What are the police doing?

I am writing this after the non-indictment of Daniel Pantaleo for killing Eric Garner.  Since we have the video in this case, it just goes to show how hard it is to get an indictment against a police officer.   There’s no disputing the facts.  Mr. Garner probably was selling tobacco illegally.  He may have argued with the officers arresting him for selling this tobacco.  He was choked to death by the officer.  The person recording the interaction was charged for filming what happened, but the officer who choked Mr. Garner is not going to be charged?

White people need to understand, the protests are not so much about an individual case as much as the fact that every week or so, there’s another case of an unarmed person being killed by police over something non-life-threatening.  And that person being killed is overwhelmingly likely to be black or brown.  It’s not just that it happens, but that it keeps happening.  I don’t really know how to solve this problem, but it seems to me that it should start with providing each child with the same opportunity to get the best education they can, no matter who their parents are.  Helping each child to have nutritious food to eat, no matter where they live.  To stop incarcerating people for minor drug crimes where no violence was done, so that they can get a job and participate in our civil governance.

I don’t know how we expect people to be contributing members of society when we keep them in schools with so few resources to teach them the skills they will need in this new global economy.  What do we expect when older brothers are fathers are locked up in prisons set up for private profit.  How often do they see the system working to make their lives any better?  What are they supposed to do if the school they attend doesn’t have the textbooks or the teachers to prepare them for life?  You have to have bootstraps before you can pull yourself up by them!