Police State

Trudeau Did Not Earn the Distrust of Black Canadians Overnight

https://twitter.com/HYMire/status/1268323230907011072

"...He forgot us in the assembling of his first cabinet. Then, by failing to recall his  blackface, he forgot us again...Defunding the police also includes reducing the powers of CSIS and CBSA. Canada's policies on anti-terror disproportionately impacts Black Muslims. Read what I wrote..."

With controversial police incidents making the news in Edmundston, in Kinngait, in Kelowna, and in Vancouver, the dam is broken in this country. We are naieve if we think the issues of confidence between American police agencies and the public do not also apply in Canada. In the coming weeks, we are going to be flooded with videos of police interactions from police agencies of all sizes across the country.

PM: 'Racism Never Has A Place in Canada and We Will Stop At Nothing To Eradicate It.'

https://twitter.com/Pam_Palmater/status/1268187823783522304

"Oh, I think what Justin Trudeau meant to say was 'Racism is well rooted in Canada and we do nothing to eradicate it.' You can't argue with decades of stats that show grave human rights violations - including failure to act on MMIWG. Most statistics are getting worse under him."

https://twitter.com/truebluecanadi1/status/1267873106363891713

A Crime-Fighting Police Tech 'Accelerator' in Edmonton Has Activists Worried

Police in Edmonton have partnered with a venture capitalist to fund tech entrepreneurs to come up with “solutions” to crime and social problems, using sensitive data collected from the healthcare system, social services, and police.

But as protests continue across the U.S. and Canada following the death of George Floyd, a Black man who was killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis last week, activists are raising concerns that the project could entrench systemic racism and further marginalize people of colour and Indigenous peoples in Edmonton.

Edmonton Police Service Chief Dale McFee and Ashif Mawji, a venture capitalist and chair of the Edmonton Police Foundation, say the goal of the Community Solutions Accelerator (CSA) is to save public money by privately funding entrepreneurs to address tough problems such as addiction and homelessness.

McFee and Mawji say the accelerator will help businesses create products to be used by police and social services in the field, such as artificial intelligence software that could predict who will go missing, or an app that would let police do on-the-spot mental health evaluations. The CSA will then sell the products to other cities.

To help startups bring these and other ideas to life, the CSA will pool sensitive information about Albertans from health care, child welfare, social services, and policing databases and provide it to entrepreneurs to get creative with. Mawji has said that the most sensitive data will only be handled by police who will “anonymize” the data before giving it to businesses.

Activists and privacy experts say the accelerator, launched in February without much fanfare, will affect the lives of vulnerable communities without giving them a say in how their information is being used.....

The oppression is a feature, not a bug.

quote:

Mariame Kaba: I think that one thing that remains constant for me is that the system—the prison industrial complex—isn’t broken. The system of mass criminalization we have isn’t the result of failure. Thinking in this way allows me to look at what’s going on right now in a clear-eyed way. I understand that white supremacy is maintained and reproduced through the criminal punishment apparatus. That hasn’t changed with Trump coming to power. Sessions is recycling ‘law & order’ rhetoric and some policies. The Feds can set a tone but most of the substantive criminal punishment policy happens at the state and county level.  That means that we have some potential openings. We’re seeing this currently in the re-invigorated struggle to end cash bail and pre-trial detention, for example.

I don’t see what is currently happening as outside of the norm. It’s part of a continuum. I see it as another stop in the ongoing US white supremacist nation building project; and while we’re going to have different kinds of things to contend with, we’re still going to have to strategize, we’re still going to have to mobilize, we’re still going to have to organize, we’re still going to have to figure out how we win. That hasn’t changed. Those are still the things we have to do. Our context has shifted a little. We’ll have some different types of actors to deal with as we make our demands and as we’re trying to figure out how we’re going to push towards whatever the goal is for people. For some people the end goal is going to be reform, for some people it’s going to be abolition, others will have other kinds of goals.

The system of mass criminalization we have isn’t the result of failure.

quote:

Mariame Kaba: I heard Patrisse Cullors from the Black Lives Matter Global Network say a while ago that somebody had to actually first imagine prisons and the police themselves in order to create them. Everything you see in the world—somebody thought of it first. I think that’s true and I think that’s right. I also think that once things are actualized into the world and exist, you can’t imagine how the world functioned before it.

It’s like we develop amnesia. You just assume things have always been as they are. I see this in myself—in just my lifetime where I went to college at a time when there were no computers—this is in the late 80’s. I brought a typewriter with me to college. That’s how I typed all my papers and did all my work. I struggle to remember how I did that now—and again that was just in the late 80’s-early 90’s. I can’t imagine it—I don’t even know how I operated in the world without a computer and the internet, right? It feels naturalized in that way even for somebody who in her own adult lifetime didn’t actually have it. That I can’t imagine a world without the technology I’m currently living with, says a lot. I can talk about it—but I don’t think I have a strong memory of that time.

We abolitionists often say that—and it’s true—that prisons are relatively new inventions, they really are, worldwide even. But think of how normalized so many other technologies are in our lives—and they are so very recent compared to prisons.

Once things are actualized into the world and exist, you can’t imagine how the world functioned before it.

The other thing about prisons and police is how they make people— the vast majority of people—feel secure. I don’t mean safe, I mean secure. Secure means that the scary, awful, monster people are kept at bay by those institutions. That is the story that gets told and reinforced by media, by our parents, by our culture, that is our story. That’s our narrative.

My comrade Paula Rojas has written that the cops are in our heads and hearts—that’s the same exact thing. The prison and the police are in our heads and hearts, therefore this system is naturalized in a way that makes it almost impossible for folks to step back and think that it wasn’t always like this. How did people manage before? How might we look into the future and imagine something different? Nothing is really permanent, right? Things are going to transform and change. We see that just in our own life span. But, again, as I mentioned, I think we can’t underestimate the fact that we think these institutions keep us secure.

Security and safety aren’t the same thing. Security is a function of the weaponized state that is using guns, weapons, fear and other things to “make us secure,” right? All the horrible things are supposed to be kept at bay by these tools, even though we know that horrible things continue to happen all the time with these things in place—and that these very tools and the corresponding institutions are reproducing the violence and horror they are supposed to contain.

All of these things are pretty clear to a whole bunch of people—we just, I think, don’t want to have to think hard about what else might be possible.

Are we ready to talk about defunding the police?

Alok Mukherjee was chair of the Toronto Police Services Board from 2005 to 2015. He is the author, with Tim Harper, of Excessive Force: Toronto’s Fight to Reform City Policing.

I called it the “budget dance.” It’s an annual ritual that plays out yearly between municipalities and police across Canada: City hall sets the year’s target and timetable for its budget process, and the police service submits a budget request to its board or commission, invariably asking for a substantial increase usually in excess of the city’s target. The oversight body reviews the request, conducts a bit of public consultation, negotiates with city hall and approves a final budget.

Rarely does the city demand a reduction in police budget. And as Statistics Canada has found, these budgets have grown year after year across Canada.

Now, protesters, activists and experts are talking about the idea of defunding the police – perhaps the first time that such broad-based efforts toward fundamental reform in policing are being sought through a reconsideration of police agencies’ pocketbooks.

quote:

Meanwhile, according to Statistics Canada’s most recent data on police expenditures, Canada spent $15.1-billion on policing in 2017-18, part of a trend that has “generally been on the increase” over the previous two decades. The year before, in 2016-17 – the last time spending breakdowns by jurisdiction were published – approximately 53 per cent of the $14.7-billion annual operating expenditures were devoted to municipal policing, while the rest went to the RCMP and the provincial police forces. And on average, 80 per cent of police budgets go to salaries and benefits. At a time when the COVID-19 pandemic is decimating cities’ finances, the impact of further increases in approved police spending feels even more enormous and worthy of closer scrutiny.....

'He's Disabled,' the Caregiver Screamed. 'I'm With Her,' Eyad Cried. The Cop Opened Fire Anyway

Eyad Hallaq was shot to death in a roofless garbage room. According to the testimony of his caregiver, who was by his side and tried to protect him, he was executed. For long minutes she stood next to him and pleaded for his life, trying to explain to the police officers, in Hebrew and in Arabic, that he suffered from a disability. They shot him three times from close range with a rifle, directly into the center of his body, as he lay on his back, wounded and terrified, on the floor of the room.

The garbage room is located in a narrow courtyard in Jerusalem’s Old City, inside Lions Gate, exactly at the start of the Via Dolorosa, where Jesus walked from the site of his trial to the place of his crucifixion, on what's now called King Faisal Street. It's just a few dozen meters from the entrance to the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound. The sanctity of the area did not help Hallaq. Nor did the fact that he was someone with special needs, a 32-year-old autistic person, the apple of the eye of his parents, who devoted their lives to looking after him.....

This article highlights just how bad our racism is.

You can expect a terrifying show of force by police if any Indigenous communities decide to stand in the way of Trans Mountain. Like we saw at Elsipogtog in New Brunswick or the Gidimt’en checkpoint this February, the RCMP relies on armoured vehicles, rifles, camouflage and dogs to intimidate most people into staying away — and cast those that stand their ground as dangerous insurgents (otherwise why would officers need military equipment?)

But there are two things that serve as a check on police brutality, and may help to hold officers accountable in moments like this. One is video cameras recording their every move. The other is the presence of witnesses with privilege and — let’s face it — light-coloured skin.

If Indigenous people choose to defy injunctions and stand in the way of pipeline construction on their land, it’s imperative they do not stand alone. For the sake of community safety, and to combat disinformation, we will need local observers to bear witness around the clock to actions by police, and likely vigilantes.

https://dogwoodbc.ca/news/british-columbia-police-brutality-militarized-...

..to bad they didn't quit entirely.

57 members of Buffalo police riot response team resign

All 57 of the members of the Buffalo Police Department's Emergency Response Team resigned Friday from the unit which responds to riots and other crowd control situations, the president of the union that represents Buffalo police officers told The Buffalo News.

Two law enforcement sources confirmed the resignations.

Two members of the Emergency Response Team were suspended without pay late Thursday after they were involved in pushing a 75-year-old protester to the ground as they were clearing the area in front of Buffalo City Hall at the emergency curfew. The Erie County District Attorney's Office is investigating the incident. No charges have been filed.

The Emergency Response Team members have not quit the police department, but have stepped down from the tactical unit, according to the sources....

Bylaw launches internal investigation into officer who punched man in Michele Heights park

An Ottawa bylaw officer who punched a man in the mouth during a physical distancing crackdown in early April will not be charged criminally, this newspaper has learned, but the city’s bylaw department has launched an internal investigation into the high-profile incident.

The investigation comes after a police detective acknowledged that while there was evidence that Obi Ifedi was assaulted during the ticketing blitz, the bylaw officer will not be charged.

Ottawa police investigated the April 4 incident in Michele Heights where Obi Ifedi’s evening walk in the park turned violent, as he claimed a bylaw officer singled him out for an $800 ticket, called for police backup when Ifedi refused to provide his name, then tripped him to the ground after police had arrived and punched him bare-knuckled in the mouth.

Ifedi was out for a stroll through the park with his seven-year-old daughter around 7:30 p.m. that evening — the Emergency Management and Civil Protection Act had been put into effect two days earlier —  when the bylaw officer arrived and began loudly dispersing people from the park.

Ifedi said he objected to the officer’s claim that they were disobeying signs posted in the park warning of the risks of COVID-19 (Ifedi pointed out no signs were clearly visible), a brief verbal dispute Ifedi believes made him a target of the officer.

Ifedi said that after he refused to give his name and two police constables arrived on the scene, the bylaw officer tripped him to the ground and punched him as he was attempting to rejoin his daughter. He was handcuffed, questioned and released, only to be left incredulous when the bylaw officer wrote him a $2,010 ticket.

Cellphone video shot by a bystander depicting part of the altercation circulated on social media following the incident.

Roger Chapman, director of bylaw and regulatory services, who had disputed the allegations at the time, confirmed Friday the incident has now sparked an internal investigation.

Chapman had reserved comment earlier in April as the charges against Ifedi were “subject to court process.” But Chapman at the time denied “any improper conduct allegations” and disputed this newspaper’s “characterization of the incident.”

Ifedi was notified by email Thursday — a full two months after the incident — that while police found enough evidence to determine the bylaw officer had assaulted Ifedi, the officer will face no criminal charges.....

Defunding The Police Will Save Black And Indigenous Lives In Canada

quote:

Alternatives to policing

Instead of relying on police, we could rely on well-trained social workers, sociologists, forensic scientists, doctors, researchers and other well-trained individuals to fulfill our needs when violent crimes take place. In the event that intervention is required while a violent crime is ongoing, a service that provides expert specialized rapid response does not need to be connected to an institution of policing that fails in every other respect. Such a specific tactical service does not require the billions of dollars we waste in ineffective policing from year to year.

We can rethink the way that we create safety in our communities by creating alternative services that truly create safety and security for everyone. Black Lives Matter - Toronto has been advocating for this since our inception, alongside our global counterparts and other Black justice organizations.

Right now, the only emergency option available for most people who are experiencing mental distress is to call 911. Both D’Andre Campbell and Regis Korchinski-Paquet died while the police were attending to calls about their mental distress.

Couldn’t we create a new emergency service that connects us with unarmed, mental health emergency service workers specifically trained to provide the health and social care required in crisis situations? It’s happening already, with front-line programs active and working in conjunction with police in parts of the U.K. and in states such as Oregon, where the CAHOOTS program has been active since 1989.  

Defunding the police can free up funding that we can reinvest in services that provide real safety for both kinds of communities. The communities that are constantly exposed to police violence should not be deprived of effective safety and security services simply because more privileged communities feel safer when calling the police is an option.

We can also decriminalize activities that are currently against the law, and reinvest the money we save on unnecessary policing and put it into programs supporting the security of communities who need it. The decriminalization of cannabis and our response to the opioid crisis show how a public-health approach to drug use is more effective than policing to support people who need help.

As another example, some public transportation systems use police to ensure that each passenger pays their fare. If we defund the police, we could reinvest our savings to help make public transit free. Fare evasion could no longer be a crime, and the policing of passengers would be unnecessary.

The minor services police provide — adherence to bylaw infractions, traffic services, attending to noise complaints — can be enforced by civilian services. In Ontario in 2015, Marc Ekamba-Boekwa was shot at 19 times and killed by Peel police after a noise complaint was made in his Mississauga, Ont. public-housing complex. Do we really need police attending to noise complaints with lethal force?

In several large cities across Canada, policing accounts for some of the largest municipal budget expenditures. Let’s defund the police and create budgets that truly reflect our priorities. Perhaps then we could fund guaranteed access to housing, increased adult support for children in schools, and other services that create true safety and security.....

..the artist

..the song

LeFLOFRANCO - ON EN A ASSEZ!

..the translation

we've had enough! we've had enough!
racism and sexism; we have had enough!
acts of selfishness; we have had enough!
corruption in the police; we have had enough!

1st COUPLET
will that change?
or will it stay that way?
serious is the danger
too many screams in the night; White and black enemies

wounded and enraged
intense looks engaged
our young people are on the streets
little lost children filled with a rage that kills

news on TV?
usual controversies
a handcuffed youth
our pride turned rebel

wrong judgment
a convicted person
future imprisonment
years after years ... …

CHORUS:
we've had enough! we've had enough!
racism and sexism; we have had enough!
acts of selfishness; we have had enough!
corruption in the police; we have had enough!

2nd COUPLET
Look What's going on.
we feel it in the atmosphere
don't ask me why, we hate the law
her face is on the floor

we're shouting, " Help!”
love is no longer the cure
shame is the master rendering, apart from my being
it is hatred that succeeds

actions and consequences;
a grieving family
small country in arrears;
words and tears on my sheet

it's made me against you.,
you against him / him against her
us against you; it's war!
a hate that costs dearly ... and we…

CHORUS:
we've had enough! we've had enough!
racism and sexism; we have had enough!
acts of selfishness; we have had enough!
corruption in the police; we have had enough!

3rd COUPLET:
wrong violence
pride handcuffed
future imprisoned
yo, we've had enough

tanned to scream
we're tired.
we're sickened.
yo, we've had enough

CHORUS:
we've had enough! we've had enough!
racism and sexism; we have had enough!
acts of selfishness; we have had enough!
corruption in the police; we have had enough!

'Heart-breaking Video from Yesterday's  Memorial Service'...

https://twitter.com/saintfadumo/status/1269009564252491776

"I wanna laugh about this but this is a slap in the face to George's memory. the FIRST thing Jacob Frey did when he got into office was push through a massive police budget increase. this is a disgusting farce."

Not the only vulture, bird of prey or political animal to 'take a knee' and drop crocodile tears either.

May 7, 2020, George Galloway, The Mother of All Talkshows, EP 31 (and vid)

https://youtu.be/DgOW9mmQDWA

"London Rocked! A second day of Black Lives Matter protests has gripped the capital as a slave trader's statue is pulled down in Bristol. Live updates throughout the show..."

Allowing Monuments to This Kind of Depraved Barbarity Certainly Warrant an Apology

https://twitter.com/038Degrees/status/1269693110356979712

Minneapolis City Council Announces It Will Disband Police Department

As historic protests continue to sweep the country two weeks after the police murder of George Floyd, the Minneapolis City Council announced Sunday it would move to disband the city’s police department. Nine members of the council — a veto-proof majority — made the vow during a community rally on Sunday. This is Minneapolis City Councilmember Phillipe Cunningham.

Councilmember Phillipe Cunningham: “This work is not new. We know that. And across the entire city over the last two weeks, we have seen that it is possible for us to keep our own communities safe. In North Minneapolis, as the buildings were being broken and burned by white supremacists and extremists, MPD was nowhere to be found. While we have no paradigm for policing that is not rooted in white supremacy, we do have a paradigm and a way to have community safety that is rooted in community and justice.”

The vow to disband the police came just days after the Minneapolis City Council voted to ban chokeholds and neck restraints. Derek Chauvin, the former officer who killed Floyd by kneeling on his neck for nearly nine minutes, will make his first court appearance today. We’ll have more on the historic City Council announcement after headlines with Minneapolis City Councilmember Jeremiah Ellison.

The End of Policing: Alex Vitale on How Cops & Their Unions Cover Up Inequality, Exploitation

quote:

ALEX VITALE: Sure. So, part of what we’re dealing with here is a long story about the use of police and prisons to manage problems of inequality and exploitation. And this goes back — this is a story goes back hundreds of years. But we’re also talking about a story of the last 50 years, about neoliberal austerity and the way in which it has concentrated inequality in the United States, producing problems like mass homelessness and mass untreated mental illness and mass involvement in black markets because of economic precarity, and then using police to manage those problems. So we’ve seen this incredible explosion of the scope of policing.

And what the defund movement is talking about — and all your guests have just been amazing in their discussions of this — is about rethinking not just what are police doing, but why are we using police to paper over problems of economic exploitation. And the defund movement, which was occurring in dozens of cities before the events in Minneapolis, is about concretely identifying police spending that could be shifted into specific, targeted community interventions that will actually produce public safety without coercion, violence and racism.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you respond to what’s happening in New York, the pressure that de Blasio has been feeling, the mayor, from community groups talking about cutting some of the budget of the police, and then, of course, this historic moment in Minneapolis where the City Council says they have a veto-proof majority to dismantle the police department?

ALEX VITALE: Yeah, I think we’re dealing with an economic — I’m sorry, a political earthquake here — right? — that things that seemed completely impossible two weeks ago are now being implemented. And while I agree with Linda we cannot trust the mayor at all in this, we need to keep the pressure on the City Council to follow through with these cuts and to make not just the cuts, but the reinvestments that communities have been begging for at a significant level. And the mayor has not been our partner in this endeavor. He has undermined our efforts. He has increased the police budget consistently during his mayoralty, including adding 1,300 additional police to the headcount several years ago. So, we have to keep the political pressure on.

AMY GOODMAN: And the role of police unions, Alex?

ALEX VITALE: So, you know, you heard from Mr. Ellison lay out exactly what we’re up against. It’s not just the unions. It’s not just their rank-and-file memberships. They become, in many cities, the locus, the institutional hub for a whole set of right-wing “thin blue line” politics that believe that policing is not only effective but it’s the most desirable way to solve our problems. And embedded in this is a deep racism that says that certain populations can only be managed through constant threats and coercion. It is the logic of slavery. It is the logic of colonialism. And we have to take concrete steps to dismantle their political power. And one of the most exciting things that I’ve seen this week — was in New York, this effort to get politicians to reject those political donations and turn them over to bail funds and mutual aid projects.

Harsha Walia@HarshaWalia

Why are people starting these petitions???

Police body cams have not reduced police violence anywhere.

They increase police surveillance, and work *against* call to #DefundPolice .

Liberals never organized against policing, & now aimlessly jumping in.

...

Movement for B.C. police to wear body cameras builds steam amid anti-racism protests

quote:

Grand Chief Stewart Phillip of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs has been vocal in supporting the anti-Black racism protests and sees links between violence against Black and Indigenous peoples.

Phillip said he was generally supportive of the technology, but added that more comprehensive police reform is necessary.

“Quite frankly, I think it’s a half measure,” said Phillip.

“The issue here is racism. And police agencies have allowed themselves to become steeped in racist attitudes towards people of colour, towards poor people, homeless people, and that needs to be addressed.”

Phillip further argued that even in the presence of video evidence, Crown prosecutors have shown reluctance to press charges against officers.....

Labour MP threatened after defending Black Lives Matter protests

Dawn Butler, the former shadow women and equalities minister, has gone to the police after being threatened with a torrent of violent and racist abuse for defending the Black Lives Matters protests.

Butler, the Labour MP for Brent Central, was sent dozens of aggressive emails over the weekend, after she wrote in a newspaper article that attempts to blame protesters for a second coronavirus peak was a cynical attempt to suppress demonstrations.

One email said: “There will come a time when you can’t breath[e], and we will all be happy, ” followed by an abusive term.

quote:

Butler wrote in the Metro on Saturday that if there were another peak of Covid-19, the government would be to blame.

“Where was their anger when we saw people flock to the beaches in Devon, Cornwall, Brighton? Or even their indignation when people were forced to cram on to the tube and buses to get to work? The fact that so many people are willing to take to the streets at this time to stand up against racism shows the strength of feeling and the importance of this critical moment.”

Israel Lobby Sees Black Lives Matter As Major Strategic Threat

https://twitter.com/AliAbunimah/status/1270029005517991941

As protests sweep the world in the wake of the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd, Israel lobby groups are struggling to appear on board with the BLM movement while upholding their support for Israel's racism. Israel lobby groups have long seen the BLM movement as a threat to support for Israel. Yet reading the sensitivity of the present moment, the ADL and similar groups are working hard to coopt BLM rather than condemn it outright..."

End Israeli Apartheid, racist terrorism and ethnic cleansing. Smash/ 'defund' the lobby.

Immigration Agents Target People at Police Brutality Protests, Including a U.S. Citizen Military Vet

quote:

MIZUE AIZEKI: Well, I think that there’s always been a lot of — the term “sanctuary city” — you know, clearly, I think, New York isn’t a sanctuary city, right? We are seeing a lot of abuse, violence by the state or the police toward Black and Brown communities in New York consistently. And I think also, you know, the ability of the city to limit ICE presence here, you know, there’s only so many options — right? — I think, and the detainer policy is one of them.

But I think the other thing, that since — especially since DHS was founded and since post-9/11, is we’ve seen many forms of collaboration between local police and federal police in the form of joint task forces or, you know, I think, this notion of this being kind of a legitimate police force. And this is something that I think is really important to kind of raise and challenge. You know, just like we’ve heard a lot of great commentary on your show and analysis of people about what the real function of policing is — right? — on a domestic level, it’s really to maintain social control and an unequal status quo, right? And so, ICE is basically kind of the global police force, which also serves to maintain a highly unequal global world order — right? — with the U.S. at the center of that power.

And so, I think one of the things that we keep trying to challenge and fight back on is this notion of ICE policing. You know, I think that there’s a lot of mission creep that has been happening, and also a lot of freedom for ICE to be present in New York conducting these raids. And, you know, ICE often hides behind kind of like the rule of law, like “we are police,” and politicians protect them in that. But part of the work that we’re trying to do is to expand our analysis around this.

And, you know, really, it serves those in power if immigration is separated from imperialism, right? There’s a great quote from a Sri Lankan who’s from London — who lived in London in the '50s, who said, “We are here because you are there.” And, Juan, I think, as you point out in your book Harvest of Empire — right? — the long history of U.S. military and economic intervention in Latin America has shaped the migration flows to the United States. And so, why do I bring this up when you're asking me about what right ICE has to be here is, I think part of our work still is to challenge kind of the legitimacy of ICE and kind of expose their function in the global world order.

"Trump advisor Peter Navarro says US protesters are 'arsonists and looters and I blame China for a lot of this. From their coronavirus failures to white supremacy and police murder, the US will deflect responsibility for any domestic injustice onto China."

https://twitter.com/ajitxsingh/status/1270014410556243969

Defund The Police

"When police retreated from Seattle's Capitol Hill, some people expected chaos - instead, the new autonomous zone has speeches, free food and people helping one another. Here's a look inside the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone."

https://twitter.com/wyattharms/status/1270761347333136386

George Floyd Laid To Rest As Nationwide Protests Over Police Violence Continue

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/06/10/floy-j10.html

"Millions of people have taken part in multiracial, multiethnic demonstrations in hundreds of American cities in all fifty states, and in dozens of cities around the world, to oppose police violence, racism and social inequality. The protests have been met night after night with an onslaught and police brutality. Hundreds of protesters have been wounded and several protesters have been killed..."

"No body cams. No community policing. No implicit bias training. No more sacrifices and rendering expendable so many for a notion of 'security' rooted in violence."  #DefundThePolice  #FundOurCommunities

https://twitter.com/policingblack/status/1270853258161070080

Protests Are About Changing Public Opinion, Not Cowering in Response to Polling Data

quote:

“Defund the Police” Has Already Been a Huge Political Success​

Let’s pause and state a truism: Politics is not some entertaining, meaningless sport you watch on ESPN. The point of politics is not to win elections for the sake of winning elections, just so your home team can get a championship trophy and a downtown parade before riding into the glorious off-season for more lucrative contracts and free agency. On the contrary, the entire point of politics — and the reason to try to win elections — is to change the laws, regulations, and policies that affect millions of human beings in the world we all live in.

In light of that, the way to judge the success, failure, savviness, and stupidity of a political cause, slogan, or movement is not to sit in your armchair lazily prognosticating about whether you think it will help or hurt your favorite politician or your preferred political party in some future election. If you actually believe that politics is more than some game you watch at a sports bar — if you actually believe it is about the real, tangible world — the more accurate and empirical way to judge success is to consider whether a cause, slogan, or movement has actually started changing public policy and the political discourse.

By those metrics, contrary to the critics’ pooh-poohing, the protesters bellowing “defund the police” have had far more real-world political success than most naysaying Democratic consultants and pollsters that gets paid millions of dollars for political counsel.

In only a few short weeks, the protests have built up enough pressure to force New York and Colorado state lawmakers to pass police accountability initiatives, and Connecticut and Minnesota are on their way to holding special legislative sessions to consider doing the same.

Whereas only weeks ago most public officials in the United States might have scoffed at the idea of ever reallocating police funds to other priorities, public officials in (among others) Minneapolis, New York, Denver, Boston, Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, Seattle, and Houston are now responding to protesters’ pressure by considering a wholesale reevaluation of bloated police budgets.

Hell, protesters have brought so much pressure to bear that even congressional Republicans — the single most retrograde group of politicians in the entire nation — feel the need to pretend to support police accountability.

This is the political efficacy of mantras and slogans that the scolds say are too strident. However divisive you think the “defund” or “abolish” or “disband” language is, by creating easy-to-understand clarion calls, the protests have abruptly moved the entire Overton window. They have polarized the situation to the point where once-marginalized police reform proposals now seem like the absolute minimum conservative position, and long-overdue structural budget changes are now on the table.....