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Whose Streets? Their Streets
Hoenig, Myles
http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/09/22/whose-streets-their-streets/Date Written: 2017-09-22 Publisher: CounterPunch Year Published: 2017 Resource Type: Article Cx Number: CX21316 If people don’t believe that the police in America are the greatest threat to civil society then they've been asleep for years, and comatose just this week. Or they're white, privileged and/or accepting of brutality against their own fellow citizens. Abstract: - Excerpt: It seems one of the more expressive of today’s chants is “Whose streets? Our streets!” We are taking our democracy back from those who have usurped a more traditional role of simple capitalist exploitation to that of oppression and brutality by the 1%. What we are now hearing in the streets of St. Louis is this chant, but by the police themselves. Whether they were mocking the demonstrators or not, they were clearly showing that we are living in a police state that has, or desires, a near-complete control of a long lost democratic society ( for the privileged only). This is a horrifying development. ... One argument often made to defend them is that there are bad apples or it’s a culture that’s out of hand. It is systemically out of hand, not isolated. There is no such thing as a good cop when they know damn well which of them are committing crimes that would put others behind bars and do nothing about it. That blue wall of silence is a license for them to kill, maim, brutalize, look away, and exploit the very weakest of our society. There are answers to this overwhelming problem and ‘community policing’ isn’t one of them. That not only keeps them in control of the situation but gives the appearance that we the people have some say in what they do, much like voting. We can limit their excesses through community policing but that doesn’t impact hiring practices, political appointments, or hardware procurements. We have to see the police for what they are, as an occupying enemy force and deal with that. Subject Headings |