Rs and Ds Unite in defense of the #War on Police

See, what the Police actually need is more power, more protection, and in May, many House Dems, including progressive D luminaries as Luis Gutierrez, Raul Grijalva and Keith Ellison handed it to them more in the Serve and Protect Act, passed by an overwhelming majority in May.

Catchy, eh, turning Protect and Serve inside out?  Come to think of it, the new way does reflect who the po-po actually are, and what they do and don’t do by and large.  Sure, there are likely still some Officer Friendly cops out and about, but many communities in the nation have learned: Never Call the Police, most especially not for help in a mental health crisis!  Far too many are so freaking chickenshit that they shoot, kill, call their union reps rather than ambulances, and sort it out later.  “I thought he had a gun!” (sorry it was a cell phone, a wallet, a comb), but ‘I really did fear for my life and the lives of others in the vicinity!”.

And that’s the legal standard in court: that simple lying justification almost always provides total immunity to the few cops who’ve been tried for their crimes.  Defense attorneys often have ‘expert witnesses’ to do ‘re-enactments’ of the crime for juries to demonstrate just ‘how little time’ a defendant had to decide to shoot or…be shot, even by a cell phone.  And that’s often even with citizen videos of the crimes showing how it went down, as with homeless schizophrenic James Boyd murdered in the hills above Albuquerque while the po-po laughed as they sicced police dogs on him, killed snuffed him with apparent glee.  And oh, so many, so many assassinated…while unarmed.  Street Preacher Pastor Marvin Booker went back to retrieve his only pair of shoes as he’d been summoned to a holding cell in Denver, and was murdered by cops…for his failure to follow orders immediately.

How many people have been shot in the back by some cop in the back while running away from them?  My media files are full of photos of them.  Or murdered while ‘in custody’?  Or shot for ‘failing to submit to a ‘peace officer’s’ orders immediately, whether or not asleep on the sidewalk, deaf, disabled, or with five ‘rhoided up po-po (okay, pigs)piled on top of them yelling contradictory orders, as with Kelly Thomas in Fullerton tased, beaten, and kicked to death?  Well, they simply beat him to death while he cried out for his mother.  Goddam.  But back to the Act:

From govtrack.us: the Summary of H.R. 5698: Protect and Serve Act of 2018:

‘A bill that recently passed the House with large bipartisan support would change the way our country punishes anybody who kills or attempts to kill a law enforcement or police officer.

Context:

128 law enforcement officers were killed in 2017. And 2018 is on pace to exceed 2017. While the trend during this century is down, both this year’s and last year’s numbers were higher than the modern low of 2013.

How might legislators try to bring these statistics down further?  What the bill does:

The Protect and Serve Act would categorize crimes against law enforcement as hate crimes, and significantly increase penalties accordingly.

The House bill makes any intentional attempt to physically harm a law enforcement officer a federal crime, and would imprison all offenders for a maximum of 10 years. That increases to life in prison if the officer is killed.

The Senate version goes a step further, by classifying such [all] attacks against law enforcement not just as a federal crime but as a hate crime. However, the prison sentences would still be the same.

Introduced on May 8, 2015, on May 16, the House passed the bill overwhelmingly 382-35, (10 members not voting)

Of the 35 Nays, 11 were Rs, 24 were Ds. (govtrack again, ‘votes’ and ‘Statistically Notable votes’)

What opponents say

While the House vote enjoyed large bipartisan majorities, some holdouts existed on both the right and the left.

“First, police already have substantial protections under federal and state law, rendering this bill superfluous,” wrote a letter signed by several dozen organizations across the ideological spectrum, from the ACLU and NAACP to the National Council of Churches. “Second, this bill signals that there is a ‘war on police,’ which is not only untrue, but an unhelpful and dangerous narrative to uplift.”

“And finally, bills similar to Protect and Serve that have been introduced in states around the country — so called ‘Blue Lives Matter’ bills — appear to be a political response to the growing national movement for police accountability in the face of continued killings and assaults of unarmed African Americans,” the letter continued. “Therefore, this bill is divisive and will have a negative impact on the relationship between law enforcement and the communities they serve.”

The letter (pdf) referenced above also says:

‘Collectively, these policy efforts, which have sprung up amid the national call for police accountability, appear to be a political response to the powerful activism of grassroots movements that demand fair and constitutional policing. Rather than focusing on policies that address issues of police excessive force, biased policing, and other police practices that have failed these communities, the Protect and Serve Act’s aim is to further criminalize. This bill will be received as yet another attack on these communities and threatens to exacerbate what is already a discriminatory system of mass incarceration in this country. Continuing to undermine police-community relations in this manner sows seeds of division, which ultimately threatens public safety and undermines the work of law enforcement.’

It’s hard to even begin to address this loaded buzzphrase: “intentional attempt to physically harm”, isn’t it?  Of course any cop hurt would claim ‘intentionality’, even in ‘no-knock’ SWAT raids, or when a protestor struggles to get out of a cop’s nasty death grip as with Cecily McMillan, grabbed by her breasts Occupying Zucotti Park, convicted later of felony second-degree assault) or push them away while being choked to death as with asthmatic Eric (‘I can’t breathe’) Garner.  How many times have those filming those events been arrested instead (Walter Scott, Eric Garner)?  Or had their cameras smashed while recording at protests as with Rebelutionary Z, Basem Masri, Unicorn Riot and many others?

I haven’t found aggregate figures on the number of police working to ‘serve and protect’ us, but the InJustice Dept. says that there are 17,000 law enforcement entities across the United States; Wikipedia makes some stabs the number, but nothing after 2012. Let’s just say: a hella lot of them, zo…not that we’re supposed to use percentages, but the fact is, ‘policing’ is one of the safest jobs statistically.

On the other hand, how many citizens have been Killed by the Po-po?

The Counted: Findings and impact : A Guardian investigation revealed the true number of people killed by law enforcement, told the stories of who they were, and established the trends in how they died. The US government… responded, well, kinda/sorta (hint: the Justice Department, the Bureau of Justice Statistics), which is why the Guardian…stopped counting

The site also used to feature an interactive chart, but it’s disappeared; odd-bodkins.

KilledbyPolice.net began tracking corporate new accounts of citizen killings by police in May of 2013 with links to news stories.  In 2017 they’d recorded 1194, but oddly, there are no entries for 2018.  My guess is the site owner hadn’t gotten enough donations to keep it going.

Ricardo Levins Morales, June 30, 2018, writes:

“When there’s no video to contradict it, even the most far-fetched police narrative about fearing for their lives is treated as credible. In the police world, however, lying – by falsifying (or not filing) incident reports, planting, tampering with or destroying evidence and in perjured court testimony – is a routine practice. This bill – which should be called the “Do Not Resist Act” – serves notice on overpoliced communities that anything short of complete obedience could net you many years in prison on the whim of a cop (and even total submission cannot guarantee your safety).

Most significantly, H.R.5698 bolsters the plea-bargain-to-prison pipeline – the express lane of mass incarceration. Over 90% of state and federal “convictions” are obtained through plea bargains, not trials. Under the system, a defendant pleads guilty of an offense to avoid the prospect of a longer sentence should they lose in court.”

Most poor people can’t afford attorneys at all, and public defenders are insanely over-worked, so that percentage of plea bargains would be due to that as well.  Morales continues:

“Approximately $105 billion are poured into police departments each year. Another $90-120 billion (the lower estimates don’t account for court costs) are spent to imprison more than two million inmates and manage close to five million people on probation or parole. These vast sums are being used, in effect, to punish people for having needs. What if they were invested instead in meeting those needs? The question itself is highly destabilizing to a system devoted to the concentration wealth in ever-fewer hands, not expanding access to it.

The only viable solution is its complete demolition and its replacement with tested and new forms of mutual aid, community empowerment and conflict resolution.

This perspective – known as police abolition – is experiencing a rapid transformation from utopian fantasy to urgent necessity. The courage to give it voice will not come from the offices of mayors, the halls of Congress or the wishful thinking of reform-minded police chiefs, invested as they all are in the legitimacy of the status quo. It is emerging, instead, from multiple locations in the educational, social service, community and street protest arenas, with its epicenter in the very communities that police occupation, surveillance and harassment are intended to immobilize. Police abolition is a piece of the unfinished business of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman’s generation. It’s time to wrap it up.”

His essay is a great polemical analysis, you just might want to read it all when you have time.

The overwhelming passage of this law comes during time of increasing worker protests, and increased ICE raids, including this:

‘Military-style immigration raids: Coming to a workplace near you’ wsws.org, July 26

The Trump administration is placing thousands of workplaces across the United States under police surveillance and is drastically expanding plans for military-style raids to arrest and deport immigrant workers.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced Tuesday that it conducted 984 workplace arrests of immigrants over the nine months from October 2017 to July 2018, nearly six times more than over the preceding 12 months, during which time the government dragged 172 people off their jobsites for deportation.

ICE also announced it has served 5,200 businesses with audit notices so far this year, including an astounding 2,738 last week alone, in what it called the “second phase” of the operation. This means federal agents are presently scouring payroll lists and checking the citizenship status of tens or hundreds of thousands of workers. ICE states that from October 2017 through July 2018, it has “opened 6,093 worksite investigations” compared to 1,716 in the preceding fiscal year.

If the government conducts raids at even a small fraction of these facilities, the total number of immigrant workers arrested will be in the tens of thousands. Raids like those conducted in Sandusky and Salem, Ohio in June give a sense of what is to come. During these SWAT-style assaults, hundreds of immigration officials with attack dogs, helicopters and assault rifles swept into a plant nursery and a meatpacking plant, arresting roughly 300 workers while their US-born coworkers shouted denunciations at the agents.”

“…fearing the prospect of social opposition to the hyper-exploitation of the working class, the superrich are establishing a police-military infrastructure to spy on and physically crush the working class.”

Back to the Senate version of Protect and Serve, Orin Hatch, cosponsor Heidi Heitkamp’s companion bill (S. 2794) was also introduced in early May hasn’t had much ‘action’, only read twice and submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee so far, the 19 members are listed at the link.

What’s the hold-up on bringing it to a floor vote?  Low whip count, but that doesn’t track, does it?  You’ll likely see the reasons more clearly than I do in my bafflement.  Do you reckon that Ocasio2018 on Twitter can shame them into a floor vote?

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez  “The GOP is: – weak on fighting for working class Americans – weak on crime – weak on equal rights – weak on national security – weak on rejecting racism – weak on moral courage – weak on family values. So yeah, I’d say this a representative choice of their values.”

(cross-posted from Café Babylon)

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fakenews's picture

grant them immunity for anything they might do, give all the high powered automatic arms and ammunition they can carry, give em' permission to stop and search everyone, let them create warrants on the spot and then put them on a turret spewing machine gun fire through out the neighborhood in random directions, take credit for killing everyone with a recording device, claim their citations for bravery, retire on our dime and move out to a nice retirement village in Florida. But for goodness sakes don't give them any special rights.

Peace
FN

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"Democracy is technique and the ability of power not to be understood as oppressor. Capitalism is the boss and democracy is its spokesperson." Peace - FN

wendy davis's picture

@fakenews

what a #fakeWaronPolice it is. one wouldn't be faulted for thinking it came from the onion.

any thought about why the senate version hasn't gone to a floor vote? even senators wouldn't want to be seen as not defending the po-po.

warrants? we don't need no fucking warrants!

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The Aspie Corner's picture

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Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.

Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.

wendy davis's picture

@The Aspie Corner

fema camps for the rabble class dissidents and state security fascism, no? it can't hold in this fashion forever, but of course we're forced to think of the various iterations of construct: 'first they came for ___.'

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magiamma's picture

Say her name...

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Stop Climate Change Silence - Start the Conversation

Hot Air Website, Twitter, Facebook

wendy davis's picture

@magiamma

and hearing them name sandra bland was certainly one of the times. her death in custody was one of the worst: vibrant, beautiful woman on her way to start her dream job. stopped by the po-lice, thrown in the clink...and she hung herself? wasn't the story 'with plastic trash bags'? no no no no no... she had everything to live for.

but then i cried again for a lot of them, marvin booker, who'd chanted MLK's words out in the street; a face like an angel, full of inner light whose smile could light up a room.

freddie gray, taken for a rough ride...so rough that his cervical spinal cord was sliced. only thing he was 'guilty' of was running away from 'law enforcement officers'. fuck the police.

sandra bland: say her name. twelve-year-old tamir rice: killed up close for holding a toy gun in a park (cleveland, iirc). a baby. say his name. scream his name to the heavens! they never had to skid their stupid car to a stop right beside him save for: hubris, and because they could.

too many, too many. we weep, they rest in power, their kin grieve forever. civil awards? who cares, really? blood money.

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WaterLily's picture

@wendy davis I weep with you. And despair over how to change it.

#SayHerName
#SandraBland
#TravonMartin
#MichaelBrown
#EricGarner
#TamirRice

And on. And on. And on.

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wendy davis's picture

@WaterLily

after i'd read your 'despair over how to change it', i spent a long time thinking about the history of the post-black panther anti-police state movements. as far as i know, abq was one of the first, and since then, i dunno how many PDs have been under federal consent decree 'watchdogs' to little avail for citizen killing, stop-and-frisk, broken windows policing (arrest for the small things to prevent the large), and took a spin thru the histories and recycling city to city of some of the most notorious police chiefs:

billy bratton, ray kelly, bernie kerik, daryl gates, howard johnson (HoJo, oakland) and where they are now. soooo depressing my stomach hurts. i'll go have a break and some brekkie, if i have anything to add (vent, really), i'll say more in a bit.

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Big Al's picture

on crime and weak on national security. Wow. That is fucking hilarious, not just because she's saying that, but because the progressives are holding her up as some kind of new age hero for the progressive movement. Unreal.
I'd like to see some defense of that from her many fans on this blog. Talk about cognitive dissonance.

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wendy davis's picture

@Big Al

step by step she demonstrates where her loyalties actually lie. there are other funny tweets, but give this diary...it fit so perfectly i couldn't not use it. but yeah, i reckoned her defenders won't like this diary for that reason.

'only the true left can beat trump', rape-jokey slavoj zizek on RT. 'are they afraid of ocasio2018 as the 'red tide', somebody gotta a laugh track ready?

my favorite tankie on twitter outs her a lot, partially because she and cynthia nixon are actually destroying the socialist brand. but yanno: baby steps. at least the word is gaining traction.

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Amanda Matthews's picture

@Big Al

and give my opinion on her and that is that she’s another ringer like The Empty Suit was.

Jeeze, The older I get, the more radical I get. Of course, as I get older our political system’s true colors become more obvious and I’ve become more realistic. The idea that anyone anywhere in this country still thinks we live in a ‘Democracy’
tells you a lot about that person, and it’s not exactly flattering.

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

WaterLily's picture

@Amanda Matthews

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wendy davis's picture

@Big Al

read this entire twitter thread; i guarantee it'll flip the zoris right off your feet.

this is the #mcResisstance Occupying lafayette park. just a few subtweets:

"OccupyLafayettePark protest MC wishes the FBI a happy 110th birthday. Protesters also repeatedly chanted praise of the Secret Service, which is, uh, odd considering their leader's goal is to oust Trump like Yanukovych."

"OccupyLafayettePark park protesters chant "Rachel Maddow!"

"Parkhomenko derives thrill "from the hunt" of "the bad guy," Rob Baechtel, another DC reserve officer, said. Parkhomenko is issued a gun & has made 90+ arrests. Evidently, the irony of a volunteer police officer organizing an "occupy" protest is lost on the demonstrators."

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Big Al's picture

@wendy davis by the democratic party, if it wasn't right from the beginning.
"Rachel Maddow"? You got to be kidding me.
Well, there's a big problem with this that many people aren't wanting to confront relative to people "working together". I hear that all the time on this blog and others how we have to put aside our differences and work together for a common goal. How are the radicals supposed to do that when these people and their political party are supporting imperialism, wall street, the police state, and the military industrial complex? It really is no different than trying to work with the republican party.

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wendy davis's picture

@Big Al

street, not main street, student and other debt, and those pesky kids headed to zucotti park in what, oct 2011? it wasn't dem -affiliated.

now now eleanor goldfield (kinda meh, imo) in newsletters seems to have chosen herself as the new mantle for OWS, much as self-chosen potty-mouth lee camp had selected himself as the comedian of the movement and is trying to grow up (RT carries his stuff here and there).

to me this sort of Occupying looks very much like ‘Tweeting While the World Burns or: Elites Against the XL Pipeline’ at the white house (while obomba was out of the house, hilariously), feb. 2013, wendydavis, then, my.firedoglake, now shadowproof

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smiley7's picture

@wendy davis
placing blame and intellectual rectitude makes no sense.

Joining together for the greater good does.

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wendy davis's picture

@smiley7

now, as there have been in the past. but to me, in the end it depends what the actions are lauding, gate-keeping in lieu of more constructive, even radical protests. did you happen to have clicked through to the 'elites tweet' essay at the link? it was phony as a three-dollar bill, smiley. the elites came to do their photo ops, get arrested with other elites, check shit of their 'bucket lists', get 'caught an released for hundred bucks, all a few days before the scheduled event.

they used obomba's own logo on their stupid protest signs, *and* copyrighted all the photos: 'buy some for your christmas cards!' not to mention that 350.org is funded by the rockefeller foundation for a reason. i won't bother you the many other grievances i have with mcKibben, et.al.

now if you believe that the occupy lafayette park in the tweet i'd highlighted, all russia-gate, hooray fbi and rachel maddow, and you believe it's 'for the greater good', that's fine with me. when is it blame and intellectual rectitude rather than calling bullshit on it as part of the problem, not part of the solution...from where i sit.

but i will say that i see the credo you've brought presented here often. but who decides what the 'greater good' is, or the truth of 'each step that gets us closer to where we want to be'...isn't that 'place' naturally widely divergent depending on one's social, economic, and justice politics?

thanks for weighing in.

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Amanda Matthews's picture

@smiley7

Enemy Of The Good”?

And who decides what the ‘commom good’ is?

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

@Big Al
national security?

Think about it for a moment.

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

Big Al's picture

@UntimelyRippd Come on. I don't think Ocasio-Cortez even knows what national security means. To say either party is weak on supporting imperialism, which is really what national security is, is ridiculous, as is support for the fascist police state we now enjoy.

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@Big Al
i'm not going to make the case for her, or do the research to figure out what she means when she says these things.

For my part, I will happily argue that the Republicans are weak on both national security and crime -- because the first and most important element in any policy that hopes to provide real national security and provide real protection against crime is justice. The biggest threats to our national security are direct and predictable outcomes of our imperialism. The biggest property crimes are the white collar ones, while the biggest driver of the kind of crime that gets Trumpalistas frothing is socioeconomic injustice here at home.

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

are the cops gonna start living in enclaves now as well? I'm pretty sure I Don't want to live in a neighborhood with a person that can just shoot me, lie about it, and go on living there next to what's left of my Family.
I'm sure I'm not the only one that would object. 'course, that would just get me shot Quicker, I suppose.

#We B F@cked

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Ya got to be a Spirit, cain't be no Ghost. . .

Explain Bldg #7. . . still waiting. . .

If you’ve ever wondered whether you would have complied in 1930’s Germany,
Now you know. . .
sign at protest march

wendy davis's picture

@Tall Bald and Ugly

so many cops are terrified of the projects they won't go in, so the people provide their own security, such as it is. an exception was NYPD peter liang who braved the pitch black stairway in a housing project in brooklyn, 'accidentally shot' akai gurley to death, called his union rep either instead of, or before he called an ambulance.

convicted, but: "Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Danny Chun sentenced Peter Liang to five years of probation and 800 hours community service, after downgrading his manslaughter conviction to criminally negligent homicide."

yep, always submit is the message most kids in the inner city learn early, and "be polite".
chris rock did some satire on it, but today...it don't seem all that funny.

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lotlizard's picture

@wendy davis  
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uj0mtxXEGE8]

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wendy davis's picture

@lotlizard

i reckon i'd have to say (if you have to have a passenger) "get a white friend'.
long ago, our black/azteca son switched high schools as he'd gotten so fooking tired of the local school's racist rubbish. one of our friends in music was one of the two counselors there, and he sent that video to our son. it really helped him see a bit of humor in all of it, although when he was harassed by store security and some apparently bored po-po on the highway near the town where he went to college...not so much.

but they took him into the PD for questioning based on 'the driver of a car like his was wanted in NM for a nasty crime. they kept him shackled and chained to a table all night long, not permitted a pee break, and badgered the hell out of him, the fuckers. i went ballistic of course when he told us, but in the end he was right: if we preferred charges against them, he was the one who'd live w/ the consequences over his next two years in school, and nothing would happen to those 'boys will be boys' just havin' a bit o' fun at the expense of the darkie.

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Since Trump came into office, over and over again, democrats have protected the ruling classes. Any popular and succesful resistance has been done by movements which establishment democrats have attempted to co-opt. And co-opt for political gain, or as Pelosi did dearil DREAMERS.

And now support for this trash law, among others, which the democrats have fully embraced.

I suspect the same dynamics that happened with depressed voter turnout in 2016 will happen again, with the democrats not able to take control of the House.

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wendy davis's picture

@MrWebster

yes, the democrat party is where social movements go to die, mr webster. on the other hand, i was disgusted reading that Code Pink has set up a gofundme account to finance their taking a giant trump balloon with him in diapers to their oppo 'peace march' on the day of trump's grand military parade.

surreal. but yes, at the café i have a category: dems as status quo gatekeepers. unless someone blogs it here first, by next diary will be a similar D/R vote with even more hideous implications.

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detroitmechworks's picture

Which I'm certain a Police Officer could interpret as being a threat...
Verbal Attacks? Can you go to jail for "Fucking Pig" or the like because it is now Hate Speech against a powerless group?

I'm going to follow this as far as I have to. Does this mean that Police must be served no matter what? Already far too many businesses I know give the pigs free food. Does that mean that NOT giving a Pig a discount is discrimination?

What if you are assaulted by a pig? Don't answer that, we already know the answer which is that Pigs NEVER assault people, and it's always the fault of the perp. Therefore if theoretically a Pig wanted, he could assault anyone he wanted, and reporting it would be a hate crime since it would be libel against a group which is protected.

And I didn't even think HARD for these abuses coming soon to a precinct near you.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBBpMpJAwjQ]

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I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

wendy davis's picture

@detroitmechworks

"the Protect and Serve Act would categorize crimes against law enforcement as hate crimes, but one would hope "intentionally cause physical harm to a LEO would be more to the point, but we can't say, can we?

of course, as in the OP, defense of oneself or others during protests has never been a defense, but hate speech? oh lordie, i hope not. served more free food? i doubt it, but then there've been any number of laugh tracks over bernie sanders saying that of course even trumpistas should be served, and served without folks interrupting their meals.

so...protests: up for grabs. and some po-po, maybe most, do earn the designation 'pigs'. and fuck the police. disarm them all.

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wendy davis's picture

and let this be my sign-off lullaby (of a sort) it will stand for both for sean bell and amadou diallo, murdered in similar fashions: american skin (the police walked out of the Garden and bruce took a lot of heat for it:

Is it a gun, is it a knife
Is it a wallet, this is your life

(Is it in your heart, is it in your eyes...)

It ain't no secret
No secret my friend
You can get killed just for living in your American skin...

[video:https://youtu.be/aQMqWAiWPMs]

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WaterLily's picture

@wendy davis @wendy davis You know, Bruce may not be perfect. He's making a metric shit-ton of money with his whole Springsteen on Broadway thing, nevermind everything else. But he has always figured out a way to articulate society's ills, and I always thought that if this song got the cops' panties in a bunch, then he was doing something right.

[Edited to add: I think my original reaction of "damn" was because Clarence is in this video, and I'm still not over his loss].

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wendy davis's picture

@WaterLily

what he can express with his sax! but bruce sure said it right on this one, you could feel his pain, which art of all kinds can express far more than the millions of words written about events, trends, zeitgeists...

while i had it on again just now, mr wd was watching the video on RT of the release of ahed taminini who was just just released from 8 months in an israeli jail for roughin' up some IDF soldiers.

the juxtaposition simply melted him, and he wept, bless his heart.

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wendy davis's picture

@WaterLily

and big al had said that ticket prices for his shows are sky-high, but i like the old uns, and just fancy: this performance was in oct. 2009. but sure, is stock-in-trade was telling stories from the lower middle class...or even lower.

hope you're kickin' musical ass in the next world, clarence, my man.

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