This is an article worth sharing widely. It's not so much the sentiment, which is something you can find in any number of DKos journals or on various lefty blogs and news outlets:
Witnessing all these shootings and killings creates a constant state of terror within minorities, not altogether different from the effect larger populations feel witnessing passenger planes flying into buildings, or gunmen cutting their way through schools and shopping malls, or children blowing themselves up in cramped bazaars. The issue doesn't involve absolute numbers; it involves the effect of knowing that at any time, your number could come up.
The difference is that when the Boston Marathon is bombed, or people fly planes into buildings, or an aggrieved loner goes on a killing spree, we, as a society, pursue justice to the very ends of the earth, if only to sleep better at night. When killer cops rarely, if ever, even step foot in court, let alone get convicted, the absence of immediate justice or punishment leads to an unaddressed fear. It's a fear of ubiquity; a fear that the carnage can be easily replicated, virtually anywhere, by virtually anyone; a fear that our lives don't matter.
What's interesting, to me, is the fact that this piece appeared in one of the sideblogs on "
Deadspin," a popular sports blog run by
Gawker Media Group. While Gawker tends to run its fair share of stories with a lefty slant, online sports communities in general tend to be right of center in their politics.
The lack of RW idiocy in the comments makes me marginally hopeful that we're reaching critical mass on this issue in the US and that meaningful reform might be possible in the near future.
Please share as someone who would disregard an article from the Daily Kos might give this piece a read. Link: Deadspin: The Police are America's Terrorists, by Greg Howard.
BTW: If you want to share a soft story from Deadspin first, one that is more representative of some of the offbeat content they post, you could do worse than Drew Magary's recounting of his vasectomy experience: "The Amazing True Story of My Exploding Balls"