A Clear and Simple Agenda for What We Should Be Demanding after Ferguson and Baltimore

Too many times lately law enforcement has failed to show transparency in dealing with the basic civil rights issues that a community saw in its own community members being denied in a situation in which a local community member was killed, from Missouri to Maryland, Alabama to New York. These deaths all to frequently split communities along racial lines and have led to situations in some ways like the current one in Baltimore. All of these deaths had a common thread in local communities perceiving a breakdown in transparency as local law enforcement investigated the deaths that they themselves had been directly involved in. 

In communities like Ferguson, Missouri and Baltimore, Maryland the all to familiar lack of trust in local law enforcement agencies and a lack of timeliness at times in providing answers has helped to create situations in which lawlessness has followed. While it is too easy for many of us to judge the actions of people who have lost faith in the system and the resulting chaos, looting and violence in the larger national communities that we see on television we also have to admit that many more communities across the US are not that removed from these problems. One has to remember that these nationally reported deaths in places like Ferguson and Baltimore have all been linked to what appears to many people to be a systematic failure of law enforcement to act professionally and with transparency.

Failing to address these issues in a timely and transparent matter probably had a very large part in these communities that had come to feel that "Black lives do not matter." 

Perhaps we need to stop seeing these problems as racial problems but as modern society's problems. Ultimately all of these incidents effected every race in a myriad of ways. These national problems are not far removed from the deaths of Massey, Thomas and Humphrey. Ferguson, Baltimore, and the less-publicized deaths in the South in Eufaula, Headland, Dothan and many other communities share common threads in this.

With all that being said, I propose to the Government and all local municipalities that they release their Prisoners of The Drug War.

We here in the United States, with some exceptions, have a real humane attitude toward our prisoners of war from somewhere else but do not even consider our own American born,equal citizens. 

We allow people to come here and not pay taxes and become legal citizens in an allotted time. But yet those who are born and bred here who make mistakes and get a felony conviction must pay taxes if they're lucky enough to get a job. But are not allowed in some states to get their citizenship back. This makes those formerly Incarcerated the REAL Tea Party examples of Taxation Without Representation. 

We need Employment for all our citizens, proper Housing, and adequate Education. 

If we can do it for others then why can't we do it for our own. 

There needs to be a unilateral training for all Law Enforcement with four simple steps, with the demand that municipalities that receive Government funding must abide by these rules. 

1: Mandatory Use of Force Training in a classroom with Diversity Training

2: Mandatory Mental Health Training. 

3: Open Records Act that demands the public records be accessible and answers given in 3 days such as Georgia's Open Records Act

4: Some Type of Community Interaction so that the police know the citizens on his beat and they at least know each other. 

These are just some of our demands to show good Faith toward a good start.