News Events around the George Floyd protests and riots, US and beyond

[Mee]

^This is not new. This has been around for a really long time & is still being done. Police forces, military & other agencies actively and enthusiastically recruit but I don't know of quotas. Same goes for female percentages.

Quotas for addressing rape statistics too maybe ? Quotas for addressing the numbers of police who are involved in domestic violence ?


I’m sure many of us could bring things to the table if deep systemic failure - and the police are effectively a more public facing Agency dealing with the fall out of this. It’s a cultural issue more Easily highlighted In the police force perhaps is a way to view it?

 

[Ronin]

I think it's utterly exciting to come up with a new system.

Why keep trying to make the current system better when we've all been trying that for years?
This is an opportunity for change .
So let's change.

That complex overhaul is not practically feasible.

You'd have to dismantle the whole world for it to do anything. With its history.

Which is unrealistic nonsense.

And 'just have more X race officers' does big squat if the existing in office and in society dynamics are as they are.

You have to work with what is. Not reinvent the wheel.

 

[Mee]

That complex overhaul is not practically feasible.

You'd have to dismantle the whole world for it to do anything. With its history.

Which is unrealistic nonsense.

And 'just have more X race officers' does big squat if the existing in office and in society dynamics are as they are.

You have to work with what is. Not reinvent the wheel.

I think maybe it’s not reinventing the wheel but replacing an outdated vehicle.


I also however think it’s pointless unless other systemic areas are addressed- judicial system, lawmakers , educators - ourselves.

The problems are not discrete to one agency. One type of person . Or ‘other people’ .


Eg- today in news it’s that the uk is fearful renaming a famous London hospital and the Tate galleries would be a revisionist history that hides what is done - It seems really easy to me - give a name that doesn’t- The hospital could be ‘emancipation hospital’ or some such and the Tate - take an acronym with a longer name - I dunno - STAIAL - striving to always improve and learn - what an odd name for an art gallery - leads to conversation about why it’s so named and non revisionist history......

 

[Movingforward10]

Well I'm up for dismantling the world. I mean, it's already happening with the pandemic.....

Flippant comment I know.
I'm just frustrated with change being sooooo slow. In so many areas. It shouldn't be this hard.

 

[blackemerald1]

I'm just frustrated with change being sooooo slow. In so many areas.

^You may be right & frustration is easy to see. There are many areas that need progress but nothing happens overnight. Not real happening anyway. You can dress stuff up, change names, be symbolic, make gesturing an Olympic sport. It won't help.

Change is very slow to implement in government, laws need to be changed, budgets revised & all of it's agencies have to be heading in the same direction. Then it's all gotta filter down into the personnel. That takes money, training & a lot of resources diverted away from other stuff. That gets noses out of joint fast. First you have to work out what needs to change and where to start. It's fine to demand change but how to do & what to do instead takes time.

It shouldn't be this hard.

^Shouldn't it? I mean if we flip flop about from one trend to another, pointing fingers, blaming this & that & not thoroughly addressing the issues, it's not going to effect change is it? Whoever said it should be easy?

Be so careful what you wish for & don't throw all of the good out with the bad that's all. :cautious:

 

[Movingforward10]

It shouldn't be this hard.
Not having systematic racism should not be hard to overcome. It shouldn't.
Believing that people are equal is not a challenging consept.
Perhaps we are too accepting that change takes time and we need to do A before we can get B. But why?
This issue is not the first occasion.
Systems have had a lot of notice that people want change.

But I'm prob projecting a lot into this discussion. From sexual offences rarely being prosecuted and if they are , conviction rates being so low. And many other things.

I may bow out of this discussion now.

 

[Ronin]

Well that's the thing with -isms....

Parallels to others work only to a certain degree. The rest? The problems and their specifics are concrete.

One can't apply one's problems solutions to a different area, based on surface similarities. It just doesn't work.

Ditto to one profession's standards applied to another. Equally doesn't work. The mindset, goals, prioritizing, methods, protocols, are different.

 

[Mee]

Well that's the thing with -isms....

Parallels to others work only to a certain degree. The rest? The problems and their specifics are concrete.

One can't apply one's problems solutions to a different area, based on surface similarities. It just doesn't work.

Ditto to one profession's standards applied to another. Equally doesn't work. The mindset, goals, prioritizing, methods, protocols, are different.

I
Think I get what you are saying but but I am not sure. It feels like t( yikes in a conversation about how equating has limits) colour blind/ not colour blind Equation is false and difficult but can be interpreted differently-


I also wanted to pick up a point I think it was black emerald? Made about naming things not changing them?

No it doesn’t- but naming things helps identify them and how we approach them. Having acceptance for ‘untackled problematic stuff’ is the silent cultural racism behind the cultural stuff. The kind of stuff that en masse slowly but surely shapes us and gives us culture. So I don’t think renaming changes stuff- Ido think not renaming stuff fails to be part of changing stuff - and I do think we should mr mindful not to be revisionist. I think we should remember the dark times - and times where more and more people are trying through really tough self examination.

 

[lostforgottensoul]

Police in Florida have been instructed to take any information that they are a police officer as well as their families to take any information that they are related to a police officer off social media. One police officer's wife already had her car set on fire!

That's just sad. America, this is not what inacting change looks like!

 

[Mee]

It shouldn't be this hard.
Not having systematic racism should not be hard to overcome. It

If it weren’t hard none of us would be here - because individual hiccups- our ‘micro’ displacement and trauma would be even easier to fix than this macro cognitive distortion.

 

[DharmaGirl]

First off, watching a restrained man begging for his life and being restrained for an additional 2 minutes after they couldn't find a pulse is horrific! Watching a 75 year old man being pushed to the ground and bleeding from his ear while NOBODY helps is horrific! It is NOT acceptable. I was engaged to a police officer ( we'll call him Pat) who went into major crimes and narcotics, and I knew many officers, prosecutors, judges, etc. There is a culture in these forces that suspects are scum, and should be treated as such. You can deny it all you want, and perhaps it was just everyone I knew, but it exists. I left the police officer when he beat the shit out of me, and years later he was being investigated because he was going to be appointed state AG, and the female officer investigating agreed with me on the culture I described, plus the lying about how victims were injured, etc. This culture must be changed. It is not a few bad apples, it is many bad apples!

Pat told me about how they would go into a suspects house, and break things on purpose. They would ask where the drugs were, and if they weren't told, they would destroy something until they got an answer. He was accused of rape, however he lied his way out of it and everyone told the same story. Yes, it's a stressful job. So is nursing. I don't hit or hurt anyone. There can be a culture in the ER to discount certain people, it is awful but true, and I worked hard to redefine the culture there, but if you don't clean out the "bad apples", the change takes much longer if it ever happens.

Where I used to live, a man was shot because they thought his cell phone was a gun. A man was killed while being restrained because he was in a mental health crisis. I have been treated like shit in several inpatient hospitals because the culture of the hospital was that mentally ill people are less than.

We have to change the culture of dominating others we think are less than. Everyone deserves dignity and respect! These are not a "few" incidents, it's been going on for a long, long time and being lied about and covered up.

Brute force is not working. Not having a gun does not make you a sheep. I'm not afraid enough to have a gun. Taking your AK 47 out to a peaceful protest is intimidation, not counter protesting. If all the disenfranchised people came out with their guns to peacefully protest, they would be shot.

This is really upsetting to me and I just hope real sustainable change comes from these protests, and all people not willing to put up with violence and double standards.

 

[Ronin]

I think I'd be careful pointing fingers at law enforcement community culture as a whole though.

I mean, I could start on all of those doctors killers I & mine had the displeasure to encounter, and nurses assisting them, not even starting on a paramedic this and that portion of my history...

And nope. Leads nowhere. Seeds more strife to point at whole professional community as crime committing douchebags with a cover.

They aren't.
Individuals are.
The whole profession isn't to blame.

That way lies madness, socially, and no growth, traumatic or personal, personally.