Daily Archives: March 31, 2021

Theres no disadvantage with state and local government police system, as argued by opponents of the agitations to decentralise the police force.

The only one touted is that police at the levels of state and local government may be used to intimidate political opponents, by Governors, local government chairmen or the ruling political party at any point in time.

This fear is not entirely baseless, but it is exaggerated; and there are antidotes to it. In support of their fears, opponents of sub-national (state and local government) police system often refer to what native authority police was allegedly used for by politicians in the first republic, by which political opponents were said to have been hounded using the instrumentality of native authority police.Nonetheless, these are some of the antidotes to the fear of misuse of federal, state and local government police forces:

1. To avoid misuse of the police at all levels, we must establish a democratic police system. In this regard, the legal and policy framework of the police system whether federal, state or local government must institute accountability, professionalism, independence in command decision, and transparency in the police system. Thats not the case even now with the single, federally controlled Nigeria Police Force. For instance, the Governor of a State cannot be questioned in any court of law for the direction he gives to the state police commissioner, talk less of the President whenever he gives direction to the Inspector General of Police. Thats a typical example of an undemocratic police system.

2. The people must be bold and alive to their responsibilities by standing up firmly against any oppressive treatment in the hands of the police and law enforcement agencies, generally. After all, thats the essence of democracy. The people cannot labour to mandate a government through their votes and become docile in the face of oppression.

3. The legal profession and civil society must be vigilant against misuse of the police by anyone including the governor of a state and or the ruling political class or party. As its said, eternal vigilance is the price of freedom. In practical sense, the legal profession must organise itself to offer pro bono services to anyone subjected to oppressive treatment on account of political differences or disputes.

4. The press and social media must be massively deployed against any authority that uses the police to oppress anyone because of political differences.

5. Full advantage should be taken to enforce the fundamental rights of victims of political oppression. In other words, anyone whos subjected to police abuse which amounts to violation of fundamental rights should take maximum advantage of the fundamental rights enforcement processes. In this connection, the legal profession must stand up to encourage the judiciary to play its role in providing succour as envisaged by the constitutional guarantee of fundamental rights. The judiciary must be encouraged to exhibit courage to protect citizens who are victims of right abuses.

These and more will blunt misuse of the police at whatever level. The devil is in the details.

Omoregie, a Professor of law writes from Abuja.

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Blunting misuse of the police at all levels - Guardian

Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar has called on citizens to take inspiration from the struggle of the Spiritual Baptist community, and work together to overcome the hardship, suffering, and challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

In her Spiritual Baptist Liberation Day message, she said the vibrant and thriving community is an example of resilience, triumph, and hope in the face of overwhelming odds.

Persad-Bissessar said the strength and the faithfulness of the Baptist community continue to provide her with motivation and the drive to keep going even when she feels disheartened.

She said: "Today, as we face trying times and challenges in our nation, let us take inspiration from the struggle of the Spiritual Baptist community, and work together to overcome the hardship, suffering, and challenges posed by the pandemic. But even as we continue to do our part in this health crisis, we must also tackle the other pressing issues that hamper our progress - inequality, high unemployment, crime, and limited opportunities for our young people. These challenges can be overcome, and with the strength, determination, and indomitable spirit of our people, we will prevail over this crisis and emerge stronger and more united."

Furthermore, the opposition leader stated that their survival in the face of unjust government oppression during the prohibition years by the colonial authorities is a true testament to their determination.

She noted from 1917 to 1951, for 34 years the Spiritual Baptist faith was banned in Trinidad.

However, she said they endured, and after many hardships and persistent efforts, they gained the freedom to practice their faith.

Persad-Bissessar said she is also proud to be part of apolitical party that took a central role in righting this wrong by granting the Baptist community an official holiday in 1996 on the anniversary of the repeal of the Shouters Prohibition Ordinance.

She added: "Then again under my Government, the completion of their very own school in 2012. Thank you to the Baptist community for inspiring us all with your continued strength and resilience."

Persad-Bissessar said as we continue to grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic, members of the Spiritual Baptist community are unable to celebrate as they have done in past years.

She said: "I know this is difficult, and even though we may grow weary of the measures we have followed since the start of the pandemic, remember why we are doing this and why it is important - to protect your health and that of your families. I urge everyone to continue to be responsible and do your part to prevent the spread of the virus."

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Kamla: Let us unite to overcome challenges ahead - Loop News Trinidad and Tobago

By Opinion Mar 28, 2021

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Dr Lehlohonolo Kennedy Mahlatsi

Athi Nyokanas article A Case for the Abandonment of the Freedom Charter published in the Sunday Independent of March 21 presents an ideological offensive against the liberation movement and it seeks to discredit the Freedom Charter. His attack of the Freedom Charter and the non-racial perspective is baseless.

The Africanists never saw anything wrong with the non-racial alliance when its foundation was laid in 1946. In that year, Dr AB Xuma (then president of the ANC) entered into an agreement with Dr Y M Dadoo (then president of the Transvaal Indian Congress) and Dr G M Naicker (president of the Natal Indian Congress) by which the African and Indian congresses would work together on all matters of common concern in their fight against white domination.

This agreement is commonly known as the Dadoo-Xuma-Naicker Pact or Three Doctors Pact. It was this alliance which launched the National Day of Protest on June 26, 1950. It was this alliance which unleashed and waged the campaign for the defiance of unjust laws on June 26, 1952. It is this same alliance that produced the epoch-making document the Freedom Charter on June 26, 1955.

The Freedom Charter nowhere pretends that blacks were not oppressed and were therefore enjoying equal rights with their white countrymen.

The preamble of the Freedom Charter first rejects the racist premise of South African constitutional life, and recognises that the real South Africa is inhabited by all who live in it.

It then proceeds immediately to challenge the authority of a government founded on national oppression, by asserting that our people have been robbed of their birthright to land, liberty and peace by a form of government founded on injustice and inequality.

In this way, the Freedom Charter, in approaching the national question in South Africa, focuses unambiguously and accurately on the national relationship between the oppressor and the oppressed.

The Freedom Charter recognises the linkage between capital and discriminatory inequality to the extent of calling for the return of the country's wealth to the people, the nationalisation of the mineral wealth beneath the soil, and public ownership of the banks and monopoly industry.

Our people gathered together in Kliptown to speak of freedom. Of the 2 884 delegates, 721 were women. There were 2 186 African delegates, 320 Indian delegates, 230 coloured delegates, as well as 112 whites.

Hundreds of delegates were prevented from coming by the action of the police on June 26, 1955. A heroic and epoch making Congress of the People was convened in the face of fierce intimidation and victimisation by the racist regime and its police force.

From every corner of South Africa delegates and representatives of the people assembled at Kliptown and despite harassment by hundreds of heavy armed police they drew up a Freedom Charter, which became a blue-print of the political, economic and social structure that the people of South Africa demanded.

The imperialists, quite obviously, hate the Freedom Charter, and would love to see the South African people opt for a less revolutionary document, some kind of reforms or even, for that matter, one document that looks super-revolutionary in form but which is reactionary in essence.

* Dr Mahlatsi is SACP Free State PEC Member. He writes in his personal capacity.

** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.

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Attack on the Freedom Charter and the non-racial perspective is baseless - Independent Online

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Irans Regime Took Oppressive Measures in Persian New Year

The Iranian regime has increased its oppressive measures, simultaneous with the start of the New Persian Year.

Fearing Irans restive society, the regimes police force held a maneuver on the Eve of the Persian New Year of 1400 in Tehran. This maneuver further confirms mullahs fear of another uprising. Coinciding with the last day of [Persian New Year of] 1399, the Tehran Police held a military maneuver on Saturday morning, March 21, 2021. This maneuver was held in the presence of the State Security Force Commander, Tehran Police Chief, and Tehran Governor Anoushirvan Mohseni Bandapi in Azadi Square. Greater Tehran police forces demonstrated their capabilities in Azadi Square, wrote the state-run Fars news agency on Sunday, an outlet linked to the regimes Revolutionary Guards (IRGC).

The State Security Force Commander, Tehran Police Chief, and Tehran Governor Anoushirvan Mohseni Bandapi in Azadi Square

In another similar development, Hossain Salami, head of the IRGC, in a message to the regimes Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, announced the creation of three IRGC bases to implement Khameneis so-called orders to combat corruption and increase production.

The regimes police force held a maneuver on the Eve of the Persian New Year of 1400 in Tehran.

The regimes police force held a maneuver on the Eve of the Persian New Year of 1400 in Tehran

Your excellency should know that we will fight corruption. We will mobilize Basij groups and defeat the enemy, and prevent them from implementing their policies. We will free the social media from idleness; we will stay in the field, we will cross the enemy strategy and help the [regime] to [circumvent] sanctions, read Salamis message.

Salami and Khamenei speak of combatting corruption, while the IRGC and Khamenei dominate Irans economy and control the large, organized network of corruption in Iran. According to Behzad Nabavi, a government minister in several administrations in Iran: There are four institutions which control 60 percent of the national wealth. This includes Executive Headquarters of Imams Directive (Setad Ejraie Farman Imam), Khatam-alAnbia Base, Astan-e Quds, and Foundation of the Oppressed and Disabled. None of these institutions are in connection with the government and parliament. All these four institutions are under Khameneis supervision. This is in addition to 10 other powerhouses under the IRGC and Khamenei control, which dominate Irans economy.

The real purpose of creating these bases and Khameneis orders is to control the society and further increase oppression.

In His speech on the occasion of Nowruz, Khamenei admitted his regime is in a deadlock, underlined the regime is in a sensitive situation and called for management of the social media.

Some try to create a negative impression and show that we are headed for a dead-end The year 1400 is sensitive and important, Khamenei said in his annual Nowruz speech on Saturday, adding, In June, we have important elections ahead that can significantly impact the future of the system. Enemies make the most of cyberspace. Unfortunately, in our countrys cyberspace, the necessary observations are not made, despite all the emphasis I have had. All the countries of the world are managing their cyberspace. But we are proud to have abandoned cyberspace. This is not an honor. This is not an honor at all; Cyberspace must be managed

Khamenei desperately intends to control restive society in different ways. But, these oppressive measures no longer work.

Abbas Abdi, one of the regimes officials from the rival factions, underlined the regimes failed oppressive measures during the Persian Fire Festival, Chaharshanbe Suri, and warned officials about peoples backlash.

The clear lesson from Chaharshanbe Suri: The [regime] is like a wood saw. If we want to saw iron with this wood saw, not only will it be unable to saw the iron, but all the ribs of this wood saw will be damaged. As is the case with the existing power, Abdi wrote on Twitter on March 17.

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Irans Regime Took Oppressive Measures in Persian New Year - National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI)

Tuesday, 30 March 2021, 5:05 pmOpinion: John W Whitehead

By John W Whitehead & NishaWhitehead

The church mustbe reminded that it is not the master or the servant of thestate, but rather the conscience of the state. It must bethe guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool.If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it willbecome an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritualauthority.Martin Luther King Jr. (AKnock at Midnight, June 11, 1967)

Inevery age, we find ourselves wrestling with the question ofhow Jesus Christthe itinerant preacher and revolutionaryactivist who died challenging the police state of his time,namely, the Roman Empirewould respond to the moralquestions of our day.

For instance, would Jesusadvocate, as so many evangelical Christian leaders have donein recent years, for congregants to submit to yourleaders and those in authority, which in the Americanpolice state translates to complying, conforming,submitting, obeying orders, deferring to authority andgenerally doing whatever a government official tells you todo?

What would Jesus do?

Study the life andteachings of Jesus, and you may be surprised at how relevanthe is to our modern age.

A radical nonconformist whochallenged authority at every turn, Jesus spent his adultlife speaking truth to power, challenging the status quo ofhis day, pushing back against the abuses of the RomanEmpire, and providinga blueprint for standing up to tyranny that would befollowed by those, religious and otherwise, who came afterhim.

Those living through this present age ofgovernment lockdowns, immunity passports, militarizedpolice, SWAT team raids, police shootings of unarmedcitizens, roadside strip searches, invasive surveillance andthe like might feel as if these events are unprecedented.However, the characteristics of a police state and itsreasons for being are no different today than they were inJesus lifetime: control, power and money.

Much likethe American Empire today, the Roman Empire of Jesus daywas characterized by secrecy, surveillance, a widespreadpolice presence, a citizenry treated like suspects withlittle recourse against the police state, perpetual wars, amilitary empire, martial law, and political retributionagainst those who dared to challenge the power of thestate.

A police state extends far beyond the actionsof law enforcement. In fact, a police state is characterizedby bureaucracy, secrecy, perpetual wars, a nation ofsuspects, militarization, surveillance, widespread policepresence, and a citizenry with little recourse againstpolice actions.

Indeed, the police state inwhich Jesus lived (and died) and its striking similaritiesto modern-day America are beyondtroubling.

Secrecy, surveillance and rule bythe elite. As the chasm between the wealthy andpoor grew wider in the Roman Empire, the ruling class andthe wealthy class became synonymous, while the lowerclasses, increasingly deprived of their political freedoms,grew disinterested in the government and easily distractedby bread and circuses. Much like America today, withits lack of government transparency, overt domesticsurveillance, and ruleby the rich, the inner workings of the Roman Empire wereshrouded insecrecy, while its leaders were constantly on the watchfor any potential threats to its power. The resultingstate-wide surveillance was primarily carried out by themilitary, which acted as investigators, enforcers,torturers, policemen, executioners and jailers. Today thatrole is fulfilled by the NSA, the FBI, the Department ofHomeland Security and the increasingly militarized policeforces across the country.

Widespread policepresence. The Roman Empire used its military forcesto maintain the peace, thereby establishing a policestate that reached into all aspects of a citizens life.In this way, these military officers, used to address abroad range of routine problems and conflicts, enforced thewill of the state. Today SWAT teams, comprised of localpolice and federal agents, are employed to carryout routine search warrants for minor crimes such asmarijuana possession and credit cardfraud.

Citizenry with little recourse againstthe police state. As the Roman Empire expanded, personal freedomand independence nearly vanished, as did any real senseof local governance and national consciousness. Similarly,in America today, citizenslargely feel powerless, voiceless and unrepresented inthe face of a power-hungry federal government. As states andlocalities are brought under direct control by federalagencies and regulations, a sense of learned helplessnessgrips the nation.

Perpetual wars and amilitary empire. Much like America today with itspractice of policing the world, war and anover-arching militarist ethos provided the framework for theRoman Empire, which extended from the Italian peninsulato all over Southern, Western, and Eastern Europe, extendinginto North Africa and Western Asia as well. In addition tosignificant foreign threats, wars were wagedagainst inchoate, unstructured and socially inferiorfoes.

Martial law. Eventually,Rome established a permanent military dictatorship that leftthe citizens at the mercy of an unreachable and oppressivetotalitarian regime. In the absence of resources toestablish civic police forces, the Romans reliedincreasingly on the military to intervene in all matters ofconflict or upheaval in provinces, from small-scale scufflesto large-scale revolts. Not unlike police forces today, withtheir martiallaw training drills on American soil, militarizedweapons and shoot first, ask questions later mindset,the Roman soldier had theexercise of lethal force at his fingertips with thepotential of wreaking havoc on normal citizenslives.

A nation of suspects. Just asthe American Empire looks upon its citizens as suspects tobe tracked, surveilled and controlled, the Roman Empirelooked upon all potential insubordinates, from the commonthief to a full-fledged insurrectionist, as threats to itspower. The insurrectionist was seen as directlychallenging the Emperor. A bandit, or revolutionist,was seen as capable of overturning the empire, was alwaysconsidered guilty and deserving of the most savagepenalties, including capital punishment. Bandits wereusually punished publicly and cruelly as a means of deterring othersfrom challenging the power of the state. Jesusexecution was one such public punishment.

Actsof civil disobedience by insurrectionists. Startingwith his act of civil disobedience at the Jewish temple, thesite of the administrative headquarters of the Sanhedrin,the supreme Jewish council, Jesus branded himself apolitical revolutionary. When Jesus with the help of hisdisciples, blocks the entrance to the courtyard andforbids anyone carrying goods for sale or trade fromentering the Temple, he committed a blatantly criminaland seditious act, an act that undoubtedly precipitatedhis arrest and execution. Because the commercial eventswere sponsored by the religious hierarchy, which in turn wasoperated by consent of the Roman government, Jesus attackon the money chargers and traders can be seen as an attack on Romeitself, an unmistakable declaration of political andsocial independence from the Romanoppression.

Military-style arrests in the deadof night. Jesus arrest account testifies to thefact that the Romans perceived Him as a revolutionary.Eerily similar to todays SWAT team raids, Jesus wasarrested in the middle of the night, in secret, by a large, heavilyarmed fleet of soldiers. Rather than merely asking forJesus when they came to arrest him, his pursuerscollaborated beforehand with Judas. Acting as a governmentinformant, Judas concocted a kiss as a secret identificationmarker, hinting that a level of deception and trickery mustbe used to obtain this seemingly dangerousrevolutionists cooperation.

Torture andcapital punishment. In Jesus day, religiouspreachers, self-proclaimed prophets and nonviolentprotesters were not summarily arrested and executed. Indeed,the high priests and Roman governors normally allowed aprotest, particularly a small-scale one, to run its course.However, government authorities were quick to dispose ofleaders and movements that appeared to threaten the RomanEmpire. The charges leveled against Jesusthat he was athreat to the stability of the nation, opposed paying Romantaxes and claimed to be the rightful Kingwere purelypolitical, not religious. To the Romans, any one of thesecharges was enough to merit death by crucifixion, which wasusually reserved for slaves, non-Romans, radicals,revolutionaries and the worst criminals.

Jesus waspresented to Pontius Pilate as a disturber ofthe political peace, a leader of a rebellion, apolitical threat, and most gravelya claimant to kingship,a king of the revolutionary type. After Jesus isformally condemned by Pilate, he is sentenced to death bycrucifixion, the Roman means of executing criminalsconvicted of high treason. The purpose of crucifixion wasnot so much to kill the criminal, as it was an immenselypublic statement intended to visually warn all those whowould challenge the power of the Roman Empire. Hence, it wasreserved solely for the most extreme political crimes:treason, rebellion, sedition, and banditry. After beingruthlessly whipped and mocked, Jesus was nailed to across.

As Professor Mark Lewis Taylorobserved:

The cross within Roman politicsand culture was a marker of shame, of being a criminal. Ifyou were put to the cross, you were marked as shameful, ascriminal, but especially as subversive. And there werethousands of people put to the cross. The cross was actuallypositioned at many crossroads, and, as New Testament scholarPaula Fredricksen has reminded us, it served as kind of apublic service announcement that said, Act like thisperson did, and this is how you will endup.

Jesusthe revolutionary,the political dissident, and the nonviolent activistlivedand died in a police state. Any reflection onJesus life and death within a police state must take intoaccount several factors: Jesus spoke out strongly againstsuch things as empires, controlling people, state violenceand power politics. Jesus challenged the political andreligious belief systems of his day. And worldly powersfeared Jesus, not because he challenged them for control ofthrones or government but because he undercut their claimsof supremacy, and he dared to speak truth to power in a timewhen doing so couldand often didcost a person hislife.

Unfortunately, the radical Jesus, the politicaldissident who took aim at injustice and oppression, has beenlargely forgotten today, replaced by a congenial, smilingJesus trotted out for religious holidays but otherwiserendered mute when it comes to matters of war, power andpolitics.

Yet for those who truly study the life andteachings of Jesus, the resounding theme is one of outrightresistance to war, materialism and empire.

Ultimately,as I point out in my book BattlefieldAmerica: The War on the American People, this is thecontradiction that must be resolved if the radicalJesusthe one who stood up to the Roman Empire and wascrucified as a warning to others not to challenge thepowers-that-beis to be an example for our modernage.

After all, there is so much suffering andinjustice in the world, and so much good that can be done bythose who truly aspire to follow Jesus Christsexample.

We must decide whether we will follow thepath of least resistancewilling to turn a blind eye towhat Martin Luther King Jr. referred to as the evils ofsegregation and the crippling effects of discrimination, tothe moral degeneracy of religious bigotry and the corrodingeffects of narrow sectarianism, to economic conditions thatdeprive men of work and food, and to the insanities ofmilitarism and the self-defeating effects of physicalviolenceor whether we will be transformednonconformists dedicated to justice, peace, andbrotherhood.

As King explained in a powerful sermondelivered in 1954, This command not to conform comes [from] Jesus Christ, the worlds most dedicatednonconformist, whose ethical nonconformity still challengesthe conscience ofmankind.

Furthermore:

We need torecapture the gospel glow of the early Christians, who werenonconformists in the truest sense of the word and refusedto shape their witness according to the mundane patterns ofthe world. Willingly they sacrificed fame, fortune, and lifeitself in behalf of a cause they knew to be right.Quantitatively small, they were qualitatively giants. Theirpowerful gospel put an end to such barbaric evils asinfanticide and bloody gladiatorial contests. Finally, theycaptured the Roman Empire for Jesus Christ The hope of asecure and livable world lies with disciplinednonconformists, who are dedicated to justice, peace, andbrotherhood. The trailblazers in human, academic,scientific, and religious freedom have always beennonconformists. In any cause that concerns the progress ofmankind, put your faith in thenonconformist!

Honesty impels me to admit thattransformed nonconformity, which is always costly and neveraltogether comfortable, may mean walking through the valleyof the shadow of suffering, losing a job, or having asix-year-old daughter ask, Daddy, why do you have to goto jail so much? But we are gravely mistaken to thinkthat Christianity protects us from the pain and agony ofmortal existence. Christianity has always insisted that thecross we bear precedes the crown we wear. To be a Christian,one must take up his cross, with all of its difficulties andagonizing and tragedy-packed content, and carry it untilthat very cross leaves its marks upon us and redeems us tothat more excellent way that comes only throughsuffering.

In these days of worldwide confusion, thereis a dire need for men and women who will courageously dobattle for truth. We must make a choice. Will we continue tomarch to the drumbeat of conformity and respectability, orwill we, listening to the beat of a more distant drum, moveto its echoing sounds? Will we march only to the music oftime, or will we, risking criticism and abuse, march to thesoul saving music of eternity?

ABOUT JOHNW. WHITEHEAD

Constitutional attorney and authorJohn W. Whitehead is founder and president The RutherfordInstitute. His books BattlefieldAmerica: The War on the American People andAGovernment of Wolves: The Emerging American PoliceState are available at http://www.amazon.com.He can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org.Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The RutherfordInstitute. Information about The Rutherford Institute isavailable at http://www.rutherford.org.

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(TNS) George Floyd pleading for his life under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer has become a defining moment of our time.

What began 10 months ago at the corner of 38th Street and Chicago Avenue has transformed into nothing less than an American reckoning on justice, racial equity, the proper role of law enforcement and the historical wrongs society has perpetrated on Black people.

Monday morning, that moment leads to the 18th-floor courtroom of the Hennepin County Government Center, where a jury will begin to hear a murder and manslaughter case against since-fired police officer Derek Chauvin.

The trial itself is about what happened that May evening, but it will also be a vessel into which a splintered society places its rage, anxieties and hopes. Like the trial after Rodney King's beating, like the trial after Emmett Till's murder, like the Scottsboro Boys' trial, this case will be viewed as another chapter perhaps a turning point in America's racial history.

"Everything is riding on the outcome of the trial," said Keith Mayes, an associate professor at the University of Minnesota's Department of African American and African Studies. "Yes, Chauvin is on trial, and it's about the Floyd murder. But an argument can be made it's about all the other folks that didn't receive justice, too. That's why a conviction is necessary for us to reimagine what a future can look like, because these cases continue to happen until the police are thoroughly reformed."

Still, while some look at Chauvin as emblematic of law enforcement as an institution that's misguided at best or racist at worst, others see what happened last Memorial Day as an anomaly: that Floyd's death was the rare exception instead of proof that police are the bad guys.

"I try in my head to better understand that broad-brush mentality, but I have a hard time," said Tim Leslie, the Dakota County sheriff. "If a plumber gets arrested for DUI, are all plumbers drunks? If a pilot crashes a plane, are all pilots incompetent? No. Yet Chauvin does that, he murders somebody, and all law enforcement needs to be reformed. Is that the same?"

When Mayes saw the Floyd video, the 53-year-old professor had a visceral reaction: What if that were me?

"You almost see yourself lying on the ground with the police officer's knee on your own neck," Mayes said. "You can't help but be engulfed in this kind of anger and rage and disappointment in the system that continues to allow this to happen."

Growing up in Harlem, Mayes had two distinct types of interactions with police: One with housing police, who were familiar and respectful, and the other with city police, who were feared. Decades later, even as an author with an Ivy League degree, those feelings linger.

After Floyd's death, Mayes joined protests and paid respects at 38th and Chicago. That's how he processed it: by sharing his grief with the grief of the community. He thought about George Floyd, but he also thought about Philando Castile, and Jamar Clark, and Amadou Diallo, the Guinean immigrant killed by New York police while Mayes lived in New York.

"I put this incident along this spectrum of other incidents," he said, "where police either assaulted or killed Black people. And they just get stacked up."

For police officers, the national debate about where the profession falls short has often felt jarring and unfair.

"We've disappointed some of our constituency that's the bottom line," said Leslie, the sheriff in Dakota County. "We have to take a look in the mirror and figure that out."

The past year has been an emotional whirlwind for police. When the COVID-19 pandemic began, they were painted as heroes; after Floyd died, they were painted as villains.

Leslie has tried to think deeply about the issues Floyd's death brought up. He's read books such as "How to Be an Antiracist" and "Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man." He's hired a community outreach and equity coordinator, and he's focused more on deputies' mental health.

But Leslie has been in law enforcement for four decades. He knows innumerable police officers who went into the field for honorable reasons. He knows policing is an emotional profession to begin with: seeing dead bodies, dealing with people in crisis, always remaining on edge. The past year has made it more so.

"We're in a really tough spot right now," he said. "We're supposed to deal with people with mental illness, chemical addiction, all sorts of family drama, poverty, undereducated. These are not police problems. These are social problems. We're trying to be everything for everyone, and I'm not sure we're able to do that without disappointing some people sometimes."

Chauvin's knee became a symbol of Black oppression worldwide: in Australia and Japan, in France and Germany, in Kazakhstan and Indonesia.

The case "has really become a global indictment of police forces," said Brenda Stevenson, a professor of history and African American studies at UCLA. "This is now representative of what happens everywhere at least, that's what many people believe. People are really watching to see if the U.S. can get it right this time."

Thabi Myeni, a 23-year-old law student in Johannesburg, South Africa, had been to plenty of protests before last spring mostly over racial equity in tuition fees.

When Myeni saw the video of Floyd's death, she thought it would be another example of racial injustice going unnoticed. "I had no idea it would spark a global movement," she said.

What changed for her was when South Africa's ruling party decried Floyd's killing as a "heinous murder." It struck Myeni as hypocrisy. While Americans protested Floyd's death, South Africans were protesting the death of a man named Collins Khosa. Khosa lived in Johannesburg's poor Alexandria township, and he was beaten to death by soldiers who said Khosa had been drinking alcohol in public, a violation of COVID-19 lockdown rules.

After Floyd's death, Myeni organized a march to Parliament. Racial justice protests were sweeping more than 60 countries around the world, but in South Africa, they felt especially resonant. It has been nearly three decades since apartheid ended, and yet institutionalized segregation still has a long tail in South Africa. It was, she thought, no different from America's legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.

"These things are transnational in nature, the global nature of Black oppression," she said. "I think of America as I think of South Africa, where the government the people of power, the people of privilege don't want to acknowledge racism still exists."

For some, Chauvin's knee on Floyd's neck told a story of America's history of racism. Calls for an overhaul of policing to defund or even abolish police also functioned as calls to disrupt America's power structures.

The reason Floyd's death had more impact than other instances of police violence is simple, said James Mulvaney, a law enforcement professor who worked in New York's Division of Human Rights. Technology made Floyd's death immediate, graphic and personal.

"We're no longer viewing these things through a telescope we're witnessing them in our living rooms," Mulvaney said. "America watched George Floyd die at our house."

In the months since, police reform has become a heated topic in Minnesota and around the country.

Brendan Cox, the former Albany, N.Y., police chief who now works as Director of Policing Strategies at the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion National Support Bureau, believes the message needs to be the system cannot be fixed by police alone.

"If the community does not trust us not only as individuals but as a system, then we really can't do our job," he said.

Maria Haberfeld, a professor of police science at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City who has written extensively about police training, has been frustrated with the national conversation about policing after Floyd's death. Too much has been driven by loud voices instead of insightful ones, she said. The better discussion, she believes, should have been about centralizing America's police system. Each state having a single police force would help funding and streamline training.

Chauvin "is a classic example of someone who should not be on the job, who was poorly trained," Haberfeld said. "I didn't see all the unrest [Floyd's death] would trigger, but in a way to me I was waiting for something of that nature. I've been writing about this for 20 years. And nobody's been listening."

The cataclysmic national moment that began 10 months ago at the corner of 38th and Chicago will not come to a tidy end at the conclusion of Chauvin's trial. The three other officers at the scene are scheduled to be tried in August, and Floyd's death is certain to reverberate much longer than that.

But Martin Luther King III, the oldest son of the civil rights icon, said he believes the impact of this trial cannot be overstated. An acquittal would mean our criminal justice system must be rethought, he said.

"It may set a tone for how people perceive whether justice can be achieved, specifically for Black people," King said. "Nothing brings this young man's life back. But his legacy can be that his tragic death mobilized people all over the nation and the world so that we don't go backward, but we as a world community go forward in terms of addressing racial issues."

(c)2021 the Star Tribune (Minneapolis)Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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Derek Chauvin Trial and Americas Racial Justice Reckoning - Governing

Some books are actually two books. You can read them twice, or buy two copies, or take two sets of notes. The Kennedys in the World: How Jack, Bobby, and Ted Remade Americas Empire by historian Lawrence J. Haas is one of those. Both books are excellent, but one takes a LOT of patience.

Haas, a former senior White House official and award-winning journalist, is Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy at the American Foreign Policy Council. He is the author of six books, including the outstanding Harry and Arthur: Truman, Vandenberg, and the Partnership that Created the Free World, a 2016 Wall Street Journal top ten non-fiction book, reviewed in the Summer 2016 issue of inFOCUS Quarterly.

The Kennedys is, first, the biography of Jack, Bobby, and Ted (Haass use of nicknames saves U.S. from multiple Senator Kennedys). Not a full biography Haas doesnt care about their love lives, personal peccadillos, or assassinations. Jack is dispatched at the end of one section and Bobby at the end of the next. Thats fine. Mary Jo Kopechne gets a single mention, which is less fine, but it is in keeping with the principle that what counts is how they were raised and how it impacted public policy. Thats public policy.

A demanding father and distant mother set the stage. Standards for academics, current events, and sports. Poor little rich boy stories about how Rose didnt visit Jack when he was in the hospital at Choate, and no suggestion that aviator and eldest brother Joseph Kennedy, Jr. might have been the preferred son.

And, suddenly, the Kennedy boys are men, where Haas has a strong preference for Ted.

Jack doesnt fare too well. War hero and Cold Warrior, Jack offloaded blame the generals were to blame for the Bay of Pigs, Bobby was sent to meetings during the Cuban Missile Crisis so Jack could disavow knowledge, and he was, apparently, preparing to blame the generals again for the escalation of U.S. military activity in Vietnam. He had a close relationship with Bobby, but when Ted offered to be helpful to the President, Jack said, Go run for Congress. Bobby was the interim figure, changing his view of the Vietnam War and promoting social change in South America as the antidote to communist revolutionaries. Teds was a full-blown revolutionary mostly for others.

If at that point you thought you didnt need another Kennedy biography, even a well-written and interesting one, youd be right. However, this is where the second book starts.

The 1960s were for American foreign policy exactly what they were for social policy a test bed of new, interesting, and sometimes, ultimately unsupportable policies. They were Camelot, broadly speaking, where idealism was coin of the realm (well get to COIN later). Bob Dylan wrote the outline:

And how many years can some people existBefore theyre allowed to be free?Yes, and how many times can a man turn his headAnd pretend that he just doesnt see?

People should be free, but are not, and other people are turning away from the oppression. How can you look at oppression without doing anything about it? And what should you do about it? Especially when the song admonishes:

Yes, and how many times must the cannonballs flyBefore theyre forever banned?

And

Yes, and how many deaths will it take til he knowsThat too many people have died?

That last one is really ambiguous because he doesnt mention whether the too many deaths are the people of oppressed places or the soldiers who have stopped turning away from them and are trying to make the oppressed free. Were there too many deaths at Omaha Beach or Iwo Jima?

A conflicting mishmash of platitudes and hopes are fine for Dylan, but more is required of presidents and senators. This is why the reader needs patience there is head-banging between here and the end.

The Kennedys were not oblivious to the suffering of people trapped behind the Iron Curtain all three brothers made pilgrimages to Eastern Europe but their efforts (after Cuba) were directed more toward Soviet machinations in Asia, and later South America than toward undoing the oppression 70 million people under communist occupation.

Ted, in fact, argued that Soviet control over Eastern Europe had largely ended Today, with the exception of East Germany, Russia has no more satellites. Shortly before the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia.

Perhaps they thought their best strategy was to prevent communism from taking hold in new places, rather than rolling it back. The book is unclear. Cold Warrior Jack was firm on the importance of Vietnam. He was less firm about the need to couple the troops and arms which he was willing to authorize with aid and pressure for political change in Saigon. It didnt take long for him to become ambivalent and was considering withdrawal when he died.

It should be noted that when wars end for some people, they dont end for others. Haas writes, As the war (Vietnam) wound down, Ted geared up to address global challenges of a different nature The war did not wind down for the Vietnamese, which is a source of head-banging for the reader.

The 60s produced COIN counter-insurgency operations which haunts American military and foreign policy makers to this day. COIN says you dont have to conquer territory dont have to stand in a capital and accept surrender papers. You can defeat enemies by supporting a local faction to kill the communist factions while you offer money and food to those who might support the communists to induce them to support the U.S. as well. At Caltech, Bobby called for:

better training for foreign national to defend themselves against communist terrorism and guerrilla penetration, but more importantly, for progressive political programs which wipe out the poverty, misery, and discontent on which [communism] thrives.

The trick is knowing which foreign nationals only want American money and arms, and which share Americas goals something we havent gotten right yet. Who could have and should have been Americas partners in Iraq? In Syria, the Obama Administration armed and trained the Free Syrian Army, claiming it was secular Syrians who wanted to depose Assad. Not exactly. And American help for the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) was supposed to keep an alternative to Hezbollah in place to protect the interests of the Lebanese people as distinct from Hezbollah itself. But the LAF actually shares weapons and training with the terror group that bombed the Marine Barracks in Beirut in 1983.

Major head-banging.

Returning to The Kennedys, Latin America was largely a test bed. Ted wrote:

Here, as in no other continent, the 1970s will determine whether we are right in asserting that fundamental and rapid change can take place without violent, bloody disruption if we assume that all radical movements are subversive; if we curtail aid to governments because they promise swift change; if we curtail aid to governments because they promise swift change if we deprive them of our markets and our resources, we ourselves may force them to look elsewhere.

Consider, for a moment, what were asking of them trading local loyalties for economic change; social change; modern education; and electoral politics that presume multiple, fair elections so that if you lose this time, you can win next time; a loyal opposition; and the understanding the coalition building helps. But what if governments are unable to do all of those things? What if they dont want to? There was enormous disillusionment with the government of South Vietnam for both Jack and Bobby rather like the disillusionment that came with Egypt after the so-called Arab Spring, or with Iraq after the toppling of Saddam, or the 2011 toppling of Moammar Qaddafi, or with a variety of Afghan governments after the ouster of the Taliban.

We seriously have to ask, What if they really cant do it, and what we push them into is NOT a version of ourselves, but a rift that allows communists, or jihadists, or anarchists or other despots to gain power?

More head-banging here. Because for all of the good intentions of the Kennedys, and all of the hard work including championing civil rights in the United States there are limits to what American idealism can do. There were limits to what the Kennedys could do.

Contrary to Teds hope, fundamental and rapid change leads to violent, bloody disruption more often than not. Interestingly, he opposed Reagans support of the Nicaraguan Contras and was thrilled when Congress cut off their funding, saying, This is a historic day, the day the tide was turned against the secret war in Nicaragua.

Actually, the Contras held on long enough to force a democratic election in 1990. It was monitored by former President Jimmy Carter and won by Violeta Chamorro, a conservative and democratically inclined newspaper publisher, over the communist Sandinistas. Daniel Ortega, the Sandinista leader, ran and lost in democratic elections until he forced changes in electoral law that brought him to power in 2006 with less than 38 percent of the vote. Ortega never looked back.

Ted opposed Reagans hard line on the Soviet Union and opposed both the Nixon era ABM systems and Reagans Strategic Defense Initiative. But it was Reagans determination to build arms that the Soviets were compelled to acknowledge they could not match, in tandem with his support of the people of Central Europe that allowed for the peaceful uprising and political change the Kennedys hoped for but couldnt produce. Jacks Ich Bin Ein Berliner remark, aside from sometimes being translated as I am a jelly donut, didnt have the clout that Reagans, Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall had decades later.

Left-wing pacifist head-banging here.

Countries that do not threaten U.S. directly but impose restrictions on the civil rights and human rights of its citizens should be treated the way we treated the Soviet Union as an abhorrent system of governance. There was no assumption that the U.S. could invade, occupy, or arm and train guerrillas, to make over the USSR in our image. And no likelihood that will do it to save the Uyghurs in China. Maybe because they are really big, with really big armies. The Kennedys generally mucked around in smaller Asian countries and in Latin America where there would be no physical backlash against us.

On the other hand, our Western heritage NOT of electoral politics necessarily but free speech, rule of law, free market economics, independent judiciaries, property rights and tolerance is precisely responsive to the conditions faced by millions of people around the globe today. It is appalling and more than a little bit condescending that where the Kennedy brothers were openly patriotic and admiring of the American political system and Western Civilization, todays political leaders are running the other way.

Final head-banging here.

Dont read this.

Do, however, buy the book it is engaging and, if read with the right mind-set and two aspirin, will force you to assess the relationship among American politics, money, and power from the 60s to the current day. The past has something to teach U.S. and Lawrence Haas is a really good teacher.

Shoshana Bryen is Senior Director of The Jewish Policy Center and Editor, inFOCUS Quarterly.

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I Want to Improve the Human Condition Jewish Policy Center - Jewish Policy Center