What technology is good for
This was originally published on my (James Cradock’s) Tumblog as “Hoosework: when technology works.”
This video, of Chris Lollie, an African American man waiting to pickup his children at daycare, who is harassed by a store clerk and then harassed, arrested and tased by St. Paul, Minnesota, police officers, who themselves should be fired, arrested, jailed and put to trial, after the St. Paul Police Department is vigorously sued, is awful. Don’t watch it if you would like to have a nice, unbothered holiday weekend. I mean that, and not with sarcasm. This stuff is hard. No sane person wants to know about this stuff, much less see it.
But…
What is good about Chris Lollie’s experience, after he was released, and after he was not more seriously hurt, is that he recorded the whole thing. All of it. What is good is that we can watch it. We can think about just how fucked up it is when a man waiting to pickup his children from daycare can be treated the way Chris Lollie was treated, in front of his children.
Technology, in the phone Chris Lollie used to record this abuse by the St. Paul PD, in that we can watch what happened on our computers, tablets and phones, and curse, and maybe lose it privately, and hopefully start to do something positive about it, technology proves it can perhaps be a potent, unstoppable tool for good.
How is that for a pitch? Not the cheeriest before the start of the long weekend, I know. The video is more than just worth watching. It is awful. Heartbreaking. It shows just how messed up we are. It shows what we need to fix. You should watch it.
