That poor woman. I really hope all of this doesn't make it even harder for her to find work. At least one online newspaper I saw published her legal (male) name and some stuff from her background that was in no way connected to being assaulted, but definitely calculated to make her look less sympathetic to the puritan, judgmental assholes out there.
SO let me get this straight, when I get on a bus and see a group of young black males/females, and decide to put away my iPhone and change seats, that makes me a racist?
What an utter humanity "fail", God, how could you watch and not get involved? And she's brilliant, as you say. What a testament to having more character than any of the assholes who watched/participated in the attack.
Really? How come I don't see poor Chinese, Vietnamese, whites doing this on youtube every week in buses, trains, fast joints, schools, bus tunnels etc. etc.?
"Other employees stood by and did nothing, other customers stood by and did nothing."
I can understand why the employees did nothing, they would have risked being fired, which at a McDonalds, doesnt take much to lose your job.
There is also the possability that customers would be sued for trying to stop the asault. As dumb as that sounds, it happens and counter sueing to recoup lawyer fees will be a challenge. You can just jump in, defend someone and hope some pro-gay philanthropist pays your lawyer fees.
@Alleged, fuck the fuck off. This has nothing to do with race, and everything to do with our culture's deep seated transphobia. Few people are targeted and attacked so brutally and disproportionately as trans people.
Here's an infographic that demonstrates how mindfuckingly evil we are to this particular set of people for being who they are, and this just shows the kids.
Hey, those of you with accounts: Why the hell don't you have unregistered comments HIDDEN? Alleged will disappear when you stop giving him attention. Hiding his comments will do that, and yes, it's worth missing a few, rare insightful comments that someone without an account might post.
@9: Something is wrong with a society where the thought of being sued is what runs through people's mind when seeing an assault. I understand why people have been forced to think that way, but it seems like such a dismal failure in North American culture.
I hope that I have the courage to never let the fear of being sued stop me from doing the right thing.
It is amazing how libs try to obscure the issue with BS. They really think we are as dumb as they are.
READ THE POLICE REPORT.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/marylan…...
1. The confrontation started BEFORE she went into the bathroom.
2. One of the attackers stated to the police she had got into a fight with a woman.
These two thuggettes did not know the victim was a transsexual. So much for the "they objected to a man being in the bathroom" BS. The attackers were black. The store employees who were yuckking it up and did nothing to help her (with one exception)were black. Those who helped them escape were black. There were racial insults shouted during the fight.
@Alleged, More stats to show you this heinous attack is symptomatic of AN ENORMOUS PROBLEM that has nothing to do with race. In a 1997 study, 78% of trans people reported being verbally harassed, and 48% reported having been assaulted, including with a weapon, sexual assault or rape. In 2001, 74% of transgender students reported being sexually harassed at school. In 2003, 55% of trans students reported being physically assaulted. As a result of society's intolerance, some 33% of trans youth have attempted suicide. Source
Oh, and here is a page with handily color coded maps and data sets that show reported murders of trans people around the world, and list the particularly brutal ways in which they are killed and where their bodies are deposited. If this is a "race" problem, every "race" has it.
@13, The trolls provide a good reason to post some very important stats on the prevalence of violence towards trans people that really can't be shown too often.
The brutality may or may not have been because the victim was white, but the employees telling their homegirls to run off before the po po comes? Fucking racist as hell.
Spooky, scary video for an transperson to watch. Makes you think it could happen to you. :: I think transfolk -- indeed, all queerfolk -- should get some martial arts training. It'll be a long time before I set foot in a McDonald's again, that's for sure.
@Alleged, as much as you try to make this about what degenerate animals you think black people are, it does not work this way. The police report makes no mention of race, just that she was attacked as she was attempting to enter the restroom. Why did they want to keep her out of the restroom? Well the guy that taped the whole scene made this comment on the video (since deleted): “And When Told To Get Out Tha ladies Bathroom He Got Smart With Everybody So Tha Two Girls Beat Him Up [sic]”. Sure, they had NOOO idea she's trans. Source
@20, Alleged is every fuckhead troll too cowardly to register on SLOG and own their comments.
What a broken society in that part of the USA. In other areas of the US or Europe, do you really think ANYONE would stand around and allow this to happen? Hell no! (Hopefully I'm not wrong.)
@7: Clearly you don't go on Youtube LOOKING FOR poor white or Asian people. Trust me, people who have grown up in bad neighborhoods and were never raised properly can be damn trashy, regardless of their ethnicity.
@20: Alleged is a term coined by Uriel238 (I think it was him; this was around the time I came to SLOG) to refer to a general breed of unregistered dumbass. We've also got Gommorah Man (who always misspells "Gomorrah"), Responsible Doc (a serious transphobic quack), and a few registered dumbasses such as Loveschild (homophobic Church Lady always at odds with Kim in Portland's compassionate christianity), Lord Basil (blatant Poe's Law parody), Seattleblues (pseudo-intellectual prat who thinks that opinions are an acceptable substitute for evidence), the Period Hive Mind (basically Alleged with SLOG immigration documents), whatsbeckgottodowithit (failed newfag troll), and Basehead (shock jock, and moar liek Crackhead, amirite?). I ought to come up with a classification system.
Oh venomlash, that would be perfect, make a document you could link to each time. Also, the "naive white" whosit who got banned not too long ago. I always think the unregistered racist ones are his. Oh! And Jake in Chinatown, don't forget...
@25, I miss the LovesChild collective, they were always so entertaining - the contradictions every other post, the pseudo-mythopoeic blather. Really a great example of how unhinged the anti-equal rights people are.
Danny, you do realize the attackers, and employees who did nothing, are fellow Big Tent Democraps, don't you?
Those are your people.
And, @9, those trial lawyers who will punish anyone who dares do the right thing, they are also loyal Democraps.
In fact the Democraps and Obama are bought and paid for by the Trial Lawyers Association.
so,
please,
all you Liberals,
spare us your crocodile tears-
this is the Gaymerica you've worked so hard to create.
@26: Look, Gommorah Man! I SO CALLED THAT ONE.
@27: Ah yes, Naive White Libtarded Seattle Progressive. He got b&, bitched about it for a little while as an unregistered, and then R-U-N-N-O-F-T.
It doesn't. Only people who know a lot about the legal system (lawyers) or people who have burned by civil lawsuits before (a very small minority) would think of that in the heat of the moment. Any decent person at that restaurant (where, apparently, the pickings were slim) failed to intervene because of the bystander effect.
The black community, generally, is pretty backwards when it comes to several different social issues. It is more difficult to lay the blame for violent homophobia at the feet of poverty, crack-cocaine, or even fatherless households; it is much easier to lay it at the foot of the church using all the anxiety that comes with a low-income lifestyle to push forward its backward agenda.
@33: Nah, I've just got obsessive tendencies. Let me put it this way; I don't just catch all the Pokemon, I also sort and organize them by National Pokedex order. Also, I've got a touch of photophobia and prefer dim spaces.
@35: "What a shame actual facts, like crime stats, don't back that fantasy up.
Enjoy the ghetto ladies."
What a shame actual facts, like crime stats, haven't actually been cited. Do you have any research suggesting that blacks have a higher propensity to criminality than others of comparable economic and social status? Or are you just shooting your fool mouth off again?
@37: I lol'ed.
@41: http://content.ytmnd.com/content/0/a/2/0…
How incredibly disgusting and appalling. It made me sick to my stomach to watch this video, but I thought it was the least I could do. As horrible as watching this was, I know it's nothing compared to what Chrissy went through.
How awful. And the Maryland Senate just rejected a trans anti-discrimination bill a couple of weeks ago. It's hard not to wonder if there's a connection.
@55 I assume you're being sarcastic. And you're right, typically they - like people of all ages - probably don't. However, the cultural climate that made the new laws possible presumably also, in some way, made this horrible abuse possible.
The cultural climate that had the senate even considering anti-discrimination laws is a step forward. Few people gave a shit about trans rights even just 20 years ago, and no one was proposing legislation. #53 is still a dipshit.
"the cultural climate that made the new laws possible presumably also, in some way, made this horrible abuse possible."
Yes, because without that climate these girls would be upstanding citizens and no doubt before this sassy trannie walked into their lives, they were living crime-free, socially positive lives well on their ways to becoming contributing members of society.
So yet agaan, we have proven that this attack was the fault of the one group of people apparently not even at that McDonalds that night: straight, white men.
I just watched both videos. I'm also awed by this woman's strength. It's amazing how so much violence against trans men and women is completely ignored in our country. Yeah, I couldn't imagine myself filming this while no one interfered in the fight, but at least cell phone cameras are bringing all sorts of injustice like this to people's screens.
Ah, my hometown Baltimore... Keeping it classy, as always. Maybe you should actually google the perp before bringing out the big race discussion. Her first assault was against 38-year-old Danielle Dower at the same location. Dower, who had her two children with her, was followed by Brown and her friends from this McDonald's to a grocery store. Brown reportedly assaulted Dower and her older daughter while Brown tried to call police. Dower is BLACK, by the way. Brown stalked this woman and her two daughters just to whoop ass, not because of race. Brown is just an asshole. Sometimes there isn't a bigger, meaningful drive behind assholery. Sometimes an asshole is just an freaking asshole. This asshole kicked a hornet's nest this time. I guess she lucked out last time by picking on an unprotected mother and her kids, who later dropped the charges. The question of whether this was a hate crime is just a cherry on the asshole sundae.
Ahem, correction to the above: Brown reportedly assaulted Dower and her older daughter while DOWER tried to call police. Getting a bit mixed up in my disgust of humanity, sorry!
@60 You're absolutely right, and on some level, we should be grateful, also, that this story is inspiring outrage. At the same time, I don't think it's inappropriate to let this incident serve as a reminder that we still have a long way to go.
@63 So if attacking a black person earlier proved she's not a racist, does attacking a cisgendered woman earlier also prove this is not anti-queer attack?
Let's just focus on the real problem: urban black thug culture.
Lots of trolls here today for some reason, but one of them makes a funny point: with the possible exception of the old lady, everyone in the video is without a doubt a Democrat.
@68, it would have been extremely difficult for Chrissy to legally carry in MD, where their enlightened approach to the 2nd amendment has clearly solved the violence problem once and for all.
If I were trans, I would never leave the goddamn house without a Glock.
i think Dan made a good point about Chrissy moving forward. I think she needs to be careful to maybe not get sucked into being a poster child for trans / lgbt rights, etc. I think it can make it harder to recover and move on. . .
And. . . until the case is resolved, I think she needs to get good representation and keep quiet.
@74, It didn't look like she was acting fine at all. She kept herself composed, but you could tell there were a lot of big emotions flashing just beneath the surface. It took a lot of courage for her to go on camera.
this makes me feel so sick.
what the hell is wrong with people?! First to brutally attack another person like that, and then for all the people to stand back and watch, and even have the nerve to film it???
@75 What you or I think is irrelevant. The question is whether there are people out there who might be on jury duty the day this case gets its jury who would think she looked just fine despite having been so savagely beaten not three days before, and there are people like that.
What she did was stupid. She should've talked to a lawyer first, and the press second (if at all).
I didn't think I would be so affected by the video. Jesus, it's scary and sick. I hope those girls get jailed for 1st degree assault. It did seem like the manager (or someone) was trying to stop it halfheartedly before the woman stepped in. But, of course, he didn't actually stop it and, I guess, didn't call the police.
It's heartbreaking, the whole thing. I'm so glad she's okay.
Yeah, the black community probably is a bit more intolerant of gay and trans people. It does seem like that was the reason they beat her. Have to say, the fact that someone was videotaping it is as sick as the girls beating her up but it's good there's a video. They should be convicted with no problem.
@84 and anyone interested, in the SLOG subsection of the forums I have started a thread to discuss how we can make a SLOG troll wiki: http://forums.thestranger.com/showthread…
@65, 67: I think I didn't clarify enough, too much emotional reaction there.
My point was that Brown seems to pick on unprotected people, period. I'm betting that's the real defining characteristic. My only point in bringing up the last case was that there was no apparent physical characteristic that made her want to attack her last recorded victim. She claimed that she overheard the victim calling her ugly from across the room. The mother couldn't convince her otherwise and so she stalked and assaulted this woman and her older kid while the younger daughter had to watch. I mean damn... Paranoid much?
I think it is a cultural thing in part - a culture of terror and silence. Growing up in a white low-income neighborhood in the city, most of the violence I personally encountered and witnessed was white against white. Of course, there was more variety than that but the core was always the same. Some asshole attacked a bystander for money or for kicks. The victim either tried to disappear as best he or she could until it blew over or tried to pursue legally and ended up dropping. Violent crimes in violent areas often go unreported or aren't taken seriously enough. Like I said, it's a classy place. It's pretty assholish across the board.
Overhearing so many assailants brag about beatings, I believe that most people don't have an actual reason for assault. Sometimes they'll cite a racial reason, sometimes a sexual identity reason, sometimes a disability reason. I hardly think those are valid reasons, I'm just saying that often times it was slapped on afterward or just a tipping point in their own warped mental justification for doing these things. In the last case she used an alleged overheard snippet of conversation as grounds for assault. In this case she used something even more flimsy. In a lot of cases it really does seem that the real motivation is just for a power trip and the justification comes afterward. Maybe Brown had a racial/transphobic rationale for this attack and added in some slurs just to be an asshole but I'd bet good money that she just felt like picking a fight and saw a lone girl there that she knew she could take. The racial /trans take on this could have been components of why they picked this particular girl, I'll grant that. Who knows? Her last charge shows that she's prone to lash out at random bystanders, not just white or transgendered people. Like the last woman, they probably beat the hell out of Polis because she was an easy target, not because of anything she did.
Shrug. I'm just saying that Brown seems to be a random asshole, nothing more than that to it. No grand transcendent message on race or sexual identity issues here. Brown may very well be racist and transphobic but she really seems people-phobic in general, which isn't any more commendable than targeted hatred.
"I'm just saying that Brown seems to be a random asshole"
Well, looking at baltimore's crime and murder rates, a city the same size as Seattle but with 10x the murder rate, do we have to guess at the demographic causing all its mayhem? Nothing random about it.
@Alleged, Why exactly are you so keen to show that black people are degenerate? Do you think we should be tailoring the law to specifically treat this degeneracy that you perceive?
@97: WV has relatively low murder rates because it has no fucking cities. Without dense concentrations of poor people, you don't have much of a propensity (or a market) for organized crime. And when crime isn't profitable, rates are lower.
"Without dense concentrations of poor people, you don't have much of a propensity (or a market) for organized crime."
Really? I was able to walk through Kolkata at 2am drunk off my arse for two weeks straight and never had a problem. I went to the Museum of Visionary Arts just once in Baltimore and had my car stolen by several members of the 'community', most of whom had nicer mobile phones and cars then I did.
But keep pretending it has nothing to do with the so-call 'culture' that exists in inner city America these days after 40 years of welfarism.
@99: Really? A little research reveals that, surprisingly enough, the most lucrative crime in Kolkata isn't robbery or drug-running. It may interest you to know that India in general, and the cities in particular, are huge centers of cyber crime.
Economics is all it is. The crime that pays off the best will be the crime that people turn to.
@Alleged, please learn how to cite your "facts" so so you can make a real argument, your anecdotes on stolen cars and trips to India aren't particularly useful for seeing what's really going on.
If you look at the poverty data venomlash provides for Baltimore, you might be able to guess at why the crime rate there is so high. 21% of the city is below the poverty line, and nearly 11% have an income below 50% the poverty line income. It's not just that poverty is so prevalent, the poverty is particularly intense (compare that to 5% of Seattleites making under half the poverty line income).
You bring up that West Virginia has lower crime stats than Baltimore, that's simply not true. Let's look at Charleston, so we can compare cities. Per thousand residents, there are 15.04 violent crimes in Charleston to Baltimore's 18.04. Overall, though, there are 91.53 crimes per thousand residents to Baltimore's 75.14. Looking more closely at each city's crime rates, a few other interesting things come out. The murder rate in Baltimore is seven times the national rate, and a little over half the national rate in Charleston. But there are 15.44 more rapes per hundred thousand residents in Charleston (37.09) than in Baltimore (21.65). Charleston even exceeds the rate of rape nationally (32.2). Aggravated assault is high in Baltimore (968.2 per 100K residents), but it's high in Charleston too (732.1 per 100K) (nationally it's 336.5 per 100K). Baltimore far outstrips Charleston when it comes to vehicle theft (982.2 to 443.2) and robbery (663.3 to 218.7), but Charleston takes the cake for larceny theft (5081.9 to 2894) and burglary (1423.2 to 1193.3) - both far exceed the national rates in these categories.
The differences between the crime in Charleston and Baltimore can pretty easily be explained by the difference in population density, Baltimore is a much more crowded place. It doesn't make sense to rob people in the street, steel cars, murder or assault people when there isn't another person for miles (figuratively speaking). Those things make much more sense when everyone is packed into the city like sardines. Your thesis that poor white people don't commit crime at a rate comparable to that of black people is pretty busted.
Oh, by the way, the crime rate in Kolkata is comparable to that of Baltimore, with 71 per 100K residents, which actually is much lower than the national rate of 167.7 per 100K. Crime is pretty high in India, India is pretty damn poor. You were basically in just as much danger in Kolkata as you were in Baltimore, you can take your anecdote and shove it.
I got the stats wrong, too (looking at them, they really didn't make sense). Between 2000 and 2004 the average crime rate in India was 526.36 per 100K. I am having some trouble determining what exactly the crime rate in Kolkata is, though it's very clearly lower than the national rate.
Ah, a bit of research shows that the original numbers are correct, except they are for per 1K, not 100K, the place I originally saw that made a transcription error.
Hey Anonymous/Alleged, I hear you and I really know where you're coming from. I blame random dark skinned people for all the things that go wrong in my life too. So much goes so wrong in this world, and it's soothing to know the fault lies squarely with them people that don't look like me.
Remember good Sloggers, this video, like about 90% of them that feature black people, is NOT about race. Say it enough, you may believe it.
My heart goes out to her and I hope she can get beyond this and find happiness. She deserves it.
Trolls: it's not about black people; it's about poor people. Crawl back under your rocks.
Really? How come I don't see poor Chinese, Vietnamese, whites doing this on youtube every week in buses, trains, fast joints, schools, bus tunnels etc. etc.?
What would everyone say if she was black and every else white, would it be about white people then?
I guess I'm a racist everytime I see a group of skanky young black kids get on a a bus and I put away my iPhone.
I can understand why the employees did nothing, they would have risked being fired, which at a McDonalds, doesnt take much to lose your job.
There is also the possability that customers would be sued for trying to stop the asault. As dumb as that sounds, it happens and counter sueing to recoup lawyer fees will be a challenge. You can just jump in, defend someone and hope some pro-gay philanthropist pays your lawyer fees.
Its one messed up win/lose situation.
Really? Blaming McDonalds? this woman is on the floor, having a seizure, the thugettes have left, but all they do is walk up and keep filming?
Right, it's McDonald's fault.
"there is also the possability that customers would be sued for trying to stop the assault."
Didn't stop that one little old white lady from trying.
What we have here is an inner city black culture almost completely devoid of humanity and a bunch of white liberals making excuses.
Here's an infographic that demonstrates how mindfuckingly evil we are to this particular set of people for being who they are, and this just shows the kids.
Hey, those of you with accounts: Why the hell don't you have unregistered comments HIDDEN? Alleged will disappear when you stop giving him attention. Hiding his comments will do that, and yes, it's worth missing a few, rare insightful comments that someone without an account might post.
I hope that I have the courage to never let the fear of being sued stop me from doing the right thing.
READ THE POLICE REPORT.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/marylan…...
1. The confrontation started BEFORE she went into the bathroom.
2. One of the attackers stated to the police she had got into a fight with a woman.
These two thuggettes did not know the victim was a transsexual. So much for the "they objected to a man being in the bathroom" BS. The attackers were black. The store employees who were yuckking it up and did nothing to help her (with one exception)were black. Those who helped them escape were black. There were racial insults shouted during the fight.
Oh, and here is a page with handily color coded maps and data sets that show reported murders of trans people around the world, and list the particularly brutal ways in which they are killed and where their bodies are deposited. If this is a "race" problem, every "race" has it.
@13, The trolls provide a good reason to post some very important stats on the prevalence of violence towards trans people that really can't be shown too often.
Do you seriously think that was what was going through the minds of a bunch of 18 yr old burger flippers more intent on getting youtube hit?
"Oh my, I might get sued! I'd better keep making a video and yucking it up!"
"The trolls provide a good reason to post some very important stats on the prevalence of violence towards trans"
Except the police reports says the thuggettes thought she was a woman and attacked her before she even went into the restroom.
Source
@20, Alleged is every fuckhead troll too cowardly to register on SLOG and own their comments.
What a broken society in that part of the USA. In other areas of the US or Europe, do you really think ANYONE would stand around and allow this to happen? Hell no! (Hopefully I'm not wrong.)
@20: Alleged is a term coined by Uriel238 (I think it was him; this was around the time I came to SLOG) to refer to a general breed of unregistered dumbass. We've also got Gommorah Man (who always misspells "Gomorrah"), Responsible Doc (a serious transphobic quack), and a few registered dumbasses such as Loveschild (homophobic Church Lady always at odds with Kim in Portland's compassionate christianity), Lord Basil (blatant Poe's Law parody), Seattleblues (pseudo-intellectual prat who thinks that opinions are an acceptable substitute for evidence), the Period Hive Mind (basically Alleged with SLOG immigration documents), whatsbeckgottodowithit (failed newfag troll), and Basehead (shock jock, and moar liek Crackhead, amirite?). I ought to come up with a classification system.
Just another day in Gommorah.
Careful what you wish for.....
Those are your people.
And, @9, those trial lawyers who will punish anyone who dares do the right thing, they are also loyal Democraps.
In fact the Democraps and Obama are bought and paid for by the Trial Lawyers Association.
so,
please,
all you Liberals,
spare us your crocodile tears-
this is the Gaymerica you've worked so hard to create.
@27: Ah yes, Naive White Libtarded Seattle Progressive. He got b&, bitched about it for a little while as an unregistered, and then R-U-N-N-O-F-T.
you're spending too much time on slog junior.
go outside and play in the sunshine.
Do you support marriage rights for polygamists?
What a shame actual facts, like crime stats, don't back that fantasy up.
Enjoy the ghetto ladies.
Enjoy the ghetto ladies and remember it's very hard to out run your fellow 'oppressed' in high heels.
Do you support marriage rights for polygamists?
It doesn't. Only people who know a lot about the legal system (lawyers) or people who have burned by civil lawsuits before (a very small minority) would think of that in the heat of the moment. Any decent person at that restaurant (where, apparently, the pickings were slim) failed to intervene because of the bystander effect.
tinyurl.com/2hrf59
@35: "What a shame actual facts, like crime stats, don't back that fantasy up.
Enjoy the ghetto ladies."
What a shame actual facts, like crime stats, haven't actually been cited. Do you have any research suggesting that blacks have a higher propensity to criminality than others of comparable economic and social status? Or are you just shooting your fool mouth off again?
@37: I lol'ed.
@41: http://content.ytmnd.com/content/0/a/2/0…
For those who are interested, there is a related petition here: http://www.change.org/petitions/demand-t…
Do you support marriage rights for polygamists?
Yes, no doubt these thugettes closely follow the comings and goings of their legislators down in Annapolis.
But nice attempt to blame straight white males, let's keep trying folks!
Obviously 14-year-olds pay a lot of attention to the goings-on of their local legislatures.
The cultural climate that had the senate even considering anti-discrimination laws is a step forward. Few people gave a shit about trans rights even just 20 years ago, and no one was proposing legislation. #53 is still a dipshit.
Yes, because without that climate these girls would be upstanding citizens and no doubt before this sassy trannie walked into their lives, they were living crime-free, socially positive lives well on their ways to becoming contributing members of society.
So yet agaan, we have proven that this attack was the fault of the one group of people apparently not even at that McDonalds that night: straight, white men.
Why, was Brown not-black during the other attacks you mention?
Let's just focus on the real problem: urban black thug culture.
No, it's too horrible to contemplate. Much better for her to be a victim. For the sake of society. Much better.
If I were trans, I would never leave the goddamn house without a Glock.
i think Dan made a good point about Chrissy moving forward. I think she needs to be careful to maybe not get sucked into being a poster child for trans / lgbt rights, etc. I think it can make it harder to recover and move on. . .
And. . . until the case is resolved, I think she needs to get good representation and keep quiet.
That would be a first.
Let's hope this woman gets an outpouring of support and someone can give her a job.
Not if ACORN had its way.
what the hell is wrong with people?! First to brutally attack another person like that, and then for all the people to stand back and watch, and even have the nerve to film it???
Makes me so angry.
Or what they call 'Monday' in da' hood.
What she did was stupid. She should've talked to a lawyer first, and the press second (if at all).
Sometimes it's heart-warming to know that humanity has a lot to grow: actualizing hidden potentials and evolving further till we reach the stars etc.
And then sometimes it's not.
I feel the same way whenever I walk past the McDonalds at 3rd and Pine too.
It's heartbreaking, the whole thing. I'm so glad she's okay.
Yeah, the black community probably is a bit more intolerant of gay and trans people. It does seem like that was the reason they beat her. Have to say, the fact that someone was videotaping it is as sick as the girls beating her up but it's good there's a video. They should be convicted with no problem.
Do you support marriage rights for polygamists?
My point was that Brown seems to pick on unprotected people, period. I'm betting that's the real defining characteristic. My only point in bringing up the last case was that there was no apparent physical characteristic that made her want to attack her last recorded victim. She claimed that she overheard the victim calling her ugly from across the room. The mother couldn't convince her otherwise and so she stalked and assaulted this woman and her older kid while the younger daughter had to watch. I mean damn... Paranoid much?
I think it is a cultural thing in part - a culture of terror and silence. Growing up in a white low-income neighborhood in the city, most of the violence I personally encountered and witnessed was white against white. Of course, there was more variety than that but the core was always the same. Some asshole attacked a bystander for money or for kicks. The victim either tried to disappear as best he or she could until it blew over or tried to pursue legally and ended up dropping. Violent crimes in violent areas often go unreported or aren't taken seriously enough. Like I said, it's a classy place. It's pretty assholish across the board.
Overhearing so many assailants brag about beatings, I believe that most people don't have an actual reason for assault. Sometimes they'll cite a racial reason, sometimes a sexual identity reason, sometimes a disability reason. I hardly think those are valid reasons, I'm just saying that often times it was slapped on afterward or just a tipping point in their own warped mental justification for doing these things. In the last case she used an alleged overheard snippet of conversation as grounds for assault. In this case she used something even more flimsy. In a lot of cases it really does seem that the real motivation is just for a power trip and the justification comes afterward. Maybe Brown had a racial/transphobic rationale for this attack and added in some slurs just to be an asshole but I'd bet good money that she just felt like picking a fight and saw a lone girl there that she knew she could take. The racial /trans take on this could have been components of why they picked this particular girl, I'll grant that. Who knows? Her last charge shows that she's prone to lash out at random bystanders, not just white or transgendered people. Like the last woman, they probably beat the hell out of Polis because she was an easy target, not because of anything she did.
Shrug. I'm just saying that Brown seems to be a random asshole, nothing more than that to it. No grand transcendent message on race or sexual identity issues here. Brown may very well be racist and transphobic but she really seems people-phobic in general, which isn't any more commendable than targeted hatred.
Well, looking at baltimore's crime and murder rates, a city the same size as Seattle but with 10x the murder rate, do we have to guess at the demographic causing all its mayhem? Nothing random about it.
Do you support fuck yeah rights for Seaking?
Seattle poverty rate: 10%
Baltimore poverty rate: 20%
Problem?
Just to not be a hypocrite:
http://www.city-data.com/poverty/poverty…
http://www.city-data.com/poverty/poverty…
Really? I was able to walk through Kolkata at 2am drunk off my arse for two weeks straight and never had a problem. I went to the Museum of Visionary Arts just once in Baltimore and had my car stolen by several members of the 'community', most of whom had nicer mobile phones and cars then I did.
But keep pretending it has nothing to do with the so-call 'culture' that exists in inner city America these days after 40 years of welfarism.
Economics is all it is. The crime that pays off the best will be the crime that people turn to.
If you look at the poverty data venomlash provides for Baltimore, you might be able to guess at why the crime rate there is so high. 21% of the city is below the poverty line, and nearly 11% have an income below 50% the poverty line income. It's not just that poverty is so prevalent, the poverty is particularly intense (compare that to 5% of Seattleites making under half the poverty line income).
You bring up that West Virginia has lower crime stats than Baltimore, that's simply not true. Let's look at Charleston, so we can compare cities. Per thousand residents, there are 15.04 violent crimes in Charleston to Baltimore's 18.04. Overall, though, there are 91.53 crimes per thousand residents to Baltimore's 75.14. Looking more closely at each city's crime rates, a few other interesting things come out. The murder rate in Baltimore is seven times the national rate, and a little over half the national rate in Charleston. But there are 15.44 more rapes per hundred thousand residents in Charleston (37.09) than in Baltimore (21.65). Charleston even exceeds the rate of rape nationally (32.2). Aggravated assault is high in Baltimore (968.2 per 100K residents), but it's high in Charleston too (732.1 per 100K) (nationally it's 336.5 per 100K). Baltimore far outstrips Charleston when it comes to vehicle theft (982.2 to 443.2) and robbery (663.3 to 218.7), but Charleston takes the cake for larceny theft (5081.9 to 2894) and burglary (1423.2 to 1193.3) - both far exceed the national rates in these categories.
The differences between the crime in Charleston and Baltimore can pretty easily be explained by the difference in population density, Baltimore is a much more crowded place. It doesn't make sense to rob people in the street, steel cars, murder or assault people when there isn't another person for miles (figuratively speaking). Those things make much more sense when everyone is packed into the city like sardines. Your thesis that poor white people don't commit crime at a rate comparable to that of black people is pretty busted.
Oh, by the way, the crime rate in Kolkata is comparable to that of Baltimore, with 71 per 100K residents, which actually is much lower than the national rate of 167.7 per 100K. Crime is pretty high in India, India is pretty damn poor. You were basically in just as much danger in Kolkata as you were in Baltimore, you can take your anecdote and shove it.
Sources:
http://seattle.areaconnect.com/crime/com…
http://www.neighborhoodscout.com/md/balt…
http://www.neighborhoodscout.com/wv/char…
http://ncrb.nic.in/crime2004/cii-2004/CHAP1.pdf">http://replay.web.archive.org/2009032607… (Note that this is a PDF)
http://web.archive.org/jsp/Interstitial.…
I got the stats wrong, too (looking at them, they really didn't make sense). Between 2000 and 2004 the average crime rate in India was 526.36 per 100K. I am having some trouble determining what exactly the crime rate in Kolkata is, though it's very clearly lower than the national rate.