All advocacy I do is rooted in the idea of empathy and holding up the humanity of every person regardless of record or past and OPPOSING VIOLENCE

I am categorically opposed to physically attacking anyone. Ambushing officers & cheering an attack on police officers is deeply wrong

Police need to stop killing black and brown people, police who kill ANYONE must...MUST be held accountable, and police priorities and the practice of policing need to be seriously reconsidered.

I get how deeply the crisis of legitimacy goes...but that is not okay and not okay

When I say accountable, I do not believe in long and indeterminate sentences, I do not believe in our current "punishment system" I believe we need to change that system radically too...but people DO need to take accountability for the harms they have committed

If you find yourself cheering because protesters are beaten or seriously injured....you should seriously reconsider where your heart is.

If you find yourself cheering because police officers were shot in an ambush...you should seriously reconsider where your heart is

Virtually every terrible thing I have done in my own life happened to some extent because I had deadened my heart to the suffering of other people.

Most of the worst things in the world happen because people stop caring about what happens to other people

Most horrors happen because people together decide that other people are not worthy of being extended the rights and privileges of personhood

Now, a clear and present danger is that our POLITICS are hardening our hearts and allowing us to ignore the humanity in our opponents

Anyone who is engaging in creating categories of people for who you can have no empathy, to whom you cannot extend dignity....rights....personhood....you are starting to engage in....to participate in...what has been called the "genocidal" mindset

This is the process where we stop asking WHY people LIKE US turn to violence, or crime, or to ideas we don't like and instead start to say "those people are not people,, they are not LIKE US, and they deserve violence, degradation, and brutal punishments"

When we start thinking like this, unimaginable horror usually follows because the whole point is that you stop CARING about what happens to someone who is not in your silo....You start cheering violence and brutality against anyone different from you...You start ENJOYING VIOLENCE

If you are taking surplus enjoyment from the suffering of others, please - and I mean this honestly - consider talking with a therapist

In many ways, therapists changed my life...whatever it takes, we all need to grab on to some guard rails soon, things are getting really ugly

I am not suggesting that from a mean place...The biggest change in my own heart and in my own life happened when I was forced to seriously look in the mirror and start addressing the terrible person I had become.

At the core HAS to be caring for others

And this message extends to police too.

Far too often in recent years people wearing badges have killed black and brown people at a vastly disproportionate rate, this cannot stand and must end

The only way to address the crisis of legitimacy is to stop this now

In fact, I just saw a message calling for the "animals who did this" to be found

That is the error, when you start seeing PEOPLE as ANIMALS that is what allows you to call for them to be treated like animals instead of people.

Error replication

Extra-judicial killing is wrong, it is wrong when police do it, it is wrong when people do it, and it is wrong when President's call for the government to do it (sadly a common occurrence at the moment).

Killing is wrong (see federal death penalty)

There HAS TO BE accountability for the - apparently large faction - in the Compton police who are engaging in extrajudicial and illegal behaviors

But again, my message is that we cannot become what we hate