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solarbirdAnd everything else. It's the usual potpourri of racism, opportunism, and, well. You know. But it also has some promising reactions to all of this, so take that much with it.
----- 1 -----
How Much Do We Need The Police?
June 3, 20207:59 AM ET
Leah Donnella
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2020/06/03/457251670/how-much-do-we-need-the-police
One effect of the widespread protests across U.S. cities this week has been to renew discussions of what role the police should play in society.
For many Americans, it goes without saying that the police are critical in maintaining public safety. Have an emergency? Call the police. But many others — especially black people and poor people — have long countered that the police pose more of a threat to their safety than a boon. See a police officer? Walk in the other direction.
So it seems like a good moment to talk to Alex S. Vitale. He's the author of the 2017 book The End of Policing. In it, he argues that rather than focus on police reform or officer retraining, the country needs to reconsider fundamentally what it is the police should be doing at all.
----- 2 -----
Weijia Jiang
twitter.com/weijia
7 June 2020
President Trump said Friday, “Equal justice under the law must mean that every American receives equal treatment,” but has not said if he thinks there’s systemic racism in policing.
AG Barr’s remarks echo what others administration officials have publicly said:
[QUOTED TWEET]
Face The Nation
twitter.com/FaceTheNation
7 June 2020
“I think there's racism in the United States,” AG Bill Barr tells twitter.com/margbrennan.
“But I don't think that the law enforcement system is systemically racist.
https://cbsn.ws/3770jkK
----- 3 -----
Trump Campaign Aide Shared Praise for Racist With Chainsaw Who Assaulted Protesters
Robert Mackey
June 6 2020
https://theintercept.com/2020/06/06/trump-campaign-aide-shared-praise-racist-chainsaw-assaulted-protesters/
The mask slipped on Saturday when a senior adviser to the Trump campaign responded to distressing viral video of a Latino man in Texas assaulting Black Lives Matter protesters — while swinging a chainsaw and screaming a racist slur — by twice retweeting praise for him.
The adviser, Mercedes Schlapp, was the White House director of strategic communications until last year, when she joined the Trump campaign to work on “Latino outreach.” At the time, Trump’s campaign manager described her fluency in Spanish, as the Miami-born daughter of a Cuban dissident, as an important asset.
As Politico first reported, Schlapp retweeted the comment “That’s how to do it,” along with the video of the man screaming a racist slur at protesters in McAllen, Texas on Friday and threatening them with a chainsaw. The tweet Schlapp promoted was posted by a far-right group called Latino Townhall.
----- 4 -----
In violent protest incidents, a theme emerges: Videos contradict police accounts
By Alex Horton
June 6, 2020
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/06/06/police-protester-incidents-video/
On May 26, the morning after George Floyd’s last gasps underneath a policeman’s knee, the Minneapolis Police Department wrote he had “physically resisted” officers, who noted Floyd “appeared to be suffering medical distress.”
That news release went online hours before video revealed two things the public may have never learned otherwise: the source of his distress was nearly nine minutes of Derek Chauvin’s leg pressed into Floyd’s neck, and there is little evidence, if any, that Floyd resisted officers.
The pattern — video of violent police encounters that contrast sharply with accounts by the departments or their unions — has repeated with grim symmetry in the days since Floyd’s death. Numerous incidents have captured the rage of the public who point to inaccurate or outright misleading descriptions of what has occurred before their eyes.
Taken together, the incidents show how instant verification of police accounts have altered the landscape of accountability.
“We certainly, as a profession, have been diminished by events that have been witnessed on video over the course of the last couple of weeks,” Jim Pasco, executive director of the national Fraternal Order of Police, a labor union, told The Washington Post.
----- 5 -----
Defund the police? Here’s what that really means.
By Christy E. Lopez
June 7, 2020 at 3:37 p.m. PDT
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/06/07/defund-police-heres-what-that-really-means/
Christy E. Lopez is a professor at Georgetown Law School and a co-director of the school’s Innovative Policing Program.
Since George Floyd’s death, a long-simmering movement for police abolition has become part of the national conversation, recast slightly as a call to “defund the police.” For activists, this conversation is long overdue. But for casual observers, this new direction may seem a bit disorienting — or even alarming.
Be not afraid. “Defunding the police” is not as scary (or even as radical) as it sounds, and engaging on this topic is necessary if we are going to achieve the kind of public safety we need. During my 25 years dedicated to police reform, including in places such as Ferguson, Mo., New Orleans and Chicago, it has become clear to me that “reform” is not enough. Making sure that police follow the rule of law is not enough. Even changing the laws is not enough.
To fix policing, we must first recognize how much we have come to over-rely on law enforcement. We turn to the police in situations where years of experience and common sense tell us that their involvement is unnecessary, and can make things worse. We ask police to take accident reports, respond to people who have overdosed and arrest, rather than cite, people who might have intentionally or not passed a counterfeit $20 bill. We call police to roust homeless people from corners and doorsteps, resolve verbal squabbles between family members and strangers alike, and arrest children for behavior that once would have been handled as a school disciplinary issue.
Police themselves often complain about having to “do too much,” including handling social problems for which they are ill-equipped. Some have been vocal about the need to decriminalize social problems and take police out of the equation. It is clear that we must reimagine the role they play in public safety.
----- 6 -----
Romney becomes first known Republican senator to march in protest
8 June 2020
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/06/protests-police-brutality-continue-europe-live-200607132432534.html
[EDITOR: May need to scroll down a bit]
Mitt Romney marched in a protest against police mistreatment of minorities in the nation's capital, making him the first known Republican senator to do so.
Romney, who represents Utah, posted a tweet showing him wearing a mask as he walked with Black Lives Matter protesters in Washington. Above the photo he wrote: Black Lives Matter.
Romney, who was walking with a Christian group, told NBC News that he needed to be there.
"We need a voice against racism, we need many voices against racism and against brutality," he said.
On Saturday, Romney tweeted a photo of his father, George, who was the governor of Michigan from 1963 to 1969, marching with civil rights protesters in the 1960s in a Detroit suburb.
Above the photo, Mitt Romney wrote: "This is my father, George Romney, participating in a Civil Rights march in the Detroit suburbs during the late 1960s — "Force alone will not eliminate riots," he said. "We must eliminate the problems from which they stem."
----- 7 -----
Citing an economic emergency, Trump directs agencies across government to waive federal regulations
By Steven Mufson, Juliet Eilperin, Jeff Stein and Renae Merle
June 5, 2020 at 11:45 a.m. PDT
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/citing-an-economic-emergency-trump-directs-agencies-across-government-to-waive-federal-regulations/2020/06/05/6a23546c-a0fc-11ea-b5c9-570a91917d8d_story.html
The Trump administration is doing by fiat what it has struggled to accomplish through lengthy rulemaking — dismantling federal regulations designed to protect workers, consumers, investors and the environment.
Invoking an economic “emergency” stemming from the coronavirus pandemic, the administration has made it harder for people to challenge inaccuracies on credit reports, eased required breaks for commercial truckers and told factories and power plants that, although they should obey pollution limits, they do not have to monitor or report their emissions routinely — among other things.
President Trump formalized this strategy two weeks ago when he signed an executive order instructing agencies across the government to rescind, modify or simply stop enforcing regulations if they burden the economy. On Thursday, he signed another order to allow agencies to waive 50-year-old environmental laws to speed federal approvals of pipelines, highways and other projects.
----- 8 -----
Courage
by Joey deVilla on June 7, 2020
http://www.joeydevilla.com/2020/06/07/courage/
When faced down by racist manbaby Jay Snowden at a Black Lives Matter protest in Whitefish, Montana, Samantha Francine pushed up her sunglasses so she could stare right back at him, eye-to-eye, even as he loomed over her with clenched fist and threatening posture. But she did not back down.
[EMBEDDED VIDEO AT LINK]
----- 9 -----
He Is Even Dumber Than We Thought
Four years in office have only convinced more Americans that the Trump might not be a stable genius.
Bruce Bartlett/June 8, 2020
https://newrepublic.com/article/158069/donald-trump-not-smart-polls
A Washington Post–ABC News poll taken the last week of May 2020 asked Americans, “Do you think Trump has the mental sharpness it takes to serve effectively as president?” Fifty-two percent of respondents said no, with only 46 percent saying yes.
One might see this solid majority response as the weary, off-the-cuff judgment of an American public worn down by Trump’s barrage of outlandish claims about coronavirus treatments, or fantasized accounts of legions of violent antifa leaders orchestrating the present nationwide protests over the police killing of George Floyd. (Indeed, since that poll’s release, it was reported that Trump mistakenly tried to register to vote in his newly adopted home state of Florida using an out-of-state address.) But in truth, this was far from the first poll to find that a substantial number of Americans see Trump as not very bright. An Economist/YouGov poll in 2019 asked, “Compared to other presidents since World War II, would you say that Trump is more or less intelligent?” Forty-seven percent said that he is less intelligent, 22 percent said he has about the same intelligence, and just 21 percent thought he is more intelligent.
It appears that Trump’s performance in office has had a negative effect on perceptions of his mental acuity. The Quinnipiac poll tracked perceptions of Trump’s mental sharpness from 2016 through 2018, asking, “Would you say that Donald Trump is intelligent, or not?” When first asked in November 2016, 74 percent of people said yes, and only 21 percent said no. A year later, however, those answering in the affirmative had fallen to 55 percent, while those in the negative camp rose to 41 percent. Subsequent polls found roughly the same ratio.
Closely related to doubts about Trump’s intelligence is the question of whether he is too ignorant to do his job. In 2016 and 2017, the Fox News poll asked people, “Do you think Trump has the knowledge to serve effectively as president?” In the five times the question was asked, 60 percent of people said no and just 40 percent or fewer said yes.
Further evidence that Trump is widely viewed as something shy of the sharpest knife in the drawer comes from another, far-from-leading query pollsters have posed about him. In September 2017, a Washington Post–ABC News poll asked people an open-ended question: “What one word best describes your impression of Trump? Just the one word that best describes him?” The first most common term to describe him was “incompetent.” Other related characterizations in the top 10 descriptors included “idiot,” “ignorant,” and “unqualified.”
----- 10 -----
Congressional Democrats unveil sweeping police reform bill that would ban chokeholds, no-knock warrants in drug cases
The measure would ban chokeholds like the kind that led to the death of George Floyd and no-knock warrants, as was used before Breonna Taylor's fatal shooting.
June 8, 2020, 7:43 AM PDT / Updated June 8, 2020, 9:36 AM PDT
By Leigh Ann Caldwell and Rebecca Shabad
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/pelosi-top-democrats-unveil-police-reform-bill-n1227376?cid=sm_npd_nn_tw_ma
WASHINGTON — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and other top Democrats in the House and the Senate on Monday unveiled far-reaching legislation to overhaul policing in the United States as protests over excessive force by law enforcement against African Americans and others have gripped the nation.
The bill, called the “Justice in Policing Act,” would ban chokeholds, including the kind used by a then-Minneapolis police officer in the death of George Floyd last month, as well as no-knock warrants in drug cases, as was used in the incident leading to the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky, in March, according to a a House Democratic aide and a bill summary obtained by NBC News.
----- 11 -----
Minneapolis To Disband Police Department
Andrew Solender, Forbes Staff
The Minneapolis City Council on Sunday voted to disband its police department and invest in community-based public safety programs following calls from activists to ‘defund the police,’ in the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer.
7 June 2020
https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewsolender/2020/06/07/minneapolis-votes-to-disband-police-department/#10bb2a4f5274
City Council President Lisa Bender, along with a majority of council members that cannot be vetoed by Mayor Jacob Frey, announced a plan to “end our city’s toxic relationship with the Minneapolis Police Department."
“We’re here because we hear you. We are here today because George Floyd was killed by the Minneapolis Police,” Bender declared. “In Minneapolis and in cities across the United States it is clear that our existing system of policing and public safety is not keeping our communities safe.”
“Our efforts at incremental reform have failed. Period,” she added.
Bender said that the council would start a conversation with the community about what the new “community-led” public safety program will entail.
The police department had already lost much of its support from the community, with key partners including Minneapolis Public Schools, the University of Minnesota and Minneapolis Parks and Recreation severing ties.
----- 12 -----
Gabrielle Blair
twitter.com/designmom
8 June 2020
https://twitter.com/designmom/status/1270038204754919424
[THREAD]
This is how I, a 45-year-old white woman and mother of 6, currently at her peak Karen power, went from assuming police work was a necessary part of functional communities, to becoming a passionate advocate for #abolishthepolice #defundthepolice, over the course of one week.
[THREAD CONTINUES AT LINK]
----- 13 -----
The Tennessee Holler
twitter.com/TheTNHoller
8 June 2020
https://twitter.com/TheTNHoller/status/1270099790613921792
WATCH: TENNESSEE REPUBLICAN twitter.com/RepMikeCarter (A JUDGE!) MAKES RACIST "FRIED CHICKEN" *JOKE* ABOUT BLACK DEMOCRAT twitter.com/RepJoeTownsJr
Outrageous. This week of all weeks. twitter.com/TNGOP twitter.com/tnhousegop
[EMBEDDED VIDEO AT LINK]
- How Much Do We Need The Police?
- Barr: I don't think that the law enforcement system is systemically racist.
- Trump Campaign Aide Shared Praise for Racist With Chainsaw Who Assaulted Protesters
- In violent protest incidents, a theme emerges: Videos contradict police accounts
- Defund the police? Here’s what that really means.
- Romney becomes first known Republican senator to march in protest
- Citing an economic emergency, Trump directs agencies across government to waive federal regulations
- Courage
- He Is Even Dumber Than We Thought
- Congressional Democrats unveil sweeping police reform bill that would ban chokeholds, no-knock warrants in drug cases
- Minneapolis To Disband Police Department
- This is how I, a 45-year-old white woman and mother of 6, currently at her peak Karen power, went from assuming police work was a necessary part of functional communities, to becoming a passionate advocate for #abolishthepolice #defundthepolice, over the course of one week.
- Tennessee State Rep. Mike Carter (also a judge, apparently) makes racist "fried chicken" joke about Black Democratic representative Joe Towns, Jr., on the house microphone
----- 1 -----
How Much Do We Need The Police?
June 3, 20207:59 AM ET
Leah Donnella
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2020/06/03/457251670/how-much-do-we-need-the-police
One effect of the widespread protests across U.S. cities this week has been to renew discussions of what role the police should play in society.
For many Americans, it goes without saying that the police are critical in maintaining public safety. Have an emergency? Call the police. But many others — especially black people and poor people — have long countered that the police pose more of a threat to their safety than a boon. See a police officer? Walk in the other direction.
So it seems like a good moment to talk to Alex S. Vitale. He's the author of the 2017 book The End of Policing. In it, he argues that rather than focus on police reform or officer retraining, the country needs to reconsider fundamentally what it is the police should be doing at all.
----- 2 -----
Weijia Jiang
twitter.com/weijia
7 June 2020
President Trump said Friday, “Equal justice under the law must mean that every American receives equal treatment,” but has not said if he thinks there’s systemic racism in policing.
AG Barr’s remarks echo what others administration officials have publicly said:
[QUOTED TWEET]
Face The Nation
twitter.com/FaceTheNation
7 June 2020
“I think there's racism in the United States,” AG Bill Barr tells twitter.com/margbrennan.
“But I don't think that the law enforcement system is systemically racist.
https://cbsn.ws/3770jkK
----- 3 -----
Trump Campaign Aide Shared Praise for Racist With Chainsaw Who Assaulted Protesters
Robert Mackey
June 6 2020
https://theintercept.com/2020/06/06/trump-campaign-aide-shared-praise-racist-chainsaw-assaulted-protesters/
The mask slipped on Saturday when a senior adviser to the Trump campaign responded to distressing viral video of a Latino man in Texas assaulting Black Lives Matter protesters — while swinging a chainsaw and screaming a racist slur — by twice retweeting praise for him.
The adviser, Mercedes Schlapp, was the White House director of strategic communications until last year, when she joined the Trump campaign to work on “Latino outreach.” At the time, Trump’s campaign manager described her fluency in Spanish, as the Miami-born daughter of a Cuban dissident, as an important asset.
As Politico first reported, Schlapp retweeted the comment “That’s how to do it,” along with the video of the man screaming a racist slur at protesters in McAllen, Texas on Friday and threatening them with a chainsaw. The tweet Schlapp promoted was posted by a far-right group called Latino Townhall.
----- 4 -----
In violent protest incidents, a theme emerges: Videos contradict police accounts
By Alex Horton
June 6, 2020
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/06/06/police-protester-incidents-video/
On May 26, the morning after George Floyd’s last gasps underneath a policeman’s knee, the Minneapolis Police Department wrote he had “physically resisted” officers, who noted Floyd “appeared to be suffering medical distress.”
That news release went online hours before video revealed two things the public may have never learned otherwise: the source of his distress was nearly nine minutes of Derek Chauvin’s leg pressed into Floyd’s neck, and there is little evidence, if any, that Floyd resisted officers.
The pattern — video of violent police encounters that contrast sharply with accounts by the departments or their unions — has repeated with grim symmetry in the days since Floyd’s death. Numerous incidents have captured the rage of the public who point to inaccurate or outright misleading descriptions of what has occurred before their eyes.
Taken together, the incidents show how instant verification of police accounts have altered the landscape of accountability.
“We certainly, as a profession, have been diminished by events that have been witnessed on video over the course of the last couple of weeks,” Jim Pasco, executive director of the national Fraternal Order of Police, a labor union, told The Washington Post.
----- 5 -----
Defund the police? Here’s what that really means.
By Christy E. Lopez
June 7, 2020 at 3:37 p.m. PDT
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/06/07/defund-police-heres-what-that-really-means/
Christy E. Lopez is a professor at Georgetown Law School and a co-director of the school’s Innovative Policing Program.
Since George Floyd’s death, a long-simmering movement for police abolition has become part of the national conversation, recast slightly as a call to “defund the police.” For activists, this conversation is long overdue. But for casual observers, this new direction may seem a bit disorienting — or even alarming.
Be not afraid. “Defunding the police” is not as scary (or even as radical) as it sounds, and engaging on this topic is necessary if we are going to achieve the kind of public safety we need. During my 25 years dedicated to police reform, including in places such as Ferguson, Mo., New Orleans and Chicago, it has become clear to me that “reform” is not enough. Making sure that police follow the rule of law is not enough. Even changing the laws is not enough.
To fix policing, we must first recognize how much we have come to over-rely on law enforcement. We turn to the police in situations where years of experience and common sense tell us that their involvement is unnecessary, and can make things worse. We ask police to take accident reports, respond to people who have overdosed and arrest, rather than cite, people who might have intentionally or not passed a counterfeit $20 bill. We call police to roust homeless people from corners and doorsteps, resolve verbal squabbles between family members and strangers alike, and arrest children for behavior that once would have been handled as a school disciplinary issue.
Police themselves often complain about having to “do too much,” including handling social problems for which they are ill-equipped. Some have been vocal about the need to decriminalize social problems and take police out of the equation. It is clear that we must reimagine the role they play in public safety.
----- 6 -----
Romney becomes first known Republican senator to march in protest
8 June 2020
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/06/protests-police-brutality-continue-europe-live-200607132432534.html
[EDITOR: May need to scroll down a bit]
Mitt Romney marched in a protest against police mistreatment of minorities in the nation's capital, making him the first known Republican senator to do so.
Romney, who represents Utah, posted a tweet showing him wearing a mask as he walked with Black Lives Matter protesters in Washington. Above the photo he wrote: Black Lives Matter.
Romney, who was walking with a Christian group, told NBC News that he needed to be there.
"We need a voice against racism, we need many voices against racism and against brutality," he said.
On Saturday, Romney tweeted a photo of his father, George, who was the governor of Michigan from 1963 to 1969, marching with civil rights protesters in the 1960s in a Detroit suburb.
Above the photo, Mitt Romney wrote: "This is my father, George Romney, participating in a Civil Rights march in the Detroit suburbs during the late 1960s — "Force alone will not eliminate riots," he said. "We must eliminate the problems from which they stem."
----- 7 -----
Citing an economic emergency, Trump directs agencies across government to waive federal regulations
By Steven Mufson, Juliet Eilperin, Jeff Stein and Renae Merle
June 5, 2020 at 11:45 a.m. PDT
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/citing-an-economic-emergency-trump-directs-agencies-across-government-to-waive-federal-regulations/2020/06/05/6a23546c-a0fc-11ea-b5c9-570a91917d8d_story.html
The Trump administration is doing by fiat what it has struggled to accomplish through lengthy rulemaking — dismantling federal regulations designed to protect workers, consumers, investors and the environment.
Invoking an economic “emergency” stemming from the coronavirus pandemic, the administration has made it harder for people to challenge inaccuracies on credit reports, eased required breaks for commercial truckers and told factories and power plants that, although they should obey pollution limits, they do not have to monitor or report their emissions routinely — among other things.
President Trump formalized this strategy two weeks ago when he signed an executive order instructing agencies across the government to rescind, modify or simply stop enforcing regulations if they burden the economy. On Thursday, he signed another order to allow agencies to waive 50-year-old environmental laws to speed federal approvals of pipelines, highways and other projects.
----- 8 -----
Courage
by Joey deVilla on June 7, 2020
http://www.joeydevilla.com/2020/06/07/courage/
When faced down by racist manbaby Jay Snowden at a Black Lives Matter protest in Whitefish, Montana, Samantha Francine pushed up her sunglasses so she could stare right back at him, eye-to-eye, even as he loomed over her with clenched fist and threatening posture. But she did not back down.
[EMBEDDED VIDEO AT LINK]
----- 9 -----
He Is Even Dumber Than We Thought
Four years in office have only convinced more Americans that the Trump might not be a stable genius.
Bruce Bartlett/June 8, 2020
https://newrepublic.com/article/158069/donald-trump-not-smart-polls
A Washington Post–ABC News poll taken the last week of May 2020 asked Americans, “Do you think Trump has the mental sharpness it takes to serve effectively as president?” Fifty-two percent of respondents said no, with only 46 percent saying yes.
One might see this solid majority response as the weary, off-the-cuff judgment of an American public worn down by Trump’s barrage of outlandish claims about coronavirus treatments, or fantasized accounts of legions of violent antifa leaders orchestrating the present nationwide protests over the police killing of George Floyd. (Indeed, since that poll’s release, it was reported that Trump mistakenly tried to register to vote in his newly adopted home state of Florida using an out-of-state address.) But in truth, this was far from the first poll to find that a substantial number of Americans see Trump as not very bright. An Economist/YouGov poll in 2019 asked, “Compared to other presidents since World War II, would you say that Trump is more or less intelligent?” Forty-seven percent said that he is less intelligent, 22 percent said he has about the same intelligence, and just 21 percent thought he is more intelligent.
It appears that Trump’s performance in office has had a negative effect on perceptions of his mental acuity. The Quinnipiac poll tracked perceptions of Trump’s mental sharpness from 2016 through 2018, asking, “Would you say that Donald Trump is intelligent, or not?” When first asked in November 2016, 74 percent of people said yes, and only 21 percent said no. A year later, however, those answering in the affirmative had fallen to 55 percent, while those in the negative camp rose to 41 percent. Subsequent polls found roughly the same ratio.
Closely related to doubts about Trump’s intelligence is the question of whether he is too ignorant to do his job. In 2016 and 2017, the Fox News poll asked people, “Do you think Trump has the knowledge to serve effectively as president?” In the five times the question was asked, 60 percent of people said no and just 40 percent or fewer said yes.
Further evidence that Trump is widely viewed as something shy of the sharpest knife in the drawer comes from another, far-from-leading query pollsters have posed about him. In September 2017, a Washington Post–ABC News poll asked people an open-ended question: “What one word best describes your impression of Trump? Just the one word that best describes him?” The first most common term to describe him was “incompetent.” Other related characterizations in the top 10 descriptors included “idiot,” “ignorant,” and “unqualified.”
----- 10 -----
Congressional Democrats unveil sweeping police reform bill that would ban chokeholds, no-knock warrants in drug cases
The measure would ban chokeholds like the kind that led to the death of George Floyd and no-knock warrants, as was used before Breonna Taylor's fatal shooting.
June 8, 2020, 7:43 AM PDT / Updated June 8, 2020, 9:36 AM PDT
By Leigh Ann Caldwell and Rebecca Shabad
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/pelosi-top-democrats-unveil-police-reform-bill-n1227376?cid=sm_npd_nn_tw_ma
WASHINGTON — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and other top Democrats in the House and the Senate on Monday unveiled far-reaching legislation to overhaul policing in the United States as protests over excessive force by law enforcement against African Americans and others have gripped the nation.
The bill, called the “Justice in Policing Act,” would ban chokeholds, including the kind used by a then-Minneapolis police officer in the death of George Floyd last month, as well as no-knock warrants in drug cases, as was used in the incident leading to the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky, in March, according to a a House Democratic aide and a bill summary obtained by NBC News.
----- 11 -----
Minneapolis To Disband Police Department
Andrew Solender, Forbes Staff
The Minneapolis City Council on Sunday voted to disband its police department and invest in community-based public safety programs following calls from activists to ‘defund the police,’ in the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer.
7 June 2020
https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewsolender/2020/06/07/minneapolis-votes-to-disband-police-department/#10bb2a4f5274
City Council President Lisa Bender, along with a majority of council members that cannot be vetoed by Mayor Jacob Frey, announced a plan to “end our city’s toxic relationship with the Minneapolis Police Department."
“We’re here because we hear you. We are here today because George Floyd was killed by the Minneapolis Police,” Bender declared. “In Minneapolis and in cities across the United States it is clear that our existing system of policing and public safety is not keeping our communities safe.”
“Our efforts at incremental reform have failed. Period,” she added.
Bender said that the council would start a conversation with the community about what the new “community-led” public safety program will entail.
The police department had already lost much of its support from the community, with key partners including Minneapolis Public Schools, the University of Minnesota and Minneapolis Parks and Recreation severing ties.
----- 12 -----
Gabrielle Blair
twitter.com/designmom
8 June 2020
https://twitter.com/designmom/status/1270038204754919424
[THREAD]
This is how I, a 45-year-old white woman and mother of 6, currently at her peak Karen power, went from assuming police work was a necessary part of functional communities, to becoming a passionate advocate for #abolishthepolice #defundthepolice, over the course of one week.
[THREAD CONTINUES AT LINK]
----- 13 -----
The Tennessee Holler
twitter.com/TheTNHoller
8 June 2020
https://twitter.com/TheTNHoller/status/1270099790613921792
WATCH: TENNESSEE REPUBLICAN twitter.com/RepMikeCarter (A JUDGE!) MAKES RACIST "FRIED CHICKEN" *JOKE* ABOUT BLACK DEMOCRAT twitter.com/RepJoeTownsJr
Outrageous. This week of all weeks. twitter.com/TNGOP twitter.com/tnhousegop
[EMBEDDED VIDEO AT LINK]
