Open Thread Wednesday

By on September 24, 2019 11:38 pm in open thread

What’s on your mind? Comment away!

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  • http://www.yotamzohar.com StudioBrooklyn

    I said that marijuana prosecution is racist, not marijuana use.

  • Eddyde

    I’m sure the BBP has logic behind their decisions, though nefarious as they might be.

  • Eddyde

    Perhaps to some degree but I think it’s more of a class thing.

  • http://www.yotamzohar.com StudioBrooklyn

    But let’s be honest: in the United States class issues are inextricably linked to race, thanks to our 400+ year history of slavery and Jim Crow and the legacies of same.

  • Brooklyn Noob

    Enjoy your urine soaked, pot filled streets and dilapidated subways while you worry about the future of these fragile souls. I will make sure my kids can walk to school without being harassed, and that the $30M a year the MTA loses from law breakers is punished accordingly. We have seen the world you want — 1975 called and it wants you back.

  • http://www.yotamzohar.com StudioBrooklyn

    😂 lol @ the idea that the MTA’s losses are from turnstile jumpers and not massive corruption/mismanagement, at the idea that prohibitions and punishments stop pot smoking or urination, and at your general antisocial mentality. Cities must be a rough place for you to coexist with those who are less fortunate than you, huh? Must get exhausting tolerating the masses down in steerage while your ship sinks.

  • Eddyde

    Of course, many minority people are on a lower economic tier for a variety of reasons. However when it comes to the penal system, the incarceration rate inversely follows the money. Plenty of poor whites in prison too. Simply, people in better economic situations are much less likely to have exposure to arrest for things like drug crimes.

  • http://www.yotamzohar.com StudioBrooklyn

    You won’t get much of an argument from me on that point. But throughout the history of marijuana prohibition there have been many attempts by those in power to use the law as a tool of racial oppression in particular, and in a place like NYC economic lines are cut very directly along racial ones. Then we can also factor in racial privilege—the mere advantage of being white, regardless of economic status—in the face of the law, etc.

  • Eddyde

    Yes but as stated above the “white privilege” plummets with ones wallet. Cops (as most people) tend to favor people they see as social/economic equals.

  • Brooklyn Noob

    Apologies. I was off by a few hundred million. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-03/nyc-turnstile-jumpers-bus-fare-cheats-costing-mta-215-million

    Civil, social, society is considerate of others in their community. Anti-social miscreants, who break the law, are not. You don’t need money or status or be “fortunate” to act as a good citizen. Or, as my mom always said, “you don’t need to be rich to have class, and being rich doesn’t give you class”.

  • http://www.yotamzohar.com StudioBrooklyn

    I don’t know how many times now I’ve said on this forum that the kind of short term decision-making you’re talking about (whether or not to jump turnstiles, etc.) does not happen inside of a vacuum. We have scientific evidence that poverty has a causal relationship to brain development, which indicates that when the poor and marginalized are able to behave with a great deal of consideration and compassion for those around them regardless of others’ socioeconomic status, they are the exception, not the rule. You and I hold ourselves to standards set for us by the environment in which we grew up, and the way that environment permitted our brains’ prefrontal cortexes to develop. That’s a lot to take for granted. People don’t jump turnstiles because they’re inexplicably inconsiderate. It’s part of a much bigger social and economic picture, and I would rather address that than punch down on the little guy who doesn’t have $2.75 at a time. In fact I’ve heard some excellent arguments for why, and how, the MTA should be free to ride for everyone.

  • Brooklyn Noob

    BS. My parents grew up poor, me middle class, and never a turnstile jumped between us. No class, no privilege, just freewill and a moral backbone. Rich people commit crimes, poor people commit crimes. They are all a choice and all deserve prosecution.

    People make choices. Buying pot takes money. So does subway fare. Which one you choose to spend your money on determines what kind of citizen (and human) you are.

  • http://www.yotamzohar.com StudioBrooklyn

    Using yourself as anecdotal evidence doesn’t exactly contribute much to this discussion but sure, go sweep away with that unscientific condemnation if it makes you feel good. Meanwhile, pot’s been illegal since what the 20s? and nobody seems to have been deterred, just a sizable percentage of the black population locked up, families torn apart, and yet other states seem to have figured out that none of this was for a good reason. Why can’t you?

    Actually, you can keep your answer to yourself. The only thing we’re learning is about you and frankly that’s not really interesting.

  • Brooklyn Noob

    Lotsa drama and personal slights there to unpack. It’s getting late so will let this go knowing that it is clear that you never lived in the city when it was a free-for-all (’70s-’90s) and that your utopian society of cuddly and relativistic law enforcement didn’t work then and won’t now.

  • http://www.yotamzohar.com StudioBrooklyn

    Obviously your comprehension of what constitutes a “free-for-all” and what constitutes a just society is a bit of a conflation. I’ll leave it to you to figure out how you got to that point of reasoning—it’s not really any of my or the other readers’ business. You don’t know where I’ve lived or under what conditions, and that’s fine because it couldn’t be further from the point, which is that deference to unjust laws and dismissal of restorative justice have no basis in science or morality.

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