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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

#351

Post by shard972 »

kelvin0 wrote: post #225

Now I know this is old news, but it's not unheard of that law enforcement finds ways to infiltrate protests and make them turn into something else than a peaceful affair, even in tame ol' Canada. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/quebec-police-admit-they-went... https://www.ctvnews.ca/quebec-police-defend-officers-actions... So instead of condemning the few who 'incite violence', it might be useful to ponder if the game…

So dozens of police departments are conspiring to turn dozens of peaceful protests into riots and looting? All across the united states?

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

#352

Post by nyhc99 »

tareqak wrote: post #331
weaksauce wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there are tangible ways that laws could be setup and practices adhered to that would make cops more accountable and, while maybe the same level of racist in some parts, help ensure that they get held accountable more often than not. mandatory body cams rolling at all times unless they are in a bathroom. turning off or a malfunctioning camera during the act of a police brutality event immediately pierces the qualified…

I personally think body camera footage should be public. I would even go as far to say security cameras owned by public institutions should also be public. I think the answer to “who watchers the watchers?” should be a group of trustworthy people beyond reproach, but the absence of such a group necessitates that this responsibility fall upon the public at large [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quis_custodiet_ip…

I don't know about you, but I don't really want my various encounters with the police to be broadcast to the public. They would need to algorithmically blur out all of our faces or something in order to make that palatable.

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

#353

Post by [deleted] »

neonate wrote: post #216
evmar wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MLK gave a speech at Silicon Valley's own Stanford and touched on this subject (the same one with the "riot is the language of the unheard" quote you might have seen circulating). https://www.crmvet.org/docs/otheram.htm See the bit starting with: "Now there's another notion that gets out, it's around everywhere. It's in the South, it's in the North, it's In California, and all over our nation. It's the notion that le…

It's uncanny how perfectly of this moment many of those quotes are. Of course that's because these are very long-term issues. But it's still uncanny.

[deleted]

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

#354

Post by AnHonestComment »

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…

Looking at murder, the statistics tell a different story — blacks are 13% of the population but over 50% of the murder arrests, while whites are 75% of the population but under 50% of murder arrests.

If times the police use force are correlated to violent crime, then it’s unclear that blacks are over represented in deaths by police — they may actually be safer than whites, once controlling for the distribution of crimes they’re arrested for.

One problem I’ve had in this analysis is that the ~60/1000 deaths per year that aren’t justified (fortunately) aren’t enough to do an analysis on that subset.

Of course, 60 deaths is tragic — but 60 wrongful deaths among 8+ million arrests may not be the problem the media portrays it as.

You’re an order of magnitude less like to wrongfully die from police while being arrested than you are to die from a car crash this year. Overall, police are safer than many things in society.

60/8M // 30k/320M = 8%

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

#355

Post by danharaj »

randyrand wrote: post #298
danharaj wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I welcome more data that has less sampling bias, but without some attempt to quantify the amount of sampling bias here we don’t know if it has a big impact on this data.

It is on you if you don't take the testimony of hundreds of thousands of black people that they're terrorized by the police as evidence of possible police brutality.

Does that sound absurd? Is it as absurd as presuming the police would incriminate themselves with the data they create?

All evidence you can gather will be indirect. You make your judgment based on which you consider relevant.

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

#356

Post by scarface74 »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #100
Press2forEN wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the real problem is that those two political parties represent factions of the population with incompatible values. We don't need more political parties, we need solutions to manage the incompatibility.

There was nothing incompatible about our values regarding what we saw in that video. The idea that there was a political divide about this incident is a myth. Even the openly racist people I know were saying it was fucked up.

After citing statistics right here on HN about how racial profiling and traffic stops and tickets targets minorities , people were making excuses because it didn’t affect them.

Right here on HN posts about the protests were being flagged left and right because people are more concerned about the freedom to side load apps on iOS than minorities getting harassed.

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

#357

Post by scarface74 »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #141
Consultant32452 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was nothing incompatible about our values regarding what we saw in that video. The idea that there was a political divide about this incident is a myth. Even the openly racist people I know were saying it was fucked up.

Even the police unions condemned it. It's literally the only thing we agree on, but certain people keep holding up this obviously false dichotomy that we can only care about this political violence or the Floyd murder.

They don’t have any choice once it is filmed. They weren’t condemning all the misconduct by the same officer that wasn’t filmed.

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

#358

Post by mistermann »

chr1 wrote: post #287
systemvoltage wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's interesting how the idea of some form of direct democracy never even comes up in conversation. Of course I wouldn't expect any current or former politician to suggest the idea, but even in conversation on HN or in the general public, I'm not sure if I've ever encountered it before.

Of course, there will be no shortage of overly enthusiastic (and absolutely confident) defeatism "We 'can't' do it because x, y, z" (complexities with security, ensuring the person casting the vote is indeed the actual person, excess amount of uninformed populism, etc.) So how about this: for the first years, make it non-binding and simply observe the results. If the votes have no power, so much for the disingenuous claims that "we don't dare try it, and it won't work anyways", because it completely derisks the situation.

So then, when you have people still guaranteeing doom, I reckon there's a pretty good chance that would make a good shortlist of people who should no longer be allowed anywhere near the political process.

I would love to know why people are adamantly opposed to having a honest, transparent, and fact-checked public conversation on the idea.

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

#359

Post by scarface74 »

mydongle wrote: post #344
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…

I don't know why you single out white business owners. ALL business owners should be looking into social media history and criminal history of every person they want to hire. There's nothing racist about figuring out if your potential employee has previously taken part of riots and looting to make a hiring decision. It's fucked up indeed, but hey...they made their choices. Jordans and gucci now, future on hold.

Looking into “criminal history” might be fine if the justice system didn’t systematically make sure minorities get harsher sentences than Whites.

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

#360

Post by Consultant32452 »

mydongle wrote: post #328
Consultant32452 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you that it seems the people sparking the looting/fires/etc seem to be mostly white. I just don't think that will matter in the minds of the average person who barely watches the news. To the extent that they are watching anything, they will see tons of videos of black people committing crimes on social media.

What makes you believe that the looters are mostly white? I mean, the people you are talking against, they have all the video evidence they need of black people and others looting and causing destruction that they need. What do you have? I'd really like to see some. I've been having some cognitive dissonance lately. Some portions of the media are telling me that the looters are white supremacists, but unless there ar…

The operative word in what I said was "sparking". It was a white guy who broke the glass at autozone, which kicked off the looting in Minneapolis. It was a white guy who was breaking up the sidewalk so people had rocks to throw before other protesters tackled him and handed him over to police. It was white guys who "stumbled upon" a bunch of bricks in one video and unwrapped them. Those are just the examples off the top of my head.
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