Tagged: 2021

Selected Media

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?”

COVID-19

Bill Gates says no to sharing vaccine formulas with global poor to end pandemic

By Jon Queally

Read the full article from Salon here.

“Bill Gates, one of the world’s richest men and most powerful philanthropists, was the target of criticism from social justice campaigners on Sunday after arguing that lifting patent protections on COVID-19 vaccine technology and sharing recipes with the world to foster a massive ramp up in manufacturing and distribution — despite a growing international call to do exactly that — is a bad idea. Directly asked during an interview with Sky News if he thought it “would be helpful” to have vaccine recipes be shared, Gates quickly answered: ‘No.'”

Selected Media

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.”

Selected Media

The Chauvin Verdict Represents an Absolute Minimum of Justice

By Elie Mystal

Read the full article from The Nation here.

“[I]f we ignore the structural changes, the hard changes, the necessary changes, we will be back here. We will not break the cycle of violence against people of color or the polarization over whether our lives matter. It is literally already too late for Floyd to be the last unarmed Black man to be murdered by criminal police action. It is already too late for this time to be the last time the country is divided over whether a cop should be held accountable for their actions.”

Selected Media

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.'”

Selected Media

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.”

Selected Media

What Daunte Wright’s Killing Foretells for the Suburbs

By Will Stancil

Read the full article from The Atlantic here.

“In some respects, segregation is even more harmful in the suburbs than in major cities, which typically have a larger industrial and commercial tax base that allows them to weather crises and sustain public services. On average, predominantly nonwhite suburbs have the lowest per capita tax base of any community type in a major metropolitan area—about 25 percent less than major cities, and about 40 percent less than predominantly white suburbs.”

Selected Media

‘Intellectual diversity’ on college campuses measure heads to Governor’s desk

By Renzo Downey

Read the full article from Florida Politics here.

“The Legislature has passed a bill calling for a survey of the ideological beliefs of Florida’s university and college professors, and it is now heading to Gov. Ron DeSantis‘ desk…The legislation comes as conservatives complain about a so-called liberal indoctrination of students. But in discussions Thursday, Republican Sen. Ray Rodrigues, who is shepherding the legislation through the Senate, opposed assertions that the effort is political. He brushed off suggestions administration could use the survey results in malicious ways toward faculty.”

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.

Selected Media

Biden Looks To Extend Trump’s Bolstered Mandatory Minimum Drug Sentencing

By Akela Lacy

Read the full article from The Intercept, here.

The Trump Administration started classwide scheduling of fentanyl analogues in 2018. The policy put a wide range of substances with a chemical structure similar to fentanyl on Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, expanding the application of mandatory minimum sentencing laws to all fentanyl analogues. “But chemical structure alone cannot predict how a drug will affect the human brain,” the letter claims, citing a neurobiologist’s testimony before the House Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security, “and not all fentanyl analogues are harmful.”

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