... people prefer manufactured media causes like "racism" "sexism" etc. that don't _really_ kill people to actual serious crises like the drug war.

They get their "do gooder" hit all the same, it just doesn't require any effort. I mean, what's easier, the vast majority of us who are _not racist_ gladhanding eachother and screaming at a few kooks or solving a global pandemic that exists because of special interests on both sides of the law (doctors, pharmacists, drug gangs, cops, lawyers, etc.) that make $$$$ thanks to the drug war?

The do-gooder just wants the neurochemicals it gets from do-gooding; the source of the fix is as immaterial as the provenance of a junkie's heroin.

It's like taking a baseball bat to an ant.

How many of your friends OD'd during that time interval, without some "do-gooder" there to revive them?

I want to live in this alternate reality where racism and sexism don't kill people. Are you not paying attention??

"The racial biases of white members of a community have a direct link to the number of black people shot and killed by police officers in that same area, new research indicates.

A study published last year found that African Americans are almost three times more likely than white people to be killed by the police’s use of force. Indigenous Americans are also almost three times as likely to suffer such a fate, while Hispanic men are twice as likely.

Now, a new report suggests the biases and prejudices held by white residents in an area has a close correlation to the number of black people who will lose their lives at the hands of officers."

You really don't think black people are ever killed because of racism? Or indigenous people? What happened in the residential schools? What about all the murdered and missing indigenous women? What about the fucking Holocaust? No one was ever killed because of racism?

it's about hate speech, which isn't covered in free expression, because no rights work unless all rights have some limits. It's actually criminal to promote hatred of groups of people. Our "leaders" won't stop these crimes so we have to.

"There are no concrete stats on fatal shootings by law enforcement officers in Canada, though the range has been estimated to be between 15 and 25 per year." --Wikipedia

And you have to go to "police shootings" because there certainly are not roving gangs of "white supremacists" going around lynching black people in Canada.

I am not apologizing for racism. Racism sucks. The USA clearly has a big problem not only with racism but also with police violence. Canada is not the USA. The VPD are _nothing like_ a "problematic" US law enforcement agency.

If you like to consume US pop culture, US "academic studies", that is fine, but you should probably, respectfully I say, consider that Canada is not simply another US state with all of the same problems.

The largest cause of preventable death, bar none, in BC and Vancouver today is the drug war and the opiod crisis. It's not sexism. It's not racism. Even if 100% of the cop-involved deaths in Canada were a product of _overt racism_ of the worst sort, opiods are killing an order of magnitude more people.

So is it that death is death, and we should go by numbers, or is it that some deaths are more important than others, because they fit into some sort of popculture/academic political narrative?

One fact that the mainstream hardly covers, tho Douglas Todd has in the Vancouver Sun, I think someone *ahem* may have tipped him off to it, is that most of the opiod deaths are young men. Like, overwhelmingly, the deaths are young men.

The simple fact is that most of the "left wing causes" that get oodles of grant money, that have dedicated infrastructure and statutory protection, they're solved problems, and have been in Canada since the mid 90s. But the drug war rages on. And on. And on.

4000 people will show up to gladhand themselves about how nice they are and to yell at some people with different political opinions.

4000 people have never shown up to protest the drug war in Vancouver, and it kills more people than the "academic leftist" causes. Is it because it's mostly young men, it doesn't matter?

Believe it or not, some people can care about more than one issue at the same time.

Why are you so convinced that people can't care about more than one issue at a time?

Why are you so convinced that there's never even a possible connection between the opioid crisis and racism? How many addicts are, for example, indigenous people trying to escape the pain of intergenerational trauma? Every addict I've met, and sure, there's bound to be some selection bias in there, but every addict I've met has been trying to escape trauma, whether that be related to racism or homophobia or transphobia or poverty or more likely a combination of these... To me, it's all connected.

And what is it that you even want people to do? What is it that you want the average person to do that's even within their power? Personally, I can't do anything to make addictions treatment more available. I can't do anything to make it possible for people to know what drugs they're even using. I very much support harm reduction, prescription heroin for those who need it, access to treatment for those who are ready for it... but I can't even access what I need myself. What is it that you want people to do?

To me, it just seems bizarre that you're so convinced that racism and sexism are fake problems and that we all need to concentrate on the DTES instead. Have you really already forgotten about the women murdered by Robert Pickton and the role racism, sexism and classism played in the police not taking those missing women seriously?

Well as much as I have to agree that you do make some valid points, I think you're missing the main one. That is, the matter of choice. People do not have a choice about their race or gender. However, as much as many people rage against this concept, taking drugs is virtually always a CHOICE. Yes, there are reasons "why", there are some cases where a person is involuntarily injected to foster an addiction, and there are multiple "causative factors ", but overwhelmingly it comes down to a personal choice made by the individual to knowingly inject a drug into their body that may actually kill them. This is indeed a sad situation and there has been a lot of attention paid to it. That being said, it is not in any way the same thing as the need to combat the rise of the type of overt racism inherent in some of the right-wing groups that appear to believe that the time is ripe for them to reappear in a big way. Try not to confuse the two issues.

How do you feel about having a crowd of people shouting down, mocking, driving away, and bullying your opinions? Do you love that? Does that make you feel that you are living in a free society? Does it reinforce your sense of democratic values?

I'm guessing not.

So don't do it to others.

Are they saying offensive garbage? Then have your counter-protest. The next day. And the next. And the next.

But if you shut them down, you don't make them go away. You make them resentful. You teach them that speech is pointless. That they will have no power unless they take it.