Denmark Vesey: Cop Shoots. Brotha Dies. Protest. Cop Arrested. Law Suit Filed. Here We Go Again. Right Back To The Comfort Zone of Perpetual Angst.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Cop Shoots. Brotha Dies. Protest. Cop Arrested. Law Suit Filed. Here We Go Again. Right Back To The Comfort Zone of Perpetual Angst.

Hundreds of people have taken to the streets calling for the prosecution of Johannes Mehserle, a former BART officer seen on video shooting an unarmed man in the back, with one rally last week spiraling into violence that resulted in more than 100 arrests and damage to dozens of businesses.

Protesters Aleada Minton, left, and Roy Russell simulate a BART officer's arrest and shooting of Oscar Grant.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...: Big deal. This has happened 800X in the last few weeks in Gaza alone!; Jan 15, 2009, 3:40:00 PM

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The founders of the American state understood that the proper functioning of a democracy required an educated electorate. It is this understanding that justifies a system of public education and that led slaveholders to resist the spread of literacy among their chattels. But the meaning of "educated" has changed beyond recognition in two hundred years. Reading, writing, and arithmetic are no longer sufficient to decide on public policy. Now we need quantum mechanics and molecular biology. The knowledge required for political rationality, once available to the masses, is now in the possession of a specially educated elite, a situation that creates a series of tensions and contradictions in the operation of representative democracy.

Margaret Sanger. Woman, Morality, and Birth Control. New York: New York Publishing Company, 1922. P

Lord Bertrand Russell, The Impact of Science On Society (Routledge Press: New York, 1951).

"At present the population of the world is increasing at about 58,000 per diem. War, so far, has had no very great effect on this increase, which continued throughout each of the world wars.. War has hitherto been disappointing in this respect, but perhaps bacteriological war may prove effective. If a Black Death could spread throughout the world once in every generation, survivors could procreate freely without making the world too full. The state of affairs might be unpleasant, but what of it?"