ghosts of bandoms past

I remember canvassing on campus for gay marriage, I remember the absolute vitriol that professors felt like it was completely okay to spew at the time, and I know I'm cis-straight-passing or whatever but no ackshually I have been queer bashed kind of a lot and have seen cops completely handwave child abuse because the child in question was gay and I'm lucky. I'm lucky I never dealt with more than what I dealt with, I'm lucky I wasn't trying to get married to a woman in 2008, I'm lucky I've only faced exclusion from clubs and organizations, not from public services like school or from employers, I'm lucky that I grew up in California where I had better protections than a lot of people a lot earlier than most people did.

I don't face the same discrimination that black people in America face, I don't face the same discrimination as migrants in America face, I don't face the same discrimination that unhoused people in America face, but FUCK.

This reflexive defense of law and order really tells me that you've never seen the law used against you.

I'm not saying that you need to go burn down a police station, but if you're incapable of recognizing that some people are going to be treated like criminals by the police *regardless of whether or not they have committed any crimes* then you need to take a huge step back and really explore what you think it means to be a criminal.

You think that in order to be a criminal you need to *DO* something, but in a lot of cases all you have to do be a criminal is to just *BE* something.

And I'm lucky. I'm white, I'm straight-cis-neurotypical-abled-passing. I'm probably never going to have to deal with a cop for simply BEING something ever again.

But there are a lot of people who don't have those same advantages and so as a lucky middle class white lady, one of the ways that I can use my privilege is to stand up in front of other middle class white people and say "PERHAPS IT IS BAD THAT COPS ARE BREAKING IN TO ENCRYPTED SYSTEMS AND SPYING ON PEOPLE WHEN THERE IS NO EVIDENCE THESE PEOPLE HAVE COMMITTED CRIMES OTHER THAN THEIR USE OF AN ENCRYPTED SYSTEM. PERHAPS COPS SHOULD, AT LEAST, NEED A WARRANT AND PROBABLE CAUSE TO READ SOMEONE'S EMAILS."

The school-to-prison pipeline doesn't exist because people sell drugs, it exists because we have systemically criminalized an entire race of people and in doing so have made it exceptionally difficult for them to function within our punitive system, in which you can get arrested for USING drugs as a teen, and can then face difficulties getting legal employment for the rest of your life.