Friday, June 19

How Things are Playing Politically In Minneapolis.

Floyd's killing marks failure of Obama-era police reform

4:50pm
Minneapolis embraced the pillars of the final report from the President's Task Force on 21st Century Policing, a signature blueprint from the Obama era on how to reform American law enforcement. But after five years, the city is no closer to achieving the primary objective of creating trust between police and the communities they serve.
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The South Side of Chicago, where Obama cut his teeth as a community organizer, could have told you that.  The man is all promises, excellent at campaigning and getting elected, but once in, he just could not get the work done.  Never published a law review article either, as the first Black man to head the Harvard Law Review.  Voted "present" many times, as an Illinois politician, and then in his one-term as junior Senator from Illinois, before he was voted the first Black man to be President of the United States.

ADDED:

Police accountability bills stall in Minnesota Legislature

A special session of the Minnesota Legislature appeared to be in a stalemate Friday with both parties deeply divided on how far lawmakers should go toward remaking policing in the state where George Floyd was killed.
12 minutes ago
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I hope the U.S. Congress will get busy on Monday, not talking about the past and which statues to remove from the Capitol, but by addressing the future. I left in that last unrelated link to the continuing Iron Range layoffs in Minnesota -- I hope Congress stops with the performance theater and develops a plan for addressing the economic devastation that is soon going to be hitting a lot of workers and industries in this country who have so far been untouched.

Looking forward and preparing for what is to come is much more important than looking behind and finding evil in America's dead. With the Judiciary continually encroaching on their territory, you'd think the Legislature would want to get busy now, tackling the substantive issues that need addressing in terms of law reform, systematic economic inequalities, and their own privileged elite places atop the heap.

It's Time.  Are you working for us, or working against us, or just plain -- not working?
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By the way?  Imma start calling errbody "Chief" now... 
I'm sorry, but that story --  Duluth pushes to remove 'chief' from job titles, calling it offensive to indigenous people  -- is FOR REAL!  The box has been opened, Pandora is on the loose, and some White people have NO IDEA how they can help, in reality.  We're well into the Theater of the Absurd, but where do you see this ending, exactly?   "I know, Sam!  Let's just tell the CEO's and CBO's to drop all that indigenous-Indian talk, and be one of us.  That'll help things, no?"

America:  Chiefless, since 1619?  I just don't see how this all ends well, myself...  You opened the box, you picked the scab, and you have no idea now how to control the bleeding.  People are busy chasing their own tails, and there is no narrowly tailored plan, directed by a pragmatist with experience, for a unified nation.  Same as attacking a sovereign country -- or two, or three or four, while we're at it... -- and thinking your physical destruction and fire-starting will morph into bigger and better things on the ground.

It didn't and it won't.  And the bleeding just goes on and on and on...
Maybe the only solution now in some areas indeed is to abandon the streets, after hours and sometimes in the hot daylight too, to the gangs assembled to patrol their own territory, quiet the citizenry, and maintain control?  Did they teach a seminar on that by chance at Brown? I don't think there are books you can read by those types of people who understand, -- probably better than you or your crew, -- raw power, controlling boundaries on the ground, and maintaining control of subordinates.  Stop snitchin' is akin to not leaking, and truth be told?  Weaker is the organization that continually spills to outside sources...

You should probably understand that -- it's a big difficulty faced in reality -- if you're going to try to identify and remedy all of the racial social problems of the past 400 years, and bring us through the voyage alive.