To Serve And Protect…Who?

Eric Garner should not be dead.  He shouldn’t even be arrested, in custody, or have had anything to do with the NYPD.  Much has been made of his murder, clearly depicted on a video with a clearly audible soundtrack, at the hands of half a dozen NYC police officers, but not as much has been made of why the police surrounded him in the first place.  Garner didn’t have a gun or a knife.  He wasn’t fleeing after robbing a liquor store or grabbing an old lady’s purse.  He wasn’t suspected of spousal abuse or pedophilia or drugging and raping a series of women (if you have enough money and fame, you can always get a pass from the police, even if you’re black).  So why did police approach Garner in the first place?  Why was he considered a danger to the public safety?  Let’s let Eric Garner tell us himself.  Here are his last words on earth, from the video: “Get away [garbled] … for what? Every time you see me, you want to mess with me. I’m tired of it. It stops today. Why would you…? Everyone standing here will tell you I didn’t do nothing. I did not sell nothing. Because every time you see me, you want to harass me. You want to stop me (garbled) Selling cigarettes. I’m minding my business, officer, I’m minding my business. Please just leave me alone. I told you the last time, please just leave me alone. please please, don’t touch me. Do not touch me. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.”

Eric Garner’s capital offense was selling loose cigarettes on a sidewalk near the Staten Island Ferry terminal.  That and being a large black man.  Garner is not the exception.  He’s the rule.  Police routinely harass people of color.  It’s been documented a thousand different ways.  Before it was recently discontinued, the NYPD had a “stop and frisk” policy.  They were allowed to stop anyone on the street and demand that they submit to a body search, even if that person was not a suspect in any crime.  The police had complete arbitrary authority to choose their victims based on any criteria they deemed appropriate…and you can bet your 401K and your house in the Hamptons that the main criteria were black, hispanic, and poor…not necessarily in that order.  It exceeds any standard of credulity that Garner was doing anything that should have attracted police attention.  They simply rousted him because he was black and imposing and because they could, and then when he challenged their authority, they reacted exactly like the schoolyard bullies most of them are…they showed Eric Garner who was boss, and now he’s dead.

That racism is alive and well in America and that it has a secure home in police departments from Portland, Maine to Portland, Oregon, is now beyond question.  Michael Brown and Eric Garner and Tamir Rice bear silent witness to that ugly truth.  But it’s not just jackbooted stormtroopers masquerading as peace officers who are to blame.  Think of those grand juries in Missouri and New York.  Those were just a dozen citizens whose identities we’ll never know, who decided that the lives of Garner and Brown didn’t mean as much as maintaining the yoke of police power.  There is little question that the prosecutors in both cases got exactly what they wanted, which was a “no bill” against the killer cops, but that result still depended on the complicity of the jurors.  Irrespective of what evidence was presented or how it was portrayed, especially in the Garner case, it is completely beyond comprehension how a dozen “regular” people could watch the tape of an unarmed and unthreatening man being put in a choke hold, swarmed by half a dozen police, dragged to the ground, and killed as he was begging for his life…and come to the conclusion that absolutely no crime whatsoever had been committed (except of course for the guy who videoed the cops at work, who was arrested and indicted).

It’s not just those grand jurors who bear a portion of the blame.  In the sense that if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem, we all bear some blame in what is becoming a national travesty of justice.  St. Louis prosecutor Robert McCullough, known for protecting bad cops throughout his career, is an elected official…the voters of St. Louis county chose him, and the same can be said of the prosecutor in NYC.  In recent years, the Supreme Court has made decision after decision favoring police powers over individual liberty.  If it was up to this Supreme Court instead of the Warren Court, it’s unlikely that the Miranda warnings ever would have been mandated.  You do NOT have the right to remain silent (and we have the right to beat a confession out of you if we know you’re guilty…)  We, as a people, elect the officials who make it possible for our own rights and liberties to be subjugated, abrogated, and ignored on a daily basis.  Every time someone pees in a container before a witness in order to keep his or her job, it’s another admission that we don’t take our own Constitution very seriously.  Every time the NSA reads our email or records our phone conversation or uses facial recognition to identify us on a public street, we’re telling the state, “Go ahead and be a police state.  I’d rather be a little safer than a lot more free.” Beyond that, every time we elect another official who stands four square against things like the minimum wage, affordable health care, and equitable taxes, we’re supporting the unconscionable wealth gap in our society, a society where the top one per cent hold over fifty percent of the wealth and the bottom fifty percent live every day from hand to mouth.

It’s that situation, even more than the plague of racism, that is the engine driving the police state.  People are getting angry.  The last time this sort of egregious wealth gap was the norm, it was in France during the reign of Louis XV, and the next thing you saw was a lot of aristocratic heads rolling at the foot of the Bastille.  So when you see buildings aflame in Ferguson and freeways blocked in New York, and the streets filled with protesters who are, for the moment, peaceful, in a dozen other cities, you know there’s a lot of anger simmering.  I, for one, wonder what will be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

BW

Potpourri Of Good News And Bad News

I find myself with journalistic ADDH.  There is so much going on in so many different areas, some of it mildly encouraging and most of it ranging from moderately depressing to utterly terrifying, that I’m having difficulty deciding on any particular topic worthy of extended focus.  Aside from that, my primary concern, as always, emanates from the known center of the universe…me.  Since I’m heading to New York in a few days, I’m increasingly wary of the many dangers of the big city.  NYC isn’t just any big city.  It’s the veritable center of civilization as we know it, and along with that concentration of commerce, entertainment, education, transportation, technology, politics, and diversity comes a commensurate volume of corruption, crime, intrigue, and illness.  NYC isn’t just a destination, it’s a target.

When ISIS talks about bringing the jihad to the US, they mean to start in NYC.  When there are threats of attacks on subways and infrastructure, it’s New York that’s in the crosshairs.  ISIS is having a hard time keeping themselves at the forefront of the 24 hour news cycle.  It’s not their fault.  They’ve got plenty of hostages to behead, and the next in line is sadly a Hoosier, Peter Kassig, who was kidnapped while acting as an aid worker in Syria.  His parents posted a three minute video begging for his release, including the mother wearing a modest head scarf, which to me seems like a pointless capitulation to the religious fanatics.  The plea will almost certainly fail, and when it does, Kassig’s demise will be relegated to a relative footnote…because truth be told, there are more terrifying international fish to fry.  Even as our “coalition” continues to rain death from the skies over Iraq and Syria, the national consciousness has moved on.  We no more consider the ongoing air war over Syria and Iraq than we do the “non-fighting” in Afghanistan and Iraq.  It’s all “over there” and all being done by someone who isn’t “us”, thank you very much.

No, ISIS lost the terror franchise when Ebola came along.  Guys in black balaclavas with serrated combat knives in hand are nothing but pussies when compared to a curly ten micron virus that will have blood pouring out your asshole ten days after you rub the sweat from your eyes.  Make no mistake.  Ebola is getting worse, and it’s going to get worse still before it gets better.  Eric Duncan, the Liberian who brought Ebola to Dallas, is in critical condition.  A Spanish nursing assistant who cared for an Ebola patient in Madrid has now come down with the disease.   Officials at the World Health Organization are quietly admitting that there will inevitably be more cases in Western Europe, but just as in the case of the CDC declarations here in the US, they are maintaining that they are well prepared to contain and control the disease.  I’m unconvinced.  The people so far who have been most prone to contracting Ebola, outside of West African villagers, are the health care workers caring for Ebola patients…the experts who are sealed into high tech biohazard gear and exercise every caution in maintaining sterile protocol.  That doesn’t provide a lot of comfort or confidence to ordinary civilians, who might encounter this virus on any surface that might have been touched by someone with the disease.

Which brings me back to New York…where airports at JFK, La Guardia, and Newark unload tens of thousands of international travelers every day, including untold numbers from Africa.  It’s only a matter of time before a case lands in NYC…and as I said before, gets on the subway, goes to a restaurant and a show, and when he gets sick, just figures he got a bad falafel from a street vendor.  There’s more to worry about in New York than pickpockets and muggers, although those are pretty scary even without the added threat of global pandemic.

But listen, it’s not all bad news.  We might all end up barricaded in our homes with the windows sealed with duct tape and the bottled water running low, but we’ll at least know that if we want to get a same sex marriage, we can do it.  With so many of our freedoms being eroded and outright reversed, this is a big win, at least for now.  This is one of the few instances where our government’s proclivity for doing nothing resulted in a benefit.  The Supreme Court declined to consider five state’s challenges to lower courts’ injunctions against the states unconstitutional bans on gay unions, and by doing so, essentially made gay marriage legal in those states…including Indiana!  The only part of this more fun than seeing the smiles on the faces of all these folks getting their licenses at the county court houses is the red-faced-about-to-rupture-an-aneurysm outrage of all the bible-thumpers who can’t quite believe they’ve once again been thwarted from legislating how the rest of us blasphemers are to live our lives.  Priceless.

The federal courts gave us one other glimmer of hope in an otherwise bleak tableau.  A US Chief District Judge in Missouri ruled that the police in Ferguson violated the constitutional protections in the First and Fourth Amendments when they arrested protesters for failing to keep moving rather than standing still.  I was wondering when some jurist would come to this inevitable conclusion, and it’s about damned time.  Just for your review, here’s the oft-quoted text of the First Amendment:  Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. When they talk about the right of the people to peaceably assemble, it doesn’t say anything about having to be in motion.  So there’s that.

Like I said, good news and bad news.  “May you live in interesting times.”

BW

US Apparently Governed By 2000 Year-Old Goat Herders And 5 Guys Who Failed At High School Civics

Let me begin with a quote from Seth Rogen, because if the Supreme Court can base their interpretation of the Constitution on a book of fairy tales, I can base my world view on the wisdom of celebrities: “The people at Hobby Lobby are assholes and those who voted to let them be assholes are also assholes.”  I wish I’d said that, but it’ll have to be good enough just using it.

The Supreme Court’s decision that Hobby Lobby can deny certain types of birth control coverage to their employees based on Hobby Lobby’s deeply held religious convictions is wrong in principle, hurtful in application, and unconstitutional based on any reasonable interpretation of the original intent of the document.  And these are the jurists who are charged with that interpretation on a daily basis.  The fact that the Supreme Court, as it is currently comprised, can routinely get 5-4 majorities in cases like Hobby Lobby and Citizens United is sobering.  But what is terrifying is that Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who wrote a brilliant dissent to the majority ruling, has stubbornly refused to resign despite her advancing age and two previous bouts of cancer.  Ginsburg’s actuarial chances of surviving another presidential administration are slightly less than my chances of a Pulitzer Prize during the same interval.  (If she survives and I get the award, I’ll happily admit that I was wrong.)  Meanwhile, those same actuarial geeks have predicted a 60% chance that the Senate will go Republican after the 2014 midterm elections…at which point the GOP will control both houses of Congress and Barack Obama will have zero chance of passing any legislative initiative (which is just a tiny shade less than he’s already had to this point) and zero chance of having any nominees approved, Supreme Court justices being high on the list.  There is a very real possibility that by 2016, there will be a 6-3 majority on SCOTUS that has a higher regard for the gospel according to Mark, Matthew, or Luke than the Federalist Papers of Madison, Hamilton, and Jay.

I imagine that will make a certain segment of the population absolutely ecstatic.  They are the folks who keep telling the rest of us that the USA is a Christian nation, and I’m beginning to believe them.  The rest of us, the realists and rationalists, the atheists and agnostics, the Jews and Muslims and Hindus and Wiccans and Buddhists, are basically staying in America’s guest room at the pleasure of our Christian hosts, and if they decide we all have to use one bathroom or the same towels from yesterday, well, it’s their house.  That’s not the way is was supposed to be.  Our Founding Fathers believed not just in freedom of religion, but in freedom from religion.  After centuries of abuse and subjugation at the hands of religious regimes in Europe, our experiment in democracy was supposed to be different.  We would be a nation of laws based on reason.  No particular set of religious beliefs would be granted any sway over any other set of beliefs.  That had already been tried in England and France and Spain and in the Roman Empire…and it was in large part the reason the earliest settlers of North America were refugees from religious tyranny.

What SCOTUS did was contrary to all that.  They said that a corporation’s religious beliefs can be imposed on employees who do not hold the same beliefs.  It’s a return to Victorian England…if you don’t like what your boss is dishing out, you have the freedom to not be employed, and if you end up in the poor house, it was your decision, not the fault of your employer’s unreasonable demands.

If this ruling stands, as it most certainly will for at least years, if not generations, there are a whole host of laws and regulations that could be challenged on religious grounds.  If Hobby Lobby or Chik Fil A is sickened and disgusted by same-sex marriage, they can deny spousal benefits even if the marriage is legal in whatever state the business resides.  Or if the Bible directs them to take concubines or slaves or beat their wives or children (all of which it does), they can make those conditions of employment.  The list is as long as your imagination or your worst nightmares.

I wish I had some kind of happy ending to blunt the indignity and unfairness of all this, but I can’t really find the silver lining in this cloud.  I simply predict storms ahead.

BW