All purpose news and politics thread part v: The quickening

[Theleviathan]

Hey Pete, Neo-liberals, Conservadems, and Moderate Centrists, I thought attacking Democrats on a personal level was forbidden?

Sometimes I wonder if you are literally using the Office Space "Jump to Conclusions" game.

[Tazirai]

Jason Johnson at it again. But if you counter him, then you're a Bernie Bros. OR a reject from the island of Misfit black girls... But he's NOT talking about Nina Turner...

[Tazirai]

This is why Medicare for all is a non-negotiable for me. As a black man, I'm one Cop away from having a bad day death.
For my sisters, they don't get listened to when it comes to their own health.
Women, in general, don't often have autonomy over their own bodies. It's sickening.

They told him his WIFE " was just not a priority..." **** kinda system we have here?

Serena Williams almost died to the same ****. Economic justice and racial justice are inextricably tied.
Lebron James had the N-word sprayed on his home, and he's rich as hell.
No matter what there will always be a minority of racists. But if you get people on an even playing field there can be a sea change.

Distraught father sues Cedars-Sinai Hospital after his wife dies during childbirth
Charles Johnson alleges that his wife, Kira, was ignored by medical professionals and she bled internally for nearly 10 hours

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

So you're saying it would be ok to nominate Hillary again?

She was considered the most electabile candidate last time.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

Bernie’s Bill de Blasio Problem

For years, grassroots organizers have fought against mass criminalization in New York City. In a city where police brutality and inequality have been the hallmarks of the experience of communities of color, mayors have often been the biggest impediments to justice. Last week, Democratic primary candidate Bernie Sanders pointed to the racist policing legacy of one of them, Mike Bloomberg, and embraced another, Bill de Blasio, as a surrogate for his campaign.

De Blasio quickly joined the popular Senator on the campaign trail, suggesting the move served as a repudiation of Bloomberg, whose campaign is currently engaged in a war of words with Bernie’s. However, while the Sanders campaign may be signaling a widening of its political tent by including de Blasio within it, it does so by ignoring his own awful record on policing — as well as the (ongoing) grassroots fight against it.

In 2013, Mayor de Blasio campaigned on ending the era of Stop & Frisk. The grossly unconstitutional approach had lost public support amid city-wide protests. Most Democratic candidates for mayor at the time, including de Blasio, came to oppose it. While reported numbers of S&Fs peaked in 2011, the numbers began to decline dramatically — during Bloomberg’s last year. Still, de Blasio as mayor has claimed credit for ending* the tactic (*racially disparate S&F continues under de Blasio, albeit at lower reported figures) as a sign of dramatic reform under his watch.

But that doesn’t tell the true story of policing under de Blasio. One place to start is when candidate de Blasio, the onetime Hillary Clinton campaign manager, signaled his support for one of the most destructive, racist policing philosophies of the modern era: Broken Windows, the neoconservative call for aggressive policing of low-level, “quality-of-life” offenses. Soon after being elected, de Blasio doubled down by making William Bratton — the police commissioner who along with former mayor Rudy Giuliani operationalized Broken Windows in the 90’s — his top cop.

Under Bratton and de Blasio, New York City saw several police controversies, including a sprawling police corruption scandal, police spying of protesters and the NYPD chokehold killing of Eric Garner . The death of Garner, who was killed after police accused him of a “quality-of-life” violation, helped spearhead the Black Lives Matter movement nationally and brought scrutiny to Broken Windows here at home. Garner’s daughter, the late Erica Garner (whom Bernie highlighted in a 2016 campaign video) also called out de Blasio as complicit in denying her family justice for years.

For over six years, de Blasio defended Broken Windows, which was the larger framework of criminalization from which S&F had sprung. Before there were 700,000 racialized stops in a single year under Bloomberg, there was a doubling of low-level racialized arrests beginning in the mid-90s and peaking at almost a quarter million arrests in 2010 — a span that covered the administrations of Giuliani and Bloomberg.

The overwhelming majority of arrests under Broken Windows were of people of color. Police were encouraged to arrest or ticket people for things like dancing on the subway or street vending, but the classic Broken Windows arrest was fare evasion, which topped 55,000 arrests (mostly of New Yorkers of color) in the middle of de Blasio’s first term. In order to pressure the Mayor over fare evasion, which criminalized poverty (most people fare-hop as an economic, not criminal, decision), activists offered free swipes in poor communities of color through the #SwipeItForward campaign.

Mayor de Blasio, a self-proclaimed progressive, rebuffed the notion that fare evasion arrests criminalized poverty by arguing those arrested sometimes have money on them. In other words, when direct action challenged one of the most destructive policing strategies in America (Broken Windows was exported to other urban cities, and even other countries), de Blasio stood with the NYPD — something that would become a theme of his mayoralty as subway performers, subway vendors, and delivery workers who used e-bikes were all criminalized even as S&F reports went down.

The legacy of de Blasio is the legacy of Broken Windows, a deeply racist philosophy which saw mostly New Yorkers of color as “disorder” needed to be policed away — an idea popularized under Republican Giuliani but that continued under independents (Bloomberg) and Democrats (de Blasio) alike. So even as Bernie and many of his supporters correctly state that Bloomberg was terrible for communities of color, we should note that he is not uniquely responsible for the police state many of us live within.

The de Blasio administration, in fact, has also laid the foundation for an arguably more Orwellian police state. “Predictive policing,” the dystopian idea that police could predict crimes and criminals, began under de Blasio. De Blasio’s NYPD expanded a secretive, sprawling “gang database” made up of almost all people of color that has led to militarized and controversial gang sweeps in collaboration with federal agencies. Transparency even took a turn for the worse as the Mayor and the NYPD reinterpreted decades-old law so that police officer misconduct history was shielded from the media and the public.

There are other concerns for those who support Bernie’s politics. Bernie decries money in politics and special interest groups. Meanwhile, de Blasio has been investigated for his cozy relationship with monied political donors who reportedly curried favor with City Hall. Amid concerns that working class communities will be gentrified out of the city, this mayor’s support from real estate donors has been a central criticism from tenant advocates who’ve rejected his affordable housing plan as a trojan horse for gentrification.

Bernie is dead wrong when he tweets that de Blasio is “a mayor fighting every day to improve the lives of New Yorkers.”

But the question of New York City mayors and their legacies isn’t simply which one was worse (Giuliani and Bloomberg and de Blasio were horrible in their own ways), but to which ones we give a pass. By aligning with de Blasio, or at least allowing de Blasio to align with him, Bernie opens the door for the mayor to rebrand himself as change agent. This not only ignores his record and the work of grassroots activists, whom the Bernie campaign would see as its driving force, but also sends the message that transactional, machine Democrats are acceptable allies so as long as they help you win an election.

So when do the politics of the so-called “big tent” encroach on one’s principles? De blasio is a lame duck mayor who tried running for president until that fizzled out. He has everything to gain at Bernie’s side. Is he looking for a cabinet position? An influential role in a progressive organization? Bernie should dump de Blasio and sit down with activists who’ve worked for change despite de Blasio.

A piece critical of Bernie that focuses on something that actually matters, instead of the usual Bernie bashing that gets attention.

This is the stuff that matters, not where he spent his honeymoon or whatever other nonsense the liberals keep bringing up.

[zinderel]

"Our party?" Who is 'Our' and why would 'Our' try to take control of something else when they can easily just start their own 'Party'?

That's like two kids fighting over the same ball in a playground instead of sharing it or each one getting their own separate ball if they can't work/play together.

In other words, fighting over something like this isn't a sign of maturity.

Some might even call it bullying.

I call it what it is: being an internet troll for Bernie.

[Tazirai]

Good thing is they passed the bill...

https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-...bill/1318/text

[Tazirai]

Some folks on Twitter tried to start the #bernieknew, and people countered with this...
Because we all see through the smears, that the Right and some of the so-called "Left" are trying to do the day before the Nevada Caucus, anyone who thinks they aren't trying to swing people away from Sanders with lies is addled in the head.
ERVh1WVXkAEeg3V.jpg

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

Some folks on Twitter tried to start the #bernieknew, and people countered with this...
Because we all see through the smears, that the Right and some of the so-called "Left" are trying to do the day before the Nevada Caucus, anyone who thinks they aren't trying to swing people away from Sanders with lies is addled in the head.
ERVh1WVXkAEeg3V.jpg

**** go back to 08 when all those memo's circulated through email and whatever that Obama was a terrorist operative who was coming out of nowhere to deestablisize America. That propaganda was out there. And certain people (who are part of the same circles that attack Bernie) did the whole "well maybe he's not even a real American" schtick.

[Superbat]

Good lord.

[Superbat]

I call it what it is: being an internet troll for Bernie.

You're haven't posted here in more than week and your only post when you come back is a cheap shot at me.

[Kyer]

Are we allowing this kind of hate speech on the board or nah?

Please do not take my type out of context. I stated that this is what others accused me of, not that this is what I personally think regarding any person's skin color.

[Superbat]

Please do not take my type out of context. I stated that this is what others accused me of, not that this is what I personally think regarding any person's skin color.

It was a typo, but having to say you don't hate Obama because he's black is a bad look.

[Kyer]

He calls NFL players(mostly black) who kneel to peacefully protest racial injustice "Sons of bitches" who should be fired.
He pardoned racist Sherrif Arpaio who was convicted of ignoring legal orders to stop racially profiling and arresting people because he "thinks" they might be here illegally (or they have brown skin).
The central park 5, now the exonerated 5, he not only took out ads suggesting they be executed. But, even when they were found to be innocent by DNA evidence he still was unapologetic and suggesting they were guilty of "something" despite no evidence and despite them winning settlement for their wrongful convictions.

Not to mention he just awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to a known racist with a history of public racist comments ANYONE can see for themselves.

He was upset that the football players were disrespecting the American flag which stands as a symbol of America. This was not about skin color, it was about disrespect. So not racism. Racism is putting down a particular race simply because of that race. Many people were upset about the football players behavior. That likely was the main contribution to the NFL's profit lag during that year.

I happened to respect Sheriff Arpaio. Probably also not a saint but he did keep crime down in the area. I also liked that he managed to do this without unduly burdening the taxpayer by building more jails. If outdoor tents are good enough for many of our military then criminals should hardly complain. Or should criminals get better accommodations than soldiers who are out risking their lives on a daily basis for all of us? At any rate, he went after criminals based on behavior and statistics. If most criminals follow a specific look or behavior I'd be wary of that group too. Store security do the same thing irregardless of a person's race/color. Backpack? Eyeing security cameras? Spending a lot of time around Electronics without actually looking like contemplating a purchase? Red flags. You bet security watch for those. I'm not putting down my own race. I just call it as I see it.

I'm not familiar with the Central Park thing so can't really comment.

Presidential Medal of Freedom to a known racist: again, not familiar with who is being referred to here. However I'd have to ask is the the same kind of 'racist' that Trump has been labelled as or is this person a card-carrying KKK leader like a certain long-time Democratic Senator was? I forget the name but the Democrats didn't see fit to get rid of him for ages. Or did they even get rid of him at all?

[Kyer]

It was a typo, but having to say you don't hate Obama because he's black is a bad look.

What am I suppose to say other than the truth? I disliked Obama for his policies. He indirectly got my dad an early death. He indirectly caused a lot of my coworkers to lose their doctors and insurance. Prices skyrocketed. Housing skyrocketed as well just before it fell (later to rise again.) These are facts I know because I have either experienced them firsthand myself or seen them happen to others I am close to. I consider the man to have been incompetent at best. Skin color doesn't factor into incompetence. Martin Luther King Jr. was a very intelligent and wise man. Pity he didn't run for President back then.