Why Do Tea Partiers Get to Parade Around Armed, While Peaceful Protests Are Met With Tanks?
AlterNet / By April M. Short
Why Do Tea Partiers Get to Parade Around Armed, While Peaceful Protests Are Met With Tanks?
Police militarization in Ferguson highlights a disturbing trend in America.
September 23, 2014 |
In the weeks following the brutal police shooting of an unarmed black man in Ferguson, Missouri, something unexpected has happened to mainstream American media. For the first time since Florida used the drug war as an excuse to become the first civilian police force to arm itself with tanks and M16 rifles, there is serious, national discussion of the problems inherent to militarizing the police.
It didn't take long to go from Florida to Texas to New York, to other parts of the country, said Deborah Small, civil rights activist and attorney, in a conference call with the Drug Policy Alliances Asha Bandele this week. Initially this weaponry was justified as necessary to respond to violent drug gangs that were heavily armed and had outdone the police. But quite frankly, after 9/11, that increase in military weaponry morphed with the war on terror.
Now, the argument was, We have to be prepared not only to respond to potential gun violence by drug cartels, but also by terrorists. It can be anywhere, anybody, and have any kind of weaponry we may not even know about.
In the course of a couple of decades, the American police went from using rifles with silencers to asking for tanks and anti-bomb equipment. Today more than 500 police departments in the U.S. possess tanks designed to deal with incendiary explosive devices, and yet there have been no cases that Im aware of, of people actually using them to fight local police departments, Small said.
More:
http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/why-do-tea-partiers-get-parade-around-armed-while-peaceful-protests-are-met-tanks
merrily
(45,251 posts)most potentially dangerous enemy.
World War II saw but an uneasy alliance between the USA and Russia. Apart from that, the USA expended huge amounts of money, time and energy, at home and abroad, to try to contain and neutralize the perceived threat from the left.
Some of the effort was mostly positive, like the New Deal (and the Marshall Plan?), the Great Society, etc. Some of it was not positive, like Korea, Vietnam, the McCarthy hearings/J. Edgar Hoover's slime, loyalty oaths, etc.
Imagine if that effort had been directed for a century toward curing cancer or peaceful conflict resolution, instead of to containing, suppressing and neutralizing and/or eliminating the left.
santamargarita
(3,170 posts)merrily
(45,251 posts)Skittles
(152,964 posts)rpannier
(24,304 posts)the third being the most important
If you are from a group that is seen as politically active in large numbers, they sit up and take notice
ReRe
(10,597 posts)... it was refreshing to see the NYPD in yellow vests and behaving like gentlemen at the Peoples Climate Change March on Sunday (I watched the 3-hour livestream.) I always figure things will go splendidly if the protesters far outnumber police, and that's exactly what happened Sunday. I thought "now why can't protests be like that every time?"
merrily
(45,251 posts)ReRe
(10,597 posts)... on Sunday. We'll see how it holds if Occupy Wall Street starts up again, or if we get more involved is this ISIS thing, and soldier's start coming home in body bags again giving birth to large anti-war protests.
Sparhawk60
(359 posts)Why? Because the cops are cowards.
The cops know they will get hurt, and hurt bad, if they try to mess with a bunch of white men with guns. However; a peaceful group of unarmed protesters are fair game.
Remember the female pastor who was kneeling in prayer in front of the police? Totally defenseless and non-threating. So the police shot her with a rubber bullet. If that was not the act of a coward, I dont know what is.
TreasonousBastard
(43,049 posts)Oh, wait...