The Difference Between a Gun and a Tank

No, that's not the beginning of a joke.  There are differences between guns and tanks, and there are similarities.  And they are on a continuum that costs not just millions of taxpayer dollars, but trust between citizens and government, and in far too many cases, lives.

I remember when the nation first heard about S.W.A.T.  Presumable, these dudes were well trained, cool-headed (and good-looking) heroes that assessed the need for force after all other options had been considered, then proceeded to save the lives of innocent people being held hostage by the truly bad bad guys.  I recall a gripping book by Ed McBain and a TV series.  And the glamour of it all continued to evolve over the years.  While violence across the country has diminished, the fear of violence has grown, feeding the desire for bigger and tougher police forces, bigger and better armed S.W.A.T. teams.

And the problem becomes, "If all you have is a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail."  Police are all armed with high powered weapons, and come to expect that any encounter with a civilian could be a deadly one.  Not too many years ago, tasers became the new toy on the block, and before that, pepper spray.  Because they are considered the "safe" alternative, what we found was that they were used not just more indiscriminately, but with abandon.  Peaceful demonstrators, the mentally ill, and just about anyone an officer (or other official, or even non-officials) thought to be a threat, came away hurt, and sometimes lethally.  No, it doesn't take a gun, but you might ask George Zimmerman:  it's always easier with a gun.

Here in South Carolina, we celebrated Columbia's acquisition of the military grade armored vehicle -- the tank -- that cost taxpayers $658,000.  Other than showing it off in parades, only the police chief that requisitioned that and other military grade equipment could imagine a practical use.  In fact, Sheriff Leon Lott foresees such equipment being used in shoot-outs with the bad guys.  Just like on TV.

He calls it "The Peacemaker."

Radley Balko in The Rise of the Warrior Cop, writes about how insidious these weapons of war have become since 9/11.  Every home town thinks they need tactical weapons and Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles, happily called MRAPS, for that distant possibility of the terrorist invasion.  Down here in the South, some of our more wild-eyed legislators like to think we citizens might could use them when the feds try to take over.

Back in Richland County, Sheriff Lot paints his tank "U.N. Blue" and sets it in parking lots, at fairs and parades, just to let us all know that it is citizen friendly.  Get us used to seeing it around.  Let the kids climb up in it like they do on the firetrucks.  But in fact, more and more, those big weapons are being used on citizens for suspected crimes like possession of marijuana and illegal poker games.  Homes smashed into, pets shot, neighborhoods traumatized, because those hammers just need to find some nails.  Or, as Mark Frauenfelder of BoingBoing says:

Don't even think about running an illegal bingo game in Richland County, South Carolina. 

After the August, 2014, Ferguson shooting and the military response to protests, Richland County, South Carolina's Sheriff Lott pointed out on the one hand that "his department aims to maintain trust and transparency with the community;" on the other hand,

While Lott said the militarized response of the police in Ferguson was not the thing to do, he said the Richland County Sheriff’s Department owns every piece of equipment – for land, sea and air – that has been seen in response to the protests and looting in Ferguson.

So in other words, as long as he displays his officers in their tactical body armor and his MRAP and assault weapons at churches and fairs, we should feel confident that all this military equipment is going to be used to protect us.  And I am afraid that in America in the 21st century, that deluded attitude has been accepted.  We've become extras in a Die Hard movie, sans Bruce Willis and wisecracks, waving flags as we wait for the parade, excited by the big blue tank, just before the violence begins.

And some of us are fighting this treacherous wave, because we know if an officer of the peace can shoot an unarmed man reaching for his driver's license for a seat belt violation, an undertrained and unnecessary S.W.A.T. team will someday be more than willing to assume the need to use those big old expensive weapons in a neighborhood like yours.

Read more here: http://www.thestate.com/2014/08/18/3626866_richland-sheriff-lott-police-handling.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy

War at Home

I have been away for awhile.  I found that it seemed I was writing the same old over and over again.  No new information, no new perspectives.  It has been nice being a member of the uninformed public.  Also, when I got back not a thing had changed -- except that somebody told me gay marriage is now legal in South Carolina, which I guess would be earth-shattering news if it were true.

The "riots" in St. Louis are related to George Zimmerman being handed his gun and set free with the blessing of the NRA and the KKK.  And the Zimmerman outrage is related to the fact that Columbia, SC, last year bought a tank from the federal government.

Rachel Maddow last night had an excellent retrospective on the shootings at Kent State in 1970.  But then she went farther back, to the campus protest in Madison, Wisconsin, in 1967, when Vietnam protests were turned over from local campus police to city police, ending in 65 people hospitalized.

After that, Madison hired a new chief of police, David Cooper, who in his long career there successfully demilitarized the police force, and began what is now called "community policing."

I urge you to read The Rise of the Warrior Cop by Radley Balko.  He paints a gruesome picture of how police departments in small communities in this country over the past decade have become armed.  Just as the US is supplying their favored sides in battles in the Middle East, they are also arming our communities.  And what they are being armed for is not fighting neighborhood crime, but for war.

Here are the priorities in the nation today:  we do not have money to spend on education, on housing, on psychotherapy.  We do have unlimited amounts to spend on arms and prisons.  And the citizens of our country are the ones who have chosen these priorities, because they are the ones who are voting.  They may be voting out of ignorance, they are certainly vulnerable to the hysterical fear-mongering of Fox News and the NRA, but the fact remains, we voters have chosen.

The reason we voters choose an armed America is because we believe that only the bad guys will get hurt.  But the battering rams are not shattering the houses of drug lords, but homes of individuals who may have their small stash of pot.  They aren't going after cartels, but people enjoying poker night.

Don't believe it?  Neither do most of us, because it is too horrendous to consider.

But there are a couple of truisms about this situation.  First, there is the supply of weapons.  Then there is the fact that we will pay for the toys, but not for the training.  And then there is the fact that the police have gone from those who live in the community and are hired to protect us, to those with too much firepower, too little training, and who believe that they need to be constantly vigilant, in order to protect themselves.

And of course, police violence like that going on in Ferguson, Missouri, won't be likely to happen in suburban white communities.  We have over the past several years, been fed racist attitudes that have allowed black teenagers to be targeted.  It may be that Michael Brown stole cigars from a convenience store, but maybe not.  He may have pushed the officer, but maybe not.  Whatever he did do, he was unarmed, and shot eight times.

This is not our system of justice.  This is a national corrosion of values, evident in "stop and frisk" and "papers, please."  Where guns are not just allowed but welcomed, because politicians and, yes, our courts, don't really have a clue about the second amendment but prefer to sow seeds of fear across the country, and quash state and individual rights to protect themselves through peaceful measures.  In fact, the second amendment has become somewhat like a Rorschach Test, reflecting just how power hungry and paranoid we are.

This time, though, there were journalists -- white journalists -- who got caught in the tear gas and the rubber bullets and the jailing.  It was a middle class, conservative campus in 1970 where the murders of four unarmed students forced the nation to look at its war on its young citizens.  I am hoping that the media, because members of its own were caught in the crosshairs of a militant police action, will pick up this fight.  Because we are looking at a future with tanks and assault weapons, where people are watched from cameras on the street corners, and are guilty until proven innocent, or maybe until killed. 

In All Fairness

While I was tuned in to as much of the Syria "debate" as I could stand, a couple of remarkable things happened.

The absolute ickiest person in the country, Ariel Castro, after being found guilty of kidnapping and holding captive three women and sentenced to a hearty life plus 1,000 years, committed suicide.  Eric Bolling at Fox News thought it was Christmas, imagining all the tax dollars that could be saved if every bad guy killed himself.

Again in the icky category, George Zimmerman appears to have threatened his wife with a firearm.  It also appears that he is not likely to be arrested, as his wife, whose veracity is questionable to say the least, is now saying he did not have a gun.  Who knew Zimmerman was potentially violent?  Certainly not the court that found him not guilty for murdering Trayvon Martin, and then handed him back the gun he used to kill Martin on his way out of jail.

Meanwhile, continuing with the stranger than fiction theme,  back in the real world, the US and Russia have reached an agreement on a proposal to eliminate Syria's chemical weapons arsenal.  Throughout these amazing talks between two world leaders that have lately been unable to agree on the weather, the media have reported that the American people are not happy.  It seems that not only do we not want to go to war because there is nothing in it for us.  We also are disgruntled because such an agreement with Syria would mean that Assad would give up Syria's chemical weapons without getting punished.

And as I write this last line, let me remind you that yesterday may have been Friday the 13th, but it's feeling more like April Fool's Day.

  

My New Pen Pal

If you send someone you've never met a letter, you probably feel the need to communicate something.  If you send them another one, I guess that means you're becoming pen pals.

T.B.S., who wrote me pages of colorful comments about his feelings about the NAACP and Trayvon Martin, apparently felt he had more to share.  So a couple of days later, he got his colored pens back out and posted several more pages of burning thoughts:

Yes, it's comical.  And it is also very creepy.  And it made me wonder why (other than the fact that this writer is unbalanced).

Here is the text of my Letter to the Editor in the P & C that began this flurry of activity:

Blaming victim
As a girl growing up in the ’60s in Rhode Island, I knew there were places I had better not walk. Even so, I was about 10 years old and walking to the library one day when a car with several men drove by and I had what I think was a soda can thrown at me.I recall as a teen-ager and then a young woman that when a woman was raped, she was asked what she was doing in that neighborhood, at that time, by herself, with those clothes on.
Now that the trial of George Zimmerman is over, I am not only reminded of how women were blamed for being attacked, I am thinking about my son who is now 21, not that much older than Trayvon Martin when he was shot and killed.
Imagine your teen-age boy walking any street, dressed as teen-agers do, in the early evening hours. And then imagine that he realizes that he is being followed.
He tries to ignore it, and then panics. He makes a phone call to alert a friend and in his fear and anger describes his pursuer in angry language that you or I might use under those circumstances. Finally, feeling confused and trapped, he decides to fight.
Trayvon Martin was standing his ground.
George Zimmerman was not being pursued. He was not at home protecting himself and his family. He was the pursuer.
By attacking Zimmerman, Trayvon Martin was standing his ground and died because apparently in Florida an adult man with a gun trumps a teenage boy attempting to defend himself from a pursuer with his hands.

Agnes F. Pomata, Ph.D.
Foxfire Road
Wadmalaw Island

Nowhere in the letter I wrote did I talk about race, or refer to the NAACP.  This letter was about violence directed at women and teenagers, and the fact that carrying guns with our government's approval has made the violence more deadly.

But my letter came from Wadmalaw Island, and I have an unusual name, and I talked about my son -- T.B.S. has assumed that I am myself African American, which I am not.

The rage that these missives convey chill me.  Particularly because they were written by someone who is insane (has poor boundary control) and has focused his considerable hatred on black Americans.  If this is a man with a gun, and it well may be, there is a good chance he will someday use it.

And people like Chief Justice John Roberts, who believes we live in a post-racial America, will never have a close-up view of that irrational hatred, or be in danger from such a disturbed individual, because he is protected on many levels.  As a chief justice, his life is sheltered, and as a white man, he will never be the focus of that blind rage that people of color in this country struggle with every day.

As the easily identified minority, black Americans are not only vilified and feared, but are targets of hatred.  My pen pal knows not to send his letters to the P & C, but he still carries that rage.  Let's hope that the only weapons he uses are those colored pens.

The Problem with the Debate

On Tuesday, the Post and Courier published a letter I wrote about the Trayvon Martin killing ("Blaming Victim").  Friday, I received a multi-page response in the mail.  To say that the respondent put a great deal of effort into the rebuttal would be an understatement.  This dude, named "T.B.S.", gathered up all the colored pens he owns and appears to have spent hours composing this reply:

Apparently, I touched a nerve.

So I spent a bit of time considering how I might respond, if I was similarly crazed, and came up with a few tantalizing possibilities:

*  I'm so glad that you read my letter in the P & C.  It must have been very difficult.

*  And your point is...?

*  I found your letter quite well thought out, especially the colors.

*  Well, you've certainly convinced me!

Chuckles aside, I think what we have here is the whole problem with the gun control debate.  The people who most fervently believe they have the right -- in fact, the need -- to carry weapons, are those like Mr. T. B. S.  who, apart from the fact that he apparently is not at all hispanic, shares much the same paranoia and rage as Mr. Zimmerman.

The NRA and ALEC need a frightened population in order to thrive.  They pay our gun-rights politicians substantial amounts of money to fire up the fearful.  And what we end up with is crazy people who are truly afraid that if we take away their guns they will be overrun by "those people."  The people they are afraid of range from the gub'mint to the NAACP to the A-rabs to Nancy Pelosi.

In other words, they are afraid of anyone our right wing legislators tell them to be afraid of.

George Zimmerman is the living proof of why we need to outlaw guns.  And why we need to vote the fearmongers out of office.

It's About Guns, Again

I would be willing to say that the killing of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman was not about race, although it was.  Based on his own utterings, I don't for one minute believe that Zimmerman would have stalked Martin if he had been a white teenager.  Because then he would have assumed that the boy belonged in that neighborhood.

If you recall Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino, or Michael Caine in Harry Brown, there is also a fear in adults of teenage gangs.  But Trayvon was alone.

So there is George Zimmerman, a paranoid individual who perceives himself to be harassed by "those kids," and who really, really wants to be the enforcer, to put a stop to those kids that can get away with that stuff.

So he joins Neighborhood Watch.  He takes courses that talk about the "stand your ground" law.  He becomes in his mind the guy the police can count on to straighten out his neighborhood, to make it safe for people like him.

And the means by which he is able to do this is his weapon.

Had Zimmerman not been allowed to carry a gun, he may have stalked Martin, he no doubt would have called 911 to report a suspicious individual.  It is less likely that he would have continued to pursue Martin after he was told to back off, although he may have.

What I think we can safely say, however, is that neither of the two would have died in the altercation.

So what this comes down to is whether we are going to continue to let the NRA dictate to our state and congressional leaders the terms by which we will be able to walk our streets.  We don't need people like George Zimmerman protecting our community.  We don't need the kind of unstable men who feel strongly the need to walk among us armed to be encouraged to do so.

So let's not let this be about race, although it certainly was race that fueled the fire.  Let this be about the gun that George Zimmerman carried -- and carries once again -- that allowed him to choose his enemy and kill him.

Not MY Son

As I watch bits and pieces of the trial of George Zimmerman in the shooting and death of Trayvon Martin, I can't help but imagine what this case would be like if this 16-year-old had been a white boy.

Like my son.

Here is a boy dressed in a way that would be weird for an adult but not for a teenager.  He is walking around this neighborhood, and honestly, if he was not black, would anyone have questioned what he was doing there?  So let's supposed he is white and walking around at -- for god's sake, 7 p.m.

Enter George Zimmerman, a wannabe cop, who makes all those racial assumptions about a black boy in his neighborhood and decides he needs to be followed.

Again, imagine this is my white 16-year-old son.  He realizes he is being followed.  He keeps walking but becomes ever more conscious that that is indeed what is happening.  He begins to get scared.  Trayvon Martin knows what can happen to a young African-American male that has wandered into the path of an angry and/or paranoid white man.  My son might have been oblivious of being followed for some time.  He might have imagined that this couldn't be happening, that it was his imagination.

But at some point, when the unknown man continues to follow him, my son would become frightened.  He would try to contact someone.  He would almost certainly refer to the person following him as crazy, followed by any other descriptive obscenity, which would emphasize his fear.  When this nightmare continues, he realizes a full-blown panic and decides that he has to fight back.

In other words, my son, and Trayvon Martin, would stand their ground.  Unarmed, they would use the weapon they have, and physically attack the stalker.  And under Florida law, they would be in the right.

Unfortunately, he who carries the gun has lived to tell the tale.  And if Trayvon had been a white youth, it is unlikely that the defense attorney would be mocking the young black woman who was the nearest thing to a witness for Trayvon, and pretending not to understand what she is saying in an effort to emphasize that she -- and therefore Trayvon -- are not like the members of the jury.

Of course, had it been a white youth killed that day, it would not likely have taken nearly six weeks for his attacker to be charged.

But here we are.  The paranoid, angry and power hungry man who stalked an innocent young black boy, who refused to heed the police officer on the phone who told him to step down and stop his pursuit, is the one who is seen as "standing his ground."

Let's all step outside of the hype and media circus, and imagine this scenario with our own teenager, walking down the road, and being stalked by an unknown man.

I wonder if, in this angry and paranoid decade, the jury will be able to give, not Zimmerman, but Trayvon Martin, a fair trial.