Being a Progressive Ally Means Being All In

I want to address for a minute the idea that the Black Lives Matter movement somehow has singled out a particular 2016 Democratic candidate and is using unfair tactics to raise awareness of their cause at his expense: well, I don't care.

The economic justice campaign of former Independent Socialist Bernie Sanders and the social justice movement, Black Lives Matter, are both progressive movements worthy of anyone's time and consideration. I believe that economic justice matters--it matters whether anyone actually has bootstraps in the first damn place to whether they are ever able to pull themselves up by them. People gaining access to the various means of economic security--whether that means good jobs or a good and fair environment to attempt entrepreneurship, need some kind of security that what they are doing will be profitable to them according to their labor, and that their effort will not be robbed from them by rent-seekers.

Her Name Was Sandra Bland

The death of this woman has haunted me, because I know she knew her rights and was aware of the ways in which an experience with law enforcement could go bad but the video of the confrontation leading up to her arrest (even if apparently edited)is just as bad as one might expect.


UPDATED: The original Youtude embed was pulled, so I've replaced it with the current copy. That the original copy appeared so glitchy raised an awful lot of questions. But there are more inconsistencies for people to pore over, here. And I have a feeling that the conversation will fall into familiar patterns. The idea that this was a "good stop" is questionable; it looks like she moved out of the police vehicle's way and this was the reason she changed lanes. This could have been a verbal warning, and the officer seems to have escalated the confrontation. She had reason not to happy about it, and the force used by the officer was simply not acceptable. This doesn't indicate at all what happened after she was in custody, but gives credibility to the idea that she was not treated with any respect, and that the safety of her body was not any major concern to law enforcement.