How about this excuse: the NRA doesn’t give a shit. They grow their bottom line on spreading fear of black and brown people in white people.

THE 2ND AMENDMENT IS ONLY FOR WHITE PEOPLE.

He was likely part of the 94% of cops who don’t do this stuff. The real question is whether he would have covered for the ones who do.

“As with lynching, it’s less about the total loss of life—though the numbers are horrific—and more about the constant state of fear it breeds, audible and visible in the way Philando Castile’s girlfriend refers to the officer who just shot her boyfriend as “sir.”

OWhere is the NRA, where are open-carry activists, where are pro-gun politicians, when these citizens are murdered by the police for owning what it is their right to own? Fucking nowhere.

I think there has been a huge change in our police force in the last 15-20 years. Budgetary constraints have lowered training quality and officer pay and the police have come to rely on things like civil forfeiture and DHS/Military cast-offs for their equipment (including military-looking uniforms and armor/helmets,…

Well, what I mean is that even when they see clear video of it happening, it’s not happening to people like them. That’s what I mean by a “them” problem versus a “me” problem. They see it, and they process it, and they’re sad or maybe even outraged by it, but at the end of the day, it’s not something that’s even…

Re. The legacy of slavery, it’s worth pointing out that slavery existed in our nation for longer than it hasn’t when you factor in the colonies, and that we’re only 150 years away from the Thirteenth Amendment. That’s two 75 year old grandmas back to back. Our senior citizens are old enough to have known people who…

I struggle with this constant stream of badness, and because I recognize my privilege as a white person, I feel as though I am not qualified to speak about it except to say that it produces a seemingly endless loop of sadness, rage, and hopelessness.

Well, part of it I think, is that when people don’t experience it, even if they see it happen or believe it to have happened, then it just doesn’t register as something to be worried about. It’s a ‘them’ problem, not a ‘me’ problem if that makes sense.

People can make themselves believe in anything. 20 % of Americans believe that angels are real. Many Germans made themselves believe that their Jewish neighbors were “resettled” in Eastern Europe when the brownshirts came for them, nevermind that Germany was riddled with hundreds of concentration and labor camps.…

I also want to point out that it’s not just racist white cops. Asian cops, Hispanic cops, and other Black cops have the same mentality: Black people are more dangerous than other people, and should be treated callously. That is what policing is, and the race of the officer only changes that attitude sometimes, or just…

I am crying. I cannot get out my head the image of his face as he is fading away. The sadness in his eyes. The expression of “this is how I will die, it is unfair and idiotic”. Poor soul.

I stopped speaking to a co-worker who insists that cops who stay silent aren’t bad cops, they’re victims too. That we the citizens who pay their salaries, should excuse them from doing their jobs, because they fear for their lives and their families. That’s nice ... we do too.

Black Women less at risk of murder by white cops, more at risk of rape and sexual assault by their hands, though. That’s not better.

That’s why the departments themselves don’t keep those records.

“In cases where innocent individuals are shot by police officers”

I read Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me recently, and was struck by his purposeful use of the word body, over and over. To have your body taken away, to have black bodies stolen. That was a strong reminder that this is a violent physical thing that happens to real people, and not some abstract thing from…

As Frank Herbert wrote long ago, fear is indeed the mind killer. Too many brain-dead fools in blue out there.

Thank you Kara for giving words to this sheer sense of anger, sadness and frustration.