Eh, sort of? I think the :the-podcast: episode on conservationism is a good primer on to why you should have some mixed feelings about the forest cops
I mean kind of. They also do like regular, bad, cop shit. It's just that they also do some good cop shit
Park Rangers Yosemite, I'm sure it's 99% good shit, 1% cop shit.
Park Rangers in Central Park? 100% cop shit.
Yosemite is a national park, which means federal park rangers which means,
Park ranger candidates who successfully complete training will be fully commissioned federal law enforcement officers in the NPS. They will be required to carry a gun, make arrests, conduct investigations, and perform all the other duties incumbent upon the job.
I'm hesitant to say that a park ranger who's a federal cop that carries is going to be 99% good shit
They will be required to carry a gun, make arrests, conduct investigations
Required to make arrests? So do they have to be able to arrest people or do they have to meet some kind of arrest quota?
I'd wager that's just government speak for job description. Same way that if you work at maccy dees, you will have to grill burgers
Are the Central Park Park Rangers also NYPD or is that just on top of being like the 4th biggest military in the world
City, county, state, federal, postal, parks, military police for each branch I assume, sometimes deputized posses, border patrol, ICE, Capitol Police, Secret Service, Drug Enforcement (federal, DEA), Gun cops (federal, ATF)... I feel like I'm missing some
There's also the National Guard units of each state, although they're more commonly used for disaster relief.
I always thought the national guard was supposed to be military not cops but, you know, :same-picture:
When the verdict in George Floyd's murder trial was to be announced the governor of MN marched five thousand soliders with machine guns (but no ammo lol) in to the city to crush any possibility of protest or dissent. Iirc for a few days it was the most heavily militarized city on earth.
The only two government agencies I absolutely will not fuck with are the secret service and the postal inspectors.
The department of education has it's own armed tactical team. "Police state" is honestly inadequate at this point.
I absolutely recognize the need for some kind of fish and wildlife enforcement to prevent poaching etc, but it does seem like a lot of the time game wardens are just the usual run of the mill cop personality type. They definitely do a lot of the same training as regular law enforcement and work with them a lot so it's no surprise that they end up being just as terrible.
They are just cops. They don’t protect the environment, they’re looking for people doing drugs so they can put them in a cage.
It is good when bad things happen to bad people, even if it's being done by other bad people.
I've considered going the ranger path as an ecologist. Natural resources are a level deeper than the state. They've outlived and will continue to outlive any particular society. Protecting that is important in a long term sense, ecological degradation can happen rapidly, and sensitive ecosystems can take centuries to heal from damage. Every time we lose biodiversity we lose a wealth of useful genes and adaptations, all while opening ourselves up to runaway feedback loops. Sure they technically have arrest powers, but if the person being arrested is a poacher or destroying alpine tundra then fuck 'em. That's a crime against a hundred generations from now as much as it is the public lands today.
rangers / forest wardens have been widely used to do big racism, but there can be good forest cops tho
It's that indigenous relationship which has kept me from applying to the National Parks Service or Bureau of Land Management. I don't think they'd put a researcher out on the front lines of a pipeline protest but I wouldn't want to enable coworkers doing that or be under the supervisor who orders it.
My aunt's an ecologist that worked for the feds as a researcher her whole career and I don't think she ever knew anyone that was involved with colonial crackdowns on land defense actions.
There's still a colonial relationship between settler science and the land probably but it's way more indirect than knowing anyone who's putting boots on necks.
Unless you go private practice, where instead of research you'll be rubber stamping EISes that let settler corps continue to do whatever they want.
There were no witches in Salem, you asshole. The people who were murdered there almost definitely identified as christians. Cannot stand these douche bags and their sweaty need to feel special.
How else would you handle witches who are poaching eye of newt etc.? We can't just wait for them to confront Allah on the astral plane for them to be stopped
In the US, park rangers don't even deserve a discount on their bastardry. The US can't be made to serve environmentalist goals, and US park rangers will never ever ever serve any primary purpose other than "cop in a park"
and like you know what I don’t give a shit if some dog or some kid gets killed by an endangered species
Like jesus fucking christ, what the ever living fuck is wrong with you?
You think a fucking elephant deserves to die for trampling somebody? Elephant didn’t do shit.
How about I put it this way, if a bear was mauling my kid, it's getting its ass shot no ifs ands or buts.
I'd also consider enacting violence on anyone having the gall to be a self righteous asshole and say that it's a good or okay thing that my kid got mauled by a bear, wolf, or a mountain lion after the fact.
Because it’s their land and they and only they have the right to implement any rules against hunting on a societal level. Imagine you’re a Native American, the government has fucked you and your people over again and again, every treaty your tribe has ever signed has been violated, hunting is one of the few rights Native Americans have, it is literally the only way many native communities can put food on the table. Who has the right to take that away? Nobody who isn’t indigenous.
Yes from a vegan perspective allowing all forms of hunting is wrong, but exceptions have to be made for the extreme edge cases with people who come from heavily persecuted cultures that were semi nomadic in nature. To criticize a Native American for hunting is like criticizing a African American for being a business owner, like yeah the system they are perpetuating is wrong, but when systemically they have had no opportunity to grow wealth, you have to excuse bipoc people whenever they do become bourgeoisie, their class must be liquidated eventually, but under no circumstances should we seek out marginalized people first in the effort of dismantling capitalism. It’s better for leftist orgs to make inroads with gay black business owners than it is to make those same connections with rural white labor aristocrat.
When Native Americans are ready to end hunting they all are going to need to be at a level of wealth equal to or greater than the white settlers that inhabit their lands, I’m saying you can’t bring a people to communism if they had not yet even begun capitalism. The native Americans need their own capitalists, their own businesses, their own institutions. They need to go through the horrors of capitalism not as a subjugated people but as subjugators. They need to create capitalism in order to destroy it. Right now pretty much all bipoc people in the west are in a sort of semi-feudalism stage. We can’t just jump over the capitalism stage, the best we can do is speed it up as fast as possible so we don’t linger in it very long.
And that is a very long and mostly unrelated explanation as to why indigenous people must first abolish capitalism in order to ban hunting.
The reddit post on this was big mad that op was doing a racism against bleach demons and i'm probably banned from that sub now.
