Category: Police Brutality

“Just Dave” Stop The Police Killings

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“Just Dave” Stop Police Killings

“Just Dave” Stop Police Killings

Calamity News and Politics Vlog Cast this week is about the escalating violence of police officers around country. Police Brutality is out of hand. “Just Dave” is really upset, and so is everyone else in the country with a soul.  Calamity doesn’t like it when Dave gets upset.  The heartbreak of the recent murders by police is  more than our man can handle. If tears would fix the problem we could have already fixed it.  End police brutality. The fear of the police by the people of the community needs to stop.

 

Offspring “L.A.P.D.”

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Offspring “L.A.P.D.”

Offspring “L.A.P.D.”

T.K. McNeil is at it again. The Offspring take the L.A.P.D to task in one of today’s CalamityPolitics.com Jukebox Choice(s) of the Day. I have posted the lyrics below.

L.A.P.D.

The Offspring
When cops are taking care of business I can understand
But the L.A. story’s gone way out of hand
Their acts of aggression, they say they’re justified
But it seems an obsession has started from the inside
They’re shooting anyone who even tries to run
They’re shooting little kids with toy guns
Take it to a jury but they don’t give a damn
Because the one who tells the truth is always the policeman
Beat all the niggers
Beat whoever you see
Don’t need a reason
(We’re) L.A.P.D.
The city of L.A. feels like a prison
With helicopters overhead and bullets whizzing by
Martial law ain’t no solution
Police brutality’s just social pollution
Beat all the white trash
Beat whoever you see
Don’t need a reason
(We’re) L.A.P.D.
They say they’re keeping the peace
But I’m not buying it because a billy club ain’t much of a pacifier
“Protecting your freedom”
Now that’s just a lie
It’s an excuse for power that’s more like an alibi
Law and order doesn’t really matter
When you’re the one getting bruised and battered
You take it to a jury, they’ll throw it in your face
Because justice in L.A. comes in a can of mace
Source: Lyric Find
Songwriters: Dexter Holland / Greg Kriesel / Kevin Wasserman / Ron Welty
L.A.P.D. lyrics © Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd.

https://www.calamitypolitics.com/2021/01/24/black-sabbath-paranoid/

Comfortable In Their Indecency

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Comfortable In Their Indecency

The work of social justice must continue.

OPINION:

Comfortable In Their Indecency

D. S. Mitchell

Daily Blessings

I have been enormously blessed. I wake with a grateful heart each day.

Unvarnished Anger

I am however, angry with so many well-meaning people that assume that it is because they worked hard, or because they are especially smart is why they have done well financially in this society. The presumption then being that those who aren’t doing well must be lazy, stupid, unworthy or some other white elitist measurement of failure. There are millions of people every day that have their dreams smashed for reasons that have nothing to do with how hard they are working. Born in poverty, birth  defects, disease, accidents, divorce, abuse, homelessness, hunger. The list of adversity is long.

Knees Down

We live in a cruel capitalist society, with thousands of devices designed to keep the already advantaged always on top. In every city in this country huge numbers of people are living in tents, surrounded by garbage, no mental health services for people in crisis, police officers  so comfortable in their indecency that they feel no shame in holding their knee on the neck of another human being for nearly 9 minutes. The injustice in this country should have us on our fucking knees.  DSM/Calamity

We Share A Dream

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Honor MLK today by doing something for someone else. Make today a day of service.

We Share A Dream

By Anna & Wes Hessel

Thank You, Dr. King…

We celebrate the birthday of one of the greatest and most humble human beings to ever live, Dr. Martin Luther King, a Godly man of peace and gentle warrior.  He selflessly championed for civil rights and worked to change the world into a better place.  Many hard won civil rights from that time have been attacked during the Trump administration but now with the inauguration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, Dr. King’s legacy will continue to live on.  The Biden-Harris inaugural team has instituted a day of service to honor the remarkable Martin Luther King, Jr.

 The Son of a King

Born the son of a preacher man, Michael King, Jr., entered life in 1929 on January 15th in Atlanta.  His father, Michael, Sr., was himself the scion of a pastor.  Junior joined senior in 1934 on a sojourn through  Rome, Tunisia, Egypt, Jerusalem, and Bethlehem, commissioned by the church the elder King pastored.  The final stop was in Berlin for the Baptist World Alliance’s international conference.

The Fight for Reform

There both Kings saw firsthand the spread of Nazi influence.  The BWA issued an official policy statement, saying, “This Congress deplores and condemns as a violation of the law of God the Heavenly Father, all racial animosity, and every form of oppression or unfair discrimination toward the Jews, toward coloured people, or toward subject races in any part of the world.”  Having visited sites in the German capital which were involved with the Reformation movement started by Martin Luther, Michael Sr. began to call himself, “Martin Luther King, Sr.” and renamed his son accordingly, making it official on junior’s birth certificate in 1957.

Growing Up Black

Junior had befriended a Caucasian boy before they both entered first grade, but because of their skin color difference, they went to separate (segregated) schools.  The white child’s parents a short time later then cut off contact between the two, citing race as the deciding factor.  When the younger Martin Luther went to his parents about the break, they sat him down to detail the slavery of blacks and resultant racism.  When confronted with all that had been perpetrated against people of color, MLK said later he became, “determined to hate every white person”.  His father and mother, though, taught junior that Jesus called for the love of everyone.

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OPINION: We Are The “Others”

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Police enforce the stigmatization of groups including people of color.

We Are the Others

By Trevor K. McNeil

Something Rotten

To paraphrase the immortal words of Shakespeare, “there is something rotten in the state”(s) of the union. A creeping specter striking down the innocence and protecting the guilty. Most will point to police prejudice, particularly racism, in the exercising of State power over the citizenry. The problem is greater than brutal policing. It is in fact a society wide issue. But, policing is a very visible factor in the lives of the oppressed that frequently leads to the incarceration or death of the oppressed. It does not help matters that policing is basically grunt work. Almost anyone can apply for the  job of a cop. Many police applicants have  less education than EMTs, or firefighters. People certainly die in the hand of these professionals, but it is always an accident. Police officers, on the other hand, frequently serve up death through inhumane tactics, brutal force and malfeasance.

Shadows Around the Fire

Fear of ‘the other’ is ingrained in the human DNA. It is the self-protective mechanism that predates man stabbing mammoths on the tundra. In fact, it is probably responsible for the wiping out of the Neanderthals to make Homo sapiens the only higher humanoid species on the planet. Generally speaking, the term ‘othering’ is understood as an undesirable objectification of another person or group. In effect this social process, labels those defined as ‘different’ in a negative manner, whether it be by skin color, sex, sexual orientation, economic status, ethnicity, religion, or even disabilities.

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World On Fire

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firefighters working to put out fires started during protests

WORLD ON FIRE

Trevor K. McNeil & D. S. Mitchell

Better Angels

Humans are complex. Neither angels nor devils, but something in between. As with many things it is a continuum. Abraham Lincoln understood this perfectly and touched on it when he referred to “the better angels of our nature.” As with human nature, so with human action. Which assists in understanding our history of civil disobedience. Particularly when it happens to turn ugly. Such as when legitimate protests based on genuine grievances turn into deadly riots.

Rebels With A Cause

Henry David Thoreau was a vocal abolitionist, anti-expansionist and a  conductor of the underground railroad. In 1849, Thoreau, an infamous proto-anarchist, published his essay “Resistance to Civil Government”.  “Anarchist” in this case meaning classical Anarchism. A political ideology that accepts rules, but opposes the notion of rules in a top-down coercive system, where using lethal violence, or the threat thereof, to keep the populace under control.  Thoreau advocated “resistance to an unjust state.” He said, “I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government”.  Thoreau said “the government that governs best is that which governs least.” Though notice the phraseology. Government. To govern. There being a vital difference between a government and an administration.

 Historical Perspective

America has a long, rich history of civil disobedience. “Fight the Power” being the unofficial national motto. Setting the American Revolution aside, one of the places this first came into focus was in lower Manhattan in 1863. From July 13th to July 16th, during the throes of the American Civil War, hundreds of citizens, many of them immigrants took to the streets to protest the draft that would send them to fight the Confederacy. What started out relatively peacefully soon grew into a large violent, three-day riot. In the end an estimated 120 people lay dead.

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Editorial: The Tyranny Of Trump

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EDITORIAL: The Tyranny Of Trump

By Trevor K. McNeil

That Old Tyme Religion

Generally speaking, there is a difference between old gods and what could be considered new gods. The god(s) of monotheism being firmly of the new school. The God of the Judeo-Christian Bible has gone through quite a transformation. He’s gone from a flaming-sword-angel-sending, flood killing-everything-on-earth, city destroying God of the Old Testament, to a Messenger of hope. Apparently, the Father felt he needed a new approach.

Police Violence

Loud, mostly non-violent demonstrations have filled the streets of America, again.  Four police officers in Minneapolis, Minnesota have murdered another handcuffed black man.  Nothing new about that either. It seems a common event in this country. A large crowd was hanging out in front of the White House. AG, Bill Barr suddenly appeared, surrounded by a cadre of secret service personnel. He appeared to be surveying the situation. Minutes later, without warning, National Guard troops using tear gas, pepper spray and rubber bullets alongside horse mounted riot police violently cleared peaceful protesters from Lafayette Square and surrounding streets. The brutality was fast, savage and done without warning against passively demonstrating American citizens.

Brutal Passage

We would soon see the violence was done in order to create a path for Trump and his entourage to walk from the White House to St. John’s Episcopal Church.  Once in front of the Priory House Trump awkwardly held up a Bible, turning it around, and around, in a bizarre manner, finally turning it upside down for a memorial photo. The newly proclaimed “law and order” president stood surrounded by his cabinet members posing for the media event. The self-proclaimed King-god of America now known as “Tyrannical Trump,” had used a militarized police force so he could shame the Bible, debase a church, and humiliate Christianity.  An action of sacrilege that, in the good old days, that would have gotten him a lighting bolt right between the eyes. Thor must have been off that afternoon.

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