hat tip to HumboltBlue:
Barack Obama on Medium: How to Make this Moment the Turning Point for Real Change
As millions of people across the country take to the streets and raise their voices in response to the killing of George Floyd and the ongoing problem of unequal justice, many people have reached out asking how we can sustain momentum to bring about real change.
Ultimately, it’s going to be up to a new generation of activists to shape strategies that best fit the times. But I believe there are some basic lessons to draw from past efforts that are worth remembering.
First, the waves of protests across the country represent a genuine and legitimate frustration over a decades-long failure to reform police practices and the broader criminal justice system in the United States. The overwhelming majority of participants have been peaceful, courageous, responsible, and inspiring. They deserve our respect and support, not condemnation — something that police in cities like Camden and Flint have commendably understood.
On the other hand, the small minority of folks who’ve resorted to violence in various forms, whether out of genuine anger or mere opportunism, are putting innocent people at risk, compounding the destruction of neighborhoods that are often already short on services and investment and detracting from the larger cause. I saw an elderly black woman being interviewed today in tears because the only grocery store in her neighborhood had been trashed. If history is any guide, that store may take years to come back. So let’s not excuse violence, or rationalize it, or participate in it. If we want our criminal justice system, and American society at large, to operate on a higher ethical code, then we have to model that code ourselves.
Second, 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, to put a spotlight on injustice, and to make the powers that be uncomfortable; in fact, throughout American history, it’s often only been in response to protests and civil disobedience that the political system has even paid attention to marginalized communities. But eventually, aspirations have to be translated into specific laws and institutional practices— and in a democracy, that only happens when we elect government officials who are responsive to our demands.
Moreover, it’s important for us to understand which levels of government have the biggest impact on our criminal justice system and police practices. When we think about politics, a lot of us focus only on the presidency and the federal government. And yes, we should be fighting to make sure that we have a president, a Congress, a U.S. Justice Department, and a federal judiciary that actually recognize the ongoing, corrosive role that racism plays in our society and want to do something about it.
But the elected officials who matter most in reforming police departments and the criminal justice system work at the state and local levels.
There’s more:
How to Make this Moment the Turning Point for Real Change
HumboltBlue, also. Well worth the 2:20 minutes of your time.
Art Acevedo, Houston Chief of Police “DONT FOLLOW THAT BULLSHIT” pic.twitter.com/2HFBu86fOc
— brat (@bribrielle_) May 31, 2020
Chacal Charles Calthrop
This is a great post, thank you. I couldn’t agree more.
Just remember that back in the crime-ridden 80’s there were a lot of people who wanted more policing because “this can’t go on” and the result was Ghouliani and the current police state. Things can always get worse, so pushing for change regardless can backfire.
PenAndKey
You know, it’s days like today that remind me how much of a travesty I consider the while “Presidents can only be elected twice” idea.
Baud
Seems sensible.
Archon
The Obama era was downright utopian compared to this.
WaterGirl
@Baud: Not totally unrelated… you said you had some ideas for ads but no time last Sunday. If no, and you have time to get those in today, that would be much appreciated.
https://www.balloon-juice.com/2020/05/24/medium-cool-with-bginchi-you-are-brad-pascale/
Baud
@WaterGirl:
That’s totally unrelated.
Today is bad. I didn’t realize you were serious about the extra time, so I didn’t think about it after that post. Sorry.
japa21
@PenAndKey:
I know what you mean, but that would leave open the possibility of a Trump being elected more than twice.
Baud
@PenAndKey:
We had a perfectly fine successor to Obama lined up. Not the Constitution’s fault so many of us took it for granted.
Dorothy A. Winsor
In the meantime, Trump is apparently ranting on a call with the governors about using greater force.
Bruuuuce
Today’s This Modern World by Tom Tomorrow (link to GOS) sounds like he’s been reading the Jackalariat.
WaterGirl
@Baud: How about by Wednesday morning?
For anyone, not just Baud.
Not totally unrelated, because we want to get this bastard out and Biden in.
HumboldtBlue
@Dorothy A. Winsor: JUST IN: President Trump unloads on the nation’s governors on a call, calls on them to step up enforcement: “You have to dominate, if you don’t dominate you’re wasting your time. They’re going to run over you, you’re going to look like a bunch of jerks. You have to dominate.”
Baud
@WaterGirl: I’ll try. Kind of a bad week for me.
dmsilev
@HumboldtBlue: Beating his chest and loudly grunting is what he thinks “strong leadership” consists of.
MattF
@HumboldtBlue: I guess ‘Calls on them to step up enforcement’ is the current euphemism for ‘Shoot them’.
Omnes Omnibus
@PenAndKey: It would probably have given us multiple terms of Eisenhower and Reagan. It is a double edged sword.
Kay
So true. Too, the real shame of the Trump era is we were making progress. Governors and state legislatures were acting. It had finally, finally become NOT a political third rail to even mention less incarceration . Kasich did it in Ohio- by executive order. He took a whole category of offenses down one notch and no one outside the actual legal system paid attention- it wasn’t controversial at all.
They all know it’s broken. They were finally, finally gathering the courage to start fixing it. Then came the election of Donald Trump and we lurched backward. Now it’s fucking 1980 again and we’re trapped with these ancient fucking gargoyles reminiscing about cracking heads and jailing people for life. Their glory days. Get OUT of the way.
zzyzx
Obama writes a long article showing a deep understanding of the issues and ways to help. Trump?
Barbara
@HumboldtBlue: He has no empathy. None. He hasn’t been able to show empathy for 100 plus thousand people who have died of COVID-19 and I can’t see how he could possibly figure it out now. This is the guy who took out a full page ad calling for the death penalty for the Central Park Five and who has never backed off even after it was proved that they were not guilty. If he tried to show empathy now, it’s likely no one would believe him (on that he probably has sound instincts), and he knows that his core supporters really, really want to be given permission to knock some heads together or worse. So that’s what he is going with — instinct, temperament, history and survival point in only one direction. Anyone who yearns for something different from Trump is either stupid or playing games.
germy
Duane
@MattF: Trumpov goes full fascist. Thousands of Americans dead in the streets is his solution. Like herd immunity, kill enough of them and it’ll go away. He’s sick. American Hitler in the bunker.
sdhays
@Omnes Omnibus: Would Reagan have really run for reelection in 1988? Surely he knew by that time that he didn’t have enough marbles left to fake it through another term.
But I agree – the two term limit isn’t a real problem, and the lack of term limits in places like Iowa have definitely been bad for good governance (although Virginia’s single term limit for governor is very stupid). Now, the (apparently real) inclination of a small, but significant number of people to just vote for the opposite party after 2 terms even if they’re happy with how the country has been run is a significant problem. That definitely gave us George W. Bush, and if the 2000 election had gone differently, the whole history of the 21st century would likely be radically different today.
MattF
@Barbara: Trump’s Central Park Five response is the revealer. Anyone who ignores it or downplays it is, at best, tolerating Trump’s racism. And that’s being excessively generous.
germy
audio:
Sloane Ranger
He turned out the lights and spent the weekend cowering in a bunker. Of course he has to call everyone else out for being weak. With him, allegations are confessions.
MattF
@Sloane Ranger: With Trump, there’s a delicate distinction between ‘nobody’s home’ and ‘it’s the last ditch’.
HumboldtBlue
Kay
@zzyzx:
It’s because it’s all political for the Trump Administration. Whatever political benefit they thought they could gain from chaos is turning into a reflection on them. Even Trump cult members are complaining that it looks bad- they mean “looks bad for Trump”.
They don’t actually care about the substance of anything. They care how it looks and how that reflects on them. They sat on their coddled asses for a week and watched it burn because they thought they could turn that to political advantage. Now they’re not so sure.
Hoodie
@HumboldtBlue: I keep wondering when one of these governors gets the nerve to say “Yeah, fuck you, go hide in the bunker” and hangs up on his ass. I still wonder how grownass men and women put up with abuse from this no-talent, cowardly shit. It’s not like he’s going to do anything for them anyway.
zzyzx
@Kay: Who is it though who is looking around at the US right now and saying, “If only someone who do something about all of the flag burning?”
The problem (well for him. It’s great for the country) is that his entire plan revolves around talking up stupid things and trying to get people mad over them. That can work in normal times, but when people are scared over real issues, it’s harder to get the anger over a flag burning or a tan suit.
Kay
I’m not religious or even superstitious but is it me or are these Trump people being visited by a series of catastrophes as punishment for being such lousy people?
Reap the whirlwind indeed. It’s like it’s designed to teach them some humility. 2020 has been like “you think you’re IN CONTROL, do you? Here comes the universe to show you how wrong you are”
JMG
@Hoodie: That’s not how the game is played. It was the Governor most disgusted with Trump who made a tape and leaked it, so Trump couldn’t deny a word. A good pol always wears gloves when knifing a foe in the back.
taumaturgo
@Kay: The other side of the coin that history tells us is that during the eight Obama years hundreds if not thousands of down-ballot judgeships, state senators and representatives and whole control of statehouses were won by Republicans. Eight years of hope and change that never truly materialize under Obama’s neoliberal rule that culminated with Donald’s election. Like systemic racism that permeates the social fabric and most of us look the other way or deny it, so does the failed economic dogma of neoliberalism which Obama and the current Democratic leadership practices, permeate the continuation of unjust economic inequalities that we rather also look the other or deny.
Hungry Joe
Re Trump in White House bunker: In my head I keep replaying the part of “Blazing Saddles,“ near the end, when the Fourth Wall has broken down and all is chaos. We’re suddenly in a movie studio commissary, where an actor dressed as Hitler is eating. Another actor joins him, saying, “So, how much more work you got, Joey?” Joey/Hitler replies, in a thick Brooklyn accent, “Dey lose me right aftah da bunkah scene.”
Redshift
Looks like Barr is going for another round of acting as Trump’s personal enforcer instead of serving the public:
AG Barr deploying federal riot teams to DC, Miami to quell unrest, DOJ official says
The unrest in DC is nowhere near many other cities, so this is obviously just to protect President Tough Guy from the scary Black people.
And if you, like me, had never heard of federal riot teams, it’s because they’re from the Bureau of Prisons. Trumpers treating this situation as a prison riot seems entirely unsurprising.
Jay C
Impressive (as usual) commentary from President Obama*, but unfortunately, I think he misses one vital point in his call to political action. IMHO, the biggest obstacle to “criminal justice system reform” isn’t the institutional politics that nominally “run” the system, but the fact that forty or so years of “tough on crime” rhetoric and policies have led to all too many law-enforcement personnel coming to regard themselves as a “Warrior Caste” – the Blue Tribe whose principle loyalty is to The Tribe and the Tribal Code: and the public/elected officials to whom they are nominally subject are all-too-often seen as merely ephemeral annoyances
*I SO hate having to type the term “Former”
Geminid
I thought from the beginning that trump’s tough talk was a tell. I’ve known 2-3 people who I thought were tough in terms of moral and physical courage, and one thing they had in common was that they did not talk tough, they were tough. When I see someone talking tough I tend to think they are the opposite.
Suzanne
I swear to God, every day of this year, I’ve woken up, checked the news, and just flopped back down into the bed immediately because I’m so sick and tired of so much winning.
MOPA = Make Obama President Again
Omnes Omnibus
@Kay: No, it is simply what happens when incompetent people have control for long enough.
germy
@Hoodie:
cain
@Jay C:
Coupled that mentality with military gear. Seriously we have tanks in the street by non-military personnel – law enforcement – there is absolutely no need to have them.
Omnes Omnibus
@Geminid: I’ve always thought that. Internet tough guys are another flavor of that phenomenon.
Salty Sam
Before he was COP in Houston, Art Acevedo was COP in Austin, when I lived there. I was impressed with him then, doubly/triply more impressed with him now. One of the good’uns…
HumboldtBlue
The contrast between Pritzker expressing concern about the country and Trump expressing concern about having his feelings hurt is notable, if not surprising
gene108
@cain:
A lot of the militarization of police came from an early-to-mid-1990’s jewelry store (?) robbery in Los Angeles, where the criminals, who had assault rifles, seemed to out gun the cops, who had revolvers.
I think that incident led for calls to better arm police, which hasn’t stop until recently.
Wapiti
@cain: This. If they need military gear, the governor can send the National Guard.
Salty Sam
No need for supernatural explanations Kay. If you neglect basic maintenance on your car, oil changes for instance, it will eventually break down.
This country has been neglecting basic maintenance to the idea of self-governance ever since Reagan declared “Government is the problem, not the solution.” And here we sit in our broke-down vehicle. It took a generation to get to this point, gonna take another generation to repair.
Roll up our sleeves…
Gin & Tonic
@Redshift: It might also be because people who choose to become prison guards are uniformly terrible. At least in choosing to become a police officer, there’s a plausible case you’re trying to help your community or something. Prison guards just get off on sadism.
I may have mentioned this, but for a few years my wife worked in health services on Riker’s Island. She often said she feared the guards more than the detainees or inmates (Riker’s is both a jail and a prison.)
Feathers
@gene108: I remember when that happened. Seemed reasonable, but it then normalized military weapons in the civilian world. When people saw police with them, they wanted them. I remember traveling to Europe in the 80s and the police at the airports with military weapons were a visceral shock. Now, here at home, it barely registers.
Jay C
@gene108:
Good recall, gene: the North Hollywood Shootout
Feb. 28, 1997
Subsole
@taumaturgo:
Hey.
Pull my finger.
sdhays
This isn’t completely true, although I think there’s definitely more to it than we’d like to believe, similar to CBP. In most places hosting prisons, they’re one of the few decent employers in the area. But becoming a prison guard does seem to destroy the goodness of people. I have a good friend whose father was a prison guard and whose brother is now a guard at the same prison. He doesn’t like what he’s seen it do to his brother (and he never really got on with his father that well).
Salty Sam
I’ve worked with a few guys who were prison guards, and from my experience, this is a true statement. Cruel, sadistic, and enjoyed visiting suffering among their inmates. I didn’t like sharing workspace with them.
karensky
Elected officials should join the peaceful protests. Lecturing at us is not going to make it this time. Newark, NJ is a good example.