The Oregon Standoff... Thing.

Good god in heaven, must we descend to this again?

Apparently so.

Some armed white male yahoos have taken over a wildlife refuge in Oregon and declared it "liberated" from Federal control -- which they claim is their right and duty as "patriots" and so on, because they do. The Federales are approaching this situation with considerable restraint, treating with the white male yahoos as if they were merely mediating a dispute between factions of governance. t

Yes, well...

The yahoos are being led by the Bundy-Bunch who engaged in an armed standoff in Nevada last year over grazing fees and rights, fees that millionaire rancher Cliven Bundy refused to pay for year upon year because he could. And because, according to these millionaires, the Feds have no right to tell them anything or to collect fees and rents. The Feds have unconstitutionally usurped private property and local control. The Bundy-Bunch will get it back or know the reason why.

This is really quite silly, but here we are. Again. As in so many things, part of the problem is the Constitution itself which is so flawed and has become so anachronistic -- and has been interpreted in so many inconsistent ways -- that governance itself is devolving into chaos.

The Bundy-Bunch believe they have a right to interpret constitutional provisions to suit themselves and to enforce their will by force of arms if need be or they choose to, and the Federal government has no authority over them. Period. End of discussion.

Thus their take over and armed occupation of an Oregon wildlife refuge, which itself is on land seized from the Paiutes in the 1870s, which was apparently initially given to white settlers and then taken away -- by the Federal government which did the seizure from the Paiutes by force of arms to begin with.

The Paiutes rightly say, "This is OUR land, not yours, and not the Government's except to the extent we allow it (or cannot fight it)."

Meanwhile the Bundy-Bunch insists that all Federal land in the West must be privatized, and they no doubt believe that they should own most of it as spoils of war or something.

"Constitutional Crisis" indeed, or it would be if it weren't for the fact that a bunch of rich white yahoos are demanding that they be given more and more and ever more by the Federal government, or they'll commit revolution, just you watch.

So far, truth is, they've gotten away with it. When rich white men say they want a thing in this country, they usually get it. It's been that way since well before there was a United States of America (Inc) and there's no sign of change.

Observers look on in astonishment the government literally bends and yields to their demands in contrast to the suppression that's taken place over and over again when people of color or non-rich white people make demands or demonstrate against some aspect of government policy that is harming them.

The official violence unleashed against Occupy, Black Lives Matter and so many other people's movements is in stark contrast to the mediation and negotiation that appears to be the official policy in treating with the yahoos occupying a wildlife refuge in Oregon. The message is obvious:

These armed white and mostly rich insurrectionists have power. You on the other hand do not. 

There are many lessons to be learned, aren't there?

They Made Him Do It

Neighbors

There are problems with this summer's story of Dylann Roof (apparently pronounced "Rauff") and his killing spree at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, SC, and yet there's a tremendous amount of symbolism involved in it, too.

Of course it's yet another incidence of mass murder by a white male American, one of hundreds over the years. Another day, another massacre. It's American as apple-pie, and according to opinion leaders, there is nothing that can be done about it. Too bad, so sad. Next?

"This is a violent country" -- supposedly -- and "this is a violent culture." Well, yes, true enough. But to then claim that "nothing can be done" about it is just silly. To claim that because elected leaders won't do anything about it, and courts essentially make things worse that therefore nothing can be done is crazy.

I pointed out in another venue that some of the commentary surrounding this mass murder in Charleston recognized that Dylann Storm Roof had for all intents and purposes been granted permission to kill Negroes by systems of impunity for murder of black folks, operating ever single day in this country, and generally involving police committing acts of summary execution -- such as the killing of Walter Scott in North Charleston only a few weeks ago.

Officer Slager is accused of murder in the case of Mr. Scott, and he is apparently being held in the cell next to Roof. 

I must qualify a lot of my comments in this post with the term "apparently" because -- apparently -- a lot of the "information" being spread by the media is false. The spreading of false information by media would ordinarily be considered propaganda, but this is a summer news cycle, and during the summer news cycle, false narratives are routinely produced and spread regarding pretty much any topic, false fears are generated (sharks, missing white women), false tales are spun. It's the way the "news" business is organized and operated. Just as the major mass media tends to take the weekends off and produce little or no "news" on Saturdays and Sundays, so the media uses the summer for a vacation from seriousness... It's been this way for generations, and there is little sign of breaking with this tradition.

Thus we need to maintain skepticism in the face of whatever is being said or shown about this mass murder or any other story that is featured in the major mass media over the summer (or really at any other time, but that's another issue.) False information and false narratives are all but guaranteed.

What we can point to with some degree of certainty is that while Negroes continue to be gunned down by police with almost complete impunity, every now and then someone is caught and/or held to answer for doing so, and two of them are being held right now in the North Charleston, SC, jail.

We can also point to the fact that white men who kill Negroes are treated with respect, courtesy and dignity. They are protected by the System. Negroes, on the other hand, are mostly treated like disposable or surplus... animals. They are not simply shot on sight -- though that happens with some regularity -- they are warehoused in vast numbers in America's astonishingly cruel, brutal and exploitative prison-industrial system. They are the meat which feeds the system of injustice in this country. White men who kill Negroes simply don't face the kinds of consequences Negroes face for being alive in this country.

In this case, Dylann Roof was apprehended while armed in North Carolina some 14 hours after he shot and killed nine parishoners at Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston. He was reported to have been apprehended "peacefully," though he was reported to be armed. He was taken into custody and provided with a bulletproof vest for his perp-walk on his way to being flown back to Charleston, some 220 miles from his apprehension point.

This sequence was staged for the cameras, and what was so striking about it to me was that Roof was being protected throughout. There was no violence in his treatment at all. A black man in similar circumstances would have been treated roughly -- if, that is, he wasn't shot on sight. That's simply the way "justice" works in the USA. And hardly anyone would consider it unusual.

The message is clear: law enforcement exists to protect the white folks and to suppress the Other.

That's its primary function. When we see such stark examples of it, many people don't even notice.

One aspect of the mass murder that has been extensively reported (though who knows whether it's true?) is that Roof apparently told his victims: "I have to do this. You rape our women, and you’re taking over our country, and you have to go.”

In other words, "You Negroes are making me do this..."

This is a historical claim that has been used for centuries to justify oppression and lynching and all sorts of depredations of Africans and African Americans, the quinessence of victim blaming. The Negro doesn't have to actually do anything to be accused of forcing the white man to act against Negroes who rape white women and would take over the country if they could -- if they weren't being killed and suppressed by heroic police and white vigilance.

They made him do it...

Isn't that always the case though? Whether the excuse is "reaching for his waistband" or being reported to be armed or any number of other supposed "threats," the Negro is always to blame for making the white man kill...Always. Of course it isn't just Negroes who are subjected to summary execution by police and white vigilantes, but they are the most likely to be subjected to it. The fear they inspire in some segment of the armed and vigilant white population is fundamental to very their existence. Without their fear of what the Negro would do if they weren't being summarily killed and routinely suppressed, some of these white folks would have no reason for living...

Police are the primary actors in this drama, but when policing fails (as it did in Charleston when Michael Slager was arrested for the on-camera killing of Walter Scott) it's incumbent on white vigilantes to step in and take care of what needs to be done, right?

One of the stories being circulated is that Roof researched the history of Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston (a founder, for example, was Denmark Vesey who planned a huge slave revolt in 1822; the pastor was Clementa Pickney, a state senator who was responsible for a number of laws restricting police action and making them accountable for their actions...) and he targeted the church on the anniversary of the intended slave revolt and just before Juneteenth, a celebration of the end of slavery. Supposedly, Roof knew quite well what he was doing, where he was acting and why, and he likely intended to induce... panic at the least. According to some reports, he wanted to trigger a civil war or a race war.

Was it because Michael Slager had failed?

I have no way of knowing, but the coincidences are there.

I sensed there was "something in the air" that would make this summer a serious and quite possibly tragic one. I didn't know exactly what it would be, but this mass murder seems to me to be an opening salvo, not the climax, far from it. The summer has only just begun.

Despair is hard to vanquish under the circumstances.

And the killing goes on and on...

[Adding: A history of Charleston's 1822 slave uprising worth pondering in light of current events:

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history/2015/06/charleston_shooting_the_attack_on_the_ame_church_is_rooted_in_the_city_s.html ]

#BlackLivesMatter Propaganda and Testimony

Speaks for itself



I would only add that I am well aware that I benefit from white privilege every single day, as I have my entire life. I have personally witnessed incidents like those described and I have heard testimony from many people who have never had the benefit of white privilege, and I have been strongly affected by what I've witnessed and heard. There are some things that are just wrong, and one of them is targeting/profiling on the sole basis of skin color -- which is what police departments and private security are trained and expected to do. Do not believe their denials. They lie.

I have also witnessed disparate sentencing for exactly the same crime. Black and brown people are sentenced to jail, white people -- who have committed the same crime get probation or community service in lieu of jail.

This is wrong. This has to stop, but most white people don't even know it goes on. They have no idea because it doesn't affect them. They assume that all the black and brown people in jail and prison are there because of all the criminality among those people -- but that's not the way it is. They are in jail or prison because that's the way plea bargaining and sentencing works in this country of injustice: black and brown people are sentenced to jail regardless of what they've done or not done; white people are not. They may not even be charged with crimes they've committed, thus they may never wind up in court to plead out and be sentenced.

It's a royally fucked up system. It is a systemic problem of disparate injustice. It is fundamentally racist, classist and sexist.

Tré Melvin is telling the truth, and it is a hard truth for many white people to grasp or understand -- unless they've seen it for themselves and have the compassion to recognize that racism and injustice  is inherent in the system itself. So many people are invested in this system that it is almost impossible to change, but that was the case with slavery and Jim Crow too.  Yet they were changed... well, incompletely and insufficiently, but they were changed.

As for the killing, I want it to stop.

On the Other Other Other Hand....

White folks confronting a police line in Berkeley a few hours ago:



Broadcast live streaming video on Ustream
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Last night, Elon James White was adamantly denouncing the "highjacking" of the protests against police violence by ignorant or worse white folk who should step back. He seemed most annoyed with the handful of "anarchists" who were going around setting fires and breaking windows in Berkeley, he says they bring disrepute on the Movement.

He says these demonstrations are about police violence and murder -- of Black people. "Black lives matter..." Remember?  Eric Garner? Michael Brown? Not "all lives," BLACK lives. But so many of the demonstrators in Berkeley -- where he is -- are privileged white student asshole jerks who know nothing and care less about the oppression of African Americans and are only looking for their moment in the spotlight.

Tonight, however, he seems to be terrified on the one hand, elated on the other, wanting to denounce, and yet... there's something happening here...

They shut down I-80 in Berkeley. They went out onto the freeway and shut down traffic to and from San Francisco and the East Bay in both directions for however long they were able to hold the line, and Elon freaked out and had an anxiety attack. He does not approve.  #ICan'tDrive became a new hashtag.  They shut down BART. They shut down Amtrak, too. This is going too far.   

Lucid_Cogency: RT H0XH4: #Berkeley Bart is on complete lockdown tonight due protests. #berkeleyprotests pic.twitter.com/EADIpEb7hc
— Wayne (@Wayne9224) December 9, 2014

“@SputnikInt: Shutting down highway and train during this night protests in #Berkeley #BerkeleyProtests pic.twitter.com/R5aS6qrSHU”
— Toe Knee (@Fallout911) December 9, 2014

Apparently hundreds were arrested -- volunteered to be arrested?? -- at an Emeryville shopping mall.

Citizens lined up against the wall in zip ties for exercising the 1st amendment right to assemble. #berkeleyprotests pic.twitter.com/QKjHTWgs0L
— David (@TheZOMB) December 9, 2014

But I really can't tell what's going on from the Twitter Machine or any of the livestreams I've checked. It's disruption and chaos and yet...

There's something happening here...

Somehow the message is getting through: Slowly. Haltingly.

This has got to stop, the police murders have got to stop, the oppression of black folks and the destruction of black lives, families, and communities has got to stop. Until it does, the People -- black and white and all the other colors together -- are going to take action. Some of it will be nice and polite and friendly and manageable. Some of it won't be. But action there will be until this intolerable situation changes for the better.

It can be done and it will be done.

"Sorry for the inconvenience. We're trying to change the world here."

And then there's this: 

Dear White Protesters: 

As I walked through the streets of Berkeley tonight listening to the overwhelmingly white crowd chant things like “Whose streets? Our streets!” and “This is what democracy looks like!” I felt uncomfortable. I passed white people holding signs that said “I can’t breathe” and I felt uncomfortable. Then, when we were instructed to sit down in the middle of the main street that runs through downtown Berkeley and were made to listen to a white person on a bullhorn declare “All lives matter!” I felt invisible. Ignored. Forgotten.

Dear white protestors, this is NOT about you.

"Whose streets?" As a Black person in this country, I am well aware that the streets belong to white people. I am not empowered or made more safe by hundreds of white people chanting that the streets belong to them. The street in Ferguson where Mike Brown was murdered and lay dead for 4.5 hours should have belonged to him, but it didn’t. He’s dead. He’s not coming back. That’s because the streets belong to white people.

Dear white protestors, this is NOT about you.

"This is what democracy looks like?" You’re right. Democracy has always meant that (for reasons you’re well aware of but like to pretend you don’t remember or don’t matter anymore) black people are a consistent minority in this country and thus must petition white people for our basic human rights. Democracy means voter ID laws and poll taxes. Democracy in America is a white majority dictating whose voice matters. Democracy is white liberals telling black folks to calm down and go the polls (and vote for Democrat) as if Bob McCulloch isn’t a "democrat." As if Jay Nixon isn’t a democrat. As if our president isn’t Black and it hasn’t done shit to lower the ever mounting body count of Black people gunned down in the streets by police and vigilantes. As if any Black politicians in a non-majority Black district can get elected, much less reelected, without catering to white people’s feelings. I know what democracy looks like and it hasn’t done very much for people who look like me.

Dear white protestors, this is NOT about you.

"All lives matter?" NO THEY DON’T AND THAT’S THE FUCKING POINT! Black people’s lives don’t matter, that’s why I’m out in the streets, to get people to realize that my life has worth. I have to protest to get people to even think about the possibility that if the police or some vigilante gun me down, it’s not because the genetic defects believed inherent in my blackness finally manifested and I had to be put down before I became more of a threat to white america. White america doesn’t need a reminder that "all lives matter," it needs to be made to recognize and respect that Black lives matter.

It’s Black bodies that are bleeding and dying in the streets. It’s Black bodies that can’t breathe. It’s Black bodies that are seen and treated as threats to whiteness as we shop in Wal-Mart, play in parks outside our homes, walk home with a pack of Skittles, sleep in our beds. It’s Black bodies that have hung like strange fruit from the trees of this nation for centuries.

Dear white protestors, this is NOT about you.

Stop whitewashing our movement. Stop pretending that “All lives matter” means anything other than “HEY ME TOO! WHAT ABOUT MY WHITE FEELINGS! DISREGARD THE ACTUAL REALITY OF BLEEDING AND DYING BLACK PEOPLE AND CATER TO THE HYPOTHETICAL AND EXTREMELY RARE POSSIBILITY THAT POLICE OR VIGILANTES WOULD BE ABLE TO EXTRAJUDICIALLY MURDER A WHITE PERSON AND FACE NO CONSEQUENCES!” Black people know our lives don’t matter because white people’s hypotheticals matter more than Black people’s reality.

Dear white protestors, this is NOT about you.

Stop cannibalizing our movements with hashtags about every other life but ours. Stop plagiarizing Black people’s actual struggles for fictionalized white pain (I’m looking at you Hunger Games, with your whitewashed protagonist. “The Hanging Tree?” For real?). Stop scrambling to stand atop the growing pile of dead Black bodies to use it as your makeshift platform to secure more privileges and status for yourself. Stop using protests that should be about Black lives to exercise your white angst, break shit under the cover of darkness, and then bask in the bright light of white privilege while Black lives are declared to be worth less than the windows you broke.

Dear white protestors, this is NOT about you. This IS about making Black Lives Matter.

Our streets shouldn’t be burial grounds for Black people. Black people’s rights shouldn’t be put to a vote. Black people should be allowed to breathe, walk, exist, without fear.

So, if you’re actually here for making Black Lives Matter, put down your “I can’t breathe” signs (because you can, and that’s the point) and pick up one that declares Black Lives Matter (because right now they don’t, and that’s the point). Get off the ground and stand in solidarity as Black people “die-in” (because it’s not white bodies lying dead on our nation’s streets, and that’s the point). Hand over the bullhorn to a Black person (because your voice doesn’t need a bullhorn to be heard, and that’s the point).

And please, stop saying #AllLivesMatter…until they actually do.

It's true, yes, and yet tragically police violence and killing is not solely about blacks -- unless we want that division to rule us forever.

I got into this issue with people who didn't know anything about the killing spree the Albuquerque Police Department were on for years. Remember that? No? It's forgotten now? Well, I haven't forgotten. And I got into the issue of that killing spree -- which has mercifully paused if not completely ended; there hasn't been a police killing in Albuquerque since August -- with people from out of town and out of state who claimed the police must have been targeting blacks... And I scratched my head and looked at the statistics and said, "No. Not really." Less than 10% of those killed by police were black. "Then they must be targeting Indians and other people of color." Well, that might be closer, but only because most of those killed had Latin last names. In New Mexico, a lot of folks whose last names are Hispanic look "white." Unless you knew them, you wouldn't know they were Hispanos. So, no, the killing spree wasn't based on color or ethnicity. More than half of those killed by APD, however, suffered from mental illness of one sort or another. A significant number were drug users/abusers. Many -- not all -- were poor.

There were specific targets for killing, in other words, but it wasn't black folks because they were black. Those targeted for killing were people with mental conditions, regardless of color, especially if they were poor or homeless; drug suspects or known users/abusers, again, regardless of color, and supposedly armed suspects, regardless of color, especially those who ran from, fought or resisted police.

These are the universal police targets for killing in this country.

In some jurisdictions, the effect of this universal targeting falls disproportionately on black and brown victims, but the targeting goes on regardless of color.

Making the issue entirely about race is a classic means of division. Telling white folks to step back is one thing, but insisting that black lives are the only ones that matter, or that only or mostly black folks are the victims of police violence and killing -- because they're black -- defies reality. And who does that serve?

White folks should be stepping back and should not try to hijack or betray the pain and suffering of their black comrades in this struggle. But black folks should welcome their comrades as well, regardless of color, gender, status or other attribute. For it is when the People are united in struggle and persistent in their demands that Authority and Power trembles.

Solidarity matters.

A Ferguson Town Hall -- In Which the Mayor is Skewered Six Ways From Sunday

Ferguson, MO town hall audience -- Credit Durrie Bouscaren, St. Louis Public Radio

The audio is embedded in this link: http://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/fergusons-mayor-faces-heat-forum-dissects-citys-divisions

It runs close to two hours, and some of it is very powerful. There are at least two Fergusons, the "black side" and the "white side," and the mayor is clearly nearly oblivious to the presence of the "black side" -- apart from his ability to bamboozle and screw its residents through those ever useful and productive fees, fines and forfeitures. He claims he's never had a problem with (his) negroes, but then what plantation owner ever did? At least they never did before the slave revolt.

Ferguson has had a mini slave revolt, and the white owners are trying desperately to figure out how to keep the idea from spreading. They send down Jesse Jackson and The Reverend Al to calm the negroes. They place negro overseers to ensure the pacification of the... well... savages.

Let's be clear.

From the evidence in this recording and from the many other recordings of incidents in Ferguson, it's clear that the owners (including the mayor as their agent) regard the colored folks as little more than exploitable resources, crops as it were, to be punished severely when they get out of line, to be mostly ignored otherwise. They are not human, they are not people. But they are "savages."

That's why we saw such sick, sick and ridiculous force being applied to control them starting within minutes of Michael Brown's execution when the St. Louis County police arrived with dogs and assault weapons at the ready to keep the crowds gathered on Canfield Drive "under control." They had the dogs out within minutes.

As many people at the town hall pointed out, the police were inciting  the crowds from the outset, and they kept right on doing it, over and over and over again, and their incitement was a direct cause of the people's anger and upset. Could the mayor even begin to understand that? No, he could not. If the police were over-reacting, it wasn't his police.  No, no, no, you negroes have to understand that his police were pulled off the streets -- except at the police station -- within a day or so of the "incident" and the police who were on the streets during the "disturbances" were St. Louis County and State Highway Patrol and all sorts of municipal police forces from around the area. They weren't Ferguson police. So, no harm no foul, right?

Where was the mayor during all this? Nobody saw him. Oh, he was at the police station sometimes; otherwise he was at home. Why? He talked to lots of constituents. He will not resign in disgrace. He has no control over the police chief and cannot hire or fire one, only the city manager can do that. The city manager has not been instructed to do that, and he probably won't be.

No one mentioned Darren Wilson and how the city is protecting him.

Strange.

Even stranger, the fact that almost all the audience for this town hall (at least initially) was... white. See the picture above.

I guess that goes to show who doesn't listen to NPR.

If There Is An Answer To The Epidemic of Police Misconduct

Some have pointed out that the spate of news about militarized police and the repeated shooting/tasing/beating of unarmed, usually black suspects, and the endless lies the police tell the public has to do with the Summer Shark and Missing White Woman news hole needing to be filled.

Summertime is a strange time for the News Business, as shark stories traditionally proliferate, and finding the missing white woman becomes the primary "news" until Labor Day or even after. It's been this way for decades. There is real news mixed, but often the real news is either buried or over-hyped right along with the stories of shark attacks and white women gone missing.

So the focus on Ferguson -- which has now abated -- this summer fits the pattern of the way "news" is covered during the summer. It became a circus, especially as celebrities like Anderson Cooper took up positions along West Florissant Avenue and declaimed their observations of the goings on among the Negroes. I bet until now few outside the St Louis metroplex knew there was a West Florissant Avenue, but now the whole wide world knows. The world knows about the McDonalds where journalists trying to do their jobs were harassed and arrested. They know about the Ferguson Market where Michael Brown is alleged to have stolen some cigars. They know about the QuickTrip that was the first to be looted and burned and which then became the Public Square for the community. They know about the Canfield Drive location where Michael Brown was shot dead by Darren Wilson and left in the street for hours while police with dogs and assault rifles kept the increasingly agitated crowd back.

All this is known all over the world because the incident of Michael Brown's killing became summertime news fodder and was promoted by news producers everywhere, and for a time, it even bumped the shark and missing white woman stories from the headlines.

But... Black men are killed every day in this country, a large percentage of them by police, and very, very few of those killings get the kind of coverage that Michael Brown did. During the height of the protests in Ferguson, for example, Kajieme Powell was shot -- executed -- on a street in St. Louis only a few miles away from Ferguson, shot dead while witnesses watched in horror and a young man in the neighborhood recorded the whole encounter on his video-phone. There was no such immediate and appalling evidence in the case of Michael Brown, despite the numerous individuals who witnessed what happened to him. The camera evidence all shows the aftermath, not the shooting itself. 

In Powell's case, there's no question about what took place: police drove up, got out of their car with guns drawn, Powell did not immediately comply with commands and was shot twelve times, six after he had fallen to the ground, and then his corpse was handcuffed to protect the officers from his black evil. 

It's all on video.

And though there have been protests in St. Louis over the shooting of Kajieme Powell, they haven't been met with overwhelming force and telegenic police violence like the protests in Ferguson, so they haven't received nearly the coverage of the events in Ferguson.

There were, after all, "riots" in Ferguson, just like the riots back in the '60s. In fact, one of the news stations in St. Louis was hyping the forty-ninth anniversary of the start of the Watts Riots just as things heated up in Ferguson, trying to insinuate that these events were somehow equivalent. 

They aren't of course, but what is similar is the nature of the police oppression that led members of these communities to rise in righteous wrath. 

Observers might say, "Why would they rise? It's such a nice suburban area!" Yes, well. So it may be -- whether Watts or Ferguson or wherever. The point isn't that it's a nice area compared to the inner city, the point is that the police behavior toward the residents is abominable and in the case of Michael Brown, is contemptuous, disrespectful and deadly. 

Any community facing such continual indignities is a potential tinderbox.

If anything, conditions were worse in Ferguson than they were in Watts -- or in many of the other communities that have risen in wrath against police misconduct, contempt and too often deadly disrespect. 

If there is an answer, it involves policing that does not destroy lives and communities but which fosters dignity, justice, community and peace.

In the case of Ferguson and many other police forces around the country, that kind of policing is impossible with the present force. That means the police forces of many, many cities must be disbanded altogether.

It happened in neighboring Jennings and it can happen in Ferguson. 

I was surprised, however, to learn how many police forces have been disbanded recently. 

Among them:

• Gaston, SC

Camden, NJ

Kemp, TX

San Carlos, CA

Millbrae, CA

Half Moon Bay, CA

Maywood, CA

Cornelius, OR

Hoschton, GA

Pewaukee, WI

Mora City, MN

Roanoke, IL

Kilbuck, PA

Highwood, IL(?)

Stillwater, NJ

Paintboro, PA

And apparently many more. Most -- with the startling exception of Camden -- are small towns or villages which had costly, and in many cases highly corrupt, police forces which did not serve and protect their communities but which exploited them for their own profit and gain. Communities simply ran out of money to support police forces of that kind and the councils voted them out of existence, usually contracting with the local sheriff's constabulary to patrol the town or village precincts.

Disbanding police forces is far more common than I would have thought. 

And the reasons for doing so are all too familiar: police forces become corrupt, brutal, murderous gangs exploiting and disrupting their communities, and the sane choice is to get rid of them.

So they do.

The way forward is clear...

On the Question of Privilege

Let's talk about Privilege. Who has it. Who doesn't. And what it means -- and doesn't mean.

Of course I've benefited all my life from White Privilege, though not nearly as much as some may assume from the looks of my pale visage and all. No, I didn't really fit very well into the harmonious conformity to the Principles of Whiteness from the time I was little, so the privilege I experienced and experience to this day is the privilege of a White Rebel, not to be discounted in any way, but hardly what you might expect.

Though I have been shot, it wasn't by the cops. Though the cops have on occasion drawn firearms against me, they have never fired, and in fact have mostly been polite or at least civil with me. I was incarcerated once for three days, but I wasn't beaten or abused in any particular way by the guards (the experience inside was awful just the same), and I wasn't subjected to more than minor harassment and intimidation by the other suspects and detainees.

The White Privilege I have benefited from is mostly that of most any White Guy who can go practically anywhere whenever he wants and not be subjected to suspicion, random search and seizure, official brutality and potential summary execution. I can expect to be treated with courtesy and respect in hotels, restaurants, retail establishments, public accommodations of all kinds, I can rent a car or buy travel tickets with ease. I generally receive only the most cursory examination of my ID when ID is required for some reason -- which for me is very rare. I could go on and on about all the other privileges that accompany being White.

But I was only made aware of my own White Privilege when it disappeared, which it has from time to time. I've been rebellious all my life, but in the 1960's I broke with convention enough to be regarded a Hippie, which at the time was enough to be banished from polite company. "Out of the car, Longhair!" is no joke, it happened. Being refused service for one's appearance, being harassed by everyone, not just by the cops. Refusing military service was even worse at the time.

Sherman Alexie On Colonization, ReColonization, DeColonization, and Being A Privileged Indian in These United States of God Damn

Sherman Alexie speaking on behalf of the MFA Creative Writing Program

We were up in Santa Fe last night -- well, up at the IAIA, which is not quite in Santa Fe but outside town up on a ridge with a spectacular view of the Jemez and the Sangres and the Ortiz Mountains and the pageantry of Mother Earth and Father Sky all around. There were storms gathering in the south. It would be quite an evening.

We were attending a fundraising event for the new MFA program in Creative Writing that the IAIA had launched last year with 32 students in attendance. The entertainment featured the stylings of Sherman Alexie, American Indian Writer of Stories and Books and Poems and Screenplays and Such, now officially a Professor of Higher Learning at one of the highest profile Indian Schools in the whole wide world, the school where every Indian Writer and nearly every Indian Artist he's ever met has gone to at one time or another. This is the top of the Indian Educational Pyramid. The very Pinnacle of Indian Achievement. His comment about being selected to serve as one of the faculty of the MFA Program at IAIA?

"It took you long enough."

And we were off to -- or maybe through -- the races in several senses of the word. This Privileged Indian, Sherman Alexie, was going to give a talk, not so much for the Anglos who'd paid the cost of admission (perhaps a hundred of us or so) but "for the Indians"  in the room, another fifty or so, mostly students in the MFA program for whom the paid attendees were providing the money for scholarships. (For the record, though one of the Chés is an Indian, we paid the price of admission, and will probably wind up paying a good deal more in the by and bye.)

Not every Indian is a rich Indian like Sherman Alexie. How rich is Sherman Alexie? He told us. He's so rich, his house in Seattle has got two garage doors, one for his wife and one for himself, and both open and close with these little electric gizmos they keep in their cars. Note, their cars.  They each have one. They're that rich! Ha! He uses and IPad when he speaks! He's that rich!

Of course, many non-Indians wouldn't see those things as emblems of wealth at all. These are things that are basic to a (White) middle-class lifestyle. No doubt you can live without them, but why would you if you didn't have to?

Oh.

The Boston Marathon Bombing and The Propaganda Machine

 

The coverage of the bombing at the Boston Marathon we saw yesterday was a bizarre mixture of news and propaganda, little of it useful to understanding, but almost all of it intended to shape and control opinions about what happened and who might have been responsible.

This was the American major news media on full display for what it really is: a propaganda machine first and foremost, not much different than the propaganda ministries and their "news" outlets in former totalitarian countries.

Their function is not news by any stretch of the imagination.

Of course, we've known this for many a long year, but most of the time -- except for FOX -- the news media manages to curb its enthusiasm for propagandizing and opinion molding sufficiently to maintain the fiction of the Fourth Estate, dispassionately reporting the happenings of the day.

The idea that the press and media actually exist to make us believe something, and furthermore to make us buy something (including our beliefs), and what they want us to believe is what their corporate owners -- and to some extent sponsors -- want us to believe (and buy) , solely for the benefit of those owners and sponsors, seems so contrary to everything we've been taught about the Free Press and Media in This Land of Liberty that it practically defies belief itself.

The touching naiveté of so many on the Interwebs -- if naiveté is what it really is -- about the nature and purpose of the news media in modern society is one of the hoariest traditions of the Internet. There always seems to be a cohort of media critics online who all say the same thing, no matter what their ideological persuasion might be: the press and media are supposed to be an independent watchdog on the operations of government. It is their job to investigate and report on mal- and misfeasance. They are supposed to stand up for the public interest -- and Liberty! -- in the face of government lies and oppression. It's their job! Why don't they do their job!?

 But of course we know that the news media really exists to serve the political and financial interests of its owners and sponsors -- and it has always been this way. There has never been a time when the press and media has not been actively promoting the pecuniary interests of those who hold the purse strings and pay the bills -- and for the most part, that's never been you and me. There have always been marginal media outlets that are more closely aligned with the People, but they can never become 'major mainstream' media for the simple fact that they don't have -- and are often actively denied -- the resources necessary. This is about as straightforward as it gets.

So yesterday, the coverage was bizarrely discordant as reporters on the scene attempted to simultaneously gather information and convey the company line about what happened.

 Interestingly, this caused an almost automatic response among some of the audience: what happened was clear enough as it seems to have been a near carbon copy of the Atlanta Olympic Park bombing of 1996, which was eventually found to be the work of a well-known right-wing domestic terrorist, Randall Terry Eric Rudolph [total brain fart, sorry], who -- apparently -- wanted the attention. Of course, like almost all domestic terrorist actions over the last several decades, the Olympic Park bombing was initially blamed on nefarious and unnamed "Arabs."

Thus, it is always a shock! to discover that the real terrorist is some white man with a grudge who wants attention.

In this case, it was pretty obvious, from the moment of the first explosion, that that's what this was likely to be. Yet I heard endless speculation about "al Qeda" and the supposed instructions in "al Qeda" sites on the internet about making and planting bombs at public events in the United States to cause the maximum disruption and destruction. Much later on came the reports of the Saudi man (in some reports injured) who had been tackled by a valiant citizen as he was running away from the scene who was turned over to the police.

Bit by bit -- without any evidence at all, and in spite of clear indications that the bombs were set by domestic rightists -- the media was building a case against "Arabs" even going so far as to broadcast pictures of the Boston skyline from across the Charles River to evoke the view of Lower Manhattan as the towers fell on September 11, 2001. There was much -- much -- chatter about how, "in this Post-9/11 World," security was of paramount importance, and how important it is to enhance security at public events such as the Boston Marathon.

Yet despite the fact that there were all these police and military personnel on scene as security for the event, someone, somehow, was able to plant at least two and possibly more bombs without detection. How is it that security was so lax? How could it be in this "Post-9/11 World?"

It's easy. White men are never subject to suspicion, are they? While surveillance is everywhere and is nearly 24/7, certain categories of individuals seem to be exempt from suspicion: they are the rich of any gender, ethnicity or persuasion, and white people in general, specifically relatively young white men.

And this goes directly to the nature of the current campaigns to arm "everybody" (except certain categories of people to be determined later) as "security" against "criminals."

It struck me as obvious yesterday that the bombings were part of the hostage taking process for the purpose of having the greatest public impact for very little expenditure, with the goal of terrifying the People in general into accepting without question yet another ratcheting of the security gears. This ratcheting has been going on pretty consistently since the OKC bombing, and the Arm "Everybody" (except...) crew has long been part of it. Any sort of rational gun control is held hostage to this "security" meme, and somehow it is always these scary brown people that White Americans need all this "security" to protect against.

The occasional bombing and mass slaughter are "the price we pay" not for Freedom, but for security against the Brown Hordes. Sometimes certain white guys get overenthusiastic. That's all. And also, too, there's the issue of Tyranny Which Must Be Fought.

As I think I've pointed out before, it's not really about fighting tyranny, it's about determining who shall impose tyranny.

There is no Liberty in this conception -- except the liberty to impose authority on others.

Of course it may turn out that yesterday's bombings had nothing to do with any of that, and I'm just spinning out a web of speculation and disbelief. It will never be entirely clear, in any case, because of the purpose and power of the Propaganda Machine to shape and control what people believe.

Even if it was what I think it was, an act by white men to get attention and to ultimately protect their privilege in the face of the Brown Horde by killing, maiming and scaring the crap out of random marathoners, the Propaganda Machine will ensure that the only version we are allowed to believe is one that protects the interests of the Highest of the Mighty against all comers, and that ensures that We, the People, accept an even greater level of surveillance and security.

Get ready for more and still more Security Theatre, more and more invasive surveillance, and no real progress at all on gun control.