The unspoken context behind the "Battle of Montgomery" video:
When media mentions "blue collar" jobs, they usually picture rural white folk. But... most employed Black and Latinx people work blue collar jobs, and most people live in cities. In the US, blue collar employees are Black and brown.🤷🏿♂️
Blue collar employees are often asked to enforce rules, (like mask mandates).
When racist white people get drunk, they often use slurs against, spit at, or physically strike these Black workers.
When racist white people get verbally abusive towards, and physically violent against Black Blue collar employees, more often than not, no one helps.
The Black employee is often in an awkward situation where they have the physical capacity to defend themselves, but know that they will be severely and disproportionately punished if they do so. Because racism.
That's a big part of the reason for the restraint and professionalism shown by this Black UK student.
The University of Kentucky student who attacked the Black student withdrew herself from campus after an outpouring of support for the victim and the Black community. The attacker was later expelled from UK, banned from the campus, and is currently indicted. Thanks to video.
Flight attendants were asked to enforce airline mask mandates. Many flight attendants are Black or latinx. Many anti-maskers are Trump supporters. They get drunk, get on planes, and you know what happens next. 🤷🏿♂️
If it weren't for video evidence and social media, no one would believe Black people when they say how often they are physically struck or called racist names by unruly white customers. It happens a lot.
Many Black service workers have stories about racist customers calling them slurs, or putting hands on them, and no one helping, and the violent customer facing no accountability.
Video evidence + social media, is one of the only channels Black people have to get justice in these situations.
So when you hear folks talk about "We don't want an outrage machine!" and see social platforms building "better conversation" tools that prevent the sharing of these videos, and prevent the unmasking of serial racist offenders... you can understand why Black folk don't like that.
We can't just say "I don't condone violence!" I don't like violence either, because it escalates. But Black people have a right to defend themselves and others.
If one of the drunk white people had a gun on that boat, this would have been a very different outcome. The woman that was struck by the chair could have had a very bad outcome. Etc.
Even as it stands, several of the Black men in that video will now be Black, in Alabama, with a criminal record. That's bad. And now they can't even vote.
@mekkaokereke For those saying "I don't condone violence" ignore the fact that this incident would have been avoided if the people on the boat did as they were told in the first place: Move the craft to make room for the riverboat that needed its *designated *space to dock.
But no, it was a Black man who was rightfully telling them what to do and, of course, that gave them cause to attack him. What they didn't expect was the reaction from others who weren't having it.
I don't like violence either. But if we only seem to say "I don't condone violence!" when talking about Black folk defending themselves from racist violence, then we very much are condoning violence. But we're only condoning it in one direction. 🤷🏿♂️
Delta Airlines has the most Black employees, and is the highest rated airline for Black employees. ♥️👍🏿
So... Delta now has 1600 people on their "violent passenger, do not allow to board" list. They want to share it.
@mekkaokereke What worries me about that proposal is that the TSA has never been transparent about how people get on the regular no-fly list, and it almost takes an act of Congress to get off that list. There has to be due process, and the TSA is notorious for having none.
@mekkaokereke If for no other reason to force police and other "authority" figures to act nice - body cameras and filmed engagements should be the norm.
The level of disproportionate response is ridiculous. As you say, they'll be commended for restraint and professionalism where it's more "awareness of the real situation that is unfolding".
@mentallyalex@mekkaokereke the problem with body cameras is they always seem to be mysteriously turned off whenever the cops may have been doing something questionable
@waitworry I don't have a problem with that, doesn't seem to be a real issue.
If I rent a parking space and "fail to remember to bring my receipt" there is a minimum fine of "THE DAY" or something similar. It's usually close to, if not the, maximum fee for the service.
That seems to be an excellent deterrent for self-regulation.
If they have a body cam that "fails to work" I am certain someone else in the area has secondary footage we could use. If "all" of their cameras failed...apply the same logic.
Once we round up the lower tiers the non-lower tiers will quit "forgetting" to turn their cameras on.
To be clear, I'm implying that if they turn their cameras off - they plead guilty to the assault.
The problem with copcams is that the cops control them. They use the footage to protect the cops first and foremost. It ought to automatically go to a secure, neutral party where nobody gets access without a warrant or subpoena, with regulations that make it easy for the people in the videos to get access.
@Spicewalla Of course, but that is a nuance to the solution.
There are a hundred hurdles to the 'cop cam' problem, but every one of them is solvable.
We obviously aren't going to dig out of hundreds of years of racism and ableism and abuse from authority. But we can't just stand by and defeat ourselves. Let them defeat us.
We need body cameras, we need accountability with the police. We need an advocacy pipeline for vulnerable communities and the COPS need help handling the sheer volume of overwork shoved at them.
Because unions, because corruption, etc. are all valid and real barriers of entry but they need to be taken as goals to solve - not project killers.
Its actually not a terribly difficult problem to fix. Nowadays, most copcams are sold as a service that outsources all the technical work to the vendor. Which means the video is stored in the cloud and is already under the control of a 3rd party like Axon or Motorola. What's missing is the legal infrastructure to enforce access control. @mekkaokereke
For me, as a white person, a real teachable moment was the angry white dog-walker girl threatening the mild-mannered black scholar guy twice her size, and he was the one who feared for his life ... a kind of modern-day Mockingbird moment ... and he did everything right, and he still got lucky things didn't go horribly awry.
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