Dear white progressives: Stop telling black people how to vote

[PatrickforO]

149. Both political parties have been guilty of paying lip service to the needs of voting blocks

We saw Reagan do this for the religious right and then ignore them. The result was that they worked for decades at the grass roots level and in effect took over the local primary processes in many states.

Seems like the Democrats could learn from this by doing more than simply saying, "Yes the deaths of all these black kids at the hands of police is deplorable and black lives do matter," and then doing nothing about the issue once elected. That's what the author in this Salon article is bitching about, and rightly so.

Maybe if we have such a 'big tent' we can start addressing things like police departments being given military gear and tanks, body cameras for police, and tie federal funding to a training approach for law enforcement that brings back 'serve and protect' rather than 'stomp until the victim totally submits,' which is what we seem to have now. The US Justice Department could be more active in investigating these cases and forcing prosecution. And other federal funding, such as highways, could be tied to the absence of egregious police behavior.

But what to do in cases where the counties and municipalities in which the police brutality crime happens are hotbeds of racism? Federal policies can only help so much, but there will also have to be some grass roots efforts. When I look at those old films of the civil rights movement, it is when we began to see white faces among the marchers and civil rights activists that change began to happen. Ending this racism is something we'll all have to help with because the blacks cannot do it alone. We have to quit thinking of it as a 'black issue' and start thinking of it as an American quality of life issue. A moral issue.

And it is urgent.