George floyd

In the early hours of May 2, 1973, State Trooper James Harper pulled over a white 1965 Pontiac Lemans on the New Jersey Turnpike near New Brunswick. Inside were three revolutionary desperados: Zayd Malik Shakur, Sundiata Acoli and JoAnne Chesimard. Trooper Werner Foerster, who was patrolling nearby, pulled up behind Officer Harper. Harper approached the Pontiac and asked the driver for his license and car registration. Something didn’t seem right with the paperwork, and the driver and two passengers were asked to step out of the car. Then gunfire erupted.Officer Harper and JoAnne Chesimard were wounded, Zayd Malik Shakur was shot dead and Sundiata Acoli escaped on foot.

Donald Trump’s efforts to broaden his appeal to the African American community are bearing fruit. Rasmussen polling noted in early June that Trump’s approval rating among African Americans stood at 41 percent, far above the 8 percent of votes he received from that community in 2016. While approval ratings don’t necessarily translate to votes on Election Day, it mathematically would be very hard for Joe Biden to win in the key battleground states should Trump double his vote to 16 percent of African American voters. Trump’s opponents are convinced that his record as president and his response to the Black Lives Matter protests mean his popularity with black voters will go down. But the truth may well be the opposite.

Midway through Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, there occurs this exchange between two characters: ‘“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked. “Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually, then suddenly.”’ The process of civilizational bankruptcy takes a similar course. Casual, seemingly isolated attacks on the fabric of civilization feel at first like so many harmless insect bites. A speaker is shouted down. A statue is vandalized or removed. A college course once deemed essential is rebaptized as offensive: first it is pilloried, then it is canceled. People start quoting Tocqueville’s warning that in a democracy, as large inequalities dissolve, small inequalities are magnified, growing both rancid and rancorous.

Protesters tried to establish an autonomous zone between the White House and St John’s Episcopal Church on Monday. Law enforcement pushed the demonstrators out of Lafayette Park using pepper spray, quickly shutting down the ‘Black House Autonomous Zone’ and establishing a perimeter much farther away from the White House. The protesters also attempted to topple a statue of Andrew Jackson.By the next morning, law enforcement had set up a perimeter such that it was impossible to venture within a quarter mile of the White House from any direction. https://twitter.com/BenZeisloft/status/1275458551985483776?s=20 The police line in the middle of the newly dubbed Black Lives Matter Plaza was rather calm.

So now they have come for Teddy Roosevelt. The large bronze statue of TR on horseback, flanked by a black man and an American Indian, will be removed from the spot it has graced since 1940 in front of New York’s Museum of Natural History. Why? According to Warren Wilhelm Jr — known to some as Bill de Blasio — the statue is being moved (to where no one yet knows) ‘because it explicitly depicts Black and Indigenous people as subjugated and racially inferior.’ Does it? I don’t think so. I think both flanking figures exude strength and dignity. I also think they stand in solidarity with the jovially commanding figure of Roosevelt.

‘Nothing works if public space is unsafe,’ says the respected urban sociologist Patrick Sharkey. The ‘Defund the Police’ initiative demands deep structural changes. But are incremental reforms more likely to deliver safe and lawful policing to those who need it most?Reflecting on the prevalence of gun violence in many black communities, Sharkey writes:‘An expanding body of research has shown just how damaging violence is to community life, children’s academic trajectories and healthy child development. We have rigorous, causal evidence that every shooting in a neighborhood affects children’s sleep and their ability to focus and learn.

President Trump is signing an executive order today on police reform. The order, while relatively toothless, does one important thing: it accepts the premise of progressive activists that police institutions must be fundamentally changed. Trump administration officials revealed during a background briefing on Monday night that the order will include incentives for departments to update their training and use-of-force standards. It will also incorporate a demand of the #DefundThePolice movement, which is to send along social workers with responding officers to calls that seem to be non-violent — ie, drug offenses, mental health breakdowns, complaints related to homelessness.

My City Council in Minneapolis has decided to de-something the police. Defend? Nah. Defund.But by 'defund', they don’t mean 'abolish', silly. And by 'abolish', they don’t mean 'abolish' at all. They mean something far less radical, which is why they chose the most alarming and polarizing words in the dictionary. Except also they mean 'abolish'.Confused? Don’t worry — the result will be so much better, because the idea is the reimagining of the power structures that have systematically arisen to systemize systemic systemism, structurally. Also, no debate, it’s a done deal, because this is what democracy looks like.

One of the best rules of thumb to emerge from systems theory is Stafford Beer’s famous statement: the purpose of a system is what it does. It doesn’t matter what the designer intended, or what the individual participants think they’re doing; the end result is all that matters. It’s a useful thing to bear in mind when we consider the objectives of the Black Lives Matter protesters, because right now the movement is beginning to look an awful lot like a machine for the abolition of police departments. It is frankly dizzying how rapidly the aims of the movement seem to have shifted from reform to destruction.

Thanks to the nature of digital media, the last 10 days can be seen in entirely different ways. On one feed rioters turn urban centers into scenes from a Purge movie, indiscriminately attacking people and property, advancing the cause of racial justice by burning down immigrant-run businesses and murdering a retired black police captain. On another feed, it is the cops who are running amok. Festooned with tactical gear and high-tech weaponry (or old-fashioned clubs), the police appear to attack people indiscriminately — from old men to young women out buying groceries to homeless guys in wheelchairs — apparently for the crime of being in their way.

New York City is crumbling into shambolic lawlessness and its citizens are growing more afraid and frustrated by the day.Why?Because Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio have once again proven to be categorically incompetent leaders incapable of working effectively together in a time of crisis.On Tuesday, the Governor was forced to confront the glaring issue that the state’s top concern had shifted from COVID prevention to the demolition of its biggest metropolis by unruly riots. During his daily press conference, Cuomo took the opportunity to chastise the Mayor and the NYPD for the turmoil, calling Mayor de Blasio’s handling of it a ‘disgrace’.