Can you think of better ways to spend twenty million dollars of our money? Free school lunches, perhaps? Healthcare? Heck, even gold-plating statues would be a better use of my hard-earned tax dollars.
Gloves that deliver a painful electric shock as the ICE agent drags a “suspect” from their car.
Using electric shocks to compel obedience.
This is Nazi-level cruelty.
Compliant Technology is the manufacturer of these gloves. If you have some thoughts on this issue, take a minute and contact them here.
And then call your representatives, and post about it on social media, and make as much noise as you can about this horror. Outcry matters.
Will it do any good? you sigh, exhausted. We’re all exhausted from these constant outrages. Will my comment do any good? Hard to say. But public outcry certainly worked as soon as word got out about conditions on the USS Lincoln. Jess Craven, one of my favorite substackers, has this to say: “Lawmakers’ phones have been blowing up over this crisis [the terrible conditions on the Lincoln]; even the Trump administration knew they needed to remedy it STAT. And they are!
“I point this out just to remind you that our calls do and can make a difference. “Popular outcry” is a real thing, and it moves our lawmakers in ways that are undeniable.
“Does such outcry always work? It depends on how we define the term. Do we always get the swift and definitive results we seem to have gotten with this aircraft carrier crisis? Of course not. But are our calls and other protests moving things behind the scenes in ways we’ll never know, and often stopping the worst from happening? I would posit that that’s the case far more than we believe.
“Outcry matters. It matters on foreign policy. It matters on domestic policy. It matters in the face of corruption and it matters in the face of scandal. It matters in protecting our sevicemembers, and in standing up for immigrants. It matters for helping detained children. It matters wildly, all the time, everywhere.”
The Shepelsky Law Group, a law firm that works with imigration cases, says “Using electricity to inflict pain for the purpose of forcing obedience is an extraordinary use of government power.
“Even the manufacturer warns that the gloves should not be used as punishment, against someone who is merely verbally defiant, or against vulnerable people such as children, pregnant women, elderly people, and people with disabilities.
Yet the device is particularly troubling because an officer can activate it almost invisibly. Unlike a baton strike, pepper spray, or a deployed Taser, an electrical shock delivered during physical contact may be difficult for witnesses or cameras to recognize.”
Outcry matters. It’s one of the strongest weapons we have. Let’s use it.
Dear Friends,
Are you furious about the state of the world and wondering what to do about it? I hope you’ll continue to check out The Optimistic Activist.
Every now and then I post some ideas for doing something. How to get out the vote, spread the word, and support progressive candidates. Ideas for simple but effective activism. As easy, as practical, as do-able as I can make them.
Together, I think, we can really make a difference.
“Optimism is a strategy for making a better future.”
--Noam Chomsky
No posts
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.