Page 6
August 3, 2016
O PINION
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Shocking Videos on Systemic Police Violence
I can’t watch
another police
killing
J oshua s errano
Philando
Castile
and Alton Sterling be-
came the latest black
Americans to turn into
Twitter hashtags when
videos of their deaths
at the hands of police circulated
on social media.
But I couldn’t bring myself to
watch them.
I still remember the helpless
frustration I felt, my stomach
twisting in knots, as I watched the
video of Eric Garner being choked
to death while screaming “I can’t
breathe.” Over and over again,
I subjected myself to the emo-
tional and psychological trauma
of watching someone who could
have easily been me being mur-
dered.
Afterward, I decided that it’s
by
not worth my wellbeing to ever
watch another video like that.
That’s meant taking long breaks
from social media and TV news.
But it’s not like I can’t see
what’s going on.
In my 23 years as a New
Yorker, liberal and conser-
vative mayors alike — from
Rudy Giuliani to Bill de
Blasio — have aggressive-
ly targeted struggling black
and Latino communities in
the city with policing.
Coupled with the war on drugs
that the U.S. has been waging on
poor communities of color for
decades, that means poor black
people are more likely to have
encounters with the police. And
we’ve all seen how those encoun-
ters can end.
Similar patterns play out all
over the country. Despite a news
cycle driven by the latest videos of
black people dying at the hands of
police — with individual circum-
stances endlessly debated each
time — it’s beyond clear that the
men and women who are killed
aren’t just unlucky people in iso-
lated encounters.
Instead, as Supreme Court
Justice Sonya Sotomayer writes,
“They are the canaries in the coal
mine whose deaths, civil and liter-
al, warn us that no one can breathe
in this atmosphere.”
There’s ample data to support
that the U.S. has a big problem
with police violence and racially
biased policing. According to The
Guardian, nearly 600 people have
been killed by the police so far this
year. And young black men are 9
times likelier than other Ameri-
cans to die at the hands of cops.
Shocking videos will come and
go. But this violence will be pres-
ent regardless of whether we’re
watching. The problem is system-
ic, and demands a systemic solu-
tion.
That means analyzing federal,
state, and local laws that drive pat-
terns in police behavior and leave
no room for accountability. This
can give us specific things to rally
around for change.
For example, special prosecu-
tors, not secretive grand juries,
should prosecute all police officers
accused of unjustified shootings.
And every department should
have civilian review boards em-
powered to conduct independent
investigations and provide over-
sight.
Congress should strengthen
existing laws against systemic
police misconduct by lowering
the legal threshold for bringing
civil rights lawsuits against po-
lice departments, and allowing
private citizens and organizations
to bring pattern-or-practice law-
suits, not just the Department of
Justice.
Additionally, when depart-
ments are found to have violated
people’s civil rights, instead of
simply entering an agreement to
reform, these departments should
have their federal funding imme-
diately suspended. And cases of
abuse should be brought to trial in
a federal court.
Moreover, all officers should
get racial bias training, and train-
ing that emphasizes de-escalating
tense situations.
Thinking systemically also
means supporting community
organizers and protesters work-
ing to bring the anti-blackness
of policing in the United States
to the forefront of our national
consciousness — and applying
strategic, sustained pressure on
our elected officials until they do
something to end police violence.
Finally, it also means keeping
up on the news — while avoiding
the urge to click “play” every sin-
gle time there’s a new video of a
police shooting.
In a country with a not-so-
distant history of lynching black
people and leaving their bodies
hanging to terrorize entire com-
munities, these state-sanctioned
executions must never seem nor-
mal.
Joshua Serrano is a fellow at
the Institute for Policy Studies.
Distributed by OtherWords.
Capitalism with No Government Intervention is a Myth
There’s No Such
Thing as a ‘Free
Market’
J ill r iChardson
The debates lead-
ing up to the election
this year will no doubt
invoke the “American
value” of capitalism.
But what, exactly, does that mean?
And what should it mean?
I’m no economist, but I took
a few economics courses while
earning an undergraduate business
degree. Growing up in a capital-
by
ist society, I thought I understood
the basic concepts underlying
capitalism — free markets, com-
petitive advantage, and so forth.
Then I actually read The
Wealth of Nations by Adam
Smith, the founding work
that described what we call
capitalism in the first place.
That was a game changer.
We’re all probably fa-
miliar with Smith’s ideas at
some level. The market regulates
itself, as each of us operates based
on our own self-interest. Business-
es try to earn profits, and consum-
ers try to meet their needs at the
best prices. The market ensures
The Law Offices of
Patrick John Sweeney, P.C.
Patrick John Sweeney
Attorney at Law
1549 SE Ladd, Portland, Oregon
Portland:
Hillsoboro:
Facsimile:
Email:
(503) 244-2080
(503) 244-2081
(503) 244-2084
Sweeney@PDXLawyer.com
that the demand of consumers is
met with supply from business.
The government’s job, the doc-
trinaire thinking goes, is to get the
heck out of the way. It doesn’t set
prices or quotas. It just lets the
market function.
Adam Smith cast this arrange-
ment in glowing terms in 1776. He
was describing England during the
Industrial Revolution. He thought
onized.
The British imported cotton
from their colonies for their own
factories, as well as wheat to feed
British workers in the isles. Co-
lonial India, meanwhile, suffered
several massive famines. Even as
tens of millions of Indians starved
to death, record amounts of Indian
wheat were exported to feed Brit-
ish factory workers laboring in a
Other British staples — tea and
sugar — were also imported from
British colonies. That sugar was
produced by enslaved Africans in the
Caribbean...Some invisible hand.
it was amazing that millions of
individual actors, each operating
based on self-interest, could so
efficiently revolutionize society
without any central planning at all.
Only, he was wrong.
In fact, the growing British Em-
pire was undertaking economic
interventions on a colossal scale
— and would do even more in the
centuries to come. The British set
out all over the globe, claiming
colonies in the New World and
later India and Africa, setting up
trade policies that benefited the
British at the expense of the col-
so-called free market.
Before the Industrial Revolu-
tion, Indian textiles reigned su-
preme. But British authorities kept
industrial textile technologies out
of India in order to capture the
global textile market, impoverish-
ing the colony further.
Other British staples — tea and
sugar — were also imported from
British colonies. That sugar was
produced by enslaved Africans in
the Caribbean.
Some invisible hand.
Smith also overlooked the ut-
ter misery textile workers lived
in, even in Britain. The system
“worked” at making some people
rich. But the squalid and wretch-
ed lifestyles of laborers, including
children — which inspired the
writing of Charles Dickens —
were its cost.
We in America have meddled in
markets plenty in our own right —
not least through historical crimes
like slavery and colonialism. But
we’ve also developed more be-
nign interventions that can actual-
ly help people.
We ban child labor, for ex-
ample, and enforce (admittedly
inadequate) minimum wage pro-
tections. We require businesses to
offer safe and healthy workplac-
es. We ban the sale of dangerous
drugs. We try to regulate pharma-
ceuticals to make sure they’re safe
and effective.
In other words, capitalism with
absolutely no government interven-
tion is a myth — and always was.
We can debate the pros and
cons of specific regulations. But if
you hear a candidate claiming that
capitalism means doing away with
all regulations — or that any gov-
ernment interference in the market
equates to socialism or commu-
nism — they’re being dishonest.
OtherWords columnist Jill
Richardson is the author of Recipe
for America: Why Our Food Sys-
tem Is Broken and What We Can
Do to Fix It. OtherWords.org.