just a wannabe space kid

The National - About Today

Imagine you and your dæmon walking down a forest trail, where everything is dappled green and gold. Maybe your dæmon would be walking beside you, or riding on your shoulder, or possibly even flying ahead of you- either way, you wouldn’t need to speak to communicate. You could just wander until you both get tired and want to head home.

Imagine a nurse in the maternity ward of a hospital. She’s late middle ages and has no children of her own, but that’s alright. She usually works the night shift, and enjoys the times where she can delicately hold the newborns, wrapped up tight in blankets. Their dæmons at that stage are so new they hardly count, precious soft little souls that can’t hold one shape for very long. Though they would never say it aloud, the nurse and her dæmon swear that they can smell the dust on the two infants.

Imagine a man with the teeniest, tiniest disk-winged bat dæmon. She likes to hang on his ear like an earring, or hide in his hair. Sometimes she crawls under his clothes just to startle strangers into thinking the man has no dæmon.

Imagine an older man with a coon hound for a dæmon; the man likes to play the harmonica, and his dæmon bays its heart out to make their human laugh. They sit outside on their porch, and everyone in town knows about the musical duo.

Imagine a ballet dancer with the most awkward dæmon imaginable. Lots of companies like to integrate dæmons into dances, to give them each a more unique feel, but they can’t with this one. Maybe it’s a walrus, or a very sleepy sloth; whatever it is, it’s an animal that has difficulty moving with swift precision. Offstage, the dæmon and their human are fantastic, but onstage the dancer despairs that her dæmon will hold her back in her career.

Imagine a couple with dæmons that look exactly like Lady and the Tramp. That would be adorable. They could never go out to anything but Italian restaurants, though.

Imagine a little girl whose mother has a wolfish looking dæmon. People give the mother nasty looks, since wolf dæmons are not looked upon favorably, but they don’t know how fiercely she loves her little girl. Besides, her dæmon makes it great fun to dress her daughter up in red clothes, and play Little Red Riding Hood.

The fucking truth. The. Fucking. Truth. Gentrification is such racist fuckery. You discriminated against Black people for centuries. Refused them mobility. Stuck them in areas where you did not invest in infrastructure, school, roads, business or anything else. Took their taxes and funneled it to richer neighborhoods to take care of their shit. Overpoliced them using brutal tactics. Even trafficked drugs into their neighborhoods. Nevertheless they rise above it, create something special, unique and lasting out of less than nothing and now that it looks pleasant to your eyes, white people want to come into said neighborhood, take it over, kick all the Black people out, tear it down, destroy everything Black people built and bleach the fuck out of the area. Fucking pigs.

1) The police are aware of this game and because they are playing they know where people may tend to congregate. Means they will be more understanding if a bunch of random people are hanging out near a place that virtually has no one there.

2) Because the news has been blasting that people are getting mugged and attacked at PokeStops, it brings up a safety issue. Well if cops decided to play Pokemon GO and hang out near some of these Stops, it will increase safety because there’s less likely hood of a mugging to occur when there are one to a few cops around.

3) This unintentionally puts cops out in multiple locations similar to how patrols work. Thus this increases public safety and gives a higher sense of security if you aren’t adverse to law enforcement.

Other issues on pause, we need to demilitarize our police.  And that starts by deconstructing the hegemony that divides “police” and “citizens”.  

People are friendlier to each other, talking to each other, offering help and tips for the game. So people who may have viewed each other with suspicion, as strangers, are seeing each other as community members across lines including race and economic background. 

While it’s true that there have been muggings, it’s not because of the game per se. You have a higher chance of being mugged if you’re out for a walk than inside your house, and this AP has made more people go for walks. One result is more victims of crime, but you also have more cases of citizens reporting crimes or calling 911 for a person in need because people are out and actively looking around/engaging with their surroundings. 

Police playing Pokemon Go is a great thing, and not only because it reduces the risk of players falling victim to crime but because it improves the police. Community Policing is good policing and good for everyone. We need the police to see citizens as community members. 

Playing together is a great start. It also decreases the risk of someone being shot while playing PokemonGo for looking suspicious if the police know ‘there’s a group of people just walking down the street’ or ‘sitting in a car/driving slow’ could mean people playing PokemonGo. It gives them a way to approach a situation without it escalating due to mutual fear (cops fearing citizens are going to shoot them, citizens fearing cops are going to shoot them).

“You playing PokemonGo? Find anything neat?” It establishes dialogue, a relationship, community. 

Community policing is effective policing because when a community trusts police, they’re more likely to work with them and help stop crime. Likewise, police trusting the community and seeing citizens as part of their own community means they’ll actually serve and protect rather than seeing people as enemies.  

Their job is to keep people safe and those players, including young black men who too often face profiling and violence at the hands of police, are safe with the police playing PokemonGo. 

DEAR EVERYONE AGAINST BLACK LIVES MATTER PROTESTERS, read this AND EAT A DICK.