Boys play basketball in the Sandton-Winchester neighborhood of Baltimore. (photo: AP)
Survey
Finds Freddie Gray's Neighborhood Is Rife With Police Brutality
By Colin Daileda, Mashable
11 March 16
The
Baltimore neighborhood of Sandtown-Winchester consumed the news cycle for a
brief period in April 2015, when Freddie Gray, a black resident of the area,
died in police custody.
His
death put a spotlight on the police department's relationship with the black
residents of Baltimore, and the results of a survey released on March 8 show
why the tension therein was bound to boil over.
According
to a survey conducted by
Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development and the No Boundaries Coalition,
which describes itself as a resident-led advocacy group based in west
Baltimore, 453 out of 1,500 survey respondents in Sandtown-Winchester had
experienced or witnessed "police misconduct."
"Rather
than describing a few bad officers, witnesses described a prevalence of police
misconduct that shaped their perception of all police," the group wrote in
its findings.
Yet
only 39 of those 453 people who had experienced police misconduct were willing
to go on the record about it.
“I
understand we need to speak up on the way the police treat the community,"
one resident said in the report. "But certain things ain’t nobody going to
talk about.”
The
coalition found that police response to crime was not "applied fairly and
consistently." Residents said they were often stopped and searched even
though they were not suspected of committing a crime, yet other obvious crimes
were allowed to go on.
One
resident in the report described watching an officer take money from a person
dealing drugs, then telling the dealer that "my kids are going to have a
good Christmas."
The
coalition's conclusion is similar to the findings of other groups dedicated to
police reform. They believe officers need training in anti-racism and community
relations, and they want police to meet often with community leaders.
They
also want residents to have a say in the police's budget, practices and
priorities.
C
2015 Reader Supported News
Published on Portside (https://portside.org)
Stephen Hawking Says We Should Really Be Scared Of Capitalism, Not
Robots
Alexander C. Kaufman
Tuesday, October 6, 2015
Huffington Post
Machines won't bring about the
economic robot apocalypse -- but greedy humans will, according to physicist
Stephen Hawking.
In a Reddit Ask Me Anything [1] session
on Thursday, the scientist predicted that economic inequality will skyrocket as
more jobs become automated and the rich owners of machines refuse to share
their fast-proliferating wealth.
If machines produce everything we
need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy
a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most
people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby
against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second
option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality.
Essentially, machine owners will
become the bourgeoisie of a new era, in which the corporations they own won't
provide jobs to actual human workers.
As it is, the chasm between the
super rich and the rest is growing. For starters, capital -- such as stocks or
property -- accrues value at a much faster rate than the actual economy grows [2], according
to the French economist Thomas Piketty. The wealth of the rich multiplies
faster than wages increase, and the working class can never even catch up.
But if Hawking is right, the
problem won't be about catching up. It'll be a struggle to even inch past the
starting line.
[Alexander C. Kaufman is the
Senior Business Editor of The Huffington Post. Previously, he
worked as a staff reporter at the International Business Times, The
Wrap and The Boston Globe. Reach him at alexander.kaufman@huffingtonpost.com [3] or @AlexCKaufman [4].]
Source URL: https://portside.org/2016-03-03/stephen-hawking-says-we-should-really-be-scared-capitalism-not-robots
Links:
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/3nyn5i/science_ama_series_stephen_hawking_ama_answers/cvsdmkv
[2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/16/thomas-piketty-inequality_n_5159937.html
[3] mailto:alexander.kaufman@huffingtonpost.com
[4] http://@AlexCKaufman
[2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/16/thomas-piketty-inequality_n_5159937.html
[3] mailto:alexander.kaufman@huffingtonpost.com
[4] http://@AlexCKaufman
- See more at: https://portside.org/print/node/11006#sthash.PSLIGeuc.dpuf
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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