Why #AllLivesMatter is not all or nothing

I've seen this making the social media rounds. It's actually what prompted yesterday's post.

We are very black & white in this country (heh - excuse the pun).

Understanding the #BlackLivesMatter movement is not the equivalent of an anti-law enforcement agenda. Understanding that there is an institutional pattern of applying the law inequitably does not negate the good that law enforcement does. Is this the time when I use the cliched phrase "I have friends that are police officers, firefighters, etc"?  Well, it's true. I do. The woman I consider a daughter is in the Army. And I firmly stand behind their exemplary service.

But standing behind good law enforcement doesn't negate those who let their personal prejudices or fears infringe on their ability to perform their public service job effectively and fairly.

Yes, some things are black & white - no middle ground. However most things in this world are not. Because I support a woman's right to choose to have an abortion, or use birth control, or get equal pay for equal work, or breastfeed in public, or not be raped, or any number of other things - it does not mean I hate men. In fact, I love men! I'm actually married to one, and have chosen to spend the rest of my life with him. I've given birth to two men. I'm even willing to put up with those grey areas - like having to listen to them fart, or scratch their genitals, or watch my husband pull his own finger because it amuses him, or courtesy laugh at his silly jokes because it makes him happy. And because I love my husband and sons, I can actually find these traits amusing and endearing and lovable. Wow. Men are actually pretty freaking awesome!

See? I can support one cause without being against the other.

I fully support providing the tools to our law enforcement officials to allow them to do their jobs effectively. But by virtue of the fact that they are publicly funded by my tax dollars, it also means that they must comply with the law at all times. Actually, even though I'm not publicly funded, I am held to the same standards. Huh. Can we hold them to an even higher standard? I say yes. Those entrusted with public safety and security must be held to a higher standard in their professional lives. That also includes not just law enforcement, but policy makers, and other publicly funded professionals.

Every person carries their life experiences into their job. It's what you do with that experience and how you control its hold over your actions that makes you a better (or worse) human being and makes you accountable for your actions on the job.

Just because you have a difficult job and times right now are making that job even more difficult, doesn't mean that you get a pass on accountability. Swearing an oath to uphold the law means something. And if we can't hold you accountable for that, then we have a lawless society. We've done this before. The wild west was a crazy place, filled with vigilante justice. As a society, we decided that didn't work for us, and so we began to develop laws to deal with how justice should be served. Equally. Through the courts. Nobody gets to determine guilt or innocence, or prounounce and carry out sentence without due process.

And what many law enforcement officials have chosen to so is exactly that. They have made themselves judge and jury for people of color and pronounced and carried out a death sentence on people of color in this country.

Yes, you may be an asshole and an idiot if you talk back to law enforcement, or run from them, or don't comply with their orders. But that is not a crime punishable by death in this country. And guess what? Neither is approaching a home after an accident for help, or playing music loudly in your car punishable by death in this country. It's what makes us better than terrorists or dictatorships. It's what makes us American.

So yes, I will continue to support law enforcement - those who are doing it right. And I will also continue to call out injustices where they exist, including supporting the root cause of #BlackLivesMatter. Because it's not black and white. We need to call out the injustices against specific groups in order to wipe out those injustices.

Black people and women did not win the vote by  claiming "All Votes Matter", even though, hey - that was true. They won the vote by calling out the injustices against them and working to fix them. Sometimes loudly. Sometimes by being rude. Sometimes with violence. Usually legally. Sometimes not. But the bottom line is by calling out the injustice, they proved that all votes do matter.

And so, if that's what you really want, I'll be happy to unfriend you. It might make our holidays a little uncomfortable. It might make band gigs equally uncomfortable. It might cause a rift in the core values of our country - that we all have a right to be heard and that laws apply to everyone.

It also means I have 1 less person to suck my time up on social media. Well, ok then.

Guns, and the killing of police officers

I mourn the loss of the officers who have been murdered this past week (and ever). It's deplorable, and awful, and horrific. My heart aches for their families and loved ones, and the people who killed them should be swiftly apprehended, tried, convicted, and punished.

Guns can not only be used in the hands of Good Guys With Guns to protect Good Guys, but hey - people also use them to commit violent, disgusting crimes. These would be the Bad Guys With Guns doing Bad Guy things. Who'da ever thunk it? This applies whether the victim is a law enforcement officer hunted down because of their uniform, or a group in a church hunted down for the color of their skin. Bottom line is that we need to change how easy it is for anyone to get a gun in this country so that we can begin to discern who is the Good Guys With A Gun and who is the Bad Guys With A Gun. (More coming up in a different post on all the "gun laws don't work so we should just get rid of them all" bullshit.)

I find it interesting, though, that there is no "lone wolf" narrative associated when the gun violence is against law enforcement. No, this is obviously the work of an organized effort, probably the (whispers) black people in the Black Lives Matter group. It couldn't possibly be a single individual breaking the law. But all the other "isolated", "lone wolf" incidents against citizens couldn't possibly be the organized efforts of a single group (ahem, NRA) or groups (ahem, skinheads, racists, etc).

We all agree (supposedly) that All Lives Matter. But by highlighting injustice against a single group, all other groups don't automatically become null and void. Just like when extending the right to get married to homosexual couples in this country, we didn't automatically render the right to heterosexual marriages null and void - no matter how much certain Kentucky county clerks and Congressional idiots would like to think it actually did.

There is a growing desire to pin the premeditated murders of police officers on the Black Lives Matter movement. The bottom line is that law enforcement deaths in the line of duty are not on the rise. It's been a shitty couple of weeks for the law enforcement community, and by extension, the country. And that needs to stop. Immediately. But this year overall is no different than any other year, except that the number of on-duty law enforcement deaths by gunfire is actually down, not up.

According to Daily Kos (and their stats are all linked in the article):

Often, people who are sympathetic to police will quote that 83 police have died in the line of duty in 2015. And that is true, but what they aren't telling you is that 13 of those officers had heart attacks or that 19 died in car accidents or that three died because of 9/11-related illnesses.

A total of 26 police officers have been shot and killed in the line of duty this year. Each of those is tragic and a reflection of the violence in our country. This, though, is not some race-based dramatic uptick in police shooting deaths. Forty-seven officers were shot and killed in 2014 and we are on pace to have fewer than that this year. Comparatively, 662 people have been shot and killed by police in America as of September 1 and a total of 792 people have been killed by police altogether this year.

Not only that, but as the media attempts to blame black activists for these deaths, the truth they aren't telling you is that half of all police who've been shot and killed this year were actually African Americans. That, though, is inconvenient for their narrative.

I have no doubt that many, many of the people killed by police had been actively attacking police and that the use of force bby police was completely justified. I also don't doubt that many, many of those killed by police were simply standing with their hands in the air, being transported from one place to another, or smoking a cigarette in the car.

The argument that you get what's coming to you if you don't automatically obey the police goes against every law relating to due process we have. In this country, the fine for mouthing off to a police officer is not death. This is one thing that differentiates us from those terrorist nations we like to rail against. When we give law enforcement the keys to be judge and jury in the field, we violate everything this country was founded on.

Do I think you're an idiot (and probably a bit of an asshole) if you mouth off to the police? Indeed I do. Does that mean you're breaking the law? Nope, it does not.

To those of you in my social streams telling me that you don't want to be my friend anymore if I don't believe ALL LIVES MATTER, I say of course they matter. But I also say that calling out injustice is what this country was founded on. So I will continue to say that Black Lives Matter. Because that is the area where we sadly seem to disagree. So if you don't want to be my friend anymore, I will suffer through the loss like a good little martyr. The fact that we refuse to understand that we can have conversations and agree to disagree escapes so many of us. There is ALWAYS common ground (ok, almost always - pretty sure I don't agree with Ted Cruz on anything. Even if it's just that today is Wednesday). Our country is founded on the right to disagree with each other, but it' also founded on common sense. No, seriously.

However, if you allow disagreements to completely define who you associate with, then you will live a pretty lonely, unexciting, homogeneous life. And that makes me sad for you. *sadface* I will miss you if you unfriend or unfollow me (probably not, actually), but that is your choice. I hope that you eventually learn that it's ok to disagree. It's how you handle those disagreements that makes you the person you are.