truthout--2020-06-04--Will Our Future Be Organized by the Rich or the Poor?

In the summer of 1995 , when I was 18 , I started visiting Tent City , a temporary encampment in an abandoned lot in northeast Philadelphia .
About 40 families had taken up residence in tents , shacks , and other makeshift structures .
Among them were people of various races , ages , and sexual orientations , all homeless and fighting for the right to live .
Tent City was set up by the Kensington Welfare Rights Union ( KWRU ) , a grassroots organization of poor and homeless people and a chapter of the National Welfare Rights @ @ @ @ @ @ @ areas of the country , homelessness in Philadelphia , a city battered by decades of deindustrialization , job loss , and affordable housing cuts , had become endemic .
Although they were still living in what had once been the center of the northeast industrial corridor , many in Philly , especially the residents of Kensington , had been reduced to two main sources of income : welfare and drugs .
A teenager might have stood better odds of going to jail or being shot than graduating from Kensington High .
More than @ @ @ @ @ @ @ area had to break the law simply to survive .
Police brutality was rampant .
Federal and municipal welfare systems were being stripped of funds being funneled into the private sector .
City officials assured those of us who protested that there was simply too much need and not enough resources .
Even the local paper accused us of engaging in “ homeless hype ” — being too disruptive in our public demonstrations and acts of mutual solidarity — when the people of Kensington really needed peace and quiet , law and order @ @ @ @ @ @ @ there were an estimated 27,000 homeless people in the city and 39,000 abandoned houses .
In that small Tent City lot , poor people were exposing the city ’ s claim of scarcity as a myth .
Families who moved there with close to nothing were quick to discover American abundance .
Residents shared their food stamps , while individuals , community groups , and religious congregations all made donations .
Soon , the abundance was such that hundreds of hungry families started turning out every week to be fed with the surplus @ @ @ @ @ @ @ another encampment on the margins of American life .
It was a center of political life for Philadelphia ’ s poor , as well as a strategic organizing base for sustenance and protest .
In the winter , as rats the size of cats arrived , the encampment moved to an abandoned Catholic church , a project the KWRU labeled “ the new Underground Railroad.
” Just as enslaved people once had to break the law to bust out of the system of slavery , poor and homeless people needed a growing civil @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about Tent City often in these pandemic days of spiraling poverty and inequality , as protesters in cities across the country question the legitimacy of a system that devalues life , especially black lives , native lives , immigrant lives , and the lives of the poor .
Unemployment is now at 41 million and so at Great Depression levels ; the shantytowns that spread across the country in the worst years of the 1930s should remind us that mass homelessness exists just on the other side of mass unemployment .
Last week @ @ @ @ @ @ @ eviction began to expire and , in my childhood hometown , Milwaukee , Wisconsin , upward of 40,000 eviction notices are poised to be sent out .
Meanwhile , the government has blundered through a string of “ relief ” packages that have injected trillions of dollars into Wall Street while excluding millions of people from even the most basic stop-gap protections .
In the midst of federal incompetence and outright abandonment , staggering numbers of Americans , children included , are desperate for support and real relief .
This society has long @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : we look to the rich for answers to the very problems they are often responsible for creating and from which they benefit .
The wreckage of this pandemic moment is a bitter reminder of this affliction , as well as a signpost suggesting how we must emerge from this crisis a just and more equitable nation .
With a possible depression ahead and more social unrest on the rise , isn ’ t it time to stop vindicating the wealthiest people in this country and look instead to leadership from those who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ even hit and already organizing and protesting ?
Here ’ s a story from a long-ago moment that ’ s still relevant .
Two months before his assassination in 1968 , Dr. Martin Luther King , Jr. , travelled to Chicago , to enlist the women of the National Welfare Rights Organization ( NWRO ) — the predecessor to the National Union of my day — into the Poor People ’ s Campaign .
As he walked into a conference room at a downtown Chicago YMCA , Dr. King encountered more than 30 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ other side of an exceedingly large table .
One of his advisers later noted that the women ’ s reception of the southern civil rights leader was a “ grand piece of psychological warfare.
” Representing more than 30,000 welfare-receiving , dues-paying members , they had not come to passively listen to the famed leader .
They wanted to know his position on the recent passage of anti-welfare legislation and quickly made that clear , pelting him with questions .
Dr. King felt out of his element .
Eventually , Johnnie Tillmon , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stepped in .
“ You know , Dr. King , ” she said , “ if you don ’ t know about these questions , you should just say you don ’ t know and then we could go on with this meeting.
” To this , Dr. King replied , “ We don ’ t know anything about welfare .
We are here to learn.
” That day , Dr. King would learn much about the long struggle those women had waged for dignity in the workplace and the home .
They @ @ @ @ @ @ @ should be a permanent right and that the welfare system of the mid-twentieth century , much like our own , was structured as a public charity that callously differentiated between the “ deserving ” and “ undeserving ” poor .
They introduced him to policy proposals that were generations ahead of their time , including a demand for a Guaranteed Adequate Annual Income , or what many now call a Universal Basic Income ( UBI ) .
Four months into the Covid-19 crisis , with this country already afloat on a sea of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to those women in 1968 , a sea change in public opinion may be underway when it comes to what ’ s necessary and possible .
Ideas that only a few years ago would have been considered unimaginable like universal healthcare , guaranteed affordable housing , and debt relief are now breaking into the mainstream .
Don ’ t think , however , that such policy positions , like the idea of a UBI , have materialized on Capitol Hill and in beltway think tanks out of thin air .
They are , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of long-term agitating , educating , and organizing led by the poor themselves .
Those of us in the welfare rights movement always saw our work as the kindling for a wildfire of organizing by the poor and dispossessed .
Our projects of survival , like Tent City , were not just about housing and feeding people .
They were also about securing the lives of those committed to building the kind of movement necessary to transform society .
Projects organized around immediate needs also became bases of operation for policy analysis and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , were beachheads meant to rally the larger society , as the ranks of the poor grew around us , to create lasting change for them .
Perhaps it should be no surprise , then , that this novel pandemic has already galvanized bold collective action on the part of the poor and the precarious .
For every sparsely attended reopen protest at a state capital by armed members of Donald Trump ’ s base , hundreds of new mutual-aid networks , ad-hoc tenant associations , and wildcat strike funds have been organized @ @ @ @ @ @ @ society .
Meanwhile , thousands of protestors have taken over streets in cities all across the country resisting racism and inequality .
Entire communities that are out of work and losing income are taking life-saving action that is also at times , and by necessity , in contradiction to the law .
Despite recent media images of vandalism , today ’ s protest movement features countless acts that add up to projects for survival .
In April and May , millions did not pay rent , echoing that most basic of economic principles @ @ @ @ @ @ @ won ’ t pay .
Indeed , such rent strikes and other protests speak to an essential demand for temporary relief in the midst of a crisis of unparalleled proportions , but they also signal potential new directions for millions of people who , if offered a political home that articulates their desperate needs and demands , might , against great odds , begin to find common cause .
If this crisis is opening up new possibilities for organizing among the poor , however , the same is true for the rich .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ 600-plus billionaires in the United States have jumped by $ 434 billion , or 15 % .
In the CARES Act that Congress passed , legislators slipped in a tax break of $ 135 billion for 43,000 of the country ’ s wealthiest business owners .
( And , of course , you need to add this to the unprecedented redistribution of wealth from the poor to the very rich that happened via the $ 1.5 trillion Trump tax cut of 2017 . )
This pandemic has already been very profitable for a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as one benefit from a long-term organizing campaign of the rich that has included crushing the labor movement , consolidating industry , financializing the economy , and what one historian has dubbed a decades-long “ tax strike.
” By now , of course , the story of widening inequality in this country has become a familiar one , but that doesn ’ t make it any less shocking .
In 1983 , median household wealth in the United States was $ 84,000 .
Thirty-seven years of growing inequality later , it sits at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ point of comparison , the total wealth of the Forbes 400 was $ 92 billion in 1982 .
Now , it ’ s $ 2.89 trillion .
Behind this staggering and rapid accumulation of wealth rests a deep and abiding belief in recent decades that the rich are the engine of the American economy and so the deepest source of societal wellbeing .
In this Covid-19 crisis , evidence abounds that such a faith , which emerged fullblown during the presidency of Ronald Reagan in the 1980s , remains , for now , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Act caught its spirit exactly , managing to direct most of its money to Wall Street and hundreds of millions more to the police , while leaving millions of workers lacking paid sick leave and the uninsured , the homeless , undocumented immigrants , and many more in the lurch .
While the HEROES Act , recently passed by the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives , offers improvements on this , many of which are guaranteed not to make it through the Senate , there are once again striking windfalls for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Within its 2,000 pages is funding for lobbyists , mortgage servicers , and private insurance companies .
It does nothing to prohibit the corporate mergers that have produced bigger and more powerful monopolies in other moments of crisis in the recent past .
It extends COBRA , a federal program that enables workers to temporarily keep health coverage on their own dime after their employment ends , and again directs vast sums of money to the private insurance industry , instead of expanding Medicaid and guaranteeing healthcare during the most devastating public health @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at the state and local level , politicians on both sides of the aisle have refused to touch the wealth of the rich , even as they have decried their budget shortfalls , while managing this crisis largely via the playbook of austerity and readying themselves for social unrest .
New York State , for instance , passed a budget that will cut $ 300 million from public hospitals but increase funding for the police .
Likewise , the Washington State legislature has been lauded for the bipartisanship it demonstrated recently in putting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ case have legislators chosen to tax their wealthiest residents , nor let up on policing and other forms of control .
And Washington is home to Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos , at present the two richest people on the face of the Earth .
Of course , the workers who are actually keeping the nation afloat will suffer the most from such cuts .
They may now be called “ essential , ” but they continue , as ever , to be treated as expendable appendages of the economy .
I recently @ @ @ @ @ @ @ How to Destroy American Society from the Top Down.
” The answer remains painfully simple : this country courts destruction as long as the rich are allowed to organize society around their lives and needs .
From my first moments working at Tent City through my 25 years of grassroots organizing , I ’ ve come to see that inverting that subtitle in a positive fashion is crucial to our survival as a nation .
Any true revival of American society depends on collective action by those most impacted by injustice and by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to follow their lead .
From the abolitionism of the pre-Civil War era to the labor movement of the 1930s and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and beyond , people on the receiving end of injustice have done best when they didn ’ t wait to be saved but , born out of necessity , took heroic action themselves .
When the Kensington Welfare Rights Union declared that we were building a “ new Underground Railroad ” in Philadelphia in the 1990s , we were doing more than just invoking a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ abolition of slavery .
We were implicitly challenging the dominant notion of who the agents of change in our society should be .
We recognized , even then , that in the lessons Americans were taught about that history , enslaved people were often conspicuously missing in action from the story of abolition .
We saw in that Underground Railroad a way for slaves to escape the grips of the system that was oppressing them , something far larger than just a physical pathway to freedom .
We imagined it as a significant @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it was one way the poor and enslaved of another era struck the first blows against a brutal and inhumane system .
Today , there is a freedom railroad rumbling underground , all around us .
It has stops in the Amazon warehouses and the fast-food restaurants where low-wage workers are organizing for better wages and conditions ; in immigrant communities that are protecting themselves against ICE raids in the midst of stay-at-home orders ; in cities where people are winning moratoriums on water and utility shut-offs ; in housing developments and hospitals @ @ @ @ @ @ @ healthcare are human rights .
You can hear it in the recent slogan — “ stay in place , stay alive , organize , and don ’ t believe the lies ” — of the Poor People ’ s Campaign that I co-chair , which has called for noncooperation with decisions to recklessly reopen states for business , putting the poor and sick most directly in harm ’ s way .
You can see it in the tens of thousands of people protesting across the country , refusing to be subdued by years @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who are demanding full justice and the right for all of us , but especially repressed black lives , to survive and thrive .
In a moment from hell , there is only one meaningful way to revive American society : from the bottom up .

In the summer of 1995, when I was 18, I started visiting Tent City, a temporary encampment in an abandoned lot in northeast Philadelphia. About 40 families had taken up residence in tents, shacks, and other makeshift structures. Among them were people of various races, ages, and sexual orientations, all homeless and fighting for the right to live.
Tent City was set up by the Kensington Welfare Rights Union (KWRU), a grassroots organization of poor and homeless people and a chapter of the National Welfare Rights Union. As in so many other areas of the country, homelessness in Philadelphia, a city battered by decades of deindustrialization, job loss, and affordable housing cuts, had become endemic. Although they were still living in what had once been the center of the northeast industrial corridor, many in Philly, especially the residents of Kensington, had been reduced to two main sources of income: welfare and drugs. A teenager might have stood better odds of going to jail or being shot than graduating from Kensington High. More than 40% of the population in the area had to break the law simply to survive. Police brutality was rampant.
Federal and municipal welfare systems were being stripped of funds being funneled into the private sector. City officials assured those of us who protested that there was simply too much need and not enough resources. Even the local paper accused us of engaging in “homeless hype” — being too disruptive in our public demonstrations and acts of mutual solidarity — when the people of Kensington really needed peace and quiet, law and order. At that time, however, there were an estimated 27,000 homeless people in the city and 39,000 abandoned houses.
In that small Tent City lot, poor people were exposing the city’s claim of scarcity as a myth. Families who moved there with close to nothing were quick to discover American abundance. Residents shared their food stamps, while individuals, community groups, and religious congregations all made donations. Soon, the abundance was such that hundreds of hungry families started turning out every week to be fed with the surplus food.
Tent City became more than another encampment on the margins of American life. It was a center of political life for Philadelphia’s poor, as well as a strategic organizing base for sustenance and protest. In the winter, as rats the size of cats arrived, the encampment moved to an abandoned Catholic church, a project the KWRU labeled “the new Underground Railroad.” Just as enslaved people once had to break the law to bust out of the system of slavery, poor and homeless people needed a growing civil disobedience movement to survive.
I think about Tent City often in these pandemic days of spiraling poverty and inequality, as protesters in cities across the country question the legitimacy of a system that devalues life, especially black lives, native lives, immigrant lives, and the lives of the poor. Unemployment is now at 41 million and so at Great Depression levels; the shantytowns that spread across the country in the worst years of the 1930s should remind us that mass homelessness exists just on the other side of mass unemployment.
Last week, for instance, Covid-19 moratoriums on eviction began to expire and, in my childhood hometown, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, upward of 40,000 eviction notices are poised to be sent out. Meanwhile, the government has blundered through a string of “relief” packages that have injected trillions of dollars into Wall Street while excluding millions of people from even the most basic stop-gap protections. In the midst of federal incompetence and outright abandonment, staggering numbers of Americans, children included, are desperate for support and real relief.
This society has long suffered from a kind of Stockholm syndrome: we look to the rich for answers to the very problems they are often responsible for creating and from which they benefit. The wreckage of this pandemic moment is a bitter reminder of this affliction, as well as a signpost suggesting how we must emerge from this crisis a just and more equitable nation. With a possible depression ahead and more social unrest on the rise, isn’t it time to stop vindicating the wealthiest people in this country and look instead to leadership from those who were living in a depression before Covid-19 even hit and already organizing and protesting?
The Poor Organizing the Poor
Here’s a story from a long-ago moment that’s still relevant. Two months before his assassination in 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., travelled to Chicago, to enlist the women of the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO) — the predecessor to the National Union of my day — into the Poor People’s Campaign. As he walked into a conference room at a downtown Chicago YMCA, Dr. King encountered more than 30 welfare rights leaders seated strategically on the other side of an exceedingly large table. One of his advisers later noted that the women’s reception of the southern civil rights leader was a “grand piece of psychological warfare.”
Representing more than 30,000 welfare-receiving, dues-paying members, they had not come to passively listen to the famed leader. They wanted to know his position on the recent passage of anti-welfare legislation and quickly made that clear, pelting him with questions. Dr. King felt out of his element. Eventually, Johnnie Tillmon, the national chairwoman of the NWRO, stepped in. “You know, Dr. King,” she said, “if you don’t know about these questions, you should just say you don’t know and then we could go on with this meeting.”
To this, Dr. King replied, “We don’t know anything about welfare. We are here to learn.”
That day, Dr. King would learn much about the long struggle those women had waged for dignity in the workplace and the home. They taught him that programs of social uplift should be a permanent right and that the welfare system of the mid-twentieth century, much like our own, was structured as a public charity that callously differentiated between the “deserving” and “undeserving” poor. They introduced him to policy proposals that were generations ahead of their time, including a demand for a Guaranteed Adequate Annual Income, or what many now call a Universal Basic Income (UBI).
Four months into the Covid-19 crisis, with this country already afloat on a sea of inequality that would have been unimaginable even to those women in 1968, a sea change in public opinion may be underway when it comes to what’s necessary and possible. Ideas that only a few years ago would have been considered unimaginable like universal healthcare, guaranteed affordable housing, and debt relief are now breaking into the mainstream. Don’t think, however, that such policy positions, like the idea of a UBI, have materialized on Capitol Hill and in beltway think tanks out of thin air. They are, at least in part, the result of long-term agitating, educating, and organizing led by the poor themselves.
Those of us in the welfare rights movement always saw our work as the kindling for a wildfire of organizing by the poor and dispossessed. Our projects of survival, like Tent City, were not just about housing and feeding people. They were also about securing the lives of those committed to building the kind of movement necessary to transform society. Projects organized around immediate needs also became bases of operation for policy analysis and future plans.
Such projects, however, were beachheads meant to rally the larger society, as the ranks of the poor grew around us, to create lasting change for them. Perhaps it should be no surprise, then, that this novel pandemic has already galvanized bold collective action on the part of the poor and the precarious. For every sparsely attended reopen protest at a state capital by armed members of Donald Trump’s base, hundreds of new mutual-aid networks, ad-hoc tenant associations, and wildcat strike funds have been organized for those at the base of this society. Meanwhile, thousands of protestors have taken over streets in cities all across the country resisting racism and inequality.
Entire communities that are out of work and losing income are taking life-saving action that is also at times, and by necessity, in contradiction to the law. Despite recent media images of vandalism, today’s protest movement features countless acts that add up to projects for survival.
In April and May, millions did not pay rent, echoing that most basic of economic principles: those who can’t pay won’t pay. Indeed, such rent strikes and other protests speak to an essential demand for temporary relief in the midst of a crisis of unparalleled proportions, but they also signal potential new directions for millions of people who, if offered a political home that articulates their desperate needs and demands, might, against great odds, begin to find common cause.
The Rich Organizing the Rich
If this crisis is opening up new possibilities for organizing among the poor, however, the same is true for the rich. Since mid-March, the fortunes of the 600-plus billionaires in the United States have jumped by $434 billion, or 15%. In the CARES Act that Congress passed, legislators slipped in a tax break of $135 billion for 43,000 of the country’s wealthiest business owners. (And, of course, you need to add this to the unprecedented redistribution of wealth from the poor to the very rich that happened via the $1.5 trillion Trump tax cut of 2017.)
This pandemic has already been very profitable for a very few. It should be seen as one benefit from a long-term organizing campaign of the rich that has included crushing the labor movement, consolidating industry, financializing the economy, and what one historian has dubbed a decades-long “tax strike.” By now, of course, the story of widening inequality in this country has become a familiar one, but that doesn’t make it any less shocking. In 1983, median household wealth in the United States was $84,000. Thirty-seven years of growing inequality later, it sits at $82,000. Meanwhile, as a point of comparison, the total wealth of the Forbes 400 was $92 billion in 1982. Now, it’s $2.89 trillion.
Behind this staggering and rapid accumulation of wealth rests a deep and abiding belief in recent decades that the rich are the engine of the American economy and so the deepest source of societal wellbeing. In this Covid-19 crisis, evidence abounds that such a faith, which emerged fullblown during the presidency of Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, remains, for now, bipartisan and largely unshaken. The CARES Act caught its spirit exactly, managing to direct most of its money to Wall Street and hundreds of millions more to the police, while leaving millions of workers lacking paid sick leave and the uninsured, the homeless, undocumented immigrants, and many more in the lurch.
While the HEROES Act, recently passed by the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives, offers improvements on this, many of which are guaranteed not to make it through the Senate, there are once again striking windfalls for the rich embedded in the bill. Within its 2,000 pages is funding for lobbyists, mortgage servicers, and private insurance companies. It does nothing to prohibit the corporate mergers that have produced bigger and more powerful monopolies in other moments of crisis in the recent past. It extends COBRA, a federal program that enables workers to temporarily keep health coverage on their own dime after their employment ends, and again directs vast sums of money to the private insurance industry, instead of expanding Medicaid and guaranteeing healthcare during the most devastating public health crisis in a century.
Meanwhile, at the state and local level, politicians on both sides of the aisle have refused to touch the wealth of the rich, even as they have decried their budget shortfalls, while managing this crisis largely via the playbook of austerity and readying themselves for social unrest. New York State, for instance, passed a budget that will cut $300 million from public hospitals but increase funding for the police. Likewise, the Washington State legislature has been lauded for the bipartisanship it demonstrated recently in putting through deep budget cuts. In no case have legislators chosen to tax their wealthiest residents, nor let up on policing and other forms of control. And Washington is home to Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, at present the two richest people on the face of the Earth.
Of course, the workers who are actually keeping the nation afloat will suffer the most from such cuts. They may now be called “essential,” but they continue, as ever, to be treated as expendable appendages of the economy.
How to Revive American Society
I recently wrote a piece with the subtitle “How to Destroy American Society from the Top Down.” The answer remains painfully simple: this country courts destruction as long as the rich are allowed to organize society around their lives and needs.
From my first moments working at Tent City through my 25 years of grassroots organizing, I’ve come to see that inverting that subtitle in a positive fashion is crucial to our survival as a nation. Any true revival of American society depends on collective action by those most impacted by injustice and by the willingness of the rest of society to follow their lead. From the abolitionism of the pre-Civil War era to the labor movement of the 1930s and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and beyond, people on the receiving end of injustice have done best when they didn’t wait to be saved but, born out of necessity, took heroic action themselves.
When the Kensington Welfare Rights Union declared that we were building a “new Underground Railroad” in Philadelphia in the 1990s, we were doing more than just invoking a powerful chapter in the history of the abolition of slavery. We were implicitly challenging the dominant notion of who the agents of change in our society should be. We recognized, even then, that in the lessons Americans were taught about that history, enslaved people were often conspicuously missing in action from the story of abolition. We saw in that Underground Railroad a way for slaves to escape the grips of the system that was oppressing them, something far larger than just a physical pathway to freedom. We imagined it as a significant political project of the past exactly because it was one way the poor and enslaved of another era struck the first blows against a brutal and inhumane system.
Today, there is a freedom railroad rumbling underground, all around us. It has stops in the Amazon warehouses and the fast-food restaurants where low-wage workers are organizing for better wages and conditions; in immigrant communities that are protecting themselves against ICE raids in the midst of stay-at-home orders; in cities where people are winning moratoriums on water and utility shut-offs; in housing developments and hospitals where thousands are insisting that housing and healthcare are human rights.
You can hear it in the recent slogan — “stay in place, stay alive, organize, and don’t believe the lies” — of the Poor People’s Campaign that I co-chair, which has called for noncooperation with decisions to recklessly reopen states for business, putting the poor and sick most directly in harm’s way. You can see it in the tens of thousands of people protesting across the country, refusing to be subdued by years of racism and police violence, people who are demanding full justice and the right for all of us, but especially repressed black lives, to survive and thrive.
In a moment from hell, there is only one meaningful way to revive American society: from the bottom up.
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truthout--2020-06-04--Trump Is Framing US Residents as Enemies to Be Met by Force. Don’t Let Him.

Donald Trump , who has cratered in opinion polls this spring as the pandemic and the economic collapse have battered the U.S. , is attempting to turn this past week ’ s explosion of political protest amid a deadly pandemic into his Reichstag fire moment .
Back in 1933 , when the German parliament burned ( the Reichstag fire ) — ostensibly at the hands of a Dutch communist , more likely at the hands of Hitler ’ s own agents provocateurs — Hitler seized on the event , and on the fears of chaos that it stoked up , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ powers .
In a similar fashion today , Trump , in this chaotic spring of 2020 , appears to be banking on people being so scared – by looters , by viruses , by economic ruin , by political chaos — that they will sit back and watch .
Or , if he can whip up enough fear of protesters , perhaps the public will applaud the president and return to his political fold , as he moves to consolidate dictatorial powers and to use the vast might of the military for domestic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a weekend of taunting , loathsome tweets aimed at protesters , Democratic Party mayors and governors , and left-wing political groups , Trump and Attorney General William Barr ordered soldiers and mounted police to tear gas and beat and shoot with rubber bullets nonviolent protesters who were blocking Trump ’ s path to a nearby church at which he wanted a photo op .
We know the protesters were nonviolent because the police and military attacked them in full view of the world ’ s media — those same journalists whom Trump has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” and scores of whom are now , at protests around the country , being deliberately targeted , beaten , shot and gassed by uniformed agents of the state .
At the church that Trump strutted to in his best Mussolini , chin-up-and-out , arms marching tin drummer-like , the reality TV figure told his supporters , “ I am your law and order president.
” He ordered all the governors to deploy their National Guard – an order that he can ’ t legally enforce .
He said that he would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to inflict swift and bloody damage on protesters — an act that is clearly illegal absent the support of the governors — and that , a day later , prompted Admiral Mike Mullen , ex-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff , to write an article in The Atlantic urging the generals to refuse to obey unlawful orders to turn their weapons against fellow Americans .
On Wednesday , ex-Defense Secretary Gen. James Mattis penned a public warning that Trump represented an existential threat to the constitutional order , while Gen. Mark A.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Staff , sent a memo to heads of all the armed forces reminding them of the oath they had sworn to uphold the Constitution .
Trump also menacingly nodded to his gun-toting paramilitaries , waiting off in the wings , by saying , apropos nothing , that he was a defender of his people ’ s Second Amendment rights .
There was , in this ghastly tear gas-bejeweled spectacle , no acknowledgement of the U.S. ’ s chasm-like racial divide ; no nod to the pain of the disenfranchised and disempowered ; @ @ @ @ @ @ @ calm .
Watching Trump ’ s snarling , fascistic performance unfold as he was surrounded by Attorney General Barr , by the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff , by Defense Secretary Mark Esper and the other black-suited fellow horsemen of his American apocalypse , I felt I had been transported to Hitler ’ s Berlin , on the morrow after the Reichstag was burned out on February 27 , 1933 .
For fellow history buffs , you will recall that , when the German parliament burned , Hitler ruthlessly seized the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ emergency powers .
When the German parliament granted them to him , he promptly personalized government , established the Führerprinzip ( a governing principle that mandated officials ’ and citizens ’ loyalty to the ruler rather than the institutions of constitutional government ) , turned his paramilitaries and his Gestapo against domestic opponents , shredded beyond repair the rule of law , and set in motion a catastrophe that would shatter much of the world over the next 12 years .
Such , I fear , is what we are witnessing in Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ unrest .
Make no mistake : While Trump ’ s entire presidency has been one long five-alarm fire burning down the country ’ s democratic political structures , this current moment is something else again .
In the film This Is Spinal Tap , a faux documentary about a heavy metal rock group , one of the band ’ s musicians boasts inanely of having a particularly loud amplifier that has 11 notches on its volume control instead of the standard 10 .
In June 2020 , we have hit the 11th notch @ @ @ @ @ @ @ patter .
This month is now shaping up to be the most serious crisis for U.S. democracy , and for our ability to live as one country since the Civil War .
With the GOP-led Senate fundamentally incapable of reining him in , Trump is clearly banking on intimidating governors into acquiescence of his military “ assistance , ” and of scaring suburbanites into supporting him through the specter of carnage .
I live in midtown Sacramento , California .
This past weekend there was intense property destruction and looting ; in fact @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nearby streets had their windows broken and their interiors ransacked .
But I also know that the large majority of protests in Sacramento this past week have been peaceful .
On Tuesday , I spent the hour before the onset of curfew at an entirely peaceful , multiracial , multigenerational protest outside of City Hall .
It was filled with messages of peace and tolerance .
There were dozens of doctors and nurses there as part of the protest .
Meanwhile , there were heavily armed police and National Guard everywhere .
I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ curfew .
As I turned onto my street , a few short blocks from my home , just east of the Capitol building , I ran into a bevy of armored personnel carriers and National Guardsmen with long-arm rifles .
I continued on my way , and one of the Guardsmen followed me for nearly two blocks , his rifle clearly not just hanging idly by his side .
To repeat , this was before the curfew , and I was on my own street .
While the Guardsmen were activated by Gov @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Sacramento ’ s mayor , rather than by Trump , they are people who have been repeatedly told in recent days by the country ’ s president to view the residents of the cities they have been sent to patrol as their “ enemies , ” as people who need to be — and deserve to be — “ dominated.
” No wonder they looked at anyone who walked past with the sort of suspicion one might expect to see on the face of a soldier patrolling occupied territory in a hostile @ @ @ @ @ @ @ assumption of violence and mal-intent oftentimes , in these situations , ends up becoming self-fulfilling .
What ’ s been missing in federal responses , in particular , is any meaningful attempt at de-escalation .
In Washington , D.C. , on the other side of the continent , phalanxes of soldiers , under the direct operational command of the secretary of defense and the president , were arrayed up the stairs of the Lincoln Memorial , in a display of raw power that would have looked entirely appropriate in , say , Pyongyang @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the end of a day in which Trump had repeatedly goaded the protesters , positively egging them onto violence .
His lust for a physical confrontation between Guardsmen and demonstrators was , throughout the day , entirely palpable .
This is Trump ’ s America in 2020 .
It is ugly and intimidatory .
The scenes of the military on the streets remind me of images out of Belfast , Northern Ireland , which I used to watch on the news when I was growing up in London in the 1970s and 1980s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gangster of a president , is treating the U.S. like a personal colony , to be used and abused , manipulated and discarded to suit his whim and his fancy .
He must not be allowed to succeed .
By the tens of thousands , in cities large and small alike , they are coming out to protest ; and , in the aftermath of his attempt to militarize the situation , most have done so peacefully , with organization , with strategy , with determination , refusing to take Trump ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ evening , I saw dozens of nurses and doctors , still wearing their scrubs , kneeling in solidarity along with the young protesters .
I was reminded of the scenes of Muscovites standing up to tanks in Moscow when hard-liners tried to launch a coup against Mikhail Gorbachev and his reforms .
I was reminded of people standing up against tanks in Tiananmen Square in 1989 , and of other protesters , later that year , demolishing the Berlin Wall .
I was reminded of the mothers of the disappeared in Chile and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ determination , coming out onto the streets of Santiago and of Buenos Aires each week to protest in the face of murderous juntas .
And I was reminded of the vast demonstrations in South Africa that refused to disappear no matter how much force , how much murder , how much repression the apartheid regime sent against them .
The people , aroused , are a mighty , unstoppable force to reckon with .
Trump understands only the idea of power enforced down the barrel of a gun .
He will , I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ soon discover the limits of that nightmare vision .

Donald Trump, who has cratered in opinion polls this spring as the pandemic and the economic collapse have battered the U.S., is attempting to turn this past week’s explosion of political protest amid a deadly pandemic into his Reichstag fire moment.
Back in 1933, when the German parliament burned (the Reichstag fire) — ostensibly at the hands of a Dutch communist, more likely at the hands of Hitler’s own agents provocateurs — Hitler seized on the event, and on the fears of chaos that it stoked up, to demand he be given unlimited emergency powers.
In a similar fashion today, Trump, in this chaotic spring of 2020, appears to be banking on people being so scared – by looters, by viruses, by economic ruin, by political chaos — that they will sit back and watch. Or, if he can whip up enough fear of protesters, perhaps the public will applaud the president and return to his political fold, as he moves to consolidate dictatorial powers and to use the vast might of the military for domestic political repression.
On Monday, after a weekend of taunting, loathsome tweets aimed at protesters, Democratic Party mayors and governors, and left-wing political groups, Trump and Attorney General William Barr ordered soldiers and mounted police to tear gas and beat and shoot with rubber bullets nonviolent protesters who were blocking Trump’s path to a nearby church at which he wanted a photo op. We know the protesters were nonviolent because the police and military attacked them in full view of the world’s media — those same journalists whom Trump has repeatedly called “enemies of the people,” and scores of whom are now, at protests around the country, being deliberately targeted, beaten, shot and gassed by uniformed agents of the state.
At the church that Trump strutted to in his best Mussolini, chin-up-and-out, arms marching tin drummer-like, the reality TV figure told his supporters, “I am your law and order president.” He ordered all the governors to deploy their National Guard – an order that he can’t legally enforce. He said that he would deploy the U.S. military on U.S. soil to inflict swift and bloody damage on protesters — an act that is clearly illegal absent the support of the governors — and that, a day later, prompted Admiral Mike Mullen, ex-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to write an article in The Atlantic urging the generals to refuse to obey unlawful orders to turn their weapons against fellow Americans. On Wednesday, ex-Defense Secretary Gen. James Mattis penned a public warning that Trump represented an existential threat to the constitutional order, while Gen. Mark A. Milley, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, sent a memo to heads of all the armed forces reminding them of the oath they had sworn to uphold the Constitution. Trump also menacingly nodded to his gun-toting paramilitaries, waiting off in the wings, by saying, apropos nothing, that he was a defender of his people’s Second Amendment rights.
There was, in this ghastly tear gas-bejeweled spectacle, no acknowledgement of the U.S.’s chasm-like racial divide; no nod to the pain of the disenfranchised and disempowered; no attempt at forging unity or advancing calm.
With the GOP-led Senate fundamentally incapable of reining him in, Trump is clearly banking on intimidating governors and scaring suburbanites into supporting him through the specter of carnage.
Watching Trump’s snarling, fascistic performance unfold as he was surrounded by Attorney General Barr, by the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, by Defense Secretary Mark Esper and the other black-suited fellow horsemen of his American apocalypse, I felt I had been transported to Hitler’s Berlin, on the morrow after the Reichstag was burned out on February 27, 1933. For fellow history buffs, you will recall that, when the German parliament burned, Hitler ruthlessly seized the moment to demand he be given unlimited emergency powers. When the German parliament granted them to him, he promptly personalized government, established the Führerprinzip (a governing principle that mandated officials’ and citizens’ loyalty to the ruler rather than the institutions of constitutional government), turned his paramilitaries and his Gestapo against domestic opponents, shredded beyond repair the rule of law, and set in motion a catastrophe that would shatter much of the world over the next 12 years.
Such, I fear, is what we are witnessing in Trump’s response to today’s unrest.
Make no mistake: While Trump’s entire presidency has been one long five-alarm fire burning down the country’s democratic political structures, this current moment is something else again. In the film This Is Spinal Tap, a faux documentary about a heavy metal rock group, one of the band’s musicians boasts inanely of having a particularly loud amplifier that has 11 notches on its volume control instead of the standard 10. In June 2020, we have hit the 11th notch on Trump’s increasingly loud fascist patter. This month is now shaping up to be the most serious crisis for U.S. democracy, and for our ability to live as one country since the Civil War. With the GOP-led Senate fundamentally incapable of reining him in, Trump is clearly banking on intimidating governors into acquiescence of his military “assistance,” and of scaring suburbanites into supporting him through the specter of carnage.
I live in midtown Sacramento, California. This past weekend there was intense property destruction and looting; in fact, most of the storefronts on the nearby streets had their windows broken and their interiors ransacked. But I also know that the large majority of protests in Sacramento this past week have been peaceful. On Tuesday, I spent the hour before the onset of curfew at an entirely peaceful, multiracial, multigenerational protest outside of City Hall. It was filled with messages of peace and tolerance. There were dozens of doctors and nurses there as part of the protest.
The people, aroused, are a mighty, unstoppable force to reckon with.
Meanwhile, there were heavily armed police and National Guard everywhere. I walked home to get back before the curfew. As I turned onto my street, a few short blocks from my home, just east of the Capitol building, I ran into a bevy of armored personnel carriers and National Guardsmen with long-arm rifles. I continued on my way, and one of the Guardsmen followed me for nearly two blocks, his rifle clearly not just hanging idly by his side. To repeat, this was before the curfew, and I was on my own street.
While the Guardsmen were activated by Gov. Gavin Newsom, at the request of Sacramento’s mayor, rather than by Trump, they are people who have been repeatedly told in recent days by the country’s president to view the residents of the cities they have been sent to patrol as their “enemies,” as people who need to be — and deserve to be — “dominated.” No wonder they looked at anyone who walked past with the sort of suspicion one might expect to see on the face of a soldier patrolling occupied territory in a hostile country. Hostility begets hostility; an assumption of violence and mal-intent oftentimes, in these situations, ends up becoming self-fulfilling. What’s been missing in federal responses, in particular, is any meaningful attempt at de-escalation.
In Washington, D.C., on the other side of the continent, phalanxes of soldiers, under the direct operational command of the secretary of defense and the president, were arrayed up the stairs of the Lincoln Memorial, in a display of raw power that would have looked entirely appropriate in, say, Pyongyang, North Korea — this, at the end of a day in which Trump had repeatedly goaded the protesters, positively egging them onto violence. His lust for a physical confrontation between Guardsmen and demonstrators was, throughout the day, entirely palpable.
This is Trump’s America in 2020. It is ugly and intimidatory. The scenes of the military on the streets remind me of images out of Belfast, Northern Ireland, which I used to watch on the news when I was growing up in London in the 1970s and 1980s. Donald J. Trump, this impeached gangster of a president, is treating the U.S. like a personal colony, to be used and abused, manipulated and discarded to suit his whim and his fancy.
He must not be allowed to succeed. By the tens of thousands, in cities large and small alike, they are coming out to protest; and, in the aftermath of his attempt to militarize the situation, most have done so peacefully, with organization, with strategy, with determination, refusing to take Trump’s poisoned bait.
In Sacramento on Tuesday evening, I saw dozens of nurses and doctors, still wearing their scrubs, kneeling in solidarity along with the young protesters. I was reminded of the scenes of Muscovites standing up to tanks in Moscow when hard-liners tried to launch a coup against Mikhail Gorbachev and his reforms. I was reminded of people standing up against tanks in Tiananmen Square in 1989, and of other protesters, later that year, demolishing the Berlin Wall. I was reminded of the mothers of the disappeared in Chile and in Argentina calmly, but with utter determination, coming out onto the streets of Santiago and of Buenos Aires each week to protest in the face of murderous juntas. And I was reminded of the vast demonstrations in South Africa that refused to disappear no matter how much force, how much murder, how much repression the apartheid regime sent against them.
The people, aroused, are a mighty, unstoppable force to reckon with. Trump understands only the idea of power enforced down the barrel of a gun. He will, I hope with all of my heart, soon discover the limits of that nightmare vision.
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truthout--2020-06-04--Breonna Taylor Was Killed by Police in March. Officers Haven’t Faced Charges.

We go to Louisville , where protesters are calling for charges against the officers involved in the death of Breonna Taylor , the 26-year-old African American woman who was an emergency room technician treating COVID patients and was shot to death by police inside her own apartment in March .
This comes as the National Guard fired shots at a crowd of protesters on Monday , killing David McAtee , a local barbecue restaurant owner who regularly gave police officers free meals .
We speak with Sadiqa Reynolds , president and CEO of Louisville Urban League .
This is a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in its final form .
AMY GOODMAN : This is Democracy Now !
, democracynow.org , The Quarantine Report .
I ’ m Amy Goodman , with Nermeen Shaikh .
Wednesday marked the seventh night of protests in Louisville , Kentucky , as thousands demanded justice for George Floyd and for two Black Louisville residents killed by police , including Breonna Taylor , 26-year-old African American woman shot to death by police in her own apartment in March .
Taylor was an emergency room technician treating COVID patients .
As protests for Breonna @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , both police and the National Guard fired shots at a crowd of protesters , killing David McAtee , whose body reportedly lay in the streets of Louisville for over 12 hours .
David McAtee owned a local barbecue business .
He was a beloved figure in the community , who regularly gave police officers free meals .
Wednesday night , hundreds of cars lined up in a caravan to honor McAtee and Taylor , and drove to the site where McAtee was shot and killed by police this week .
Louisville Police @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , after it emerged two officers who were at the scene of McAtee ’ s shooting did not have their body cameras activated — a violation of police department policy .
Conrad had already announced his plan to retire at the end of this month as a result of the police killing of Taylor .
This comes as the Louisville Metro Council ’ s Public Safety Committee voted unanimously Wednesday night to approve proposed legislation called Breonna ’ s Law , that would regulate no-knock warrants .
The law is based on what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ March 13th , when police with a warrant to search for illegal drugs entered her home and say they were immediately met by gunfire from Taylor ’ s boyfriend .
A lawsuit filed by Taylor ’ s family says the officers arrived at the home in plainclothes , unmarked cars , did not announce who they were , and that Walker and Taylor thought they were being robbed .
The Louisville Courier-Journal reports the police were investigating two men who they believed were selling drugs out of a house that was far from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had also signed a warrant for them to search the house because police said they thought one of the men had used it to receive packages .
911 tapes from the night have now been released .
Now , this is a warning : It ’ s an excerpt of the call from Breonna ’ s boyfriend , Kenneth Walker , as he spoke to Metro EMS dispatcher after Louisville Metro Police officers shot his girlfriend .
Again , a warning to our listeners and viewers : This call is highly disturbing .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Taylor ’ s boyfriend , Kenneth Walker , speaking to a 911 operator after Louisville Metro Police officers shot his girlfriend in their own home .
This is Breonna Taylor ’ s mother , Tamika Palmer , speaking Monday .
AMY GOODMAN : Well , for more , we go to Louisville , Kentucky , where we ’ re joined by Sadiqa Reynolds , president and CEO of the Louisville Urban League .
We welcome you to Democracy Now !
It ’ s great to have you with us , Sadiqa .
I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ heard this story , perhaps because there wasn ’ t videotape inside the home of Breonna , this is a young woman who was helping care for COVID-19 patients .
AMY GOODMAN : She goes home and — explain exactly what happened .
SADIQA REYNOLDS : Well , she ’ s working .
She goes home .
As you said , she ’ s risking her life taking care of COVID-19 patients .
And she goes to bed , is my understanding .
And her boyfriend , Kenneth Walker , was there with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ night , the police showed up .
It seems to be clear that they did in fact knock .
As you know , they had a no-knock warrant .
But what they did not do was announce themselves .
So , when they knocked , I think it probably frightened Kenneth .
He got up .
He is a licensed gun owner .
He had his gun .
And when they came through the door , he fired .
One of the officers was shot , and they fired back .
And they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ there were 22 bullets sent into that house .
Eight of those bullets landed in Breonna ’ s body .
One of those bullets , at least , landed in the next-door neighbor ’ s house in the bedroom of a 5-year-old .
One of those bullets , at least one , landed in Breonna ’ s sister ’ s room , who , thank God , was not at home , because if she had been , maybe her mother , Tamika , would have lost both her children that evening .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , I guess that is when police must have retreated because one of the officers had been shot .
And so , that ’ s why Kenneth had the time to make the call .
What is disturbing here is that police have always known that that 911 tape existed .
And there seemed to be some controversy — well , we did not know this .
The community was not under the impression , never heard about any 911 call , until this case really — it was really in May , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he was released , once we really began the outcry to say this man should not be in jail , because it corroborated what he said : “ I didn ’ t know that it was police coming in.
” And I think they say — they attempt to say sometimes that he ’ s contradicted himself .
But I think it ’ s insane for them to think like that .
If you think about what it is to see someone you love , who you were just in bed with , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by the time they take you to interview you , only God knows what you ’ ll say .
You know , there ’ s so many things going on in your head .
And police know this better than anyone .
That ’ s why they wait so long to be interviewed after they have had a situation like this where they ’ ve taken someone ’ s life .
So — AMY GOODMAN : And it ends up , Sadiqa , that the man they say they were looking for was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , “ Sorry , this was a mistake ” ?
SADIQA REYNOLDS : Well , first of all , these police never say sorry , so that absolutely did not happen , that they don ’ t say sorry .
They ’ ve never said sorry for anything .
What it is , there is a man who was an alleged drug dealer .
And the allegation is that he was storing drugs at her house or having drugs shipped there or something .
So her name was actually on the search warrant @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Obviously , she was there with Kenneth Walker .
But when you hear the story — when the police told the story , you kind of get this story that “ We went into the drug suspect ’ s house .
One of the suspects fired at officers , hitting an officer .
A female suspect was caught in the crossfire , basically , was killed.
” And so , this whole female suspect , male suspect — well , he was never a suspect , and she was never suspected of selling @ @ @ @ @ @ @ So , one of the things we ’ re really hoping that the FBI takes a very hard look at is the content of the affidavit , the affidavit that the police officer used in order to get the search warrant , because there are things stated in that affidavit , things like “ We observed this other person leaving Breonna Taylor ’ s home with a package , and we observed Breonna Taylor ’ s car at this other location.
” So the questions that we have are : Well , when @ @ @ @ @ @ @ car ?
When did you see him leaving with a package ?
How long ago ?
How many times ?
All of those things .
Because there were also some allegations in the affidavit — there ’ s sworn testimony in the affidavit that — a sworn statement , I ’ m sorry , in the affidavit that they had spoken with someone from the postal office who said that there were packages , suspicious packages .
Well , that ’ s just not true .
So , there are so many things @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and confirmed in the affidavit , because there is some belief that the affidavit is flawed , and , quite frankly , the warrant itself — AMY GOODMAN : Sadiqa — it looks like we just lost Sadiqa Reynolds , president and CEO of the Louisville Urban League .
We ’ re going to reget her on the Skype .
As you see , the way we ’ re conducting interviews all over is for people to remain safe at home and to be able to do these broadcasts from home .
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ governor , Andy Beshear .
On Monday , he said he supported Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer ’ s decision to fire the Louisville Metro Police Chief Steve Conrad .
AMY GOODMAN : So , that ’ s Governor Beshear .
Sadiqa Reynolds , take this forward .
You have the police chief being forced out — but he was allowed to resign and stay for a couple months , until the end of June — because of what ’ s happened here .
And no officers have been charged — is that right @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Taylor .
And then , explain what happened this week in the midst of the protests .
Now he ’ s been fired .
SADIQA REYNOLDS : In the midst of the protests , in the midst of us complaining and the mayor responding — the mayor has tried very hard to be responsive .
And he says there legally are things that he can ’ t do quickly , as it relates to termination of these officers .
But he did say that they would , moving forward , be wearing body @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out protesting , the National Guard came in .
LMPD obviously was already here .
And Louisville , like many cities , has that divide , and ours starts at 9th Street .
Most of the protesting was happening in downtown Louisville , which is the business district , and in the Highlands area .
For whatever reason , the National Guard and the police department ended up in the West End of Louisville , which is beyond that 9th Street divide .
You know , most of those folks probably didn ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
They weren ’ t in tune — certainly they were in tune with things that were happening , but not probably watching the news or whatever .
I mean , they just weren ’ t protesters .
They were going to get barbecue .
There was a man there , YaYa , he had a business on 26th and Broadway , and he sold barbecue .
And he gave barbecue away , and he fed community , and he fed the police .
In fact , I think he had even catered @ @ @ @ @ @ @ They thought highly of him , just as the community did .
What police say is that something happened .
We don ’ t know what exactly , because the video that they ’ ve turned over is not that clear .
You know , why they were not wearing body cameras ?
And he ’ s dead now .
You know , David McAtee is dead now .
And we don ’ t have a clear understanding of what happened .
You can certainly see him going out his door , raising @ @ @ @ @ @ @ slightly see smoke there , so you don ’ t know what happened to provoke this .
Was he shooting when he raised his arm ?
Was he waving ?
Was he — I mean , we just don ’ t know the answers .
And now he ’ s gone .
And what people are trying to figure out is : Why was the National Guard at 26th and Broadway ?
Why were the police — they were supposed to be focused on protesters .
And , you know , why were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were not protesting .
They were getting barbecue .
They were hanging out .
They were doing what they do any typical evening .
I mean , it just doesn ’ t make any sense .
And can I say this ?
I think it ’ s so important .
Sometimes when you have these kinds of cases , you have this other side that goes , “ Aha , he did something wrong.
” So , therefore , what ?
He deserves to be executed ?
NERMEEN SHAIKH : Sadiqa , I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that you made in Breonna Taylor ’ s case , namely that the judge was granted a no-knock warrant .
Can you explain what that is ?
Because it seems to have an inherent risk — namely , that people whose houses are searched without a warrant are likely to respond with force or could respond with force , especially in a country which is so heavily armed , that that is a risk .
So , why did the judge grant in this case a no-knock warrant ?
And your response to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ groups like the ACLU wanting to ban no-knock warrants entirely ?
SADIQA REYNOLDS : Well , I think that — can you hear me ?
SADIQA REYNOLDS : OK. Well , I don ’ t understand .
There are certainly situations where I can imagine , if you have a kidnapping in process — I think about the case in Cleveland where the man had several women locked in the basement for all of that time , all those years .
That ’ s somewhere — you ’ re not going to knock @ @ @ @ @ @ @ there are drugs in a home , you ’ re going in at 1:00 in the morning , you ’ ve had a search warrant since 12:00 in the afternoon , that ’ s not exigent circumstances .
There is no need to execute a no-knock warrant .
And , in fact , they did knock .
So there ’ s evidence that they didn ’ t need a no-knock warrant .
Many , many judges would not have signed it .
And not just that it was a no-knock , but there @ @ @ @ @ @ @ timing , was the information in the affidavit stale , how long had it been .
All of those kinds of things are things that need to be looked at .
As it relates to Breonna ’ s Law — and I think it ’ s right to limit the no-knock warrants .
I think the Metro Council here in Louisville and the ACLU and all the organizations that are working on this are exactly right .
I think it was right for the mayor to suspend all no-knock warrants , period .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Breonna back .
And what we have to have in this country is a way to more quickly respond to these officers who make these sort of terrible decisions that cost people their lives , innocent people , and sometimes — and this is the hard part for folks — sometimes guilty people .
But guilty people don ’ t deserve to be executed on the streets in America .
And — AMY GOODMAN : Sadiqa , very quickly , your own senator , Senator Rand Paul , opposing the anti-lynching legislation ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ : He is being who he is .
AMY GOODMAN : Well , Sadiqa Reynolds , we thank you for being who you are , president and CEO of the Louisville Urban League , speaking to us from Louisville .
As we broadcast , the U.S. Labor Department has released its latest unemployment numbers .
Almost 2 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week .
A cumulative 42.6 million U.S. workers have now filed claims since the start of the pandemic .
Expanded unemployment benefits are set to expire at the end @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for our show .
A huge thank you to our amazing team as they prevent community spread by working from home .
I ’ m Amy Goodman , with Nermeen Shaikh .
Stay safe .

We go to Louisville, where protesters are calling for charges against the officers involved in the death of Breonna Taylor, the 26-year-old African American woman who was an emergency room technician treating COVID patients and was shot to death by police inside her own apartment in March. This comes as the National Guard fired shots at a crowd of protesters on Monday, killing David McAtee, a local barbecue restaurant owner who regularly gave police officers free meals. We speak with Sadiqa Reynolds, president and CEO of Louisville Urban League.
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The Quarantine Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh. Wednesday marked the seventh night of protests in Louisville, Kentucky, as thousands demanded justice for George Floyd and for two Black Louisville residents killed by police, including Breonna Taylor, 26-year-old African American woman shot to death by police in her own apartment in March. Taylor was an emergency room technician treating COVID patients.
As protests for Breonna Taylor and George Floyd raged on Monday, both police and the National Guard fired shots at a crowd of protesters, killing David McAtee, whose body reportedly lay in the streets of Louisville for over 12 hours. David McAtee owned a local barbecue business. He was a beloved figure in the community, who regularly gave police officers free meals. Wednesday night, hundreds of cars lined up in a caravan to honor McAtee and Taylor, and drove to the site where McAtee was shot and killed by police this week.
Louisville Police Chief Steve Conrad has now been fired, after it emerged two officers who were at the scene of McAtee’s shooting did not have their body cameras activated — a violation of police department policy. Conrad had already announced his plan to retire at the end of this month as a result of the police killing of Taylor.
This comes as the Louisville Metro Council’s Public Safety Committee voted unanimously Wednesday night to approve proposed legislation called Breonna’s Law, that would regulate no-knock warrants. The law is based on what happened to Taylor on the night of March 13th, when police with a warrant to search for illegal drugs entered her home and say they were immediately met by gunfire from Taylor’s boyfriend. A lawsuit filed by Taylor’s family says the officers arrived at the home in plainclothes, unmarked cars, did not announce who they were, and that Walker and Taylor thought they were being robbed.
The Louisville Courier-Journal reports the police were investigating two men who they believed were selling drugs out of a house that was far from Taylor’s apartment. A judge had also signed a warrant for them to search the house because police said they thought one of the men had used it to receive packages.
911 tapes from the night have now been released. Now, this is a warning: It’s an excerpt of the call from Breonna’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, as he spoke to Metro EMS dispatcher after Louisville Metro Police officers shot his girlfriend. Again, a warning to our listeners and viewers: This call is highly disturbing.
KENNETH WALKER: I don’t — I don’t even know what is happening. Somebody kicked in the door and shot my girlfriend. … Bre! Oh my god! 911 OPERATOR: You said 26? Where was she shot at? KENNETH WALKER: I don’t know. She’s on the ground right now. I don’t know. … Help! Oh my god! Breonna’s so ill! Help! 911 OPERATOR: What’s her name, sir? Is she alert and able to talk to you? KENNETH WALKER: No!
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Breonna Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, speaking to a 911 operator after Louisville Metro Police officers shot his girlfriend in their own home. This is Breonna Taylor’s mother, Tamika Palmer, speaking Monday.
TAMIKA PALMER: I don’t think that I’m asking for too much, just justice for her, just that people know the truth, what happened, that she didn’t deserve this, that people are fired for doing this to her. To know Breonna, she was full of life. She loved life. She respected life. This is so much bigger than her.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, for more, we go to Louisville, Kentucky, where we’re joined by Sadiqa Reynolds, president and CEO of the Louisville Urban League.
We welcome you to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us, Sadiqa. I mean, for people who had not heard this story, perhaps because there wasn’t videotape inside the home of Breonna, this is a young woman who was helping care for COVID-19 patients.
SADIQA REYNOLDS: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: She goes home and — explain exactly what happened.
SADIQA REYNOLDS: Well, she’s working. She goes home. As you said, she’s risking her life taking care of COVID-19 patients. And she goes to bed, is my understanding. And her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, was there with her. At some point in the night, the police showed up. It seems to be clear that they did in fact knock. As you know, they had a no-knock warrant. But what they did not do was announce themselves. So, when they knocked, I think it probably frightened Kenneth. He got up. He is a licensed gun owner. He had his gun. And when they came through the door, he fired. One of the officers was shot, and they fired back. And they fired back in such a way that there were 22 bullets sent into that house. Eight of those bullets landed in Breonna’s body. One of those bullets, at least, landed in the next-door neighbor’s house in the bedroom of a 5-year-old. One of those bullets, at least one, landed in Breonna’s sister’s room, who, thank God, was not at home, because if she had been, maybe her mother, Tamika, would have lost both her children that evening.
And the 911 call that you hear, I guess that is when police must have retreated because one of the officers had been shot. And so, that’s why Kenneth had the time to make the call. What is disturbing here is that police have always known that that 911 tape existed. And there seemed to be some controversy — well, we did not know this. The community was not under the impression, never heard about any 911 call, until this case really — it was really in May, I mean. And very quickly, he was released, once we really began the outcry to say this man should not be in jail, because it corroborated what he said: “I didn’t know that it was police coming in.”
And I think they say — they attempt to say sometimes that he’s contradicted himself. But I think it’s insane for them to think like that. If you think about what it is to see someone you love, who you were just in bed with, be murdered in front of you, by the time they take you to interview you, only God knows what you’ll say. You know, there’s so many things going on in your head. And police know this better than anyone. That’s why they wait so long to be interviewed after they have had a situation like this where they’ve taken someone’s life. So —
AMY GOODMAN: And it ends up, Sadiqa, that the man they say they were looking for was already in custody? And they said, “Sorry, this was a mistake”?
SADIQA REYNOLDS: Well, first of all, these police never say sorry, so that absolutely did not happen, that they don’t say sorry. They’ve never said sorry for anything.
What it is, there is a man who was an alleged drug dealer. And the allegation is that he was storing drugs at her house or having drugs shipped there or something. So her name was actually on the search warrant. That gentleman was someplace else. Obviously, she was there with Kenneth Walker. But when you hear the story — when the police told the story, you kind of get this story that “We went into the drug suspect’s house. One of the suspects fired at officers, hitting an officer. A female suspect was caught in the crossfire, basically, was killed.” And so, this whole female suspect, male suspect — well, he was never a suspect, and she was never suspected of selling any drugs or anything like that.
So, one of the things we’re really hoping that the FBI takes a very hard look at is the content of the affidavit, the affidavit that the police officer used in order to get the search warrant, because there are things stated in that affidavit, things like “We observed this other person leaving Breonna Taylor’s home with a package, and we observed Breonna Taylor’s car at this other location.” So the questions that we have are: Well, when was that? Who was driving the car? When did you see him leaving with a package? How long ago? How many times? All of those things. Because there were also some allegations in the affidavit — there’s sworn testimony in the affidavit that — a sworn statement, I’m sorry, in the affidavit that they had spoken with someone from the postal office who said that there were packages, suspicious packages. Well, that’s just not true. So, there are so many things that really need to be checked on and confirmed in the affidavit, because there is some belief that the affidavit is flawed, and, quite frankly, the warrant itself —
AMY GOODMAN: Sadiqa — it looks like we just lost Sadiqa Reynolds, president and CEO of the Louisville Urban League. We’re going to reget her on the Skype. As you see, the way we’re conducting interviews all over is for people to remain safe at home and to be able to do these broadcasts from home. But I want to go to the Kentucky governor, Andy Beshear. On Monday, he said he supported Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer’s decision to fire the Louisville Metro Police Chief Steve Conrad.
GOV. ANDY BESHEAR: It is unacceptable that the officers that responded last night did not have body cameras on and recording. This is the entire reason that we have those cameras. … I believe at this point that Chief Conrad, who’s somebody I’ve known and is a nice individual — it had to happen. It had to happen. Two incidences of this significance, no body cameras, it had to happen.
AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s Governor Beshear. Sadiqa Reynolds, take this forward. You have the police chief being forced out — but he was allowed to resign and stay for a couple months, until the end of June — because of what’s happened here. And no officers have been charged — is that right? — in the killing of Breonna Taylor. And then, explain what happened this week in the midst of the protests. Now he’s been fired.
SADIQA REYNOLDS: In the midst of the protests, in the midst of us complaining and the mayor responding — the mayor has tried very hard to be responsive. And he says there legally are things that he can’t do quickly, as it relates to termination of these officers. But he did say that they would, moving forward, be wearing body cameras.
Well, as people were out protesting, the National Guard came in. LMPD obviously was already here. And Louisville, like many cities, has that divide, and ours starts at 9th Street. Most of the protesting was happening in downtown Louisville, which is the business district, and in the Highlands area. For whatever reason, the National Guard and the police department ended up in the West End of Louisville, which is beyond that 9th Street divide.
You know, most of those folks probably didn’t even know there was a curfew. They weren’t in tune — certainly they were in tune with things that were happening, but not probably watching the news or whatever. I mean, they just weren’t protesters. They were going to get barbecue. There was a man there, YaYa, he had a business on 26th and Broadway, and he sold barbecue. And he gave barbecue away, and he fed community, and he fed the police. In fact, I think he had even catered an event that the police had. They thought highly of him, just as the community did.
What police say is that something happened. We don’t know what exactly, because the video that they’ve turned over is not that clear. You know, why they were not wearing body cameras? And he’s dead now. You know, David McAtee is dead now. And we don’t have a clear understanding of what happened. You can certainly see him going out his door, raising his arm, but you also can slightly see smoke there, so you don’t know what happened to provoke this. Was he shooting when he raised his arm? Was he waving? Was he — I mean, we just don’t know the answers. And now he’s gone.
And what people are trying to figure out is: Why was the National Guard at 26th and Broadway? Why were the police — they were supposed to be focused on protesters. And, you know, why were they there? Those people out there were not protesting. They were getting barbecue. They were hanging out. They were doing what they do any typical evening. I mean, it just doesn’t make any sense.
And can I say this? I think it’s so important. Sometimes when you have these kinds of cases, you have this other side that goes, “Aha, he did something wrong.” So, therefore, what? He deserves to be executed?
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Sadiqa, I want to go back to a point that you made in Breonna Taylor’s case, namely that the judge was granted a no-knock warrant. Can you explain what that is? Because it seems to have an inherent risk — namely, that people whose houses are searched without a warrant are likely to respond with force or could respond with force, especially in a country which is so heavily armed, that that is a risk. So, why did the judge grant in this case a no-knock warrant? And your response to this proposed Breonna’s Law and groups like the ACLU wanting to ban no-knock warrants entirely?
SADIQA REYNOLDS: Well, I think that — can you hear me?
AMY GOODMAN: We hear you perfectly.
SADIQA REYNOLDS: We’ve lost the video.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Yes.
SADIQA REYNOLDS: OK. Well, I don’t understand. There are certainly situations where I can imagine, if you have a kidnapping in process — I think about the case in Cleveland where the man had several women locked in the basement for all of that time, all those years. That’s somewhere — you’re not going to knock there.
But if you think that there are drugs in a home, you’re going in at 1:00 in the morning, you’ve had a search warrant since 12:00 in the afternoon, that’s not exigent circumstances. There is no need to execute a no-knock warrant. And, in fact, they did knock. So there’s evidence that they didn’t need a no-knock warrant. Many, many judges would not have signed it. And not just that it was a no-knock, but there was information that was not clear — timing, was the information in the affidavit stale, how long had it been. All of those kinds of things are things that need to be looked at.
As it relates to Breonna’s Law — and I think it’s right to limit the no-knock warrants. I think the Metro Council here in Louisville and the ACLU and all the organizations that are working on this are exactly right. I think it was right for the mayor to suspend all no-knock warrants, period. But that is not going to bring Breonna back. And what we have to have in this country is a way to more quickly respond to these officers who make these sort of terrible decisions that cost people their lives, innocent people, and sometimes — and this is the hard part for folks — sometimes guilty people. But guilty people don’t deserve to be executed on the streets in America. And —
AMY GOODMAN: Sadiqa, very quickly, your own senator, Senator Rand Paul, opposing the anti-lynching legislation? We have five seconds.
SADIQA REYNOLDS: He is being who he is.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Sadiqa Reynolds, we thank you for being who you are, president and CEO of the Louisville Urban League, speaking to us from Louisville.
As we broadcast, the U.S. Labor Department has released its latest unemployment numbers. Almost 2 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week. A cumulative 42.6 million U.S. workers have now filed claims since the start of the pandemic. Expanded unemployment benefits are set to expire at the end of next month.
That does it for our show. A huge thank you to our amazing team as they prevent community spread by working from home. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh. Stay safe.


truthout--2020-06-04--GOP’s Rand Paul Blocks Anti-Lynching Bill

Sen. Rand Paul , R-Ky. , is blocking the passage of a Senate bill that would make lynching a federal hate crime , because he worries that it would be used for lesser violent crimes that result in only “ minor bruising.
” Paul on Wednesday told reporters that he objected to the bipartisan measure , which appeared on the verge of passage by unanimous consent after more than a century of similar legislation being blocked , because it might “ conflate lesser crimes with lynching.
” “ We think that lynching is an awful thing that should be roundly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” Paul said .
However , he argued that the bill would be a “ disservice to those who were lynched in our history ” and result in “ a new 10-year penalty for people who have minor bruising.
” “ We don ’ t think that ’ s appropriate , and someone has to read these bills and make sure they do what they say they ’ re going to do rather than it be just a big PR effort , and then everybody gets up in arms and wants to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the bill and actually make the bill strong , ” he added .
Paul said in a statement that he aims to add an amendment to the legislation that would create a “ serious bodily injury standard ” so that only crimes involving “ substantial risk of death and extreme physical pain ” are prosecuted as lynching .
“ It is shameful that one GOP Senator is standing in the way of seeing this bill become law , ” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer , D-Md.
, tweeted .
Paul ’ s comments @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he was the unnamed senator who bill co-sponsor Sen. Cory Booker , D-N.J. , said was blocking the legislation in March .
The bill was authored by Booker , Sen. Kamala Harris , D-Calif. , and Sen. Tim Scott , R-S.C .
The Senate already passed an anti-lynching bill , but it stalled in the House , which instead opted to vote on the Emmett Till Antilynching Act sponsored by Rep. Bobby Rush , D-Ill .
The bill , named after the 14-year-old black boy lynched in Mississippi in 1955 , passed 410-4 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the authors of the legislation should talk to him “ about how to make the bill better.
” “ If they want to pass it the easy way , they have to talk to me about it , ” Paul added .
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif. , rejected Paul ’ s complaints .
A spokesman for Pelosi told Politico that the two bills “ only differ with respect to the title and House resolution number.
” “ It ’ s unfortunate that procedural issues are being used to delay @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he said .
“ The House of Representatives has passed numerous anti-lynching bills .
Unfortunately , the Senate again stands in the way of enactment.
” Scott , the only black Republican in the Senate , argued that it was the House which had actually held up the legislation .
“ To be frank , I think they wanted their fingerprints on it .
They want it to be a House bill , ” he told the National Journal .
“ So they changed the title and kept every other syllable , sentence @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it passed twice .
Now , we have to do it again .
I think we would have been better off just keeping it as it was and sending it to the president ’ s desk so we could get it done immediately .
I hope that doesn ’ t disrupt it.
” Paul ’ s objection comes after Congress failed to pass anti-lynching legislation 200 times since 1992 .
“ This has been decades in the making , and it is remarkable that we have gone this long in our country without @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Kristen Clarke , the head of the Lawyers ’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law , told the National Journal .
“ And today ’ s communities continue to wrestle with racial violence in many forms.
” “ The fact there may be one man who prevented her from seeing that bill signed into law is very unsettling , ” she added .
Rush questioned Paul ’ s motives in an interview with the outlet .
“ The only conclusion I can draw from Sen. Paul ’ s sudden opposition to the bill @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the law being named after Emmett Till , which would be utterly shameful to say the least , ” he said .
“ In the face of the recent lynchings that have taken the lives of Ahmaud Arbery and others , it defies reason that anyone would be opposed to swiftly enacting this critically needed legislation .
”

Paul claims he objected to the bipartisan measure because it might “conflate lesser crimes with lynching.”
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., is blocking the passage of a Senate bill that would make lynching a federal hate crime, because he worries that it would be used for lesser violent crimes that result in only “minor bruising.”
Paul on Wednesday told reporters that he objected to the bipartisan measure, which appeared on the verge of passage by unanimous consent after more than a century of similar legislation being blocked, because it might “conflate lesser crimes with lynching.”
“We think that lynching is an awful thing that should be roundly condemned — that should be universally condemned,” Paul said.
However, he argued that the bill would be a “disservice to those who were lynched in our history” and result in “a new 10-year penalty for people who have minor bruising.”
“We don’t think that’s appropriate, and someone has to read these bills and make sure they do what they say they’re going to do rather than it be just a big PR effort, and then everybody gets up in arms and wants to beat up anybody who wants to read the bill and actually make the bill strong,” he added.
Paul said in a statement that he aims to add an amendment to the legislation that would create a “serious bodily injury standard” so that only crimes involving “substantial risk of death and extreme physical pain” are prosecuted as lynching.
Democrats slammed the delay.
“It is shameful that one GOP Senator is standing in the way of seeing this bill become law,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., tweeted.
Paul’s comments came after the National Journal reported that he was the unnamed senator who bill co-sponsor Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., said was blocking the legislation in March.
The bill was authored by Booker, Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., and Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C. The Senate already passed an anti-lynching bill, but it stalled in the House, which instead opted to vote on the Emmett Till Antilynching Act sponsored by Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill. The bill, named after the 14-year-old black boy lynched in Mississippi in 1955, passed 410-4 in February.
Paul on Wednesday said the authors of the legislation should talk to him “about how to make the bill better.”
“If they want to pass it the easy way, they have to talk to me about it,” Paul added.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., rejected Paul’s complaints. A spokesman for Pelosi told Politico that the two bills “only differ with respect to the title and House resolution number.”
“It’s unfortunate that procedural issues are being used to delay the passage of historic legislation,” he said. “The House of Representatives has passed numerous anti-lynching bills. Unfortunately, the Senate again stands in the way of enactment.”
Scott, the only black Republican in the Senate, argued that it was the House which had actually held up the legislation.
“To be frank, I think they wanted their fingerprints on it. They want it to be a House bill,” he told the National Journal. “So they changed the title and kept every other syllable, sentence, letter in it…. We got it passed twice. Now, we have to do it again. I think we would have been better off just keeping it as it was and sending it to the president’s desk so we could get it done immediately. I hope that doesn’t disrupt it.”
Paul’s objection comes after Congress failed to pass anti-lynching legislation 200 times since 1992.
“This has been decades in the making, and it is remarkable that we have gone this long in our country without declaring lynching a federal crime,” Kristen Clarke, the head of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, told the National Journal. “And today’s communities continue to wrestle with racial violence in many forms.”
“The fact there may be one man who prevented her from seeing that bill signed into law is very unsettling,” she added.
Rush questioned Paul’s motives in an interview with the outlet.
“The only conclusion I can draw from Sen. Paul’s sudden opposition to the bill is that he has an issue with the law being named after Emmett Till, which would be utterly shameful to say the least,” he said. “In the face of the recent lynchings that have taken the lives of Ahmaud Arbery and others, it defies reason that anyone would be opposed to swiftly enacting this critically needed legislation.”
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