gAlienLifeform

@ gAlienLifeform @lemmy.world

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3 yr. ago

15h ago

Cook County prosecutors drop charges against 19 arrested during clergy-led protest at Broadview ICE facility
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gAlienLifeform @lemmy.world 15h ago
Yep, you can tell by how the prosecutors went out of their way to bullshit about how the police were totally justified in arresting these people in the first place
“Although sufficient evidence exists to support this prosecution, considering the totality of the circumstances, we are declining to proceed,” the Cook County state’s attorney’s office said in a statement Monday.
Also how they let protesters twist in the wind for as long as possible
Woolf, of Lake Street Church of Evanston, said it shouldn’t have taken three months to dismiss the cases.
Also also,
Of the two people arrested that day whose cases were not dropped, one is charged with mob action and the other is charged with resisting a police officer.
Good to see that protesters and voters were able to force these prosecutors to do the right thing, but the whole system is still completely fucked

17h ago

Louisiana could spend $82 million more on prisons as inmate population grows

First of all, we shouldn't just talk about crime rates without acknowledging that the justice system that renders those verdicts is full of shit (arc)

Louisiana is a hotbed of wrongful conviction. It has the second highest rate of known wrongful convictions in the nation. New Orleans has the highest rate in the country among cities. There have been documented exonerations in 17 Louisiana parishes.

Secondly, whatever you think about the people of Louisiana, there's no real basis for saying they've changed a whole bunch recently, but what has are their laws -

Two years after Louisiana overhauled its sentencing laws to lengthen prison stays, the corrections department says it needs another $82 million in state funds for its annual operating budget.

First, that was a really nice story, thank you for taking the time to write all of that out

Secondly, yeah, the intellectual colonization of Christianity is a really tragic thing. I was personally raised by people who had been abused by the kind of conservative and dominating religion you described when they were kids and who had left their churches, so I was allowed to believe whatever I wanted growing up and just relate to the Bible as a collection of cool stories and good quotes (as well as some weird and bad ones), imo not as good as Kurt Vonnegut but better a lot better than Tom Clancy (look I read whatever was on the shelves of my local library whether it was good or not).

What I'm trying to say there is it isn't a personal thing for me either way, because I never really got bullied by a bad church or had a strong family connection with a good one. But I have seen both of these things in other people, and either way, whether they hate/fear the church or associate or with family and community, the reflexive emotional responses those people have had were undeniably genuine and persistent. Those experiences (along with a lot of neurological research suggesting most human beings have brains that are structurally predisposed towards wanting a connection with a god-like force, which is probably why so many separate groups have independently come up with religions) have really convinced me that religious belief is an almost inextricably deep part of a person's psyche (a lot like sexuality and gender actually).

And yeah, there have definitely been concerted efforts by states and rich people and tyrannical assholes of all sorts who want to use this thing that has such a deep hold on most people to justify themselves since Constantine. But also there's a bunch of examples of this backfiring and religion causing people to rebel, from Martin Luther to John Brown. And also, there's a ton of examples of religion bringing people together from sides that shouldn't have gotten along and getting them to work together, from the Christmas truce in WWI to the American Civil Rights movement bringing white churches from the north to volunteer alongside black churches in the south to register black voters.

So, yeah, religious belief is a really complicated thing with good and bad aspects, but it is a powerful thing and something everyone needs to sort out for themselves one way or another. It sounds like you're walking your path now and I'm glad to hear it!