Law, Civil Rights, and Justice

Law, Civil Rights, and Justice

Big Questions

How can we make real progress to reduce crime, incarceration, and recidivism?


Corrections in Ink: A Memoir by Keri Blakinger

JUSTICE: Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was sentenced to 20 years for killing George Floyd.

How do we balance “self-defense vs. nonviolence, black power vs. civil rights” to achieve justice and equality for all Americans, in a peaceful and secure way?

       
Break the Wheel: Ending the Cycle of Police Violence by Keith Ellison
Shielded: How the Police Became Untouchable by Joanna Schwartz
Say It Loud!: On Race, Law, History, and Culture by Randall Kennedy
No Justice, No Peace: From the Civil Rights Movement to Black Lives Matter by Devin Allen

How is it that we can bomb a million innocent women, men and children in the name of “democracy” with no accountability, while one desperate addict can go to jail for life for selling drugs on the street?

Can (should) common sense gun control measures and the Second Amendment coexist?

  • Why should Americans have unlimited mass access to so many guns, assault weapons, and ammunition?

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Make It Stop

Is there no violence and death threshold at which the NRA and its loyalists say “enough is enough“?

Where is the tipping point at which a majority of politicians in the senate will vote to ban assault weapons?



  • 10 innocent children shot dead per month?
  • 10 innocent children shot dead per week?
  • 10 innocent children shot dead per day?
  • When is Enough is Enough?


Children Under Fire: An American Crisis by John Woodrow Cox

November 20, 2022 — Mass shooting at LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs leaves at least 5 dead, 18 wounded.

Is there no violence and death threshold at which the NRA and its loyalists say “enough is enough”?

Or is protecting gun industry profit the only truth they serve?

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In My Lifetime

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Is the AR-15 the Favorite Gun of Good Samaritans?

Kyle Rittenhouse: Since when do Good Samaritans go stalking with an AR-15?

On the night of August 25, 2020, 17-year old Kyle Rittenhouse stalked the streets of Kenosha, Wisconsin with some very important things missing:



  • maturity
  • experience
  • common sense
  • good decision making
  • empathy
  • sufficient police on the streets, and
  • the advice of a level-headed adult (policeman, fireman, mother, father?) who would have said to Rittenhouse, “If you’re going to go help people in need, let them know you’re friendly, and leave your gun here.”

Hindsight is always 20/20, isn’t it? Basically, if you go looking for trouble, most likely you will find it, and he did.

It’s too bad because two people were killed that didn’t have to die; and think about it, Rittenhouse has killed two people at the age of 17. Rittenhouse’s life has changed forever. No matter whether or not some try to elevate him as a some type of celebrity, make no mistake those murders will haunt him to his grave. 99%+ of people in this world will live an entire life without killing someone. Kyle Rittenhouse — so-called Good Samaritan — will forever be unable to check that box.

Kyle Rittenhouse impulsively inserted himself into a vortex of protest, violence, chaos, and stalked the streets of Kenosha yelling “friendly, friendly, friendly,” but with an AR-15 packing. Good Samaritanism and AR-15s do not go peacefully together. Confrontation was likely, and in hindsight, inevitable. This same scenario regrettably repeats itself hundreds of times a day in households across our nation where families and friends knowingly enter the vortex of anger and chaos and someone has a gun. Shots go off, people die, and someone says it was self-defense, and that becomes very difficult for a jury to sort it out.

The tragedies at Sandy Hook and Uvalde teach us that some teenage boys with guns are like a pack of wolves. The only thing you can predict is that you can never predict anything as to when and where and why and how a lone wolf might launch a deadly shooting rampage.


Gunfight: My Battle Against the Industry that Radicalized America by Ryan Busse

People will draw their own conclusions about this case, but the fact is, If you don’t show up to the vortex with a gun, you can’t make that self-defense bullshit argument; and oh by the way, you won’t end up killing someone. But no matter how hard we try to teach and counsel, we humans keep screwing up and hurt each other, and then try very hard to escape our accountability.

But tomorrow is another day, and maybe we can be better.

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Texas, Don’t Fuck This Up!

Big Picture

Big Picture / Human Society / Law

Law

  • Philosophies and Systems of Law
  • Public Law
    • Authority and power of the state
    • Relations among sovereign states
    • Criminal law
  • Laws promoting the public welfare
  • Private Law

No one person has the unilateral authority to be judge, jury, and executioner.

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Crime, Corruption, Violence, Police & Policing

    
Untouchable: How Powerful People Get Away with It by Elie Honig
Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks by Patrick Radden Keefe
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou

If SCORPION is covertly protecting the people from violent crime, who’s going to protect the people from SCORPION?

Silicon Valley Two-Step
Fake it till you make it, then
Fuck it up and cover it up.
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Power

The Paradox of Accountability is the likelihood of accountability and justice for the actions of tyrants, corporations, and countries committing crimes against humanity and the earth, is inversely proportional to the size and scope of the damage done. – sp

  • Lessons of history
    • Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
    • Corruption thrives within complexity and centralization of power.
    • As income and wealth rise to the top, so does political power.
  • Tactics

Further Reading


Tracers in the Dark: The Global Hunt for the Crime Lords of Cryptocurrency by Andy Greenberg


The Central Park Five: The Untold Story Behind One of New York City’s Most Infamous Crimes by Sarah Burns

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