Many of my listeners reached out over the weekend to make sure I was OK. Thank you.
This is a tiny podcast, hosted by someone even tinier. I am not famous. I never make the news.
And I still haven’t made the news. I was, however, arrested, as some of you know, in Washington DC. last Thursday.
I am going ahead with the show. I try not to hold anything back, but on this specific incident I cannot comment on an ongoing criminal matter.
Thank you to everyone who contacted me. I will have plenty to say when this matter is settled. All I can tell you is this…
If you’re an American citizen, or if you’re thinking of visiting America—do not get arrested.
This is coming from a middle-aged white man who has zero outstanding bench warrants. No priors.
I’m a middle-aged white man who, because of the way I look and sound, could be mistaken for an upstanding member of society.
If this is what I went through, all I can say on the matter is: Do not get arrested.
Welcome to the Mop Up for Juneteenth, 2022. I’m David Feldman coming to you from an airshaft overlooking a parking garage somewhere in Manhattan where the temperature is 70 degrees and sunny.
I have never been more grateful to be back in New York City– this malignant cesspool of rotting narcissists.
The noise, the stench, the emotional and physical impositions. I’ll take all of it over what passes for civility in Washington D.C.
Today is Juneteenth, a national holiday celebrating the end of slavery in the United States.
And by slavery, I mean dark skinned Africans held against their will by private landowners to work on their plantations.
Dark skinned Africans were treated no differently than physical, lifeless property, traded and sold and separated from mothers and children like animals.
Free labor. Slavery was about free labor. Cotton, sugar cane and tobacco had to be picked.
The most efficient way to keep labor costs down was to round up Africans bring them to America and pay them nothing other than food, water, clothing, and a roof over their heads.
They were stacked onto ships like pieces of plywood, brought to this country in shackles, in airless, windowless coffins, and the ones unlucky enough to survive were sold to the highest bidder. We’re talking about women and children as well.
As Professors Adnan Hussain and Gerald Horne taught us on this show, the idea of race was invented, here in North America, to justify slavery.
Academics, theologians working for the slave traders couldn’t complete this total and all-encompassing dehumanization of Africans unless they invented a justification. And that justification is the concept of race.
Isn’t it interesting that America invented Jazz, baseball, standup comedy, and race? And what do they all have in common. All four never would have been worth talking about without Africans.
When you see someone as white or brown that is not seeing someone’s race. That is an act of dehumanization that Americans were trained to perform to justify subjugating people of color.
Let me repeat. This is something Professor Adnan Husain first taught me.
Race did not exist until those who profited off the slave trade needed to justify the brutal treatment of Africans and of course Native Americans.
The white men who wrote our founding documents were not just racists, they invented racism.
Without Thomas Jefferson there is no Eugenics program that begins in the early 20th century right here in America.
Without our eugenics program that began right here in America there is no science to bolster Hitler’s theory of a master race.
Without our founding fathers essentially coining the term master race, there is no Jim Crow South after the civil war. And without our Jim Crow South there is nothing for white south Africa to study in 1948 when they first implement apartheid.
We didn’t invent slavery. We invented the justification for it. Race.
We invented Apartheid.
Now, understand, Hitler’s genocide, south Africa’s apartheid would have happened with or without our founding fathers. But our founding fathers provided the intellectual heft to justify these crimes against humanity.
More importantly, our founding fathers, America proved to Hitler and South Africa that you can do all these things and get away with it.
What’s especially galling is our Founding Fathers baked all this into our nation’s character, even though they knew it was wrong.
Our founding fathers believed one thing, and did the other, for their own economic and political expediency.
Racism is baked into our soul. And so is believing one thing and doing the opposite if it furthers your political or economic interests.
Thomas Jefferson, who said all men are created equal in his Declaration of Independence, wrote nine years later in Notes on the State of Virginia,” that Africans were children who could not be taught.”
He said that, but he didn’t believe that.
How could he when he had already taught his slave Sally Hemmings to speak French and fathered several children with her.
Thomas Jefferson told Americans that blacks weren’t bright enough to learn. That’s what he said.
He did not believe that.
He only wanted others to believe that.
Because he couldn’t part financially with his slaves. Because the men who voted for him needed slaves.
Monticello, his mountaintop home, served as a tiny manufacturing town where his infamous Mulberry Row showcased all the goods and services produced and designed by his unteachable childlike slaves who were accomplished carpenters, builders, blacksmiths, nail makers and vintners.
Thomas Jefferson who said all Americans were entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, owned 600 slaves, many of whom were his own children.
He never once openly denounced slavery.
He kept slaves and he also kept what he really believed about slavery to himself.
The same way Republicans today denounce abortion while keeping to themselves what they really believe not just about abortion but the people who are against it.
Trump, both Bushes, Ronald Reagan—they support a woman’s right to choose. But they keep that to themselves.
And so, baked
into America’s founding is the big lie, the willingness if not the necessity to say anything if it means not paying for labor or furthering your political agenda.
Adam Smith wrote the wealth of nations in 1776. The same year Thomas Jefferson wrote the declaration of independence.
Capitalism, and America were both set into stone in 1776.
America arose not from the age of enlightenment; it arose from the age of capitalism. The enlightenment, Rousseau and Locke were merely fig leaves to disguise the stark-naked greed that animated our nation’s founding.
We fought the British so we could sell tea that came from Holland. This was a war to free up the marketplace.
It was wrapped in freedom, but freedom for white men. Freedom for white men to make money. Hyman Roth in Godfather Two could have been describing colonial America when he said of Cuba, “Here we are, protected, free to make our profits without Kefauver, the goddamn Justice Department and the F.B.I. ninety miles away, in partnership with a friendly government.”
That’s how America was founded. By white gangsters. It’s no coincidence that going into 1776, the man leading our army, George Washington, was the wealthiest man in America. He was, as Smedley Butler eventually described himself, a gangster for capitalism.
That’s who our Founding Fathers were. They believed only in freedom for themselves and only those who looked and talked like them.
Twenty-five, nearly half of the white men who signed the constitution owned a total of 1,400 African slaves.
Of the first 12 presidents, eight owned slaves.
You cannot separate the founding of America from capitalism.
America and capitalism were defined the very same year.
You cannot separate capitalism from slavery. The great wealth Adam Smith describes was built on the scarred backs of slaves.
You cannot separate America from slavery. White men were born with the inalienable right to free labor.
And it’s not just free labor. Our founding fathers saw these black human beings in and of themselves as an investment.
From the time of its founding, America commodified human beings.
Like the Nazis, Jefferson was a prodigious bookkeeper, and wrote to George Washington, who also owned slaves. Jefferson told Washington that because his own slaves were reproducing at such a healthy clip, he was earning a four percent dividend each year off their offspring who he could then sell.
Jefferson marveled at his four percent profit off the slaves’ yield. Not their agricultural yield. The children they yielded.
While he was making babies with Sally Hemmings, he was breeding identical slaves so he could then sell them.
Jefferson and Washington delighted in the commodification of human beings, and that delight continues to this day all the way up to Facebook and Google who mine your very existence so they can sell that information to the highest bidder.
It’s not just our labor that has been commodified. It’s our entire existence. In a much gentler iteration of slavery, our lives are now commodities.
Jefferson didn’t write our constitution. At the time of the constitutional convention, he was off in Paris with his slave Sally Hemmings.
Our constitution was written, essentially, by the equally degenerate slaveholder and fellow Virginian, James Madison.
Our two founding documents, the declaration of Indolence, and our constitution were written by two southern slave owners.
Both of whom knew intellectually, and morally that slavery was evil. But not pernicious enough to end it.
How many wars, how many industries since have we as Americans known full well were murderously evil, but not murderously evil to put an end to.
How many of us bear witness to human carnage but say nothing for fear it will be economically or politically disadvantageous?
Jefferson and Madison knew slavery was wrong, but they protected it. Fought for it. Created talking points used to this day, like state rights, to defend slavery.
Because in America just because something is wrong it doesn’t mean we have to put an end to it, so long as the right people can get rich off it.
The Electoral College and The Senate were created to protect slaveholders.
The same way the senate filibuster was invented in the 20th century to protect the Jim Crow South.
And all three are still being used to keep the ancestors of slaves in a diminished state economically and politically.
James Madison, a tobacco farmer, drafted the constitution and the bill of rights. He is one of three founding fathers to pen the federalist papers.
If you’re a strict textualist, sitting on the supreme court, one who interprets the constitution by reading the original intent of our founding fathers, you study James Madison who wrote it all.
The federalist society gave us Judge Amy Coney Barret, Neil Gorsuch, and the Rapist Brett Kavanaugh—because like Antonin Scalia they all read the constitution through the prism of what James Madison meant what he drafted it.
In other words. When they decide on say protecting voting rights for African Americans the very first thing they ask is, “What would James Madison say?” James Madison who…
- Said Africans were not human, but rather property. And died having never freed his slaves.
- Came up with the idea to Write into the constitution that Africans should be counted as three fifths of a human being. Not because they were human beings, but because he wanted blacks to be counted in the census so southern states could get a larger share of congressmen. And so…
- He claimed Africans were not humans, but, when it came time to getting more members of congress apportioned to Virginia, he was willing to say Africans were three fifths of a human. Because democracy is all about compromise.
- But Madison knew they were humans. He was lying to the country and himself.
- Madison wrote in private diaries that he intellectually saw something seriously wrong with slavery. But decided not to free his slaves to maximize profits on his tobacco plantation.
- He refused to speak out against slavery to gain a political foothold on the voters of Virginia all of whom were white male owners of property, and a lot of that property was slaves.
This speaks volumes to our current political discourse in America.
The man who drafted our bill of rights, the man who drafted our constitution, the man whose original intent most of our supreme court justices divine before issuing a new ruling—that man, James Madison said what he didn’t believe to further his financial and economic agenda.
Slavery was genocide. Madison knew that. But James Madison remained silent because that genocide satisfied his economic and political agenda.
That’s our sacred founding father James Madison.
Turns out here in America evil happens when good men DO something.
And that means, Baked into the founding of America is a patriarchy, a white patriarchy, that is perfectly comfortable expounding positions they know are wrong, writing laws they know are wrong, supporting policies that they know are wrong, fighting wars they know are wrong– so long as it all furthers either their economic or political agenda.
We saw last week during the hearings that there are plenty of republican lawyers who knew it was wrong to spread the big lie, that Biden won, lawyers, officers of the court, who knew they were overturning an election, and that it was criminal.
But they also knew our founding fathers believed that there’s a difference between what you believe is right and what will further your political and economic agenda.
John Eastman, and Jeffrey Clark, inside the Justice Department, attempting to overthrow the election, have more in common with James Madison than anybody sitting on the January 6 committee.
Kenzinger and Cheney, it pains me to admit are profiles in courage. By the very definition of JFK’s book profiles in courage, they are willing to pay a political price for what is right.
James Madison and Thomas Jefferson were not profiles in courage.
The original intent of our founding fathers was say and do whatever is necessary to keep white men in power.
Were the men who wrote our founding documents products of the time. No. The times were a product of these white men.
And so, this country is built on a nasty institutional lie.
Enough Americans knew slavery was wrong. James Madison, who drafted our constitution, writing in his notes on the federal convention of 1787 called slavery one of the most oppressive exercises of power by man over man, and that it ran completely contrary, he said, to this age of enlightenment. He knew it was wrong.
George Mason, also from Virginia, said slavery would surely bring G-d’s judgement down on the American people.
Gouverneur Morris, that’s his name. He wasn’t a Gouverneur, called slavery wicked, and nefarious.
John Adams said during the constitutional convention, “I have, through my whole life, held the practice of slavery in …abhorrence.”
People knew slavery was wrong in 1776. Some people said it was wrong. And then there was Jefferson and Madison who wouldn’t admit it was wrong. They said privately slavery was necessary but knew deep in their hearts that slavery was evil. Therefore, they are evil.
George Washington owned slaves.
It’s not like nobody told him it was wrong to rip the teeth out of one so he could be fitted with a set of lifelike dentures.
He did it anyway.
He knew slavery was wrong. That’s why he insisted that upon his death, all his slaves be freed.
Why did so many republican congressmen ask for pardons after January 6? Well, why do you free slaves after you die if you don’t know slavery is wrong.
Of course, George never had any children. The father of our country was sterile and or impotent. I suspect had he fathered a child he would have left them those slaves even knowing it was wrong.
Our constitution was written by men who knew slavery was wrong. Were told slavery was wrong. Who admitted slavery was wrong, but defended it anyway?
Because it furthered their financial and economic agenda—at the expense of our nation’s soul.
That’s who every politician, every American leader, every intellectual is.
They remain silent.
We say and do whatever it takes to further our economic and political agenda. No matter who suffers.
Do you honestly believe Stephen Moore from the club for growth believes cutting taxes for the wealthy will balance the budget? Of course not. But like our founding fathers, he says whatever it takes to further his economic and political agenda.
Do you really think Joe Biden believes private health insurance companies are better than Medicare for all?
Do you really believe Joe Manchin thinks America has a perfectly functioning social safety net that protects children?
Look at how the right wing will twist themselves in knots to justify an 18-year-old’s right to purchase an Ar-15.
It is economically and politically expedient for the gun manufacturers, the NRA, and the Republicans to put as many ar-15 into the hands of as many people as possible.
And they will say whatever it takes, from we don’t need new gun laws we need to enforce the laws already on the books, to the only things that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun, to we need to arm kindergarten teachers with Glocks, to let’s have one door so kids don’t die from gun fire, they simply die from a fire.
That is who this country is. It’s baked into our DNA.
Say whatever it takes to protect your political and economic advantage.
Our founding fathers were all pint-sized versions of Kelly Anne Conway.
Say whatever is necessary. Lie to the country, lie to yourself—it doesn’t matter what the truth is. All that matters is furthering your political and financial agenda.
Our founding fathers would look at today’s congress, today’s federal government and would say, “The system works the way we planned it.”
Our government, the original intent of our government, was to merge the political with the economic.
Why did Lincoln fight the civil war? Because slavery only became truly abhorrent to the North when the North realized it could no longer benefit financially from it.
Slavery became wrong in the north when slavery wasn’t needed in the north.
New York city almost seceded. New York was financing slavery, insuring slaves, commodifying slaves, and the crops they picked.
New York almost did stay within the union.
In 1861 New York was America’s financial hub, and the confederacy’s financial hub. During the first three months of 1861 New York City Mayor Fernando Wood addressed the city council several times proposing that the city secedes with quote our aggrieved brethren of the slave south.
Eventually New York city did the right thing, they stayed within the union.
But you could hear the conversation among the new York liberals. “Yes, of course slavery is wrong. Of course, I believe getting rid of it is essential. But let’s not make sure the cure is worse than the poison.”
It’s what we hear today about eliminating health insurance companies. What are you going to do? Destroy an entire sector of our economy? Yes.
It’s what we hear about guns. Gun manufacturers are part of our economy? We can’t just wipe out an entire industry by regulating it to death.
Yes, of course I know America has destroyed Vietnam or Afghanistan or Iraq by sending troops in. But if we remove the troops, we will only make things worse.
Yes, of course fossil fuels are destroying the planet. You think I don’t know that? But to shift to green energy suddenly and drastically will destroy a lot of businesses.
That’s who founded the country. Increment lists, bullshit artists who will say whatever it takes to further their economic and political interests.
Like I said, we are a nation of Kelly Anne Conaway’s. Or to put it another way, a nation of grifters.
Our nation is run by waiters and waitresses who serve us a ham sandwich but insist it’s exactly what we ordered—macaroni and cheese.
And we are a nation of customers who eat the ham sandwich convinced its macaroni and cheese.
We believe the lie.
We believe the slaves were freed on Juneteenth.
But slavery continued, just by another name.
The plantation was replaced by our prison system.
And Slavery, under the 13th amendment, didn’t end, it expanded. Not to other states but to other people. Our prisons became the new plantation, and some of those prisons had white people in it.
By now, most of you are familiar with the 13th amendment, which ended slavery in 1865, with the added loophole that anyone held in prison could be forced to work for free.
Ohio State University law professor, civil rights activist and author of The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander says there are more African Americans behind bars, or under the watchful eye of our nation’s parole system, today than there were slaves in 1850.
Professor Alexander famously writes that while black people make up 13 percent of our population, they are more than 41 percent of our prison population.
Do black people commit more crimes than white people?
No, they are arrested more than white people.
They are prosecuted more than white people.
According to the NAACP a black person is five times more likely than a white person to be stopped by a police officer for no just cause.
The more times you get stopped, the more likely you are to get arrested.
The police target black people because that is what police have always done. Modern day policing has its roots in the slave patrols of the 1700s.
Police in America started as Armed officials searching for runaways and tamping down any threat of a slave rebellion.
Then, after the passage of the 13th amendment, which freed the slaves, but allowed for free prison labor, police in the south became the enforcer of black codes which rounded up black men on false charges of vagrancy to lock these men up and use them once again as a source of free labor.
Because of the loophole in the 13th amendment, black men are being arrested because while this country outlawed slavery it decided to turn our prisons into a source of free labor.
According to a new report by the ACLU two out of three prisoners in America work either for private industry or the government. If they chose not to work, they are punished and end up having their sentences extended. Some of the work for free, some of them work for pennies per day. According to the ACLU They manufacture products like office furniture, mattresses, license plates, dentures, glasses, traffic signs, athletic equipment, and uniforms. They cultivate and harvest crops, work as welders and carpenters, and work in meat and poultry processing plants.
That’s why we have police. To find free labor.
The idea of professional police force, working for the city is an early 20th century idea.
Starting in the early 1900s, police were there to be an arm of the state. To enforce public order.
The police myth is that the police are there to prevent and solve crime.
But historical analysis reveals that is a myth. Police do not prevent or solve crime. They occasionally solve crimes. But their track record at solving crimes, especially rape and murder has dropped precipitously.
The truth is, as you about to find out, they were never any good at preventing or solving crime because
The purpose of the police is to restore order as defined by the state.
The purpose of the police is to be an arm of the state. Back in the 1700s the police were there to prevent slave uprisings. Today the purpose of the police is to prevent the people from turning into an angry mob.
The myth is they’re there to solve and prevent crime. As I said, the statistics reveals they have never been good at preventing and solving crime, and they have gotten worse not better at it.
It’s time for America to grow up. There is a myth about our police.
According to Professor Shima Baradaran Baughman who teaches at S.J. Quinney College of Law, police solve only two percent of major crimes. And she says that’s being generous.
The police will admit they don’t solve most major crimes. They admit that to increase funding for police.
But their record in not solving crime is far worse than they are willing to admit.
According to Professor Baughman’s recent article in The Conversation, it is an absolute rarity for a crime to be reported to the police that results in a criminal conviction.
She says eleven percent of all serious crimes result in an arrest, and only two percent result in a conviction.
Here’s the other alarming fact. Because the American people have already internalized, but not admitted that the police don’t solve crimes, half of all major crimes goes unreported.
To put it generously, half of all major crimes committed in this country go unreported.
According to my math, that means of all the major crimes committed in America, the police solve one percent.
One percent of all serious crimes in America are solved by our police.
accord¬ing to a Justice Depart¬ment analysis of viol¬ent crime in 2016
80 percent of rapes and sexual assaults go unre¬por¬ted.
According to RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) America’s largest anti-sexual violence organization Only 310 out of every 1,000 sexual assaults are reported to police. That means more than 2 out of 3 go unreported.
According to Andrew Van Dam
writing for the Washington Post on October 6, 2018, in the middle of the rapist Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s hearings, “About 0.7 percent of rapes and attempted rapes end with a felony conviction for the perpetrator.”
Let me repeat. 0.7 percent of rapes and attempted rapes end with a felony conviction.
There are more than 100,000 rape kits that remain untested. We’re not sure of the exact number, because there are 18,000 police agencies in America, and nobody is keeping track of them.
But let’s say there are conservatively speaking than 100,000 untested rape kits.
That means. A woman is raped. She goes to the police. She submits to a physical exam. She strips, spread her legs and a detective swabs her vagina for DNA.
And then she is told after that second indignity that the DNA will be sent to a lab to confirm that 1.) she has been raped and 2.) the DNA will be entered into a national database to see if it matches any other DNA found in any other rape victims.
The woman is sent home. And she tries to forget what happened to her, while the police who swabbed her vagina, have no intention of ever processing that rape kit.
An untested rape kit is sexual assault. Why are you swabbing a woman’s vagina if you’re not going to test the results?
That is sexual assault, and the detective who does the swabbing and then leaves it in the evidence room should be arrested for sexual assault.
There are close to one million police officers in America. More than at any time in American history.
It is customary currently for anyone who is critical of the police to say, “Many, if not most, of our police officers are good people.”
It is customary currently for anyone who is critical of the police to say, “It just a few rotten apples.”
I’m not going to say that.
Because It is the job of police, we are told, to prevent, and report a crime.
They don’t do that. But even worse they are supposed to
preventing and especially report crimes committed by our police.
Crimes committed by our police are the worst crimes. How can we expect the law to be applied when the people applying the laws are criminals?
In Texas and Ohio, for example, it is illegal not to report a crime that caused serious bodily injury or death.
You will be charged as an accessory after the fact if you witness a felony being committed and then assist in keeping that felony secret from the police.
Given what you now know about our police.
While most cops don’t beat random suspects. How many cops stood around watching someone like Derek Chauvin kneeling on a black man’s neck, and didn’t stop him, and didn’t report it.
What percentage of police officers just to get along, keep their mouths shut when they witness one of their fellow officers committing a felony? How many officers have committed felonies simply by not reporting that felony to their supervisors?
Of the one million cops in America. What percentage of those cops committed the felony of witnessing a crime being committed by another cop and failed to stop and or report it?
A few bad apples?
This is now the part of the discussion where I’m accused of hating the cops.
I don’t hate the cops. I want to know why the cops hate us.
This is the part of the conversation where I’m accused of being weak on crime.
I’m not weak on crime. I want to know why the cops are.
Fewer than one percent of rapes result in a conviction. Why are the police weak on crime?
One percent of all major crimes are solved by our police. Why are the police weak on crime?
I believe in police. I believe in locking people up. I believe there are evil people in this world. Most of them in our corporate suites. And I believe the police should be arresting these people and putting them behind bars.
I am anything but soft on crime.
But it’s time to decide who the real criminals are. And to start asking why our police do such a piss poor job arresting them?
The answer is the police aren’t there to solve or prevent crimes.
They are there to protect property, property owners, and the state.
The police, the local police, are not there to protect the people. The local police are there to protect the state from the people.
The purpose of the police is to maintain order which is just another word for the status quo.
The purpose of the police is to make sure ordinary American citizens get it in their heads to do what they are told.
The purpose of the police is to arrest Christian Smalls, which they did, outside an Amazon fulfillment center trying to unionize the workers. The police are not there to arrest any executives at Amazon who violate real laws regarding safety that cause injury and death.
The police protect Amazon.
The city streets are filled with amazon delivery trucks illegally using sidewalks as way stations to sort thousands of boxes that should have been sorted back at the fulfillment center.
But instead of ticketing the amazon delivery trucks, the police ticket ordinary citizens for double parking, or even worse, for having a busted taillight that means you have a fix it tickets and must show proof that you fixed it otherwise there’s a bench warrant.
The police work for amazon.
We have a cottage industry of pundits, academics and politicians warning that democracy is on life support, and we are about to become a police state.
Black people know that this already is a police state.
Police states, start with the police.
All the tools for a full-blown police state have already been put into place. And by full blown police state I mean white men and women start getting locked up.
I mean, Karens suddenly become afraid to call the police.
All the tools, all the instruments are there. All it takes is an emergency. A terrorist attack. Maybe a riot. Maybe an economic collapse. Maybe so many people who are homeless the government clears the homeless camps to incite a reason to declare martial law.
We heard the testimony. Donald Trump was looking for any excuse to declare emergency powers, which already exist.
We are but one click away from the police being given full reign to do what they are there for. To keep us in line, or in prison.
It is not patriotic to love the police. It is patriotic to always hold the police under suspicion. Because the police are human.
They are capable of anything.
It’s patriotic to hold the police under suspicion and try to take away as much power from them as we can.
We need the police. To prevent and solve crime. They do not do that.
The real purpose of the police is to arrest as many people as possible and get as many American citizens as possible into the system. To get our fingerprints, to get out mugshots, to have us on record. To know who we are. Because a populace that is in the system will be more obedient to the state.
The purpose of the police is to arrest ordinary workers. To fingerprint them, to make them feel powerless and expendable. The purpose of the police is to make a compliant labor force.
The purpose of the police is to harass the American people, to create outstanding bench warrants on a busted taillight, so the American people can be fined.
The police pay the city’s bills by arresting Americans, by charging them with misdemeanors and forcing them to pay court fees and fines so the rich don’t have to pay taxes.
The purpose of the police is to create outstanding warrants so that when you’re pulled over for a minor infraction, they can look up your record, find that outstanding bench warrant, and now have reason to arrest you, and if you’re poor, hold you indefinitely to await your trial.
The purpose of the police is to fill our nation’s prisons and jails. Because the fuller our prisons and jails the more money is spent keeping people behind bars, and the more people behind bars the more sources there are of cheap or free labor.
The purpose of the police is to find the sadists and give them something to do, to absorb them into the system so they don’t become a threat to it.
The police are job recruiters. They are patrolling the streets looking for men who they think will fit nicely into our for-profit prison system.
It is not patriotic to give blind loyalty to our police.
You have the right to say whatever you want to say so long as what you say doesn’t result in a crime.
You have the right to protest, to peacefully assemble outside your government, or outside the homes of the people who control or work for our government. You have the right to a lawyer. You have the right to demand a warrant before the police enter your home. You have the right not to answer any questions from the time of your arrest all the way through your trial. You have the right to a quick and speedy trial, and not to be held without due process. You have the right not to be charged excessive bail, and you have the right to be spared cruel and unusual punishment.
Joe Strummer sang, “Know your rights.”
Know your rights.
And then demand your rights.
And exercise those rights. Because if those rights are not exercised, they will become as out of shape as the cop arresting you.
I’m an American. I don’t have to back the blue. Instead, I chose to back what the police have sworn an oath to protect. The constitution of the United States of America.
When I am handcuffed and arrested, I shouldn’t have to ask politely how many more hours it will be before someone reads me my Miranda rights.