Defend Black Lives - Defund Police Terror!
You don't need this newsletter to tell you about the massive outpouring of Black-led outrage, grieving and resistance in response to the racist police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, against the backdrop of the terrible racist disparities in infections and deaths from COVID-19. Starting in Minneapolis and spreading swiftly to Los Angeles -- ground zero for racist police killings with impunity in the US despite decades of so-called reforms -- people took to the streets in disruptive and angry protests, and were met with renewed brutality and repression, teargas, rubber bullets and mass arrests. Over 3000 arrests for failure to disperse and curfew violations were made by the LAPD alone, not even counting separate arrests by the LA Sheriffs Dept and local cops in Santa Monica, Long Beach and elsewhere.
Some people were apparently more concerned about so-called "vandalism" and property destruction than about the taking of lives by the police. Civil unrest on this order of magnitude, particularly when met with provocative state violence as the peaceful protests have been, almost always results in some "vandalism" and "looting" (a racially charged word -- remember the differences in how Black and white people expropriating what they needed in New Orleans after Katrina were treated and referred to).
But polls show that 54% of the US public believes that the burning down of the Minneapolis police precinct was a valid response to the situation. Property destruction is not the same as state violence; whereas property protection is always undergirded by state violence. People who vandalized or even burned police cars, the people who painted George Floyd's face and Black Lives Matter slogans on the statue of Robert E. Lee in Richmond VA, are heroic and exemplary to my way of thinking; their actions are righteous. Same goes for the people who lobbed tear gas cannisters back at the police. Did you see the gif of the Somali woman in a hijab doing exactly that in Minneapolis? Inspiring.
Here's a map of how widespread the protests have been and are continuing to be.
https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/graph ... 310149002/The map above also highlights in orange (appropriately) the 23 states where the National Guard has been called out.
But this has proven to be a problem in itself for the rulers - in Los Angeles, Guard troops took a knee with protesters in Hollywood when they were supposed to blocking further passage, and the marchers moved on to continue protesting.
The most significant aspect is that these massive, multi-racial, international, diverse, militant demonstrations have been Black-led, with millions of people moved to conscious anti-racist action and rejection of institutionalized and internalized racism and anti-Blackness. Learn more here about how that movement is building:
https://m4bl.org/ Twitter
Facebook
Website
Local Accounts and Resources
Actor Kendrick Sampson videos LAPD attacking him with so-called "less-lethal" rubber bullets:
https://www.instagram.com/tv/CA0_qStBtP ... e=ig_embed If you have been arrested at a demonstration or for curfew violation in Los Angeles, here the form to fill out for assistance with the National Lawyers Guild:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIp ... Q/viewform LA's liberal political establishment, cop-lovers all, has totally exposed itself in this moment. Thousand of people turned out to the #JackieLaceyMustGo vigil, back live at the Hall of Injustice, 211 W, Temple St, corner Spring, after 2 months in Instagram Live. Demand that members of the county Board of Supervisors rescind their endorsement of Lacey for re-election in November (she was denied election in the March primary and forced into a run-off in the fall through concerted opposition by families of people killed by law enforcement with impunity in LA County under her tenure as DA). And watch this expose of Mayor Garcetti and Chief of Police Moore-of-the-same:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dymj5To ... gs=pl%2Cwn 70,000 people watched a livestream on YouTube offered by KTLA of the first Police Commission (#LAPCFails) since the uprising, as hundreds of people spoke out to #FirePoliceChiefMoore and to #DefundThePolice. In response, Garcetti proposed to cut about $100 million from the LAPD budget to transfer to unspecified community programs in the Black community.
Here's my letter in response as printed in the LA Times:
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2 ... t-protests To the editor: Imagine how large the LAPD’s budget is if it can cut out $100 million without making too much of a dent. That’s only about 5% of its $1.86-billion 54% share of the city budget. (And the LAPD get other money besides, in federal grants, civil forfeitures, and from its contract with Metro to police the trains.)
The city’s offer of cuts should meet police abolitionists halfway on defunding the LAPD, still one of the deadliest police departments in the U.S. For starters, chop the budget in half (that would still be almost $1 billion wasted on policing).
Start cutting at the top — Chief Michel Moore must go. Sell the damaged police vehicles for scrap and don’t replace them. Shut down the predatory policing programs that criminalize poor black people for who they are.
Deal with social and economic problems such as homelessness with social workers and housing, not cops. Get police out of the schools and off the buses and trains, and put money into a reeducation program that finds them some meaningful and socially useful work to do. Fund community peacemakers.
Michael Novick, Los Angeles
UPRISING DETAINEE SUPPORT RESOURCES
From the Alliance for Global Justice:
Follow these links to contribute to pay bail bonds for those arrested in demonstrations:
Action Bail Fund (NYC)
https://afgj.salsalabs.org/actionbailfund/index.htmlBukit Bail Fund of Pittsburgh (PA)
https://www.bukitbailfund.org/donateColorado Freedom Fund
https://fundly.com/coloradofreedomLouisville (KY) Bail Fund
https://afgj.salsalabs.org/louisvillebailfund Report those who are jailed during the uprising and not being released
While we cannot list all who have been arrested or jailed for short periods, we want to be able to include on our US Political Prisoner list those who are being held with no imminent release in sight, who are facing serious charges related to the uprising, and how people can support their cases. Send reports to
James@AFGJ.org Click here to download this well-researched information guide developed by our intern Natalia Schuurman that will help any who want to understand better the scope of the uprising and the repression against it.
RACIAL DISPARITIES IN COVID EXPOSE INSTITUTIONAL RACISM
Resistance to racist police murders with impunity is inextricable from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and its disproportionate impact on Black, Brown and indigenous people. Even apart from the threat of police violence and the use of National Guard and even US military forces against them, protesters understood they were risking infection and death by going out into the street and close-quarters public demonstrations. Medical professional underlined that police use of teargas, which was widespread, increased the risk or infection and "super-spreader" events dramatically.
https://www.colorlines.com/articles/how ... est-racism EXCERPT: A small community of volunteers, currently led by The Atlantic staff writer Alexis Madrigal, launched The COVID Tracking Project in an effort to aggregate and make sense of numerous and confusing data sources. It then partnered with the Antiracist Center to found The COVID Racial Data Tracker. “This outbreak will not affect everyone equally,” says Madrigal. “It is moving through [US] institutional structures and socioeconomic realities. The COVID Racial Data Tracker is really to track racism, not to track race.”
Indeed, predominately Black counties have experienced three times the infection rate and six times the deaths as predominately White counties during the virus’s initial wave, which hit big cities hard. In L.A., for example, Latinx people made up 44% of the population, but 65% of the deaths.
Many states are not reporting infections among Native Americans—whose history already includes being ravaged by infections, such as smallpox and tuberculosis, carried by Europeans. But what we do know looks grim. Though Native Americans make up just 6% of Arizona’s population, they account for 16% of the state’s deaths. In New Mexico, they comprise 11% of the population, but 31% of deaths.
[But though communities of color are facing greater impact, testing resources have gone elsewhere.] In mid-April, an analysis by the New York Post found that 3.8 out of every 100 residents of Staten Island had been tested, as compared to only 2.9 per 100 in the Bronx and 2.5 per 100 in Queens. Staten Island is 75% white; the Bronx and Queens consist primarily of people of color. 22 of the 30 ZIP codes where the greatest numbers of COVID tests were conducted were either Whiter or wealthier than the city as a whole.
Data in depth here:
https://covidtracking.com/raceSaving Lives Campaign for US-Cuba-Canada
Medical Cooperation
Danny Glover in Conversation with Jose Ramon Cabañas,
Cuban Ambassador to the US
https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_yHr ... McWJwo0aBg Auspices: Organizing Committee, International Conference for the Normalization of US-Cuba Relations
http://us-cubanormalization.orgSaving Lives Campaign US-CANADA-CUBA Medical Cooperation
http://savinglives.usAnti-Racist Action L.A./People Against Racist Terror
PO Box 1055
Culver City, CA 90232-1055
https://antiracist.org