This speaks volumes--but who's listening?

[Mythsaje]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x53223

This is from Real Time with Cornell West and Mos Def.

Bill asks Mos Def "What, you don't believe there are people out there who want to hurt Americans?"

Says Mos "Yeah, the Po-lice."

I'm not African American, but I can sympathize with what he's saying. I was a long-haired metalhead in the suburbs in my teens and on more than one occasion I was harassed and, yes, even threatened, by the police for simply going about my business. Perfectly legal business, much of the time. They didn't know me from Adam, yet, based on nothing but how I looked, they thought it worth their time to harass me.

The Police seem increasingly on-board with more and more authoritarian bullshit... Long gone is the neighborhood cop everyone knows--who has time to stop and chat with an ordinary citizen about the weather or the time of day. They're increasingly segregated from the communities they serve and are encouraged (if not trained) to see themselves as somehow separate from everyone else. To look at all of US as potential criminals and not the citizens they're supposed to "serve and protect."

This distrust and dislike of the police is nearly universal in black neighborhoods...often with good reason. But rather than doing anything positive to counter it, we simply hear them and their spokespeople griping about it. "People are against us."

No shit? Ever wonder why?

Probably not.

It's not necessarily the individual cops who are the problem, it's the whole CULTURE. Rather than step up to condemn corruption and bad acts by cops, they and their defenders will step in and DEFEND themselves as if THEY are personally being attacked.

They almost universally oppose any kind of citizen oversight group--saying there's "no way civilians can understand what it's like."

With that attitude, we have to wonder if the opposite is ALSO true. If it's US and THEM, who's in the right?

A question worth asking. Hard to say if it'll ever get an answer.