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Judi Lynn

(160,217 posts)
Thu Sep 25, 2014, 03:38 AM Sep 2014

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 Alliance’s 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 I’m 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

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Why Do Tea Partiers Get to Parade Around Armed, While Peaceful Protests Are Met With Tanks? (Original Post) Judi Lynn Sep 2014 OP
Why? Since the Russian revolution, USA oligarchs have considered the left their merrily Sep 2014 #1
Excellent, that sums it up. santamargarita Sep 2014 #8
Thank you! nt merrily Sep 2014 #9
because conservative paranoid white men's fears TRUMP ALL Skittles Sep 2014 #2
old, white and they vote in every election rpannier Sep 2014 #3
I must say... ReRe Sep 2014 #4
DiBlasio may have had something to do with it as well. merrily Sep 2014 #10
That did run through my mind... ReRe Sep 2014 #12
Why? Sparhawk60 Sep 2014 #5
Because we have the right to bear arms, but no right to free speech? TreasonousBastard Sep 2014 #6
I have met the enemy, and he is us. blkmusclmachine Sep 2014 #7
Race... Blue_Tires Sep 2014 #11

merrily

(45,251 posts)
1. Why? Since the Russian revolution, USA oligarchs have considered the left their
Thu Sep 25, 2014, 04:40 AM
Sep 2014

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.

rpannier

(24,304 posts)
3. old, white and they vote in every election
Thu Sep 25, 2014, 05:20 AM
Sep 2014

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)
4. I must say...
Thu Sep 25, 2014, 05:27 AM
Sep 2014

... 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?"

ReRe

(10,597 posts)
12. That did run through my mind...
Thu Sep 25, 2014, 05:58 PM
Sep 2014

... 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)
5. Why?
Thu Sep 25, 2014, 06:46 AM
Sep 2014

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 don’t know what is.

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