On Sep 20, 2017 a friend from Mexico wrote
I read about the murder at Georgia Tech and saw the video. They shot the person while SO FAR away because of holding a knife.A knife? That's the police version.
The young man, Georgia Tech student Scout Schultz, had a suicidal episode, and called the police on 911 so they would come and kill him. In his hand he had a small multipurpose tool from Home Depot, with no blade extended. He was an all-A student, with no violent past of any kind. It took all of several minutes of warnings by four policemen surrounding him to drop that object before he was executed from a few yards distance, in front of a dormitory full of students watching the execution.A significant fraction of people killed by the militarized local police forces in US are killed for suffering from mental disorders, rather than talked to and provided medical care.
The only reason why this killing got some press coverage is that the all-A student happened to also be a president of the Georgia Tech Pride Alliance, and that is the subpopulation of students most exposed to hate, bullying, prejudice and suicide. They are essentially the only activists on US campuses. Most of the students are uninformed sheep, fearful about their own futures and student debts, with no social moral compass beyond that.
The Pride Alliance organized the vigil. 500 people came, out of some 35000 people who are either students or work on this campus. Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America were there (join them or give them money, they are amazing). I saw no colleagues or administrators. It was a moving and somber time to reflect together in the quiet of a beautiful summer night.
Afterwards, there was a debate between a very articulate and emotionally deeply moved person who blamed the murder on the systemic causes, and who demanded that the institution provide better psychiatric counseling for its students, and a group that blamed the campus police for the murder. Some 50 protesters then went to trash the campus police parking lot. Three were arrested and their mugshots published in a local newspaper - one is a physics student, the two others are not associated with Georgia Tech. Now, in the reign of @GOP, as in the Freedom Summer of 1964, the institution's president was not at the vigil, he stood by the police. Police was not at the vigil either, and has not apologized to the traumatized parents. Officer Tyler Beck, who murdered Scout, said that he "regrets the situation he was faced with" but not pulling the trigger. Were the victim not a member of Pride Alliance, or were the victim a young black man walking, there would have been no vigil at all. Presidents of state universities are appointed by state boards of regents, which in turn consist mostly of rich white men with no educational expertise, political donors appointed by state governors.
I do not blame the police. Today the police are trained to deal with "active shooters." If they are not white males, they are called "terrorists." Rural districts state legislators, elected with the NRA and gun manufacturers' money, ram down the throats of the urban and university populations "conceal carry" laws, which allow any of the 300 million citizens of United States to roam our campuses armed. Sandy Hook massacre had shown that the country is beyond repair. Thus, in theory (very few students are armed) the police runs real risks in confronting the citizenry, and shoots to kill. With impunity - of thousand of so police killings per year, virtually none are prosecuted.
It's the way a slide into fascism works. The economic issues of vast income inequalities are real, but the response is driven by the unenlightened greed of the few, who divide and disfranchise the poor by fanning racism, xenophobia and fear. The have not read their Orwell, and do not care about where this ends. They are ethical morons.
See my next post, March 10, 2019.
