This 3 June 2020 video from the USA says about itself:
Police Attack Reporters at Black Lives Matter Protests | NowThis
Police have attacked journalists reporting on Black Lives Matter protests more than 100 times in the past week.
In US news and current events today, despite freedom of the press, police are attacking journalists nationwide. Here’s a compilation of reporters being targeted for doing their jobs.
TRUMP CALLED IN THE MILITARY TO SCARE PROTESTERS. THEY CAME ANYWAY. Despite fearsome military displays and escalating police violence, protesters in Washington came out in force anyway Tuesday night, many of them saying they were stirred by the president’s outrageous rhetoric and efforts to stifle peaceful protests. Meanwhile, no governor accepted the president’s offer of military assistance to crush protests. [HuffPost]
RELIGIOUS LEADERS ‘TEAR-GASSED’ FOR TRUMP PHOTO OP Clergy were passing out water and snacks to protesters in front of St. John’s Church, in Washington’s Lafayette Square, before law enforcement officials in riot gear fired tear gas and flash-bangs to disperse the crowd so that President Donald Trump could walk to the church for a photo op. The Rev. Gini Gerbasi, rector of a different church, said she and seminarian Julia Joyce Domenick were tear-gassed and driven away by police. Washington’s Roman Catholic archbishop also roundly criticized Trump’s visit to the Saint John Paul II National Shrine on Tuesday. [HuffPost]
Trump’s use of the Bible was obscene. He should try reading the words inside it.
TRUMP VOWS TO UNLEASH MILITARY, PROTESTERS TEAR-GASSED FOR PHOTO OP Donald Trump issued an unprecedented presidential threat from the Rose Garden: He would send “thousands of heavily armed soldiers” into Washington to quell protests and would follow by invoking the Insurrection Act to deploy the military into other U.S. cities if mass protests against police brutality continued. As he spoke, federal law enforcement officials working alongside military police officers fired projectiles and tear gas upon American citizens protesting peacefully just yards from the White House so that the president could be photographed holding up a Bible in front of a nearby church. The church itself was “outraged” by the measures — and Washington residents opened their doors to protesters trapped by the police. [HuffPost]
WARREN CALLS FOR DOJ PROBE INTO BARR’S ORDER REMOVING PROTESTERS Sen. Elizabeth Warren called for an investigation following the violent dispersal of protesters near the White House amid reports Attorney General William Barr personally ordered federal officers to remove them. The Massachusetts Democrat wrote to the inspector general at the Department of Justice saying she was appalled after largely peaceful protesters gathered in Lafayette Park were confronted by federal police wielding tear gas and flash-bang grenades before Trump’s stroll to a church for a photo op. [HuffPost]
This 2 June 2020 video from the USA is called Reverend describes being pushed out from church for Trump photo-op.
Ice-T responds to Trump’s “Law and Order” tweet exactly as you’d expect
Don Lemon asks whether Trump is “declaring war” on Americans.
Michael Jordan shows support for police brutality protests “we have had enough.”
TRUMP’S HISTORY OF RACISM CATCHES UP WITH HIM After decades of cultivating racists, Trump continued his struggles trying to deal with the worst crisis in race relations in decades as he remained ― outside of a brief, tear-gas-enforced photo opportunity Monday at a damaged church ― bunkered in the White House. “Most of you are weak,” Trump berated the nation’s governors on a video conference Monday, blaming them for not using violent enough tactics against protesters. “You have to dominate or you’ll look like a bunch of jerks. You have to arrest and try people.” [HuffPost]
FACEBOOK ENGINEER RESIGNS OVER HANDLING OF TRUMP POSTS Timothy Aveni, Facebook engineer who works to combat the spread of misinformation on the platform, is resigning over how CEO Mark Zuckerberg has handled Trump’s “increasingly dangerous rhetoric.” “For years, President Trump has enjoyed an exception to Facebook’s Community Standards; over and over he posts abhorrent, targeted messages that would get any other Facebook user suspended from the platform,” Aveni wrote on Facebook. “Mark always told us that he would draw the line at speech that calls for violence. He showed us on Friday that this was a lie.” [HuffPost]
SENATE GOP-ERS BRUSH ASIDE TRUMP’S VIOLENCE AGAINST PROTESTERS Top Senate Republicans brushed aside the use of force against hundreds of peaceful protesters gathered to demand an end to police brutality against Black Americans near the White House. Some questioned whether it was a real protest in the first place. “That wasn’t even a protest ― that was a provocation that was created deliberately for national television,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), the acting chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told reporters on Capitol Hill. “Tell me those are real protesters and not professional agitators,” Rubio added. [HuffPost]
POLICE MAKE AP REPORTERS STOP COVERING NEW YORK PROTEST New York City police officers surrounded, shoved and yelled expletives at two Associated Press journalists covering protests Tuesday in the latest aggression against members of the media during a week of unrest around the country. Portions of the incident were captured on video by videojournalist Robert Bumsted, who was working with photographer Maye-E Wong to document the protests in lower Manhattan over the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. [AP]
New Yorkers said f**k the police, so the police rioted.
Schools are considering terminating their contracts with the police.
There’s one big reason why police brutality is so common in the U.S.
The police have a white nationalist problem — and have for at least 15 years.
DEFUND THE POLICE — It would be nice to blame the chaos and cruelty unleashed by police forces across the nation on Trump’s cartoonish brutality. He’s certainly provoking more violence, but the major policy choices that have led to the epidemic of police brutality — from macroeconomic management to police procurement — have been bipartisan. It ends by defunding police forces and reimagining community maintenance as an act of support, not an act of violence, writes HuffPost’s Zach Carter. [HuffPost]
LA RESIDENTS FLOOD ZOOM MEETINGS WITH CALLS FOR LAPD CHIEF TO RESIGN Los Angeles residents flooded a public Zoom meeting with anger and frustration on Tuesday over the city’s response to ongoing protests following the death of George Floyd. Hundreds of citizens called into the Los Angeles Police Commission’s first virtual meeting since the demonstrations began. For more than eight hours, dozens of residents repeatedly called on Los Angeles Police Department Chief Michel Moore to resign after he made comments on Monday blaming looters for “capitalizing” on the man’s death at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer last week. [HuffPost]
LOUISVILLE POLICE CHIEF FIRED AFTER BODY CAMS INACTIVE IN FATAL SHOOTING Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer fired Police Chief Steve Conrad after learning that the officers involved in a shooting that killed a man early Monday amid tumultuous protests rocking the Kentucky city did not turn on their body cameras. “This type of institutional failure will not be tolerated,” Fischer said. The police department already facing questions and mounting community rage over the March killing by officers of Breonna Taylor, a Black 26-year-old EMT shot as she lay in bed. [HuffPost]
FLORIDA COP SUSPENDED AFTER SHOVING KNEELING BLACK WOMAN Florida police officer has been suspended after he was seen shoving a kneeling protester at an anti-racism demonstration. Videos captured by bystanders show the man, identified by authorities as Fort Lauderdale police officer Steven Pohorence, confronting protesters outside a parking garage. As the officer, who appears to be white, is turning to walk away, he pushes to the ground a Black woman who is kneeling with her hands in the air. A Black female police officer can be seen pulling Pohorence from the crowd and scolding him as other demonstrators scream in response to his actions. [HuffPost]
AUTOPSY FINDS GEORGE FLOYD DIED OF ‘HOMICIDE BY ASPHYXIA’ An independent autopsy on George Floyd conducted at the request of his family concluded his cause of death was “homicide caused by asphyxia due to neck and back compression that led to a lack of blood flow to the brain.” The report by Dr. Michael Baden and Dr. Allecia Wilson found that Floyd likely died at the scene where a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes. [HuffPost]
STORE OWNER REGRETS 911 CALL ON GEORGE FLOYD The owner of Cup Foods, the Minneapolis store where a clerk called 911 on George Floyd, says his business will no longer involve the police in certain incidents until law enforcement stops “killing innocent people.” Mahmoud Abumayyaleh posted a lengthy note on Facebook to say that he supports the protests over the death of Floyd, a Black man who died after a white officer knelt on his neck outside Cup Foods, and said his store is “deeply saddened for our part of this tragedy.” Abumayyaleh also said that he’ll be “donating to pay for George Floyd’s memorial service.” [HuffPost]
Seven ways to support Black lives and protesters with your money.
Here are a few ways to reduce your coronavirus risk while protesting.
White supremacists pose as Antifa online, call for violence.
This 3 June 2020 video says about itself:
Brazil anti-racism rallies: Protesters blame Bolsonaro
Anti-racism demonstrations are being held in Brazil, where around half the population is Black or mixed race.
The protesters blame President Jair Bolsonaro for the growing discrimination.
Al Jazeera’s Teresa Bo reports.
Brazilian youth join international wave of protests against police violence. By Tomas Castanheira, 3 June 2020. Responding to demonstrations across the US, thousands of people took to the streets of Brazil protesting against police violence, racism and the fascistic president Bolsonaro.
Woman pinned down by police officers in London: “I can’t breathe”. By Thomas Scripps, 3 June 2020. Police violence is directed against the working class, particularly its poorest sections, and falls disproportionately on black communities.
This video is about the demonstration in Rotterdam today.
Australian police officers assault Aboriginal boy in Sydney. By Oscar Grenfell, 3 June 2020. The widespread anger provoked by the attack has prompted nervousness from the political establishment, under conditions of mass protests internationally against police violence.
Dear Kitty. Some blog 
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Linda –
People, across the country, marching in the streets against police brutality and murder.
Over 100,000 Americans dead from the coronavirus, and millions infected.
Tens of millions of workers losing their jobs, struggling to put food on the table, pay their rent, keep their homes or afford a visit to the doctor.
We are in the midst of an unprecedented moment in American history and our people are hurting in a way we have never experienced in our lifetimes. That is the simple truth. And, in the midst of all this suffering, it would be unforgivable if we did not learn some profound lessons from the failures of policies and institutions which have made this difficult situation much worse than it had to be. If all the death, pain and struggle are to mean anything, it must be that we develop a new vision for America and a government based on the principles of justice, not greed.
Tragically, racism and police brutality in America are not new. They have been an integral part of American history. But now, we are seeing people of all races and backgrounds stand up and fearlessly say: “Enough is enough. No more.” We will not accept the torture and murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers. We will not forget the police killings that, in recent years, took the lives of so many African-Americans including Eric Garner, Sandra Bland, Laquan McDonald, Tamir Rice, Alton Sterling, Breonna Taylor, Freddie Gray, Rekia Boyd and Walter Scott.
Now is the time for real police department reform. Every death of a person held in police custody must be investigated by the U.S. Department of Justice. Every police officer involved in a killing must be held accountable, and those found guilty must be punished with the full force of the law.
Now is the time for real criminal justice reform. We must invest in our young people in jobs and education. Not more jails and incarceration. We must end the disgrace of the United States having more people in jail than any other country on earth — disproportionately Black, Latino and Native American.
Now is the time for real health care reform. It is a tragedy that, in the last several months, 40 million Americans have lost their jobs. It is totally absurd that many of them are also losing their health insurance. We are the only major country on earth that ties health care to employment. That irrational and dangerous policy has got to end. The time is long overdue for us to understand that health care is a human right, not an employee benefit. Are the unemployed less in need of visiting a doctor or a hospital than those who have jobs? Are they less likely to come down with the coronavirus, cancer, heart disease or mental illness? Whether the insurance companies like it or not, the absurdity of tying health care to employment must end. We need Medicare for All.
Further, as Americans are painfully aware we pay, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. While the pharmaceutical industry makes tens of billions a year in profit and gives their CEOs exorbitant compensation packages, one out of five Americans are unable to afford the medicine their doctors prescribe.
That situation is likely to become even more grotesque. Right now, the federal government is providing billions to major drug companies as they search for a COVID-19 vaccine. Fine. But, as of now, there is no assurance from the government that the new vaccine will be delivered free to the American people, the people who are paying for the research. Unbelievably, we may well end up paying for the vaccine twice. First, through research funded by our tax dollars. Second, when we purchase the product. And that means that if you have the money for the vaccine, you can stay well and stay alive. If not, well, good luck. That is not an acceptable approach. The vaccine, when it is developed, must be free to all.
Now is the time for real economic reform, and an economy that works for all and not just the few. The current crisis has not only revealed the cruelty and the dysfunctionality of our health care system, it has also shown us the extraordinary inequities in our economy. In America today half of our workers live paycheck to paycheck. Not surprisingly, it turns out that when you have nothing in the bank and your existence is dependent upon your last paycheck, and that paycheck ceases to come, you go from poverty into desperation. Hunger, because there’s no money for food. Homelessness, because there’s no money for rent. Sickness, because there’s no money for the doctor.
What the pandemic has taught us is that a relatively low unemployment rate, which is what we had before the current crisis, does not constitute a “great” economy, and does not adequately guarantee for the security and well-being of working families. When tens of millions of workers earn starvation wages, that is not a “great” economy. When 40% of the people in our country do not have the savings to pay for a $400 emergency, that is not a “great” economy. When over 500,000 Americans are homeless and 18 million families spend at least half their incomes on housing, that is not a “great” economy. When 87 million are uninsured or underinsured, that is not a “great” economy.
At a time of massive unemployment, starvation wages and enormous unmet needs, we need a federal jobs program that guarantees employment for all who are able to work. We can create millions of good-paying jobs by rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, transforming our energy system away from fossil fuel into energy efficiency and sustainable energy, building the 10 million units of affordable housing we need, educating our kids and expanding access to health care.
Right now it is up to us to envision what kind of country we want to become, which is why I am asking you directly:
Add your name to say you are committed to our fight for racial justice, economic justice, social justice and environmental justice and to call on Democratic leadership to adopt a strong progressive agenda.
In my view, the great lesson to be learned from this terrible moment in American history is that we cannot rely on unfettered capitalism to protect us. The rich, the powerful and wealthy campaign contributors are doing just fine. Too many others are being left behind, struggling hard just to survive. The question now is whether, as a nation, we will finally learn that lesson and make the bold changes we desperately need in order to become a more just society.
In the richest country in the history of the world we need strong policies to ensure that every man, woman and child has a decent standard of living. We must understand, as President Franklin D. Roosevelt did 80 years ago, that when we talk about “freedom” we are talking about economic rights as human rights.
What does that mean in specific terms? It means that:
We must end starvation wages in America. People cannot live on $7.25 an hour, or $10 an hour or $12 an hour. We must raise the minimum wage to at least $15 an hour, make it easier for workers to join unions, and guarantee a good-paying job to everyone who is able to work.
We must end our wasteful and dysfunctional employer-based private health insurance system and move to Medicare for All. The function of a rational health care system is not to provide huge profits for the insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry. It is to provide high-quality health care to every man, woman and child in this country in a cost-effective way.
We must fundamentally alter our approach to education. We need a universal, high-quality, affordable childcare system. We need to adequately fund public education so that every school district in the country, regardless of zip code, is able to attract high-quality teachers and provide reasonably sized classes. We need to make public colleges and universities tuition-free and cancel student debt.
I realize that some people will say that these ideas are “radical” or “utopian” — never to be accomplished. I disagree.
Here is what Nelson Mandela said about transformative politics. “It always seems impossible until it is done.” This from someone who walked out of a prison cell after 27 years to become president of South Africa and end apartheid.
The great opposition we face to progressive and humane change in our society comes not just from Wall Street, the insurance companies, the pharmaceutical industry, the fossil fuel industry, the military-industrial complex, the corporate media or the enormous wealth and power of the 1%. It also comes from the limits of our imagination.
If we believe that real, fundamental change is impossible, it will never occur. If we believe that justice — economic justice, social justice, racial justice and environmental justice — is unachievable, it will never be achieved.
In this very difficult moment for our country and the world, now more than ever, we must stand in solidarity in the fight for a new and better society. Despair is not an option. This struggle is not just about us. It is for our children, future generations and the survival of the planet.
Let us go forward together.
In solidarity,
Bernie Sanders
In this unprecedented moment in American history, now more than ever, we need to stand together.
Add your name to say you are committed to our fight for racial justice, economic justice, social justice and environmental justice and to call on Democratic leadership to adopt a strong progressive agenda.
ADD YOUR NAME
Paid for by Friends of Bernie Sanders
(not the billionaires)
PO BOX 391, Burlington, VT 05402
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Linda,
Breonna Taylor worked in an emergency room in Louisville, Ky, risking her life every day to help people during the COVID-19 pandemic. She had big plans for her future, including becoming a nurse, buying a house, and starting a family.1
But late one night in March, as Breonna slept, police dressed in plain clothes broke through her home’s front door without identifying themselves and killed Breonna in a hail of bullets.
The actions of the police in Breonna’s killing were every bit as senseless and brutal as in the killing of George Floyd. She had done nothing wrong. But unlike in Minneapolis, none of the officers involved in Breonna’s killing have been arrested or even fired.
With the country rising up against police violence, we CAN get justice for Breonna–but her death simply hasn’t gotten the attention it should. So we’re raising money now to launch an all-out PR offensive, including a mobile billboard, a double-page centerfold ad in the Louisville Courier-Journal, and an airplane bearing the message, “Breonna was essential,” while we continue to support the local organizers on the ground.
This plan isn’t cheap, but it’s just what is needed to help get justice for Breonna Taylor. Will you donate $5 to UltraViolet to allow us to fully fund our all-out ad offensive in Louisville and demand accountability for the police who murdered Breonna Taylor?
Breonna was sleeping in her bed when her partner, Kenneth Walker, rushed to the living room to confront intruders breaking down their door. The intruders turned out to be police officers, in plain clothes, barging in without announcing their identity, who later claimed they were looking for a person who was already found miles away. Kenneth had no way of knowing that, and he thought he and Breonna were being assaulted by armed intruders. He fired his licensed firearm to protect himself and Breonna, and the police responded by spraying the apartment with bullets.2
Breonna was shot eight times in her own home. The police officers that murdered Breonna are still walking free.
Protests have raged in Louisville demanding justice for Breonna, but the police have responded by soaking the protesters in pepper spray and killing a beloved small business owner, David McAtee.3
The pressure is working, however. Two of the protesters’ demands have been met: Charges against Kenneth have been dropped, and Kenneth’s 911 call recording has been released.4 But we need to keep working to bring together as many voices as possible, until the officers who murdered Breonna are charged.
After months of work, Breonna’s case is finally starting to break through in the national press. City officials and the Louisville Police Department leadership are feeling major pressure. We’re on the verge of a breakthrough, and a big, loca,l multi-media ad push could be just what’s needed.
We need to raise $22,342 to fund our full plan, including a mobile billboard, a centerfold ad in the Louisville newspaper, and an airplane flying over one of the protests. Will you donate $5?
Yes, I’ll donate $5 to help demand justice for Breonna Taylor.
–Shaunna, Kat, Kathy, Anathea, Melody, Pam, Lindsay, Sonja, Kimberly, Maria, Elisa, and Katie, the UltraViolet team
CONTRIBUTE
Sources:
1. ‘Get your damn story straight’: What we know about Louisville woman Breonna Taylor’s death, USA Today, May 14, 2020
2. Ibid.
3. LMPD officer in fatal shooting of David McAtee had mocked protester on Facebook, Louisville Courier Journal, June 2, 2020
4. 911 call from Breonna Taylor’s shooting death released: “Somebody kicked in the door and shot my girlfriend”, CBS News, March 29, 2020
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