Nowhere does the comic say that though?

Why pretend people weren’t already upset about ICE before they killed Good and Pretti? Why feed this person’s delusions that white people didn’t care before this?

That’s kind of insulting to all the people (yes, white people included) who have been protesting and actively resisting since this whole thing started, don’t you think?

The abolish ICE movement is not new, it already existed throughout the first Trump presidency. It mostly stopped during the Biden presidency since he showed good will by reversing the most abusive of Trump’s policies right away (proving he wasn’t a mere figurehead and had the power to provide change), but the core rot of border patrol prison camps and treating migrants like cattle never stopped.

I honestly don’t think of a President as more than a figurehead.

Yet his primaries were the best opportunity to send a clear signal that progressives were fed up with his inwards dehumanizing policies and his outwards genocidal policies. Not many seemed to care as he had no real opposition. At some point people have to take responsibility for being complacent, and instead of feeling fragile about it or personally attacked by it (this whole thread), understanding that this is about learning from the past, and figuring out what to do in order for this to never happen again in the future.

People knew extremely well what ICE was and did, since after Trump won a common “joke” on social media was threats to call ICE on the latinos or arabs that voted for Trump. I remember seeing many of those, and being disgusted at how some progressives will only support minorities as long as they support them, and treated ICE as a joke despite the murders still going on.

Information doesn’t reach people equally. The media is complicit for underrepresenting this issue, makes sense some people haven’t heard about it yet. And the USA’s racist culture of treating migrants like worthless cattle is guilty of making these stories sell less when the media actually tries to talk about them.

This is about people who were aware of the situation and dismissed, minimized, ignored it. Which is a lot of people. People I’ve been having interactions with for the past decade. It isn’t about you. But there’s still a lesson to be learned here: how come it hasn’t reached you, and what can we change on a structural level to make sure this reaches people widely when it inevitably happens again. There’s an actual conversation to be had, and the topic isn’t guilt, it’s stopping the death machine.

Being dismissive, feeling personally guilty, etc. is how you make sure nothing changes, and guarantees people will keep dying in those camps for decades to come because you and most of the other people in this thread were too busy making this all about yourselves instead of discussing the actual racial bias issues at hand.

Condolences regarding your cat. I know how it feels. Can be as bad as losing a close human. Been there multiple times throughout my life and it never gets better. Got three cats right now and I regularly wake up from nightmares in which I dream they died, you have my full empathy on this topic. I hope you’re handling the grief well, if not therapy genuinely helps. Now that this is out of the way, stop throwing yourself as a shield in the way of people who are refusing to confront their racial bias. They don’t need any protection, and you don’t need to be offering them more excuses.

Sorry (not sorry) about lashing out but I’m getting genuinely pissed at this never ending influx of replies three days in. So many egotistical comments from losers jerking each other off all over the place. Done being polite, the fediverse has a gigantic fragility issue regarding race and masculinity, and I won’t stop posting content that addresses both, won’t stop replying to people trying to minimize those issues, and won’t stop shutting up people who derail conversations by making them about themselves.

George Floyd was famously a movement for Black Lives Matter, and there was no suggestion of general strike

There is absolutely a racial bias that it took white people dying for people to get upset at it to the level we are seeing now.

It’s weird that your interpretation is “you’re racist if your upset white people are dying”.

No part of what you said addresses my point, so I’ll repeat myself: Resistance movements have to worry about being coopted from the inside almost as much as they do about being crushed from the outside. Introspection and self-awareness are crucial if this movement is going to survive. Internal conflict is often rightly cited as a danger to any movement, but it’s also a survival mechanism that shouldn’t be shut down out of hand.

Like, we do need to address it but how do we minimize the resistance that comes from the defensiveness of “dont call me bigot?”

I mean, I have no idea but anyone will get defensive over something this simple then they can frankly take a hike. Movements can (and in fact are more likely to) succeed without selling their souls to the centrist devil.

We all need to learn that past mistakes are only a permanent mark if we do nothing to change them

Yes, but the first step of the process of rectifying past mistakes is for someone to point out those mistakes. Someone who rejects criticism of their past mistakes outright is nothing more than a liability.

When it discourages people acting for change from fear or guilt around racism. It seems like a purposefully timed red herring.

“People getting upset when white people are murdered is racial bias” Get fucked.

Don’t act like people are demotivated by the scale of the violence. People are demotivated because you’re calling them racist for being upset when the victims happened to be white, when chances are these same people were already upset even before white people were murdered.

Stop making up this imaginary scenario in which white people never cared until the violence was done against a white person. You’re ignoring the countless efforts that white people have made previously for racial justice movements, all the white people who supported BLM, and all the white people who have been out protesting against ICE since even before they murdered Renee Good.

Sure. Racism will always be a factor.

It should have had /s, apologies. I’m indirecly saying you have a very reasonable viewpoint.

You’re seeing the effectiveness of community organisation efforts to impact larger groups of people. That community was largely established in response to events like Floyd, González and Garcia.

The event with Pretti was filmed from multiple angles by community members. The evidence is unequivocal.

• he was carrying, and didn’t attempt to draw, which establishes ultimately peaceful intent
• the gun was completely removed from him before shooting began
• he was shot while under control of four other men

There was zero justification, and it’s documented. That is why there’s such a major uptick in response. …and that documentation was in direct response to the prior wrongdoing which was not in response to white people being threatened.

This is a lot of people, from different backgrounds, looking out for each other. What more do you want?

I’m white. I heard about them. Garcia lives down the street from me and I have tears in my eyes over his death, over his 9 year old daughter who no longer has a dad

I’m not sure what the point of your argument is here. You have people uniting, in solidarity, against a common enemy. Do you need more?