The source of the cancer. The tensions stem from a multiplicity of sources, some of which is certainly the police, the prison industrial complex, policing for profit, mass incarceration, the militarization of cops and the like. Yes, Freddie Gray may have precipitated the initial involvement and interaction, but there’s more at stake. The media have been horrid in their approach. CNN shows particular tone deafness when it comes to causation factors.
Repeat: It’s not about the police. So-called leaders of the black community appointed and anointed by corporate media puppeteers are most cautious to limit their protests and collective demands to the narrow sphere of police abuses and police-community devolved relations. Yes, they’re certainly important, but are co-symptomatic of a greater pathology. Economic demands of any kind are never made by the usual suspects, a bunch of Botoxed and spackled Ted Baxters limited to a minute-thirty package before they’re off to news, sports and weather. Ending police atrocities and 1033 militarization is of course absolutely essential, but JOBS are at the very necessary center of any long-term solution to the systemic problems of the black and poor community. This POTUS, elevated via a mindless apotheosis and deification whilst he spouted a series of vacuous claims of hope and change, needs to nationalize the Fed, demand of Yellen a $500B loan issued to our Department of Labor at 0% with a 100-year maturity. A paltry $500B is a pittance compared to the $27T line of credit the Fed offered Wall Street and foreign banks in 2007-2008 derivatives panic. This POTUS, elevated via deification and proclamation, has been an abysmal failure. The mainstream lapdog Jurassic and ossified mainstream media have nary a clue as to economic fundamentals and history so here we are, rehashing and regurgitating the same trite pap.
Whither POTUS? In a moment of rare candor President Obama remarked as follows infra, but be not mistaken. It is high time that this POTUS get very specific. He must utilize some mass-impact economic demands that will lead to an economic recovery, and not merely pay cheap lip service to millions of people who are quite literally dying for real answers and solutions to a problem that transcends police excesses.
“If you have impoverished communities that have been stripped away of opportunity, where children are born into abject poverty; they’ve got parents — often because of substance-abuse problems or incarceration or lack of education themselves — can’t do right by their kids; if it’s more likely that those kids end up in jail or dead, than they go to college. In communities where there are no fathers who can provide guidance to young men; communities where there’s no investment, and manufacturing has been stripped away; and drugs have flooded the community, and the drug industry ends up being the primary employer for a whole lot of folks — in those environments, if we think that we’re just going to send the police to do the dirty work of containing the problems that arise there without as a nation and as a society saying what can we do to change those communities, to help lift up those communities and give those kids opportunity, then we’re not going to solve this problem. And we’ll go through the same cycles of periodic conflicts between the police and communities and the occasional riots in the streets, and everybody will feign concern until it goes away, and then we go about our business as usual.”
This podcast. My prescription for change and improvement and my endorsement of attacking the interstitial problems at the root of black economics. Please, mainstream media, listen and take note.