Courtesy - Blog Posts
Decency towards others, especially service workers, should be the bare minimum.
When boarding buses, or any sort of public transportation where you have to walk past a driver to board, always smile at and greet the driver as you're boarding.
It doesn't waste anyone's time, yours or the drivers, to smile and greet the driver, as chances are you probably have to pay or scan your pass which is going to take a second or two, about the amount of time it takes to smile and greet the driver.
When we don't look at or acknowledge the driver at all, this can make the driver feel dehumanized to not be acknowledged by other human beings all day. Being a bus driver is a difficult job, they have to do customer service AND deal with traffic all day. Bus drivers also face a lot of burn out because they are often treated poorly. The least you can do is humanize them by smiling at them and greeting them.
There is no attack against the police, there is no conspiracy or propaganda agenda AGAINST the police or law enforcement.
With decades worth of law and police shows such as Law and Order (and those spin-offs), CSI, NCIS, Blue Bloods, Sherlock, Bones, Homicide Hunter, Monk, Southland; we have received propaganda for the police- how we should trust them, they’re here to help us, they exist for us. Their slogans in NYC are Courtesy, Professionalism and Respect. But these are not true.
But our daily, real-life experiences fall fall-short than the ideals presented for our consumption in mass media. It is entertaining, but it is not real. They put a siren on to go race thru a red light, text and drive, park illegally everyday-so we are not surprised when they murder young black men and children without provocation, we are not surprised that they overreact and attack black woman or any citizens against their rights granted to them just being in this country and by being humans themselves.
Whether it comes from an actual fear out of racism, or just an authoritarian ideal that they can get away with it--it does not matter. We believe the true victims of those who are murdered because we see the proof every day, the murders are just the tip of the iceberg.
The best thing about modern technology is exposing the way cops fuck over black people to white people. Literally no black person is surprised that they would do this to a black mother grieving over her child.