Privilege in America

We are seeing today the evidence of privilege in the United States of America in two different, but related stories in the news. 

In one, the Attorney General of Kentucky, a Republican, is seeking to charge some 87 protesters who were trespassing on his private yard. Yes, with trespassing, a misdemeanor. But also with a Kentucky felony, "intimidating a participant in a legal process." The protests were over the Attorney General's slow roll of the investigation into the death in February of Breonna Taylor at the hands of Louisville police.

The second case involves the wealthy St. Louis couple who pointed weapons at protesters on the street in front of their house. In that case, the St. Louis District Attorney, acting within her prosecutorial discretion, is seeking felony charges of brandishing a weapon in public. The Governor has called for the DA to resign, and Trump, along with US Attorney General William Barr, are looking at ways they can intervene in the case.

Threatening and intimidating public officials in the conduct of their duties happens every day all across America, in the demands and threats around campaign contributions. Businesses are looted every day by "private equity" that buys up companies using tons of borrowed money, strips the companies bare - including any employee pension funds - and then sells the remains at a huge profit. Big companies and wealthy people avoid taxes every day, with all sorts of schemes to hide money (see the Netflix movie "Laundromat"). Businesses and the wealthy have their minor violations overlooked all the time.

But if you're poor - white or black or brown or whatever - you get charged with a felony "threatening and intimidating." You get arrested and put in jail for a long time for breaking a window in a business, or blinded in one eye by a beanbag round from a 2nd story window as you're complying with police commands to disperse. You get choked to death for selling loosey cigarettes on a city street or passing a counterfeit $20. You get pulled over for not signaling a lane change in a deserted town on a sleepy Sunday morning, and then put in jail with cash bond for "resisting."

The determination isn't always race or ethnicity, but it's always money.