Are You Showing Support for Black Lives Matter in Second Life?

[Extrude Ragu]

2 minutes ago, Innula Zenovka said:

But meanwhile you live in a society which does very much care about people's race, wealth, social status, sexuality, religion, and so on, and it is a society in which these attributes (actual or perceived) can make an enormous difference to almost every aspect of your life, including -- as we have just seen so graphically captured on video, in what's certainly the first snuff movie I've ever seen -- whether you are likely to survive an encounter with the police.

I am aware that people do discriminate based on various facets of peoples identity. However my view is that when you punish a collective for an individuals actions, you become no better than the original discriminating individual.

There are good and bad people across all groups in society. The only way to nip a problem like this in the bud is to ensure that we judge and hold individuals to account for individual action. To repeat myself, Lady Justice wears a blindfold for a good reason.

[Dano Seale]

12 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

via assigning possible blame to him?  Really, you can't comprehend how disgusting that is?

I see my explanation for that in my last post was a little too subtle for you Luna! Let me put it in easy "Americanese" so you and others won't be so ....confused. I DON'T BLAME GEORGE FOR WHAT HAPPENED! Clearer?
All I said was that if he resisted being put into the police car, then that technically (to cops) counts as "resisting arrest", which usually results in cops dumping people on the ground!
Try to look at it logically, instead of twisting my words to make out I'm defending the cops ffs!

[Madelaine McMasters]

2 hours ago, Gatogateau said:

There were also, primarily young people, who voted for Trump because they thought it would be funny. So hopefully we've gotten that out of our collective systems and people will be moved to come out in force and say, "Oh god no, anything is better than this."

I've been watching, with a mix of fascination and confusion, the rise of the stock market over the course of C19. That too will be a factor in November.

[Luna Bliss]

15 minutes ago, Dano Seale said:

I see my explanation for that in my last post was a little too subtle for you Luna! Let me put it in easy "Americanese" so you and others won't be so ....confused.

I prefer Yoganeese or more simplicity since I'm a meditater.  If you think I'm going to wade through that excessively verbal, overly emotional wall-o-text.....nope. 

But Ghandi, actually, might have the patience. But I'm no Ghandi.

Edited June 6, 2020 by Luna Bliss

[Innula Zenovka]

30 minutes ago, Extrude Ragu said:

I am aware that people do discriminate based on various facets of peoples identity. However my view is that when you punish a collective for an individuals actions, you become no better than the original discriminating individual.

There are good and bad people across all groups in society. The only way to nip a problem like this in the bud is to ensure that we judge and hold individuals to account for individual action. To repeat myself, Lady Justice wears a blindfold for a good reason.

Sorry, but you've lost me with "when you punish a collective for an individual's actions."

What collective do you say is being punished, and how and by whom, and because of which individual's actions?

 

[Gatogateau]

Bleck...

Forum Overload.

[Dano Seale]

19 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

I prefer Yoganeese or more simplicity since I'm a meditater.  If you think I'm going to wade through that excessively verbal, overly emotional wall-o-text.....nope. 

But Ghandi, actually, might have the patience. But I'm no Ghandi.

Colour me shocked! (Always thought meditation took a lot of patience but eh, whatever!)

[Extrude Ragu]

I recall my first encounter with racism. It was in drama class in school. I was starting my first year. We were doing a 'stand up and swap chairs' exercise. The person before me had said if you had brown eyes. Come my turn I said brown skin. There were actually quite a few brown skinned people in my class and I was an innocent kid who didn't know better. I was singled out, sent out of the drama class, made an example of, bullied etc. It was a pretty traumatic introduction to race and racism.

Since then, I've only wished that people would putting so much weight behind identity, it makes the world this tense, scary place. There's no need for it

[Extrude Ragu]

21 minutes ago, Innula Zenovka said:

Sorry, but you've lost me with "when you punish a collective for an individual's actions."

What collective do you say is being punished, and how and by whom, and because of which individual's actions?

In the case of George Floyd, they're currently talking about defunding Police. They're basically saying that an entire group of people are guilty by being in the same group and should be punished as such.

Not to mention going around and destroying small businesses, low income homes etc. These are all people who have been 'punished' for actions they didn't commit.

[Ted McGregor]

31 minutes ago, Dano Seale said:

Colour me shocked! (Always thought meditation took a lot of patience but eh, whatever!)

Don' t colour me Ghandi, but I do try to read .. occasionally.

I still object, with Luna,  to what you are implying : Nothing the suspect might have been accused of warranted a 9-minute blockage of his respiratory system by a cop ignoring " I cannot breathe."  for said time.

Nothing.

Edited June 6, 2020 by TDD123

[Dano Seale]

2 minutes ago, TDD123 said:

Don' t colour me Ghandi, but I do try to read .. occasionally.

I still object, with Luna,  to what you are implying : Nothing the suspect might have been accused of warranted a 9-minute blockage of his resporatory system by a cop ignoring " I cannot breathe."  for said time.

Nothing.

FML! Lord give me strength! 🙄

[Ted McGregor]

12 minutes ago, Dano Seale said:

FML! Lord give me strength! 🙄

We don' t need divine intervention here. We just disagree.

I despise this trend of brute force and consider particularly this case of George Floyd  for police officers everywhere in the world to have this as a prime example how NOT to conduct an arrest.

The neck clamp method needs to be abolished and convicted if needed. It' s a predatory lethal action to take. It' s animalistic and also inhumane.

[Lyssa Greymoon]

1 hour ago, Extrude Ragu said:

In the case of George Floyd, they're currently talking about defunding Police. They're basically saying that an entire group of people are guilty by being in the same group and should be punished as such.

It’s not the case of George Floyd, that’s just the latest (well, last week it was) incident in a very long line of examples of institutionalized racism. The cop who murdered George Floyd is bad, but that doesn’t mean the rest of them are. And the ones who stood there while he did it. And all the others who have done the same thing. And all the ones who have covered for them.

Edited June 6, 2020 by Lyssa Greymoon

[Innula Zenovka]

2 hours ago, Extrude Ragu said:

In the case of George Floyd, they're currently talking about defunding Police. They're basically saying that an entire group of people are guilty by being in the same group and should be punished as such.

Not to mention going around and destroying small businesses, low income homes etc. These are all people who have been 'punished' for actions they didn't commit.

Who are "they" here?

My understanding of the situation is that people are calling for the defunding of the police because in so many areas they're throwing good money after bad on equipping and maintaining unaccountable police forces that behave towards the communities they are supposed to protect and serve by acting like a particularly brutish army of occupation.

That money could be better spent, quite simply, on community-led resources.

The police officers directly involved in George Floyd's murder will be punished by the courts.     The various initiatives to defund police departments are intended to help dismantle the dysfunctional and racist systems that allow such violence to happen.

For heaven's sake -- what sort of a place is it where a police officer can sit on a handcuffed suspect, in a public street, with fellow officers standing by, as the poor man slowly suffocates for almost nine minutes as he begs, in vain, for his life, and think he can get away with?    What sort of police department is that?

 

 

Edited June 6, 2020 by Innula Zenovka

[Scylla Rhiadra]

9 minutes ago, Innula Zenovka said:

My understanding of the situation is that people are calling for the defunding of the police because in so many areas they're throwing good money after bad on equipping and maintaining unaccountable police forces that behave towards the communities they are supposed to protect and serve by acting like a particularly brutish army of occupation.

QFT

THIS is the point that comfortable and too-frequently-complacent white middle class folk worried about break-ins or car thefts seem not to understand.

"Defunding" -- which, again, usually means redirecting funds towards things like education, healthcare, and social services, rather than "abolishing" the police -- seems a logical and reasonable solution to many because black communities are paying taxes that are effectively going towards equipping and arming the very people who are brutalizing, oppressing, and sometimes murdering them.

[Zephyr Starchild]

To answer the question of the Op.  Yes I do and Yes I am doing things I visit the freedom wall daily I check in on my POC friends here in SL to make sure they are safe and okay, I take Milk, snacks and water ( at risk to myself ) to the protesters and when in these POC spaces I make sure and do my best to boost their voices. 

If you go here : http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Moonsong/126/134/4003

You can get all kinds of BLM stuff and join the group. The more people who support BLM the better. 

[Coffee Pancake]

[kali Wylder]

2 hours ago, Dano Seale said:

FML!

ok so Urban dic says FM= fix me lighthouse, which has a rather obscure meaning in it's own right.  Is that what you meant?  These TLAs  confuse the heck out of me sometimes.

[LittleMe Jewell]

2 minutes ago, kali Wylder said:

ok so Urban dic says FM= fix me lighthouse, which has a rather obscure meaning in it's own right.  Is that what you meant?  These TLAs  confuse the heck out of me sometimes.

My googling showed me that it stood form "f**k my life".   No clue if that is what he meant or not.

Other alternative meanings that we could pick from:

 

"Find My Luggage! Lord give me strength" doesn't seem quite right, so that meaning is probably definitely not it.

 

 

Edited June 6, 2020 by LittleMe Jewell

[Innula Zenovka]

Very powerful explanation of why people loot:

Warning -- NSFW language  (it is subtitled)

 

[Scylla Rhiadra]

8 minutes ago, Innula Zenovka said:

Very powerful explanation of why people loot:

Warning -- NSFW language  (it is subtitled)

 

Wow. Powerful.

Thank you.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

This is a great interview with an expert on the subject of policing, police reform, police and communities, and "defunding" the police.

Before you attack the notion of "defunding the police" as an absurdity, please watch this video. The insights into what this might look like and how it might work are thoughtful, coherent, and intelligent. They make sense.

https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1747543107932/

[kali Wylder]

4 hours ago, Innula Zenovka said:

I haven't followed the discussion sufficiently closely to know what's being discussed here, but when someone takes exception to something I've said or done and tells me I'm being racist or sexist or homophobic or whatever, my reaction, unless I think they're deliberately misunderstanding me, is to take what they say seriously, look at what they object to, and ask myself myself what exactly I was trying to say, and how I have said it differently, in a way that would not have merited this criticism.

If I can see what the problem is, I'll apologise and try to rephrase and reformulate my point (unless I wish to withdraw it altogether) or, if I still can't see the problem, I'll politely explain why I think they've mistaken what I was saying, and see what their reponse is.

I think it's always a criticism worth taking seriously, unless it's obviously bogus.

 

(bolded and embiggened by me)  I really like what you said there Innula.  I think that a willingness to re-examine one's actions and motivations is the mark of a truly open mind, Something I also strive to have.

[Dano Seale]

1 hour ago, kali Wylder said:

ok so Urban dic says FM= fix me lighthouse, which has a rather obscure meaning in it's own right.  Is that what you meant?  These TLAs  confuse the heck out of me sometimes.

Lol, ME catching out Americans with an acronym, that's a first!  😆

Jewell was right 1st time - "fk my life!".  

[kali Wylder]

So anyway, back to the OP's original question, I don't get in world much except on weekends.  I did get in earlier this week during the day and got myself a BLM tshirt and put it on.  Last night I wore it and went out "in public"  in SL and hung out at my favorite place to unwind on Friday nights at the Junkyard Blues club.  Not one person commented to me about my shirt. Probably because there is a long held rule at the club to not discuss politics.  I've been reflecting about it and I think it's prolly a sign that JYB is not a racist place. I didn't get any IMs about it, prolly because nobody there felt the need to correct me and tell that ALM. That felt good.