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How to Make this Moment the Turning Point for Real Change

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Re: How to Make this Moment the Turning Point for Real Change

#281

Post by austincheney »

makomk wrote: post #220
Consultant32452 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worst part is not going to be the brutality that is coming when police/military put a stop to this. That will be horrific, but temporary. Six months from now, is the average white American small business owner going to be more or less likely to hire a black person? That's the fucked up shit that is going to last another decade. That's the stuff that maintains generational poverty. And there's a thousand other sub…

As far as I can tell, the people burning everything down aren't even particularly likely to be black, efforts to spin this as some kind of necessary fight back against racism by people who've been suffering not withstanding. The folks cheering it on and advocating for this to their audiences definitely aren't - they're largely white, middle-class techies and journos and other well-off educated folks who aren't worrie…

I have noticed only one common demographic among rioters: age.

Re: How to Make this Moment the Turning Point for Real Change

#282

Post by manfredo »

evan_ wrote: post #60
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that chronology right? Were there protests before he was arrested? Was there property damage in those protests? Even if so, 90% of the protests and property damage were after the arrest, so... they're pointless?

The protests started in earnest May 26 and Derek Chauvin was arrested and charged May 29. The Minneapolis PD third precinct building burned on the evening of the 28th. The other three cops who helped to kill George Floyd have not been charged or arrested. Neither have the men who killed Breonna Taylor. That's hardly the limit of police violence that has gone unaccounted for. At this point it’s more of a protest again…

The riots were mostly contained to Minneapolis until the weekend. The riots in my state and across the Nation mostly happened after Chauvin was arrested.

Re: How to Make this Moment the Turning Point for Real Change

#283

Post by e40 »

randyrand wrote: post #279

Police brutality is a real issue. It's less clear that racial bias in policing is a statistically significant issue, however, when accounting for obvious things. If someone has numbers that tell a different story I am all ears. Here are mine when I attempted to find it for myself: black arrests (all crimes) a year: 2.2 million white arrests (all crimes) a year: 5.6 million https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2017/cr…

The NYC stop-and-frisk numbers should be considered.

https://www.nyclu.org/en/stop-and-frisk-data

Re: How to Make this Moment the Turning Point for Real Change

#284

Post by shuntress »

someguyorother wrote: post #241
systemvoltage wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am curious, what would such a system look like? I am thinking that a "promise" is not a quantitative term. It needs to be ratified into specific data oriented actions that can go through a litmus test whether it was fulfilled or betrayed. After that, one idea is to have an accountability score tracked by bureaucracy and have that printed on the ballot along with their principle accomplishments in the supplement. An…

A control theory idea: use continuous voting. When the support falls below some threshold (e.g. 50%), kick the candidate out. But now you'll get an unstable system where candidates get kicked out all the time and are too populist because they don't expect to live long. So add a low-pass filter. When the moving average of the candidate's support falls below the threshold and a definite other candidate's support is hig…

Not a bad idea but it probably depends on a level of convenience and ease of access to voting that does not seem to exist currently.

Unrelated side note: when you are talking about a hypothetical politician, be aware of your choice of pronoun.

You might be the type of person who picks between he/she with a precise 50/50 split but I'm going to assume you are not that type of person. Similar to the way you seem to have assumed that if a person is a politician they are also a man.

Re: How to Make this Moment the Turning Point for Real Change

#285

Post by jessaustin »

devalgo wrote: post #178
appleflaxen wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the post you're replying too doesn't imply he advocated riots; if the quote is accurate (I'm no historian) it's simply attributing causality.

I'm explicitly talking about the people who are using the MLK quote to DEFEND the riots not explain them. If they actually supported the thesis of what MLK was saying they would post the entire quote with the relevant condemnation of riots, some are doing that but many aren't.

No one is doing that.

Re: How to Make this Moment the Turning Point for Real Change

#286

Post by rayiner »

syshum wrote: post #266
rayiner wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but the immediate aftermath of that showed deep disagreement about “what to do about that problem.” Leftists want to dismantle the “systems of oppression” they perceive produces that result. Libertarians want to get rid of qualified immunity and police unions. Conservatives are taken aback by the rioting and violence and for them the immediate need maintaining social order has overtaken the more long term desire…

As normal, libertarians have the correct and rational solution to the problem :)

I think the libertarians are basically right in this instance. Apart from systemic racism (which I believe is a very real thing, but an abstract and not directly unactionable one), I see two problems:

1) The people with the power over the police have almost no contact with the people being policed. Neighborhood schooling reinforces that problem. It ensures that ability to afford housing segregates black people from white people. (Note: it’s not a question of funding. Here in DC, most of the shiny new LEED Gold schools are 99% black. Therefore, white parents won’t send their kids there, notwithstanding the gleaming facilities and lower housing prices in the surrounding area.) School choice gives black people the power to create integrated schools, instead of waiting for statistically wealthier whites/Asians to get woke enough to want to do it. I think people would be much more sensitive to policing issues if they didn’t just hear about these things a couple of times a year on the news, but were faced with people in their PTA suffering the consequences of police brutality. I would add that, unsurprisingly, a decisive majority of black people support school choice.

2) With notion of black people being “the other” rooted since childhood, qualified immunity and police unions eliminate the near term, immediate consequences of acting on those instincts.

The two things that make people think before they act are empathy and self preservation. The libertarian approach is a double-barreled solution that could hit both.

Re: How to Make this Moment the Turning Point for Real Change

#287

Post by chr1 »

systemvoltage wrote: post #55
kajumix wrote: post #35

"I’ve heard some suggest that the recurrent problem of racial bias in our criminal justice system proves that only protests and direct action can bring about change, and that voting and participation in electoral politics is a waste of time. I couldn’t disagree more. The point of protest is to raise public awareness... But eventually, aspirations have to be translated into specific laws and institutional practices —…

One big problem is that the elected after being elected, choose to not follow or dilute those promises. There is no accountability. So time and again, democracy fails as they just change their minds after being elected. There is this "damping" factor like a mechanical system, that takes the energy out of the people's hands and dampens it with lobbying, dishonesty, unaccountability and complete neglect for public inte…

The idea about presentations is very good, but it alone won't fix the problem. We need to be able to vote for individual decisions instead of people, and we on hn are best positioned to fix the democracy https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23377423

Re: How to Make this Moment the Turning Point for Real Change

#288

Post by woodpanel »

hkai wrote: post #133

I like this post because it avoids making provocative claims that are sometimes seen in the media, and I hope that this restores some of the lost trust between the people on two sides. For example, unlike the media, Obama avoids saying that violence is partially justified, or claiming that some groups have a higher chance of being killed by police, and instead talks about the "recurrent problem of racial bias in our…

Don't get why you're getting downvoted.

I agree with you except on the "defeating Trump" part. Moderation is not enough IMO. Everyone with a progressive agenda who is not stongly distancing themselve from the rioters right now will have his cause collaterally defaced by them, just as they collaterally deface these neighbourhoods.

Disclaimer: Not a US-citizen nor resident.

Re: How to Make this Moment the Turning Point for Real Change

#289

Post by danharaj »

randyrand wrote: post #279

Police brutality is a real issue. It's less clear that racial bias in policing is a statistically significant issue, however, when accounting for obvious things. If someone has numbers that tell a different story I am all ears. Here are mine when I attempted to find it for myself: black arrests (all crimes) a year: 2.2 million white arrests (all crimes) a year: 5.6 million https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2017/cr…

Laws are disproportionately overenforced on black communities. Your numbers are collected after a large amount of the bias is already baked in and collected by the people perpetrating the bias. Maybe that didn't occur to you.

You're just asking questions right?

Re: How to Make this Moment the Turning Point for Real Change

#290

Post by Uhhrrr »

mythrwy wrote: post #127

A couple of thoughts: Racism is an issue, but I wonder in the case of police the abuse the issue could be more generally described as one of class? There was an incident a few years ago in my state were police picked a white guy up who had been convicted of methamphetamine possession a few times. I'll describe the guy as a "scraggly white guy". He was dirty, unkempt, skinny, poor spoken in an old vehicle. The cops I…

FWIW, George Floyd was indeed driving a Mercedes, which is generally considered to be a nice car.
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