Nicholas Kristof writes: Imagine that no one had shot video of George Floyd being killed by the police in Minneapolis. There would have been a bland statement that he had died resisting arrest, and none of us would have heard of him. Instead, the horror of that video has ignited protests around the world. Racism in that video is as visceral as a lynching. Yet there is no viral video to galvanize us about other racial inequities: There is no…
Time reports: When you talk to activists who are pushing to defund police departments, there’s a specific word that comes up often: Reimagine. The idea that police are the only answer to preventing crime and protecting people is one that has been so ingrained into American society that it can be hard to imagine a different reality. But amid a national uprising against police brutality and systemic racism, activists say it’s time to reimagine what the public actually needs. In…
The Associated Press reports: Few have watched how the U.S. Park Police deals with protesters for as long and as closely as Ellen Thomas, an anti-nuclear activist who anchored a continuous sit-in vigil day and night on the pavement in front of the White House over two decades. So Thomas, 73, speaks from great familiarity in describing her surprise at the force used by the U.S. Park Police and other law enforcement officers in front of the White House last…
The Associated Press reports: Democrats are proposing to overhaul legal protections for police, create a national database of excessive-force episodes and ban police choke holds in legislation coming Monday in response to the deaths of black Americans at the hands of law enforcement, according to a draft outline obtained by The Associated Press. “We’re in a real moment in our country,” Rep. Karen Bass, D-Ca., chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” speaking…
HuffPost reports: Carmen Berkley spent four years directing the AFL-CIO’s civil rights department, trying to advance the cause of underrepresented communities at the country’s largest labor federation. Her tenure overlapped with seismic social justice events, including the protests that followed the killing of Michael Brown by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014. Berkley felt that the AFL-CIO often broached difficult conversations about race, but failed to follow through. With the country now engulfed in anger over police…
Margaret Sullivan writes: With the country in turmoil over racial injustice, a public health crisis and devastating job losses, it should be no surprise that journalists are caught up in the tumult. Still, the extent of that upheaval is remarkable. Consider just a slice of what’s happened in recent days: Numerous New York Times journalists publicly denounced their editorial page management for publishing a commentary article by a U.S. senator — headlined “Send In the Troops” — that advocated deploying…
The New York Times reports: They were warned by Prime Minister Scott Morrison of Australia against attending Black Lives Matter marches on Saturday because of the coronavirus risk, but tens of thousands would not be deterred. The health minister in Britain pleaded with residents not to gather for similar demonstrations in cities like London, Manchester and Birmingham to stop the virus’s spread. But throngs showed up anyway — despite the cold weather, the spitting rain and warnings by the police…
Steve Fletcher writes: When I ran for the Minneapolis City Council in 2017, I knew that the Police Department had a decades-long history of violence and discrimination. I ran on a platform of police reform informed by my experience seeing police persistently harass young black canvassers that I worked with as a community organizer, and by the police shooting of Jamar Clark in 2015, which prompted weeks of protest outside the fourth precinct. In 2017, the police shooting of Justine…
The New York Times reports: After more than a week of protests against police brutality and unrest that left parts of the city burned, a growing chorus of elected officials, civic leaders and residents in Minneapolis are urging the city to break up the Police Department and reimagine the way policing works. “We are going to dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department,” Jeremiah Ellison, a member of the City Council, said on Twitter this week. “And when we’re done, we’re not…
Politico reports: Mass arrests of protesters across the country — many held for hours in vans, cells and other enclosed spaces — are heightening the risk of coronavirus spread, according to public health experts and lawsuits filed by civil rights groups. As tens of thousands of people take to the streets to protest police brutality after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, the arrest and detention of thousands further jeopardizes the health of demonstrators — and that of police…
Human Rights Watch reports: Police and other law enforcement officers have responded to largely peaceful protests across the United States with, in many cases, excessive force and other abusive tactics. This week they threatened demonstrators with military helicopters. On June 1 at around 10 p.m. in Washington, DC, a UH-72A “Lakota” helicopter from the District of Columbia National Guard bearing a Red Cross emblem and at least one other helicopter, a variant of the “Blackhawk,” hovered low above protesters out…
The NFL’s own social team went behind the league’s back, created this video with players, met with Goodell after doing it and then got the league to come out with an apology for its previous inaction. If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s to expect the unexpected. https://t.co/v5iWrbGm9V — Adam White (@FOSAdam) June 5, 2020 The New York Times reports: The protracted debate in the N.F.L. over players protesting racial injustice during the national anthem reignited with force on Friday…
The Washington Post reports: The security perimeter around the White House keeps expanding. Tall black fencing is going up seemingly by the hour. Armed guards and sharpshooters and combat troops are omnipresent. In the 72 hours since Monday’s melee at Lafayette Square, the White House has been transformed into a veritable fortress — the physical manifestation of President Trump’s vision of law-and-order “domination” over the millions of Americans who have taken to the streets to protest racial injustice. The White…
Ben Zimmer writes: This nation has been roiled with anguish and anger this past week over the police and extrajudicial killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, and yet the White House is engaging in the same old rhetorical tactics of divisive scapegoating. Only now that rhetoric comes in the service of ominous ends: President Donald Trump relies on the shadowy specter of “antifa”—a label for a diffuse militant movement unified by a drive to counter fascism through…
Garrett M. Graff writes: Few sights from the nation’s protests in recent days have seemed more dystopian than the appearance of rows of heavily-armed riot police around Washington in drab military-style uniforms with no insignia, identifying emblems or name badges. Many of the apparently federal agents have refused to identify which agency they work for. “Tell us who you are, identify yourselves!” protesters demanded, as they stared down the helmeted, sunglass-wearing mostly white men outside the White House. Eagle-eyed protesters…
The Daily Beast reports: A video of Buffalo police officers shoving an elderly peace activist to the ground, then walking by him as a pool of blood collected around his head, shocked the nation. Their colleagues? Not so much. All members of the Emergency Response Team resigned from the unit on Friday in support of the officers who were suspended without pay for their aggression toward Martin Gugino, 75. “Fifty-seven resigned in disgust because of the treatment of two of…