Author: Henry Taylor

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White Supremacy Never Takes a Day Off

By Elie Mystal

Read the full article from The Nation here.

“The police, the people empowered to turn systemic racism into state-sponsored terrorism, remain totally unbowed by the conviction of a single cop. At the very moment the verdict against Chauvin was being read in Minneapolis, police in Columbus, Ohio, shot 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant to death. Cops couldn’t wait until the close of business on the day George Floyd’s family found some measure of justice before killing another Black person.”

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We Still Don’t Know Who the Coronavirus’s Victims Were

By Ibram X. Kendi

Read the full article from The Atlantic here.

“More than a year into a pandemic that has killed at least 574,978 Americans and infected 32.3 million as of Thursday, we still have only partial visibility into precisely who coronavirus patients really are. Data inequality, and all its shadows, is the norm. No one knows how many Black Americans died from COVID-19. No one knows exactly how many Native Americans were hospitalized. No one knows precisely how many white Americans were tested for the coronavirus. No one knows precisely how many Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders were terrorized by other Americans.”

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Police Traffic Stops Have Little to Do with Public Safety

By Libby Doyle and Susan Nembhard

Read the full article from Urban Wire here.

“Research on police traffic stops has consistently found widespread racial disparities, with Black drivers more likely than white drivers to be pulled over in cities across the country. These disparities are amplified when considering vehicle search rates; Black and Latine drivers are significantly more likely to be searched than white drivers. In North Carolina, Black drivers were 63 percent more likely to be pulled over and 115 percent more likely to be searched during a traffic stop than white drivers, despite finding that contraband was more likely to be found on white drivers.”

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What It Actually Means to Pass Local ‘Reparations’

By Brentin Mock

Read the full article from CityLab here.

“Reparations in the U.S. have conventionally been defined as the idea that Black Americans should be compensated for the wrongs of slavery and racial discrimination — an idea once embraced almost exclusively by members of the Black radical Left. As the term has become mainstream, it’s important to probe: Do these municipal programs actually constitute reparations as opposed to, in Evanston’s case, housing assistance, or, in Asheville’s case, part of the divest/invest strategy that many other cities are pursuing?”

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George Floyd, Cariol Horne, and the Duty to Intervene

By Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan

Read the full article from Democracy Now! here.

“Horne organized a campaign to pass “Cariol’s Law” in Buffalo, New York. The law codifies the duty to intervene for police officers, whether on- or off-duty, when they see another officer using unreasonable force against a civilian. It also protects those officers who intervene from retaliation. As the protests sparked by George Floyd’s police killing swept the globe, the Buffalo City Council passed Cariol’s Law, and the mayor signed it into law.”

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DeSantis Signs Bill Ending Vehicle Driver Liability For Hitting Protesters

By Chris Walker

Read the full article from Truthout here.

“Adora Obi Nweze, president of NAACP Florida State Conference, also described the law as being ‘racist, discriminatory, unwise, unlawful, and unjust…The Governor put his stamp on this discriminatory law filled with criminalization and civil rights disenfranchisement aimed at Black and Brown Floridians,’ she added. ‘We won’t sit silent on this issue and we won’t let this stop peaceful protests across the state of Florida.'”

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Mayor Lori Lightfoot Has Failed Chicago

By Jasson Perez

Read the full article from The Nation here.

“In the aftermath of the tragedy, the mayor, police, and attorney general followed their usual post-police-killing script: They minimized both the violence on the tape and police culpability. Mayor Lori Lightfoot tried to hold abstractions like ‘systemic forces’ responsible…We know who killed Toledo. It was the police, with an assist from mayors like Lightfoot who fund and empower them. This is why we have taken to the streets in Chicago, again.”

Uncategorized

New York Is Finally Taxing the Rich

By Liza Featherstone

Read the full article from Jacobin, here.

In the annual wrangling over the New York State budget, socialists and other left forces just won far more than anyone expected. The state legislature agreed to temporarily raise taxes on New Yorkers earning more than $1.1 million, with a tax rate of 10.9 percent on incomes over $25 million. This is happening even though Democratic scion Andrew Cuomo is still the governor. After years of Cuomo’s elevation of coddling the rich into a matter of liberal principle, in New York, as at the federal level, decades of austerity are grinding to a halt.

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Minnesota police shooting of Daunte Wright sparks protests

By Rachel Elbaum and Caroline Radnofsky

Read the full article from NBCBLK here.

“The Minnesota branch of the American Civil Liberties Union called in a statement for an ‘immediate, transparent and independent investigation by an outside agency’ and for the quick release of any body camera video. It said it has ‘deep concerns that police here appear to have used dangling air fresheners as an excuse for making a pretextual stop, something police do all too often to target Black people.'”

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