Two hundred union workers, out of 5,700 who assemble dishwashers, refrigerators, washers, and dryers for GE Appliances-Haier at Appliance Park in Louisville, Kentucky, received notice this month that the Trump administration is revoking their work authorizations.
The immigrant workers from Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, and Venezuela have received a mixed reaction to their imminent deportation—hostility from some co-workers and an outpouring of support from their union and the local labor movement. They’re part of the Communications Workers’ industrial division, IUE-CWA Local 83761.
Back in 2014 in Ukraine, the thing that caused what had been some pretty normal student protest issues to explode like a bomb and become an active revolution by the people against the government, was that the government really cracked down on the protests. They had students, their children, getting sent to the hospital with broken bones or skull fractures, and they said absolutely the fuck not. Now you are hurting our children. It turned 100% of the country against the government in a really active and personal way.
I fear that in America there is no community like that to be turned against any oppressive government or action. People have been watching random citizens getting snatched off the street and disappeared, children getting sent off to concentration camps, and it’s more or less “oh well that is happened to someone else. It’s a shame.”
Turns out decades of “stop resisting or you will get shot and it will be your fault” has some real nasty side effects…
What?
I can’t even tell what you’re saying here or how it relates. Are you saying that militarized police in the US have intimidated people to the point that they’re unwilling to rise up against an oppressive government?
Do you know what the biggest and most popular protest movement in modern US history was?
Yes. They literally cracked skulls during the BLM protests. We’re looking down the barrel of the worst economy in U.S. history and not even 1% of the country bothered to get out of the house on a Saturday to protest. 90% of Americans do not watch or read the news. Many were surprised that Biden wasn’t on the ballot in November, and many more haven’t noticed Orange Monday wiped out their 401(k)s yet.
Absolutely agreed. Horrible media, both in the “lazy” and in the “corrupted” sense, combined with comfortable-life-induced apathy by the majority of people, combined with corruption of the levers of democracy so that it’s not really clear how people now even could influence events without taking them in an even worse direction, have left us in a dire state. I am having trouble seeing how it’s plausible that there is any future in store other than collapse, hopefully followed by something better although the reasons to think it will be better are slim. I think it’s very notable that Tim Snyder who studies this kind of historical time period professionally and is clearly very amenable to the idea of getting involved to try to fix things, is leaving the country.
I fail to see how any of that is in any way a result of police brutality. Actually police brutality was the one issue recently which actually did motivate people to get off the couch and go try to do something about it in a big way. I feel like SinAdjetivos just kind of had their pet issue they wanted to bring up and emote about, and the fact that it has nothing to do with what’s currently happening didn’t deter them.
Motivated people to get off the couch and do what exactly? Other than skulls caved in what was the result? Was there any actual police reform? Was there a massive shift of funding away from incarceration as the cure-all? Have the number of extrajudicial murders decreased?
Yes, I am saying that police militarization has resulted in a populace that is unable/unwilling to revolt in even the slightest of ways since the uncomfortable truth that all Americans live under is that even something as minor, routine and unintentional as speeding can be reason for death. Much less any meaningful/intentional disobedience.
It is a very direct, but often overlooked, reason for a lot of what we are currently seeing today. It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone as even the US founders knew you can’t have a functioning democracy while staring down the barrel of a gun. That’s what the whole “standing military” thing was about.
As an aside, why are you coming at a “I completely agree, here’s another interesting facet/perspective” comment where you don’t see the connection with such hostility and defensiveness instead of curiosity?
An absolutely massive historic protest movement. Among other things, they burned down the police station at the heart of everything, millions of people marched in the streets, businesses shut down, in scattered little places (pretty rarely) they actually rioted or burned police cars, some people got killed, they changed the language of policing and basically made it clear that the people wouldn’t tolerate anything other than change and would back it up with direct action.
Yes. Do you remember those walls of names of people who got killed with no particular justice, and notice that the names basically stop in 2020?
Do you remember all those constant news stories involving no charges for the cops, and have you noticed that every single one of the stories in the modern day involves charges for the cops?
I’m not saying the system is fixed. In particular that cop who broke the neck of an elderly Japanese man and then had his charges overridden by someone at the state level when the system attempted to charge him with a crime. That’s the one big example I can think of recently. But the constant drumbeat of dead unarmed black people who posed no particular threat at all, and the lack of consequences that always accompanied them, has stopped. It’s weird that the people who were so passionate about having made it happen through direct action don’t seem to have noticed.
No. I mean, it barely matters now, we’re switching away from the democratic justice system completely and into ICE as the new Gestapo, quite quickly. Reforming the police at the city and state level is a dead issue now. But, if for some reason you want to get back to it after the coming of real fascism has somehow been defeated (how, I don’t know), you could start at the level of prosecutions and incarcerations, which are still horrifying as policing on the streets used to be, now that the rank-and-file of policing on a day-to-day basis is about the least unjust part of the system thanks to successful action.
DUDE THEY BURNED DOWN THE FUCKING POLICE STATION
Millions of people were in the streets this past weekend. Is it enough? Fuck no. Did any of them get gunned down by state or city level cops? Or even rubber-bulleted? Not that I’m aware of.
BECAUSE OF THE EXACT REFORM THAT IS THE SUCCESS OF THE MOVEMENT YOU’RE SHITTING ON THE RESULTS OF AND INSULTING THE PARTICIPANTS IN
That’s fair, and you’re right that in my frustration I’m not giving proper credit where credit is due. It was definitely the last time I had hope of things improving somewhat and the bad takes/wrong lessons learned sometimes make me forget that.
Some localities did, but largely no. I’m assuming you’re referencing the George Floyd bill, go look at what it actually says.
Police killings in the US have been rapidly increasing since 2020 your anecdotes and what the media chooses to report are not going to be good/accurate reflections of reality.
The US justice system was never democratic, and DHS (ICE as a subsidiary) was explicitly created by Bush Jr. to function that way. I apologize for my frustration and I’m glad you’re finally on board/aware of it but you’re also 25 years late my dude.
You are correct that I am not giving those involved enough credit for that level of bravery and action, but it also wasn’t a consistent trend and with the benefit of foresight we can look back and realize that no police reform came from any of it.
Because they threw a parade instead of a riot. The pro-palestinian protests absolutely did face that level of repression.
The real issue is that you keep contradicting yourself so which is it:
A. the 2020 protests reformed the police and we’re all safe now.
B. We’re entering an era where the already abysmal human rights abuses are about to become far worse.
Very little that happens at the level of a federal bill will impact policing on a local level. I assume the impact of the George Floyd bill will be effectively 0 beyond several congresspeople being able to pat themselves on the back.
How many of the people in that graph do you think were unjustified shootings? Just to get a sense of what you think is going on. I actually don’t know of any quantitative tracking of unjustified police killings, which is a massive lack if we’re going to have a fact-based conversation about it.
I periodically have this conversation with people who have no idea what they’re talking about.
You can make a municipality with any type of police you want. Any type of prison system you want, or none at all. The city council can make no police at all. There are actually a tiny little handful of case studies of individual places where for some reason it happened: Those libertarians in New Hampshire, the whole cult community talked about in “Wild Wild Country,” what the Freak Party had in mind in Aspen back when that was going on, and a handful of others.
The fact that you personally don’t have any impact on the police in your community doesn’t at all mean that it’s not democratic. It’s just that US culture is pretty conservative, so what the city council (or whatever) authorizes for the police force is reflective of that. But if you and your friends got elected to mayor and city council, you could disband the police completely if you wanted to. You could literally do whatever you wanted.
ICE is something different. I have no idea how you think that Trump enacting a for real no-trial no-warrant neo-Gestapo is somehow in any type of same ballpark as the mayor and chief of police not caring if Officer Brother-In-Law shot someone and then said he was in fear for his life. They’re not comparable.
Pretty sure I explicitly said the exact opposite of that. My wording was, “I’m not saying the system is fixed. In particular that cop who broke the neck of an elderly Japanese man and then had his charges overridden by someone at the state level when the system attempted to charge him with a crime. That’s the one big example I can think of recently.”
The fact that things are about to get a whole lot worse from one agency, is not contradictory to what some totally other group of agencies is doing. The two have literally nothing to do with each other (aside from both being rooted in the US populace being pretty conservative and also not watching the news and having no idea what’s going on). There’s no contradiction any more than there is “I thought you said the hole in the boat is partially fixed and so how can there be a fire in the engine room.” They are different agencies. Different things.
I feel like you’re just saying weird stuff to try to wind me up or something.
Thank you for this. There has been far too much of people utterly ignoring the hard work that people have done against authoritarianism in the US and the actual impact it’s had. Lemmy seems to be inundated with people insisting that nothing anyone can do could possibly help and the no one has ever done anything meaningful to resist, and that’s just bullshit. It’s some terminally online doomerism and it’s the last thing we need.
Frankly, it’s complicity. It needs to be called out and opposed, and you’re doing good work by not mincing words here.
People who pull this shit day in and day out are as much a part of the problem as the MAGA idiots, both in their constant attempts to undermine any and all resistance and very likely in getting us into this situation in the first place.
We need to stop tiptoeing around them and throw their bullshit back in their faces. It’s fucking shameful, and they should be embarrassed to be such spineless bootlickers.
Your turn! Point out where what I said is bullshit.
I’m not
I’m saying that we have the benefit of hindsight now and can look back and see the results of actions taken and determine what tactics were and weren’t effective. If you don’t do that and instead only focus on how much “hard work” was put in instead of the results of the labor you’re going to be constantly wearing yourself out and accomplishing nothing.
I’m begging you to focus less on the “how many people showed up” and focus more on the “what did it accomplish” and update your tactics accordingly.
Yes. I’m also incensed that “let’s all not vote for Kamala Harris because we don’t want a cop as president” “let’s all not vote for Kamala Harris because we care about genocide in Gaza” has been replaced by “ho hum let’s not protest ICE, that sounds scary, they might do something to me” “ho hum I’ve moved on from Gaza, I care about other issues now” and so on.
I saw earlier today someone I saw who has moved on completely from hand-wringing about Kamala Harris about Gaza to hand-wringing about Eric Adams’s opponent, for perfectly sensible reasons I am sure. I thought about going back and seeing how many of these people who were super concerned about fascism in America and policing and the cop who spoke at the DNC and Gaza, are now trying to publicize the 50501 protests, but (a) I already have a pretty good idea of the answer (b) it’s a little mean spirited I guess and just more mud-slinging © what’s the point. But yes. This bullshit on a friendly social network should get people yelled at. In my opinion.
Thanks for sharing that, I wasn’t aware of that event in Ukraine. I should read up on it more
I think we still have hope. I think we just have to wait for another spark. Another unfortunate moment that will spur people to action.
Similar to the George Floyd protests. One action that people can’t look away from and will cause the pressure to burst. I believe we’ll see it at some point. It’s gona suck but I think positive change will come
I’ve also been wondering why we haven’t seen people act out more. But I wonder if it’s just because it hasn’t hit close enough to home yet. Maybe everything has been too surreal for people to digest? Or maybe people are afraid to act and don’t feel like they’ll have someone watching their back? I’m really not sure.
Watch “Winter on Fire”. It’s so good that the Russians had to make their own confusingly-named film “Ukraine on Fire” to try to make it more difficult for people to find the first thing.
Fucking hell that was a hard watch. People should watch it though. They need to understand what happens when we let the intolerant have power