This 8 June 2020 video from the USA says about itself:
This couple joined a Black Lives Matter protest after their wedding ceremony.
In US news and current events today, Kerry-Anne & Michael Gordon joined a protest at Philadelphia’s City Hall, after their wedding ceremony. Watch the moving footage here.
Millions march in cities and towns in every part of the US to oppose racism and police violence. By Kevin Reed, 8 June 2020. The demonstrations over the weekend to protest the police murder of George Floyd, among the biggest nationwide mobilizations of workers and youth in US history, signaled a new stage in the movement of the American working class.
Trump, Barr continue threat to deploy military against nationwide protests. By Barry Grey, 8 June 2020. The political situation in the US remains on a knife-edge as Trump’s fascistic cabal continues to plot against the Constitution.
Buffalo, New York mayor protects police in attack on 75-year-old. By Jacob Crosse, 8 June 2020. The Democratic mayor’s comments follow another week of vicious police assaults against peaceful protesters across the country.
Hundreds of thousands join protests against police violence across Europe. By our reporters, 8 June 2020. The size and wide geographical spread of the protests over Floyd’s murder reflect broad-based opposition to racism and police violence around the world.
This 8 June 2020 video from England says about itself:
Who was slave trader Edward Colston and why was his statue pulled down?
Historic scenes were witnessed in Bristol over the weekend as Black Lives Matter protesters pulled down a controversial statue of 17th-century slave trader Edward Colston and rolled the memorial into the city’s harbour.
The divisive memorial has stood since 1895, with a plaque that read: “Erected by citizens of Bristol as a memorial of one of the most virtuous and wise sons of their city.”
But who was Edward Colston and why did his presence anger so many?
Read the full story here.
By Peter Frost in Britain, 8 June 2020:
Edward Colston: a man for who black lives didn’t matter at all\
PETER FROST is delighted that Colston’s statue no longer stands in Bristol
IF BLACK lives really do matter then Edward Colston, a man who sold 84,000 young black children, women and men into slavery and also murdered another 18,000 men, women and children doing it doesn’t deserve to have a statue commemorating his evil life and trade in the city of Bristol.
I was delighted not just to see his statue pulled down but also thrown in the harbour that engineer William Jessop built for Bristol in 1802 using the money the slave trade had brought to the city. They threw the statue into the harbour by Pero’s Bridge — the only place in Bristol named after a slave.
If anybody wasn’t sure of the demolition team’s motives they had only to take note of the fact they pressed their knees on the neck of the statue rather as Minneapolis police did killing George Floyd.
Colston’s toppled statue links the anti-racist and anti-imperialist causes: here.
Lewis Hamilton: All racist statues should be torn down: here.
By Bethany Reilly in Britain, 8 June 2020:
Met ‘potentially acted unlawfully’ in policing of Black Lives Matter protests
HUMAN rights groups have accused the Metropolitan Police of “potentially unlawful” actions against Black Lives Matter protesters in London over the weekend.
On Saturday and Sunday evening hundreds of protesters, who had been taking part in rallies against the police killing of George Floyd in the US, were held in the rain until about 2am by riot police.
Black Protest Legal Support (BPLS), a group of legal observers and lawyers, claimed that protesters were asked by officers for personal details in order to be released – an act which human rights group Liberty said could be illegal.
By Bethany Reilly in Britain, 8 June 2020:
Far-right goons plan to confront Black Lives Matter protesters in London next Saturday
HUNDREDS of football hooligans and far-right activists are planning to confront Black Lives Matter protesters on Saturday in London, campaigners warned today.
The Democratic Football Lads Alliance (DFLA), a network of hooligan groups, has called on supporters across the country to bus down to the capital this weekend and surround war memorials and statues.
Campaign group Hope not Hate warned that it “seems certain” the DFLA event will go ahead after prominent racist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (known as Tommy Robinson) pledged to attend in a video posted on Sunday night.
Defying government threats, thousands join Australian protests against police violence. By Oscar Grenfell, 8 June 2020. Over 100,000 people demonstrated across the country, despite threats of large fines and an attempted ban of the Sydney rally.
Australian protesters speak out: “The class systems need to be abolished”. By our reporters, 8 June 2020. The demonstrations were “a great show of people power and it’s a great show of how the world should move forward.”
Dear Kitty. Some blog 
Demand that MAYOR DE BLASIO: RELEASE ALL PROTESTERS FROM JAIL NOW!
NYPD’s Continuing Racist Brutality is a Death Sentence for Protesters
Jails and migrant detention centers, along with nursing homes and meatpacking plants, rank as the worst settings for the spread of coronavirus. The NYPD has not only been arresting thousands of anti-racist protesters and illegally violating the new arrest-and-release law; it is also keeping arrestees for longer than 24 hours AND taking their masks away.
A New York judge just rubber-stamped that threat to public health, ruling it was okay to keep protesters in jail after they’ve been beaten and brutalized.
According to Section 150.20 of New York City’s criminal procedure law, the NYPD should not even be arresting ONE person. The movement against the city’s racist stop-and-frisk program won the concession and small legal gain that protesters and people stopped by the police should be issued a summons at the scene, with a date to attend court.
The police continue to violate this procedure.
The New York Police Department’s budget for 2019 was $6 billion. It is the largest and most expensive police force in the U.S. The NYPD budget is larger than the gross national product of many countries. This is money stolen from vulnerable communities, the same communities that are most impacted by police violence and structural racism. It is seventh largest army in the world and it is in flagrant violation of New York City’s own laws.
Any form of arrest, one of the main vectorsin the pandemic of racism, should be off-limits to the NYPD. The oppressive response to the protests by the white-supremacist system of incarceration has amply demonstrated it has no authority to criminalize protest in any way.
The Prisoners Solidarity Committee of Workers World Party demands that all protesters, along with all other inmates in the city’s racist incarceration system, be immediately and unconditionally released.
Racist killer cops walk free. The Wall Street gamblers that destroyed people’s homes never see a day in jail. Trump separates migrant families at the border and puts thousands in camps. At meatpacking plants and other factories executives can reap profits while demanding that migrant workers show up at work, setting off hundreds of infections.
None of these criminals spend a second in jail—while the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the world. U.S. jails overflow with Black and Brown prisoners, their lives destroyed by what Michelle Alexander has called “the New Jim Crow.”
This day-in and day-out reality is just one part of the racist oppression bred by capitalism. Along with skyrocketing unemployment and the devastating effects of COVID-19, mass incarceration has fueled the powerful protests, ignited by the horrific murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery.
In response to these justified protests, liberal mayor Bill de Blasio has unleashed a bloody cop riot on the streets of New York, targeting not just protesters but also anyone who happens to be in the way, including “essential” workers.
The NYPD has:
– beaten protesters,
– entrapped them with fake information, cabs and kettling,
– violently attacked and jailed pregnant people,
– trapped demonstrators in order to make mass arrests,
– denied inhalers to asthmatic detainees,
Teargas victims are jailed begging for water. Many of those released show signs of being beat. Facemasks are confiscated, while precinct cops themselves refuse to wear them.
New York City, the center of world capitalism and home to world-looting Wall Street, is also the epicenter of the COVID-19 virus. As Governor Cuomo reopens New York to safeguard profits for the rich, the NYPD’s racist brutality can be a death sentence for thousands of righteous protesters. This can lead to a second wave of contagion.
The inspiring, dynamic protests against white supremacy are showing what’s possible when the people are united. The massive New York City protests have broken the ability of the police to enforce the curfew, which was canceled this weekend.
Police unions are not unions to protect workers. They are crime syndicates, criminal cabals. Their racist power structure must be rooted out.
Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti announced this week that upwards of $150 million will be cut from the Los Angeles Police Department budget and given to communities of color. This amount is about 8% of the LAPD’s outsized $1.8-billion budget.
Nine members of the Minneapolis City Council on Sunday announced they intend to defund and dismantle the city’s police department following the police killing of George Floyd. “We committed to dismantling policing as we know it in the city of Minneapolis and to rebuild with our community a new model of public safety that actually keeps our community safe,” Council President Lisa Bender told CNN. With nine votes the city council would have a veto-proof supermajority of the council’s 13 members, Bender said.
All these concessions show that it’s the right time for the movement to up the ante — and make even bolder demands. Abolish the police!
What we are fighting for:
Dismantle the Racist Incarceration System, All Jails and the New Jim Crow!
Defund the Police and Use the Money for Jobs, Housing, Schools and Healthcare!
Abolish the Police! Close all Detention Centers! Set All Prisoners Free!
Shut Down Capitalism and Build Socialism.
SIGN THE PETITION
https://solidaritycenter.ourpowerbase.net/civicrm/petition/sign?sid=17
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Corporate Democrat Eliot Engel has done a great job recently proving why he deserves to lose to Our Revolution-backed progressive Jamaal Bowman in New York’s 16th congressional district primary on June 23rd.
Last week, Engel was caught on a hot mic saying that if he didn’t have a primary challenger, he “wouldn’t care” about speaking to his district about the uprisings over police killings.
And just yesterday, Engel responded to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s endorsement of Bowman by implying that she was a “dictator” and falsely claimed to be endorsed by the New York State Nurses Association — even though the union endorsed Bowman instead.
Pitch in here to help Our Revolution ensure that Jamaal Bowman defeats corporate Democrat Eliot Engel this month. We need to send a strong message that it’s unacceptable to dismiss the importance of addressing police violence.
Thank you for all that you do,
The whole team at Our Revolution
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Over the last five years, you have seen me talk about Eric Garner, Walter Scott, Philando Castile, Freddie Gray, and so many of the others who had been killed by police officers. Through all of these terrible killings LDF worked not only to demand justice in the individual cases, but to draw the nation’s attention to the deep, powerful, longstanding systemic racism in this country that gives rise to law enforcement misconduct in their interactions with our communities.
With the unprovoked and unnecessary killing of George Floyd, something has changed. Like many of you, I feel this time is different and I think many of the protests we have seen in recent days demonstrate that all over this country and the world, people feel that this time is different too.
Why is it different? For me personally, when I saw the image of Officer Derek Chauvin taking the life of Mr. Floyd, with his hands in his pockets, looking at people videotaping him, everything about his stance showed me that he believed there would be no accountability for his actions.
As the head of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, I have dedicated myself to justice through the law ‒ but in that officer’s expression, I could see that we had failed in our justice system.
We need to take meaningful action to change the justice system at both the national and local levels. Here are four steps that need to be implemented immediately. We are asking you to join with us in this work:
Open a national registry of police officers. If someone is fired for misconduct, they will no longer be able to just move to other jurisdictions and continue to inflict pain on Black communities.
Change the law of “qualified immunity.” This judge-made doctrine has resulted in near impunity for police officers who engage in this kind of brutality and violate the constitutional rights of African Americans.
Push the Justice Department to use the Law Enforcement Misconduct Act to investigate patterns of discrimination by police departments. This law, passed following the verdicts of the Rodney King case, has allowed for the investigations of police departments in Baltimore, MD, and Ferguson, MO, and it’s a vital tool for police transformation.
Find your local jurisdiction’s police union contract and ask your local leaders to remove protections that bar police officers from appearing within 72 hours of killing an unarmed person. Some of these contracts are being negotiated right now. Your city’s leaders need to hear from you.
None of this work happens in a vacuum, and it can only be achieved if we consistently act together for change.
So I’m asking, Lola, please support LDF and other organizations that are on the front lines of this fight. Your gift will go to work immediately to help LDF and also support these other important grassroots organizations. Please donate NOW. >>
Here are the organizations your gift will lift up:
The Bail Project is a national nonprofit organization designed to combat mass incarceration by disrupting the money bail system ‒ one person at a time. Your gift can help pay bail for someone as an act of solidarity with local communities. Support here >>
BOLD (Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity) is a national training intermediary focused on transforming the practice of Black organizers in the U.S. to increase their alignment, impact, and sustainability to win progressive change. BOLD carries out its mission through training programs, coaching, and technical assistance for BOLD alumni and partners. Support here >>
BYP100 Education Fund (BYP100) is a national organization of Black 18 to 35-year-old activists and organizers, dedicated to creating justice and freedom through a Black queer feminist lens. We focus on leadership development, direct action organizing, issue advocacy, and political education. BYP100 prioritizes the issues of historically silenced and vulnerable groups within Black communities ‒ specifically queer, trans and gender nonconforming, poor, disabled, and undocumented people. Support here >>
Forced Trajectory Project (FTP) is a long-term multimedia project that began in 2009 documenting the rippling effects police violence has on communities beginning with the families who have lost their loved ones to police murder. Utilizing moving pictures, stills, and sound, the project’s goal is to paint an intimate and accurate portrait of the “forced trajectory” these family members find themselves on after their loved ones are killed. Support here >>
The Justice Committee is a grassroots organization dedicated to building a movement against police violence and systemic racism in New York City. At the heart of JC’s work has always been supporting and uplifting the leadership of families who’ve lost loved ones to the police. Support here >>
SONG is a home for LGBTQ liberation across all lines of race, class, abilities, age, culture, gender, and sexuality in the South. It builds, sustains, and connects a Southern regional base of LBGTQ people in order to transform the region through strategic projects and campaigns developed in response to the current conditions in our communities. Support here >>
To fix our justice system, we need to organize and fight on all levels. Please donate now to support LDF and other organizations that are on the front lines of this battle. Your gift will go to work immediately and be split evenly between LDF and these organizations. Be a part of this important moment of change. DONATE NOW. >>
With you in solidarity,
Sherrilyn A. Ifill
President and Director-Counsel
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