Williams began by acknowledging how the movement was the African-American community’s response to the violence and social injustices they have endured. However, Williams also pointed out how the movement’s recent actions like challenging supportive Democratics while not proposing political solutions will be counter-productive to its own goals.
People who are protesting, have you been up all night freaking out about whether Juan Williams wants to join your protest? Have you been wondering what you could do to get him on your side?
It has been said that politicians see the light once they feel the heat. If only the energy and passion of #BlackLivesMatter protesters could be harnessed in something constructive rather than destructive.
Lobby Congress, hold voter registration drives, quiz candidates on their plan for sentencing reform, but don’t heckle the candidates and incite violence by calling for cop-killing. The movement could be critical to securing and mobilizing black support for criminal justice reform that actually would improve black lives.
Yes. If only they would do things that hundreds of black civil rights organizations have been doing for decades without Juan Williams noticing them, then Juan Williams would notice them, and approve, and would decree the movement Good, and that would send the political-prison-industrial complex a-tumblin’ down.
That’s what real criminal justice reform has been waiting for, by the way. Juan Williams’ blessing in the form of a statement that enough people are now behaving like they deserve it.
A couple of people temporarily inconveniencing Bernie Sanders is what got the most press, and Juan Williams (and quite a few not-otherwise-unintelligent pundits along with him) decides that’s all that’s happening, and that’s wrong, and so here is a bunch of stuff you should be doing, protesters.
No word on what cops or judges or city fathers should be doing to address the concerns #BlackLivesMatter is raising. I eagerly await Williams’ next column, in which he asks police not to SHOOT SO MANY FUCKING PEOPLE, because it’s just damaging the cops’ cause, and turning good people off law enforcement’s point of view.
A.
After Williams’ fawning interviews of Cheney and Kindasleezza on NPR, I think I know exactly what appeals to Juan Williams.
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Everybody complains how difficult it is for employees to establish collective bargaining units because American labor laws (which mean presumably settled issues on how things should operate) are uniquely unenforceable. Zero penalties for union busting muscling.
Does it ever occur to anybody prounion that their biggest issue therefore should be to make those laws enforceable with real penalties? That the total health of our society — economic and political — depends on getting the balance of power right between labor and ownership?
Our labor market is the only such that is truly a completely free market — as in totally unfettered — at least in comparison with every other country in the modern world.
[snip]
100,000 out of my guesstimate 200,000 gang age, minority males in Chicago are in street gangs because they wont work for a sub-LBJ minimum wage — multiple dollars below 1968’S $11 an hour, DOUBLE THE PER CAPITA INCOME LATER!
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/gang-wars-at-the-root-of-chicagos-high-murder-rate/
Ditto for former American born, former middle class taxi drivers like me who wont work for much watered down wages — just for all around comparison.
The labor market wont “clear” for these would be employee cohorts because labor ‘s price is forced too forbiddingly low. Just have to make something a felony that is not now even a ticket: union busting (would auto invoke RICO too). Do this issue or do nothing really. Really.