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You may have seen a video floating about, an impassioned spoken essay from a uniformed officer, titled

“You Don’t Know Me“.

 

No one is saying that there aren’t officers who got into it for the right reasons, that they convince themselves to put on their uniform every day for altruistic reasons.

 

But the entire institution, from start to finish, is constructed to discourage self-accountability.

 

When is the last time you’ve seen a police officer turn in a peer for egregious use of force? When was the last time you heard of a cop quitting because a coworker was NOT held accountable, because another cop was NOT fired for gross abuse of power?

 

There are entire police teams protest-quitting in the face of one of their own facing accountability for their actions. This is a fact. How does that jive with “we don’t want them either”? There are entire police departments that are attacking peaceful protestors with “less than lethal” ammunition, and being protected by their peers. Are they ALL rogue officers?

When a single cop in a line of cops violates the first amendment and arrests a person peacefully protesting and breaking no laws, and the rest of the line of cops protects that one cop, can that cop really be said to be rogue?

 

We literally watched a video of 3 officers standing by watching a peer kill a citizen he was supposed to protect, with barely a half-hearted attempted to stop him. Who was the rogue officer in that situation? At a certain point, the officer kneeling on the neck of a nonviolent, suffocating person became a bigger criminal than the person he was kneeling on, and yet 3 officers stood by. Why? Where were the officers who don’t want people like that in the profession?

 

We all know the saying “a few bad apples spoils the bunch”.  That absolutely applies here.

And we’ve seen no effort by police to actually root out the bad apples. In fact, as I mentioned earlier, many police departments around the country are defending their bad apples, quitting in solidarity.

 

Some professions have so much power that they REQUIRE greater accountability. Let’s apply the same concept to pilots as we do to cops. Let’s say that 1 out of every 1000 pilots liked crashing into mountains. Would you all be defending the other 999 pilots, saying MOST pilots are great and only a few bad apples crash their planes into mountains on purpose? Would you be arguing against greater training and accountability for pilots? Would you be arguing against safeguards to stop that 1 pilot who likes crashing into mountains? Would you be arguing against punishment for that pilot as well?

The post “You Don’t Know Me” – but we do. appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Protestors gather on the steps of Michigan’s Capitol Building in Lansing.

On Wednesday, April 15th, protestors upset with Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s stay-at-home orders swarmed the Michigan Capitol Building in Lansing.

Thousands of people drove into town and surrounded the state capitol, intentionally causing a traffic jam. This protest was a symbolic gesture from people upset with the governor’s ‘Stay Safe, Stay Home’ order in response to the Coronavirus Pandemic which has killed over 32,000 Americans since January 2nd, 2020.

Despite the organizer’s requests for participants to adhere to social distancing guidelines and stay in their cars, many of the protestors got out of cars and congregated much closer than the required 6 feet, and a large percentage were not wearing any sort of face covering.

Michigan already has the highest rate of deaths from COVID-19 in the nation, and many are already predicting the surge that will occur in 2 weeks among the people who participated in this protest. While it is easy to understand the economic fear COVID-19 has caused worldwide, it is difficult to understand the thinking that goes into protesting an order designed to protect people in the midst of an ongoing crisis.

So what was the point of the protest? If you listen to the protestors interviewed, they were objecting to what they feel is the  erosion of their rights, the unconstitutionality of the stay-at-home orders and social distancing guidelines sweeping the nation. They chose to show their disbelief of the situation by breaking every single one of the guidelines and laws.

While some claimed they understood the safety component of the stay-at-home order, they still parroted the president by insisting the country is ready to be opened up.  Additionally, their very presence at the protest and their complete disregard of the guidelines being adopted worldwide showed that they clearly do not understand the nature of the threat that COVID-19 poses.

Looking at the behavior, it seems more like a tantrum at being told to do what is common sense, like a child throwing a tantrum when being told to eat their vegetables or to wash their hands.

Perhaps looking at whose behind the rhetoric designed to inflame citizens can help us better understand this complete disconnect in logic. The protest in Michigan was organized by the Michigan Conservative Coalition (a group of pro-Trump Republicans) and promoted by the Michigan Freedom Fund, headed by a long-time DeVos family employee. The Acting Director of the Office of National Intelligence posted a picture of the preamble of the Constitution on social media, with the caption “Signed permission slip to leave your house”. Donald Trump has been fomenting this “anger” at stay at home orders with calls to “liberate” states that are under protective orders. It’s no wonder that this ridiculousness is spreading far and wide.

In Trump’s push to reopen the country against the recommendations of all medical and science experts, and MAGA supporters ensuing protests of Stay at Home orders, they apparently forgot that people are still getting sick, that people are dying. The United States reached 2400 deaths in a single day two days ago and the world has reported over 153,000 deaths.

While protesting the stay-at-home order in Michigan, conservatives outfitted in MAGA hats, waving confederate flags, openly carrying firearms, and chanting “lock her up” blocked access to a hospital, so that essential health care workers trying to care for patients could not get to work.

Trump’s bombastic base have somehow made fighting a virus into a partisan affair, and this unsafe partisan showboating is coming to Denver this coming Sunday. If you are one who understands that COVID-19 does not care about your party affiliation or your beliefs in government overreach, you’d do well to avoid downtown Denver on Sunday.

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The post The fight against common sense in the name of liberty appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.