A witness, named Jaccbot Hinds, told the New York Daily News that the cops emerged from an unmarked vehicle and fired off their guns without warning. “They just hopped out of the car,” said Hinds. “It’s almost like they did a hit. They didn’t say please. They didn’t say put your hands up, nothing.”

And I would rather they wear their bulletproof gear even if it’s *whine* hot and heavy than kill people who weren’t threatening them because they’re afraid of being shot. That way nobody dies for nothing.

Bullies who are given training that tells them that they are in constant danger for their lives and therefore should treat every encounter as potentially fatal, I should add.

I looked at stats for that once and being a cop has never been a particularly dangerous job even when they weren’t trigger happy. The problem has always been the sort of person that’s usually drawn to this profession-bullies.

the default response is to kill anyone who looks remotely black

It isn’t that cops think that anything looks like a gun. It is just that cops think that anything a black man is holding looks like a gun.

I should add that any black male carrying any object in his hand appears to fall into the “extremely threatening” category, even though it’s white men who kill police at a rate grossly disproportionate to the rate with which they have police encounters.

At some point we’re going to need to make cops choose between valuing their own lives above anyone else’s, and getting paid hazard pay. The job isn’t actually dangerous if the default response is to kill anyone who looks remotely threatening, and so perhaps cops should be paid like private security guards.

I just need a quick reminder, they took Dylan Roof, James Holmes, and Aaron Cruz alive right? I can’t really remember if these 3 mass shooters were taken alive.

I was telling my dad how creepy Trump was toward Ivanka and my first few examples he was like “that’s not so bad” and as I kept going he was getting more and more creeped until he finally made me stop because he was so creeped.

That’s actually kinda the plot in the second and third movies.

Please pass along this rando internet stranger’s encouragement and best wishes to your mom and her colleagues. They’re fighting for kids, the best investment in any group’s future. I hope they can reach a satisfying agreement and soon.

Go Mom go!

Solidarity from WI, where we got similarly screwed by Scott Walker in 2011.

And Kentucky teachers are protesting at the State Capital today! My mom, a retired teacher, is among them.

Thank you to you and all the other teachers. Our future depends on you, yet you get little pay and little respect for so much work. Teachers should not be paid a little as they are and should not be having to spends hundreds, if not thousands, out of their own pockets to provide supplies to their classrooms.

Thanks for the article about the fight in Oklahoma Aimee. Oklahoma lawyer and part time liberal activist here and I just want to add a little more context that’s missing here for readers from around the country and globe.

People in Oklahoma, especially in the education community, are particularly frustrated because…

My sister is a teachers aide in Oklahoma City special education classrooms and takes home $500 every two weeks, no maternity leave, no sick time (she had to use it as maternity leave) and while she was out on her sick/maternity leave had to actually write the SCHOOL a check for her health insurance. Just a mess.

GOOD. I teach in a right-to-work state where the largest teachers’ organization proudly bills itself as “not a union!”, so most of us have given up on having any type of collective power. Oklahoma is also RTW. I don’t know the strength of their NEA and/or AFT affiliates, but they’re giving me hope that power is indeed…

USA Today reports that thousands of educators statewide are planning to walk out. Governor Mary Fallin signed a $6,100 pay bump over the holiday weekend, but the teacher’s union is not satisfied. Oklahoma Education Association President Alicia Priest said in a Facebook live video that the package does not address…