People Are Mad as Hell and They Aren't Going to Take It Any Longer

Excellent DU post:

... I think this goes beyond police brutality. I am in no way diminishing the horror of police brutality and the contempt that it demonstrates for black people. To me, the phrase "black lives matter" encompasses more than the right to not be treated as rabid animals to be put down, or swept out of the way into a nightmarish prison system.  

In city after city, and town after town, black people are marginalized, stereotyped and then conveniently forgotten. There's a mountain of blame to go around. Republican economic policies which dominate, are not insignificant. When we talk about the ever increasing gulf between the rich and the rest of the population, the people that suffer most under those policies are people of color. 

I'm not saying this well, but I do believe this: When you marginalize people, when you treat them as disposable and strip them of dignity through a steady stream of cultural contempt and brutality, that some of them, particularly young men, react by acting out on the rage that's been inculcated and building; that shouldn't be a surprise. 

We need to start with police departments, and minor tweaks won't do it. It's so bad and there's such egregious civil rights abuses extant in so many police department that I believe it has to start with the Justice Department. But we need to think beyond that: The Judicial System, the education system, prison reform, the social safety net, and on and on. It's daunting.

The police and the insane drug war are fucking out of control. Maybe not all police are bad, but the sheer psychopathy and sadism of so many policemen is just evil. Evil disguised as authority.

This column on the Baltimore protests in the aftermath of the Freddie Gray killing is good too.