Six on Police Brutality Protests: The burden of ending racism is on white people; Thousands Of New Yorkers Protest Police Killing Of George Floyd As NYPD Responds With Batons And Pepper Spray; US should stand with Minnesota violent protesters as it d
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"The country is in an economic meltdown. An unchecked pandemic is disproportionately killing black people, while a coterie of right-wing whites, quick to imagine their liberties are being “infringed,” are waging war against science and common decency. This is white privilege at its most insidious.
"All of this comes at a moment when the country is more than three years into the presidency of Trump, a bigot who uses racial discord not just as a campaign strategy but as a governing technique.
On Friday, as if on cue, Trump used the word “thugs” to describe enraged protesters who took to the streets of Minneapolis after George Floyd, yet another unarmed African American man, was choked to death by a white police officer, as three of his colleagues stood by.
“These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen. When the looting starts, the shooting starts,” tweeted Trump, never one to refrain from throwing gasoline on a racial fire.
That officer’s knee on Floyd’s neck is as good a metaphor as any for the way this country — and our current president — deal with racial inequality.
On Thursday night, Ingraham concluded her monologue with an almost otherworldly display of white cluelessness: “And to our African American fellow citizens, I say this: Given his own experience with an out-of-control FBI and unfair investigation, given all the work on criminal justice reform, President Trump knows how poisonous and out-of-control law enforcement process can be.”
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"Busloads of people were arrested and some hospitalized across New York City on Friday as thousands of New Yorkers gathered for the city’s largest street demonstrations of the pandemic era to protest racist police violence.
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After the tragic death of African-American George Floyd following violent police treatment, enraged protesters in Minneapolis rushed to the city's police building, where a fire later broke out. US President Donald Trump then began to feel uneasy. He sent out a tweet early Friday morning (US time), saying, "I can't stand back & watch this happen." He instructed Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey to "get his act together and bring the city under control," saying the alternative was that he would send in the National Guard and "get the job done right."
"When the looting starts, the shooting starts," Trump said. He said he had spoken to Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and told him "the military is with him all the way."
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet on Thursday condemned the killings of many unarmed African Americans at the hands of the police over the years. She said that US authorities must take serious action to stop such killings and to ensure that justice is done when they do occur.
In the US, more than 100,000 people have died from COVID-19, most of them weak, elderly, poor and minorities. The death of George Floyd, from another perspective, reveals the desperate inequality rampant in the US. People in Minnesota were angry and lost control. I sent out a tweet on Friday: "Secretary Pompeo, please stand with the angry people of Minneapolis, just like you did with the people of Hong Kong."
US political elites seem to be fierce in all directions. They directly applauded Hong Kong's riots, calling them a "beautiful sight" of democracy. The chaos in Hong Kong has lasted for over a year and military forces have not been dispatched. Yet after only three days of chaos in Minnesota, Trump publicly threatened the use of firepower and implied military forces could be utilized.
That is the state of US inequality and another example of the country's double standards. Well, America, what should I say?"
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There were widespread reports of looting and confrontations with the police in cities across the United States. The White House went dark as fires burned outside its gates.
RIGHT NOW
President Trump said on Monday that state governors who do not order protesters arrested and jailed “for long periods of time” will look like “jerks.”
Speaking on a private conference call, audio of which was obtained by The New York Times, Mr. Trump began the conversation with an extended, angry diatribe.
“You have to dominate,” he told governors on the call. “If you don’t dominate, you’re wasting your time — they’re going to run over you, you’re going to look like a bunch of jerks.”
The president continued: “You have to arrest people, and you have to try people, and they have to go jail for long periods of time.”
“He hates to see the way it’s being handled in the various states,” Mr. Trump said of General Milley.
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"Let’s hope Minneapolis cop Derek Chauvin is convicted of murder as charged. Let’s hope this beast of a man who asphyxiated George Floyd in a sickening display of police brutality is incarcerated for life.
Let’s hope the protests in the streets of Minneapolis and elsewhere, less violent ones, continue for weeks and months if necessary to keep this repugnant story in the public eye and emblazoned in the mind of every cop who ever arrests a black man again.
The broad-daylight killing of Mr. Floyd dramatically worsens the racial divide in the United States. It has been intensifying since Barack Obama left office.
But this act, this killing, this “execution” as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi calls it, was so appalling, so public, so massively wrong that maybe, just maybe, it can serve to educate U.S. public opinion in a way that might finally make a difference.
No one with half a mind can side with the police on this one. Even other police forces are speaking out against the suffocation of Mr. Floyd. “Nothing short of murder,” said District of Columbia Police Chief Peter Newsham. “Shocking to the conscience,” said Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo, the president of the Major Cities Chiefs Association.
“The death of George Floyd must serve as a national call for action,” he said. Amen to that.
In the United States, black people are three times as likely to be killed by police as whites. The Floyd death followed the police killing in March of 26-year-old Breonna Taylor, a medical technician shot eight times in Louisville, Ky. Protests have broken out in that city. Her death followed the shooting of Ahmaud Arbery in the same month by two white men, one a former police officer. They pursued Mr. Arbery, who was jogging, in a pickup truck and shot him. They told police they believed Mr. Arbery was a burglar. His death prompted an outcry, but nothing of the order of what is happening today.
Other cases of police violence against African-Americans usually involve at least a supposed justification of sorts, as flimsy as it may be."
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