Linda Thomas
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Linda is the morning news anchor and features reporter for KIRO Radio. This is her local news blog, with an emphasis on social media, technology, Northwest companies, education, parenting, and anything else that grabs her attention.If you have a news tip or story idea, I'd love to hear from you...
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Bonneville Seattle is raising funds for the construction of a second Fisher House at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Tacoma and we need your help.SPD officer's view of Socialist Seattle
January 23, 2011 @ 5:53 pm (Updated: 3:46 pm - 3/28/11 )
The Seattle Police Officers' Guild has a newspaper that generally doesn't get a lot of attention. A paper copy of it is distributed to about 1,250 SPD officers, but it's not online. A copy of the December newsletter is getting press attention because of one officer's essay, "Just Shut Up and Be a Good Little Socialist" which rails against the Seattle's anti-bias training.
An officer, whom I will not name, let me borrow his copy of The Guardian. Since Officer Steve Pomper's article will likely get attention from our talk show hosts, I transcribed exactly what Pomper wrote:
Just Shut Up and Be a Good Little Socialist
by Officer Steve Pomper, East Precinct
The city, using its Race and Social Justice Initiative (RSJI), continues its assault on traditional and constitutional American values such as self-reliance, equal justice, and individual liberty. But more to our immediate concern, the city is inflicting its socialist policies directly on the Seattle Police Department.
I once wrote, elections have consequences. This is true, and Seattle voters will get what they deserve. However, the city has extended its leftist political agenda to the police department, which should remain as apolitical as possible. The police department is not a laboratory and its cops are not guinea pigs.
Social justice is a socialist scheme that judges people not as individuals, but by their race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. Again, please research it yourself. The groups touting social justice all tend toward the political left, including socialist and communist groups.
Remember when communism and socialism used to be considered bad in America? You know, for little things like slaughtering a hundred million people during the 20th Century? Even in its least aggressive forms, socialism is responsible for wrecking economies, restricting liberty, and stifling human innovation and achievement worldwide.
I'm not conflating Seattle's quaint socialist cabal with the brutal tyrants of the last century. However, any student of history knows totalitarianism begins with small bites. In 21st Century America, political repression comes in the form of what Europeans call Fabian or Democratic Socialism, which we Americans know as progressivism.
By this method, if we aren't careful, we will literally vote ourselves into tyranny. Some think we came pretty damn close to it in 2008: Thank God for the November slap down ordinary Americans gave their overreaching government.
Socialist oppression may start with the "best" of intentions by people who feel they have the right to run other peoples' lives. And while they may not intend oppression, this is to where socialism always - always - leads, to one degree or another.
In cities it begins like this: Mayors present social justice policies to city departments. Department heads carry out the policies without much dissention, not wanting to jeopardize their jobs. Before they know it, they're complicit in implementing socialism. ...Lives, fortunes, and sacred honor... what a charming, archaic notion.
These initial policies always seem benign. The city compels its employees to participate in RSJI classes, and they conduct ostensibly, innocuous surveys advancing an unquestionably leftist political agenda. They attempt to make us feel comfortable with socialist and progressive terminology through repetition and saturation. The Race and Social Justice Initiative, SPD Race and Social Justice Change Team, and Race and Social Justice Survey. I'm waiting for the Race and Social Justice Torchlight Parade and Race and Social Justice 10K Race for Social Justice. On and on it goes until, they hope, the term no longer riles us.
Most of us refuse to believe "real" socialism will ever take hold in Seattle-in America. We know city leaders aren't going to change our minds. We'll always be patriotic, antisocialist, Americans. Really? Well, at what point do we say, "Hell no!" to the indoctrination? In its early, weaker stages, or later when, the infection has spread and the disease is harder to cure?
Perhaps there should be no participation at all in anything involving Social Justice? At what point does our commitment to American liberty and opposition to socialism compel us to disengage from something we find so abhorrent to our nature? I don't know the precise answer to this, but don't we need to at least think about it?
Anyone think that back in 1776, Thomas Jefferson, Sam Adams, or Ben Franklin would have participated in a King's Royal Justice Initiative (KRJI?)? Complete a survey for ol' King George III? America was exceptional then, and we must remain exceptional now. And what makes America exceptional is our commitment to equal justice and individual liberty, not social justice and emulating Europe's failures.
I've given some thought to my own RSJI participation to date. The "Perspectives in Profiling" class (or as one officer put it, one of our "de-policing classes") served as a good way to learn what the enemy is up to (Yes, enemy. A liberal after my money in taxes maybe my opponent, but a socialist attacking the Constitution and my liberty is my enemy).
The RSJI survey was an opportunity to let the city know exactly how I feel about its institutional racial profiling policy. It was another opportunity to give them my opinions on the city practicing arbitrary justice over equal justice. To let them know that I'm not okay with blatantly violating the 14th Amendment.
What happens the next time they order us to take the survey or to otherwise actively participate in promoting RSJI? Many of us have already let them know what we think about their socialist policies. (I would pay handsomely to be in the room when they read some officer's surveys). The next time would simply mark our participation in the RSJI effort as a whole, regardless of how we answer. Would we be surrendering to their attempts to indoctrinate SPD in social justice culture? Perhaps, if some new policy doesn't force it sooner, that'll mark the line drawn in the sand.
Speaking of the survey, our precinct command staff recently carried out an order forcing all SPD employees, sworn and civilian, to complete a six page hardcopy of the RSJI Survey. Seems we were less than enthusiastic about voluntarily completing the paperless online survey. Imagine that. Compliance didn't work, so the city resorted to compulsion, How delightfully socialist of them. There is also an ancillary issue, which is truly ironic: Regarding Seattle's supposed "green" commitment to going paperless. Since all city departments are supposed to participate in the RSJI survey, and the city employs thousands, with about 2,000 in the SPD alone, I have to wonder how much paper the city wasted to print out this worthless survey?
I'll leave you with this refresher: employing the RSJI, the City of Seattle is actually deciding on which people do or do not "merit punishment" for a crime, based upon their race, ethnic heritage, and/or socio-economic status. So far this only applies to DWLS3, but one has to ask, what's next? They're also deciding purchases and the issuing of city contracts based upon similar criteria. This is social justice, folks, and socialism has no place in Seattle, and positively no place in the Seattle Police Department.
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wonderfullone wrote...Amen BrotherJanuary 23, 2011 5:10 pm{ "Thumbs Up":"1","Thumbs Down":"-1" }- Reply
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wonderfullone wrote...btw, LindaJanuary 23, 2011 5:13 pm{ "Thumbs Up":"1","Thumbs Down":"-1" }
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TheNewsChick wrote...wonderfulloneJanuary 23, 2011 5:40 pm{ "Thumbs Up":"1","Thumbs Down":"-1" }- Reply
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Chuck Gould wrote...Source, smourceJanuary 23, 2011 5:53 pm{ "Thumbs Up":"1","Thumbs Down":"-1" }- Reply
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Chuck Gould wrote...Bogus logic in the cop's rantJanuary 23, 2011 6:15 pm{ "Thumbs Up":"1","Thumbs Down":"-1" }
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cigarfan wrote...constitution ?January 23, 2011 6:23 pm{ "Thumbs Up":"1","Thumbs Down":"-1" }- Reply
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Chuck Gould wrote...PS, Wonderbread....thanks for the belly laugh, the irony just struck me....January 23, 2011 6:34 pm{ "Thumbs Up":"1","Thumbs Down":"-1" }
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therealajmccarrell wrote...Defending the Cop against CigarbozoJanuary 23, 2011 6:37 pm{ "Thumbs Up":"1","Thumbs Down":"-1" }
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therealajmccarrell wrote...CigarpukeJanuary 23, 2011 6:39 pm{ "Thumbs Up":"1","Thumbs Down":"-1" }
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cigarfan wrote...Response to absent minded "therealajmccarrell.............January 23, 2011 7:24 pm{ "Thumbs Up":"1","Thumbs Down":"-1" }
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