Interrupting the 1 percent's 5 Billion Dollar Spectacle - some thoughts about #BLM and progressives

As the brewhaha about #BLM interrupting Bernie, Hillary and now even Jeb has been going on, I've been thinking about #BLM's tactics and considering that it is time for the progressive movement broadly to step up its game.

#BLM has garnered a great deal of very necessary attention and I think that they are on to something. Elections are a huge media spectacle and by playing the democracy game by an altered set of rules, they have managed to inject issues of great urgency into the narrative of the periodic 5 billion dollar spectacle of our 1% dominated managed democracy. These urgent issues are generally utterly ignored by the media and the bipartisan candidates that are suddenly grappling with them, and they are certainly not discussed in the language that the oppressed use to describe their circumstances.

#BLM has made a broader public aware of the emergency in their community and is demanding that those that are vying for the presidency articulate credible plans to deal with it. Given the nature of the emergency and the fact that the holder of the office of President has a constitutional obligation to see to it that the laws are executed faithfully - this is not an unreasonable demand.

There is more than one emergency

At the other end of the pipeline that imports military equipment, training and tactics into communities of color is the imperial force that uses those things first. They are creating emergencies of their own, killing untold numbers of innocent civilians, displacing millions from their destroyed homes and unleashing brutal forces that throw entire nations into ungovernable chaos.

Needless to say, the same government that directs the used weapons and tactics of mass destruction into communities of color at home where a person of color is killed every 28 hours - is the government that is creating dire emergencies mostly for people of color around the globe.

The chief executive of this government carries on wars without the authorization of congress as required by the constitution. The congress does not appear to have the will to assert its constitutional power to perserve, protect and defend the constitution.

The chief executive of this government has arrogated unto himself the power to kill individuals at his own instance, becoming judge, jury and executioner. This has resulted in the cold-blooded, remorseless murder of at least one American teenager - because he had the nerve to be born to the wrong parents. While the loss of one American teenager is tragic, he is but one of thousands of innocent people slaughtered by the imperial drones.

The chief executive wistfully remarks that he is surprisingly good at killing people.

The chief executive is also surprisingly adept at torturing people who are held indefinitely without charge in a stinking gulag. Despite his protestations that he intends to close the gulag, he has managed to maintain its existence for the 7 years thus far of his presidency. Despite the powers vested in him as the commander-in-chief of the military, he has allowed the military to disobey his direct orders to release a prisoner of the gulag. This demonstrates that either he had no real intention of causing the release of the prisoner and is hiding behind a bureaucracy, or, that the military has quietly taken charge of some functions of government removing the people's elected officials from the top of the chain of command.

Along with indicating a crisis of democracy at home, these are surely emergencies which need urgent attention as people are dying in great numbers. Surely we must pay attention to these actions of our government despite the fact that the victims are not Americans.

Meanwhile, here in America there are other dire community emergencies. Poverty and lack of access to health care are killing people and shortening their lives. Environmental degradation allowed by a government of the 1% hellbent on deregulating industry are killing people and shortening lives. Speaking of which, the government of the 1% refuses to meaningfully address climate change (in actions rather than lip service.) This slow-moving emergency threatens to extinguish the ability of the planet to host much of the life including human life.

Surely these other emergencies are worthy causes to propel activists to interrupt the flow of the election spectacle.

The progressive movement as a whole should support and participate in interrupting candidates for high office and forcing them to respond to these emergencies with realistic, practical policy rather than allow them to blather on, avoiding these critical, oft-ignored issues. Further, the movement should have a plan B to guide their actions should the candidates refuse to respond appropriately. [More on that later.]

Racism and liberal movements

I intend to digress here before I get to the next point. Take my word for it that I have a point in mind.

Were you aware that Elizabeth Cady Stanton, famous feminist women's suffragist said horrible racist things?

…“American women of wealth, education, virtue and refinement, if you do not wish the lower orders of Chinese, Africans, Germans and Irish, with their low ideas of womanhood, to make laws for you and your daughters … awake to the danger of your present position and demand that woman, too, shall be represented in the government!”

-- Elizabeth Cady Stanton

“What words can express her [the white woman’s] humiliation when, at the close of this long conflict, the government which she had served so faithfully held her unworthy of a voice in its councils, while it recognized as the political superiors of all the noble women of the nation the negro men just emerged from slavery, and not only totally illiterate, but also densely ignorant of every public question.”

-- Susan B. Anthony

During the civil war suffragists like Stanton and Anthony were active abolitionists and loyally supported the Republican party (which was in that time the liberal party), calling for the emancipation and enfranchisement of those held in bondage along with, of course, enfranchisement for women. After the war, the expectation of suffragists was that the Republican party would deliver universal enfranchisement. - Needless to say, things didn't go as hoped as the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments attest.

Stanton (and other suffragists) considered the Republican party's failure to deliver the franchise to women a great betrayal. Stanton also felt betrayed by the abolitionists lack of solidarity when they took the politically expedient route and supported enfranchisement for black men alone.

Frederick Douglass explained, that he was sympathetic to the rights of women, but for black men, this was an emergency:

“I champion the right of the negro to vote. It is with us a matter of life and death, and therefore can not be postponed. I have always championed women’s right to vote; but it will be seen that the present claim for the negro is one of the most urgent necessity. The assertion of the right of women to vote meets nothing but ridicule; there is no deep seated malignity in the hearts of the people against her; but name the right of the negro to vote, all hell is turned loose and the Ku-Klux and Regulators hunt and slay the unoffending black man. The government of this country loves women. They are the sisters, mothers, wives and daughters of our rulers; but the negro is loathed....The negro needs suffrage to protect his life and property, and to answer him respect and education. He needs it for the safety of reconstruction and the salvation of the Union; for is own elevation from the position of a drudge to that of an influential member of society.”

Abolitionists took up a popular rhetorical device of the time, that this was, "the Negro's hour." The response was created by Republican Charles Sumner in senatorial debate with a Democrat, Senator Edgar Cowan. Cowan asked Sumner to justify giving the franchise to negroes but not to women:

This gauntlet thrown down to the Republican leaders brought out a paradoxìcal debate, many supporters of woman suffrage stoutly opposing the amendment, and many opponents defending it. Former suffragists not only acknowledged the justice of the woman's claim to the vote but admitted as well that it was a proper reconstruction demand. They contended, however, that while woman and Negro suffrage were both just and logical, the nation would not accept two reforms at one time; therefore the question of suffrage must be divided and the first chance be given to the Negro. “This is the Negro's hour” became the universal response to the woman's appeal.

Note the (not-really-so) clever appeal to pragmatism, "the nation would not accept two reforms at one time; therefore the question of suffrage must be divided." How often have we seen liberals and progressive lawmakers boldly support taking half a loaf (or less) for reasons of political expedience, in many cases the logic of which has been performed by pols practicing cranio-rectal inversion?

Due to this sudden invention of pragmatic politics:

Men who had stood shoulder to shoulder with the women leaders in their convention before the war when the women were serving men's causes, men who had earnestly and eloquently espoused in return the woman's cause when it was in a purely academic stage, now at the first opportunity to put theory into practice boldly chided the women for their selfish intrusion upon this, “the Negro's Hour.”

Much damage was done to the relations between black and white activists over this and the enmity that it engendered limited the possibility for interracial cooperation on civil rights issues for years going forward. The contention of whose group advances first has had echoes as recently as the 2008 election in the primary contest between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

[An excellent exposition of this can be found in the introduction to White Women's Rights by Louise Michele Newman. Also, NPR has an excellent interview with Lori Ginzberg, author of a book on Stanton that sheds light on these issues.]

End of digression, we return to the previously scheduled content already in progress...

Which emergency comes first?

I can already hear people grumbling about the idea of other groups appropriating #BLM tactics. Goodness only knows what sort of comments that will engender.

I understand that it's hard to focus on these other emergencies when representatives of the state are oppressing you and everybody that looks like you, harassing, beating and shooting people that look like you leaving you feeling endangered every minute of every day everywhere you go.

You can see this in action at the Daily Kos. During the period when Edward Snowden's controversial revelations that demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that the government had established some of the means to implement an authoritarian state, the site's owner shared that other issues were of greater priority from his perspective. He flatly stated that to give priority to protesting illegal, unconstitutional exercise of executive power to spy on Americans indicated warped priorities of privileged white people:

I don't give a shit (183+ / 0-)

Seriously, I just don't care.

NSA spying is bad! So is stop and frisk. So is splitting up families by deporting children to countries they've never been to and don't speak the language. So is harassing American muslims.

Government overreach is bad. But to act like having the government track who you call is the height of government abuse is a very white privileged view of the privacy issue.

But as for Greenwald and Snowden? Seriously, I don't give two shits.

by kos on Fri Jul 19, 2013 at 12:40:39 PM PDT

It appears to me that Kos and much of the liberal/progressive movement have internalized the false logic put forward by Charles Sumner, that it is politically infeasible for more than one issue or group to advance at a time, that it is impossible, politically speaking, for the American polity to walk and chew gum at the same time.

This is hardly new. James Madison planned for it in Federalist #10 and deftly implemented it in the Constitution.

In a large Society, the people are broken into so many interests and parties, that a common sentiment is less likely to be felt, and the requisite concert less likely to be formed, by a majority of the whole. ... Divide et impera, the reprobated axiom of tyranny, is under certain qualifications, the only policy, by which a republic can be administered on just principles.

Divide and conquer has been an effective weapon of the ruling class against the people for hundreds of years. Allowing ourselves to argue about whose emergency must be addressed first when they all must be attended to urgently is a recipe for failure.

Seperately the people and groups organizing around the emergencies described in a section above are a constellation of balkanized "special interest" groups clamoring for attention and power, together they could be a formidable movement with the power to demand and enforce change which could extend far beyond the bare demands of proposing policy while campaigning.

This is where we get to Plan B.

Plan B

A movement must think a step or two ahead in its planning and consider some contingencies. Some come to mind immediately. What happens if no candidate will articulate policies that are suitable to the tasks we demand of the political system? What happens if a candidate does accede to demands, creates a credible policy but fails to win their party's nomination?

These reasonably foreseeable possible outcomes should be thought about and planned for.

The potential outcomes can be protested initially by organizing protests and boycotts of elections, including protesting at the polls.

After all, it is hard to imagine, as Markos might put it, a more "white privileged view," than participating in an election and granting legitimacy to candidates that refuse to stop the killing, brutalization and oppression of people of color both in the US and outside because they are "good on some issues," or are, "the lesser of two evils." Surely the lesser of two evils is still evil in this scenario. Similarly, it would make little sense for people of color to grant legitimacy to candidates who might be willing to address the emergency of their community, but refuse to meaningfully address climate change which surely endangers their lives and the lives of future generations, though by a different means.

Of course, it will take more than the election of a president to deal with these issues, but #BLM and progressives could develop solidarity in the process of protest that would create a useful and powerful alliance to continue to press demands going forward.

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Shahryar's picture

at this point I'd say nothing. Some people connected with BLM have provided a little impetus for two candidates (who likely won't win) to include a "plan" page at their websites. These are plans that wouldn't even start to be implemented for another year and a half if either Sanders or O'Malley should win. A year and a half! I thought the matter was urgent? Then shouldn't those in charge be confronted now?

I agree on the walk and chew gum aspect. Income inequality is a huge problem. Should it not be discussed because the police are shooting people? Oh, by the way, does the President know about all of these shootings?

We have a weird world where BLM knows and the Obama fans at dKos know that the President will not do anything about this. Yet to discuss why he won't do anything is forbidden. etc. etc. etc.

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joe shikspack's picture

is along the lines of what occupy achieved. it has made an issue part of the public discussion. just like we wouldn't have the terms 1% and 99% broadly understood and the popular discussion of economic inequality on the table - blm has put the issue of the oppression of people of color on the table and made it an unavoidable issue for democratic (and hopefully republicans soon, too) candidates.

of course they should be addressed now, and the protests in ferguson, baltimore and all over the country are part of that demand. however, there is a recognition that there are few leverage points over the current executive whereas, people campaigning for office have to pretend that the issues of us pissants are important and they will do something about them - that gives a movement leverage.

and yes, dkos is another dimension where the logic that applies in most places on earth does not apply. i'm still debating whether to post this there.

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gulfgal98's picture

then you know it. Wink I believe this essay has great value for discussion on many levels. I hope you will post it, but if you do not, I can very much understand why.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

Unabashed Liberal's picture

Service Agents surrounding her during a 4th of July Parade in New Hampshire.

919197_1_0705-hillary_standard--FSC NH Parade With Secret Service, July 4, 2015.jpg

Whew!

Several reporters on XM have remarked that the presence of Secret Service dudes (and maybe dudettes) is extremely heavy in FSC's campaign entourage.

In the current lethal and militarized environment, I would imagine that some protestors would be quite intimidated, and/or afraid to approach FSC (without prior permission) in many of her public appearances.

And, I sorta doubt that they would get very far--probably, they'd be thrown in jail. With, or without, a warning.

Wink

Pushed this evening, but next week I'll try to find and re-post a blurb about the President's Task Force on Policing, headed by Former D.C. Police Chief Charles Ramsey.

Ramsey’s appointment to head the White House task force on police reform was greeted with incredulity by civil liberties activists who remember the DC police crackdown on protesters during anti-IMF demonstrations in the early 2000s. The most notorious episode of overkill involved the summary arrest of more than 400 people – demonstrators, journalists, legal observers, unwitting bystanders – at Pershing Park.

The District eventually paid $8.25 million to settle multiple lawsuits arising from that incident. This followed an even larger settlement paid to victims of an even more draconian crackdown in 2000.

Mara Verheyden-Hilliard of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) describes what happened when police arrived to deal with peaceful protesters who had staged a sit-in at the intersection of 20th and K streets:

“A bus pulls up. A platoon of MPD officers get off. They have their badges obscured either by removal, taping over or punching out numbers (all common practices under Ramsey). The leader of the platoon shouts something to the effect of `let’s do this’ and they charge the protesters who are immobilized and cannot flee, with their batons out and beating them. The officers smash in their faces with their batons, breaking noses and teeth. Blood is pouring out.”

Since this happened before the availability of cell phone video recorders, Ramsey stolidly denied what had happened for several years. Eventually, the PCJF obtained the video, “which, it turned out, had been turned over to the MPD’s General Counsel’s office directly after the incident.”

After lying, concealing evidence, and obstructing the investigation for years, Ramsey refused to conduct an official inquiry or discipline any of the officers involved in the police riot. Instead, the taxpayers assumed the burden of paying a $13.7 million civil settlement. . . .

Mollie


"The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart."--Helen Keller

"Every time I lose a dog, he takes a piece of my heart. Every new dog gifts me with a piece of his. Someday, my heart will be total dog, and maybe then I will be just as generous, loving, and forgiving."--Author Unknown

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Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.

joe shikspack's picture

i'll look forward to the info about the presidential task force. i remember that there was protest about ramsey when the task force was first announced, but it didn't gain much traction in the news cycle.

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Pluto's Republic's picture

…to me, at least. Thanks for taking the time to think this out in such a cogent manner, Joe.

I do have a question. When the "right to vote" is discussed historically in the context of Amendments to the ancient US constitution — whether black men or women — does this refer to voting in Federal elections, separate and apart from state elections?

As far as I know, NO American has a directly conferred "right" to vote in a Federal election. Indeed, the US is the only democracy that I know of where citizens do not have a right to vote for the country's leader.

I scramble down that rabbit hole merely to point out that there are fixed "Operating Systems" beneath the pressing issues that preclude any remedy more than a temporary cosmetic correction, which might stick around for a while before that right is ripped out from under the people again (due to "national security" concerns about the latest existential "threat"). The so-called right to privacy, which you alluded to in the Snowden affair, is one such right that has ceased to exist because the "Operating System" allows the government to revoke those rights at any time. American woman, for example, do not have inherent sovereignty over their own bodies. They are categorized as livestock, legally.

Thomas Jefferson warned that, unless the constitution was rewritten every 20 years or so, no American will ever have Generation Sovereignty. Had it been rewritten on schedule, no one would be in jail for drugs today, because altering one's consciousness is a Human Right. And Human Rights evolve with the evolution of human consciousness. Which means, same sex marriage can be revoked at any time in the US (just as privacy rights were) because such rights are not enshrined by Generational Sovereignty in the form of directly conferred human rights.

Unlike all other nations of the world, the US has never ratified a Human Right at the UN — because to do so would break the US "slave-owners" Constitution, under which the American people's rights can be, and indeed, are subordinate to extra-national corporations which are sovereign — the modern-day slave owners and the entire point of the TPP for the future

But back to #BLM —it is essential that the actual causes of the current stepped-up pace of the slaughter of blacks at the hands of police, be addressed. That's not happening at all.

These police-murdered victims are, in fact, casualties of the current US foreign wars. They just happen to die on US streets.

Until this actual causes of this slaughter is addressed, there is no legislative or social structure upon which to base enduring social change.

Here's how that works:

As of today, 763 US people have been killed by police so far this year. (The link will take you to each one and tell you what color they are.) Several are exterminated every day. This is more than twice the rate of fatal police shootings tallied by the federal government over the past decade. This number does not does not include people who "died" in custody, like Sandra Bland. Nor does it include those who were choked or tazed to death.

Why the explosive increase in police killings?

The majority of police hired over the past 10-15 years were previously deployed in the brain-damaging US wars of aggressive extermination against brown people throughout the world. The current crop of US police working in the field were previously trained by the military to kill indiscriminately and to operate the military-grade weapons that have been bestowed upon police departments across America. American civilians, especially brown ones, are now, quite naturally, regarded by the trained serial killers who staff America's police departments, as "enemy combatants." (And, these days Americans are armed and dangerous, so who can blame the PTSD-riddled police? In no other nation in the world is a handgun or ammunition a "right", nor is carrying a handgun off one's property and into the public square ever a right.)

So, how brain damaged are formerly deployed Americans? They are dangerously crazy. Right now — every single day of the week — 22 "formerly deployed" individuals blow their brains out. Many kill their families, as well. The confirming demographic shows that police have by far the highest suicide rate (and murder-suicide rate) of any occupation in the US.

It's that simple. The US foreign wars are essentially race wars. Most of those who die at the hands of police in the US can genuinely be categorized as victims of US foreign wars. Americans now have the police forces they earned by allowing these US slaughters throughout the world to continue without meaningful protest.

As activism goes, #BLM should be working closely with the antiwar and pro-active mental health movements to address the root causes of this particular issue.

Anyway, thanks again for the thought provoking essay. Which led me to the same conclusion you came to:

Of course, it will take more than the election of a president to deal with these issues, but #BLM and progressives could develop solidarity in the process of protest that would create a useful and powerful alliance to continue to press demands going forward.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
mimi's picture

you make an important point in this paragraph to which I want to add one little side thought.

The majority of police hired over the past 10-15 years were previously deployed in the brain-damaging US wars of aggressive extermination against brown people throughout the world. The current crop of US police working in the field were previously trained by the military to kill indiscriminately and to operate the military-grade weapons that have been bestowed upon police departments across America. American civilians, especially brown ones, are now, quite naturally, regarded by the trained serial killers who staff America's police departments, as "enemy combatants." (And, these days Americans are armed and dangerous, so who can blame the PTSD-riddled police? In no other nation in the world is a handgun or ammunition a "right", nor is carrying a handgun off one's property and into the public square ever a right.)

So, how brain damaged are formerly deployed Americans? They are dangerously crazy. Right now — every single day of the week — 22 "formerly deployed" individuals blow their brains out. Many kill their families, as well. The confirming demographic shows that police have by far the highest suicide rate (and murder-suicide rate) of any occupation in the US.

Give a thought of the "brown people", who were hired into the military to become indiscriminately killing robots to operate the military grade weaons, who leave the military and before going homeless and broke themselves are finding only jobs in the police force. Now you have to consider the brown police officer who is PTSD riddled and is "ordered" to consider the "brown civilian" as "enemy combatants" and be part of the other internal racial war against their brown brothers.

And go one step further, consider that many PTSD riddled formerly soldiers, are considered dangerous enough (because of their supposed PTSD) to NOT get hired to some jobs, because the PTSD meme has so much been talked about that employers are prejudiced to hire combat Veterans because they think they are too dangerous to be hired. So, if it's not combat based PTSD, rest assured that desperate Veterans not finding steady employment, will show similar anger and symptoms as the ones who have combat based PTSD.

All I can say is that it is an utter mess and nothing will stop that other than "the slave owner constitution" is rewritten and contains all the "equality rights" a person must have.

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joe shikspack's picture

thanks for the kind words and the excellent commentary.

regarding your question...

When the "right to vote" is discussed historically in the context of Amendments to the ancient US constitution — whether black men or women — does this refer to voting in Federal elections, separate and apart from state elections?

i am not well-informed on all of the ins and outs of election laws, but generally speaking, voting is organized by the states individually. since all federal elections are electing state representatives to federal positions (except for the president and vice president) each state gets to make up its own rules about how it decides who goes to washington within the context of the general parameters set up in the constitution.

due to the supremacy of the constitution as law, if a constitutional amendment says that black people or women are persons entitled to vote in all elections, then states cannot (legally) block them from voting.

at least that's the way i understand it.

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mimi's picture

each state can make its own rules, it drove me nuts. Til today I can't understand why they allowed that "inequality" among the states when it comes to electoral rules. It's a subject I can't get over or understand. I also don't understand what kind of rights written up in the constitution, can't be "un-amended". Equal rights should be not amendable to become unequal rights. I don't know where and how you put this into the constitution. The way I understand it, equal human and civil rights are not written into the constitution, so that they can't be changed. I would so much like to understand that. The lawyerish types at dailykos NEVER wrote an understandable essay about it, I think.

Foreigners don't understand that. It should become an issue the international community is aware of and it be scrutinized by them as well.

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joe shikspack's picture

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mimi's picture

and read for real. Legal language comprehension is almost nil in English for me. That needs to change. I always wanted to research how many countries rewrote their constitutions and exactly under what circumstances those happened. I know this only for Germany. and it took two world wars to initiate the rewriting. So, in my little mind I always fear that unless there is a severe civil war going on that brings the whole chaos upon the American citizens, a rewrite will never happen in the US. I need to study it, always hoped to find essays and materials, who would make that issue clear to me.

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gulfgal98's picture

(Note: my bolding.)
Text of the 13th Amendment:

Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

From the legal dictionary:

A related statute is the Anti-Peonage Act (42 U.S.C.A. § 1994). Peonage is defined as compulsory service based upon the indebtedness of the peon to the master. The courts have held that neither the Thirteenth Amendment nor the Anti-Peonage Act prevents a convicted person from being required to work on public streets as part of his sentence (Loeb v. Jennings, 67 S.E. 101 (Ga. 1910), aff'd, 219 U.S. 582, 31 S. Ct. 469, 55 L. Ed. 345 [1911])

I would take that there is nothing to prevent the use of prisoners as labor (unpaid or barely paid) for a profit making enterprise in a for profit prison.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

hecate's picture

2013, just 8.4% of the nation's prisoners were housed in private prisons. That number was down from 2012.

However, prisoners in state (or federal) prisons can perform work that results in profit for private enterprises.

Work requirements vary by state. In Arizona, for example, all able-bodied prisoners are required to work. In California, prisoners are generally not required to work, though working earns them time credits that decrease the number of days they must serve.

There are currently some 4000 state prisoners fighting wildfires in California. They receive $1 an hour. Civilian volunteers receive $9. Either way: not enough.

People who receive probation are often sentenced to some number of hours of "community service," which is unpaid labor, either "work[ing]' on the public streets," as in the case you cite above (cleaning trash from the highways, etc.), or for private, generally non-profit or not-for-profit, businesses. Once when I was on probation, I worked for the AIDS Foundation in SF, giving away food and other goods to HIV people. In California a probationer can usually refuse such service, substituting in a larger fine, or increased number of days in jail.

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joe shikspack's picture

and there have been enormous abuses of that provision, particularly in the south. it was not uncommon for blacks to be thrown in jail under the most contrived of circumstances in order to use them in forced labor. sometimes even a bare contrivance was not needed; during the great mississippi flood of 1927 black men were rounded up in large numbers and pressed into service at gunpoint to build and maintain levees and other services. there is an excellent description of this in alan lomax' book, "land where the blues began."

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I don't think anyone has firm statistics of how many veterans became police officers. I do know that when the wars started, many police officers were serving in the National Guard and reserves. When recruitment fell for the wars, the National Guard and Reserves just kept rotating troops in and out. The Police forces were undermanned, yet they had promised to keep positions open. Eventually, the positions had to be filled. Standards were lowered substantially in order to bring staffing levels up. I think this is a portion of the problem today.

I wouldn't be too quick to blame vets, especially combat vets. I did see the enclosed comment when looking for any stats on percentages of vets that transitioned to the police.

When I became a police officer in the early 70s, lots of us were combat veterans having served in Vietnam. Lots of the "old timers" were WWII and Korean War vets, lots of them with combat experience. Since we were spared any significant warfare in the 80s, fewer new veterans (and even fewer combat vets) came on the job. Thankfully, Desert Storm came and went a blink of an eye, and did not produce very many combat vets. With the advent of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a fair number young military vets are seeking law enforcement employment.

No one (not the VA nor the DOJ) keeps statistics on how many combat vets are employed as law enforcement officers. Most of my generation has retired, so the Vietnam vets are only a tiny percentage. I am sure that the total number of combat vets has only increased slightly in the last ten years.


A Marine Corps Officer told a newsman a few years ago (forgive me if I slightly misquote him) “The US is not at war. The Army and the Marine Corps are at war. The US is shopping at the mall."


Think about it:
16.1 million Americans served in WWII;
5,720,000 US Troops served in the Korean conflict,
2,709,918 Americans served in Vietnam;
and only 550,000 US Troops served in Operation Iraqi Freedom and the Afghan Campaign (to date).


So, statistically, there just are not as many combat veterans at an age to be employed as police officers as there were in generations past. I only know a handful of police officers who are combat veterans.

There are 1.1 million police officers in the US. For the "bulk" of them to be combat veterans, almost everyone who served in Iraq and Afghanistan would have to be a police officer. And every member of the armed forces who served there would have to have seen combat. We all know that is not the case.

In fact there are usually 7 support troops for every combat troop in a combat zone. I have a feeling that the percentage of veterans in the police are substantially less than most people assume. In addition , combat vets are far better trained on applications of lethal force. I look at today's police and how quick they are to use lethal force and think; if these guys were in a real combat zone, we would have had a My Lai type massacre 3x a day in Afghanistan.

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Pluto's Republic's picture

BLS puts the number of police at 630,000. Only a portion of them work on patrol.

The DOJ has changed the game:

The DOJ's Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) office will provide $111 million to law enforcement agencies later this year to hire or retain officers or deputies.

This year, agencies requesting new-hire positions must hire military veterans, a program spokesman told POLICE Magazine.

Agencies requesting new-hire positions must hire a military veteran with an honorable discharge who served on active duty for more than 180 consecutive days after Sept. 11, 2001.

Demographics have changed.

Many military veterans seek employment in police ranks when they rejoin the civilian workforce. That's what is happening right now in numbers unseen since the closing days of the Vietnam War. The result is a job market flooded with well-qualified police officer candidates who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato

1. BLS has estimates only, see their disclaimer. The fact is there is no real dependable data that is going to backup an assertion that veterans are a significant part of the problem in the misapplication of lethal force. To be fair, there is no data to refute it.

2. "The DOJ's Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) office will provide $111 million to law enforcement agencies later this year to hire or retain officers or deputies." That are veterans

I still don't think that gets to the point of the argument that veterans - military - are a cause of what appears to be an upsurge in the use of lethal force. 111 Million doesn't even move the needle in terms of total annual expenditures on law enforcement \

3 We really don't even know if this is an upsurge because there are no stats to back it up from previous years. This could have been going on for some time. Thanks to readily available video via phones, we have seen more of it and subsequently more attention has been focused on it. But we still aren't any closer to finding causation or seeing if or when a surge started or not.

My original answer is pure spec to your post which is pure spec. I don't think either advance a causation argument. It's merely a discussion of a meme that has been around for awhile that has been passed around with no data to back it up.

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gulfgal98's picture

Which is why politicians and sites like dkos continue to focus upon the individual social issues in a vacuum. By arguing over whose ox is being gored worse, they get us to ignore the overall issue of the capture of our government by the oligarchs and corporate interests. It is an intentional misdirection so that we the people will continue to debate with one another over our own special interests rather than acting in concert against our oppressors.

That said, I have posted here before that the BLM's use of the tactic of disrupting politicians cannot be discounted. It has gotten the issue of blacks being disproportionately executed by police mainstream attention. It is an urgent issue and getting the attention of the people and a few politicians is the first step. What BLM and most of us forget that there is a distinct connection between the slaughter of people in our streets by police and the other forms of murder and oppression that our government engages in overseas. And the government purposely has built a wall of security around itself and the politicians who work for it that prevents the people from being heard.

As a "political operative," Markos' white privilege comment falls right into the category of divide and conquer. It served to both chastise whites at dkos for raising the issue and it diverted the attention away from it. It was a clumsy attempt to cover up the capture of our government by corporations that benefit from wars abroad and wars in our streets.

Excellent essay, Joe. I may post more thoughts later.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

joe shikspack's picture

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mimi's picture

I have to read two more times later. I just woke up. All I know that I won't support "the lesser of two evils" no matter what, unless "the lesser of the two things is not any more evil".

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joe shikspack's picture

i'm not fully awake yet, either. the coffee is not working so well this morning. but, i too am done with voting for the evil of two lessers.

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smiley7's picture

saying a lot. The question, imo, becomes: can a horizontal movement gain traction without coalescing behind a recognized leadership? If it doesn't, divide and conquer by singular tactics of potential rouge intent may split those supporting the movement and diminish BLM.

Some progress is being made on the policy grounds, now, where are the ongoing protests?

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gulfgal98's picture

that addresses some of the criticisms of Sanders candidacy. In the comments section I saw once again the old binary thinking going on about left/right, liberal/ conservative, or Democrat/Republican. A portion of my comment is applicable here too, outside the context of a political campaign. I am clipping the part that I believe applies to nearly every issue we face in this nation.

It is short sighted and the way Americans have been conditioned to think. It is also premised upon binary left/right, liberal/conservative, or Democrat/Republican thinking that dominates our politics. That is the wrong struggle. The real struggle is vertical, not horizontal.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

smiley7's picture

alluded to in this good thread, intermingling global oligarchy--I prefer classic fascism--obfuscates the obvious Orwellian state of our republic; call it the advance TPP effect.
Those in control of Social Media: the Googles, the Facebooks, the NSA and so on make "The Century of Self," and the growth of Madison Avenue look like small fry in retrospect; persuasion run amok readily available for competing interests, ISIS included, to take flight, subliminally serving the passions of individual participants.
How can truth out under these circumstances?

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Big Al's picture

What do we want?

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Big Al's picture

I say that because I sat here thinking about what to say and that's what I concluded. That's what it comes down to,
what do we want. And I guess, who is we?
Some want radical change some want reforms of the current systems. Certainly working with the Democratic party is working
within the current system. Some want $15 an hour, some want an end to capitalism.
That was the primary problem with Occupy, even though there was a message (overblow impact imo), there was no
tangible goal that the public could get on board with.
I think we're at Plan B stage now personally. Get ready for 2016, make it the year of the Radical. But there has to
be a consensus on what to achieve.

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joe shikspack's picture

i made a start on my list of demands when i put together that platform for the "party of nobodies." i've had some additional ideas since then, perhaps i should dust it off and make some additions.

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mimi's picture

to guarantee equality, equal civil rights and equal human rights with no loophole to undermine it, which would include a Supreme Court that HAS to protect it and can't set those rights up for re-interpretation by some evil spirits. Can't express myself better.

As a foreigner I always thought that the Americans worship their constitution like others worship their Bible or Koran. Me thinks that all three "holy texts" shouldn't be worshiped and taken literally, but if one is to be taken literally then it would be the constitution. And that means that the current constitution is so bad that no sane person could take it literally or worship it as something god-given or holy.

Well, I hope I could write what I mean in appropriate wording with the back-up of knowledge and facts. 90 percent or the population can't do that either, so I refuse to feel ashamed for now. Smile

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Big Al's picture

And besides, you spelled Constitution correctly, that does put you ahead of many, especially those who think
it's the U.S.S. Constitution.

Me, I want it all, and I want it now.

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mimi's picture

there is an USS Enterprise (fitting for a capitalist superpower, of course), a USS Harry Truman, a USS Franklin D. Roosevelt, a USS John F. Kennedy, USS John C. Stennis and USS Carl Vinson. Very impressive aircraft carriers.

But the USS Constituion is a real beauty.
USS Constitution
Nice to know. Thanks.

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hecate's picture

had to go aboard the Vinson once, to interview a guy. The thing was completely ridiculous. Aircraft carriers are among the most monumentally, mind-numbingly stupid ludicrousnesses ever built by human beings. An aircraft carrier is a huge water-borne behemoth the size of a town that motors around so that people can be killed somewhere. As such, it is an artifact of madness.

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Big Al's picture

believe it don't ya. It's human madness at it's highest.

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hecate's picture

still refuses to believe it. I'd like to write the thing off as a nutbag drug vision. But I can't. : /

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hecate's picture

Vinson is also named for a howling racist, who would foam at the mouth and fall to the floor whenever the Supreme Court or the Congress would decree that white people like him would have to share the country with "the mud people." I am sure that this is not among the information imparted to the non-Caucasians who are assigned aboard.

Vinson's family continues to pollute the polity. His grandnephew is Sam Nunn, and Nunn's daughter Michelle is the geek who in 2014 sought a Senate seat in Georgia, as a Democract, by claiming she didn't know nothin' 'bout that black man occupying the White House.

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mimi's picture

I had only seen them in our camera team's raw material they shot on one of them, don't remember which one it was. Human madness is invasive, contagious and all around ...

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gulfgal98's picture

I was amazed at just how huge it was. It was in port at Mayport, near Jacksonville, Florida. An on line friend of mine invited me to come over for the day to tour it. Her husband was a Lt. Commander on the JFK, so with him taking us around, I got to see more than most people would. When we toured it, everyone was gone so I got to see a lot of stuff up close. I walked on the flight deck and saw the huge cables they use to stop the planes. I also saw the netting along the sides of the landing area where the ground crew can jump off if something goes wrong in the landing area. For me, it was fascinating to see and learn about the intricacies of an aircraft carrier. Within a year after I saw the JFK, it was de-commissioned. But I still think actually walking on the deck and seeing it all up close was one of the neatest things I have ever done. Does that mean I think we need these behemoths? No. But I would not trade my experience of seeing the JFK up close for anything.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

hecate's picture

I ever toured was a shuttered Titan nuclear-missile base. Many of the knobs and controls and widgets and doodads were still in place, and they were so clunky and shoddy and primitive and embarrassing they looked like something from the set of Plan 9 From Outer Space. It was like a Laurel and Hardy operation. How did it not blow up, just from sheer slipshod stupidity?

Another illuminating artifact is the Mercury space-capsule on display in the Smithsonian. Which is roughly the size and strength of the refrigerator-boxes my dad would bring home for us to play in when I was a kid.

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mimi's picture

Airforce base in Great Falls. They had the nuclear missile silos (minute man missiles, I think), which had to be maintained. He was a little guy who worked on the outside of the silos areas, but our German TV team has filmed inside the control center for those missiles and some kind of drills they did to test for "the real thing".

I found those drills terrible to watch, mind numbing to say the least. And the guys were young kids mostly career enlistees. And lucky that my son was one of the "little guys" not qualified for those tasks. Instead he can't forget to drive at night from one silo site to the next at extreme cold weather and being scared to freeze. He prefers Hawaii nowadays... Smile ... kinda smart conclusion, I would say...

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Big Al's picture

a new political system and a new economic system. I can't get past one major problem though. That's not for
me to decide, or you. It's for the people to decide. And that's the problem, the people can't decide. That's the big
major problem that we the world's people have, we don't have a say in things. We're ruled by the rich, pretty much
like it's always been for humankind. The big question is, do we end rule by the rich and how do we do it? Do we
want democracy or not? If not, then we can just continue to let the rich decide things while we bitch and moan about
it. If we do want democracy, then we need to go get it, then we can decide on a new Constitution or a new political system.
Maybe that's the ultimate demand, democracy. Many people don't agree, but then again, it's not their call either.

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Azazello's picture

I actually found something worth reading at Huffington Post today: Sometimes a movement ...

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We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.

gulfgal98's picture

It's good to see you posting! Smile

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

gulfgal98's picture

The author says something in the article that I have been trying to make a point about, mostly over at the other place. And this is how the author puts it:

Although Occupy Wall Street "changed the conversation" about the criminality of the too-big-to-fail banks and popularized the idea of the "99 percent" fighting back against them, in hindsight, it could have benefited from more coherent leadership. But the activists who occupied Zuccotti Park and other public spaces in cities across the United States (and the world) in September 2011 did not evaporate; they're out there and ready to re-emerge. With Bernie Sanders there now is an opening to bring Occupy Wall Street's sweeping critique of the glaring unfairness of the U.S. economy into mainstream politics.

I tried to say that although Bernie Sanders is not affiliated with the Occupy Movement, his brand of populism is a natural component of what Occupy stands for. So by his entering the campaign, he gives Occupy a face and voice in the political process. Occupy was not a political movement, but a social movement. Rarely do politicians initiate major change of their own accord. Usually most change originates with a social movement. Occupy created the opening that allows a politician like Bernie Sanders to address the needs of the people.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

mimi's picture

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Unabashed Liberal's picture

(so to speak), here, but for the most part, I'm of the opinion that it's more productive for (most) social movements to remain 'outside of' the two major legacy parties.

If anything, I'm always concerned that the Dem Party will try to co-opt progressive social movements. Folks may recall, that happened (the attempt) with OWS, led by radio talk show host Ed Schultz, a couple of unions, Al Sharpton, etc.

I recall that a loose consortium of so-called progressive groups staged a protest and 'jobs rally' in D.C., which was run from a K-Street PR Firm (I followed the links). I also read several accounts on union websites/blogs [of bused-in union members/participants, congregations from predominantly black churches, etc.]--many of whom were furious because the so-called 'protest' amounted to no more than an Obama 'pep rally.'

Now, if Bernie were to decide to make a third party run, and a couple of social movements decided to hook up with a Third Party headed by Bernie, and it was willing to challenge the Bipartisan Washington Establishment, or status quo, I would gladly get on board with that affiliation/movement/Third Party.

(I think that Bernie is forbidden to do this, per DNC rules, although I've been unable to find absolute proof that he and other Presidential candidates signed a pledge to this effect.)

Heck, I'm rather pushed because of having to leave town, but when I return, I'll try to lay out my reasoning a bit more extensively. In a nutshell, though, union bosses/leaders melded with the Dem Party--some would say selling out unionists in the process--and we see how toothless they are today. As a [now retired] Civil Service professional, I was around and involved in a government employee union before this happened. IOW, I saw what happened from the inside.

And I can assure folks, the only people who've greatly benefited from that merger (unions' unconditional fealty to the Dem Party) has been the Dem Party neoliberals/corporatists.

(Plus, I heard the figure the other day that approximately 35%-40% of union members today are Republicans/conservatives. Certainly, that is believable regarding Police, Firefighter, etc., Unions.)

Hey, I don't pretend to know 'the answer.'

But, when all is said and done, it seems wise (to me) to have outside forces, or movements, to agitate--if we have any hope of keeping politicians, in general, 'honest.'

Again, great to see you here!

[Apologize in advance for typos, syntax, etc.]

Mollie


"The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart."--Helen Keller

"Every time I lose a dog, he takes a piece of my heart. Every new dog gifts me with a piece of his. Someday, my heart will be total dog, and maybe then I will be just as generous, loving, and forgiving."--Author Unknown

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Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.

joe shikspack's picture

occupy did an excellent thing, in my view, in getting a lot of people on the same page regarding a topic that is very difficult to address in america. sure, you have a few egghead academics that are outside of the mainstream economic viewpoint of the 1%, but vanishingly few of them can really make themselves understood by a mass audience and the media bullhorn tends to drown them out. the peer-group discussion amongst ourselves that was created by occupy changed how the public understands the fundamentals of our economic system.

the article points out though, that there is a lot of political ferment around other issues right now and that is just waiting to be "bundled" into a coherent political worldview which can be the basis for translating a bunch of causes into a platform for political power.

i am dubious that what really needs to happen can be accomplished from within the system, but process is important. the actions of creating popular demand for a course of action and agitating for it build alliances and organization that will extend outside of the system if it is necessary.

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mimi's picture

I will never forget or forgive (there was a diary by him about it before, the comment you linked is one he made long after he first talked about it, if I remember it correctly) It enraged me and I thought to myself that that is the end of me feeling loyalty to his site or opinions. Quite frankly, I could find some curse words for that. He has revealed himself too clearly as something, I don't want to support anymore as well, with too other not to be named diaries. He also told us what he gives a shit about. It didn't sound convincing to me or let's say it sounded a bit shitty, but people liked his tunes. I can't take his style very well, but as he insists his site is to be taken seriously. His influence is so opaque and many don't seem to realize it and are wandering around blindly in the dailykos land fog. The site corrupts us with the exposure it offers to the diarists. I wished it weren't so.

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enhydra lutris's picture

I've said more than once in more than one venue that there is no restriction on multi-issue advocacy and activism. Back in the sixties (geezer mode, I know) many actors worked simultaneously for multiple causes. It was routine to go to an action supporting some union issue, or an anti-war action and learn of 3 or 4 upcoming actions in support of diverse other things, and it was routine for many to show up at as many of those actions as possible.

The whole focus of the New Left was that it was afocal, it subsumed, or tried to, all causes. All repressed, suppressed, downtrodden, disadvantaged, persecuted and prosecuted were within its ambit, hotel workers, women, the wheelchair bound, farm workers, racial discrimination, civil liberties (as opposed to civil rights), stopping war, stoppng the cannon-fodder spigot known as the draft, prsioners rights, etc. We can work together and it doesn't even have to be quid pro quo, though alternating days might be the most workable solutin for todays generation, Mondays BLM in the narrow sense of stopping police terrorism of blacks, tuesdays voting rights, wednesdays women's equality, etc. except that there aren't enough days.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --