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Daily thread for news/updates/discussion of George Floyd protests - June 8
This thread is posted daily - please try to post relevant content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Especially significant updates may warrant a separate topic, but most should be posted here.
NY state lawmakers pass law named after Eric Garner that criminalizes police chokeholds
So, that's progress. Yay progress.
But...
It took 5 years to get this law enacted. Eric Garner was killed in 2014, so it sounds like it was introduced at the very next legislative session.
I suspect that without George Floyd's murder and these protests, that bill would still be languishing in committee in 2021 and 2022.
From back in 1993:
So in 1993, there was already enough evidence that chokeholds could kill that NYPD was willing to agree to the reform of banning them. "We should ban chokeholds" was not some fringe position, it was mainstream enough for the largest police department in the country to adopt it.
More than 20 years later, in 2014, the NYPD officer who violated that policy and killed Eric Garner with a chokehold was fired. Nothing more.
And then 6 years later, after historic protests because police choked George Floyd to death, they agree to make it a state-wide crime rather than a city-wide policy.
This is progress. But don't let anyone tell you that progress like this is sign that incremental reform works. This shows the exact opposite. Even obvious incremental reforms take 30 fucking years to get adopted. Incremental reform doesn't work, there has to be structural change.
Albany is the king of locking bills in committee. The marijuana taxation and regulation act has been circling around and around for over a decade. The only upside to that is usually a solid implementation since everyone gets to review and amend it like six times per committee.
I did notice Cuomo seemed a bit panicked in his daily briefing today. Real short one. Everyone's heaping the love on him but Cuomo is not our friend. He's a lifelong politician and prosecutor with plenty of dirt on his shoes.
What's an example of something you would consider to be structural change?
Nine members of the Minneapolis City Council — a veto-proof majority — pledged on Sunday to dismantle the Police Department, promising to create a new system of public safety in a city where law enforcement has long been accused of racism.
For an example of what I consider to be unacceptable incrementalism: this twitter thread from my mayor
Excellent PR-speak coming from someone who made a promise not to tear gas her constituents on Friday and broke it on Sunday.
Neat little set of images explaining what "defund the police" really means.
That's great, but it does worry me that the phrase "defund the police" has to be explained to people. Most people will see that phrase and think, "Looneys! We can ignore whatever they have to say," and not give it a second thought. But of course, "Decommodify Law Enforcement" isn't as pithy. There has to be a better way to say it that normal people can understand or they won't even start to listen to the message.
People had similar things to say about black lives matter (all lives matter). Attacking the messaging is not a tactic we need to entertain. Redirect to the issues at hand and focus on policy changes. We need to de-weaponize "phrasing" as a redirection tactic.
Thanks for sharing this, was a nice summary.
The author's Twitter account (some sources posted): https://twitter.com/gv4et
Didn't see this mentioned on Tildes at all, but Philly had some massive peaceful protests over the weekend.
It's amazing how the tone of the protests changes after police have to call in any escalation and tear gas stops being used.
Disturbing video from Seattle last night (unrelated to the shooting earlier in the evening): https://twitter.com/RexChapman/status/1270184140898525185
There's lots of talk about how "non-lethal" or "less-lethal" weapons can actually be fatal. Here's a very clear example. A woman standing in the middle of an intersection is hit with a grenade of some kind. The kind that's fired from a launcher and not thrown by hand. From a range of 30-40 feet. And she's hit dead-on, center of mass, not a ricochet or glancing blow.
Here's a reddit thread from someone working as a medic alongside the protesters, who gave her life-saving CPR and got her to a hospital.
The most recent thing I saw is that she's alive but still in critical condition.
This is the absolute most basic thing any cop should be learning about these "less-lethal" weapons. The gas they disperse may not kill you, but the grenade itself can absolutely deliver lethal blunt force trauma. Firing one directly at a protester is use of deadly force and should be treated as such.
There is zero accountability for her attempted murder. Every officer who was there has plausible deniability that they weren't the one who fired the shot (and even if they did, who's to say that grenade didn't strike her center-mass by accident?)
As a bonus:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minneapolis_City_Council
A history lesson on MLK and the civil rights movement
This guy is a lawyer and Washington resident. I follow his channel (Legal Eagle), and he is not one for passional arguments. On the contrary, he's always very analytical and controlled, restricting himself to the legal aspects of the matter. In this video he makes an exception, and not only presents a legal argument, but also a compelling account of the ethical implications of the attitudes of Donald Trump that led to the violent removal of protestors from the vicinities of the White House, and the consequences of the president's belligerent discourse. In my opinion, he nailed it, big time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z56j06plUgs
AOC Wants to Know Why the Hell a Predator Drone Was Spying on Protesters
A rare & tragic combo of something that is both NSFW and NSFL: https://twitter.com/SarahBelleLin/status/1270202857195663361
Someone at the Oakland, CA protests was shot 20+ times with "less-lethal" weapons as punishment for saying "fuck you" to police. A picture of their injuries was shared at a meeting of the Oakland Police Commission.
Seattle PD prepares to abandon East Precinct.
After police abandoned the station, riots and looting broke out. The neighborhood is now in flames.
Yeah, just kidding.
There was an entirely peaceful march and then everyone pretty much went home.
Which is the exact same thing that happened in every other neighborhood in Seattle over the weekend. We had lots of protests, all over the region. I saw people on overpasses, and there was a dozen people standing with signs outside the grocery store in my neighborhood.
Only one protest made national news, the one on Capitol Hill, because only that one got violent. It was also the only one that riot police showed up to in great numbers. Fancy that.
Watching on woke on twitch right now, it's packed, just around the east police department now. No riot, no burning of the building, however, as you've said.
https://twitter.com/anarchomastia/status/1270180282964926464