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

[FairreLilette]

16 minutes ago, Beth Macbain said:

I’m sorry, but what?! Slicing a little snip off the LAPD budget is absolutely nothing even remotely similar to disbanding the LAPD. The budget cut isn’t a done deal, either. The police union in LA is fighting it tooth and nail.

Also Los Angeles county has something like 40 different independent police departments. The LAPD isn’t even the largest one - the LA County Sheriff’s Department is.

About 11:20 to see the beating from the female officer’s body cam.

Oh, yeah, I'm tired.  I've posted it so many times in this thread about what is proposed.  What is proposed is reallocating 100 to 150 million dollars through the end of the fiscal year 2021 for programs for people along with some other things such as financial damages to people instead of to fund police.   There is no talk whatsoever of defunding or abolishing the LAPD nor LA Sherrif's Department.   I think official talks only began yesterday as to the reallocation of funds, so it's way to early for us to know what will actually transpire.  

Okay, thanks for the time frame.  

Edited June 10, 2020 by FairreLilette

[Janet Voxel]

19 minutes ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

Before releasing us, the judge entered the jury room and said, approximately "I'm glad you faithfully followed my instructions about not "sending a message". You all did the right thing. That was my first inkling that the system had internal strife. I hope we're witnessing a watershed moment here.

Something about this definitely feels different.

[stlshayne]

For anyone that's been wanting to look more into the policing abolition movement, the ebook for The End of Policing by Alex Vitale is free right now. I've heard nothing but good things about it, and Alex has been making the rounds recently and is really great in interviews. 

[Beth Macbain]

I know some people don’t like links to Twitter, but this is an epic three part thread giving concrete examples of why the police need to be defunded.

(Parts 1 and 2 part linked to in the thread)

[Janet Voxel]

26 minutes ago, Beth Macbain said:

I know some people don’t like links to Twitter, but this is an epic three part thread giving concrete examples of why the police need to be defunded.

(Parts 1 and 2 part linked to in the thread)

There are a lot of other stories in there!

[FairreLilette]

38 minutes ago, stlshayne said:

For anyone that's been wanting to look more into the policing abolition movement, the ebook for The End of Policing by Alex Vitale is free right now. I've heard nothing but good things about it, and Alex has been making the rounds recently and is really great in interviews. 

It could happen but, imo, it would/could take some time.   It would need laying groundwork and building from there.  I just read an interesting article which explains how the cry to "Defund the Police" actually happened (it's in the article I linked below).   Here is some information regarding REFORM vs. DEFUND   

REFORM

Police reform has often been the mainstream call in the wake of protests against police brutality. Reform, a long-term process that has usually involved putting more funding toward police, now tends to call for community policing, a style that encourages police to be assigned to specific communities and to know the residents and dynamics of the areas where they work. In his criminal justice plan, former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, calls for allocating $300 million toward community policing, saying it's the model that makes policing work best.

Police reform also focuses on limiting officers' use of force and holding police accountable.

Full coverage of George Floyd's death and protests around the country

House Democrats on Monday introduced the Justice in Policing Act, a police reform bill that would ban chokeholds, including the kind used on Floyd, as well as "no-knock" warrants used in drug cases, as in the case that led to the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky.

The legislation would also require police departments to send data on their use of force to the federal government, and it would create a grant program that would allow state attorneys general to create an independent process to investigate misconduct or excessive use of force, according to the five-page summary of the bill.

Reforms have also been proposed under "8 Can't Wait," an initiative released in the wake of the protests by Campaign Zero, a group advocating police reform. The campaign has called for banning chokeholds, requiring de-escalation, mandating a warning before shooting, banning shooting at moving vehicles and using a use-of-force continuum, among other things.

Defund

But many say reform doesn't work, arguing that police departments like Minneapolis' have already undergone reform and police violence still happens.

Instead, activists, organizers, scholars and city residents are furthering the call, demanding that police be defunded, often under a "divest/invest" model.

Those calling for defunding the police see the departments' budgets as bloated and misappropriated when other crucial city services have to beg for scraps.

In Washington, "it would look like taking the money and using it on things that would actually make our communities safer," Hazzard said. 

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/calls-reform-defund-dismantle-abolish-police-explained-n1227676

Edited June 10, 2020 by FairreLilette

[Sylvia Tamalyn]

[Ceka Cianci]

Not that they are about the bubonic plague, but there are a lot of rat statues ..

 

Look at this one I found..hehehehe

Edited June 10, 2020 by Ceka Cianci

[Paul Hexem]

12 hours ago, Beth Macbain said:

If that piece gets fixed, the others will as well.

That's a naive hope at best.

The pie is rotten. Throw it out, make a new one. Fix just one piece and the rot is gonna spread right back to that piece.

[Extrude Ragu]

8 hours ago, Sylvia Tamalyn said:

meme pic about plague

But we do have a tendency to put up statues for the researchers and scientists who put an end to issues such as plagues and diseases.

I'm gonna go out on a whim and say I think that with not much digging you'll find that most of these people are complicated characters who do not have the same moral standards that exist today.

If they're willing to go after statues of people who end the holocaust then they are willing to go after them all. And yes, I do think that statues are important parts of history, we build them and surround ourselves with them so that we don't forget and have a visual references to history that people can discover and choose to study. There's a reason most of the Chinese don't know about their own history.

[FairreLilette]

17 minutes ago, Paul Hexem said:

That's a naive hope at best.

The pie is rotten. Throw it out, make a new one. Fix just one piece and the rot is gonna spread right back to that piece.

It's just an analogy because for my analogy I state 'the whole pie is police brutality' so the whole pie is already rotten.  It doesn't mean fix one piece only if it's broken down into sections.  We do need to look at the specific sections so as not to cloud the issue of BLM.

I also said police brutality is a forest, but we cannot only look at the trees and not deal with the whole forest.  The whole forest will have to be dealt with eventually.

If you have a better analogy for a working model...please share it.  

Edited June 10, 2020 by FairreLilette

[JanuarySwan]

1 hour ago, Paul Hexem said:

The pie is rotten. Throw it out, make a new one. 

Make a new pie?  With what ingredients though?

I think we need to look at what is making the pie rotten in the first place.  So, I thought about it.  Is it really the color of someone's skin that makes it rotten or is it preconceived notions in regards the the color of the skin?   If it is preconceived notions about the color of the skin, to what purpose does this police brutality hope to accomplish towards that color of skin?   

And then, I wonder about corruption.  So, let's say the pie is rotten because of corruption.  Why is the pie corrupt?  Who corrupted it and for what reasons?  To what gains does the corruption hope to accomplish, is it money?  So then, I deduce the corruption of the rotten pie is greed.  

The Police are federally and state funded through grants.  However, private money also supports the Police Departments.

So, who are these who are sending private monies to the Police and for what reasons?  It is political posturing through private monies?  Is it church influenced through private monies?   

And also, would it be safe to say there is a possibility someone could be using POC in order to further their own capital gain or even political agendas?  

And, if that is the case, it needs to looked at as to what does systemic racism and racial profiling hope to achieve through the police force?  What is their goal here?  It must involve allocations of money because I can't see it existing for no reason; thus, I think it's money power of some kind.  

Another thing though, some laws need to just be done away with first, I'd imagine.

Also, if there were no police.  What about spousal abuse?   Whom would someone call in a spousal abuse situation if they need help?  

Edited June 10, 2020 by JanuarySwan

[Sylvia Tamalyn]

1 hour ago, Extrude Ragu said:

But we do have a tendency to put up statues for the researchers and scientists who put an end to issues such as plagues and diseases.

I'm gonna go out on a whim and say I think that with not much digging you'll find that most of these people are complicated characters who do not have the same moral standards that exist today.

If they're willing to go after statues of people who end the holocaust then they are willing to go after them all. And yes, I do think that statues are important parts of history, we build them and surround ourselves with them so that we don't forget and have a visual references to history that people can discover and choose to study. There's a reason most of the Chinese don't know about their own history.

Statues are just statues. They are THINGS. 

Try caring about people more than things, and then we will have something to talk about. 

[JanuarySwan]

2 minutes ago, Sylvia Tamalyn said:

Statues are just statues. They are THINGS. 

Try caring about people more than things, and then we will have something to talk about. 

I agree.  I don't give a darn about statues in this matter.  Well, maybe a little...the ones in the museums.  But, the statues that interest me most in the museums do not depict a particular person but rather were to challenge existing artistic rules.  

[Prokofy Neva]

On 6/7/2020 at 3:56 AM, CoffeeDujour said:

The bog box stores have destroyed all the local business everywhere they have moved. There is a reason you can buy everything at Walmart.

We actually have few big box stores in New York City, especially Manhattan. They aren't given permits to build and there's no space for them. There are still a lot of little and medium stores. In my neighbourhood, I have seen small cafes, hardware stores, book stores, video stores, gift shops, stationery stores destroyed BY THE INTERNET and by higher rents. Not by big chains. First *the Internet* destroyed them; then the rent was too damn high. Today, I live in a hollowed out, once thriving area of three giant government subsidized housing projects with virtually no stores, many stores vacated because they can't pay the rent, but not rented yet, and owners waiting to drive up prices further; large apartment buildings that built on the ashes of small stores, a temple, a school -- and aren't even 30% full because no one can afford those luxury apartments; and more 7/11s and Taco Bells per city block than anyone could possibly use them -- and they sit empty, much of the time, their owners able to write off losses and wait for the area to gentrify, I guess. Where are all the people in these giant housing complexes going to go? Well, one place they will go when there is enough incitement and opportunity by mass marches is to loot and trash the few stores -- and chains, like Verizon -- that remain.

So yes, any little mom and pop stores still owned by established Koreans, aging Holocaust survivors, and new Indian immigrants who managed to survive first the rent hikes, then the pandemic, have remained to see their businesses looted and trashed during recent demonstrations.

Here's a video made by one of my children's classmates of the Best Buy. Best Buy will survive, but now the jobs are gone from that particular store (my daughter's boyfriend worked there), and in general Best Buy has cut back during the pandemic and laid off people.

 

All the stores by Fordham in the Bronx are trashed. How will they be rebuilt? Small business loans were already spent coping with the pandemic. Now what? They won't be rebuilt, and in their place will be a giant K-mart or if they are in Chapter 11, a Wal-mart.

AOC couldn't see her way clear to allowing Amazon to come in and provide jobs, she kept falsely claiming that apartment complexes were going to push out existing residents when the already-existing co-op owners already were selling to Amazon without displacement. It's not like there were more executives than the locals who were going to be hired. 

So easy to say "oh, big box stores" which I don't particularly like either, but they are cheaper than ordering from Amazon. But now it's not big box stores causing the havoc.

 

Edited June 10, 2020 by Prokofy Neva

[Paul Hexem]

24 minutes ago, JanuarySwan said:

Make a new pie?  With what ingredients though?

I think we need to look at what is making the pie rotten in the first place.  So, I thought about it.  Is it really the color of someone's skin that makes it rotten or is it preconceived notions in regards the the color of the skin?   If it is preconceived notions about the color of the skin, to what purpose does this police brutality hope to accomplish towards that color of skin?   

And then, I wonder about corruption.  So, let's say the pie is rotten because of corruption.  Why is the pie corrupt?  Who corrupted it and for what reasons?  To what gains does the corruption hope to accomplish, is it money?  So then, I deduce the corruption of the rotten pie is greed.  

The Police are federally and state funded through grants.  However, private money also supports the Police Departments.

So, who are these who are sending private monies to the Police and for what reasons?  It is political posturing through private monies?  Is it church influenced through private monies?   

And also, would it be safe to say there is a possibility someone could be using POC in order to further their own capital gain or even political agendas?  

And, if that is the case, it needs to looked at as to what does systemic racism and racial profiling hope to achieve through the police force?  What is their goal here?  It must involve allocations of money because I can't see it existing for no reason; thus, I think it's money power of some kind.  

Another thing though, some laws need to just be done away with first, I'd imagine.

Also, if there were no police.  What about spousal abuse?   Whom would someone call in a spousal abuse situation if they need help?  

It's not race or greed causing it. It's law, that the police unions pushed for. Qualified immunity. A law that says government officials, including police, are not personally responsible for their actions. It says, almost literally, that you can get away with murder if you work for the government. 

Of course that's going to attract racists looking to kill people, and corrupt personalities looking to abuse power.

Do away with that law and make police subject to the same penalties and restrictions as private security, and you'll see this sort of behavior change really, really fast.

[JanuarySwan]

13 minutes ago, Paul Hexem said:

It's not race or greed causing it. It's law, that the police unions pushed for. Qualified immunity. A law that says government officials, including police, are not personally responsible for their actions. It says, almost literally, that you can get away with murder if you work for the government. 

Of course that's going to attract racists looking to kill people, and corrupt personalities looking to abuse power.

Do away with that law and make police subject to the same penalties and restrictions as private security, and you'll see this sort of behavior change really, really fast.

I see.

So the police have blinders on.  They see other "crime" but not their own?   So, it's attracting racists.  Scary.   I'm not saying color is a crime...it's merely attracting those who can get away with it.  Again, scary.  

Edited June 10, 2020 by JanuarySwan

[JanuarySwan]

23 minutes ago, Paul Hexem said:

It's not race or greed causing it. It's law, that the police unions pushed for. Qualified immunity. A law that says government officials, including police, are not personally responsible for their actions. It says, almost literally, that you can get away with murder if you work for the government. 

Of course that's going to attract racists looking to kill people, and corrupt personalities looking to abuse power.

Do away with that law and make police subject to the same penalties and restrictions as private security, and you'll see this sort of behavior change really, really fast.

I'm going to quote you again, Paul which is kind of weird, but I felt what I am about to say regarding the above deserves it's own post. 

Then, the only way we have to fight the above is to stop paying our taxes somewhere, so it may have to be property taxes.  We will all have to refuse to pay our property taxes and certain other taxes until that above law is over-turned.  I don't see any other way to fight it.  I know certain taxes are taken out of our checks, but there are other taxes we can refuse to pay.

[Selene Gregoire]

If you don't pay your property taxes your land/home can be taken from you and auctioned to cover the unpaid taxes.

If your state charges sales tax, you won't be able to buy anything if you don't pay the sales tax.

There are consequences for not paying taxes. Is anyone prepared to pay the consequences? Somehow I doubt it.

[Extrude Ragu]

2 hours ago, Sylvia Tamalyn said:

Statues are just statues. They are THINGS.

 

Knowledge of history is part of what helps humans survive and become more aware of their surroundings, their ancestors successes and mistakes.

The way I read your statement, It's a bit like trying to tell me medicine isn't lives, it's just solids and liquids. Try caring more about people than medicine.

[Innula Zenovka]

15 minutes ago, Extrude Ragu said:

 

Knowledge of history is part of what helps humans survive and become more aware of their surroundings, their ancestors successes and mistakes.

The way I read your statement, It's a bit like trying to tell me medicine isn't lives, it's just solids and liquids. Try caring more about people than medicine.

You don't necessarily need statues in public places to be aware of history -- those statues can do the same job, only better, in a museum.  I don't recognise half the people portrayed in statues around the UK, and most of them I don't know who they are -- I only heard of the slave trader in Bristol because his statue was pulled down and thrown in the river on Sunday, and likewise the similar man in London's docklands whose statue was taken down yesterday.

The authorities of the day either erect, or allow to be erected, a statue to commemorate someone or something, for reasons that seem them good at the time.   

Times change though, and either people no longer wish to commemorate whoever it is, for whatever reason, or they want to widen the road, or build a car park, and the statue gets moved somewhere else, be it to another public area, or a museum, or whatever.    It's normal.

 

 

Edited June 10, 2020 by Innula Zenovka

[Extrude Ragu]

12 minutes ago, Innula Zenovka said:

You don't necessarily need statues in public places to be aware of history -- those statues can do the same job, only better, in a museum.  I don't recognise half the people portrayed in statues around the UK, and most of them I don't know who they are -- I only heard of the slave trader in Bristol because his statue was pulled down and thrown in the river on Sunday, and likewise the similar man in London's docklands whose statue was taken down yesterday.

The authorities of the day either erect, or allow to be erected, a statue to commemorate someone or something, for reasons that seem them good at the time.   

Times change though, and either people no longer wish to commemorate whoever it is, for whatever reason, or they want to widen the road, or build a car park, and the statue gets moved somewhere else, be it to another public area, or a museum, or whatever.    It's normal.

 

 

I take no issue with moving statues to museums to be preserved, that is a reasonable civilized thing to do.

It's all about respect for history. Could you imagine the uproar if a group of people decided one day, they're going to flatten the Pyramids of Egypt because they were made by oppressed slaves. Somebody came along and smashed up the pharaoh's. Threw old artifacts into a river etc. They'd be called hooligans and people would call for those people to be detained.

[Innula Zenovka]

Just now, Extrude Ragu said:

I take no issue with moving statues to museums to be preserved, that is a reasonable civilized thing to do.

It's all about respect for history. Could you imagine the uproar if a group of people decided one day, they're going to flatten the Pyramids of Egypt because they were made by oppressed slaves. Somebody came along and smashed up the pharaoh's. Threw old artifacts into a river etc. They'd be called hooligans and people would call for those people to be detained.

Yes, but let's worry about that when it happens, as my old mother used to say.

[Sylvia Tamalyn]

9 minutes ago, Extrude Ragu said:

It's all about respect for history. 

How about respect for the people who were enslaved by the subjects of the statues you are so eager to defend?

Honestly, I just can't wrap my head around this argument that "OH NOOOO HISTORY WILL BE LOST" if some statues glorifying racists are taken down. I highly doubt that people are going to forget about centuries of oppression just because some horrible person doesn't have a statue erected in his honor.

At this point, I have to conclude that one of two things is going on here: trolling or racism. That being the case, I'll not waste any further time on the topic of "SAVE THE STATUES". 

[Extrude Ragu]

14 minutes ago, Innula Zenovka said:

when it happens

It is happening. That's why I am worrying about it.