The United States is a police state. Thatâs not hyperbole. Yesterdayâs news - another unarmed Black man shot while directly obeying police orders, while offering no resistance - is not some outlier, some rare occurrence. This happens again and again, and there are almost never repercussions for the police involved. And I remind: this occurs in a country that has imprisoned a higher percentage of its population than any other.
And yet the uncritical hero-worship of police continues. Yes, the police do risk their lives to do their job. So do farm laborers, social workers, loggers, truckers, construction workers, and many others. There are a HUGE number of people in this country who risk their lives by getting up and going to work everyday, many of them moreso than police, and all of these people contribute to our society and their communities.
Of course some cops are good people and its a tragedy when they lose their lives, but thatâs just as true of many, many others. And yet at the same time, unlike these people in other jobs, they rarely face repercussions when they fuck up, even when they kill people. They are not held responsible, they are frequently placed on paid leave during investigations that, all too often, find them innocent of any wrongdoing because we have a system that protects and rewards the police at the expense of the people. While, again, Iâm aware that there are some cops who are good people, the system as a whole is seriously broken and I find it hard to respect any kind âpro-police/blue lives matterâ until the police are disarmed, demilitarized, and most important, have real independent community oversight and held responsible by the society they are in - just like everyone else.
The Black Lives Matter organization created a ten point plan to work against police violence in this country. I agree with it entirely, and I hope it is taken seriously during this election on both local and national levels. Iâm going to paste those ten points here so you donât even have to click on a link (though you should definitely go to their website and read more):
-Ending âbroken windowsâ policing, which aggressively polices minor crimes in an attempt to stop larger ones
-Using community oversight for misconduct rather than having police decide what consequences officers face
-Making standards for reporting police use of deadly force
-Independently investigating and prosecuting police misconduct
-Having the racial makeup of police departments reflect the communities they serve
-Requiring officers to wear body cameras
-Providing more training for police officers
-Ending for-profit policing practices
-Ending the police use of military equipment
-Implementing police union contracts that hold officers accountable for misconduct
All too often progressive voices are criticized for being vague, having no specific action plan, being too fractured. The plan created by Black Lives Matter is specific, positive, and workable.
As usual, there are a lot of big issues we are facing as a country this election season. And maybe not so much as usual, we have the circus of the election itself. And of course many of these issues are important, but the relationship between the police and the people they are supposed to serve is at a crisis point, it has been for a long time, and it needs to be the priority right now.
pixelskylines
izzy806
2087
germansingergirl
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
ellievsbear
