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May 31, 2020 at 11:34 pm in reply to: Police v. Demonstrators Protesting Killing of George Floyd #115566
ZooeyModerator
ZooeyModeratorNo group, protestors or civilians, have been anywhere close to as violent and sadistic as the police have been tonight.pic.twitter.com/85p9E3zMps
— Gravel Institute (@GravelInstitute) May 31, 2020
ZooeyModeratorBiden is sure doing an inspirational job right now.
ZooeyModerator
ZooeyModeratorI’m not interested in getting a statistical breakdown of who did what, for what reason.
There could be leftists, white nationalists, and selfish chaos-lovers in any kind of blend, and the bottom line is this:
Our police departments need reform, and the police must be held accountable for their actions.
The rest of it is ideological tug-of-war.
ZooeyModerator
May 29, 2020 at 7:07 pm in reply to: Police v. Demonstrators Protesting Killing of George Floyd #115438ZooeyModeratorThis is the first cheerful news I have read in a while.
Minneapolis Bus Drivers Refuse to Transport George Floyd Protesters to Jail
Organized labor throughout the city is banding together in solidarity against police violence in the aftermath of Floyd’s death.
By Lauren Kaori Gurley
May 29 2020, 8:57amThe murder of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police has sparked several days of protests, including the burning of a police precinct on Thursday night.
In solidarity with protestors, union bus drivers in Minneapolis signed a petition and refused to transport police officers and arrested protestors to jail on Thursday, PayDay Report first reported and independently confirmed by Motherboard. At one bus garage in downtown Minneapolis on Thursday evening, some workers refused to drive buses that were being dispatched to transport police officers.
“We are willing to do what we can to ensure our labor is not used to help the Minneapolis Police Department shut down calls for justice,” the petition reads. “For example, I am a bus driver with ATU 1005, and I urged people to call MetroTransit and the Governor the second I heard our buses and members were being organized to make mass arrests hours before the protests escalated.”
On Thursday, the city of Minneapolis shut down its light rail and bus services out of concern for employee and rider safety.
More than 400 union workers, including Minneapolis postal workers, nurses, teachers, and hotel workers have signed the petition posted on the Facebook group Union Members for #JusticeForGeorgeFloyd pledging not to aid the policing of the protests with their labor, according to Adam Birch, a Minneapolis bus driver who wrote the petition.
“I was on my route on Wednesday evening and there was a message that came over transit control asking for a bus to transport police officers,” Birch told Motherboard. “I interpreted this as Minneapolis police department preparing for mass arrests so when I had a moment on a layover, I created a post on Facebook saying that I’m a metro transit bus driver, and I don’t feel comfortable assisting the Minneapolis police department to make arrests. It got a lot of reaction, which was surprising so I created a petition.”
Since the release of a video earlier this week showing an officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck until he died, unions and workers in Minneapolis, a city with a strong organized labor movement, have condemned the killing. Among them, Minneapolis’s teacher union and the Awood Center, which organizes Amazon warehouse workers in the area, have also issued statements condemning the killing as an act of racism.
“If we feel if something is unjust, then workers should have the right not to support the situation or provide their services,” Ryan Timlin, president of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1005, which represents the bus drivers and 2,500 public transportation workers in the Twin Cities, told Motherboard. “This was not a strike.”
Many members of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1005, which represents 2,500 public transportation workers in the Twin Cities, live in south Minneapolis, where Floyd lived and was killed and where recent protests have taken place.
“ATU members live with similar fears on a daily basis. ATU members face racism daily. Our members live in and work in neighborhoods where actions like this happen, and where this took place, now watched in horror across the globe,” a press statement from the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1005, said.
“In ATU, we have a saying: ‘NOT ONE MORE’ when dealing with driver assaults in some cases have led to members being murdered while doing their job,” the union said. “We say ‘NOT ONE MORE’ execution of a black life by the hands of the police. NOT ONE MORE! JUSTICE FOR GEORGE FLOYD.”
The Minneapolis police department, which has a history of misconduct allegations and racist violence, is represented itself by a powerful union. The Minneapolis Police Union has continued to offer “warrior-style training” to any officers that want it, despite the city’s mayor putting a ban on the style of training last year, which was linked to the shooting of Philando Castile in 2016.
When the police shot and killed 32-year-old Castile in Minnesota, the local teacher’s union took action to protest the death of Castile, who was a nutrition services supervisor, and 14-year member of the Teamsters Local 320, which also represents law enforcement officials in the Twin Cities.
Birch says the Facebook group Union Members for #JusticeForGeorgeFloyd is organizing a coalition of union members to attend a protest in Minneapolis on Saturday.
ZooeyModeratorI tried adding to that thread twice and my posts simply vaporized.
I got em back, right?
Yeah, both items are there: the video and the tweet. Now if you would restore the Rams’ dominance, that would be cool.
May 29, 2020 at 4:21 pm in reply to: Police v. Demonstrators Protesting Killing of George Floyd #115421ZooeyModeratorAnd I had seen that story about the umbrella guy and his violence. It’s still not quite definitive enough as a story for me yet, but I am far from automatically doubting it.
Yeah, at this point, the only thing I can really say about it is that it wouldn’t surprise me. But it is not definitive. Not that it matters to me, really. Either way, it will just be used by one side to change the subject.
May 29, 2020 at 2:17 pm in reply to: Police v. Demonstrators Protesting Killing of George Floyd #115407ZooeyModeratorNot sure what just happened. Do links to FB just go up in flames?
Found it on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UJR_FJcg1c
ZooeyModeratorOh, and a CNN reporter got arrested and Floyd’s killer(s) haven’t been.
Yeah I got stuff on that, in here: http://theramshuddle.com/topic/police-v-demonstrators-protesting-killing-of-george-floyd/
I tried adding to that thread twice and my posts simply vaporized.
ZooeyModeratorOh, and a CNN reporter got arrested and Floyd’s killer(s) haven’t been.
ZooeyModeratorI am just so fucking angry right now.
That’s my meme. Or maybe Tweet. Maybe this should go in the Tweet thread.
Fuck.
Floyd?
Yeah, Floyd. Floyd. Yeah. And Aubery, and Cooper.
And the fact we are in the beginning of a terrible economic crisis, the 3rd one since 20ish years, and each time the government has used the occasion to transfer wealth to the richest people. We have a global pandemic and the president is blocking the CDC from issuing guidelines to navigate the worst disease outbreak in a century while encouraging people to protest minor inconveniences that limit the scope and duration of the damage. And the president is engaging in vengeance against social media companies for finally calling bullshit on his egregious lies. And Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi have no serious interest in fixing any of this.
And hurricane season, and wildfire season are about to start.
ZooeyModeratorI am just so fucking angry right now.
That’s my meme. Or maybe Tweet. Maybe this should go in the Tweet thread.
Fuck.
ZooeyModerator
May 27, 2020 at 11:07 am in reply to: the one-shot tweets thread (diff'rent stuff, funny angry interesting) #115359ZooeyModerator
ZooeyModeratorI’m sorry to hear that, Jack. It’s tough, I know. You will always have the memories of her, though, and they will someday make you smile.
ZooeyModerator
ZooeyModeratorKrystal said the leftist movement was ‘on the cusp of victory…’
But it wasn’t. It was a mirage. The only reason Bernie won so many states early was the Corporate-Neolibs had spread out their votes among all those Corporate-Dems.
As soon as the game got down to Corporate vs Bernie — Corporate dominated.When you add up the Corporate-Dems and the Corporate-Rightwingers…..how big is the ‘progressive left’ really?
All ya haf to do is count that actual, real-life, real-left national office-holders. There’s AOC. There’s Bernie. And a few others.
A handful. Christ there were more leftist officeholders in the 1920s.
Ah well.
Granted, as Noam noted, the left has made some agonizing, slow, progress. Medicare For All is not anathema among the Dems anymore. As far as i can tell…thats about it. Thats what we got, after all these years. That much.
w
vBernie may have won if the corporate Dems hadn’t all bailed and rallied around Biden. If the field had stayed spread out through Super Tuesday. If Pete and Amy and Mike stayed through Super Tuesday, Sanders would have won more delegates than anybody else, and had the appearance of inevitability. But…yeah. He probably still wouldn’t have had the majority of delegates, and they still would have screwed him at the convention. But it would have been a lot harder to sabotage him if he had made it that far.
It is really amazing – and discouraging – to see that the Democrats are more energetic and effective at fighting the progressives than they are at fighting Republicans and Trump. I think that is the most depressing takeaway of the entire Sanders story. Democrats have completely moved into the traditional Republican camp, and Republicans have become Fascists, and there is almost no FDR Democrats left. The unions are basically washed up and sold out. The politicians serve Wall Street. The only trace of liberal compassion left is in identity politics and marijuana laws. That’s it. The only progressive accomplishments since the Civil Rights Act are the legalization of gay marriage and the legalization of pot in a handful of states. Oh…and gays can serve in the military. Sort of.
That’s it. In the past 50 years, that’s it.
Every other political sphere has regressed. And the courts are being stacked with assholes to lock up the next 40 years.
It was nice knowing ya, wv. I hope Armageddon is good to you.
May 23, 2020 at 7:15 pm in reply to: the one-shot tweets thread (diff'rent stuff, funny angry interesting) #115256ZooeyModerator
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I dunno though. I think the Corporate-Media would smear a leftist Veggie like Cauliflower.
They would get behind processed meat, I think. Or maybe Wheaties.
w
vSure, but they don’t take the cauliflower threat seriously yet. Besides, processed meat has consensus backing among the power establishment.
ZooeyModeratorhttps://www.huffpost.com/entry/textbook-investigation-climate_n_5ec6d26dc5b69106a7355661
Do you think this ^^^ doesn’t lead to skepticism?
ZooeyModeratorAs an example you mentioned McCarthyism and the red scare. I don’t think for a minute that was orchestrated by corporate capitalists who sat down and said lets get the American public to be frightened because it will mean more $ for us.
Chomsky’s argument is that nobody has to do that. People have inherited a schema for their world from a variety of sources – family, school, church, whatever – and that they are already conditioned to respond in predictable ways.
There ARE people who do that kind of thing, though. You must certainly recognize that the Koch brothers and several of their peers have spent a good deal of money on shaping public opinion. They’ve created Think Tanks and PACs with lofty sounding names, funded chairs at universities, and so on, all to give credibility to the horseshit philosophies and “science” that enable them to make more money.
So…it’s both self-perpetuating and manipulated at the same time.
May 23, 2020 at 11:00 am in reply to: the one-shot tweets thread (diff'rent stuff, funny angry interesting) #115233ZooeyModeratorMay 23, 2020 at 10:58 am in reply to: the one-shot tweets thread (diff'rent stuff, funny angry interesting) #115231ZooeyModerator
ZooeyModeratorFDR.
And Sanders basically matches his policy positions, though being more modern, Sanders would include minorities in his programs from the beginning.
ZooeyModerator
ZooeyModeratorI don’t think you can separate Americans from the media stew they grow up in. Their ignorance, apathy, and short attention spans are deliberately cultivated and exploited.
And I don’t think there was a time in American history where that wasn’t true. It may be worse now, but the powers-that-be have been massaging the message since the beginning. Part of it is that many people today realize that things are not always what they are told, but to them the lies are only coming from the group they don’t identify with. They cling to and vehemently defend the propaganda that fits their own word view, and dismiss out of hand any alternatives as fake news.
The saturation level is much higher now, both on TV and the radio, and the message is more consolidated. And I think the message is more proactive now rather than reactive.
May 21, 2020 at 1:44 am in reply to: the one-shot tweets thread (diff'rent stuff, funny angry interesting) #115145ZooeyModerator
ZooeyModerator’m not saying it addresses your notion. Just something I thought was interesting.
It doesn’t because I’m not saying poor people are having more children. I’m saying the raw selfishness and lack of interest in current issues has to do with parents-wealthy or poor. IMO those parents who are unable to give to their children the elementary nature and value of civics are the ones producing far more children. And in order for democracy to work it needs an informed and curious public. It doesn’t work well if we are for the most part ignorant on the issues in front of us. And corporations will always have their way with the ignorant.
Well, I agree with wv that this is a systemic failure, not an individual failure. I blame this factor – this ignorance and apathy – on the media, and in particular to the dismantling of the Fairness Doctrine. There is a straight line from there to these conditions. Another major driver, imo, is the profit motive in the news media. It is no accident that the consumers of NPR/PBS are the best informed – factually – on current affairs, and the FOX and MSNBC have the most misinformed audiences. Sensationalism will draw more viewers for longer periods of time, and in depth reporting on issues is discouraged by the profit motive.
I don’t think you can separate Americans from the media stew they grow up in. Their ignorance, apathy, and short attention spans are deliberately cultivated and exploited.
ZooeyModeratorA good friend of our family recently died of COVID-19 in a nursing home in Philadelphia. He and his wife had been my parent’s best friends since I was in my teens. Our families vacationed together in the Outer Banks every summer. He was a kind and fun-loving man. He was suffering from Alzheimer’s and had been living with his son’s family, but he started experiencing “Korean War” flashbacks accompanied by a lot of screaming. He was frightening his son’s small children, and not knowing what else to do, they put him in a nursing home. I had not seen him in years, but from what I have heard, Alzheimer’s had taken the man I used to know. He no longer existed. What was left was a frightened, tormented, shell of his former self who didn’t know where he was and didn’t recognize anyone around him. Perhaps this is one case where COVID-19 was a blessing.
Oof. Alzheimer’s is the worst, I think. What meaning does life have if memory is destroyed, and the personality becomes tempest-tossed? That’s tough.
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