Nihilism, giving up, inaction…these are privileges of those who don’t feel threatened. There are solutions, and while imperfect, we can fix much of this.

At the bottom of this article you’ll find a list of some recommended solutions.

The point of this is not that you (if you are white, male) are safe from injustice so you don’t need to care.

“The white dude is drawn older and in an expensive car, in case you missed that distinction.

Just so that you didn’t have to say “it’s not only about race!” the artist made sure to draw it to be clear it wasn’t just about race.” This is about injustice, and a lack of training and accountability in police culture. “I kept seeing cases [of police brutality against white men] get brought up around the George Floyd protests as a “whataboutism.” Missing the point that police murdering people isn’t okay regardless of skin color, and that black men are significantly more likely to be the victim of police violence. The fact that there’s a prominent modern case if a white victim of police violence doesn’t change that. It should just be more motivation to radically change how policing works in this country.”

As with toxic gun culture, which makes America the most shot up country in the world, if all you’re going to do is reflexively argue on social media out of your predetermined beliefs, nothing will change for the better for all Americans.

Educate yourself. Listen. Feel your heart, angry, hurt, scared, closed, whatever you feel.

Learn to care. We have videos and articles up on our site, on our youtube, we’ve covered this exact issue for years, interviewed experts, featured leaders…but none of it will change unless you do, unless we all wake up to caring.

This is so sad. Tyre Nichols, crying out for his mom, only 60 yards away, while they were beating him…to death. George Floyd called out for his mom, too. You don’t have to watch the video of the beating, unless you don’t care about this, in which case you should, and see if it wakes up your dormant heart. But you, all of us, can watch Tyre’s mother’s speech. Don’t skip over this, or it’ll continue. And that’s hopelessness, and as with gun culture, hopelessness is nihilism and permissiveness for this to continue for another generation.

“The [police] union is only part of it, there is this whacky legal concept called “Qualified immunity” which prevents individual officers from being prosecuted or sued for doing something wrong. The assumption is that law enforcement agencies will police their own. It turns out that the police are terrible at policing themselves and bad cops just get fired [often moving to another precinct] instead of punished.

Smart phones and body cams have started to reveal how terrible police behavior is and has been. The Rodney King beating in 1991 happened to be caught by a citizen with a camcorder, but capturing those events was not common. Now that 90% of the population has a portable high rez camera it’s more difficult for police to hide some crimes…”

Sadly, the death of journalism, particularly local journalism, has made corruption easier, too.

“Protests take place in cities, but most of the electorate has been moved into zoning far from where most (legal) protests occur. So most of [us are] largely unaware of deep tensions all around them.

Racial bias is deep seated, and its origins predate the US. The southern economy ran on slave labor for a long time…many [still] see minorities as inferior and/or dangerous.

That confusion has permitted…a racial barrier between poor white folks and poor minorities in a divide and conquer approach…”

Some solutions:

“We just [up to now] lack the willpower to fix the police + their unions:

> Apply the same standard of rules of engagement that the actual US military uses.

> Force them to purchase insurance, the same way we force doctors to.

> Create a federal “bad apple” registry (my nickname) for bad cops who do shit like punching teens for no reason. Create a law with a ten year prison sentence for hiring anyone on that list who would be in ANY position of authority over another human being.

> Formally declare the end of qualified immunity, unequivocally naming and shaming [mostly Trump’s] partisan hacks at the Supreme Court for making it up out of thin air, and bar “use” of it in any court case. Like, no, they’re not immune, fucking prosecute them.

> When judgements are rendered against the police because of an officer’s actions, it DIRECTLY comes out of their pension, if they’re somehow not also fired or arrested for whatever happened. No more of the taxpayer paying for the officer’s sins.

Oh, what’s that, you’re not insurable anymore? That’ll be your resignation, then.