Filmmaker Michael Moore was on Chris Hayes’ MSNBC show on Tuesday, May 24, 2022. It was the day of another senseless mass shooting in the United States. The targets this time were once again school children. Twenty-one people in all killed in the town of Uvalde, Texas.

Moore is clearly for strong gun control legislation, but he didn’t say what so many proponents of gun control frequently say, “I believe in the Second Amendment.”

Instead, Moore pointed out how the Second Amendment has essentially given pro-gun people free license in opposing meaningful gun control. Then Moore raised a fascinating hypothetical question. “What if bullets had not been invented until fifty years after the U.S. constitution was written?”

His point was that gun rights are completely different from any other rights in the constitution. All of the other rights would have been relevant in the times of Greece, or Rome, or really any time. These non-gun rights could easily have stood alone without the Second Amendment.  This doesn’t mean that people could not have had guns once they and bullets were invented. The difference is that there would not have been a constitutional guarantee to be able to purchase and possess guns.

There are many who say that even with the Second Amendment, there is no such guarantee. The wording is thoroughly ambiguous:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

It may seem at first that this amendment guarantees people the right to bear arms, but the context is having a well regulated militia. So does the right to bear arms only apply for those who are in a militia (armed forces) or the United States, or can they own guns regardless of whether or not they are in the U.S. military?

This argument is one which America’s gun owners have won. Much as those who favor gun control want immediate new regulations, it appears that it will be years before Congress passes meaningful legislation or the Supreme Court chooses to value public safety above gun rights.

There are numerous reasons why the gun advocates are currently winning this dispute:

1. They own most of the guns, and that frightens many who want to limit gun rights.
2. The roots of the Second Amendment have a great deal to do with slave owners’ rights and needs to hunt down runaway slaves. Creating the constitution required considerable compromise to get southern states to agree to the document. Protecting their control over slaves who were already in the United States was essential to southern states’ acceptance of the constitution. In contemporary American society, many White Americans feel that they need to have guns to protect themselves against Black Americans.
3. Unlike most other democratic countries, the United States has this peculiar institution called states rights. In many cases, the rights of states supersede those of the federal government. For example, the state of Georgia can make a law stating that it is illegal to bring a glass of water to someone standing in line to vote, and currently there is nothing that the federal government can do about it. In the absence of strong federal gun controls, the states pass more “gun rights.”
4. The U.S. Senate favors small and southern states, and those are the states in which gun rights are most deeply cherished. This makes it very difficult to pass meaningful gun control legislation. It might be possible without a filibuster, but that arcane rule is cherished by senators from small states, rural states and southern states.

The United States did not come close to writing a constitution in a time before guns and bullets were invented. The first guns were invented in China in the 10^th Century. Michael Moore was not trying to point out that we almost avoided having the Second Amendment in our Constitution. What he meant is that it is significantly different than any other part of the constitution, and had guns not existed, we would have found a way to agree on the constitution.

It’s one of those “What ifs ….” that keep us thinking. It’s interesting talk, but regrettably, only academic now. Barring some sort of unforeseen circumstances, we’re going to have to live with lightly regulated guns for some time which means that we’ll have more Uvaldes and other mass shootings. The “thoughts and prayers” come easily; meaningful gun control is stymied by the oddity of having the Second Amendment in our Constitution.

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He says, “It’s my right to order a wedding cake with two grooms on the top, a symbol of our gay wedding.”

The proprietor says, “It’s my right to choose the people to whom we want to sell cakes, as well as those to whom we do not want to sell cakes.”

This conflict involving a gay couple from Indiana and a local bakery has become a classic scenario of conflicting rights in America. Perhaps more important than this particular conflict is how it defines the major political divide that separates America into two distinct and fiercely opposed tribes of people.

If there is a key word that draws the ire of Americans and separates them into distinct groups, it is ‘mandate.’ According to Webster’s, the definition of mandate is ‘a formal order from a superior court or official to an inferior one.’ Most Americans, in fact most of humanity, like mandates when they establish rules to our individual or personal liking. The reverse holds true as well; if we don’t like it, it’s a bad mandate.

In earlier human history, the world was largely bifurcated between those who issued mandates and those who followed them. Life in America now is very different as the two sides of our political polarity (right wing and left wing) have times when they hold more power than the other, and consequently when they can be the issuer of mandates.

Mandates are not all the same. It is helpful to divide them into two categories. The distinction between the two largely defines the differences between the Republicans / Trumpsters and Democrats / Progressives.

1. Those mandates that protect the liberties of individuals.
2. Those mandates that protect the common good for society as a whole.

It is the Republicans who seek mandates to protect their own personal interests. They want to have the right to refuse to bake or sell that wedding cake to a gay couple. They want to ensure that they can purchase and own powerful guns and do so with a minimal paper trail. They want to own cars that are fast and cheap and that include minimal required safety features.

Progressives largely want mandates that make our society healthier and safer. They want protection against fraudulent behavior by institutions and individuals. They want vaccinations to be mandated so that diseases such as COViD-19 or smallpox can be eliminated. During a pandemic, they want everyone to wear masks to minimize the spread of the virus. They want infrastructure to be built with full safety measures embedded in the construction.

At times, the populace is split close to 50-50. Recently, a poll on vaccines requirements conducted by CNN / SSRS showed the following results about mandated vaccinations:

1. Acceptable Way to Increase Vaccination Rate …….. 51%
2. Unacceptable Infringement on Personal Rights ……49%

This survey also reflects how dramatically the nation has moved since the time when the polio vaccines or measles immunizations were mandated for children before they could enroll in public schools.

There are times when the positions of conservatives and progressives flip-flop. The most obvious case is abortion. To progressives, it is clearly a personal right; one in which the woman should be empowered to make the decision in consultation with a physician and anyone else whom she thinks can lend helpful advice.

To conservatives, abortion becomes a religious issue in which “God’s will” says that abortion should be illegal. Progressives view the conservative reasoning with a little more skepticism. They believe that in many ways conservatives oppose allowing women to have control of their reproductive rights, because they feel that the male-dominated government institutions should have control over the rights of women.

Additionally, one could argue that progressives’ support of abortion rights is consistent with their view that it is most important to protect the common good of the society. Abortion rights is one means by which we can minimize the number of unwanted children born into our society.

Neither conservatives nor progressives have an exclusive handle on the word mandate. They each use it to their own advantage; to further their views on a variety of issues.

We all try to use words to our advantage; often to give ourselves, and others like us, a presumed moral high ground. Mandate is one of the key words utilized by all sides of the political spectrum to try to advance their interests. It is another reason why we need to be especially careful about the language that we use in politics.

The post Why the Word ‘Mandate” Is so Tricky in our Political System appeared first on Occasional Planet.

School shootings in America have proliferated. In response, individuals and for-profit companies have developed a plethora of products aimed [pun intended] at reducing the carnage. Are they necessary? Do they work? If one of them saves a life, it may turn out to have been a worthwhile purchase, whatever the price. But I can’t help thinking that these defensive approaches, while well intentioned, and perhaps effective in some instances, miss the point. It’s clear that in 2019 America, creative minds, inventive marketers and politicians call themselves ready to address everything about gun violence—everything, that is, but the guns.

Instead of focusing on reducing the number of guns in circulation and enacting stricter laws for owning guns, this is what passes for protecting students from school shootings. Do we really have to live this way?

Stop the bleed

Stop the Bleed is a national awareness campaign intended to encourage bystanders to become trained, equipped and empowered to help in a bleeding emergency before professional help arrives. Through the program, healthcare professionals teach effective blood-stopping techniques to teachers, parents, students and members of the general public. [I’m not saying this is a bad idea; I’m just saying that it’s very sad that there’s a need for it.]

Bulletproof hoodies

A woman whose neighbor was shot and killed in an attempted robbery has started a company that makes bulletproof hoodies to keep people of all ages safe. The California company, Wonder Hoodie, now produces the bulletproof protection in smaller sizes for young children and teens in response to the rash of school shootings.

Bullet-resistant classroom blankets

Vox describes Door Shield is a panel of “soft armor” — used as cover by police SWAT teams when they raid buildings and exchange gunfire. You nail the shield to a classroom door. If a shooter breaks into the school, teachers lock the door, and with one hard tug on a canvas strap, you release the bullet-resistant panel, which rolls down and covers the door. “Even a child can operate it,” claims the manufacturer. The list price per blanket is $1,995—pretty pricey for a school with lots of doors. The manufacturer says, “It’s cost versus value: the cost of [Door Shield] versus the value of a life.”

PepperBall

Billed as a solution for “schools that don’t want teachers to carry guns,” the PepperBall launcher is a flashlight-shaped weapon that shoots bullets filled with pepper spray. Originally, it was marketed to campers and truck drivers, who wanted non-lethal weapons to carry on the road. After the shootings at Parkland, the manufacturer saw teachers as an additional market for the product.

Bullet resistant backpacks

The manufacturer calls its armor-plated backpacks, “the backpack that will save your life.” They retail for between $150 and $500. Originally aimed at law-enforcement personnel, after a recent school shooting, the manufacturer began designing a kid-sized version.

Rocks, bats and hockey pucks

While they’re not high-tech inventions, in the category of “Whose Brilliant Idea Was This,” are the primitive weapons that some school administrators have put in classrooms for kids to use in case a shooter shows up. Oakland University in Michigan gave out 3,500 hockey pucks to faculty members and students in November 2018 to throw at a gunman. Since 2016, a Pennsylvania school district has kept 5-gallon buckets of river rocks in classrooms. “If an armed intruder attempts to gain entrance to any of our classrooms, they will face a classroom full of students armed with rocks. And they will be stoned,” David Helsel, superintendent of the Blue Mountain School District in Schuylkill County, has said. Finally, Millcreek Township School District Superintendent William Hall wanted to show that safety policies had changed from hiding from a shooter to running, fighting, and surviving. So he distributed 600 mini baseball bats, and encouraged staff to keep one in every classroom of the Pennsylvania district’s 11 schools.

Fear sells. Gun laws, apparently, do not.

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In 2017 there were 346 mass shootings. In 2018 there have been 307 so far. On average America has experienced one deadly incident per day this year. Thoughts and prayers are not enough.

The Shameful Toll of Mass Shootings

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Mitch McConnell, Sarah Huckabee Sanders and most other Republicans are champions when it comes to playing “Kick the can down the road.” You can fill in the blank after the euphemistic six words: “Now is not the time to …” Sometimes they add two more words to make a full sentence, “Now is not the time to play politics.”

The mass shooting in Las Vegas is just another example of avoidance and distraction. The gunman, Stephen Paddock, had over forty rifles. He had an arsenal sufficient to kill nearly sixty people and wound over five hundred. But it’s not the right time to talk about gun control.

Well, I suppose that you could say that if a meteor landed on your head, “now would not be the right time to discuss gravity.” Unlike gun violence, being bopped upside the head by a meteor is not something that is man-made, and it does not require a man-made solution.

When, if ever, do Republicans think that it is the right time to talk about gun control? We all know that this is a specious question, because they never want to talk about. Whether we’re talking about Sandy Hook or the Pulse Nightclub shooting, or Las Vegas, it doesn’t matter. Now is not the time and there never will be a time.

It’s not that different from their views on health care. The myriad of plans that Republicans had to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act all seemed to be missing something. In a word, we’re talking about talking.

Some people think that Senator John McCain’s reasons for opposing the latest versions in the Senate of repeal and replace were minimalist. He did not necessarily say that he opposed the policies presented by his Republican colleagues. Instead, he said that a process was not being followed, a process that involves study, dialogue, deliberations and conversation. He was saying to Mitch McConnell and others, “Now is the time to talk about health care.” That seemed to be too much for his Senate leadership to accept; after all, with health care, we were only talking about one-sixth of the entire American economy.

Republicans are good at playing the news cycles. They know the drill. Something serious happens, the media comes in and covers it with varying degrees of serious consideration followed by what often is a maudlin aftermath. By then, we’re all worn out and ready to move on. And by then, Republicans can be confident that America does not have the appetite to give serious consideration to issues like gun control or health care.

One of the things that we work with students on is “B.S. Detection.” Five-year-olds begin to get the hang of it; by the time that kids are ten, they have a good handle on it. But there seems to be a certain numbing and dumbing nature to much of our education system and Republicans definitely know how to capitalize on that. So, they can say, “now is not the time to …” and they get away with it because not enough of the public sees the B.S. in it. Shame on them; shame on us.

The post Mitch, Sarah, I’m getting antsy. When can we talk gun control? appeared first on Occasional Planet.

If you were looking for a hackneyed and inelegant metaphor for privilege and inequality, the building I work in would be an excellent choice. It’s a tower above a dilapidated shopping mall, and while there is constant construction, it’s always work on the offices in the tower. The shopping mall will probably never reopen. The bottom wilts, and the people at the top can safely comment on the noise the construction makes. It’s the only part of it that touches their lives.

I went in to work on September 15^th, 2017, around 7:30. By the time the coffee kicked in and I was fully sentient, it was 9:00 or so. Around this time we were called to the office center for a brief meeting about the Stokely ruling. “We’re not going to talk about this very long,” said a manager, “because that wouldn’t be office-appropriate. If you want to know more, Google it.” The manager laid out several options for us: Stay and work, go work from home, or just go home. Management was worried about the ensuing violence from protestors after the ruling. They seemed to think St. Louis would explode in the same way the major cities did in the 1960’s, or LA in the 1990’s. Protestors would ostensibly block highways, and roving gangs of brigands would rob us of our property, and perhaps our lives.

I opted to stay, thinking that the trouble was overstated. I dimly perceived various conversations about the ruling around me, as I frequently keep my headphones in at work.

“I’m going home, cause I’m white, and they might come after me. And if someone tries to hurt my wife, I’ll go to jail. And it’ll be a fair ruling.” I found this one difficult to parse. I can understand the desire to protect one’s family. I can’t understand bragging to a coworker about the pain you’d inflict on someone who would attack your family. And I can’t get inside the worldview that considers whiteness to be a persecuted identity. I should note that this quote came from an otherwise very kind and thoughtful person.

Later, I heard people watching the riots unfold on TV in another room. The media, of course, quickly focused on a burning car. My coworkers laughed and offered suggestions on what the protestors would do “if they were smart”. “Why would the protestors do that? It’s irrational,” they said of the car. I’m sure it was, but I don’t expect people willed with righteous anger at the murder of one of their fellow citizens to be the most rational and understated arguers. Just as I had trouble processing the person threatening violence against imaginary people who might hurt their family, they had trouble understanding why people might burn cars. Why don’t they just protest peacefully? I suspect the idea of systemic problems of racism or state did not enter their minds.

Sometimes I wonder if we could convince law-and-order types that police repression here has the same character as similar violence in Iran, or Egypt, or Saudi Arabia, or Russia, that they might come to their senses. These are, for me, fleeting considerations. I’m reasonably sure they wouldn’t change many minds.

I was second-to-last to leave, with the last right behind me. I drove home and did not see a single person blocking highways or acting illegally on the way. I took a nap when I got back. I didn’t join in the protests, though I was sympathetic, and plenty of my friends did. Lately I’m having trouble believing that my individual presence at demonstrations means much. I am not particularly proud of this.

According to friends who did go, a thousand or more people protested peacefully, and a handful did not. The narrative in the reactionary media, however, seemed to be that of savages bursting through ordinary society. Mob rule.

The police, on the other hand, used pepper spray and gas grenades and the other tools of repression against peaceful protestors. They trampled an old lady, captured in a disturbing video. According to the Riverfront Times, the end of that day saw 11 injured officers and 32 arrests. Doubtless the arrests have increased in the couple days since.

My friends and I went out for drinks that night. The streets were a little emptier, but we saw no protestors or vandals. I went home around midnight. My friends stayed out even later, and the only thing they noticed out of the ordinary is that the bars weren’t very crowded. My guess is that, like my coworker above, people were afraid of gangs of non-Caucasian bandits roaming the streets.

The city did not explode, though there were sparks and conflagrations here and there. But the specter of mass conflict frightens the complacent such that they would prefer police repression to justice.

When I returned from what felt like a lengthy weekend, the office was largely back to normal. The only comments I heard relating to Stokely and the protests were some hurried inquiries about some coworkers’ friends who were cops. Were they ok? Did someone hurl a brick at them? Just about no concern for the protestors. But that’s the advantage of the tower, I suppose: Surrounded by security, wealth, prosperity, girded by the violence of the state apparatus, we can see injustice happening at a distance. And we can safely ignore or denounce it at our will.

The post The View From The Tower appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Joe – Thank you. Your panel discussion of the Berkley/Antifa/Snowflake “controversy” reminded me why of I don’t watch morning news programs. It is too annoying to work all day while I’m debating with you in my head.

It is simultaneously humorous and frustrating that the newfound awareness of the “Antifa” is instant Republican fodder.

Conveniently, now in the “Summer of Trump 2017” – the conservative media is eager to focus on the very few liberals who are violent – picking up on the NRA’s narrative du jour. Now, thanks to the “Antifa’s” actions, Republicans can choose not to face the well-organized and entrenched evil of white supremacy in America or how it is now the true, active, and very public base of the Republican Party because of a very few liberals who gained notoriety.

I always denounce threatening words and threatening actions and physical violence regardless of the source. But I know that this white nationalist threat exists in every corner of the US. I don’t live in a bubble. The people who ignore this hateful reality are in the ones in a bubble. And the people who discuss it so glibly are the “mentally stunted”.

I’m 48 years old and in my lifetime, I have heard no condemnation of racism by Republicans that is backed up by action. Democrats haven’t done enough either. But I have never seen Republicans call for more thorough investigations and prosecutions when synagogues and mosques targeted and burned or when white pro-life activists threaten the lives of doctors and commit assault against legally operating abortion providers.

Republican politicians consistently turn a blind eye when it suits them – further infantilizing the white working class by not owning up to their support of systemic racism in our communities and our culture.

But I’m in a liberal bubble. Sigh.

A few Republican politicians have come forward to denounce the KKK, but have you debated on your show why they likely won’t change laws to actually protect people and why they certainly won’t change the policies that continue to keep people divided by race? Until they do that, violence will increase, because they are pitting us against each other.

Then, Joe, you talked about law and order. Again – do you hear that? That’s the echo of the right-wing echo-chamber messaging.

Did you care when, earlier this year, a 2006 Department of Homeland Security study was reported to find that “domestic terrorism investigations focused on militia extremists, white supremacist extremists, and sovereign citizen extremists often have identified active links to law enforcement officers”?  And that white supremacists were “avoiding overt displays of their beliefs” to gain “employment with law enforcement agencies”?

Did you or any other Republican object when Trump gave the DOJ direction to stop pursuing terrorism investigations by Neo-Nazis and only focus on Islamic terrorists? I heard crickets from my bubble. That was a clear-as-day green light for Neo-Nazis and a signal that law enforcement would once again turn a blind eye to crimes against minorities and our democracy.

It was a far cry from the small progress made at the DOJ to fairly represent people equally under the law during Obama’s administration, which Republicans were chomping at the bit to undo. Did any Republicans fight for racial equality during the confirmation process of Trump’s nominees? No. They stuck together and marched in almost perfect time, happy to remove so many African-Americans from leadership positions.

It’s a sad day for me when I realize that even my “moderate” Republican friends, who are similar to you, will ignore all that and just be glad to jump on Antifa actions and smear liberals, while only reservedly shaking their heads and give a quiet “oh, jeez, that’s terrible” at violence by bad white cops or atrocious white nationalists.

And, oh! The “free speech” hand-wringing from you and your panel about right-leaning speakers who were supposedly deprived of their first amendment rights and the fate of liberal college students.

Fake News Alert! A college cancelling a speaker is not “limiting their free speech.” These well-financed and well-represented speech-givers have ample media outlets, the internet, podcasts, and more. What the universities are taking away is money and promotion and their name. And that is within their rights.

The people and students protesting aren’t limiting free speech. They are rejecting the content of that speech. And that protest is their free speech!

Of course, there should be no violence – but your faux concern about free speech – please. Republicans just don’t like it when people tell them they aren’t wanted. They can’t seem to handle rejection (i.e. reality) as well as us liberal snowflakes.

And – it keeps making me laugh – your offer to send “some people” to help Berkeley protect the Alt Right demonstrators? Forgive me – I must have missed it – did you offer to send some people to Charlottesville to protect the Jews and Christians in their places of worship? Did you send “some people” to protect protesters in Ferguson? In Baltimore? Funny how you want to protect the Alt Right’s rights, isn’t it?

When the organizer of the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” march, Jason Kessler, wanted to give a press conference after the unfortunate events that weekend, he was provided a microphone and the press was waiting for him – with bated breath – ready to report his free speech to the world.

Kessler was shouted down by an opponent and then complained that free speech is dead. Someone stole the spot light during his moment of hateful glory. Boo hoo hoo! Talk about a snowflake. Racists and their supporters have been shouting down and taking away the mic from black people for decades.

Actually Joe, free speech is not dead in Berkeley because of liberals – it just doesn’t ONLY belong to Republicans.

I know, Joe, you are smarter than me – reading the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times – as a child. RME. You are more elitist than me. You are slicker than me. Your hair stands taller than mine. But I’m not living in a bubble because I don’t want to listen to right wing ideology. I hear it, I see it, and I reject it.

(Sources: NRA.com, Reuters, Intercept/IBT, Morning Joe)

The post Open Letter to Joe Scarborough appeared first on Occasional Planet.

In a few weeks, I turn 20. People keep telling me how young I am— how my life is just beginning. But today I can’t help but feel keenly how old I am— how many more years my life has had than millions of lives do.

How many Syrian refugees died before they had to use both hands to count their age? How many Iraqi, Thai, and Congolese children died soldiers before they lost their baby fat? How many Yemeni and Somali children will waste away of malnutrition without ever learning to walk? How many Afghani and Nigerian girls died giving birth to a child while themselves still children? How many trans teenagers in the United States ended their lives before their adolescence ended?

To them, my life has been eons already. By their metrics, I am ancient. I am acutely conscious of the privileges I have as a fluke of my birth that conspired to keep me alive here today rather than in a grave as small as theirs.

A month ago, Jordan Edwards was shot to death by a police officer in Dallas, TX as he drove away from a party. He was only 15 years old.

I am almost 5 years older than he will ever be. But because my body is not Black and male, here I sit. The number of unarmed Black men killed by police is so incredibly high, it is numbing. The number of lives cut short by police brutality is almost unfathomable. The number of birthdays lost to violence because a Black man’s unarmed body was seen as inherently too dangerous to exist is staggering.

How many unarmed Black boys’ and men’s lives were cut brutally short by police before they even left their teenage years?

• Tamir Rice was killed at age 12 in Cleveland, OH (11/22/2014).
• Tyre King was killed at age 13 in Columbus, OH (9/14/2016).
• Laquan McDonald was killed at age 17 in Chicago, IL (10/20/2014).
• David Joseph was killed at age 17 in Chicago, IL (2/8/2016).
• Michael Brown was killed at age 18 in Ferguson, MO (8/9/2014).
• Paterson Brown was killed at age 18 in Richmond, VA (10/17/2015).
• Tony Robinson was killed at age 19 in Madison, WI (3/6/2015).
• Keith McLeod was killed at age 19 in Reisterstown, MD (9/23/2015).
• Christian Taylor was killed at age 19 in Arlington, TX (8/7/2015).
• Dalvin Hollins was killed at age 19 in Tempe, AZ (7/27/2016).
• Dyzhawn Perkins was killed at age 19 in Buckingham County, VA (2/13/2016).

The number of candles on their birthday cakes will never increase to more than mine. How can I not feel too old?

And in none of these instances will the police officer who cut their lives abruptly short be charged with a crime.

And what about the many lives which existed for only a few years beyond 20?

• Terrance Kellom was killed at age 20 in Detroit, MI (4/27/2015).
• Zamiel Crawford was killed at age 21 in Leeds, AL (6/20/2015).
• Christopher J. Davis was killed at age 21 in Milwaukee, WI (2/24/2016).
• John Crawford was killed at age 22 in Dayton, OH (8/5/2014).
• Christopher Kimble was killed at age 22 in East Cleveland, OH (10/3/2015).
• Vernell Bing, Jr. was killed at age 22 in Jacksonville, FL (5/22/2016).
• Deravis Caine Rogers was killed at age 22 in Atlanta, GA (6/22/2016).
• Levonia Riggins was killed at age 22 in Hillsborough County, FL (8/30/2016).
• Sean Bell was killed at age 23 in Queens, NY (11/25/2006).
• Albert Davis was killed at age 23 in Orlando, FL (7/17/2015).
• Calin Roquemore was killed at age 24 in Longview, TX (2/13/2016).
• Ariel Denkins was killed at age 24 in Raleigh, NC (2/29/2016).
• Kevin Judson was killed at age 24 in McMinnville, OR (7/1/2015).
• Ezell Ford was killed at age 25 in Florence, CA (8/11/2014).
• Freddie Gray was killed at age 25 in Baltimore, MD (4/19/2015).

By a fluke of my birth, I was born into this body in these circumstances in this place with these opportunities and privileges, and so here I sit. But by a fluke of their birth, they weren’t given the same privileges as I was.

And that’s not even counting the thousands— the millions— of people whose lives may not be over, but who through a fluke of their birth were not given the opportunities and privileges by which their lives could flourish.

I just earned my undergraduate degrees; I’m going to law school in the fall. How many people could have been world-class lawyers or doctors or engineers or politicians transforming our society but who weren’t given the opportunity to complete their education? Who were put in underfunded school systems that didn’t have the funds or resources to provide a quality education? Who had to drop out of high school? Who couldn’t afford college tuition? Who are so desperately living paycheck-to- paycheck so their children can one day go to school even though they harbor no hopes of themselves seeing a degree in their name?

When I think about the opportunities I’ve been given in almost 20 years that some people are never given their entire lives, I can’t help but think that perhaps the standards we use to measure if someone’s life is “just beginning” are just lies— cold comfort so we don’t have to think too hard about the way our life could have been if not by a fluke of our birth. And the more I think about those names and those dates, I just remember how old I am. Happy birthday.

The post Happy Birthday appeared first on Occasional Planet.

What would have happened in Ferguson on that hot August afternoon had a social worker come upon Michael Brown on Canfield Avenue? What if a social worker saw Eric Garner selling loose cigarettes in the Tompkinsville neighborhood of Staten Island? My hunch is that they’d both be alive today. [NOTE: This is an updated version of a post from December 14, 2014.

Among those who want reform, there is considerable talk about community policing. The Department of Justice defines community policing as:

Community policing is a philosophy that promotes organizational strategies, which support the systematic use of partnerships and problem-solving techniques, to proactively address the immediate conditions that give rise to public safety issues such as crime, social disorder, and fear of crime.

I went to the Occasional Planet’s Director of Plain Speaking who said that what it means is a cop with a heart. Well, there’s probably more to it than that and we don’t wish to imply that most cops do not have a heart. An effective community police officer has much the knowledge of a social worker such as what approach to take when an individual or a group of people are truly upset about something. He or she is also someone who can brainstorm solutions to seemingly difficult situations. Whether they are on the “mean streets” of the inner city or closeted away in the hidden lanes of the farthest suburbs, there is essential work that community police officers can do.

Several days ago I was working with a group of inner city student about to enter high school. We were talking about the recent events in Baton Rouge, St. Paul, Dallas and elsewhere in the United States. One of the questions we asked was whether any of them had had any positive experiences with police officers. About a quarter of the class raised their hands and had encouraging stories to tell. One boy spoke of a day when he was playing catch with himself with a football. The ball got away from him and rolled out into the street. The boy said that a police officer drove up, and naturally he was scared. What ensued was that the officer stopped his car, got out, retrieved the ball, and tossed it back to him. The policeman did not reprimand him, rather he urged the boy to enjoy his play and to be safe.

We do have numerous examples of community policing, in both our actual history and fictional history. Remember the beat cop that actor Sean Connery played in The Untouchables. He was a guy who would befriend you on the street, but when necessary bop you upside the head with his night stick.

From the 1960s through the 1980s, many police forces made efforts to hire an “Officer Friendly.” While much of the work of these officers was visiting pre-school and kindergarten classes, they also were present at a number of events where they could mingle with the public. But one Officer Friendly does not make a friendly police force.

Why is it difficult for some police officers and many of their supporters to pick up the nuanced meaning of Black Lives Matter? It’s easy for anyone to say that all lives matter, but it becomes a throwaway line when intended to imply that everyone’s life is in equal jeopardy. Police officers are aware of the statistics showing that African-Americans are much more likely to die from gunshots, from disease, even from the hands of police. But if those officers’ only engagement with the African-American community is with a criminal element, then it can easily follow that they have a lower regard for African-American lives.

On the other hand, when officers are on the streets in both good times and bad times, they get to see a more realistic picture of the community. When they can informally interact with citizens, they get to know people in a way that goes beyond stereotypes. And if officers were to get to know individuals and families in a way that social workers do, the officers might see their roles entirely differently. They would become problem-solvers in a much broader way than they are under the current definitions of their jobs.

In a perfect world, we would neither need police officers nor social workers. But people have problems. Sometimes they can be addressed with love and compassion; other times they require physical restraint. The way out society is currently structured, we have different professions to address different problems. But who determines under what category a problem falls? Really there is no one. What we need are individuals who have skill sets of both police officers and social workers. The fact that this is currently possible in only a few locales does not make it an unworthy goal. We need to put our efforts towards creating a new group of community police officers who are resourceful, compassionate, and also firm when needed.

Consider what President Obama had to say about community policing in a speech last year in Camden, New Jersey:

So I’ve come here to Camden to do something that might have been unthinkable just a few years ago — and that’s to hold you up as a symbol of promise for the nation.  (Applause.)  Now, I don’t want to overstate it.  Obviously Camden has gone through tough times and there are still tough times for a lot of folks here in Camden.  But just a few years ago, this city was written off as dangerous beyond redemption — a city trapped in a downward spiral.  Parents were afraid to let their children play outside.  Drug dealers operated in broad daylight.  There weren’t enough cops to patrol the streets.

So two years ago, the police department was overhauled to implement a new model of community policing.  They doubled the size of the force — while keeping it unionized.  They cut desk jobs in favor of getting more officers out into the streets.  Not just to walk the beat, but to actually get to know the residents — to set up basketball games, to volunteer in schools, to participate in reading programs, to get to know the small businesses in the area.

If the system that we have elsewhere for policing is flawed, then perhaps it has to do with those whom we recruit to become police officers and how we define their jobs.  We need to recruit individuals who have more of a holistic view of society rather than one limited to dividing us into “good guys” and “bad guys.” We need people who see their role as being arbiters on the streets of their community. We need people who represent the best of our societal values to the many varied kinds of people whom they encounter.

In order to do this, we are going to have to pay community police officers more. We’re also going to have to improve their working conditions so that there is more joy and less trauma. We’re going to have to set expectations so that they receive high regard from the public when they earn it; not just because they wear a badge.

These ideas are not particularly new; they’re just ones that were frequently thrown in the trash heap during the era of a singular focus on law and order. When the primary representatives of “we the people” who interact with citizens are solely hell-bent on keeping law and order, we should expect more than occasional miscarriage of justice. If Ferguson, Baton Rouge and St. Paul have taught us anything about policing, it’s that we need to thoroughly re-think it. Let’s start with community policing.

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My wife and I, along with friends, spent a wonderful week in Arizona.  We admired the Grand Canyon on a perfect April Day.   We toured Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture school outside Scottsdale.  We visited Sedona, the red rocks canyons, and, the picturesque mountains below Flagstaff.  On four evenings we watched the Cardinals play the Diamondbacks in a domed stadium where parking next door is just $12.00 and $8.00 gets you two and a half scoops of Cold Stone Creamery ice cream in a waffle bowl with fudge and caramel topping.  The week before we got to Phoenix afternoon highs were in the high 90’s.  Our week the thermometers never crept above 81○F.

The week verged on perfect…except for the bookend encounters with the T.S.A.

Yes, the Transportation Security Administration involves itself in every trip involving an airplane.  Once again, they did their utmost to ruin my vacation.

Back in 2009 a complicated chunk of metal and wires went into my upper left chest.  That creates two issues.  My Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator has enough metal mass to set off a standard metal detector several feet away.  It also shows up as a black hole on a backscatter x-ray screen or a millimeter wave scanner used in airports.  Whether that hole is a lifesaver or the latest ISIS suicide toy requires a bit of investigation.  I understand that.

The second, more important issue is that it hurts like hell when my ICD is exposed to high energy electromagnetic devices.  A standard metal detector really gets my attention.  Those backscatter x-rays have almost taken me to the floor twice.  The millimeter wave scanner itself doesn’t use much energy in its scans, but, beneath the device the business part of the machine creates a pretty substantial field which I keenly feel.

On the afternoon of April 23 I went through T.S.A. at the main terminal at Lambert International Airport.  I had my driver license and my I.D. card, issued by the manufacturer of my defibrillator, in my hand when I told the T.S.A. agent that I needed a hand pat-down:  “We’re not doing that here today.”  No pat down, no option.  Wave good-bye to my three traveling companions or go through the millimeter wave scanner.

The tingling calmed down after about a minute, allowing me to put my shoes and belt back on before I had to walk to the gate.

The trip home came in two segments, Phoenix to Denver, then Denver to St. Louis.  Sky Harbor Airport will never be my happy place.

Even on a clear Saturday morning, the security line crept slowly.  Oh, off to my left they did do a long hand pat-down on a tall, attractive young blond woman in a tank top.  (After a long time in line even prurient entertainment is welcome.)  The T.S.A. staffers handling the item x-ray lines seemed a bit over zealous, even when iPads or smartphones or other items were very spread out in the bins.  The conveyor belt stopped, retreated and moved forward time after time.  That slowed the proceedings.

Finally, I got to the metal detector and millimeter wave machines where – as instructed – I asked for my hand pat down.

Now, T.S.A. agents don’t like pat-downs.  After all, they take more work than nodding as people walk through technology.  And, the job of a T.S.A. screener sucks.  The hours are long and the pay mediocre.  The people you screen won’t like you.  Despite limited representation by the American Federation of Government Employees, they serve pretty much at the whim of mid-level bureaucrats.  Per Glassdoor.com, full time pay for experienced screeners is in the $37,000 a year neighborhood:  who goes after a $37,000 job with a lot of hassles?  Someone making $25,000 a year in another job with a lot of hassles.

So, you have a mess of people struggling to stretch for the bottom rung of the middle-class watching people who can afford expensive trips to fun places saunter past you.  Putting travelers in their place is one of your few work place pleasures.

In Phoenix that meant I had to wait, crammed into a non-space between a x-ray conveyor and a metal detector as dozens of other travelers squeezed by me.  The wait is standard, the nine minutes in Phoenix pretty much standard.  Then things went downhill.

First, as they do, they isolated my bins off the x-ray belt from the good people’s stuff.  Only isolated isn’t the proper word.  My stuff was out of my sight (but within reach of all the other travelers) while the screener got up close and personal with all the inside surfaces of all my clothes, including my Dockers and my all-cotton briefs.  After being probed once in front of the crowd, the screener rubbed a special strip of paper over his gloves, then fed the paper into a machine – which gave him the wrong answer.  That meant a call for a supervisor, a move to a private room and a second, even more personal pat-down.

Meanwhile, my lovely wife was told she couldn’t fly because her stylish top had a metal zipper front.  That encounter got heated when her pat-down screener said she didn’t like my wife’s tone and the screener invoked the trump card – we can keep you from your flight.

In my little space they repeated the paper strip test, again failing.  The third pat-down was getting pretty close to my annual prostate exam.  The screener and supervisor then gave up.  They couldn’t get the machine to like the paper strips but they couldn’t find anything.  Besides, the loud lady in line was making them uncomfortable.  (They finally relented and let her head for the gate.)

We changed airlines in Denver.  Unfortunately, after disembarking at one of the fringe gates (meaning we had to walk through a snow shower to get into the terminal), we had to get our bags, re-check them and again go through security.

That airport security staff was not having a good weekend:  TSA Admits mistake after Amy Van Dyken-Rouen said she was ‘humiliated’ by agent at Denver airport.  [www.thedenverchannel.com  5/2/16]  Amy won six Olympic medals before an ATV accident put her in a wheelchair.  Still, she travels extensively as a motivational speaker.   As she put it, “They go around your breasts, they basically go under your butt and they just grab things, not grab, they touch things that are not appropriate…”

Again, crammed into the narrow space between electromagnetic energy emitting technology, I waited and waited and waited for a pat-down.  Then I waited some more.  I could see my friends and my wife across the terminal, watching for me to emerge.  My iPad, phone, wallet and other personal property was in some unseen place as scores of other travelers picked-up their gear and moved through.  I waited some more.  A gentleman came up behind me.  The screener/hall monitor asked if he wanted to go through the millimeter scanner.  “I decline,” is all he said.

With two of us filling the space, after a couple of more minutes, they finally brought over staff to do the pat-downs.

Last week The New York Times headlined a long piece, Catching a Flight?  Budget Hours, Not Minutes, for Security [ www.nytimes.com  5/2/16].  The article quoted the head of the Charlotte airport calling the T.S.A. ability to screen passengers on Good Friday a “fiasco.”  The number of screeners has declined by about 5,800 due to budget cuts.  Washington’s answer is to hire 768 screeners.  That will still leave airlines with unhappy passengers missing flights, “But, there’s not much airlines can do, except warn passengers to show-up three hours before takeoff…”

My group had almost three hours between flights in Denver.  Our overpriced late lunch got delayed while I waited and finally went through my pat-down.  The screener was less intrusive than his Phoenix colleague but added a new wrinkle.  My bins of items, including a canvas bag for under the seat with my Cardinals road hat, part of a newspaper, my iPad and other items were all spread out on a steel counter and individually examined:  what the screener hoped to see that had escaped many rads of x-rays baffled me, but it took another five minutes.

I was asked why I wasn’t TSA-Pre, paying the $85 to avoid some of the hassles (the theory being that people with extra money are less likely to blow-up airplanes?).  Well, my friends were TSA-Pre – and were signaled out for ‘extra screening,’ including pat-downs (even after they chose a line as far from me as they could).

When I was a kid I have a vague memory of an American propaganda film telling us how bad things were in the Soviet Union.  The prime example was that Soviets couldn’t move about their nation without special permission and special identification.  In the Clint Eastwood Cold War flick Firefox (1982), the hard part of getting old stone eyes in position to steal a revolutionary Soviet fighter plane prototype was getting him through the internal checkpoints with a dead man’s I.D.  (Yes, Clint’s friends wasted him for his I.D. but he was a bad guy so it was cool.)

Here we are in the United States now tolerating a system where low-level agents of the government decide if we get to exercise our constitutional right to travel freely.

Imagine if a Clayton cop stopped lunch time strollers on Central Avenue and stuck his gloved hands in other people’s pants in full view of other citizens?  His probable cause – they were on the street.

The Tea Party would start the demonstrations before happy hour.  As they should.

So let’s go over the Transportation Security Administration conundrum.  To protect Americans and the constitution we cherish, T.S.A. violates our personal privacy, ‘humiliates’ women in wheelchairs, put hands inside our underwear and threatens to prevent us from using our purchased airline tickets.   Kind of like destroying a village to pacify it, we let government violate our rights to protect them.

Yes, terrorism is real.  But is the response intelligent and effective?  Tests of T.S.A. effectiveness inevitably find mock guns and explosives getting through screenings.  The ‘intelligent’ part I think has been already answered.

And people wonder why I hate to fly.

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