2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: MoveOn has a perfect response to Netroots controversy: [View all]PatrickforO
(14,576 posts)For us white guys, it is the fact that we have enjoyed unearned white privilege in a profoundly racist society. And that does suck. Economic justice is good, but to have social justice we would have to make some sea changes in our society.
First, public school funding would have to be evened out so each pupil, no matter where they attend school, gets the same amount of funding, AND re-institute bussing because we've got a lot of de facto segregation going on. And classes within the schools need to be desegregated as well. The problem is that kids will still tend to hang in cliques.
Police brutality can be addressed through making sure these cops aren't on steroids, first of all, and then taking a whole new tack with retraining. We've got to get the police forces and sheriffs departments back to the serve and protect community policing model instead of 'they are the enemy, stomp on them 'til they totally submit' model which we have now. We can also implement predictable sanctions for brutality and track incidents through body cameras.
We also need to end the drug war, legalize pot, decriminalize the rest and END private prisons. There is absolutely NO excuse for introducing the profit motive into the corrections system. And these contracts communities sign with these private jails to guarantee 80% occupancy? Get rid of those.
Sounds like a lot of entrenched interests will lose a lot of money if we take steps for social justice. But they do need to be taken.
Still, the netroots event sucked because, well, see my post below. That whole thing was just wrong - in the sense it was poorly planned and poorly conducted.