“We're not in Afghanistan or Gaza,” he says.
I hate this mentality so much. We're not in Afghanistan or Gaza, but we're all still human. Their deaths are equally tragic.
It's even the same weapons a lot of the time! The cops are all kitted out in surplus from the Afghanistan war, and receive "counterterrorism" training from the soldiers currently slaughtering children in Gaza.
Here's an article from 10 years ago about the Ferguson/Palestine connection. https://www.ebony.com/the-fergusonpalestine-connection-403/
Are you sure you interpreted that statement correctly?
Article said:
The overwhelming force that SWAT teams employ is designed to ensure officer safety, which Schock acknowledges is important. But he says this needs to be balanced by people’s rights against unreasonable searches and seizures. “We're not in Afghanistan or Gaza,” he says.
If Afghanistan or Gaza have something similar to the fourth amendment, then maybe I can see your take.
Otherwise, and what the author seems to be inferring, is that those countries don’t have protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. Not that their people are in any way less human.
I don't think he's talking about search and seizure laws in foreign countries. Reads to me like "this is not a war zone, you don't need 10 guys with rifles and armor to safely go talk to someone."
I'm not making a legal argument against searches, I'm making a moral argument for international solidarity.
The lawyer's statement isn't that objectionable in a vacuum. But it's representative of how Americans view the world. We see something terrible in our own society, and we say, "How can this happen here? This isn't [a country we completely fucked over]!" Then the rest of the discussion is how to solve the problem here, instead of addressing the root cause.
If Afghanistan or Gaza have something similar to the fourth amendment, then maybe I can see your take.
Think of the context the bill of rights was written in. Most of those amendments were a reaction to the fear of an occupying force. Obviously these anti-occupation policies don't apply to a people under occupation.
Here's the thing: does a citizen in a crime ridden neighborhood in America have something similar to the fourth amendment? Legally they do. In reality, many don't. After you have the police bust into your home for no reason without a warrant, you have a different take on the constitution.
Thanks to SCOTUS, the fourth amendment is functionally non-existent for a large number of americans, and the police operate as an occupying force. They use the same weapons as international occupying armies. They train each other. They fund each other. They're all part of the military industrial complex. It's all the same struggle
