There is a crazy amount of news, both local and otherwise, that the media does not report on. I had no idea just how much until I started working with first responders. That gave me the opportunity to see and hear what actually goes on. There are way more shootings in most large towns and cities than its residents realize. More overdoses, more fires, a crazy number of larceny and breaking and entering calls. A LOT is kept quiet. A few years back, a guy got caught near here with a car trunk full of bombs. He only got caught because the idiot got the car repossessed for non-payment. Not one peep about it in the media.

I don’t have any G’s where I live. Could we maybe just try to get everyone/everywhere at least basic coverage first?

But what an awesome problem to have!

That got a surprised snort-laugh out of me lol

by a howitzer

It was (kind of) an option at one point: blowing from a gun.

It’s not much of a protest when many of the people participating are doing so involuntarily because they can’t afford to buy things anyway.

Many people in the US have that “fear of the other” drilled into them starting at a very young age.

You are so very right. I was born in the mid-70’s and I grew up in a rural area, lots and lots of low-income farmers outside of the valley, no minorities. There was a city to the west, and a notorious maximum security prison to the east. The news focused almost solely on the non-white people inhabiting both, and as a result I grew up absolutely terrified of those “others”, because the bad things was all I ever heard. I had no real contact with any minorities until I was an adult and had to get a job in the city. One morning driving in to that job, my car broke down a couple miles from where I worked, in a pretty run-down area. I had to walk the rest of the way to work. Not a soul bothered me, but that fear of the “other” was so strong that by the time I got to the office I was physically ill from it. Reactions and fears like this were the norm with the people I knew back then, and the media and those in power continue now with the propaganda that the “other” are to be feared and distrusted, because keeping us on edge and divided makes us easier to control.

The canary died back when they removed “don’t be evil”. I think the canary was just resurrected as a Horizon Zero Dawn mech canary.

Based on my own experience, this is how most cities handle their PD/FD funding, unfortunately. The fire department is just not important… until it is.