You Know It's True
A Few Days Old, But Still AMAZING
What Have the Protests Accomplished?
5/26 4 officers fired for murdering George Floyd
5/27 Charges dropped for Kenneth Walker (Breonna Taylor's boyfriend, who police accused of killing her)
5/28 University of Minnesota cancels contract with police
5/28 3rd precinct police station neutralized by protesters
5/28 Minneapolis transit union refuses to bring police officers to protests or transport arrested protesters
5/29 Activists commandeer Minneapolis hotel to provide shelter to homeless
5/29 Former officer Chauvin arrested and charged with murder
5/29 Louisville Mayor suspends "no-knock" warrants
5/30 US Embassies across Africa condemn police murder of George Floyd
5/30 Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison takes over prosecution of the murdering officer
5/30 Transport Workers Union refuses to help NYPD transport arrests protesters
5/30 Maryland lawmakers forming work group on police reform, accountability
5/31 2 abusive officers fired for pulling a couple out of their car and tasing them – Atlanta, GA
6/1 Minneapolis public schools end contract with police
6/1 Confederate monument removed after being toppled by protesters – Birmingham, AL
6/1 CA prosecutors launch campaign to stop DAs from accepting police union money
6/1 Tulsa Mayor agrees to not renew Live PD contract
6/1 Louisville police chief fired after shooting of David Mcatee
6/1 Congress begins bipartisan push to cut off police access to military gear
6/1 Atlanta announces plans to create a task force and public database to track police brutality in metro Atlanta area
6/2 Minneapolis AFL-CIO calls for resignation of police union president Bob Kroll, a vocal white supremest
6/2 Pittsburgh transit union announces refusal to transport police officers or arrest protesters
6/2 Racist ex-mayor Frank Rizzo statue removed in Philadelphia
6/2 6 abusive officers charged for violence against residents and protesters – Atlanta, GA
6/2 Civil rights investigation of Minneapolis Police Dept launched
6/2 San Francisco resolution to prevent law enforcement from hiring officers with history of misconduct
6/2 Survey indicates that 64% of those polled are sympathetic to protesters, 47% disapprove of police handling of the protests, and 54% think the burning down of the Minneapolis police precinct was fully or partially justified
6/2 Trenton NJ announces policing reforms
6/2 Minneapolis City Council members consider disbanding the police
6/2 Confederate statue removed from Alexandria, VA
6/3 Officer fired for tweets promoting violence against protesters – Denver, CO
6/3 Walker Art Center and the Minneapolis Institute of Art cut ties with the MPD
6/3 Chauvin charges upgraded to second degree murder, remaining 3 officers also charged and taken into custody
6/3 Richmond VA Mayor Stoney announces RPD reform measures: establish "Marcus" alert for folks experiencing mental health crises, establish independent Citizen Review Board, an ordinance to remove Confederate monuments, and implement racial equity study
6/3 County commissioners deny proposal for $23 million expansion of Fulton County jail
6/3 Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board unanimously votes to sever ties with MPD
6/3 Seattle withdraws request to end federal oversight/consent decree of police department
6/3 Breonna Taylor's case reopened
6/3 Louisville police department (Breonna Taylor's murderers) will now be under review from an outside agency, which will include review on training, bias-free policing and accountability
6/3 Colorado lawmakers introduce a police reform bill that includes body cam laws, repealing the "fleeing felon" statute, and banning chokeholds
6/3 Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announces plans to reduce funding to police department by $150M and instead invest in minority communities
6/4 Virginia governor announces plans to remove Robert E. Lee statue from Richmond
6/4 Portland schools superintendent discontinues presence of armed police officers in schools
6/4 MBTA (Metro Boston) board orders that buses wont transport police to protests, or protesters to police
6/4 King County Labor Federation issues ultimatum to police unions: admit to and address racism in Seattle PD, or be removed
6/5 City of Minneapolis bans all chokeholds by police
6/5 Racist ex-mayor Hubbard statue removed – Dearborn, MI
6/5 NFL condemns racism and admits it should have listened to players' protests
6/5 California Governor Gavin Newsom calls for statewide use-of-force standard made along with community leaders and ban on carotid holds
6/5 2 Buffalo officers suspended within a day of pushing 75 year old protester to the ground, and lying about it
6/5 2 NYPD officers suspended after videos of violence to protesters
6/5 The US Marines bans display of the Confederate flag
6/5 Dallas adopts a "duty to intervene" rule that requires officers to stop other cops who are engaging in excessive use of force
6/5 Dallas City Manager T.C. Broadnax releases an 11-point action plan for immediate police reforms
6/6 Statue of Confederate general Williams Carter Wickham torn down – Richmond, VA
6/6 2 Buffalo officers charged with second-degree assault for shoving elderly man
6/6 San Francisco Mayor London Breed announces effort to defund police and redirect funds to Black community
6/7 Frank Rizzo mural removed, to be replaced with new artwork – Philadelphia, PA
6/7 Minneapolis City Council members announce intent to disband the police department, invest in proven community-led public safety
6/7 Protesters in Bristol topple statue of slave trader Edward Colston, throw it in the river
6/7 NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio vows for the first time to cut funding for NYPD, redirect to social services
6/7 A Virginia police officer faces charges after using a stun gun on a black man
6/8 NY State Assembly passes the Eric Garner Anti-Chokehold Act
6/8 Democrats in Congress unveil a bill to rein in bias and excessive force in policing
6/8 Black lawmakers block a legislative session in Pennsylvania to demand action on police reform
6/8 France bans police use of chokeholds
6/8 Seattle council members join calls to defund police department
6/8 Boston reevaluates how it funds police department
6/8 Honolulu Police Commission nominees voice support for more transparency, reforms
6/8 Rights groups and Floyd's family call for a UN inquiry into American policing and help with systemic police reform
No, it's not enough, but this is only the beginning. Keep fighting!!!
A Gentle Reminder
No We Can't Joe. No We Can't.
Quote of the Day
There's a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state, and the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people." ~ Edward James Olmos as Admiral William Adama, Battlestar Galactica
That Would Be Epic
Ooh, That's a Tough One
What's the Appetizer?
This Gives Me Hope
In a show of solidarity, a massive tribute to Black Lives Matter has been painted on the street leading to the White House in Washington, D.C. Completed in permanent street paint, the message features bold, yellow letters that span more than a block of 16th Street and marks a historic moment in the United States after weeks of protests.
Mayor Muriel Bowser commissioned the banner-style piece, which city workers and volunteers began at 3 a.m. Friday morning ahead of weekend demonstrations. The new message is just two blocks north of Lafayette Square, where police charged peaceful protestors and released tear gas and flash-bang shells to clear the crowd for a photo-op for Trump earlier this week. It sits at the foot of St. John's Church.
[Source]
Pride Was Always a Protest
Here is a list of Black-led LGBTQ community organizations you can donate to, compiled by pfpicardi and RaquelWillis_:
Snapco – Builds power of Black trans and queer people to force systemic divestment from the prison industrial complex and invest in community support.
Black AIDS Institute – Working to end the Black HIV epidemic through policy, advocacy, and high-quality direct HIV services.
Trans Cultural District – The world's first-ever legally recognized trans district, which aims to stabilize and economically empower the trans community.
LGBTQ+ Freedom Fund – Posts bail for LGBTQ+ people held in jail or immigrant detention and raises awareness of the epidemic of LGBTQ overincarceration.
House of GG – Creating safe and transformative spaces for community to heal, and nurturing them into tomorrow's leaders, focusing on trans women of color in the South.
Trans Justice Funding Project – Community-led funding initiative to support grassroots trans justice groups run by and for trans people.
The Okra Project – Collective that seeks to address the global crisis faced by Black trans people by bringing home-cooked meals and resources to the community.
Youth Breakout – Works to end the criminalization of LGBTQ youth in New Orleans to build a safer and more just community.
Trump's Presidency is Over
From Robert Reich:
You'd be forgiven if you hadn't noticed. His verbal bombshells are louder than ever, but Donald J. Trump is no longer president of the United States.
By having no constructive response to any of the monumental crises now convulsing America, Trump has abdicated his office.
He is not governing. He's golfing, watching cable TV, and tweeting.
How has Trump responded to the widespread unrest following the murder in Minneapolis of George Floyd, a black man who died after a white police officer knelt on his neck for nine minutes as he was handcuffed on the ground?
He has incited more police violence. Trump called the protesters "thugs" and threatened to have them shot. "When the looting starts, the shooting starts," he tweeted, parroting a former Miami police chief whose words spurred race riots in the late 1960s.
The following day he encouraged more police violence, gloating about "the most vicious dogs, and most ominous weapons" awaiting protesters outside the White House, should they ever break through Secret Service lines. On Sunday he again resorted to incendiary tweets, instructing "Democrat Mayors and Governors" to "get tough" on the "ANARCHISTS."
Trump's response to George Floyd's murder has debased the presidency and squandered whatever moral authority remained.
Trump's response to the last three ghastly months of mounting disease and death has been just as heedless. Since claiming Covid-19 was a "Democratic hoax" and muzzling public health officials, he has punted management of the coronavirus to the states.
Governors have had to find ventilators to keep patients alive and protective equipment for hospital and other essential workers who lack it, often bidding against each other. They have had to decide how, when, and where to reopen their economies.
Trump has claimed "no responsibility at all" for testing and contact-tracing – the keys to containing the virus. His new "plan" places responsibility on states to do their own testing and contact-tracing.
Trump is also AWOL in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
More than 41 million Americans are jobless. In the coming weeks temporary eviction moratoriums are set to end in half of the states. One-fifth of Americans missed rent payments this month. Extra unemployment benefits are set to expire at the end of July.
What is Trump's response? Like Herbert Hoover, who in 1930 said "the worst is behind us" as thousands starved, Trump says the economy will improve and does nothing about the growing hardship. The Democratic-led House passed a $3 trillion relief package on May 15. Mitch McConnell has recessed the Senate without taking action and Trump calls the bill dead on arrival.
What about other pressing issues a real president would be addressing? The House has passed nearly 400 bills this term, including measures to reduce climate change, enhance election security, require background checks on gun sales, reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act and reform campaign finance. All are languishing in McConnell's inbox. Trump doesn't seem to be aware of any of them.
There is nothing inherently wrong with golfing, watching television and tweeting. But if that's pretty much all that a president does when the nation is engulfed in crises, he is not a president.
Trump's tweets are no substitute for governing. They are mostly about getting even.
When he's not fomenting violence against black protesters, he's accusing a media personality of committing murder, retweeting slurs about a black female politician's weight and the House speaker's looks, conjuring up conspiracies against himself supposedly organized by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, and encouraging his followers to "liberate" their states from lockdown restrictions.
He tweets bogus threats that he has no power to carry out – withholding funds from states that expand absentee voting, "overruling" governors who don't allow places of worship to reopen "right away," designating anti-fascism activists as terrorists, and punishing Twitter for fact-checking him.
And he lies incessantly.
In reality, Donald Trump does not run the government of the United States. He doesn't manage anything. He doesn't organize anyone. He doesn't administer or oversee or supervise. He doesn't read memos. He hates meetings. He has no patience for briefings. His White House is in perpetual chaos.
His advisors aren't truth-tellers. They're toadies, lackeys, sycophants and relatives.
Since moving into the Oval Office in January 2017, Trump hasn't shown an ounce of interest in governing. He obsesses only about himself.
But it has taken the present set of crises to reveal the depths of his self-absorbed abdication – his utter contempt for his job, his total repudiation of his office.
Trump's nonfeasance goes far beyond an absence of leadership or inattention to traditional norms and roles. In a time of national trauma, he has relinquished the core duties and responsibilities of the presidency.
He is no longer president. The sooner we stop treating him as if he were, the better.
It Would Be a Shame…
It would also be really annoying if they wore heat resistant gloves to throw back the hot tear gas canisters and if this got shared to all those protesting…
It would be a further shame if people started covering cameras (as seen in Hong Kong, with protestors using poles and rakes to lift cardboard boxes over security cameras), blinding drone optics with laser pointers, and flooding police-run reporting apps with junk data.
It would also be a shame if the protesters noted that plainclothes cops can be identified a number of ways, such as wearing steel-toed boots; an armband or wristband of a particular color; driving white, black, or dark blue cars with concealed lights; or having the outline of cuffs visible in the back pocket or the bumps of an armor vest's shoulder straps under their shirt.
It would be a shame if the protesters began making their signs out of inch-thick plywood to stop rubber bullets,* forming a tight shield wall to prevent police from singling out and mobbing individual protesters. It would be a shame if the people behind the shield wall held up umbrellas so that tear gas canisters fired over the heads of the front line will be bounced away. It would be a shame if protesters began constructing improvised armor vests out of duct tape, hardback books, and ceramic tiles.
It would be a shame if protesters started wearing safety glasses, hard hats, respirators, and gardening gloves, all of which can be found at the same hardware stores as the plywood. It would be a shame if they started using traffic cones (the kind without the hole in the top) upside-down buckets, or other improvised lids to contain tear gas by placing them over the canisters.
It would be a shame if protesters learned that police scanners are legal to own in the US, allowing them to learn where police are moving and what routes they intend to take. It would be a shame if they discovered that these scanners can be used to send as well as receive, allowing them to flood the scanner frequencies with noise.
All this would be a terrible, terrible shame.
*I can't speak for the other things on this list but do not use plywood as a shield! It will not defend against rubber bullets and will splinter if hit.
Finally Some Good News
Steve King, one of Congress's biggest pieces of human excrement and openly and proudly racist members, gets beaten by Randy Feenstra in the GOP Iowa primary.
With that being said, this is a deeply-red district (4th District of Iowa) and it's a longshot that Democrat J.D. Scholten will win in November. Still, it will be refreshing not to hear remarks like, "Where did any other subgroup of people contribute more to civilization [than whites]." ~Steve King, July 2016