I never thought this would be possible however i will say I am incredibly grateful for what Anonymous is doing. I want them to bring to light the things that have gone wrong. Honestly, I view them as a dark knight or batman watching from afar. At this point, I am thankful...beyond thankful for the exposing of terrible things.
The other thing I am beyond thankful for is the regular mom and pop's who are keeping their community safe. We are at a place where we NEED to come together as a community. That includes out safety.
It's a sad state of affairs right now however I do believe we can get stronger.
Well put, @vestralux: "And that problem is a privilege so pervasive, so deep and ancestral, it just can't see itself."
I am white. My son* is Black (I adopted him as a newborn). Although I try with all my heart, and engage both my maternal instincts and my intellect, I know I can never really know what it's like for him as he moves through the world.
*And recent graduate of Berklee College of Music--must also share some mom-pride here!
T say he will deploy military if state officials can’t contain protest violence
"If a city or state refuses to take the actions necessary to defend the life and property of their residents, then I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them," Trump said, referring to himself as "your president of law and order and an ally of all peaceful protesters.”
To activate the military to operate in the U.S., Trump would have to invoke the 213-year-old Insurrection Act, which four people familiar with the decision had told NBC News he planned to do.
But the president could invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy active-duty troops without a request from a governor. Those troops would be allowed to conduct law enforcement missions. To invoke the act, Trump would first have to issue a proclamation to “immediately order the insurgents to disperse and retire peaceably to their abodes within a limited time,” according to the law.
I am white. My son* is Black (I adopted him as a newborn). Although I try with all my heart, and engage both my maternal instincts and my intellect, I know I can never really know what it's like for him as he moves through the world.
*And recent graduate of Berklee College of Music--must also share some mom-pride here!
Nothing has shaken or moved me more deeply than the testimonies of mothers of Black sons. My heart breaks for the fear they must carry. And for the weight of centuries of oppression and stigma that your sons are forced to hold on their backs for the whole world.
Many years ago in college I took a powerful Race and Ethnic Relations course. White students were asked to simply sit and listen as minority students (those who wished to) told us about their personal experiences living in the world as it is. It became a really potent, supportive space and I vividly remember a young Black man breaking down in pain about how many times he'd seen women—even of his own race—reach to lock their car doors as he walked through the parking lot on campus.
We're all taught to fear people who look like him, to assume they are preparing to commit a crime and are already guilty of others. The worst part, he explained, is how deeply this suspicion had penetrated his own conscience because even he had found himself experiencing the same assumptions and biases toward Black men.
People are murdered everyday because of the success of structural racism. And this is just one of countless reasons why it's so important to me to do everything I can to help dismantle it, even when doing so is hard for people. White lives aren't threatened because we're talking about our privilege; only our egos are.
Congratulations, mama! I'm right here celebrating your son's success with you. May he thrive. ?
Recent talk about a full-fledged civil war in this country has always been *a bit* overwrought, and you don't need to be a military insider to understand why. My estimate is that a good portion of a country's adult population - maybe at least 30% - would have to be willing to shoot their own neighbors for ethnic/religious/political differences in order to bring about sustained civil unrest (political scientists have probably posed better estimates). Don't let the hyper-distortions of social media and cable news fool you; the US is nowhere near that threshold. There are vast differences between America now and America in 1860. Neither are we Biafra in 1960 or Bosnia in 1990. One of the crucial features that sets the US apart now is that there's no clear dividing line that delineates "us" and "them." There are colored and non-Hispanic white Americans, but the only people agitating for a race war are a very. very, very small minority of white people and a cohort of aging die-hard Black Panthers. There are also Democrats and Republicans, but get a grip. A Bosnian who lived through that country's civil war would probably dismiss our partisan squabbles as child's play (and what of the near-plurality of Americans who don't belong to any political party?)
So I'm going to be blunt: the aspirations of far-right white supremacists to start a race war in this country are idiotic. It ain't gonna happen. None of the conditions exist for a full-fledged uprising. As we're seeing with the current protests, white nationalists can cause localized, short-term mayhem. They can also carry out lone wolf terrorist attacks. But that's it. Their belief that they can initiate a civil war is about as cogent as Charles Manson's delusions that he could start a race war by shooting up 10050 Cielo Drive.
He hasn’t yet. He used the military to clear a path for him so he can do his pathetic speech in front of a church. A photo op holding a bible. What a joke
I love this
"I reject the notion that the federal government can send troops into the state of Illinois," said Pritzker, a Democrat. "The fact is that the president has created an incendiary moment here. He wants to change the subject from his failure over coronavirus, a miserable failure and now see a moment when there's unrest because of the injustice that was done to George Floyd that he now wants to create another topic and something where he can be the law and order president."