On Black Power: death of torturer marks a hopeful end to era of racial police violence

[Cubo de Sangre]

No, unarmed black men getting killed is what libertarians like @Cubo de Sangre care about.

Cliff's?

 

[irish_thug]

Cliff's?

Cubo is a good dude.

End of cliffs

 

[Trotsky]

Following up deflective shit posts with a novel shamelessly and clumsily appropriating Native American struggle and casting aspersions on a man based on his son's actions:

I'm teasing you, and it should be obvious why. You came in and constructed this large OP with the opening comment about "last week" as if immediacy was significant to this story. I like that you are rooting this in the death of the police officer who played a role, but this is one of the most significant stories in American history, and the apparent sense of urgency just tickled me. This namesake crime is decades old, and the criminal is dead. I don't see what difference a week makes.

Ahh, you were just joshing with me. I should have guess that, given your history of levity, light-heartedness, and not being a spastic and randomly adversarial putz. Alas, Burge's passing was national news and his passing does reflect a hopeful changing of the guard in American history. But you're right: my referencing that the story of his death is a week old did very clearly provoke ad hominem shit posts.

Despite that I would agree with any conscientious American that this was tragic, do you know what I like most about your post? For years now I have cast the allegation that #BLM is little more than a thinly veiled pretense to push for socialism under the pretense of correcting our system of justice.

My, what a revelatory suggestion. The history of civil rights activists being socialists didn't ring any bells for the rest of us.

Yes, economic inequality along the lines of race - not individual racial animus - is the driving force behind the intersection of black life and police misconduct. I apologize that my fellow activists had the same foresight as their fathers before them - and that you do not have it.

It's a lie. This is what inflamed me, more than even how it racialized a problem that is far greater than one race, and explains why I have rejected the movement so stridently. I came to this realization when #BLM finally drew up its list of demands under a coalition of official chapters. My original criticism of the movement stemmed from its focus on one race, which supporters justified by arguing, "If only one house is on fire you don't hose them all" logic, ignoring that Native Americans continue to suffer even more harsh treatment by virtually every metric they cited.

The problem of police misconduct does affect more than one race, but it affects one race to a greatly disproportionate degree due to the history of that race in this country and the situation of that race in densely population, high-crime urban pockets. Native Americans don't have this sort of interface with policing because, and I'm not sure if you know this, they generally do not reside in said urban areas. In fact, Native Americans have the lowest metropolitan residential percentage of all racial categories. Meanwhile, African Americans are the most urban-dwelling racial group.

I am saddened, truly, that the almost-entirely-black communities and community groups that got together to form BLM didn't make the obvious prediction that daft white folks would use the name to deny its purpose.

By the way, what was your opinion on the Dakota Access Pipeline? I know that BlackLivesMatter protested alongside our Native American brothers and sisters.

Surprisingly, though, I didn't see any "All Lives Matter" tee shirts in any of the photos of people being hosed and beaten. Strange.

So when they finally did offer that list of demands I was dizzied by how few of them had anything to do with policing. This is the refined policy demands two years later, and it hasn't gotten better:
https://policy.m4bl.org/
I immediately realized this had nothing to do with policing, and everything to do with radical proposals for naive cultural upheaval, and redistribution of wealth. I have argued that since. I have argued that it was the renewal of the extreme Islamic movement in this country as it was headed by Louis Farrakhan and Elijah Muhammad back in the 70's and 80's. Our resident liberals have scoffed at this. They insisted, "No, it's about unarmed black men!"

Again: Duh. If the history of civil rights organization didn't tip you, I would think at least that the fact that the key founders of BLM have been lifelong advocates of labor rights, immigrant issues, and economic justice would have pushed it through.

You don't correct the problems focused on by BLM by lecturing police officers about how it's bad to kill black people, nor by naive attempts at correcting the psychology of racial bias (which, by most analyses that I have seen, has very little effect on the phenomenon), just like you don't fix the problem of gun violence in the black community by banning handguns or massively redistributing the black community into government custody. You did it by allocating opportunity and, yes, addressing economic inequality.

Lie! Such a lie-- but one many believe. No, unarmed black men getting killed is what libertarians like @Cubo de Sangre care about. They cared about it before Trayvon Martin. They were talking about COINTELPRO before Trayvon Martin. He and the rest of the more devoted libertarians were bitching about the rise of the police state, authority overreach, and a lack of accountability among our government years before Trayvon got shot, in this very forum, when it became a convenient pet cause for Communists like yourself to gaslight minorities/liberals. These libertarians are mostly white males.

Cool, I'm happy for @Cubo de Sangre. I do agree that he has some principle to him. But his devotion to the issue of government abuse of power doesn't in any way contrast that of the far left.

In fact, while pants-shitting reactionaries like you were too busy rocking back and forth after 9/11 to give a shit about the PATRIOT Act, communists all across the country were opposing it as a second coming of legislation like the Communist Control Act (which I have literally zero doubt that you would have supported with a throbbing 4-inch erection).

I wonder if his son understood that Korean shopkeepers were to be included in these "masses" when he firebombed their innocent businesses in the wake of the Rodney King beating:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hampton_Jr.

That's who carries the torch.

Maybe Jr. is just another case of a black man gone hopelessly wrong because he grew up in a fatherless household, amirite?

I understand the rage that comes from reading about Fred Sr. I feel it, too. I desperately want to prevent that sort of crime and injustice from happening in the truth. That doesn't mean I share his ideas on how to do it, and I certainly don't share #BLM's, either: a rose by any other name.

Firstly, I don't believe that you feel any sort of rage on this matter.

Secondly, what are your "ideas on how to do it"?

 

[Madmick]

Cliff's?

Cubo is a good dude.

End of cliffs

Yeah, pretty much this, Cubo. I'm not speaking for you about #BLM. I'm speaking to your vigilance over state abuse. You are one of the central posters who defines this vigilance to me irrespective of race. It's why I tend to ponder more on your posts when I find you disagreeing with me.

We've had a lot of turnover since 2011-2012, but there are a lot of posters that I remember like yourself, @Dolomite, and @Zeke's Chaingun, for example, who I recall debating this topic enthusiastically before the shock wave of Trayvon and Zimmerman. The focus was always earnestly on police abuse, corruption, and corruption at the government level. It was a race blind concern, and had little concern for socioeconomics. @Jackie Blue is a recent example who fits this paradigm for me although I don't figure him as staunch a libertarian, but he is quite complicated, as a poster, and could speak better for himself. The focus was always on specific injustices, and systemic cover-ups with no regard for race on either side of the thin blue line. Every one of these posters is a staunch defender of the 2nd Amendment, and as far as I know, all are also generally strong advocates of a capitalist foundation for markets.

It's not directly on topic, but I doubt our TS would mind, and while I believe I have mentioned it before on the board, since this is a thread focused on the history of American police justice, I thought I would take the opportunity to once again draw the forum's attention to one of the most important documentaries ever made. It springs to mind every time I use the phrase or see it in print (which is why it has been on my mind a great deal more the past few years). It's a work with too many children to count:

 

[Madmick]

Ahh, you were just joshing with me. I should have guess that, given your history of levity, light-heartedness, and not being a spastic and randomly adversarial putz.

No, I believe there is a good chance you just learned about this, and most likely due to headlines spawned from this officer's death last week.

Again, good for you.

 

[Trotsky]

No, I believe there is a good chance you just learned about this, and most likely due to headlines spawned from this officer's death last week.

Again, good for you.

Simply doubling down on your initial deflection because you realized your attempt to reconcile it with an actual post of substance was dog shit.

Good for you as well.

 

[Madmick]

Simply doubling down on your initial deflection because you realized your attempt to reconcile it with an actual post of substance was dog shit.

Good for you as well.

I prefer this to wasting time dealing with "clumsily appropriate Native American struggle" when, first, I probably have considerably more Native American blood in me than you, and second, one doesn't require to "appropriate" another race's hardships in order to illuminate the flawed defensive logic of a movement that ignored them altogether in the first place.

 

[Cubo de Sangre]

Yeah, pretty much this, Cubo. I'm not speaking for you about #BLM. I'm speaking to your vigilance over state abuse. You are one of the central posters who defines this vigilance to me irrespective of race. It's why I tend to ponder more on your posts when I find you disagreeing with me.

I never knew you cared.





Seriously though, thanks. It's a real fuckin' shame police malfeasance is racially divided in terms of uproar. We're all getting fucked. The argument gets bogged down in whose crimes get overlooked vs. who brings it upon themselves. There's a serious shortage of non-black outrage that could be ignited if BLM would expand their scope. Caring only about black people and turning a blind eye to any criminal behavior on the victim's part is an effort likely to underachieve. The Australian lady who phoned the po-po and got capped in her nightrobe was obviously the time to question police impunity. Crickets.

 

[jefferz]

Following up deflective shit posts with a novel shamelessly and clumsily appropriating Native American struggle and casting aspersions on a man based on his son's actions:

Ahh, you were just joshing with me. I should have guess that, given your history of levity, light-heartedness, and not being a spastic and randomly adversarial putz. Alas, Burge's passing was national news and his passing does reflect a hopeful changing of the guard in American history. But you're right: my referencing that the story of his death is a week old did very clearly provoke ad hominem shit posts.



My, what a revelatory suggestion. The history of civil rights activists being socialists didn't ring any bells for the rest of us.

Yes, economic inequality along the lines of race - not individual racial animus - is the driving force behind the intersection of black life and police misconduct. I apologize that my fellow activists had the same foresight as their fathers before them - and that you do not have it.



The problem of police misconduct does affect more than one race, but it affects one race to a greatly disproportionate degree due to the history of that race in this country and the situation of that race in densely population, high-crime urban pockets. Native Americans don't have this sort of interface with policing because, and I'm not sure if you know this, they generally do not reside in said urban areas. In fact, Native Americans have the lowest metropolitan residential percentage of all racial categories. Meanwhile, African Americans are the most urban-dwelling racial group.

I am saddened, truly, that the almost-entirely-black communities and community groups that got together to form BLM didn't make the obvious prediction that daft white folks would use the name to deny its purpose.

By the way, what was your opinion on the Dakota Access Pipeline? I know that BlackLivesMatter protested alongside our Native American brothers and sisters.

Surprisingly, though, I didn't see any "All Lives Matter" tee shirts in any of the photos of people being hosed and beaten. Strange.



Again: Duh. If the history of civil rights organization didn't tip you, I would think at least that the fact that the key founders of BLM have been lifelong advocates of labor rights, immigrant issues, and economic justice would have pushed it through.

You don't correct the problems focused on by BLM by lecturing police officers about how it's bad to kill black people, nor by naive attempts at correcting the psychology of racial bias (which, by most analyses that I have seen, has very little effect on the phenomenon), just like you don't fix the problem of gun violence in the black community by banning handguns or massively redistributing the black community into government custody. You did it by allocating opportunity and, yes, addressing economic inequality.



Cool, I'm happy for @Cubo de Sangre. I do agree that he has some principle to him. But his devotion to the issue of government abuse of power doesn't in any way contrast that of the far left.

In fact, while pants-shitting reactionaries like you were too busy rocking back and forth after 9/11 to give a shit about the PATRIOT Act, communists all across the country were opposing it as a second coming of legislation like the Communist Control Act (which I have literally zero doubt that you would have supported with a throbbing 4-inch erection).



Maybe Jr. is just another case of a black man gone hopelessly wrong because he grew up in a fatherless household, amirite?



Firstly, I don't believe that you feel any sort of rage on this matter.

Secondly, what are your "ideas on how to do it"?

you mean the "water protectors" that left 48 million pounds of garbage. the "water protectors" that built their camp in the middle of an area that floods every year which would have washed their entire camp into the river they were claiming to protect. the "water protectors" that buried their human waste in their camp that got washed into the river they were claiming to protect.
You mean those "water protectors"

 

[bobgeese]

I meant to make this topic last week when this odious toad punched his ticket to hell, but got delayed with all the news and frantic goings on.

In 1969, civil rights icon and Black Panther prodigy Fred Hampton was executed, unarmed, sleeping in his bed by members of the Chicago Police Department and Illinois State Police after a confidential informant drugged him with sedatives. The extrajudicial execution of such a prominent and beloved African American figure - and a man who expressly denounced reciprocal racial violence and sought racial and economic solidarity between minority political groups - sparked outrage, as subsequent investigations into his death showed the cold and calculated circumstances of his death.

The assassination of Hampton, and the subsequent outrage, was hoped to mark a turning point in the brutal law enforcement history of Chicago, Illinois.

It was no such turning point.

Jon Burge was promoted to detective three years later in 1972. Under the supervision of detective (and later commander) Burge, Chicago police carried out a rampant campaign of extrajudicial coercion and torture. Burge himself would become tied to more than 100 accusations of torture of African American citizens in South Side Chicago.

Beyond the then-expected brutality of law enforcement, the exploitative rot in the system spread much further outward to the FBI (who had provided logistical support for Hampton's assassination) and upward to the federal and state judiciaries, where established judges regularly refused to admit evidence of coerced confessions and unconstitutional searches and seizures. Over the course of Burge's tenure, no less than ten suspects would be sent to death row despite credible allegations of constitutional violations.

In 2011, Jon Burge was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice related to civil suits relating to involvement in Chicago law enforcement's horrific crimes against the citizens they had sworn to protect. However, nearly all of those before him, under him, and after him have never faced justice.

I agreed with the meme quotes right up until the end.


You fight poverty by putting effort into your education, getting yourself an engineering degree, and becoming a valuable asset to society.


Terrible story btw.

 

[deadshot138]

Police torture black mans. Torture bad. Police bad.

Lol. Well I see a more caring police force has done wonders for the city. Also this dude dying does nothing, since his influence seems to have already been weeded out of the current Chicago police model.

 

[deadshot138]

Cubo is a good dude.

End of cliffs

Jury is still out on Cubo

 

[Liquid Smoke]

Police torture black mans. Torture bad. Police bad.

Single case. Obvious conclusion. Spurious conclusion.

 

[irish_thug]

Jury is still out on Cubo

Nah. Jury's been in for a while. The dude is consistent, reasonable and doesn't get emotional. I don't have to always agree with a dude to get along with him.

 

[ChillBroBaggins]

I'm slightly surprised this thread devolved into anything controversial, it seems rooted in basic facts, though I'm beginning to realize this is standard War Room protocol...

Are we to honestly diminish the abuses of our law enforcement because it might substantiate evidence we find, distasteful? The idea that this police brutality was so targeted should incline us to take heed, it proves that any dissident or disenfranchised group could become the subject of unwarranted oppression. Really it's just a reminder to be vigilant over those we've given power, and also I suppose to root out the malignant elements that still exist within our police forces.

I think the main problem I have with police is their history of suppressing protest, and by extension protecting a status-quo which may not be in the interest of the masses.

 

[Hollywood Jack]

Yeah, pretty much this, Cubo. I'm not speaking for you about #BLM. I'm speaking to your vigilance over state abuse. You are one of the central posters who defines this vigilance to me irrespective of race. It's why I tend to ponder more on your posts when I find you disagreeing with me.

We've had a lot of turnover since 2011-2012, but there are a lot of posters that I remember like yourself, @Dolomite, and @Zeke's Chaingun, for example, who I recall debating this topic enthusiastically before the shock wave of Trayvon and Zimmerman. The focus was always earnestly on police abuse, corruption, and corruption at the government level. It was a race blind concern, and had little concern for socioeconomics. @Jackie Blue is a recent example who fits this paradigm for me although I don't figure him as staunch a libertarian, but he is quite complicated, as a poster, and could speak better for himself. The focus was always on specific injustices, and systemic cover-ups with no regard for race on either side of the thin blue line. Every one of these posters is a staunch defender of the 2nd Amendment, and as far as I know, and all are also generally strong advocates of a capitalist foundation for markets.

It's not directly on topic, but I doubt our TS would mind, and while I believe I have mentioned it before on the board, since this is a thread focused on the history of American police justice, I thought I would take the opportunity to once again draw the forum's attention to one of the most important documentaries ever made. It springs to mind every time I use the phrase or see it in print (which is why it has been on my mind a great deal more the past few years). It's a work with too many children to count:

Before Black Lives Matter, there were libertarians and Constitutional conservatives who were seriously concerned about the increasing militarization of the police and police brutality and related issues. BLM has unnecessarily racialized and politicized what should be a biracial and bipartisan effort. I understand the argument that blacks, particularly males, are disproportionately effected, but there are a multitude of reasons for that, some of which align with left-wing thinking, some of which align with right-wing thinking.

Michael Brown was a bad poster boy for police brutality. He was a large young man who was acting psychotic that day. My personal theory is that he had a psychotic reaction to particularly strong marijuana. I've heard from heavy, long-time marijuana users that the stuff these days is so strong that they've stopped smoking because of how it effected them. Given Brown's lack of a criminal record and reports of his prior behavior being different, that leads me to believe that he had a psychotic reaction to marijuana which caused him to act in a way that ultimately led to his death. It's a sad story across the board.

 

[cincymma79]

Really good read. The criminal justice system is the great civil rights battle of our time.

Which is why their leaders shouldn’t even talk to trump when he offers to do something about it. That really sticks it to the guy who’s been president for two years and is responsible for all do american history

 

[deadshot138]

Nah. Jury's been in for a while. The dude is consistent, reasonable and doesn't get emotional. I don't have to always agree with a dude to get along with him.

Yeah you right

 

[Cubo de Sangre]

Jury is still out on Cubo

Yeah you right

 

[Pseudo Sane]

I had no idea Chicago had this kind of problem. It's a pity more people who were involved weren't jailed. I have no sympathy for someone aiding and abetting torture.

Obviously other PDs have had their scandals, but this was obviously pretty widespread.

Someone who knows the history better than me; were similar levels of torture being committed by in other major cities in the same way, or was Chicago a special case? And if it was special, why?