Context to a Businesskid On A Cloud:
FREE YOURSELF FROM MENTAL SLAVERY. Or follow this blog to do so.
I'm a bald head Samsonite Rastafari with a liking for politics, media, sociology, psychology, economics, ganja and other topics.
What you'll read here are usually posts analyzing the world around me through a Gestalt lens. The picture is clearer when you look at the whole thing, rather than just the flower in the foreground. Join(t) me and read about a world of interconnected problems and possible solutions! And of course, random rantings and weed.
Special: Marijuana in NYC- The Blinker
Nearly 51,000 people in NYC were arrested for marijuana possession in 2011. The 2012 number is only expected to be higher, despite minimal efforts to stem the tide by NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly. This series tackles the real economic and social consequences of marijuana prohibition in the United State’s most densely populated city.
THE NYPD’S CHOOSES EASY POT ARRESTS OVER FIGHTING SERIOUS CRIME
Crimes of more consequence, including murder and rape, rose significantly in some of the city’s highest pot arrest precincts. This rise in crime was over the same period as the NYPD’s rise in pot arrest rates, and occurred virtually only in communities of color.
Read more about the costs of the NYPD’s War on Pot
Insanity.
The impact of Stop and Frisk on #NYC
withathousandwordsunspoken asked: Ah yes, thanks for explaining. I was truely curious. Of course there are other ways then selling weed to make ends meet. Perhaps people should start looking at other options. There are tons of government programs and group homes for people in need. They could even start up a lawn buisness or do some kind of labor. But of course, that is just my biasness talking, working with the sheriffs department and all.
I understand how that may be more prevalent in a suburban neighborhood, but in urban environments, especially dense ones like NYC, self-employment by legal means is costly, highly controlled by city government, and open to numerous costly liabilities and start up expenses. Government programs hardly suffice when you live in a city that is 4X more expensive than the rest of the country, and group homes are crowded and honestly more concerned about people deeply entrenched in generational poverty. And of course, living in a city, lawns don’t really exist, lol. All of this, of course, is not even with the complications of racial background and geographic bias in the city. The weed market is, sadly, a lot more easy to enter and perpetuate option. I think giving people that are in these positions options to get entry into livable wage employment might be the best strategy on a shallow level.
withathousandwordsunspoken asked: Ummm, what is your issue with misdemeanors and weed?
My issue is that having a misdemeanor for intent to distribute marijuana (at least in how NYC applies its code) forces you to self-report on most job applications. Most of the people I know, and from what I can recall in many observations I’ve read about, sell weed because their job prospects are already pretty bad and they can’t seem to find a steady one that meets a realistic living wage. If many places (depending on the HR culture) are willing to toss out an applicant with a misdemeanor, and the reason the misdemeanor was incurred was because the person was unable to find another way to make ends meet, that seems to force him right back into the position in which he was when he incurred the misdemeanor… trying to make ends meet when job prospects don’t exist. It’s a cyclical system.
You know, I remember reading a Judge once, in the context of a case he was presiding over where a young man was said to have willingly shown an in uniform police officer his bag of weed: “I have a hard time believing that a person willingly decided to show someone with a badge a concealed illegal substance in their possession.” (paraphrased)
And I agreed, because under most cases a mentally healthy person will not self-incriminate unless deceived or promised better options in the future.
In that same avenue of thought, I have a hard time believing someone was erratically driving around and cutting off NYPD ESU (New York’s SWAT) Trucks, with an off-duty police officer in the back seat of his car. Something is fishy about the police report on this.
One of my friends is defending the actions of the #NYPD officers in the Empire State Building shooting
First, let me say, I’m down for supporting cops that do their job well and seek to ensure safety and suppress violent crime with minimal impact to the lives of civilians.
I can’t excuse putting nine other people in jeopardy for the sake of protecting yourself from the threat of getting shot (not actually getting shot), as a police officer.
Dunno if I posted this already….
Power to the people! Bringing awareness to a subject can be enough to significantly turn up the heat for change.
Certainly the job isn’t done yet, but keeping this persistently at the front of NYC politics (and sometimes Federal politics) will certainly facilitate and maintain the environment necessary to dialogue and push for successful and cooperative change for the better.
Shine a light into the darkness.
An awesome discussion of how the Black experience in the U.S. has naturally progressed to the stop and frisk culture of the NYPD today.
