• Eldritch [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    961·
    2 months ago

    They’ll never shut up about mass incarceration in China and how that means communism is authoritharian. You show them this and suddenly it’s all context, individuals and nothing is systemic.

  • miz [any, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    78·
    2 months ago

    if she’s 13, she was 8 or 9 during the BLM summer after George Floyd’s murder and she probably learned a lot from that shit unlike white liberals

  • MarxMadness@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
    104·
    2 months ago

    I don’t think this is a good one to use as agitprop. Read these facts from the perspective of someone who is sympathetic to the left, but who isn’t all the way there yet:

    Bible said the girl gave Beaver Falls police a fake name, Mae Wilson, and a fake birthday that indicated she was 18 years old. Although, she told officers several times she was a juvenile. Police told the girl they would release her to her parents, but she claimed she was homeless and from the Pittsburgh area.

    "Beaver Falls police called Beaver County CYS when she disclosed she was from Pittsburgh. They contacted Allegheny County CYS to try to find any information on her, but since she gave a fake name, no one had any records of the individual,” Bible said.

    Note that one big reason people give fake names upon arrest is that they know they are wanted for more serious crimes.

    There are things to criticize here, but it’s a bad example to push when there are a million other much clearer miscarriages of justice out there.

    • vovchik_ilich [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      63·
      2 months ago

      Sorry, but I’m not believing a word the pigs say. Cross-checking a possible unidentified minor that you’ve had for a few days in jail, with the database of missing people, seems like the most stupidly obvious thing you can do, and if they didn’t do it, that’s negligent as shit.

      • Barx [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
        5·
        2 months ago

        American cops are terrible at the alleged parts of their jobs that involve actually helping people. The only parts they are “good” at are using violence to protect private property, acting like a gang, and being racist.

        This is why key demands when defunding cops is to keep these alleged functions but make them civilian jobs by social services professionals. Having a way to identify and care for children in tough situations is a good thing to do. Cops are possibly the worst people to give that responsibility to.

      • MarxMadness@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
        3·
        2 months ago

        There are things to criticize here, but it’s a bad example to push when there are a million other much clearer miscarriages of justice out there.

        As for believing the story: we should absolutely be skeptical, but “if the facts hurt my position I don’t believe them” is an unfalsifiable stance.

        • vovchik_ilich [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
          46·
          2 months ago

          It’s not “if the facts hurt my position I don’t believe them”, it’s about “cops have a record of bullshitting to try and save their asses to the point of bodycams becoming a necessity to save the public from their constant lying”

          • MarxMadness@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
            2·
            2 months ago

            That plays well for other leftists, but not for people who aren’t there yet. It’s much easier to get people on board with “we should be skeptical and check the cops’ story” than it is to get them to wholesale reject anything the police say. And if the latter is your position, you can get proven wrong.

            • vovchik_ilich [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
              24·
              2 months ago

              I’m not talking in hexbear to make optics and to make leftists look good, I’m talking my mind because I feel like this is a safe space to do so. Anyway, optics aren’t everything, being on the right side of things is important. For example, saying that there’s no ongoing genocide in China (look at my last post) is important regardless of it meaning alienating people right now, because in 10 years time it will be obvious to everyone, and then when people are like “oh my god how could we be so dumb to believe it”, you can explain why analysis of material conditions from a leftist perspective gives better results historically. An actual example of this, would be the leftists opposing the invasion of Iraq, as seen on a 2005 debate between Michael Parenti and Christopher Kitchens in which Parenti rightly predicts that in 5-10 years time, the situation in Iraq won’t be better.

            • Barx [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
              5·
              2 months ago

              That is not my experience. It is much easier to convince people that cops are just organized crime for capital than to achieve anything worthwhile by pretending they deserve the benefit of the doubt.

      • MarxMadness@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
        3·
        2 months ago

        I’m saying it’s bad agitprop. It’s bad agitprop because there are a lot of important facts beyond “a 13 year old was in jail.” If you present a story as a horrible injustice but someone clicks through and reads “she told police she was an adult, waffled on that so it was guaranteed she was lying about her ID one way or the other, and never gave any real info that could be verified,” you look like you didn’t read what you shared, or you look like you’re exaggerating.

        There are factually innocent people in prison. People keep getting beaten by cops at the drop of a hat. You have cops catching themselves on video lying. This is what we want to use as agitprop, not “the cops kept someone in jail for two weeks because they didn’t know who they were, and they didn’t know who they were because the person lied to them.”

        • niph [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
          22·
          2 months ago

          Have you considered that not everything that is shared is shared because of its usefulness as agitprop? That people communicate for reasons other than winning internet arguments?

          • MarxMadness@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
            3·
            2 months ago

            If you don’t want to talk about the value of this as agitprop, don’t respond to a comment talking about the value of this as agitprop.

            • egg1918 [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
              15·
              2 months ago

              If you don’t want to talk about the value of shitting your pants, then you shouldn’t have replied to my comment about the value of shitting your pants

              smuglord

    • autismdragon [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      49·
      2 months ago

      I’m a little bit worried about your own instincts if you dont think “a 13 year old was in a cage for two weeks” isnt viscerally upsetting to anyone whos “sympathetic to the left”.

      • MarxMadness@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
        41·
        2 months ago

        It is viscerally upsetting, especially for those charges. The problem with using it as agitprop is that anyone who reads the actual story is presented with a scenario that undercuts that feeling – she lied about being an adult, then changed her story, and never provided a way of verifying her ID (parents’ names, home address, a phone number, etc.). It comes across as a bait-and-switch.

        There is no reason to push a story like that as agitprop when there are a million equally upsetting cases that have no such caveats.

        • Nakoichi [they/them]@hexbear.netMEnglish
          27·
          2 months ago

          This isn’t the town square this isn’t for optics this isn’t for you. Rethink why you chose to make these comments and then please fuck off until you do serious self crit. She is a child for fuck sake.

          • kittin [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
            13·
            2 months ago

            Not to mention the missing child report. Dozens to hundreds of legal officers must have been interacting with her. I guess they didn’t case the search for the child net very far for some reason.

    • FALGSConaut [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      44·
      2 months ago

      someone who is sympathetic to the left, but who isn’t all the way there yet

      LIB

      imagine trying to excuse the pigs locking up a child for two weeks by trying to blame the child

      • MarxMadness@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
        2·
        2 months ago

        Yes, we absolutely should be talking to people who are sympathetic to the left but aren’t there yet. The goal is to build a mass movement, not sit in a tiny leftist club and call everyone outside of it fascists.

        • FALGSConaut [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
          33·
          2 months ago

          Tbh I don’t want to be in the same group of people that are fine with pigs locking a child up for two weeks without doing the bare minimum of trying to identify them. The cops can try to blame her all they want but ultimately they’re the ones holding all the cards. I don’t believe for a second they tried their hardest to reunite her with her family or even try to properly identify her

    • RiotDoll [she/her, she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
      35·
      2 months ago

      i genuinely haven’t seen a post this bad in a while here, which probably speaks more to my curating than a lack of said, but oh my God MarxMadness get off of this hill, stop dying, and go figure out the different ways you might be wrong, like be very goddamn introspective because the veneer of rationality you’re hiding behind is thinner than the lead paint chips you’ve apparently been eating - nothing you’ve said is rational, but simultaneously nothing you’ve said has an ounce of heart or empathy either. Go figure out how to tell yourself you’re wrong and stop posting until you figure it out

      • MarxMadness@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
        2·
        2 months ago

        Is no one here trying to figure out how to bring more people left?

        It’s maddening trying to talk about how to persuade people. You bring people along step by step, with stuff that’s really hard to argue. You don’t throw them into the deep end right away and give them easy things to push back on. We do have to actually do politics, we do have to actually think through how to move someone from skepticism to agreement.

        Somehow we got to where any tactical discussion like this is met with “we should just yell at people in Maoist Standard English and if they don’t immediately agree we write them off.”

        • ashinadash [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
          26·
          2 months ago

          I think if someone is willing to look at this and justify pigs locking up a kid for two weeks… That should be something that disgusts anyone but the grossest bootlicking chuds. Might be a hard person to “pull left” if they justify locking up children because the cops didn’t check their stupid database at all.

          • MarxMadness@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
            1·
            2 months ago

            The story is not “cops arrest kid, find out kid is 13, then lock kid up for two weeks anyway.” It’s understandable to think that’s the story, because it’s implied the way the tweet is worded. The story is “cops arrest person, person says they’re an adult, person changes story and never provides any verifiable information, cops keep person locked up until they find out she’s 13, then they release her.”

            And that’s the problem with using it as agitprop: when you tell a story that promises something big, and then closer inspection fails to deliver, people write your story off and trust you less in the future. It’s The Boy Who Cried Wolf.

            • AOCapitulator [they/them, she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
              14·
              2 months ago

              when you tell a story that promises something big, and then closer inspection fails to deliver, people write your story off

              Who the FUCK are you talking about?

              Liberals who check what the facts are and then change their tune when proven wrong(lmfao)? republicans who care about reality? NO ONE FUCKING CHECKS SHIT LIKE THIS IN THE FIRST PLACE, if they did we would not be where we are politically

            • AOCapitulator [they/them, she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
              10·
              2 months ago

              hey dumbass, if cops were real people with real accountability and really cared for communities, they would have INSTANTLY searched for missing children in the area that match the description JUST IN CASE this very young looking person might be lying about their age.

              Stop fucking giving cops the benefit of the fucking doubt

            • Rom [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
              9·
              2 months ago

              But why did it take them two weeks to figure out her identity when there was a missing person’s report out for her, presumably with her picture attached, since before she was even arrested? They even knew she was from Pittsburgh and they didn’t even think to check the missing persons reports from that city.