Protests in Sao Paulo have hit an incredible fever pitch over the past days as youth rebel against a proposed transit hike and government corruption.
Cops are all individual people, it’s the system that’s the problem!
Yeah, the State is the problem but no one is denying that. Cops wield and abuse State power hence my criticism. The State uses the police to stop anything that threatens it. The police are dangerous because of the amount of power they are given. They have enough power to take down the system if they want to. But they don’t.
Cops are not separate from “the system”. This “system” is made up of individuals. It is not some distant monolith. Cops as individuals are enforcers of oppression. I’m sure everyone knows someone who is a cop who is a good-hearted person. That changes absolutely nothing. Your racist grandma is a good person too I’m sure. But really, no matter how good of a person they are, their profession essentially requires them to be oppressive. They have to follow the rules, and the rules are deeply flawed.
The duty of police officers is to uphold the law. The laws in this country (and world) are oppressive. They are made in favor of those with power: the white and the rich. These laws are made by these people to protect themselves and to keep the hierarchies in place that benefit them.
Because the laws themselves are oppressive, there is no way to enforce them without also being oppressive. Again: There is no way to have laws without being oppressive. Laws always work in favor of certain people and against others.
And: The police, as a group, and also as individuals, decide which laws they actually want to enforce. They regularly look the other way and let unethical behavior and corruption happen. It’s true that they would lose their jobs if they truly challenged these things unless cops en masse decided to rebel. And that’s my point.
Who polices the police?
But cops are people who choose their work because of (class) (individual circumstances) (their own oppression)
There is no police draft. Marginalized youth with no options are targeted by the military and tricked into joining with promises of future wealth and education. This is not the case with police. Some people join the force because they want to do good, but they are kidding themselves if they believe that’s really what the police are for. Most people join because they want power.
Cops are necessary in order to deal with crime.
This implies that the current system is somehow working. Which is ridiculous. Pay attention to the world around you. The people who are the biggest criminals in this world are getting away with it.
What we consider to be “crime” is a social construct. Can we agree that murder, across the board, is wrong? It’s a crime? So why is it that police can get away with it? What about war? What about capital punishment? Oh, okay, so only some murders are crimes. So… who decides which murders are okay, and which are not? Why should anyone have that power? The people who make those decisions are going to make sure that anything they do won’t be considered a crime, because why would they work against their own interests?
In our system the people that can do whatever they want are the people with the most power. Corporate CEOs help to make the laws that ensure they can continue to do whatever the fuck they desire. We socially don’t view them as criminals despite the fact that they do heinous things on a regular basis. Including killing people.
The laws continue to only apply to certain people: the most oppressed. The poor. People of color. Immigrants. Often they are imprisoned for petty crimes, crimes they did not commit, or crimes that they committed because they ran out of options. The prison-industrial complex makes money off of these people. The corporations that own prisons make laws that guarantee they will have constant cash flow (read: inmates). They criminalize the existence of the poor and POC. The justice system as it currently stands does not prevent crime. It does not stop or “deal with” crime. Its purpose is not to prevent crime or to keep “us” safe. Its purpose is to make money and uphold power structures.
Well what should we do then if we shouldn’t have police?
That is a topic that people write entire books about. The truth is that I don’t know what the ideal is, and it’s not up to me to make those decisions. I believe in the power of communities to come up with solutions that work best for them. I do not believe most people would hurt others if they didn’t have to. In a just world, most of the crime that we see on a daily basis would not exist. I believe the biggest criminals today are heads of governments and corporations. I don’t have to know all the answers in order to criticize what I see as a harmful and corrupt system. I definitely think we can do much better. Things are certainly not “working” right now for anyone except the most privileged.
If you think cops protect “us”, you’re wrong. They protect certain people and certain interests. I don’t blame you for resisting what I’m saying. We’re taught that cops are good people who keep us safe but through our experiences we learn that this is not the case. If you haven’t learned that through experience you are very lucky and possibly naive. But it’s time to get your head out of the sand.
(via fyeahderrickjensen)
I’m trying to make the world see what’s happening. The brazilian media keeps saying that people in protests are being violent, and this is one of the thousand videos that show how television and newspapers are clearly LYING. In this video, we’re just screaming “No violence! No violence!” (Sem violência! Sem violência) and suddenly, what happens? The police attack the people they should be protecting! The government is against us. We were in a pacific riot, just asking for 1) The bus and subway tickets to get a lower price, because the price at this moment is abusive and the service is not good enough and, 2) MORE IMPORTANT THATN THE PRICE OF PUBLIC TRANSPORT, we’re fighting for the possibility of making protest, of being able, as a democracy, to fight about something we belive.
The police are being violent, abusive and it’s not letting the people of São Paulo to fight for what they believe. This looks like a ditactorship, not a democracy. Brazil was a ditactorship from 1964 to 1985. Are we in a ditactorship again? We’re not able to fight for what we believe? We can have free speech anymore? This is not the first protest we’re doing and it’s not gonna be the last. We’re in a free country, we HAVE to fight.
Please, this is important. Spread the world! Watch the video and reblog and show it to whoever you can! We brazilian, we citizen of São Paulo appreciate it!
The international media is reporting the facts, as the national media is defending the interests of the one’s in power.
pretty awful, but sadly true. fuck the patriarchy.
Brb changing url to lesbo_opinions
I face this problem more on facebook than anywhere else. Here on tumblr there are huge amounts of people willing to stand up to all kinds of bullshit, but it seems like this way of thinking is barely reaching the world outside of what we do online. When will women truly be heard?
(via feministbecky)
asks you if she’s pretty
your heart will drop like a wineglass
on the hardwood floor
part of you will want to say
of course you are, don’t ever question it
and the other part
the part that is clawing at
you
will want to grab her by her shoulders
look straight into the wells of
her eyes until they echo back to you
and say
you do not have to be if you don’t want to
it is not your job
both with feel right
one will feel better
she will only understand the first
when she wants to cut her hair off
or wear her brother’s clothes
you will feel the words in your
mouth like marbles
you do not have to be pretty if you don’t want to
it is not your job
(via thegoldmedal)
Meet: Melinda Byers
Born and raised in California, USA, Melinda Byers is one of America’s foremost and popular artists of nostalgic and ethnic art.She discovered her love for art at a young age, and vividly remembers sponge painting as a four year old, at primary school. Whilst at a grammar school, Melinda Byers was awarded many art certificates and one art teacher, in particular, introduced her to watercolours, which is the medium she has favoured throughout her career. After school she worked at a dental practice, whilst painting in her spare time. However, she soon took up painting full-time and began participating in many exhibitions at leading galleries in America.Melinda Byers is a self-taught artist who has not undergone any formal training. Before starting a painting, she spends on average 150-200 hours preparing the scene she has chosen to paint. This includes activities such as finding models and making their clothes, and taking photographs.She has won many awards over the years, including several first place prizes and three ‘Best Of Show’ awards. She has also donated many of her original paintings to charities to raise money for hospitals around her home town.
Yes.
YES.
Black women being shown as dainty and genteel and with poise.
(via feministbecky)
(via brazilianveganfeminist)
When the Department of Housing and Urban Development first began to systemically study housing discrimination in the United States in the 1970s, the most blatant forms of it were still common.
Blacks were denied appointments to meet with real estate brokers or rental agencies to tour homes that had been publicly advertised.
Or they were told those homes were no longer available, a lie that helped perpetuate the racial divides between whole neighborhoods.
Today, illegal incidents like these rarely occur (although they have not disappeared entirely). Discrimination, though, persists in a much subtler form. Minorities in search of a home today typically get to meet the agent and see the property.
But they’re less likely than whites to then learn about the full range of housing options available to them – to be told “I have another two-bedroom you might like to see,” or “let me show you one more house.”
“It’s very subtle,” says Margery Turner, a senior vice president with the Urban Institute. “It’s pretty much impossible for the victim to detect that this is happening to him or her.”
We know, however, that this kind of discrimination takes place across the country based on the results of a sweeping new study released today by HUD and conducted by the Urban Institute. The research is the fourth in a series of HUD-sponsored studies of housing discrimination in America that have taken place roughly once a decade since 1977.
In this latest study, 8,000 pairs of matched testers – one white, one minority, both equally qualified for the home in question – responded to ads for a variety of housing in 28 nationally representative metropolitan areas. Blacks in the market to own a home, for example, were then shown 17 percent fewer properties than whites.
In effect, this practice still constrains housing opportunities available to minorities.
“It still matters,” Turner says. “It still really makes a difference. Not only is it fundamentally unfair that somebody doesn’t find out about available housing because of the color of their skin, but it also really raises the cost of searching for housing for minorities, or it restricts their choices.”
This may mean that minorities don’t find the most affordable housing or the housing located in neighborhoods with the best schools or parks or proximity to jobs. In this study, the race of the rental or real estate agent appeared to have no effect on the results. But minority testers whose race was more easily identifiable – by name, by voice over the phone, or in person – experienced more discrimination than minorities who were more likely to be mistaken as white.
(via truth-has-a-liberal-bias)
I want a movie about a little girl, aged like 11-12, going through the stuggles of prepubescent girl life, with her entire inner monologue is narrated by Samuel L. Jackson.
Shot of disgruntled adorable little girl.SLJ: I knew that Susie was a backstabbin’ motherfucker, and if anyone was going to ruin my chances of being Miss Sugar Drop Queen, it was that asshole.
(via feathers-of-hope)
Have the Republicans reached peak batshit insane yet?
Do they realize The Biebs is canadian???
