Give people land (Redistribute land!)

knowledgeisking.ning.com

In this essay I discuss the historical ways land and resources are taken away from people while they are exploited for corrupt means. Our history has created systematic disadvantages for the poor people of color. This system is environmental racism-- where the poorest persons of color are segregated and red-lined into the worst schools, worst neighborhoods, and worst environmental conditions. Another example of this environmental racism includes deforestation in Central Africa (Congo) and South America, and pollution/contamination (e.g. Flint water crisis) affecting poor people and people of color, on a global scale (an international division of labor).

Consequently, not many people know of the United States' terrible history of buying up land and exploiting it, nor do people know the extent to which this affects the present state of affairs. One thing that impacted the most was Land lotteries which prompted Indian removal. Land lotteries was simply giving away land to white immigrants like in Georgia. Another impact was creating systemic racism in the form of African/African American slavery. Even after slavery, Black families were not allowed to get loans to make small payments on property, Blacks were segregated, and now there is a phenomenon now that keeps Blacks segregated called Redlining. There are many systematic factors that contributed and still contribute historically to the racist policies, laws, customs, mores, etc which keeps people of color from owning land in the United States.

Those in rural areas were greatly disenfranchised during the Industrial age in Appalachia because of coal mining and timber companies. For example the expansion of surface mining leveled thousands of acres of mountaintops because the coal industry benefited from mountaintop removal (Eller, 2008.) Additionally, corporate chains like Wal Mart affect small local businesses in those rural areas of Appalachia, especially when the profits do not trickle down into the community because they go out of the region. The Appalachian Land Ownership Task Force found that large corporations and land companies controlled up to 90 and 100% of the surface land and the mineral resources in 80 Appalachian counties (Eller, 2008.) This was a significant study during this time and it's shocking information. Other data the study found was that 8 million acres—more than 40% of land surveyed—was owned and operated only by 50 private owners and the federal government (Eller, 2008.) 

Another example of this is that for 14 West Virginia counties, 25 companies owned 44% of the surface land, yet only assessed for 20% of the area’s taxes (Eller, 2008.) This means that taxes from these large corporations are not going to the community while the poor community pay higher taxes or more taxes to support it's own community. Likewise, these systems of racism has led to the extreme wealth of a select few white families. Today, the median wealth of white families is 20 times greater than the median wealth of black families (and 18 times greater than Latinx families). 
Subsequently, some of the programs put in place to aid those disadvantaged did nothing to help disadvantaged people of color. In fact, FDR was able to pass the New Deal including Social security and other beneficial programs, as long as they excluded domestic service workers and agricultural workers (which meant predominantly people of color.) This gave preferential treatment to whites. Secondly, the dream of home ownership granted mortgage loans to Americans, where 98% of all recipients were white. Third, GI bill was passed to give low cost mortgage, living expenses paid, and paid tuition for veterans, which exclusively benefited whites, and excluded black veterans. 
Additionally, The 62 of the richest billionaires own half of the world’s poorest populations. Those that have accumulated all the world's resources simultaneously destroy natural resources at an alarming rate. Those richest people are the ones that destroy the land (trees, soil, crops, air, water, animals/aquatic life), those people buy all the land, and try to keep people from being truly free. We do NOT live in a free and equal opportunity country, and it is essential that we (the 99%) take back stolen land, take back our stolen creativity and individuality. In an effort to save, protect, and preserve nature and all its species, we cannot continue to deforest the planet, pollute, and kill off ecosystems.


Moreover, the middle class own more land, but it's usually for farming, growing soybeans or corn for livestock to eat, or for hunting grounds (more family owned operations). I'm not sure how anyone figures they own the oceans, but they also wreak havoc on that too, and capture to exploit and kill aquatic life. Those who own the majority of land on this planet are the rich who exploit it for drilling and fracking, mining, infrastructure, etc. In fact the families who own most of the world's resources are the reason the number of trees has fallen by 46% since the start of human civilization. There are over 20,000 different kinds of trees in the world. Actually, 3 trillion trees are left on the Earth. Somehow these same people who don't own land will go to different countries in Africa or South America to mine for gold. And they too are part of the destruction of land, trees, wildlife, and the last remaining tribes.

As mentioned, all of these examples are the many ways land and resources are taken away from the poor and persons of color, and consequently, this land is often used for big business, corporations, coal mining, logging, or fast food chains. What's truly depressing is that absentee owners of land have taken thousands of acres while rich families keep land in the family for to be passed down through generations. I'm not sure redistributing land (redistributing wealth) is feasible, but it sounds effective. And in fact when I think about the few people that own half of the world, this wealth disparity is unfair, and simply unjust. This cannot be normal, this cannot be how the system works. There is much land to be "bought" but there is much land already owned on a large scale.

Simply, if all people were given land to build their own houses and grow their own food, there would be less corporations, less logging, mining, fracking, pollution, etc. If all people had an acre, no one would want to cut down all the trees on their property for a quick buck. People would perhaps use their land to make a home business and then this would create a local economy where everyone had a service to offer. This isn't about poor people paying taxes, because in fact the tax system is not fair for the poor to begin with. Poor people shouldn't pay taxes, only the rich! Poor people pay the same tax rate as the rich, if not more taxes. And something most people don't realize is that half of the US budget goes to funding the military. So, clearly the tax system is not fair for the poor, but it should be used to regulate the rich because they are clearly exploiting people, resources, polluting land, and those are the people that came from money that was passed down to them through the generations of a system that favored the imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.
 
I am one of the many people who do not own land. Even if I bought land, I still do not "own" any of the trees, the sky, the birds, the deer, the soil, rocks, and rivers. People often talk in terms of ownership like "my girlfriend", "my daughter," "our Earth", "our galaxy", "my America." I find this to be problematic because this suggests that we have a culture that cannot look outside of capitalism, imperialism, and colonization. I fear that if the culture continues to use rhetoric that reflects ownership and possession, then it will be one where the disparities, inequality, destruction will be even greater as civilization ages within this world. But, if those of us don't collectively buy up land to take away from capitalists, then what will be left for those of us that want to protect it? True equality is the providing access to healthy living conditions, healthy food and land to grow food, and education for everyone. 

References:

Eller, Ronald. D. (2008). Uneven Ground: Appalachia Since 1945. Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press.

Rosenberg, Matt. (2016). Refugees: The Global Refugee and Internally Displaced Persons Situation. ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/global-refugees-overview-1434952

Age, Race, Class and Sex: Women Redefining Difference excerpt by Audre Lorde

"We have no patterns for relating across our human differences as equals. As a result, those differences have been misnamed and misused in the service of separation and confusion." -Audre Lorde

Sociological model theory

No one is one-dimensional because all of our experiences and stories are their own dimension (time, place, space.) Although we have been programmed in some ways to obey, do as we're told, conform, brainwashed, but through modernity we have expanded our freedoms. People make money online, or have little shops to get by, and some make it rich if the idea is crazy enough. But, this could also create a sense of anomie--where there is too much freedom for some, and not enough freedom for others.
Then this evokes the idea of inequality and the division within society, or even the conflict of society that drives change. We see that throughout history, our world is constructed of dialectical relationships, where there are opposites of the same side. There is a yin and yang quality of life, where opposites are complementary and interconnected in the natural world. We're interconnected in that we all have the same needs. For example, we all need affection, love, connection, integrity, well-being, but not everyone is the same in the ideas we project, or the projects we ideal...because we come from different standpoints.
Male and female are not opposite and sex is complementary! We play the role we were born into, and we are socialized to act, dress, talk, think a certain way thus like a self-fulfilling prophecy. We have a chance to change with the little time we have on Earth if we want to. In this short amount of time we have, there exists the concept of death, which we fear more than anything. We fear death of ourselves and others closest to us, so we create institutions around truth, justice, medicine, education, science, research, language, and everything else that encompasses the industrial, surveillanced, capitalistic arenas. At the end of the day, we were meant to die, because if you were born and so you will die. But this doesn't necessarily have to be a negative aspect, because you are part of the universe and peoples and animals and plant life before you that have lived and died. Our biologic value on this earth is to procreate and sustain life in our society and natural environment. It is our abstract life that we create symbolic meaning and value to things we cannot see or that we created like science, math, language, symbols of religion/philosophy, etc.
And this cycle repeats where there is conflict in our ideas within science, religion, philosophy, language, etc. But humans are unique that we seek the truth. We are an investigative species seeking the truth through the different standpoints we've been given. We can be fooled or foiled in the information we've been given, so we do our best to understand with which we have been equipped.
We are all made up of particles from the universe. We share the same elements as the plant and animal life, rock life, soil, and others in the atmosphere. We have been life for billions of years, and humans for hundreds of thousands of years giving feedback to one another and creating language to create other institutions of life, to search for the truth of who we really are and why we're here.

Angela Davis quote on racism in America

“Every generation has a symbol of the white supremacist structure,” Ms. Davis said. “My 24-year-old daughter has a symbol of Trayvon Martin like my mother had Emmett Till and I had Rodney King.”
 -Angela Davis, quote from the article: From Ferguson to Charleston and Beyond, Anguish About Race Keeps Building by Lydia Polgreen.

List of Socially & environmentally conscious documentaries on Netflix

Among the hundreds of Nazi, Hitler, and JFK documentaries, there are documentaries I have favored and hope that others watch the material to gain insight, information, and a new found empathy and understanding for all people, animals, the planet, and ourselves. Of course there are so many more documentaries I enjoyed and see value, and I condensed a list below of the best documentaries to watch on Netflix that are currently uploaded, and a small list of the documentaries I thought were decent. Many movies and documentaries are deleted periodically from Netflix. Some good documentaries can be watched on youtube and other sites for free; and of course, the list of documentaries on the left side of the page, can be watched on youtube.

Dark Girls

Through a lens darkly

Black Power Mixtape

The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross (series with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.)

The Reel Injun: One the trail of the Hollywood Indian

The True Cost

Walmart: the high cost of low price

Inequality for All

Surviving progress

Collapse

Earthlings

Blackfish

Cowspiracy

Food Matters

Forks Over Knives

The Fruit Hunters


Plastic Paradise

Cosmos (series with Neil Degrasse Tyson)

How to Grow a Planet & The power of the Planet (series with Iain Stewart)

Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia

Howard Zinn: You can't be neutral on a moving train

Money for nothing: Inside the Federal Reserve

Winter on Fire: Ukraine's Fight for Freedom

Ai Weiwei, Never sorry

Miss Representation

Pussy Riot

The House I Live In

Others Netflix documentaries that were worth a watch:
Slingshot
Hiroshima (BBC)
The propaganda game
Food Chains
Exit through the gift shop
Tesla: master of lightning
We're not broke
Citizen Koch
Ethos
Bottled Life
Documented
God Loves Uganda
For the Bible tells me so
Jesus Camp

Behold the efficiency of capitalism

Protest Thanksgiving (quotes)

photo source

"Imagine that Germany won World War II and that a Nazi regime endured for some decades, eventually giving way to a more liberal state with a softer version of German-supremacist ideology. Imagine that a century later, Germans celebrated a holiday offering a whitewashed version of German/Jewish history that ignored that holocaust and the deep antisemitism of the culture. Imagine that the holiday provided a welcomed time for families and friends to gather and enjoy food and conversation. Imagine that businesses, schools and government offices closed on this day."


 "The Mayflower’s cultural heirs are programmed to find glory in their own depravity and savagery in their most helpless victims."

"I have a difficult time experiencing gratitude on a holiday that celebrates and worships the dual genocide of a race of people and a species of animal." Gary Smith

“To this day, I can hardly bear to think of that quintessentially American holiday —Thanksgiving. When I do, however, I do not dwell on Pilgrims with wide black hats sitting to sup with red men, their long hair adorned with eagle feathers. I think not of turkeys or of cranberries, foods now traditional for the day of feast...I think of the people we have habitually called ‘Indians,’ the Indigenous people of the Americas; those millions who are no more. I think of those precious few who remain, and wonder, what do they think of this day; this national myth of sweet brotherhood that masks what can only be called genocide.” Mumia Abu Jamal

"Before our white brothers arrived to make us civilized men, we didn't have any kind of prison. Because of this, we had no delinquents. Without a prison, there can be no delinquents. We had no locks no keys and therefore among us there were no thieves. When someone was so poor that he couldn't afford a horse, a tent or a blanket, he would, in that case, receive it all as a gift. We were too uncivilized to give great importance to private property. We didn't know any kind of money and consequently, the value of a human being was not determined by his wealth. We had no written laws laid down, no lawyers, no politicians, therefore we were no able to cheat and swindle one another. We were really in bad shape before the white men arrived and I don't know how to explain how we were able to manage without these fundamental things that (so they tell us) are so necessary for a civilized society" -John Fire Lame Deer

"The language and the rhetoric surrounding the holiday erase the true history of settler-colonialism".
"“R*dsk*ns,” and “Thanksgiving” may seem inconsequential to some, the historical context that gave rise to these terms and celebrations contribute to real life consequences that still impact native people in this country."
"Natives have the shortest lifespan of any group living in the United States, and this rate is even lower for those living on reservations. Historical or intergenerational trauma is literally embedded in native DNA, and many of our parents and grandparents were stolen from their families and forced into boarding schools that had the expressed mission to “civilize the savage” and “kill the Indian but save the man.” by Ashley Nicole McCray – Lawrence War, Decolonizing the History of Thanksgiving

Truth in Media: Origin of ISIS

picture source

"There is only one way to defeat ISIS"

There Is Only One Way to Defeat ISIS by Charles P. Pierce

We must hold accountable our Middle Eastern "allies"—the states and bankers and political elites—who persist in funding mass murder.

"These are a few things that will not solve the terrible and tangled web of causation and violence in which the attacks of Friday night were spawned. A 242-ship Navy will not stop one motivated murderous fanatic from emptying the clip of an AK-47 into the windows of a crowded restaurant. The F-35 fighter plane will not stop a group of motivated murderous fanatics from detonating bombs at a soccer match. A missile-defense shield in Poland will not stop a platoon of motivated murderous fanatics from opening up in a jammed concert hall, or taking hostages, or taking themselves out with suicide belts when the police break down the doors. American soldiers dying in the sands of Syria or Iraq will not stop the events like what happened in Paris from happening again because American soldiers dying in the sands of Syria or Iraq will be dying there in combat against only the most obvious physical manifestation of a deeper complex of ancient causes and ancient effects made worse by the reach of the modern technology of bloodshed and murder. Nobody's death is ever sacrifice enough for that...
​"The attacks were a brilliantly coordinated act of war. They were a brilliantly coordinated act of pure terrorism, beyond rhyme but not beyond reason. They struck at the most cosmopolitan parts of the most cosmopolitan city in the world. They struck out at assorted sectors of western popular culture. They struck out at sports, at pop music, and at simple casual dining. They struck out at an ordinary Friday night's entertainment. The attacks were a brilliantly coordinated statement of political and social purpose, its intent clear and unmistakable. The attacks were a brilliantly coordinated act of fanatical ideological and theological Puritanism, brewed up in the dark precincts of another of mankind's monotheisms. They were not the first of these. (The closest parallel to what happened in Paris is what happened in Mumbai in 2008. In fact, Mumbai went on alert almost immediately after the news broke.) They, alas, are likely not going to be the last...
"The expression of bigotry and hatred will not solve the deep desperation in the human heart that leads people to kill their fellow human beings and then blow themselves up as a final act of murderous vengeance against those they perceive to be their enemies, seen and unseen, real and imagined. Tough talk in the context of what happened in Paris is as empty as a bell rung at the bottom of a well....Francois Hollande, the French president who was at the soccer game that was attacked, has promised that France will wage "pitiless war" against the forces that conceived and executed the attacks. Most wars are pitiless, but not all of them are fought with the combination of toughness and intelligence that this one will require. This was a lesson that the United States did not learn in the aftermath of the attacks of September 11, 2001. There are things that nations can do in response that are not done out of xenophobic rage and a visceral demand for revenge. There are things that nations can do in response that do not involve scapegoating the powerless and detaining the innocent.  There is no real point in focusing a response on the people whose religion makes us nervous. States should retaliate against states...
"The main job of the elites there is to find enough foreign workers to ensla…er…indenture to do all the real work. The example of Qatar and the interesting business plan through which that country is building the facilities for the 2022 World Cup is instructive here. Roughly the same labor-management relationship exists for the people who clean the hotel rooms and who serve the drinks. In Qatar, for people who come from elsewhere to work, passports have been known to disappear into thin air. These are the societies that profit from terrible and tangled web of causation and violence that played out on the streets of Paris. These are the people who buy their safety with the blood of innocents far away...
"It's not like this is any kind of secret. In 2010, thanks to WikiLeaks, we learned that the State Department, under the direction of then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, knew full well where the money for foreign terrorism came from. It came from countries and not from a faith. It came from sovereign states and not from an organized religion. It came from politicians and dictators, not from clerics, at least not directly. It was paid to maintain a political and social order, not to promulgate a religious revival or to launch a religious war. Religion was the fuel, the ammonium nitrate and the diesel fuel.Authoritarian oligarchy built the bomb. As long as people are dying in Paris, nobody important is dying in Doha or Riyadh.
Saudi Arabia is the world's largest source of funds for Islamist militant groups such as the Afghan Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba – but the Saudi government is reluctant to stem the flow of money, according to Hillary Clinton. "More needs to be done since Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qaida, the Taliban, LeT and other terrorist groups," says a secret December 2009 paper signed by the US secretary of state. Her memo urged US diplomats to redouble their efforts to stop Gulf money reaching extremists in Pakistan and Afghanistan. "Donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide," she said. Three other Arab countries are listed as sources of militant money: Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. The cables highlight an often ignored factor in the Pakistani and Afghan conflicts: that the violence is partly bankrolled by rich, conservative donors across the Arabian Sea whose governments do little to stop them. The problem is particularly acute in Saudi Arabia, where militants soliciting funds slip into the country disguised as holy pilgrims, set up front companies to launder funds and receive money from government-sanctioned charities.
It's time for this to stop. It's time to be pitiless against the bankers and against the people who invest in murder to assure their own survival in power. Assets from these states should be frozen, all over the west. Money trails should be followed, wherever they lead. People should go to jail, in every country in the world. It should be done state-to-state. Stop funding the murder of our citizens and you can have your money back. Maybe. If we're satisfied that you'll stop doing it. And, it goes without saying, but we'll say it anyway – not another bullet will be sold to you, let alone advanced warplanes, until this act gets cleaned up to our satisfaction. If that endangers your political position back home, that's your problem, not ours. You are no longer trusted allies. Complain, and your diplomats will be going home. Complain more loudly, and your diplomats will be investigated and, if necessary, detained. Retaliate, and you do not want to know what will happen, but it will done with cold, reasoned and, yes, pitiless calculation. It will not be a blind punch. You will not see it coming. It will not be an attack on your faith. It will be an attack on how you conduct your business as sovereign states in a world full of sovereign states.
And the still, stately progress of the news from Paris continues. There are arrests today in Brussels, of alleged co-conspirators. The body count has stabilized. New information comes at its own pace, as if out of respect for the dead. In the stillness of the news itself, there is refuge and reason and a kind of wounded, ragged peace, as whatever rolled up from the depths of the sickness of the human heart rolls back again, like the tide and, like the tide, one day will return."

Source link: "There is only one way to defeat ISIS" by Charles P. Pierce of Esquire, Nov. 14, 2015 @ 1:57pm

Do not celebrate "Columbus Day"

Columbus Day is celebrated every year by Americans on October 12th when in 1492, Christopher Columbus (Cristoforo Colombo) explored the Americas. We refer to him as the "Father of the New World." Between 1492 and 1503, Columbus completed four round-trip voyages, which mark the beginning of the European exploration and colonization of the American continents. All of this sounds very humble. It's a common misconception that he was trying to prove the world was round, which everyone already knew in the 6th century. And it's a common misconception that he was the first European to explore the Americas, which he was NOT, and in fact was preceded by the Norse expedition led by Leif Ericson 500 years earlier. And actually he never set foot on the mainland of North America.
Christopher Columbus' sole intentions were to enslave people to find gold for him, which led to the genocide of the Hispaniola natives.

Before 1492, the island inhabited above 3 million Taino Indians (native population of Haiti); and within 20 years the population was reduced to 60,000 peoples, which were completely extinct within 50 years. Millions of people were killed. This prompted Columbus to begin shipping African slaves to the island, which inadvertently makes Columbus "The Father of the Transatlantic Slave trade".

Columbus sought out to expand Christian religious influence to the indigenous people. To him, the indigenous people needed Christianity because they were mere heathens, but mostly because they were not white or rich. The reason Columbus was funded for his expedition in the first place was to convert "heathens" into Christians in an effort for European governments to control them.
Columbus had to find gold so he could pay back the investors. Because he needed gold, he also needed slaves to find this gold. Because he needed slaves, he would need swords, hunting dogs, cannons, and all sorts of weaponry to force the people to work for him. This resulted in war, rape, and horrific accounts that are shared in Columbus' personal journal.
Columbus still had not enough gold to pay back the Queen, so he used tactics described in the quote below from Howard Zinn--which really portrays the narrative of Christopher Columbus:


"Now, from his base on Haiti, Columbus sent expedition after expedition into the interior. They found no gold fields, but had to fill up the ships returning to Spain with some kind of dividend. In the year 1495, they went on a great slave raid, rounded up fifteen hundred Arawak men, women, and children, put them in pens guarded by Spaniards and dogs, then picked the five hundred best specimens to load onto ships. Of those five hundred, two hundred died en route. The rest arrived alive in Spain and were put up for sale by the archdeacon of the town, who reported that, although the slaves were 'naked as the day they were born,' they showed 'no more embarrassment than animals.' Columbus later wrote: 'Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold.'
But too many of the slaves died in captivity. And so Columbus, desperate to pay back dividends to those who had invested, had to make good his promise to fill the ships with gold. In the province of Cicao on Haiti, where he and his men imagined huge gold fields to exist, they ordered all persons fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months. When they brought it, they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. American Indians found without a copper token had their hands cut off and bled to death."

Bartolome De Las Casas, one of Columbus' men, was an eye witness to the atrocities. For example in one single day, he says the Spanish soldiers dismembered, beheaded, or raped 3000 native people. Other stories included cutting off the legs of children; men would test if they could cut a person in half; poured people full of boiling soap; and the list goes on.

In relation to the Syrian crisis, I remember watching a recent video of a Hungarian camerawoman continually tripping Syrian refugees as they ran with their children. And I think "there is still white vs brown mentality" all over the world, and it stems from this glorification of the "white hero".
And I want to share a quote that it puts it better than I do, from Bill Bigelow of the Huffington Post, "If Black people's lives mattered in our society, it would be inconceivable that we would honor the father of the slave trade with a national holiday. The fact that we have this holiday legitimates a curriculum that is contemptuous of the lives of peoples of color".

Masked by positive Columbus myths and celebrations, the United States government and citizens avoid taking responsibility for their own mindfulness (or actions). One action they could possibly take now is STOP CELEBRATING COLUMBUS DAY, and encourage all schools to stop the justification of celebrating this day because of tradition. 

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Migrants and Refugees (video)

CBS news

"When Violence Hides Behind Politeness & Convenience"

"When Violence Hides Behind Politeness & Convenience" part 1 & 2, by Josh Fossgreen of RawFoodFreedom.

"Film the police" #SandyBland

After the case of Sandra Bland, "who was mysteriously found dead in jail after a bizarre traffic stop arrest", last week police claimed that two young women committed suicide by hanging, after being arrested on relatively minor charges. In one case the police seem to have targeted a young African American woman for her civil rights activism and asserting her rights at a traffic stop. While she was waiting for bail, she was found hung in her jail cell. In the other, police say that an 18-year-old girl committed suicide by hanging after she was arrested over a spat involving a cell-phone" (countercurrentnews).

To sum up the last couple months of 2015, "There was bikini-clad teenager Dajerria Becton who was wrestled to the ground and kneed in the back by a police officer. Before her there was eight-month pregnant Charlena Michelle Cooks who a police officer allegedly threw stomach first to the ground. There was Renisha McBride shot in the face and killed, no questions asked, when she knocked on a door asking for help after a car accident. And we must not forget Marissa Alexander who was initially given a 20-year prison sentence after being denied a stand-your-ground defense for firing a warning shot into the air during an incident of domestic violence with her estranged husband. Most recently, there is Sandra Bland, thrown to the ground and kneed in the back because police perceived her as 'combative' during a traffic stop." (lockerdome).
And lets not forget the murders that took place in a South Carolina church, and also five predominantly black churches were burned within a week. 
And, truly not to lump a bunch of names together, but also remember the lives that were lost, Freddie Gray, Michael Brown, and Trayvon Martin--all different situations where young black men die at the hands of police.

"[A]bout 46 percent of state prisoners who are behind bars for non-violent crimes... in most states, the black incarceration rate is more than four times the white incarceration rate. In nearly half of states, it’s six times the white incarceration rate...these facts raise painful questions about the way our justice system treats people of color" (The Washington Post). 
And seeing how officers treat minor "offenses" of black females, it seems white people especially white women are less likely to have altercations that took place in Sandy Bland's situation. 
It's not a matter of 'oh black folks need to stop doing these crimes', the issue is that even if black folks are NOT committing crimes, they are accused, abused, threatened, and feared. White people do consistently get smaller penalties for the same crimes and that has been documented. A white person convicted of a crime is far less likely to get jail time and more likely to get community service. It is also documented that police specifically go to "ghetto" neighborhoods (and places that segregate black people from the suburbs) to entrap, prey upon, and then convict black folks of crimes in order to perpetuate a cycle that the penal system created.

Even if black people were doing more violent crimes than white people (which they are not), lets ask WHY they are doing these crimes, rather than HOW to convict them and take away all of their freedoms. 

These events invoke my rage on our police state. Technology, availability and ease of access to this information has actually woke up the white people of the world to the disparities black folks face everyday. Now white folks are acknowledging their white privilege, and this provokes the media/public to put stress on the officials to charge the police for their crimes (considering police kill, falsely arrest/accuse others, commit horrifically racist acts, and the list goes on. I actually have a video link where an ex-police officer, Michael Wood, exposes some of the abusive racist police culture, here.)

I don't necessarily want to use this same system to put down officials and politicians when it is in my favor, or rather for 'justice', and disrupt the system when it isn't in my favor--and certainly these people that you throw in jail, even police, will not change their attitudes towards another race, culture, etc.
I will say, however, cops are people, and cops are given privileges that no other person is given. The police are not doing 'good' for society--of course good and bad are arbitrary terms--but the police exist for the sole purpose of exuding violence.
We know that people change by establishing empathy for others, the proverbial 'walk a day in my shoes' can create some astounding transformations in people.

Faces of Modern (Current) Slavery

The holidays (November thru December) does not bring me happiness, especially since I do not believe in celebrating these holidays. Yet during this time I am with my family, which I am thankful for having. I am especially grateful that I am not these people in the photos that portray modern slavery. Slavery takes all forms, and I have compiled a stream of photos that I believe are obvious forms of slavery and the concepts that may not be questioned as slavery but what I would consider a modern form of slavery.

The images are not in order from better or worse because the concept is subjective.

A soldier ignorantly fighting for something he does not understand

Women shaving their arms to be 'attractive' or 'clean'

I have much to say on this subject. Women are considered unsanitary if they do not shave and use products to wash their hair and body. Another pet-peeve of mine is the use of disposable tampons and pads. Women who are still bleeding during their time-of-the-month should switch to reusable DivaCups or cloth pads.

Where does your chocolate, textiles, and gold come from?

 We usually do not consider slavery as a modern phenomenon, rather we consider the 1700s-1800s as a time when Africans were brought over to the South of the United States. Slavery is as prevalent today in other countries; yet we mask modern slavery with incentive (money). Chocolate, gold, and other goods are usually harvested by small children that do not get paid, instead their parents or other authority figure takes the profit.