote in the first place.
Re: Trump and The Ominous Weapons
Date: 2020-05-31 03:11 pm (UTC)Wish I agreed with you on that one. I don't.
Protests become violent because in that context, violence becomes kind of a game.
Re: Trump and The Ominous Weapons
Date: 2020-06-01 08:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-05-30 01:35 pm (UTC)It used to be, though: "Many police departments, including the one in Minneapolis, stopped teaching the knee restraint technique and also sought to limit the use of chokeholds after the highly publicized death of Eric Garner in 2014 at the hands of the New York Police Department." (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/29/us/knee-neck-george-floyd-death.html)
I think Chauvin should have been charged with 2nd degree murder, or would that be more difficult to prove? His defiant look into the camera seems to say "you can't touch me!" and him continuing to press on George Floyd's neck amidst the cries of bystanders to please stop choking him makes it very clear to me that this was a deliberate murder.
And they even had the bloody nerve to allege Floyd resisted arrest. Fortunately the abundance of footage from phones and surveillance cameras proved they were lying. I still don't get why the other three were not arrested as well, but maybe that has to do with the fact that even Chauvin was only arrested after three days of protest. I do hope that he will get his just deserts and will go down for a long time.
no subject
Date: 2020-05-30 02:45 pm (UTC)I'd like to think that they three-day delay in charging the guy reflected prosecutors' search for a charge that absolutely will stand up in court. But maybe I'm being too charitable there.
I agree with you that the other three need to be arrested, too.