Sure, by homeowners and landlords who actually see who they are going to sell or rent to. I doubt if Donald Trump has even met a tenth of the people who rent from him.
Racism among the wealthy is a problem, but it’s a subtle problem. Racism among the middle class and the poor is in African-Americans’ faces every day. It’s not the CEO of a large company telling his people not to hire minorities. It’s the individual managers that make those decisions against company policy.
Reich can urge us to unite all he wants, but that’s just dreaming. The problems we have are real and won’t be solved by upper class scolds.
After robbing a store and assaulting the clerk, Brown reached into Wilson’s police vehicle. There was a struggle for Wilson’s firearm and Brown was shot. Brown ran away, stopped, turned, and charged at the officer who was pursuing him. Wilson then shot the charging Brown several more times. Brown made several bad choices that day.
The angry, and threatening, crowd prevented the medical examiner from examining the crime scene and releasing the body for 4 1/2 hours. The BLM activists conveniently forget that fact and blame the police for not releasing Brown’s body. The BLM appears to be bullshit artists but I’m willing to be swayed by their future actions.
Brown I have no sympathy for, but what happened to Eric Garner was a travesty. I get BLM’s point, they just shouldn’t be considering all people shot by police to be victims. Michael Brown was no victim. He made people victims.
I’m not really commenting on Reich, but throwing out some info about money, government, and race. From here:
Ok, google Florida v. Bostick, Ohio v. Robinette and Atwater v. City of Lago Vista to see the dismantling of the 4th Amendment in the wake of the War on Drugs.
All right, getting back to the beginnings of the War on Drugs, from the same cite above:
The result has been police harassment of the black community. Why do cops tend to target minorities, when theoretically they could target anyone with this? I dunno, you tell me. Maybe it is the intent of the War on Drugs. I understand that this doesn’t address why Sanders is being targeted by activists, but I think it is important for someone to try to make you understand how federal money influences the relationship between police and the black community.
I thought that slogan wasn’t supposed to be dismissive of Black Lives Matter?
Here’s what doesn’t make sense to me (well, one of them): this expectation that people who have already clearly stated that they don’t trust the police or their integrity would or should listen to those SAME police when they say they’re not at fault because of forensic evidence THEY collected and analyzed, or because a prosecutor who works very closely to them (in the same criminal justice system that the group as ALSO made clear they believe is racist) says they didn’t do it. Why should they? (And this is even ignoring whether you think they SHOULD distrust the police or criminal justice system. The fact is they DO, and they’ve expressed that in no uncertain terms.)
What also doesn’t make sense to me, on topic: why SHOULDN’T a group who wants to draw attention to a cause do so at an event for a politician who’s hot Internet news and attracts a lot of people who’ll be more inclined to be sympathetic to their cause (at the very least, enough so that they won’t “mind” the interruption)? This group has no stake in getting Bernie Sanders elected or nominated.
I mistakenly posted this in the GD thread about “All Lives Matter”, but it probably belongs here:
Update: The splinter group is called Outside Agitators 206. This was posted on Johnson’s Facebook page:
“The white liberal differs from the white conservative only in one way. The liberal is more deceitful than the conservative. The liberal is more hypocritical than the conservative. Both want power, but the white liberal is the one who has perfected the art of posing as the Negro’s friend and benefactor, and by winning the friendship and support of the Negro, the white liberal is able to use the Negro as a pawn or tool in this political football game. Politically the American Negro is nothing but a football, and the white liberals control this mentally dead ball. Through tricks of tokenism and false promises, and they have the willing cooperation of Negro leaders. These leaders sell out our people for just a few crumbs of token recognition and token gains” -MALCOLM X
If you are stanning for Bernie Sanders and are upset that he got shut down but you haven’t been putting the same passion behind Black Lives you really need to reevaluate more than your political party.
There have also been tweets against Sanders with the hashtags: #BowDownBernie and #FreePalestine. I’m not sure what to make of it, but there are plenty of CTs going around.
I agree that the war on drugs has resulted in an intensifying of police targeting of African-Americans, but I don’t think that was the intention of the powers that be. High minded concepts tend to get muddied the further down the chain they get. Another example is LBJ’s war on poverty, which in the mind of the geniuses was supposed to end poverty, but at the ground level led to bureaucrats actively recruiting people to go on welfare, which led to dependency and the destruction of the family, and well, lots of drugs, which led to the war on drugs.
Actually, drug use was on the decline at the time the drug war was started. Law enforcement had to be goaded into getting on board with it- they didn’t see drugs as a priority problem. And, the statistics I’ve seen show that black people don’t use more drugs than anything else- the only demographic that uses drugs at a significantly higher rate is young white people.
Maybe you have a point about LBJ’s war on poverty, but it isn’t that it made the drug war necessary or turned blacks into a bunch of drug fiends.
No, my point was just that at the top level it’s high-minded goals, but at the lower levels it’s “let’s bust some heads.”
For the most part, both Republicans and Democrats supported both the war on drugs and anti-poverty measures. The controversies didn’t really get started until it was seen what happened once those ideas filtered down to the people who actually had to carry them out. Then everyone got really uncomfortable.
We can work together or special interest groups can idolize a petty thug who stole cigars, attacked a store clerk, and died while attacked a police officer who was trying to detain him.
The BLM supporters can attack Democrat presidential candidates if they chose to. The attacks, and general assholeyness, of the OWS thugs brought them the attention they desired. It also cost them much of the support they may have had from independents, Democrats, conservatives, progressives, left-handed people, athletes, shopkeepers, truck drivers, etc… You know - voters. The OWS obnoxious behavior doomed their efforts. The BLM is no different. When the OWS/BLM chant for internal war, push Bernie Sanders around, reject free speech, and just happen to appear at the demonstrations which turn violent, they are showing their true colors.
I don’t agree with much of that other than the special interest part. BLM has a point to make, and Democrats are right to listen. But are they looking to LISTEN, or just try to appease, while still tailoring their message to white middle class voters, where elections are won and lost?
The public came to hear Bernie Sanders. They couldn’t hear Sanders speak because several assholes from BLM reject Sanders right to free speech, and the voters right to hear from a Presidential candidate.
Why would the Bernie Sanders crowd be sympathetic to the interrupting assholes and their cause célèbre?