A serious question…

Say you have neighbors with whom you’re friendly and have more than a nodding acquaintance; whom you trust.

If one day you saw them being taken away by the authorities, would you go out to ask what was going on ?

Would you check and see if the neighbors needed you to call anyone on their behalf ?

Or would you close your blinds and assume the neighbors were being treated fairly and according to the law ?

And that getting involved would only cause you problems ?

🥺

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ninalanyon · 61-69, T

That's a difficult question. Here I have quite high confidence that the authorities would only take such drastic action if the situation warranted it. The usual rule here is that even arrests are generally undertaken in a cooperative manner and not as unexpected events. On the other hand I imagine that I would worry that this particular event was an exception and perhaps I would try to find out what was going on.

It's all a bit hypothetical, thank goodness, I've never been in that situation.

Here's an illustration of how things work here: the leader of a large Bandidos (like Hell's Angels) chapter (or whatever it's called) used to live in the village. He was arrested without any drama, found guilty of something serious and sentenced to prison. But there was no space in prison so he was told to go home and wait for a letter calling him in. Which he did. The police didn't need to collect him, he turned up when called in.

At least that's how it was described to me.

FreddieUK · 70-79, M

@ninalanyon Oh the delights of living in a civilised and ordered country.

ninalanyon · 61-69, T

@FreddieUK It's not all rosy here unfortunately. For instance the Barnevern (the branch of Social Services that is responsible for the safety of children) has a reputation for taking children away from marginalised and minority parents when they didn't need to and ignoring the danger to children when they should have taken action. To what extent the reputation is deserved is hard to say.

FreddieUK · 70-79, M

@ninalanyon I think that's been an issue in many countries all round the world where there is a dominant culture which finds it difficult to accept minority groups behaving in what seen as non-normative ways.

EarthlingWise

@ninalanyon What are "minority parents", if I may ask?

ninalanyon · 61-69, T

@EarthlingWise These days it generally means immigrants from non-European countries, particularly those who have both adifferent skin colour and who are economically disadvantaged. In the past it was more likely to apply to the Sami (the indigenous people of the far north). As far as I can tell it actually has little to do with racism but rather to do with imbalance of power, the people affected tend to be those who, at the time in question, have the greatest difficulty fighting back.