Daily thread for news/updates/discussion of George Floyd protests - June 5

All 57 of the members of the Buffalo Police Department's Emergency Response Team resigned from the unit today (but not from the police department), apparently in support of the two officers who were suspended for pushing over and hospitalizing a 75-year-old man.

@spit-evil-olive-tips and @Gaywallet were posting updates about that incident in yesterday's thread.

Seattle's mayor and police chief have agreed to ban use of tear gas for at least the next 30 days

Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of reddit, has resigned and pledged $1m to know your rights camp. As a part of his resignation he has urged the reddit board to fill his seat with a black candidate.

From the "you can't make this shit up" news dept:

Family harassed in Forks after being accused of being members of Antifa

Forks is a few hours outside Seattle (and probably most famous as the setting for the Twilight books).

Multi-racial family going camping in a converted school bus. Local citizens thought they were antifa members and felled trees to block the road to prevent them from escaping.

Columbus, OH: woman with asthma dies after police attacked protesters using tear gas

her name was Sarah Grossman. rest in power.

we need a nationwide ban on use of tear gas by police.

Negotiators for the city of Minneapolis agreed with the state Friday to ban the use of chokeholds by police and to require officers to report and intervene anytime they see an unauthorized use of force by another officer

Why Ta-Nehisi Coates is hopeful

I can’t believe I’m gonna say this, but I see hope. I see progress right now, at this moment.

I had an interesting call on Saturday with my dad, who was born in 1946, grew up dirt poor in Philadelphia, lived in a truck, went off to Vietnam, came back, joined the Panther Party, and was in Baltimore for the 1968 riots. Would’ve been about 22 at that time.

I asked him if he could compare what he saw in 1968 to what he was seeing now. And what he said to me was there was no comparison — that this is much more sophisticated. And I say, well, what do you mean? He said it would have been like if somebody from the turn of the 20th century could see the March on Washington.

The idea that black folks in their struggle against the way the law is enforced in their neighborhoods would resonate with white folks in Des Moines, Iowa, in Salt Lake City, in Berlin, in London — that was unfathomable to him in ‘68, when it was mostly black folks in their own communities registering their great anger and great pain.

I don’t want to overstate this, but there are significant swaths of people and communities that are not black, that to some extent have some perception of what that pain and that suffering is. I think that’s different.

George Floyd protests created a surge in voter registrations, groups say

From an Onion-esque satire site in Seattle:

Mayor Durkan Kicks Off Pride Month Festivities with Rainbow-Colored Tear Gas

Derek Chauvin, the cop who killed George Floyd, illegally voted in two elections (2016, 2018)

Supreme Court asked to reconsider immunity available to police accused of brutality

The court could announce as soon as Monday whether it will accept for argument next term challenges to a doctrine called qualified immunity.
...

An extraordinary coalition of organizations on the left, right and middle — one federal judge called it “perhaps the most diverse amici ever assembled” — has called on the court to revisit the issue.

And so have two members of the court itself — Justices Clarence Thomas and Sonia Sotomayor, who represent opposite ideological wings of the court.

Trump invokes George Floyd's name while taking economic victory lap

"We all saw what happened last week. We can't let that happen. Hopefully George is looking down and saying this is a great thing that's happening for our country. (It's) a great day for him. It's a great day for everybody," Trump said during a White House Rose Garden event before signing a piece of legislation devoted to small business loan flexibility.

"This is a great, great day in terms of equality," Trump added.

How dare he. What a massive piece of shit. I couldn't help but shout out loud, "Fuck you!" when I heard Trump say this, even though I was alone in my apartment.

From yesterday, but still worth noting:
Trump Agrees to Send Home Troops From Washington, Easing Tensions With the Pentagon

President Trump agreed on Thursday to begin sending home 82nd Airborne Division troops he had ordered to Washington, temporarily easing a contentious standoff with the Pentagon over the role of the armed forces in quelling protests that have broken out across the nation.

None of the active-duty forces ever actually deployed in Washington, instead remaining on alert outside the city while National Guard troops took up position near the White House and elsewhere around town. But they became caught up in a confrontation pitting a commander in chief intent on demonstrating strength in the face of street demonstrations versus a military command resistant to being drawn into domestic law enforcement or election year politics.

Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper initially tried to send home a small portion of the 1,600 active-duty troops on Wednesday, only to have Mr. Trump order him to reverse course during an angry meeting. The president finally acquiesced on Thursday, according to an administration official who asked not to be named discussing internal deliberations, but it did not appear the two men spoke directly.

Pointed commentary on policing here: https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2020/06/04/policing-wont-solve-our-problems/

While the immediate outcome of the George Floyd protests may be some police oversight and training reform, we need to pay attention to the broader picture in the U.S. and elsewhere. It's not just the U.S. that has color and economic class hierarchy problems, aggravated by public disinvestment and deregulation.

It's fair to say that police have taken much of the burden of impoverished mental health, education, recreation, and other public services; geographical and racial poverty from deindustrialization; and in the U.S., ubiquitous guns.

It's astonishing what a microscopic investment in mental health alone could achieve. In my very brief service with Crisis Text Line, a charity with a $37 million (2018) annual budget, I've already had the opportunity to talk down someone desiring to act in a way likely to result in suicide-by-cop. As recent stories of police killings in Canada illustrate, these deaths are too common, predictable, and preventable.

In other news, for those not able to participate in the protests, Rep. Stacey Abrams had some choice words for action in her New York Times essay yesterday.

Found the full speech by someone I posted yesterday; definitely worth a listen if you have concerns about looting

Is the meltdown within the NY Times in scope for this thread or should it just be its own thing? It's related to the topic but kind of tangential and more about the extreme slide in quality and responsibility of the Times Opinion page. That manifested recently as a result of the protests, but it'll be a story long after as well.

Attended the protest in my city today. It felt good and was entirely peaceful. Surprisingly well run and coordinated in a very short period of time, as I saw the invite go up on social media on Wednesday. There were people handing out masks and water along the path through the street, people on bikes stopping traffic for the protest march, 99% of people that attended were wearing masks despite the 86 F/30 C weather. The police didn't interfere at all, didn't even see them until the end when they were blocking traffic on one of the larger streets.

Here's an argument that health officials have lost all authority, regardless of what happens:

It may seem obvious to you that ending police brutality rises to a level of importance that, say, church services don’t. But the impossibility of rank-ordering competing ideas about what is “most important” is the reason liberal democracy had to be invented. If you were a religious believer, you might rank church higher; if you were about to lose your house unless your business reopened, you might put nail salons high up on the list.

As individuals, we can make those distinctions. But our authorities may not except on broadly neutral terms. Some public officials seem to imagine that if they can distinguish between selling food and offering Communion, they must also have the authority to make even finer distinctions: allowing people to exercise their First Amendment right to protest police brutality, while circumscribing their First Amendment right to worship in public. Legally, I doubt it, but I’m quite positive that courts won’t let governments distinguish between assembling to protest police brutality and assembling to protest public health policy.

From: Social distancing is over

Mayor Muriel Bowser - The section of 16th street in front of the White House is now officially “Black Lives Matter Plaza”.

https://twitter.com/MayorBowser/status/1268928589975695361
(has video showing street sign being put up)

Another great tweet from her too:
https://twitter.com/MayorBowser/status/1269121684268818438

There's a pretty great post about the failure of Reddit to address hatred on the website, as a response to the Reddit statement about ongoing events. If you didn't read it, I'd recommend doing so.

Pentagon disarms National Guard activated in D.C., sends active-duty forces home

The White House was not involved in the decision to disarm the Guard, said the two senior officials, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. The order from the Pentagon comes as federal and district officials prepare for an estimated 100,000 to 200,000 protesters in Washington on Saturday and as the Pentagon looks to dial back the militarization of the response.

[...]

A senior U.S. defense official said Esper communicated the order to disarm to the D.C. Guard and other guardsmen earlier in the week through McCarthy and Gen. Joseph L. Lengyel, the head of the National Guard. The order affected only about 10 guardsmen who had been out on patrol with firearms that weren’t loaded but who had ammunition in their packs, the senior defense official said.

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell says NFL was 'wrong' not to listen to its players about racism

The video that a bunch of NFL players released (that triggered the above) is also well worth watching, IMO: https://twitter.com/PatrickMahomes/status/1268724815118163971