Grand Rapids-based Voice for the Badge continues to spread propaganda

On July 4th, the local pro-police group, Voice For the Badge (VFB), posted another propaganda image on their Facebook page (shown below), with two flags. The first flag was the USA flag, which accompanied by the tag line, This is Why We Are Free. The second flag is the pro-police flag, which had the tag line, This is Why We Are Safe.

There are several things worth pointing out about the VFB post. First, the image they used is from the Far-Right group Turning Point USA,  which not only believes that the US military is a force for good, they believe that cops protect people from Black Lives Matter activists and ANTIFA.

However, when it comes to deconstructing the beliefs that the US Military makes us free and that cops in the US keep us safe, there are lots of fabulous sources to call both beliefs bullshit.

If you haven’t been completely seduced by Hollywood depictions of the US military or bought the ongoing collusion between dominant US news media companies and the US Military, then you know that the US Military has invaded dozens of countries, occupied lots of countries, bombed civilian targets, murdered millions, tortured, repressed and then left politicians in charge to look out for US interests. Zoltan Grossman has been documenting US Military interventions for decades and he has a great list that begins with the 1890 US Military attack at Pine Ridge (killing 300 indigenous people) all the way up to the present. Spend some time looking at that list and then tell me is you really believe that the US Military makes people in the US free.

As for whether or not the police in the US keep us safe, one way to determine if that is true would be to look at statistics of how often cops murder civilians. Check out the data at https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/ and see how many civilians are killed by police each year, along with the disproportionately high number of Black people that are killed by cops. 

It’s bad enough that Voice For the Badge pushes it’s pro-cop propaganda, now they want to deny that the US Military is not a brutal, repressive and imperialist force in the world.