Monthly Archives: June 2020

Mayor Ted Wheeler released 19-point action plan last week as part of his promise to reform the Portland Police Bureau in the wake of ongoing protests against police brutality. Local activists and community watchdogs say the proposal doesnt go nearly far enough.

In this June 4, 2019, file photo, Portland Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty spoke as several hundred people gathered in Director Park in Portland, Ore., at a rally in support of a climate change lawsuit. City commissioners in Portland voted Wednesday, June 17, 2020 to cut nearly $16 million from the Portland Police Bureau's budget in response to concerns about police brutality and racial injustice. The cuts are part of a city budget approved by the commissioners by a 3-1 vote in a contentious meeting. (Dave Killen/The Oregonian via AP, File)Wheelers Action Plan to Increase Police Accountability and Reinvest in Black and Brown Communities includes the dissolution of PPB's Transit Division, its Gun Violence Reduction Team and its school resource officer program, and initially suggested redirecting $7 million from the PPBs $244 million budget to unspecified programs benefiting communities of color. On Wednesday, the Portland City Council voted 3-1 to cut almost $16 million from the police budget, with Commissioner Chloe Eudaly arguing the cuts werent deep enough and voting no. The amount falls far short of the $50 million cut that groups like Unite Oregon and the Portland African American Leadership Forum have demanded.

The Portland Committee on Community-Engaged Policing, a court-ordered advisory board that recently voted for partial defunding of the PPB, voiced similar concerns for what members viewed as the plans limited scope.

"The $7 million dollars Mayor Wheeler has proposed cutting from PPB represents just 3% of their budget, Elliott Young of the PCCEP told The Skanner, clarifying that he was expressing his personal views.

PCCEP's recommendation to 'defund the police and refund the community' is a call for a substantive shift in resources.

"While I applaud the elimination of the GVRT, transit officers and SROs, the (proposed) cut represents incremental change in a moment when we need transformational change."

We have to understand that what were talking about is decades and decades of billions and billions of dollars being poured into the system of policing, at the expense of community investments, Mohamed Shehk, National Media and Communications Director for Critical Resistance, told The Skanner.

The proposed budget for Portland police outpaces the next largest expenditure by over $100 million.

Locally and nationwide, many activists have called not for reform, but for a complete disbanding of the police -- an idea that is gaining traction.

I think its important to just keep reframing conversations about reforms into a more abolitionist view, so that we dont get stuck in the cycle that weve seen over and over again for the past decades -- that reform doesnt actually work, Olivia Hasencamp of Care Not Cops told The Skanner. Its not actually effective in making any real change, because the police are only accountable to upholding power dynamics through violence.

In an open letter to the city, county and Metro, Care Not Cops and Critical Resistance joined 19 other organizations in calling for a moratorium on arrests and "quality of life policing activity" during the pandemic. Such organizations are increasingly pushing the public to have more political imagination.

We dont actually have to look very far to see what a community without policing looks like, Shehk said.

You just have to look to Beverly Hills or any elite, affluent, primarily White neighborhood in this country, and youll see that the police dont actually have much of a presence there. The reason for that is because in those communities, they have sufficient and meaningful investments in things like education, housing, health care, social services. Peoples needs are met. Its where we have drastic social, economic and racial inequities that police are then used as a solution to those problems, when in reality they end up reproducing the problems themselves.

Shehk added that the governments botched response to the COVID-19 pandemic had added an urgency to what has been an ongoing movement.

The prioritization of funding for policing and other systems of state violence, which led to the killing of George Floyd, is the same prioritization that has left our healthcare system completely underfunded and under-equipped to respond to covid-19, he said. Its a moment where were seeing that communities do not have access to proper health care, while the system of policing is extremely well funded.

Others criticized the mayors plan as rushed and vague.

This document raises more questions than it answers, Young said during a PCCEP listening session hosted by video chat Sunday evening.

Wheeler came up with this literally overnight. But I would also note that some of the things in here are not clear that theyre actually reforms: ban chokeholds. According to the current chief of police, chokeholds have been banned for a very long time, and it concerns me that the mayor wouldnt know that.

Oregon State Senator Lew Frederick speaks on the Zoom callSen. Lew Frederick (D-Portland), also on the call, said that during the special session at the end of this month, a new legislative package would be introduced at the state level to address urgent concerns about policing.

Thats my plan: To be able to be a support system, and create a new atmosphere, a new concept of how were dealing with public safety generally, and how were dealing with a switch from a law enforcement approach of policing to a peace officer approach to policing, Frederick said.

Candace Avalos, acting chair of the Citizen Review Committee, responded to the mayors assertion that current police oversight systems lack teeth. Avalos agreed that the CRC didnt, but added that it does serve as an appeals board and policy advisory committee.

I think the (Police Review Board) could benefit from a merge with the CRC, Avalos said.

Instead of having an appeals board of citizens, we could just have more citizens on the PRB, because right now police officers outweigh citizens in those decisions.

While the mayor and City Council scramble to respond to increasing calls for systemic overhauls, advocates say the changes have been a long time coming.

This moment is really a reflection of years and years of organizations working on and demanding the abolition of policing and building relationships and practices, so that when the protests erupted in Minneapolis, there was a whole history of work and organizing and relationships and thought that had been developed that communities can point to when saying, We want to defund and abolish the police, Shehk said.

Continue reading here:

Mayor's Police Reform Plan Criticized by Activists, Policy Panel - The Skanner

As stipulated by the Minsk agreements, Ukraine's sovereignty in the Russian-occupied territories of Donbas must be restored, and this includes the abolition of Russian legislation, the tax system, and currency introduced there.

"We continue our efforts to resolve and mitigate the severe security, socio-economic and humanitarian consequences of the ongoing Russian aggression. Ukraine's sovereignty over the Russian-occupied Donbas must be restored. This was the goal of all three Minsk agreements approved by Ukraine, Russia, and the international community in 2014 and 2015. Russian legislation, the tax system and the currency, which have been illegally introduced by the Russian side since then, must be repealed," Permanent Representative of Ukraine to the International Organizations in Vienna Yevhenii Tsymbaliuk said during an online meeting of the OSCE Permanent Council on Thursday, June 18, an Ukrinform correspondent reported.

Tsymbaliuk noted that the Ukrainian delegation stressed during the Trilateral Contact Group meeting on June 15 the need for full restoration of Ukrainian legislation in the temporarily occupied territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine, restoration of taxation and settlement systems within the Ukrainian legal framework.

"It is necessary to conduct an inventory of state-owned and private property in the temporarily occupied territories of Donbas. We are talking about enterprises of all forms of ownership, including branches of banking institutions, which were expropriated by Russia. The Ukrainian delegation also insisted during the meeting on ensuring the work of Ukrainian mobile communications operators in these territories, emphasizing that it is primarily about meeting humanitarian needs," the Permanent Representative of Ukraine to the International Organizations in Vienna said.

Currently, there are no signs that Russia is ready to end the conflict it started in February 2014, the Ukrainian diplomat stressed. In addition, the Kremlin regime continues to destroy the long-term prospects for the future reintegration of Ukraine's temporarily occupied territories, strengthening their social, economic, and legal ties with the Russian Federation.

The so-called passportization of Ukrainian citizens in Donbas and Crimea is one of the most dangerous forms of this policy. The forced imposition of Russian citizenship in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine is not only a gross violation of Ukrainian and international law but also an unacceptable element of pressure on local residents, Tsymbaliuk noted.

He added that the Ukrainian side also condemned the recent statement by the Russian occupation administration about the participation of residents of the occupied areas of Donetsk and Luhansk regions who have illegally issued Russian passports in the vote on amendments to the Russian Constitution. This is nothing more than complete contempt for sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine. We are grateful to the participating states that pursue a policy of non-recognition of such Russian passports, and call on other countries to do the same," Tsymbaliuk said.

It is known that the Russian occupation administration in Donbas implements the norms of the legislation of the Russian Federation in the controlled territories, has introduced the Russian tax system and currency. In addition, Russia illegally issues passports to the residents of the occupied Donbas, claiming that up to 800,000 Russian passports could be issued to Ukrainians in Donbas by the end of the year.

ol

View post:

Ukraine at OSCE calls for abolition of Russian laws, taxes and currency in Donbas - Ukrinform. Ukraine and world news

How will the abolition of the Department for International Development (DFID) and new UK foreign policy direction impact the UKs infrastructure exports? Tom Cargill considers the potential opportunities for UK companies.

Given our focus on driving UK exports of infrastructure, capacity building and international development, British Expertise International (BEI) and our members engage extensively with relevant departments in the UK government. As a result, we have both a stake and some depth of experience in current discussions around the future of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), Department for International Development (DFID) and Department for International Trade (DIT).

In fact, at BEI we have increasingly found ourselves at the core of wider discussions around the future of UK trade, development and influence. Not only is infrastructure recognised now by HMG as central to the UKs future growth and prosperity, its also seen as essential to our security and influence globally, as well as to international development objectives. A recent study by DIT established there are around 25 separate infrastructure export related initiatives underway across different parts of government. This speaks to the growing recognition of a key export sector. Yet few of these initiatives were found to be coordinated or strategically linked, demonstrating the need for a far more joined-up approach.

Catalysing and supporting a more joined-up, focussed and effective UK effort around infrastructure exports has taken a renewed urgency for BEI in recent months. The change of direction heralded by Brexit has placed a new emphasis on driving exports to the emerging markets of Asia, Africa, Middle East and Latin America where BEI has a particular focus. Climate change has also brought a renewed focus on the need to promote resilient and sustainable infrastructure globally, with UK expertise central to delivery.

The Covid-19 crisis has placed further weight on the role of government in driving export recovery and growth, but we had already been forming ever closer working relationships with counterparts in DIT, DFID, FCO and the Cabinet Office as we began to lay the groundwork for a new strategic foreign policy direction with large scale infrastructure development and government-to-government engagement playing an enhanced role.

Now BEI has revitalised and initiated additional streams of activity. We have used our position on the Board of Infrastructure Exports: UK, the government/industry body established to boost UK infrastructure exports, to reform, refocus and prioritise activity in support of infrastructure export wins. We have also established a number of working groups of members to drive forward an export agenda which better serves the UK supply chain. In addition, we are revitalising UK efforts to catalyse a sustainable financial model for delivery of large-scale infrastructure projects globally - with a defined, differentiated and communicated UK offer on global infrastructure at its heart.

Like many others, we are finding that moving our events online has actually increased our reach and relevance and despite, or perhaps because of, the challenging circumstances our membership is growing again. It has also enabled us to undertake more comprehensive monitoring of the changing export environment through the crisis, for example by hosting events with all relevant Her Majestys trade commissioners, who are responsible for coordinating trade efforts across key global regions.

Next month we will be drilling down further by hosting 14 panels combining the views of around 60 UK Heads of Mission on the market opportunities in the countries to which they are posted. All of this amounts to an important evolution of our mission. With additional online tools, materials and initiatives, BEI will be relaunching early in the autumn to reflect this new phase in our development. Core to all of this are partnerships with our members, but also with other organisations that share a common interest in supporting the strength and vitality of the UKs infrastructure industry. We will all need to pull together to recover and rebuild over coming months and years.

The merger of DFID and FCO into a new department the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Department, may signal a welcome level of coordination, particularly, as has been mooted, if the Department for International Trade is also brought into some degree of greater coordination. Outside government, we will also need to work together to inform government policy in support of the UKs wider growth and success, with infrastructure growth, both at home and abroad, playing a central role.

Tom Cargill is the CEO of British Expertise International.

Read the original post:

How will DFID's abolition impact UK infrastructure exports? - Infrastructure Intelligence

My childhood experience of police was defined by the absence of it. Growing up white in Lynnhurst, I rarely saw police cars. I never thought about police they didnt make me feel particularly safe or particularly afraid. This experience is shared by most people who grew up in neighborhoods like mine. It was only when I moved into other neighborhoods, built community with people of different backgrounds and experiences and continued to educate myself that I realized my experience was a stark contrast to that of members of other communities.

For the last several years, I have been organizing with a local collective, MPD150, that advocates for police abolition. In contrast to those who advocate for reforming police departments, abolitionists believe that policing is inherently flawed and must be replaced with other public safety institutions. After the brutal killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police on Memorial Day and the uprisings that followed, America is in a process of collectively examining its relationship to policing. Almost all of Minneapolis agrees that police departments are responsible for systemic racist violence and wants change, but the question remains: What does that change look like?

I joined MPD150 after several years of organizing around policing, beginning after the police murders of Jamar Clark and Philando Castile. I participated in the black youth-led occupations of the 4th Precinct Station and the St. Paul governors mansion. These occupations drew new public attention to police violence and led to a series of systemic responses: an unprecedented large-scale investigation into Jamar Clarks case and body camera policies that were touted as major reforms. Philando Castiles killers trial marked the first time in Minnesota history that a police officer was criminally prosecuted for killing a community member. But though they were novel, these actions did little to curb police violence in Minneapolis. The officers who killed Jamar Clark were never charged and are still on the Minneapolis police force today. The body camera legislation was full of loopholes allowing officers to avoid filming. The officer who killed Philando Castile was acquitted of all charges despite a $3 million settlement paid to the Castile family in a wrongful death lawsuit. According to the Star Tribune, Minneapolis police killed more community members last year than any year in the last two decades.

In these few years, the MPD has shown its reform-proof nature, remaining essentially unchanged despite the intensity of public outrage and action. Disenchanted by the ineffectiveness of those reforms, I was drawn toward the abolitionist perspective of MPD150 because it demanded the deeper, structural change Minneapolis and our country clearly need.

MPD150s work has been to locate police violence within a historical context, advocate for police abolition, provide resources for people to envision what will come next and provide ideas about how to get involved. Our central work has been publishing Enough is Enough: a 150-year performance review of the Minneapolis Police Department. This report is available in print and audio forms on our website, mpd150.com, alongside a wealth of other resources for people looking to learn about abolitionism.

Two key findings of the MPD150 report are worth emphasizing here. First, the report demonstrates that, from its inception five years after the U.S. Dakota War solidified the violent expulsion of the Dakota people from their ancestral homeland, the police department has consistently been an instrument of violence against black, indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) and against poor people. Second, the report illuminates how the cycle of failed police reform has spanned the last 60 years.

For generations, the cycle has continued. Police commit an act of violence. There is public outrage. There are reforms or actions taken to placate that outrage. Those reforms are either proven ineffective or undermined. And the cycle continues as the violence continues.

As abolitionists, we want to break this cycle.

We want more than a public repudiation of an officers behavior. We want more than a few murderous cops prosecuted and convicted as if their racism does not run through the veins of the entire police body. We recognize that killings of BIPOC people are only the most egregious examples of police violence and that people are abused, intimidated, jailed and fined by police in this city every day. We want this entire system torn up from the roots and we want to plant something new that truly keeps our people safe.

I want to encourage the people of Southwest Minneapolis, particularly the majority of us who are white and middle class, to use this moment for deep reflection and action. Most of us grew up perceiving the police as an organization that promoted public safety. When the police show up, it is usually because we called them there, and we can usually expect the police to treat us with respect. But that has never been true for communities of color, poor or houseless people, and other communities who the police have harmed instead of protecting.

As people with the privilege of choosing whether and how to engage with the police, it is important that we push ourselves to uproot the oppressive systems both in our own bodies and minds and on a systemic level. We are in a pivotal moment in time and space right now where we have the possibility to make deep and lasting change so that future generations can know life without police violence. Our city council has committed to dismantling the police department, but we need to make sure this vision does not get watered down, replaced with reforms or that the institutions that replace the police department do not replicate its oppressions. This fight is just beginning, and we need to stay in it for the duration.

When I talk to people about police abolition, many agree with the ideas but struggle to make the leap to imagining a police-free future. I have had the same struggle. Having spent my whole life in policed cities, it is a challenge to imagine something different. But while it may be challenging, abolitionists believe this imagination and collective creation is the necessary and urgent work to be done.

A core abolitionist principle is that the best way to increase public safety is to meet peoples basic needs rather than policing them. Growing up in well-resourced and barely policed Lynnhurst, I saw that a world without police is possible. The task now is to provide these resources to all of our communities while dismantling the systems that harm them and replacing them with alternative public safety institutions. I have seen these systems come to life in places when people come together to support each other in the absence of police at the 4th Precinct occupation, at Standing Rock and all across Minneapolis as people have spontaneously organized relief and community defense efforts over the last several weeks.

From these experiences, I have developed a deep faith that abolition is not only possible but is the only viable way forward. Please check out our website and the websites of our partner organizations, Reclaim the Block and Black Visions, for ideas on how you can be part of building our police-free future in Minneapolis.

Peter VanKoughnett is an organizer with MPD150, a group founded in 2016 with the aim of working towards a police-free Minneapolis.

More:

The time to abolish the Minneapolis Police Department is now - Southwest Journal

Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber, appears on CNBC's Squawk Box at the 2020 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Jan,. 22nd, 2020.

Adam Galici | CNBC

Uber will honor Juneteenth and elections days around the world as company holidays, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi announced Wednesday.

"To embrace the meaning of #Juneteenth this year, we're making it a paid day off. We encourage employees to spend it in a way that allows them to stand up against racism, whether that's by learning, participating in a community action, or reflecting on how to make change,"Khosrowshahi said on Twitter.

"But I strongly believe that lasting change really happens at the ballot box. That's why we are making election days around the world an @Uber company holiday from now on," he added.

In the United States, Election Day takes place on a Tuesday in November, making it difficult for some people to get to the ballot box because they have to work.

Uber's announcement is the latest effort among tech companies to support and honor the Black community. Twitter and Square CEO Jack Dorseyannounced last week that Juneteenth would become a company holiday.

Juneteenthcelebrates the end of slavery in the United States. A combination of the words June and nineteenth, the holiday commemorates when an U.S. army general informed enslaved African Americans in Galveston, Texas on June 19, 1865 that the Civil War had ended and they were free.

The Confederate army had surrendered two months earlier in April and President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation more than two years prior, but the abolition of slavery was not enforced in remote Texas until much later.

Subscribe to CNBC on YouTube.

Read the original:

Uber is making Juneteenth and election days around the world company holidays - CNBC

Former Vice President Joe BidenJoe BidenSusan Rice calls Trump administration 'racist to its core,' says Senate backers belong in 'trash heap of history' Trump mocks Biden event that practiced social distancing Trump to visit Arizona, Wisconsin next week MORE (D) called the rooting out of systemic racism in the U.S. "the moral obligation of our time," in a statement commemorating Juneteenth on Friday.

"Juneteenthreminds us of how vulnerable our nation is to being poisoned by systems and acts of inhumanitybut it's also a reminder of our ability to change," Biden tweeted. "Together, we can lay the roots of real and lasting justice, and become the extraordinary nation that was promised to all."

Biden also marked the day, which honors the ending of slavery in the U.S., by penning an op-ed on Essence.com.

"Juneteenth is a day of profound weight and powera holiday whose very existence tells us so much about the soul of America," Biden wrote. "It reminds us of just how vulnerable our nation is to being poisoned by systems and acts of inhumanity."

The former vice president referenced the killings of unarmed black Americans including George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.

Their deaths call us to come face to face not only with overt acts of violence, but with subtler realities that strike at the dignity of Black Americans every day, Biden wrote.

Juneteenth is recognized by all but four states. It commemoratesthe day in 1865 when Union Gen. Gordon Granger announced in Galveston, Texas, that all slaves in the state were free. Texas was the last state to comply with the Emancipation Proclamation, signed after the Civil War.

Politicians across the country, including President TrumpDonald John TrumpProtesters tear down, burn statue of Confederate general in DC US attorney in NYC who spearheaded probes of Trump allies refuses to leave as DOJ pushes ouster Trump to host 4th of July event despite pleas from lawmakers to cancel MORE, marked the holiday on Friday.

Today, we join America in honoring Juneteenth, the day reserved for recognizing the abolition of slavery in the United States in 1865, Trump campaign spokeswoman Katrina Pierson said in a statement. While even today our nation continues to work towards healing from this legacy of the past, we look ahead with optimism that there is far more that unites us in America than divides us.

Excerpt from:

Biden says rooting out systemic racism is 'moral obligation of our time' | TheHill - The Hill

Minneapolis did everything Barack Obama asked it to.

Its mayor and City Council appointed a reform-minded police chief who emphasized a guardian mentality instead of a warrior one. They held listening sessions with the community and updated policies to create more transparency and accountability. They promoted officer wellness by offering yoga and meditation classes.

Yet none of this stopped officer Derek Chauvin from pinning his knee on the neck of George Floyd until he lost consciousness and died.

Minneapolis is a case study in a city that embraced the pillars of the final report from the Presidents Task Force on 21st Century Policing, a signature blueprint from the Obama era on how to reform American law enforcement. After five years, the city is no closer to achieving the primary objective of creating trust between police and the communities they serve.

After the killing of Floyd and the uprising against police that followed, culminating in the torching of the Third Precinct station, Minneapolis is at a crossroads. It can continue on the path of slow cultural change, or it can opt for a blank slate to end the current policing system as we know it, as City Council Member Alondra Cano, who heads the councils committee on public safety, said recently.

The 21st Century Policing model for reform came out of a moment similar to the one Minneapolis faces now. In August 2014, a white police officer shot and killed Michael Brown, a young black man, in Ferguson, Mo. The shooting and decision not to indict the officer laid bare long-standing civil unrest over racial disparities in policing and use of force. It led to protests and riots throughout the suburban St. Louis city and a federal investigation that determined the Ferguson Police Department engaged in a pattern of unlawful and racist policing.

In May 2015, the Presidents Task Force on 21st Century Policing released a report of recommendations for cities to move into a new era of law enforcement. The document emphasized the need for a cultural revolution in American police departments, which the authors said would come through more transparency and accountability. Police would have to reset their philosophy to focus on community policing rather than the militarized, warrior-minded tactics embraced by so many officers. The trust of skeptical citizens key to a functioning democracy, according to the report would come from police forces reflecting the values of the communities in which they work.

One barrier that has prevented Minneapolis from achieving these goals has been pushback from the police union and its president, Lt. Bob Kroll, against policy and culture change, said Michelle Phelps, a sociology professor at the University of Minnesota. Last year, when Mayor Jacob Frey announced Minneapolis would become the first city to ban warrior-style training, Kroll countered by publicly announcing free warrior training for rank-and-file officers.

Cultural change is really hard, Phelps said. We can see the resistance to this change in the election and re-election of Bob Kroll. And the union exerts its own independent push against reform.

There is also a bureaucracy that complicates the very idea of ground-level change. Phelps points out that Minneapolis is under jurisdiction of not only Minneapolis police, but also University of Minnesota police, park police, Metro Transit police and state and federal law enforcement, all of whom answer to different leadership hierarchies.

The Minneapolis Police Department has made some progress toward more accountability over the past five years. In 2016, following the police killing of Jamar Clark, a black man, the department updated its use-of-force policy with greater emphasis on sanctity of life. The new language made it possible for the city to take swift action against Chauvin and the other three officers who stood by and watched as Floyd pleaded that he couldnt breathe, Phelps said.

The fact that all four officers got fired immediately means something, she said. And yet its woefully inadequate.

Its too early to say whether Minneapolis is giving up entirely on the Obama model. A majority of the City Council has publicly committed to dismantling the police department, but they have yet to come to a clearly defined consensus of what that means. Phelps said even radical changes could end up looking more like a 21st Century Policing-plus model than an entirely new playbook.

The death of Floyd has moved the Overton window the range of ideas deemed politically acceptable insanely quickly, Phelps said. I think everybodys catching their breath and trying to figure out what that means.

The measure of success of a functional police department is also in the eye of the beholder, said Sandra Susan Smith, a sociology professor at University of California-Berkeley.

Communities of color in particular have historically seen the role of police as about confinement and control vs. protect and serve, Smith said. Through that lens, many Americans view efforts to make police more accountable as nibbling around the edges, rather than addressing the fundamental problems of policing head on.

Some people argue that police are doing exactly what theyre intended to do, she said.

The 21st Century Policing model is predicated on the philosophy that police are an important resource in communities, Smith said. Making dramatic changes including better training, more accountability and redirecting some police duties to other city departments could still be compatible with the Obama-era reform model.

What is incompatible is the abolition of the police, she said.

Earlier this month, the City Council approved a resolution for intent to create a transformative new model for cultivating safety in our city. Mayor Frey, who signed the resolution, is pushing for change within the current department, rather than starting over. What exactly changes will likely come down to Minneapolis voters in the form of a referendum, which some council members say could appear on the ballot this year.

In the meantime, unrest over American policing continues to generate protests across the country in the name of Floyd and other victims of police brutality. Many look to Minneapolis for what comes next.

Continued here:

Killing of George Floyd shows that years of police reform fall far short - Minneapolis Star Tribune

Subscribe to the Podcast: SoundCloud | YouTube | iTunes

Today's podcast is sponsored by...

Are you a supplier or a brand working to elevate the customer experience? The Interactive Customer Experience Associationconnects brands, suppliers, agencies and more who are working to create transcendent customer experiences. Let's work togetherto create a better customer experience ecosystem for us all. Join the ICX Association today at icxa.org.

Become a podcast sponsor - sign up here for more information!

There may be no more appropriate day this year to publish a podcast focused on one of the most outspoken and socially active restaurant brands, &pizza, than today, June 19, also known as Juneteenth. On this same date in 1865, a Union army general proclaimed all slaves in Texas the last and then most remote of the so-called "slave states" to be free. The day preceded the official abolition of slavery in the U.S. on Dec. 6 of that same year.

This year, of course, Juneteenth has particular relevance following the past month of nationwide protests and other forms of social activism that have highlighted the violence and injustice still levied on black Americans some 155 years after that first Juneteenth.

And of course, Washington D.C.-based &pizza has been a part of that national discourse, even providing its employees known as its Tribe paid time off from work if they wished to take part in activism pushing for changes in what has been described as the institutional victimization of blacks, following the death of Minnesotan George Floyd in police custody last month.

"&pizza is, and has always been about unity,"&pizza COO Andy Hoopersaid during the podcast. "As we celebrate Juneteenth this year, issues of racial inequality, policing, and community feel particularly poignant. The parallels between this day in 1865 and today in 2020 are too similar and the work is nowhere near finished, which is why &pizza is offering its employees PTO for activism, PTO for Election Day, and the opportunity to make the changes they want to see in the world.

"As a representative of the food service industry which employs 10% of the American workforce &pizza is championing activism at the most grassroots level: its own staff. This year on Juneteenth, it celebrates the Black community and stands in unity with their continued fight by encouraging its peers in the QSR space to do the same."

In today's podcast, Hooper discusses the brand's activism, along with how it fits into the company's larger business picture, especially during this protest- and pandemic-pocked year.

Read the original here:

&pizza COO breaks down the business-building power of activism - QSRweb.com

Juneteenth revelers and demonstrators gathered at strategic locations in D.C. on Friday for protests against police brutality and societal inequality.

Juneteenth marks the date June 19, 1865 that all enslaved black people in the U.S. learned they were free. It was more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, when a Union Army general read federal orders to enslaved African Americans in Galveston, Texas.

The Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves in the South in 1863, but it was not enforced in many places until after the end of the Civil War in 1865.

And on Friday, 155 years later, holiday revelers and demonstrators took to the streets throughout D.C. and the greater Washington area both to celebrate and protest police brutality that has taken a national spotlight in the wake of the May 25 killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody.

Stay with WTOP all day Friday, June 19, for coverage from our team of reporters in the District, Maryland and Virginia following the Juneteenth celebrations and protests. Please check back for the latest developments as the day continues.

In D.C., students, teachers and even professional basketball players gathered in strategic locations to call attention to the inequalities faced in American society by African Americans and to push for change.

In a particularly striking moment, a group that included NBA star Bradley Beal of the Washington Wizards, and Natasha Cloud of the WNBA champion Washington Mystics started their day at Capital One Arena.

WTOPs sports anchor Dave Preston joined the group as it went to the National Museum of African American History and Culture and eventually made its way to the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial.

The Wizards and Mystics organization (each owned by Monumental Sports) stopped at the King statue and read the names of African-Americans who have been killed recently by police or white supremacists in hate incidents.

This isnt a barbecue, were going to be out here marching regardless, said one speaker at the protest at the base of the statue, according to WTOPs Alejandro Alvarez. The speaker was referencing the darkening late-afternoon skies portending a storm in the District.

Cloud said members of both the Wizards and Mystics can work together to push for change. Collectively, she said, this is where were going to get action done.

Alvarez said the group knelt for 8 minutes, 46 seconds, the length of time that Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin had his knee on the neck of George Floyd. During the near 9-minute period, the transcript of what Floyd said as he was dying was read aloud.

Among his final words: I cant breathe; My neck hurts; My stomach hurts; Theyre going to kill me; and mama.

Another group approached Black Lives Matter Plaza, just north of the White House on Friday, dancing to the beat of Go-Go, the original music of D.C.

Backyard Band, legendary purveyors of the sound, launched a rolling concert on a flatbed truck heading toward the White House.

Its still a protest, not a party, organizer Ron Moten said. Were talking to people as we go and giving out information along with the music.

Outside the White House, several hundred people gathered as blue skies started giving way to storm clouds.

They can kill our leaders! Lord knows they have. But they cannot kill a movement, activist Joella Roberts said over a bullhorn. Dont be scared. Thats what they thrive on fear and ignorance.

Earlier in the day, one of the first groups to take to the streets was a group of students and teachers advocating for both the District and the federal government to offer more support to students of color.

WTOPs John Domen was there just after 10 a.m. The group was working on signs to bring on their march to the U.S. Department of Education building across the National Mall, near Fourth Street Southwest.

Domen said one goal of those who assembled Friday morning was to ask the federal government to allocate more money to schools that have been struggling for generations. While the march went to the U.S. Education Departments campus, protest leaders said the government in D.C. deserves its share of criticism, too.

Domen spoke with Nandi Taylor, an elementary school teacher in D.C., who helped organize the protest. We want to see them spend less money on police, and more money on mental health, Taylor said. We want to see a revised curriculum, so its more reflective of true history and our students needs.

Many of those students come from Wards 7 and 8, Taylor said.

Taylor also said standardized testing needs to be abolished or revised. Taylor wanted to remind D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser that she should be directing the Districts funding away from police and toward education.

The deaths of Floyd, Breonna Taylor in Louisville,Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta and others have sparked outrage and renewed calls for changes in policy and laws.

Earlier on Friday, Louisvilles mayor said that one of three police officers involved in the fatal shooting of Taylor will be fired.

Juneteenth is a blending of the words June and Nineteenth, is also known as Emancipation Day, Freedom Day and Independence Day for black Americans. Its recognized in 47 states and the District of Columbia, according to the National Juneteenth Observance Foundation.

Hawaii, North Dakota and South Dakota are the only states without an official recognition.

It is not a federal holiday.

On Capitol Hill, WTOPs Mitchell Miller reported Texas lawmakers would propose that June 19 become a national holiday. Both Sen. John Cornyn (R) and Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D) have proposals in the works. A vote in the Democratic-led House will take place next Thursday on police reform.

It took roughly 18 years after the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. before his birthday was observed as a federal holiday.

The abolition of slavery in the U.S. did not equate to equality for black Americans.

The birth of Jim Crow segregation followed, relegating many black Americans to poor, redlined neighborhoods with under-resourced schools.

And after the passage of landmark civil rights protections in the 1960s, decades of mass incarceration policy and employment discrimination eroded opportunities and economic stability for black people and families. All along, police brutality has been a fixture of the black American experience.

In addition to the disparity in the way authorities treat black Americans, the novel coronavirus has shown what many people already knew: Black people do not have good enough healthcare. While African Americans make up less than 15% of the population, nearly one-third of those who have died from COVID-19 in the U.S. are black.

This week, the Equal Justice Initiative which in 2015 cataloged thousands of racial terror lynchings of black people by white mobs added nearly 2,000 Reconstruction-era lynchings confirmed between 1865 and 1876, bringing the total number of documented lynchings to nearly 6,500.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Mitchell Miller/WTOP

Mitchell Miller/WTOP

Dave Preston/WTOP

Dave Preston/WTOP

Dave Preston/WTOP

Dave Preston/WTOP

Dave Preston/WTOP

Dave Preston/WTOP

Dave Preston/WTOP

Dave Preston/WTOP

Dave Preston/WTOP

Dave Preston/WTOP

John Domen/WTOP

John Domen/WTOP

John Domen/WTOP

John Domen/WTOP

John Domen/WTOP

See original here:

Juneteenth: Athletes and teachers join protest for change - WTOP

Down where we are, food is used as a political weapon. Fannie Lou Hamer

As calls for abolition, defunding and disbanding police departments, and reallocating critical city resources animate the American landscape, we are facing an imminent opportunity to draw connections between people in prisons and our food system.

For some, abolition conjures images of a past thought gone. For those folks, images of slave patrols and plantations seem unrelated to the current wave of uprisings following the deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. But for others, abolition is a relevant, timely, and necessary injunction. Abolition invites a critical-historical awareness of unfreedom and a creative prescription toward the possibilities of freedom.

The coronavirus pandemic has re-cast our food workerscashiers, delivery persons, and farmersas essential. What of those who labor on prison farms?

While prison labor specifically and mass incarceration more generally have been debated over the years, researchers have been slow to make either theoretical or empirical claims that link incarceration and the food system, despite the United States history with using enslaved and incarcerated labor to produce food. Abolitionist theory cites the plantation as both a geography and way of thinking whose logic has remained consistent, despite its changing material form. The prison is one of those forms.

Many historians have written about the development and role of the convict lease system in rebuilding the South after the Civil War. Companies and plantation owners leased prisoners to build railroads and perform agricultural labor. In Texas, for example, the convict lease system not only provided labor for companies and planters but also helped the state strengthen itself financially. When the convict lease system formally ended in 1910, the Texas penitentiary system continued its investment in agriculture, purchasing former plantations in east Texas and along the Gulf Coast. Some of those former plantations make up the 130,000 agricultural acres currently maintained and operated by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

The coronavirus pandemic has re-cast our food workersas essential. What of those who labor on prison farms?

On Texas prison farms in 2017, incarcerated men and women raised 30 crops that produced more than 11.7 million pounds of food; harvested 123.7 million pounds of cotton, grains, and grasses; tended chickens that produced just under 5 million eggs; canned 297,143 cases of vegetables; and processed more than 22.7 million pounds of meat. The state, in effect, operates its own miniature food system that feeds people who are incarcerated there (the Texas Department of Criminal Justice boasts about being self-sufficient) as well as commercial sales of food to the public.

Prison labor is not solely used to feed prison populations or to supply state agencies. In 2018, the nonprofit food justice organization Food First published an article that asked: Is Prison Labor the Future of Our Food System? The group detailed how private companies have turned to prison labor to make up for the shortage of farmworkers due to anti-immigration legislation. Across the U.S. 30,000 incarcerated people provide onions, watermelons, potatoes, and other produce for private companies to sell for public consumption.

Food Firsts question does not have an inevitable answer. As a terrain of struggle, abolition is as much about building the institutions, relationships, and worlds we want to live in as it is about dismantling those we reject. And we are not building from scratch: The seeds and fragments of a more just, community-controlled food system that honors the healing potential of working the land are already present. Abolitionist theory also makes connections between how power that is concentrated in police forces and prisons flows into other parts of our lives through channels such as the food system.

A contemporary abolitionist practice must create the conditions for healthy communities. To that end, the work of nourishing people and building just food systems is necessary. Just as sure as we must end state violence in the form of police and prisons, we also must deepen our capacity to meet the needs of people and build anew. What we build cannot be yet another transformation of a system that privileges and protects private property, exploits labor, or maintains hierarchies of deservedness.

Where can we turn when we want to see abolitionism in practice? We turn to the prison strikes and uprisings that used food as a political weapon in the fight for more humane conditions. We turn to incarcerated farmers who, even as they labor under confinement, point to the revolutionary possibilities of farming itself, particularly in the context of prisons, where idleness is a threat to individual and communal well-being. We turn to the folks who built Black towns to make freedom spaces and examples of community land trusts and cooperative enterprises. We turn to food justice organizations with radical Black leadership that use food to build infrastructure for maintaining Black life rather than hastening Black death. In these examples, we see fragments and building blocks that challenge exploitation and private property while also overturning the centuries-old plantation paradigm of violence and control.

As we continue to uplift abolitionist demands, those of us also committed to land and food work must insist on building self-determining food economies and fully commit to overturning the food systems plantation paradigm. Indeed, in the world where we defund and disband police departments, shutter prisons and penal farms, and end hyper-surveillance, we must also consider what we want to build that is essential? An abolitionist approach to food requires us to build community, grow food, and nurture people. All this must happen alongside the dismantling of plantation-prisons.

Top photo: Parchman Penal Farm. Male prisoners hoeing in a field in Mississippi. (Public domain photo by the Mississippi Department of Archives and History)

See the original post here:

Op-ed: Overthrowing the Food Systems Plantation Paradigm - Civil Eats