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Forums - Politics - Official Protest Thread

Immersiveunreality on 17 June 2020
SpokenTruth said:
John2290 said:

You fail to understand Antifa's purpose  they use "antifa" as a recruiting tool but they are in reality communists, like left of Stalin types, and some are anarchists. It's really just the fools at the lowest level who think they are fighting fascists but hey, 99.9% of people aren't facists in the western world. 

Who is they, John?

And you really expect these anti-fascists to just slip on down to the road of communism?  Government owned means of production and central economic planning?

John2290 said:

And that is by design to avoid the law, thwy admit it in their guidebook. Their guidbook, rules and what not is their unifying factor and there are many organized groups, some who even take up arms like the far right but yeah, the majority are just spoiled, white rich kids who think they're fighting back Hitler like fascism when in fact the leaders of these sects want to dismantle society and rebild it with their own ideaolgy and systems akin to communism. 

Guidebook?  Leaders?  Rebuild society into a commune?  Where the hell do you get this stuff?

John2290 said:

Ya need to do some research, lad. It's not nearly as simple as that. 

The irony. So much irony my clothes are pressed, my blood is highly oxygenated and metals keep sticking to me.

melbye said:
They tore down a statue of Thomas Jefferson
https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2020/06/protesters-take-down-thomas-jefferson-statue-in-front-of-portlands-jefferson-high-school.html

Really doubt this is gonna go over well with a majority of Americans

As a descendant of Jefferson (my heritage is in the Library of Congress - he's my cousin), I can tell you it needs to go. His accomplishments should not overshadow his misdeads upon others.

Bolded:I think we should stop misnaming them as anti-fascists,it is not what they do but only what they claim to do.

I'm sure they have people with good intentions and people that are misleaded in almost religious ways,like any destructive group.



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sundin13 on 17 June 2020
JWeinCom said:
sundin13 said:

This conversation has been infinitely frustrating to watch.

As per the FBI:

" In the UCR Program, the term known offender does not imply that the suspect’s identity is known; rather, the term indicates that some aspect of the suspect was identified, thus distinguishing the suspect from an unknown offender. "

https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2018/topic-pages/offenders

It actually applies to neither defendants nor convictions. It applies solely to information obtained by the police. This is obviously susceptible to biases and issues with eyewitness reports. This means the "unknowns" are generally when there is no information about a suspect.

That said, there is no question that black people commit far more crime than whites (including homicide) when controlling for population size (which you seem to be failing to account for in many posts). There is virtually no doubt about this fact in the scientific community. Even if you were to assume that every homicide where the police have no information regarding race was committed by a white person, and half of homicides with black suspects were misreported, you would still have the black population accounting for a disproportionate amount of homicides. Both of those assumptions are inherently ridiculous, but when you have to go beyond ridiculous to erase these racial disparities it is usually pretty safe to say that they are quite real.

I agree with you on most points here J, but you are getting so bogged down in pedantic retorts that I feel you are losing the forest for the trees. There is a lot to talk about regarding the original point, but focusing so heavily on a bad stat used to prove something that is clearly true, prevents any of that discussion from happening.

At no point did I say that black people did not commit crimes commit crimes at a rate that is disproportionate rate to their population size..

However, if you want to say that "it must be the case" that racism is caused by the murder rate, as was done, then you need to actually know what the murder rate is, and how other indicators of racism vary along with it.  In that context a ten percent difference can be very significant.  

If you want to draw a conclusion, being able to collect data is step one.  If you're not getting your data from proper sources, and don't see the problem with that, or if you're claiming the data shows something which it does not show instead of actually checking its methodology, that's a problem.  If you haven't gotten step 1 right, then you can't move on.

Admittedly I probably should have just quit trying a while ago.  I can be stubborn sometimes. So if you think there's something worth discussing, you can go for it. I'm out.

The fact that you never made that argument is kind of my point. You don't disagree with the fundamentals of his argument, yet most of your discussion has been based around these fundamentals (ie Your preoccupation with the particulars of the statistics he used). This preoccupation regarding something that no one really contests, has largely prevented you from actually discussing the meat of the issue: what does this information say about racism and police brutality.

I personally don't think a 10 percent difference really makes much of a difference from our side. If you were to be collecting the data yourself and writing a scientific article about how violent crime rates contribute to racism that might be relevant, but no one here is attempting to do so.

What I see as Ghost's core argument is the following (and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, Ghost): High violent crime rates among the black population relative to whites, contributes to racist attitudes towards black individuals, specifically from police.

I personally think this is a quite interesting argument and discussion. I'll just quickly list out a few issues I have with this line of thinking:
1) The cause of police racism is largely irrelevant. If they are unable to do their jobs impartially, they should not be doing this job.
2) High violent crimes rates among the black population are in many ways, a result of generations of racism. You cannot blame violent crime for racism when you also acknowledge that racism can be blamed for violent crime.
3) These generations of racism are not just a thing of the past, or felt in remnants through various systems, but instead they are directly programed into our justice system. Significant parts of our justice system are built upon a foundation of policing and criminalizing black individuals, which is why such radical reform is necessary.

Basically, I don't think the argument is incorrect in a vacuum, but once you put it in context, it largely stops mattering. I believe Ghost at one point asked about whether a decrease in violent crime rates among the black population would reduce racism within the police and justice system, and to an extent, I believe it would (though there are many other contributing factors). However, at the same time, a decrease in the racism with the police and justice system, would reduce violent crime rates among the black population. This is a positive feedback loop in many ways, but we have a collective responsibility to address these issues through systemic reform. Simply sitting back and hoping that our failures will stop having the effects we know them to have isn't justice and does nothing to help fix the core issues here.

Note: I put this comment as a response to Ghost, as it is designed to address his arguments, even though it was a response to J.



kirby007 on 17 June 2020

I dont follow the news really on this subject but have the protests amounted to a substantial change in our society yet?
or its forgotten within the next month like this is occupy2.0



 "I think people should define the word crap" - Kirby007

Join the Prediction League http://www.vgchartz.com/predictions

Instead of seeking to convince others, we can be open to changing our own minds, and seek out information that contradicts our own steadfast point of view. Maybe it’ll turn out that those who disagree with you actually have a solid grasp of the facts. There’s a slight possibility that, after all, you’re the one who’s wrong.

Pemalite on 17 June 2020
sundin13 said:

Thats generally not what defunding the police is about. Basically the idea is that police budgets are absurd. Here is an image out of Denver that I think illustrates this point:

We know that there are a lot of risk factors which lead to crime. If we shift the budgets to other priorities such as education and housing, you can tackle crime issues in a way which actually benefits the community. While we shouldn't abolish the police, we do have to understand that our current justice system increases recidivism. That means if you are arrested, you are more likely to commit additional crimes. This is obviously not beneficial for the very bottom line of preventative policing. The justice system is failing in many ways.

Now, how do we "defund" the police in beneficial ways? Well, there are a few solid ideas that I've seen thrown around. One is changing what we are asking police to do. Many of the things that police get sent out for don't really need an armed response. One example is rape cases. The vast majority of the time, when victims contact police, they are not in any current pressing danger, so sending someone who fulfills more of a social worker/mental health expert role could make reporting easier for the victims while alleviating some of the pressure on our policing system. Overall, we need to ask as a society "how often do we really need an armed response?" Doing so can allow us to downsize police departments while improving interactions with victims. This obviously extends far beyond this one example, but this comment isn't meant to be comprehensive.

I can probably provide a little insight on the budgeting side of the equation. Well. For Australia at-least.

The police tend to run some very expensive highly specialized equipment like personal thermal imaging cameras to find missing persons and items, speed cameras, breath/drug testing equipment... And after something like a Road Crash Rescue we will have the Road Crash Police team fly in and set up special devices that record with lasers the gradient of the road, trajectory of the vehicles, record placement of debri, road composition and more.

Sometimes police helicopters get used in a search which comes with an accompanying budgetary cost even when not being used... And we also have Police Water Ops which assists us with marine rescues and body retrievals/hand overs. - These all cost, because 1,000 liters of fuel can get expensive, maintenance costs are on-going costs.

And there is a significant overlay with wages, insurance and training, police need to do skills maintenance like us firefighters and marine rescuers and there is ongoing running costs with all of that as well.

Not sure on the vehicles they use in the USA, but here they take commodity consumer vehicles and "enhance" them for police use, which means a new chip to increase power, reworked steering, breaking and so forth, but every few years they cycle the vehicles through and buy new ones to take advantage of more modern vehicle features and technology... Some of that cost gets recouped when they sell the old vehicles thankfully.

Could things be better? Yeah. It's a Government agency and government agencies due to admin and bureaucracy tend to be inefficient.

My advice to the people of the United States is... Be careful how you defund the police, because that will impact other rescue agencies as well and our ability to respond...
Last night for example I worked on a structure fire, Police was busy keeping the public out of our way and put in road blocks while we went in the building. - They were bringing us water, they were helping us strip off and decontaminate our PBI Golds (Asbestos home) and they had officers evacuating neighbors to keep them safe... And they were investigating, they were gathering information and providing that to us as well.

Police do more than just pull you over and fine you for excessive alcohol or drug consumption, that's the grunt work that is generally exposed to the public, there is a ton that goes on behind the scenes that us (Or myself even!) even know about.

I personally believe the USA needs to do multiple independent inquiries into the Police system in the USA all specialized in specific areas, I.E. One on abuse, the other on monetary... And then politicians need to enact policy to support those inquiries and enact some systemic changes... Because clearly there are issues.




www.youtube.com/@Pemalite

JWeinCom on 17 June 2020
sundin13 said:
JWeinCom said:

At no point did I say that black people did not commit crimes commit crimes at a rate that is disproportionate rate to their population size..

However, if you want to say that "it must be the case" that racism is caused by the murder rate, as was done, then you need to actually know what the murder rate is, and how other indicators of racism vary along with it.  In that context a ten percent difference can be very significant.  

If you want to draw a conclusion, being able to collect data is step one.  If you're not getting your data from proper sources, and don't see the problem with that, or if you're claiming the data shows something which it does not show instead of actually checking its methodology, that's a problem.  If you haven't gotten step 1 right, then you can't move on.

Admittedly I probably should have just quit trying a while ago.  I can be stubborn sometimes. So if you think there's something worth discussing, you can go for it. I'm out.

The fact that you never made that argument is kind of my point. You don't disagree with the fundamentals of his argument, yet most of your discussion has been based around these fundamentals (ie Your preoccupation with the particulars of the statistics he used). This preoccupation regarding something that no one really contests, has largely prevented you from actually discussing the meat of the issue: what does this information say about racism and police brutality.

I personally don't think a 10 percent difference really makes much of a difference from our side. If you were to be collecting the data yourself and writing a scientific article about how violent crime rates contribute to racism that might be relevant, but no one here is attempting to do so.

What I see as Ghost's core argument is the following (and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, Ghost): High violent crime rates among the black population relative to whites, contributes to racist attitudes towards black individuals, specifically from police.

I personally think this is a quite interesting argument and discussion. I'll just quickly list out a few issues I have with this line of thinking:
1) The cause of police racism is largely irrelevant. If they are unable to do their jobs impartially, they should not be doing this job.
2) High violent crimes rates among the black population are in many ways, a result of generations of racism. You cannot blame violent crime for racism when you also acknowledge that racism can be blamed for violent crime.
3) These generations of racism are not just a thing of the past, or felt in remnants through various systems, but instead they are directly programed into our justice system. Significant parts of our justice system are built upon a foundation of policing and criminalizing black individuals, which is why such radical reform is necessary.

Basically, I don't think the argument is incorrect in a vacuum, but once you put it in context, it largely stops mattering. I believe Ghost at one point asked about whether a decrease in violent crime rates among the black population would reduce racism within the police and justice system, and to an extent, I believe it would (though there are many other contributing factors). However, at the same time, a decrease in the racism with the police and justice system, would reduce violent crime rates among the black population. This is a positive feedback loop in many ways, but we have a collective responsibility to address these issues through systemic reform. Simply sitting back and hoping that our failures will stop having the effects we know them to have isn't justice and does nothing to help fix the core issues here.

Note: I put this comment as a response to Ghost, as it is designed to address his arguments, even though it was a response to J.

I'm not going to reply to the main points you made, but after thinking about it more, I think your last post was mostly correct. People can get frustrated when they think their point is not being heard and dig in further and further, especially on certain topics that are important for them (which for me is actually more statistics than racial justice)... and that's kind of what happened.

So, thanks for giving me a much needed "hey you're being a bit of a dick". Sometimes we all need a reminder.

Last edited by JWeinCom - on 17 June 2020

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melbye on 18 June 2020

Well, guess like the anti-cop people are gonna get to experience a city without police



KiigelHeart on 19 June 2020
sundin13 said:

I think this is a problem with our justice system. There is so little trust in both the police and the justice system as a whole. Like, it doesn't shock me that someone would try to run away from a cop. They are afraid, not just for their immediate situation, but for the fact that being put into the justice system can fuck your whole life. I don't think an arrest of someone who was sleeping in their car with a 0.1% BAC is a situation that requires putting someone in handcuffs and arresting them. This may be a personal philosophy thing, but I think if the individual was encountered by a social worker they would be able to actually provide the individual with positive resources to prevent similar actions in the future instead of just saying "We 'bout to ruin your life". In my opinion, the public would have been more safe in the absence of an armed response here.

And again, I just want to emphasize that I have no issue with individual cops as a whole. I believe that there are fundamental issues with the system which make abuses both inevitable and common. If we try to address this at an individual level, we will fail. That is why the changes that are being asked for seem so large. They are asking for broad, systemic changes which may seem a little scary at first, for the people who feel safe under what is essentially a military force patrolling our streets.

Well, justice system of Finland is pretty much an opposite of US but some people still try to run away or attack the police heh. Some individuals are simply violent assholes, alchohol makes some people aggressive and a person with psychotic disorder can be unpredictable and extremely dangerous.

I'm not that familiar with your justice system so I'd like to know how and why is it going to fuck your life? 

I also understand your philosophy, but my experiences have made me too cynical for it. We have social workers available and offer help to people who have issues with alchohol. It just usually doesn't work unfortunately. 

And I think laws should be enforced and people need to be held accountable for their actions. Driving with 0.1% BAC is irresponsible and dangerous. It's your own fault if you drink and take the wheel. I'd get fired for doing it, and our limit is 0.05% BAC. 

Anyway, reforming the police and making changes to justice system seem like reasonable ideas. It's just that many are asking for abolishing the police, driven by this acab-bullshit agenda. Isn't Minneapolis planning on doing it already? I'm not sure because media is all over the place. It's a freaking scary idea and I find it hard to believe this is what majority of people who live in crime-infested areas want. 



sundin13 on 19 June 2020
KiigelHeart said:
sundin13 said:

I think this is a problem with our justice system. There is so little trust in both the police and the justice system as a whole. Like, it doesn't shock me that someone would try to run away from a cop. They are afraid, not just for their immediate situation, but for the fact that being put into the justice system can fuck your whole life. I don't think an arrest of someone who was sleeping in their car with a 0.1% BAC is a situation that requires putting someone in handcuffs and arresting them. This may be a personal philosophy thing, but I think if the individual was encountered by a social worker they would be able to actually provide the individual with positive resources to prevent similar actions in the future instead of just saying "We 'bout to ruin your life". In my opinion, the public would have been more safe in the absence of an armed response here.

And again, I just want to emphasize that I have no issue with individual cops as a whole. I believe that there are fundamental issues with the system which make abuses both inevitable and common. If we try to address this at an individual level, we will fail. That is why the changes that are being asked for seem so large. They are asking for broad, systemic changes which may seem a little scary at first, for the people who feel safe under what is essentially a military force patrolling our streets.

Well, justice system of Finland is pretty much an opposite of US but some people still try to run away or attack the police heh. Some individuals are simply violent assholes, alchohol makes some people aggressive and a person with psychotic disorder can be unpredictable and extremely dangerous.

I'm not that familiar with your justice system so I'd like to know how and why is it going to fuck your life? 

I also understand your philosophy, but my experiences have made me too cynical for it. We have social workers available and offer help to people who have issues with alchohol. It just usually doesn't work unfortunately. 

And I think laws should be enforced and people need to be held accountable for their actions. Driving with 0.1% BAC is irresponsible and dangerous. It's your own fault if you drink and take the wheel. I'd get fired for doing it, and our limit is 0.05% BAC. 

Anyway, reforming the police and making changes to justice system seem like reasonable ideas. It's just that many are asking for abolishing the police, driven by this acab-bullshit agenda. Isn't Minneapolis planning on doing it already? I'm not sure because media is all over the place. It's a freaking scary idea and I find it hard to believe this is what majority of people who live in crime-infested areas want. 

So, a quick response to your question about why the justice system is such an issue when people get involved in it:

Our system leans far too heavily on punishment and not enough on rehabilitation. This in combination with the rights that are stripped away from you once you've been convicted and the difficulty finding a job, combine to create high recidivism rates and make it a very difficult journey to be reintroduced into society. This creates a bit of criminality trap where individuals spend their lives in and out of jail, because the system doesn't provide them the resources to get out of that trap and instead builds up bigger and bigger walls for the individual to actually get out. In addition to this, many times when an individual is released from prison, they are given a bill for the time they spent in prison. This leads to an individual having to pay about 60% of their income after they are released to paying off these fees, which again, just builds that wall higher up.

As far as the "abolish the police" idea, I think there are two important things to realize about this. One is that this is a fairly niche idea that isn't as popular as some would have you believe. Two is that this is a reflection of the lived experiences of many people. I think when we hear someone say "Abolish the police" we should not just scoff and shake them off, but acknowledge that what they are saying is "In my lived experiences, the police have not been working for me and have not made me feel safer". In my opinion, that speaks volumes of the reform that needs to be done.

Also, no Minneapolis is not abolishing their police. Essentially what they are doing is saying "Our system is too broken to reform, so we are going to start new". They are breaking apart the current system so they can build a new one in its place with additional reforms in place. The idea of this is to use evidence to improve public safety by shifting away from a punitive, militant approach when it is not required.



Immersiveunreality on 19 June 2020
SpokenTruth said:
Immersiveunreality said:

Bolded:I think we should stop misnaming them as anti-fascists,it is not what they do but only what they claim to do.

I'm sure they have people with good intentions and people that are misleaded in almost religious ways,like any destructive group.

Then we should first stop grouping everybody who wears black and shows up to a protest as Anti-Fa.  There is no centralized organization.  No membership.  No leadership. 

kirby007 said:
I dont follow the news really on this subject but have the protests amounted to a substantial change in our society yet?
or its forgotten within the next month like this is occupy2.0

Quite a lot of change already and more in the pipeline.

Confederate statues and other symbols of glorification (Confederate battle flag) are being removed from public and private spaces and institutions.

Police reform in dozens, if not hundreds, of cities.

Vestiges of racism, oppression, etc...are being removed by dozens of companies.  Product policy changes are being addressed.  Hiring practices are changing. 

Countless CEO's, politicians and other leaders have resigned or been fired.

The sports and entertainment worlds have started to own up to their past racial mistakes.

The amount of things that have changed in the past 2 weeks in almost unprecedented.  NASCAR banned the Confederate Flag...that should tell you everything you need to know about how much things just changed.

Bolded: I disagree,whenever people can organize to protest and form a mass then it is likely there is an organisation WITH a certain leading to plan this.

I remember seeing interviews with antifamembers and leads on youtube but strangely i can not find them anymore,i did try to look them up on google and only got positive news so i suspect censoring and i really hope google starts to get fined into oblivion for the searchresults they provide.



Immersiveunreality on 19 June 2020
SpokenTruth said:
Immersiveunreality said:

Bolded: I disagree,whenever people can organize to protest and form a mass then it is likely there is an organisation WITH a certain leading to plan this.

I remember seeing interviews with antifamembers and leads on youtube but strangely i can not find them anymore,i did try to look them up on google and only got positive news so i suspect censoring and i really hope google starts to get fined into oblivion for the searchresults they provide.

OK. So.......how do we join?  How can we become official members of Anti-Fa?  How can we schedule a news interview?

And no, Google isn't censuring a damn thing.  Wayback machine would have it cached or you could check Duck Duck Go or Live Leak, etc....

You are not refuting what i say because i currently have no means to join them,if i was wanting to join them i would probably try to connect with them through social media.