{"id":10418,"date":"2016-07-07T23:06:14","date_gmt":"2016-07-08T04:06:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thewei.com\/kimi\/?p=10418"},"modified":"2016-07-08T06:19:27","modified_gmt":"2016-07-08T11:19:27","slug":"president-press-and-governor-speak-out-police-brutality-must-be-condemned-and-controlled","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thewei.com\/kimi\/president-press-and-governor-speak-out-police-brutality-must-be-condemned-and-controlled\/","title":{"rendered":"President, Press and Governor speak out: police brutality must be condemned and controlled"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Alton<\/a>
Alton Sterling Source: YouTube<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
No man is an island entire of itself;
\nevery man is a
\npiece of the continent,
\na part of the main;
\nif a clod be washed
\naway by the sea, Europe is the less,
\nas well as if a promontory were,
\nas well as any manner of thy friends
\nor of thine own were;
\nany man’s death diminishes me,
\nbecause I am involved in mankind.
\nAnd therefore never send
\nto know for whom the bell tolls;
\nit tolls for thee. <\/p>\n

\u2013 John Donne, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions Meditation XVII<\/em><\/div>\n

This week saw the police murder father of five children Alton Sterling<\/a> in Baton Rouge, Louisiana not long before school lunch supervisor and student mentor Philando Castile was murdered by a policeman near St. Paul, Minnesota.<\/p>\n

New York Times writer Michael Eric Dyson offers a sizzling condemnation<\/a> of white people for failing to hold brutal police accountable for killing people of color. Because ultimately, they don’t want to see that their greed for privilege has created and supports the social environment in which it is OK for this to happen. What a read:<\/p>\n

You cannot know what terror we live in. You make us afraid to walk the streets, for at any moment, a blue-clad officer with a gun could swoop down on us to snatch our lives from us and say that it was because we were selling cigarettes, or compact discs, or breathing too much for your comfort, or speaking too abrasively for your taste. Or running, or standing still, or talking back, or being silent, or doing as you say, or not doing as you say fast enough…<\/p>\n

You do not condemn these cops; to do so, you would have to condemn the culture that produced them \u2014 the same culture that produced you. Black people will continue to die at the hands of cops as long as we deny that whiteness can be more important in explaining those cops\u2019 behavior than the dangerous circumstances they face.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The NY Times Reports<\/a> on the President’s response:<\/p>\n

An emotional President Obama declared on Thursday that \u201call Americans should be troubled\u201d by fatal police shootings this week of black men in Louisiana and Minnesota, saying that they were \u201dsymptomatic of a broader set of racial disparities that exist in our criminal justice system.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speaking in Warsaw, and citing statistics that showed that blacks were far more likely to be arrested and shot by police, Mr. Obama asked Americans to try to understand that many people in the country think they are being treated unfairly.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen incidents like this occur, there\u2019s a big chunk of our fellow citizenry that feels as if, because of the color of their skin, they are not being treated the same,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd that hurts. That should trouble all of us.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n

March tonight 5pm at JJ Hill Montessori 998 Selby in St. Paul, sponsored by the parents there. #PhilandoCastile<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/QV7rEXkqCk<\/a><\/p>\n

— Ana Marie Cox (@anamariecox) July 7, 2016<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n