The Shooting Gallery: Police Violence MEGATHREAD

[grumbler]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGRlrMu37lc

Two overweight white people point their weapons at demonstrators in front of the (Democratic) mayor's mansion.

The mayor is catching shit for publicizing names and addresses of people who called for defunding the police.

Obviously they are white, because the police haven't murdered them yet.  If they'd been black, they'd be in the morgue.

They still should have been arrested for brandishing.  You can't point a gun at people not on your property.  But the cops probably just wanted them to go ahead and shoot.

[Zoupa]

Like many of you, I'm absolutely confounded by this bizarre removing of TV shows from netflix and youtubers cancelling themselves and so on. Where on earth is this coming from? Mighty Boosh is off netflix because of The Spirit of Jazz? Bizzarre.

I'm all about taking down statues of people that attacked the United States, inside the United States, especially as they were determined to own other Americans, but how that's transmutated into this curious performance on streaming services and social media I have no clue. Jenna Marbles has cancelled herself? What?

The white man will try to satisfy us with symbolic victories rather than economic equity and real justice.

[viper37]

Is brand name butter worth shelling out the extra pennies for?

No.

[Admiral Yi]

The white man will try to satisfy us with symbolic victories rather than economic equity and real justice.

[/quote]

What part of "stop killing us" did you read as economic equity?

You guys want to have it both ways.

[The Larch]

The white man will try to satisfy us with symbolic victories rather than economic equity and real justice.

What part of "stop killing us" did you read as economic equity?

You guys want to have it both ways.

It's a Malcolm X quote.

[Sheilbh]

What part of "stop killing us" did you read as economic equity?

You guys want to have it both ways.

Not really, my point is there's no protests or even individual protesters calling for TV channels to scrub Golden Girls - literally zero. I think it's fair to say there is an economic part of these protests not least at brands trying to elbow their way in.

All I'd like them to do is pay good wages, hire and promote people without discrimination and have a decent benefits and retirement package (or as Norm Kirk put it most people don't want much, they just want "someone to love, somewhere to live, somewhere to work and something to hope for"). Corporations hear that and roll out their rainbow coloured logo, announce they support BLM and get rid of the episode of Golden Girls were they wore face masks.

[viper37]

The white man will try to satisfy us with symbolic victories rather than economic equity and real justice.

Stop writing your outrage to these big corporations and maybe they'll stop removing their old shows.

Lessons in activism 101: just like war, concentrate on your objectives, avoid spreading your lines too thin.

[Tonitrus]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGRlrMu37lc

Two overweight white people point their weapons at demonstrators in front of the (Democratic) mayor's mansion.

The mayor is catching shit for publicizing names and addresses of people who called for defunding the police.

Obviously they are white, because the police haven't murdered them yet.  If they'd been black, they'd be in the morgue.

They still should have been arrested for brandishing.  You can't point a gun at people not on your property.  But the cops probably just wanted them to go ahead and shoot.

The news I have seen indicates that it was their property (at least, a private street/neighborhood that the protestors were cutting through).

[fromtia]

Obviously they are white, because the police haven't murdered them yet.  If they'd been black, they'd be in the morgue.

They still should have been arrested for brandishing.  You can't point a gun at people not on your property.  But the cops probably just wanted them to go ahead and shoot.

They are also pretty well off, unless they are house sitting for their rich uncle. Dude, the size of that place...

[FunkMonk]

They look like they've never held a firearm in their lives 

[Admiral Yi]

Not really, my point is there's no protests or even individual protesters calling for TV channels to scrub Golden Girls - literally zero. I think it's fair to say there is an economic part of these protests not least at brands trying to elbow their way in.

You keep repeating this as if it's a killer line.  As we've discussed at length before, BLM, or protesters in general, have not presented policy papers with detailed requests/demands.  You've all argued that it's up to policy makers, or in this case, companies, to try to come up with policies that will  meet the generalized demands.  That's what this network is trying to do, eliminate what some could perceive as racially insensitive.

No where on a list of demands did it say change all state flags that include the Confederate battle flag, ban Confederate flags at NASCAR, or remove all statues of Confederates, but I don't see you mocking those actions.

To pre-empt your expected reply, yes, those are long standing grievances, but by exactly the same token so is black face.

[Admiral Yi]

The news I have seen indicates that it was their property (at least, a private street/neighborhood that the protestors were cutting through).

I'm the victim of a bad Bloomberg headline.

"Missouri Couple Points Guns at Protesters Outside Home of St. Louis Mayor"

[grumbler]

The news I have seen indicates that it was their property (at least, a private street/neighborhood that the protestors were cutting through).

I'm the victim of a bad Bloomberg headline.

"Missouri Couple Points Guns at Protesters Outside Home of St. Louis Mayor"

The mayor's home was in the neighborhood.  Private roads, though, are not private property,* they are just privately maintained


*Exception:  some 'roads' are just driveways and on only one person's property, not on an easement.  They are entirely private property, and aren't formally roads at all, just driveways.  But that wasn't the case here.

[Zoupa]

The white man will try to satisfy us with symbolic victories rather than economic equity and real justice.

What part of "stop killing us" did you read as economic equity?

You guys want to have it both ways.
[/quote]

Stop killing us would be in the real justice part of the quote. Or really just having a shred of decency/compassion.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure the protesters' main demand is police reform, not golden girls episodes.

[Sheilbh]

You keep repeating this as if it's a killer line.  As we've discussed at length before, BLM, or protesters in general, have not presented policy papers with detailed requests/demands.  You've all argued that it's up to policy makers, or in this case, companies, to try to come up with policies that will  meet the generalized demands.  That's what this network is trying to do, eliminate what some could perceive as racially insensitive.

That wasn't my point about policy makers. I would see this as a classic example of virtue signalling.

No where on a list of demands did it say change all state flags that include the Confederate battle flag, ban Confederate flags at NASCAR, or remove all statues of Confederates, but I don't see you mocking those actions.

No. But I query the extent they would have happened without Bristol. I think the statues debate after Charlottesville was really annoying because it distracted from the bigger issue. I think in the UK those protests have largely been subsumed into a dispute about culture, which is a shame because I think BLM has less traction because fewer people die because of the police here. But I think there was the potential for a more focused campaigns on - the difference in fatality for BAME communities in the covid crisis, Grenfell etc. There are big issues to fix.

I've been impressed in the US that the protesters are actually being fairly disciplined and keeping the pressure up on

To pre-empt your expected reply, yes, those are long standing grievances, but by exactly the same token so is black face.

Yeah. So I think the long standing grievance is a fair point, but I also think there's a difference between the culture of our public space and sort of cultural artifacts. You know a text or a film or a TV series is created in a particular moment from a particular society and its then read by people then and people now, and the way we read it may change. But ultimately it's always a product of the moment it was created even if we receive it in a different way.

The culture of our public space is something we are always creating - it's always in the present, that's why my personal preference with statues would be to use art as a way to contest the public space you know almost to humiliate the men on pedestals. So those examples don't tell us what people in the 1970s thought - they tell us now who is welcome at an event, what is the symbol of the state, who are the heroes on street signs and pedestals. It's present tense.

Leaving aside Golden Girls - when they were in face masks! - I see a ot of American activists being annoyed at this stuff for distracting and also especially when NBC removed blackface episodes from 30 Rock an attempt to rewrite or exonerate themselves. And I think how we approach this will probably shift over time. So in the UK there was a furore of a TV station removing an episode of Fawlty Towers - it turns out many people (me included) had never actually seen the original episode which included a really strong rant by the Colonel which had basically been cut from every broadcast since the 1980s. Similarly there were loads of really racist British comedies in the 1970s which have been memory holed in part, because they're racist but in large part because they're bad - they haven't held up.

I think over time 90% of the racist cultural products will disappear not necessarily because they're racist, but because they're bad. The ones that remain will, like Birth of a Nation, be heavily caveated, trigger warned and explained. You know, Faulkner will last - I would be astonished if anyone is reading Gone with the Wind in 50 years time. And, much as I love 30 Rock, it probably shouldn't be allowed to pretend that it didn't make a blackface episode in the last 20 years when that was already unacceptable. It should probably just have a warning at the start of the episode. But as I say my bigger point is I've not really seen anyone in the protests focusing on these cultural issues - I think because they learned from Charlottesville, I think the focus in the US has been very impressive.