motherjones--2020-06-05--I’ve Lived in DC for 3 Decades and Covered Dozens of Protests. This One Is Profoundly Different.

On Sunday night , the White House was dark , and a line of riot cops stretched across Lafayette Square , a public park directly across from the darkened building .
Facing the cops were hundreds of protesters , demanding an end to police killings .
“ Hands up !
Don ’ t shoot !
” they chanted .
“ No justice , no peace !
No racist police !
” Others hurled invective at the cops , and some even pelted them with water bottles and traffic cones .
The cops responded with smoke canisters and flash grenades .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ chemical agents and weed .
The anger in was palpable .
Tag artists climbed up on a bronze statue of the Polish freedom fighter Thaddeus Kosciuszko—that had been there since 1910 when William Howard Taft was president—and spray painted “ Fuck 12 ” and BLM on its base .
After three months of social distancing , on what would become the most violent night in a week of protests , I had donned a KN95 mask and waded into the crowd of people assembled in front of the White House to protest the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Protests in Washington are part of the city ’ s furniture .
You can find one here on almost any given day .
Lafayette Square , in fact , has been the site of a permanent peace vigil started by anti-nuclear weapons protesters in 1981 .
In the nearly 30 years I ’ ve lived in Washington , I ’ ve watched abortion marches ( pro and con ) , anti-war protests against the invasion of Iraq , numerous tea party rallies , and the massive women ’ s march after the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ago , I covered a pro-Trump anti-impeachment protest .
But this past week has been different .
In the first days , the collective action wasn ’ t so much a protest as a howl—a howl of pain over senseless death and violence and racism , none of which has been addressed by the political system .
But since then , something remarkable has happened .
By the time I arrived at Lafayette Square after dinner Sunday night , the initially peaceful protest was growing heated .
I choked on the tear gas @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was charged with danger from the electric mix of so many riot cops and people on the edge .
Fireworks punctuated chants for justice .
Explosions from M-80s seemed to come from nowhere and ratcheted up the tension .
Designed for the military to simulate artillery fire or explosives , the M-80s were a destabilizing force , causing panic and chaos in the dark night .
Every boom sent masses of people running away from the White House , unsure whether the riot cops were shooting at them or whether the fireworks might @ @ @ @ @ @ @ protesters .
Many there pleaded with the bottle-throwers to back off and de-escalate .
But rage won out .
The crowd surged against the barriers in the park , prompting the riot cops to push them back with more tear gas .
Volunteer medics rushed in with milk and water to pour into the eyes of protesters .
As the 11 p.m. curfew grew near , protesters built a bonfire in the middle of H Street and were dragging traffic barrels , plywood notice boards , and whatever else they could find to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ me to rip branches off trees around the Veterans Administration to provide fuel for the fire .
The flames grew higher and higher until they were licking the leaves of a mighty oak tree that hung high above .
From across the street , I watched as dark smoke engulfed its branches .
An African-American protester standing near me looked on in horror .
“ This isn ’ t right , ” he said with despair .
“ This is our city.
” As the bonfire grew bigger and bigger , the police @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and everyone started running .
I turned the corner around the VA and ran into a phalanx of police cruisers .
Someone threw an M-80 at the cops that landed just a few feet from me and exploded .
I jumped back and joined others running for safer ground , my pulse racing .
It felt like a war zone .
Once the smoke cleared , I crept back to watch the crowd reassemble in front of the VA. People cheered as some men climbed up on a traffic signal and rocked it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the nearby streetlights , plunging the street further into darkness .
I finally headed home as the park bathroom went up in flames .
Sunday night ’ s fires were an expression of years of pent-up frustration—what people do when nothing else works .
It was utterly predictable and fully understandable .
Even so , veering from pandemic to pandemonium in a matter of hours left me with vertigo .
One day I was hoarding toilet paper and covering protests by a handful of right-wing activists pissed off because they had to wear @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I was in the middle of the worst civil unrest DC has seen in decades .
It was like the earth had suddenly shifted on its axis , and I was still trying to adjust to the disequilibrium .
I thought of Joan Didion famously watching the social upheaval of the 1960s and quoting William Butler Yeats : “ Things fall apart/The centre can not hold.
” Didion ’ s commentary was a lament .
But after witnessing the visceral anger on display in Lafayette Square this week , it was obvious that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hold .
It just wasn ’ t clear where we ’ d end up once the spinning stopped .
The next morning , I was still so keyed up I couldn ’ t sleep , so I got up early and walked back down to check on the tree that had provided a canopy for the bonfire .
It seemed like a noble sentry , something solid in the chaos .
If it had survived the night , maybe the country would , too .
The walk to the White House was like @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The bike store near my house had been looted .
Sidewalks sparkled with broken glass .
The charred remains of city trash bins lay neglected in the street .
I saw a man scrubbing red graffiti off the side of the AFL-CIO building that said , “ Burn it down.
” When I reached Lafayette Park , city workers were already cleaning up the night ’ s mess with an efficiency developed after years of practice .
The traffic light was upright and under repair .
Street sweepers , which had disappeared @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at the mess , preparing the street for another day of protests .
All that was left of the bonfire was a patch of melted pavement .
The tree was a little singed , but mostly unharmed .
The District of Columbia government was born from the civil rights protests of the 1960s and ’ 70s , when activists demanded home rule for the majority-black federal city that had been governed by a federally appointed three-member board of commissioners , almost exclusively comprised of white men .
Finally , home rule was granted @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has no true autonomy as a state with full representation in Congress .
The roots of protest here run deep , as does sympathy with it .
That ’ s why DC ’ s municipal government helped restore order with street sweepers , while the White House brought out military hardware and paramilitary troops .
( On Friday morning , the DC department of public works deployed its fleet of dump trucks to block off parts of 16th Street near the White House and helped activists paint a blocks-long “ Black Lives Matter @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in a stunning display of municipal resistance . )
In front of that same tree that had guarded the bonfire , peaceful protesters had gathered on Monday until federal law enforcement tear gassed them so President Donald Trump could film a campaign ad and wave a Bible in front of the historic St. John ’ s Church , which briefly had been on fire the night before .
Later that evening , the administration sent in a helicopter , marked with a red cross , to terrorize the crowds , whipping up dust @ @ @ @ @ @ @ terrified people—a possible violation of the Geneva Convention .
But as with George Wallace and his dogs and firehoses , the Trump administration ’ s use of paramilitary tactics on peaceful protesters has backfired spectacularly .
Instead of scaring away the protesters with a militarized show of force , the protests have only gotten bigger , and not just in DC .
People who have spent the past three months afraid to leave home have streamed out into the streets to raise their arms in solidarity with Black Lives Matter .
The evening @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and the appalling show of force by federal law enforcement , I followed the protesters up 14th Street , where everything was boarded up with plywood in anticipation of coming disturbances .
The mayor had imposed a 7 p.m. curfew , which was fast approaching .
The streets were largely empty , until I got to the Luther Place Memorial Church .
A historic Lutheran church whose first pastor had been an abolitionist , it was open , as it had been during the riots in 1968 , when the church sheltered and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and volunteers were handing out water , snacks , and masks to anyone who needed them .
Inside , they ’ d stocked the sanctuary with a remarkable collection everything from hockey helmets to duct tape to swimming goggles , donated by people wanting to show support for those who marched .
The church may have provided the ultimate service to the people on the streets : It let them use the bathroom .
By around 9:30 , I watched as DC cops herded protesters into a narrow city block and boxed them @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that the city council and civil libertarians have been trying for years to eradicate from the police department .
Despite its deep experience of dealing with protesters , the Metropolitan Police Department has still suffered from many of the same problems with brutality as in other cities .
As officers in padded suits arrived and swung batons as they walked toward the protest , I was sure the night would devolve into violence and that the police would crack some skulls .
Instead , as the crew of officers pushed in on the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ opened his front door and let more than 70 people escape into his house , where they stayed until the next morning and evaded arrest .
I later discovered that the resident was Rahul Dubey , whose son went to elementary school with my kids—a real-life reminder of how ordinary people sometimes step up to do extraordinary things .
After I got home that night , I did a midnight interview with an ABC radio affiliate in Melbourne , Australia , which had seen my tweets about all that had happened over the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ me if in all the unrest , I was hopeful for the future .
I laughed and emphatically said no .
I explained that these protests were a sign that American democracy is fundamentally broken .
The voices of the people most affected by police brutality are the ones who have been intentionally shut out of the political process , through gerrymandering and voter suppression .
I told the Aussies that right now , as a key effort of his reelection campaign , President Trump had enlisted sympathetic state governments and his attorney @ @ @ @ @ @ @ harder for people to vote .
What kind of democracy is that ?
But now , at the end of the week , I might answer that question differently .
On Tuesday night , hundreds and maybe thousands of people marched past my house and took a silent knee in front of Le Diplomate , the swanky French restaurant where Trump children and cabinet members like to dine .
In 1968 , that same street had been burned during the uprising after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated , imbuing the scene with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in silent protest brought tears to my eyes .
I was so moved by the moment that I screwed up the video .
Meanwhile , the response by the White House has been to call in more troops , build more fences .
But something has started that Trump can ’ t stop .
On Wednesday night , even more people converged on downtown DC , laying down in the baking heat , in masks , on Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the Trump Hotel in memory of George Floyd .
A man @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and the crowd followed , waving their illuminated phones as the sun set .
The breathtaking images and the sound of all those voices in harmony restored my sense of equilibrium with the possibility of a new center , one that is more humane and reflective of our values than what we have witnessed the last four years .
It left me feeling something I hadn ’ t experienced since that November night in 2008 when Barack Obama was elected : hope .

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On Sunday night, the White House was dark, and a line of riot cops stretched across Lafayette Square, a public park directly across from the darkened building. Facing the cops were hundreds of protesters, demanding an end to police killings. “Hands up! Don’t shoot!” they chanted. “No justice, no peace! No racist police!” Others hurled invective at the cops, and some even pelted them with water bottles and traffic cones. The cops responded with smoke canisters and flash grenades. Klieg lights cut through the fog of chemical agents and weed. The anger in was palpable. Tag artists climbed up on a bronze statue of the Polish freedom fighter Thaddeus Kosciuszko—that had been there since 1910 when William Howard Taft was president—and spray painted “Fuck 12” and BLM on its base.
After three months of social distancing, on what would become the most violent night in a week of protests, I had donned a KN95 mask and waded into the crowd of people assembled in front of the White House to protest the police killing of Minneapolis resident George Floyd. Protests in Washington are part of the city’s furniture. You can find one here on almost any given day. Lafayette Square, in fact, has been the site of a permanent peace vigil started by anti-nuclear weapons protesters in 1981. In the nearly 30 years I’ve lived in Washington, I’ve watched abortion marches (pro and con), anti-war protests against the invasion of Iraq, numerous tea party rallies, and the massive women’s march after the 2016 election. Just a few months ago, I covered a pro-Trump anti-impeachment protest.
But this past week has been different. In the first days, the collective action wasn’t so much a protest as a howl—a howl of pain over senseless death and violence and racism, none of which has been addressed by the political system. But since then, something remarkable has happened.
By the time I arrived at Lafayette Square after dinner Sunday night, the initially peaceful protest was growing heated. I choked on the tear gas that hung in the air, which was charged with danger from the electric mix of so many riot cops and people on the edge. Fireworks punctuated chants for justice. Explosions from M-80s seemed to come from nowhere and ratcheted up the tension. Designed for the military to simulate artillery fire or explosives, the M-80s were a destabilizing force, causing panic and chaos in the dark night. Every boom sent masses of people running away from the White House, unsure whether the riot cops were shooting at them or whether the fireworks might provoke the cops to start shooting at protesters.
Many there pleaded with the bottle-throwers to back off and de-escalate. But rage won out. The crowd surged against the barriers in the park, prompting the riot cops to push them back with more tear gas. Volunteer medics rushed in with milk and water to pour into the eyes of protesters. As the 11 p.m. curfew grew near, protesters built a bonfire in the middle of H Street and were dragging traffic barrels, plywood notice boards, and whatever else they could find to stoke the blaze. Men pushed past me to rip branches off trees around the Veterans Administration to provide fuel for the fire. The flames grew higher and higher until they were licking the leaves of a mighty oak tree that hung high above. From across the street, I watched as dark smoke engulfed its branches. An African-American protester standing near me looked on in horror. “This isn’t right,” he said with despair. “This is our city.”
This are getting out of hand by the White House. “This isn’t right,” a guy next to me says. “This is our city.” #DCProtests pic.twitter.com/u5sCvCy2TP — Stephanie Mencimer (@smencimer) June 1, 2020
As the bonfire grew bigger and bigger, the police started shooting gas canisters into the crowd and everyone started running. I turned the corner around the VA and ran into a phalanx of police cruisers. Someone threw an M-80 at the cops that landed just a few feet from me and exploded. I jumped back and joined others running for safer ground, my pulse racing. It felt like a war zone. Once the smoke cleared, I crept back to watch the crowd reassemble in front of the VA. People cheered as some men climbed up on a traffic signal and rocked it until it fell over and shorted out the nearby streetlights, plunging the street further into darkness. I finally headed home as the park bathroom went up in flames.
One day I was hoarding toilet paper and covering protests by a handful of right-wing activists pissed off because they had to wear a mask at Walmart, the next I was in the middle of the worst civil unrest DC has seen in decades.
Sunday night’s fires were an expression of years of pent-up frustration—what people do when nothing else works. It was utterly predictable and fully understandable. Even so, veering from pandemic to pandemonium in a matter of hours left me with vertigo. One day I was hoarding toilet paper and covering protests by a handful of right-wing activists pissed off because they had to wear a mask at Walmart, the next I was in the middle of the worst civil unrest DC has seen in decades. It was like the earth had suddenly shifted on its axis, and I was still trying to adjust to the disequilibrium. I thought of Joan Didion famously watching the social upheaval of the 1960s and quoting William Butler Yeats: “Things fall apart/The centre cannot hold.” Didion’s commentary was a lament. But after witnessing the visceral anger on display in Lafayette Square this week, it was obvious that right now, the center should not hold. It just wasn’t clear where we’d end up once the spinning stopped.
The next morning, I was still so keyed up I couldn’t sleep, so I got up early and walked back down to check on the tree that had provided a canopy for the bonfire. It seemed like a noble sentry, something solid in the chaos. If it had survived the night, maybe the country would, too. The walk to the White House was like surveying the aftermath of a natural disaster. The bike store near my house had been looted. Sidewalks sparkled with broken glass. The charred remains of city trash bins lay neglected in the street. I saw a man scrubbing red graffiti off the side of the AFL-CIO building that said, “Burn it down.”
When I reached Lafayette Park, city workers were already cleaning up the night’s mess with an efficiency developed after years of practice. The traffic light was upright and under repair. Street sweepers, which had disappeared after the lockdowns started, spun away at the mess, preparing the street for another day of protests. All that was left of the bonfire was a patch of melted pavement. The tree was a little singed, but mostly unharmed.
The District of Columbia government was born from the civil rights protests of the 1960s and ’70s, when activists demanded home rule for the majority-black federal city that had been governed by a federally appointed three-member board of commissioners, almost exclusively comprised of white men. Finally, home rule was granted in 1973, but the city still has no true autonomy as a state with full representation in Congress. The roots of protest here run deep, as does sympathy with it. That’s why DC’s municipal government helped restore order with street sweepers, while the White House brought out military hardware and paramilitary troops. (On Friday morning, the DC department of public works deployed its fleet of dump trucks to block off parts of 16th Street near the White House and helped activists paint a blocks-long “Black Lives Matter” banner in yellow traffic line paint in a stunning display of municipal resistance.)
In front of that same tree that had guarded the bonfire, peaceful protesters had gathered on Monday until federal law enforcement tear gassed them so President Donald Trump could film a campaign ad and wave a Bible in front of the historic St. John’s Church, which briefly had been on fire the night before. Later that evening, the administration sent in a helicopter, marked with a red cross, to terrorize the crowds, whipping up dust and glass on the streets and scattering terrified people—a possible violation of the Geneva Convention.
But as with George Wallace and his dogs and firehoses, the Trump administration’s use of paramilitary tactics on peaceful protesters has backfired spectacularly. Instead of scaring away the protesters with a militarized show of force, the protests have only gotten bigger, and not just in DC. People who have spent the past three months afraid to leave home have streamed out into the streets to raise their arms in solidarity with Black Lives Matter.
The evening after the president’s photo op and the appalling show of force by federal law enforcement, I followed the protesters up 14th Street, where everything was boarded up with plywood in anticipation of coming disturbances. The mayor had imposed a 7 p.m. curfew, which was fast approaching. The streets were largely empty, until I got to the Luther Place Memorial Church. A historic Lutheran church whose first pastor had been an abolitionist, it was open, as it had been during the riots in 1968, when the church sheltered and fed thousands of people. Church members and volunteers were handing out water, snacks, and masks to anyone who needed them. Inside, they’d stocked the sanctuary with a remarkable collection everything from hockey helmets to duct tape to swimming goggles, donated by people wanting to show support for those who marched. The church may have provided the ultimate service to the people on the streets: It let them use the bathroom.
By around 9:30, I watched as DC cops herded protesters into a narrow city block and boxed them in, using a likely illegal tactic that the city council and civil libertarians have been trying for years to eradicate from the police department. Despite its deep experience of dealing with protesters, the Metropolitan Police Department has still suffered from many of the same problems with brutality as in other cities. As officers in padded suits arrived and swung batons as they walked toward the protest, I was sure the night would devolve into violence and that the police would crack some skulls.
Instead, as the crew of officers pushed in on the trapped protesters, a Swann Street resident opened his front door and let more than 70 people escape into his house, where they stayed until the next morning and evaded arrest. I later discovered that the resident was Rahul Dubey, whose son went to elementary school with my kids—a real-life reminder of how ordinary people sometimes step up to do extraordinary things.
A resident in Swann just let a tin of protesters run through their house to escape the cordon as cops started moving in yelling “move on back.” pic.twitter.com/m66QkIE8Cj — Stephanie Mencimer (@smencimer) June 2, 2020
After I got home that night, I did a midnight interview with an ABC radio affiliate in Melbourne, Australia, which had seen my tweets about all that had happened over the past 24 hours. The host asked me if in all the unrest, I was hopeful for the future. I laughed and emphatically said no. I explained that these protests were a sign that American democracy is fundamentally broken. The voices of the people most affected by police brutality are the ones who have been intentionally shut out of the political process, through gerrymandering and voter suppression. I told the Aussies that right now, as a key effort of his reelection campaign, President Trump had enlisted sympathetic state governments and his attorney general to unapologetically try to make it harder for people to vote. What kind of democracy is that?
But now, at the end of the week, I might answer that question differently. On Tuesday night, hundreds and maybe thousands of people marched past my house and took a silent knee in front of Le Diplomate, the swanky French restaurant where Trump children and cabinet members like to dine. In 1968, that same street had been burned during the uprising after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, imbuing the scene with symbolism. Watching all those people engaging in silent protest brought tears to my eyes. I was so moved by the moment that I screwed up the video.
Meanwhile, the response by the White House has been to call in more troops, build more fences. But something has started that Trump can’t stop. On Wednesday night, even more people converged on downtown DC, laying down in the baking heat, in masks, on Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the Trump Hotel in memory of George Floyd. A man sang “Lean on Me,” and the crowd followed, waving their illuminated phones as the sun set.
Surreal, beautiful, peaceful scene outside the White House as a man sings “Lean On Me” and thousands and thousands of protesters raise lighted cellphones and join their voices with his. pic.twitter.com/iAr0WWYc3u — Hannah Natanson (@hannah_natanson) June 4, 2020
The breathtaking images and the sound of all those voices in harmony restored my sense of equilibrium with the possibility of a new center, one that is more humane and reflective of our values than what we have witnessed the last four years. It left me feeling something I hadn’t experienced since that November night in 2008 when Barack Obama was elected: hope.


motherjones--2020-06-05--This Week, Mark Zuckerberg Sided with Donald Trump. History Won’t Forget It.

On Monday evening , Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg got on a Zoom call with the leaders of several civil rights organizations to discuss what Facebook had become over the preceding days : a platform for President Donald Trump ’ s most incendiary and violent words .
By the time the advocates spoke with Zuckerberg and his top deputies , Facebook was already roiling with internal dissent over its role spreading the president ’ s messages targeting predominantly black protesters .
“ This is one of those moments where the choice is very clear , ” says Steven Renderos , executive @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has spent years lobbying Facebook to prioritize the wellbeing of people of color who use its services , “ You either support black lives or you support being a platform for white supremacy.
” This moment of choosing came quickly as events of the past 12 days pitted protesters against the inflammatory remarks of the president .
Through them , Zuckerberg led his company down a path that not only civil rights advocates but even his own employees believe history will judge as the wrong one .
Last week , after Twitter fact-checked @ @ @ @ @ @ @ voting by mail leads to fraud , Zuckerberg quickly called into Fox News to let it be known that his platform would not block the president ’ s posts .
Facebook is not an “ arbiter of truth of everything that people say online , ” he said .
The next day , as protests grew over the death of George Floyd after a cop spent nearly nine minutes kneeling on his neck , Trump pushed the envelope further , tweeting the words of a former Miami police chief who threatened civil rights @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the looting starts the shooting starts.
” Twitter affixed a tag to the tweet indicating it violated its policy against glorifying violence .
But when Trump put the same sentiment on Facebook , Zuckerberg left it untouched .
That weekend , cell phone cameras documented numerous instances across the country of police using excessive and sometimes unlawful force against protesters , journalists , even people sitting on their front porches .
New videos of police abuse accumulate daily .
On Facebook , Trump continues to celebrate “ overwhelming force ” and “ domination @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s call with civil rights groups coincided with federal security forces dispersing peaceful protesters from outside the White House with tear gas so that President Donald Trump could wave a Bible before the cameras , the administration ’ s most obviously authoritarian maneuver in an already turbulent week .
“ We saw a president tear gas American citizens so he could do a photo op outside of church , and the messages that he delivered through Facebook were consistent , ” says Henry Fernandez , a senior fellow at the Center for American @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Terms , a coalition of civil rights and issue advocacy groups pushing tech companies to fight hate speech .
“ He called for violence against American citizens to help normalize that violence , and then he engaged in violence against American citizens .
This is textbook how national leaders exploit and endanger their people.
” Civil rights groups have spent years pushing Facebook to take the needs of minorities and women seriously—reasoning , cajoling , sometimes flattering Facebook to get its executives to rein in hateful content .
After Trump made his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to lodge complaints at the company .
“ The lines of communication that a lot of civil rights groups have into Facebook were just ineffective in this moment , ” says Renderos .
“ It became clear pretty early on that it was going to be the C-suite that was going to be making a decision around [ Trump ’ s posts ] and more explicitly , Mark Zuckerberg.
” On Monday night , the groups issued a statement of defeat .
“ We are disappointed and stunned by Mark ’ s incomprehensible @ @ @ @ @ @ @ remain up , ” read a joint statement from three prominent civil rights advocates—Sherrilyn Ifill of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund , Vanita Gupta of the Leadership Conference for Civil and Human Rights , and Rashad Robinson of Color of Change—issued after their conversations with Facebook ’ s leadership .
“ He did not demonstrate understanding of historic or modern-day voter suppression and he refuses to acknowledge how Facebook is facilitating Trump ’ s call for violence against protesters.
” “ We ’ re grateful that leaders in the civil rights community took @ @ @ @ @ @ @ feedback , ” a Facebook spokesperson said of the call .
“ It is an important moment to listen , and we look forward to continuing these conversations.
” Renderos , who was not on the call , described this moment as “ a new low ” for relations between Facebook and the civil rights community .
The next day , Zuckerberg defended his decision to his own employees , many of whom had staged a virtual walkout from their remote workstations .
In a virtual town hall , he held firm that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the right call , invoking , as he has for months now , the idea that Facebook is a free speech zone even though Facebook is a private company whose algorithms determine what content people see .
Many workers disagreed .
“ Why are the smartest people in the world focused on contorting and twisting our policies to avoid antagonizing Trump ?
” one asked Zuckerberg pointedly .
Zuckerberg ’ s decision has prompted employees to quit .
“ Today , I submitted my resignation to Facebook , ” software engineer Timothy Aveni @ @ @ @ @ @ @ whose workforce he was leaving .
“ Mark always told us that he would draw the line at speech that calls for violence .
He showed us on Friday that this was a lie .
Facebook will keep moving the goalposts every time Trump escalates , finding excuse after excuse not to act on increasingly dangerous rhetoric.
” Facebook and its CEO , he concluded , are “ on the wrong side of history.
” “ He was the primary voice challenging Twitter on television , ” says Fernandez .
“ He was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on behalf of Donald Trump .
That is who Zuckerberg has become.
” Facebook ’ s arrival at this moment was a long time coming .
But it didn ’ t have to be like this .
For nearly a decade , advocates have warned Facebook that the platform was being used as a weapon of hate against their communities .
In some instances the problem was hate speech , in others the doxxing of Black Lives Matter activists .
In 2016 , Facebook became a source of disinformation and voter suppression , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Facebook allowed its events pages to be used to organize anti-Muslim rallies and the white supremacist protests in Charlottesville that turned deadly .
As Facebook ’ s powers of surveillance grew , so did its relationships with police departments .
All the while , it transformed into an advertising business , bringing in tens of billions of dollars annually , while failing to apply the civil rights laws that could have prevented those ads from becoming a bastion of discrimination .
It was not until 2018 , and after years of effort @ @ @ @ @ @ @ try to mend these issues .
It agreed to a civil rights audit of its platform , which spawned new rules particularly to prevent voter suppression , and began to crack down—albeit inadequately—against white supremacists on the platform .
That same year , Facebook was caught red-handed in two major scandals , which prompted more promises to change .
The first was the Cambridge Analytica affair , where the company was careless with users ’ personal data .
The second was viscerally worse : reporters and human rights investigators revealed that the platform @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s government and military to push a genocide against the country ’ s Rohingya Muslim minority .
“ We weren ’ t doing enough to help prevent our platform from being used to foment division and incite offline violence , ” Facebook acknowledged in November 2018 , promising to update its “ credible violence policy ” and “ remove misinformation that has the potential to contribute to imminent violence or physical harm.
” But the era of collaboration between civil rights groups and the tech giant following the revelations of Cambridge Analytica @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Facebook worked to curry favor with the Trump administration , presumably out of fear of regulation that would hurt the company ’ s bottom line .
In August 2016 , Facebook handed oversight of its trending stories page to an algorithm , which guided millions of users to fake pro-Trump stories , a coup for complaining conservatives .
After the election , under constant pressure from Trump , his campaign , administration , and Republican lawmakers to maintain a conservative-friendly platform , Facebook decided that its civil rights audit would be paired @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as not to anger Republicans .
Last fall , Zuckerberg announced that politicians would be allowed to lie in Facebook posts and advertisements .
While he promised continued guardrails against voter suppression , staying on Trump ’ s good side never entails one policy decision ; it ’ s a never-ending series of tests .
And the content that Trump put on Facebook this week was the biggest test yet .
Despite the company ’ s rules against posts that could suppress the vote , Trump ’ s lies aimed at dissuading people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ remain on the platform .
Despite policies against inciting violence , the president ’ s words— ” when the looting starts , the shooting starts ” —have also stayed up .
“ Just as in Myanmar , Facebook is choosing to actively participate as the megaphone for that hate and violence , ” says Fernandez , recalling the words of a United Nations investigator who said that Facebook had “ turned into a beast ” in Myanmar .
“ I think we ’ re seeing the same thing here.
” As the civil @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s elections , they worry how much further Facebook will bend its own rules to appease Trump .
What will happen as the policies Facebook put in place to safeguard elections “ get tested by Trump , Trump ’ s campaign , the PACs that are supporting Trump ?
What happens when when we start seeing those kinds of activities pop up again ?
Will they choose to do nothing ?
” wonders Renderos .
“ Because that has been what what they ’ ve told us they will do based on the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ We ’ re stepping into a moment in which the elections are largely going to be contested and fought online , ” he says , referencing the likelihood that shelter in place orders aimed at stemming the spread of the coronavirus will return before the fall .
The biggest battlefield is Facebook .
Even as groups worry about what Zuckerberg will do in the next five months , the events of the past week—a pandemic , economic crisis , the killing of Black people at the hands of police and white vigilantes , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and the people—standout to them as a moment that will go down in history .
“ In the long through line of history , I think there have been moments in which there are these kinds of forks in the road of the right thing to do and the wrong thing to do , ” says Renderos .
“ This will be one of those moments where you look back and you say Mark Zuckerberg was on the wrong side of history here , just like we look back and we say Bull @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was wrong.
” It ’ s unclear what Zuckerberg is thinking about his place in history , or if the question keeps him up at night .
But it ’ s sure to be a topic of discussion for some time .
What drives this powerful person whose decisions affect everyone on the planet ?
How did a Harvard dropout become one of Trump ’ s most important defenders ?
Fernandez finds himself wondering if the Facebook cofounder would be making different choices if he had finished college before starting Facebook .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ looks down upon the enablers of fascism , that people remember Henry Ford not just for making cars but for his proximity to Hitler , ” he says .
Watching Facebook ’ s policy of appeasement toward Trump in recent years , multiple news reports have documented the influence of Joel Kaplan , a top Facebook executive and prominent conservative , whose sway over Zuckerberg appears to have grown .
The Trump administration has also exerted tremendous pressure on Facebook .
The president and his campaign regularly accuse the platform of bias , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ accommodation .
Attorney General Bill Barr has reportedly opened an investigation into Facebook which , if he chose to follow through on , could hurt Zuckerberg ’ s bottom line .
Facebook is a company of more than 2 billion users , not just a website and an app but also Instagram , Messenger , and WhatsApp .
It recently tried to start its own cryptocurrency .
Its path to more growth is one of uninhibited expansion , and any anti-trust action would threaten both Zuckerberg ’ s ambition and monopoly .
( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s plan to break up big tech companies an “ existential ” threat that he would “ go to the mat ” to fight . )
These theories see Zuckerberg as more acted upon than actor , more pawn than global power player .
More theories are sure to emerge about what is driving Zuckerberg , whose own words leave a hodgepodge of clues : he told his employees he personally didn ’ t like Trump ’ s reference to putting down riots in the 1960s but also didn ’ t find it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ critic and Wired columnist Siva Vaidhyanathan on Wednesday wrote that he had long presumed Zuckerberg was an idealist who regretted that his platform had become a weapon of genocide in Myanmar and a tool of strongmen in countries such as the Philippines .
And yet as he allows the same behavior in his own country , Vaidhyanathan , a professor of media studies that the University of Virginia , says he has now come to a different conclusion .
Zuckerberg is not an idealist nor is his paycheck driving his decisions ; instead @ @ @ @ @ @ @ He cites the fact that the Facebook CEO named one of his children after the Roman emperor Augustus and reminds readers that he has been known to yell “ Domination !
” at staff meetings—the same phrase Trump has been repeating all week .
“ In the long run , he believes , Facebook ’ s domination will redeem him by making our lives better .
We just have to surrender and let it all work out , ” Vaidhyanathan concluded .
In that view , Zuckerberg is no one ’ s pawn—he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to dominate .
But the psychological state of a historical figure is not what defines their place in history .
Whichever theory of Zuckerberg ’ s internal motivations proves right , the decisions he made this week will define him .

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On Monday evening, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg got on a Zoom call with the leaders of several civil rights organizations to discuss what Facebook had become over the preceding days: a platform for President Donald Trump’s most incendiary and violent words. By the time the advocates spoke with Zuckerberg and his top deputies, Facebook was already roiling with internal dissent over its role spreading the president’s messages targeting predominantly black protesters.
“This is one of those moments where the choice is very clear,” says Steven Renderos, executive director of MediaJustice, a group that has spent years lobbying Facebook to prioritize the wellbeing of people of color who use its services, “You either support black lives or you support being a platform for white supremacy.”
“Facebook is facilitating Trump’s call for violence against protesters.”
This moment of choosing came quickly as events of the past 12 days pitted protesters against the inflammatory remarks of the president. Through them, Zuckerberg led his company down a path that not only civil rights advocates but even his own employees believe history will judge as the wrong one. Last week, after Twitter fact-checked the president’s false claims that voting by mail leads to fraud, Zuckerberg quickly called into Fox News to let it be known that his platform would not block the president’s posts. Facebook is not an “arbiter of truth of everything that people say online,” he said. The next day, as protests grew over the death of George Floyd after a cop spent nearly nine minutes kneeling on his neck, Trump pushed the envelope further, tweeting the words of a former Miami police chief who threatened civil rights protesters in 1967 by saying “when the looting starts the shooting starts.” Twitter affixed a tag to the tweet indicating it violated its policy against glorifying violence. But when Trump put the same sentiment on Facebook, Zuckerberg left it untouched.
That weekend, cell phone cameras documented numerous instances across the country of police using excessive and sometimes unlawful force against protesters, journalists, even people sitting on their front porches. New videos of police abuse accumulate daily. On Facebook, Trump continues to celebrate “overwhelming force” and “domination” by law enforcement. Zuckerberg’s call with civil rights groups coincided with federal security forces dispersing peaceful protesters from outside the White House with tear gas so that President Donald Trump could wave a Bible before the cameras, the administration’s most obviously authoritarian maneuver in an already turbulent week.
“We saw a president tear gas American citizens so he could do a photo op outside of church, and the messages that he delivered through Facebook were consistent,” says Henry Fernandez, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund and co-chair of Change the Terms, a coalition of civil rights and issue advocacy groups pushing tech companies to fight hate speech. “He called for violence against American citizens to help normalize that violence, and then he engaged in violence against American citizens. This is textbook how national leaders exploit and endanger their people.”
Civil rights groups have spent years pushing Facebook to take the needs of minorities and women seriously—reasoning, cajoling, sometimes flattering Facebook to get its executives to rein in hateful content. After Trump made his posts pushing shootings, activist organizations attempted to lodge complaints at the company. “The lines of communication that a lot of civil rights groups have into Facebook were just ineffective in this moment,” says Renderos. “It became clear pretty early on that it was going to be the C-suite that was going to be making a decision around [Trump’s posts] and more explicitly, Mark Zuckerberg.”
On Monday night, the groups issued a statement of defeat. “We are disappointed and stunned by Mark’s incomprehensible explanations for allowing the Trump posts to remain up,” read a joint statement from three prominent civil rights advocates—Sherrilyn Ifill of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Vanita Gupta of the Leadership Conference for Civil and Human Rights, and Rashad Robinson of Color of Change—issued after their conversations with Facebook’s leadership. “He did not demonstrate understanding of historic or modern-day voter suppression and he refuses to acknowledge how Facebook is facilitating Trump’s call for violence against protesters.”
“We’re grateful that leaders in the civil rights community took the time to share candid, honest feedback,” a Facebook spokesperson said of the call. “It is an important moment to listen, and we look forward to continuing these conversations.” Renderos, who was not on the call, described this moment as “a new low” for relations between Facebook and the civil rights community.
The next day, Zuckerberg defended his decision to his own employees, many of whom had staged a virtual walkout from their remote workstations. In a virtual town hall, he held firm that leaving Trump’s post up was the right call, invoking, as he has for months now, the idea that Facebook is a free speech zone even though Facebook is a private company whose algorithms determine what content people see. Many workers disagreed. “Why are the smartest people in the world focused on contorting and twisting our policies to avoid antagonizing Trump?” one asked Zuckerberg pointedly.
“Why are the smartest people in the world focused on contorting and twisting our policies to avoid antagonizing Trump?”
Zuckerberg’s decision has prompted employees to quit. “Today, I submitted my resignation to Facebook,” software engineer Timothy Aveni wrote in a post on the platform whose workforce he was leaving. “Mark always told us that he would draw the line at speech that calls for violence. He showed us on Friday that this was a lie. Facebook will keep moving the goalposts every time Trump escalates, finding excuse after excuse not to act on increasingly dangerous rhetoric.” Facebook and its CEO, he concluded, are “on the wrong side of history.”
“He was the primary voice challenging Twitter on television,” says Fernandez. “He was an apologist against Twitter’s actions on behalf of Donald Trump. That is who Zuckerberg has become.”
Facebook’s arrival at this moment was a long time coming. But it didn’t have to be like this. For nearly a decade, advocates have warned Facebook that the platform was being used as a weapon of hate against their communities. In some instances the problem was hate speech, in others the doxxing of Black Lives Matter activists. In 2016, Facebook became a source of disinformation and voter suppression, much of it directed toward African Americans. Facebook allowed its events pages to be used to organize anti-Muslim rallies and the white supremacist protests in Charlottesville that turned deadly. As Facebook’s powers of surveillance grew, so did its relationships with police departments. All the while, it transformed into an advertising business, bringing in tens of billions of dollars annually, while failing to apply the civil rights laws that could have prevented those ads from becoming a bastion of discrimination. It was not until 2018, and after years of effort, that Facebook began to acknowledge and try to mend these issues. It agreed to a civil rights audit of its platform, which spawned new rules particularly to prevent voter suppression, and began to crack down—albeit inadequately—against white supremacists on the platform.
That same year, Facebook was caught red-handed in two major scandals, which prompted more promises to change. The first was the Cambridge Analytica affair, where the company was careless with users’ personal data. The second was viscerally worse: reporters and human rights investigators revealed that the platform had been used for years by Myanmar’s government and military to push a genocide against the country’s Rohingya Muslim minority. “We weren’t doing enough to help prevent our platform from being used to foment division and incite offline violence,” Facebook acknowledged in November 2018, promising to update its “credible violence policy” and “remove misinformation that has the potential to contribute to imminent violence or physical harm.”
But the era of collaboration between civil rights groups and the tech giant following the revelations of Cambridge Analytica and election interference was short-lived. Instead, Facebook worked to curry favor with the Trump administration, presumably out of fear of regulation that would hurt the company’s bottom line. In August 2016, Facebook handed oversight of its trending stories page to an algorithm, which guided millions of users to fake pro-Trump stories, a coup for complaining conservatives. After the election, under constant pressure from Trump, his campaign, administration, and Republican lawmakers to maintain a conservative-friendly platform, Facebook decided that its civil rights audit would be paired with one looking into anti-conservative bias so as not to anger Republicans. Last fall, Zuckerberg announced that politicians would be allowed to lie in Facebook posts and advertisements. While he promised continued guardrails against voter suppression, staying on Trump’s good side never entails one policy decision; it’s a never-ending series of tests. And the content that Trump put on Facebook this week was the biggest test yet.
Staying on Trump’s good side never entails one policy decision; it’s a never-ending series of tests.
Despite the company’s rules against posts that could suppress the vote, Trump’s lies aimed at dissuading people from casting absentee ballots during a pandemic remain on the platform. Despite policies against inciting violence, the president’s words—”when the looting starts, the shooting starts”—have also stayed up.
“Just as in Myanmar, Facebook is choosing to actively participate as the megaphone for that hate and violence,” says Fernandez, recalling the words of a United Nations investigator who said that Facebook had “turned into a beast” in Myanmar. “I think we’re seeing the same thing here.”
As the civil rights advocates look ahead to November’s elections, they worry how much further Facebook will bend its own rules to appease Trump. What will happen as the policies Facebook put in place to safeguard elections “get tested by Trump, Trump’s campaign, the PACs that are supporting Trump? What happens when when we start seeing those kinds of activities pop up again? Will they choose to do nothing?” wonders Renderos. “Because that has been what what they’ve told us they will do based on the events of this past week.”
“We’re stepping into a moment in which the elections are largely going to be contested and fought online,” he says, referencing the likelihood that shelter in place orders aimed at stemming the spread of the coronavirus will return before the fall. The biggest battlefield is Facebook.
Even as groups worry about what Zuckerberg will do in the next five months, the events of the past week—a pandemic, economic crisis, the killing of Black people at the hands of police and white vigilantes, protests and violent clashes between the state and the people—standout to them as a moment that will go down in history.
“In the long through line of history, I think there have been moments in which there are these kinds of forks in the road of the right thing to do and the wrong thing to do,” says Renderos. “This will be one of those moments where you look back and you say Mark Zuckerberg was on the wrong side of history here, just like we look back and we say Bull Connor as that sheriff out in Birmingham was wrong.”
It’s unclear what Zuckerberg is thinking about his place in history, or if the question keeps him up at night. But it’s sure to be a topic of discussion for some time. What drives this powerful person whose decisions affect everyone on the planet? How did a Harvard dropout become one of Trump’s most important defenders? Fernandez finds himself wondering if the Facebook cofounder would be making different choices if he had finished college before starting Facebook. “He could have read about how history looks down upon the enablers of fascism, that people remember Henry Ford not just for making cars but for his proximity to Hitler,” he says.
Watching Facebook’s policy of appeasement toward Trump in recent years, multiple news reports have documented the influence of Joel Kaplan, a top Facebook executive and prominent conservative, whose sway over Zuckerberg appears to have grown. The Trump administration has also exerted tremendous pressure on Facebook. The president and his campaign regularly accuse the platform of bias, putting Zuckerberg in a position of constant accommodation. Attorney General Bill Barr has reportedly opened an investigation into Facebook which, if he chose to follow through on, could hurt Zuckerberg’s bottom line.
“Mark Zuckerberg was on the wrong side of history here.”
Facebook is a company of more than 2 billion users, not just a website and an app but also Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp. It recently tried to start its own cryptocurrency. Its path to more growth is one of uninhibited expansion, and any anti-trust action would threaten both Zuckerberg’s ambition and monopoly. (He previously called Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s plan to break up big tech companies an “existential” threat that he would “go to the mat” to fight.) These theories see Zuckerberg as more acted upon than actor, more pawn than global power player.
More theories are sure to emerge about what is driving Zuckerberg, whose own words leave a hodgepodge of clues: he told his employees he personally didn’t like Trump’s reference to putting down riots in the 1960s but also didn’t find it an exhortation to violence. Longtime Facebook critic and Wired columnist Siva Vaidhyanathan on Wednesday wrote that he had long presumed Zuckerberg was an idealist who regretted that his platform had become a weapon of genocide in Myanmar and a tool of strongmen in countries such as the Philippines. And yet as he allows the same behavior in his own country, Vaidhyanathan, a professor of media studies that the University of Virginia, says he has now come to a different conclusion. Zuckerberg is not an idealist nor is his paycheck driving his decisions; instead, Zuckerberg is driven by power. He cites the fact that the Facebook CEO named one of his children after the Roman emperor Augustus and reminds readers that he has been known to yell “Domination!” at staff meetings—the same phrase Trump has been repeating all week.
“In the long run, he believes, Facebook’s domination will redeem him by making our lives better. We just have to surrender and let it all work out,” Vaidhyanathan concluded. In that view, Zuckerberg is no one’s pawn—he is doing what he thinks he must to dominate.
But the psychological state of a historical figure is not what defines their place in history. Whichever theory of Zuckerberg’s internal motivations proves right, the decisions he made this week will define him.


motherjones--2020-06-06--Romney Claps Back at Trump’s Callousness Toward the Protests

After President Trump spent the week demeaning protesters demanding justice in the wake of George Floyd ’ s murder , former Republican presidential nominee and Utah senator Mitt Romney offered a tweet to suggest he disagrees with the president ’ s response .
On Saturday morning , Romney shared a photograph of his father , George Romney , marching alongside civil rights protesters in the Detroit suburbs in the late 1960s .
The elder Romney had served as governor of Michigan from 1963 to 1969 and had a record of championing civil rights in both his rhetoric and the fiscal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ This is my father , George Romney , participating in a Civil Rights march in the Detroit suburbs during the late 1960s , ” Romney wrote alongside the photograph .
He also shared a quote from the former governor : “ Force alone will not eliminate many riots .
We must eliminate the problems from which they stem.
” This is the strongest criticism we ’ ve seen from younger Romney , who has had positive , if tepid , response to protests that have broken out following Floyd ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that “ peaceful protests underscore the urgency of addressing injustices , ” but scolded the looting and vandalism that happened alongside them—less Trumpian than many of his fellow GOP lawmakers , but short of a full embrace .
After federal police sprayed tear gas and fired rubber bullets at a crowd of protesters gathered outside the White House so the president could do a photo-op outside of a nearby church , Romney followed the typical GOP playbook of maintaining ignorance of the president ’ s actions , telling reporters , “ I didn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ know [ what happened ] .
” Since he won his Senate seat in 2018 , Romney—the only GOP senator to vote for Trump ’ s impeachment—has had a record of contradicting Trump , though he ’ s often fallen short of fully condemning him .
When the president tweeted that Democratic congresswomen of color should “ go back ” to their countries , Romney called the comments “ destructive , demeaning , and disunifying.
” He did not , however , call the president ’ s tweets racist .
The elder Gov @ @ @ @ @ @ @ moderate and liberal Republican leaders who ’ d been supportive of the Civil Rights Act and forged bonds with Black civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King , Jr. Sen. Romney ’ s tweet serves as a reminder of how far the Republican party has moved from the racial justice platform many of its members once supported .

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After President Trump spent the week demeaning protesters demanding justice in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, former Republican presidential nominee and Utah Sen. Mitt Romney offered a tweet to suggest he disagrees with the president’s response.
On Saturday morning, Romney shared a photograph of his father, George Romney, marching alongside civil rights protesters in the Detroit suburbs in the late 1960s. The elder Romney had served as governor of Michigan from 1963 to 1969 and had a record of championing civil rights in both his rhetoric and the fiscal policies he advanced to address systemic inequality.
“This is my father, George Romney, participating in a Civil Rights march in the Detroit suburbs during the late 1960s,” Romney wrote alongside the photograph. He also shared a quote from the former governor: “Force alone will not eliminate many riots. We must eliminate the problems from which they stem.”
This is my father, George Romney, participating in a Civil Rights march in the Detroit suburbs during the late 1960s—“Force alone will not eliminate riots,” he said. “We must eliminate the problems from which they stem.” pic.twitter.com/SzrcAyfPD8 — Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) June 6, 2020
This is the strongest criticism we’ve seen from younger Romney, who has had positive, if tepid, response to protests that have broken out following Floyd’s death. Last week, he tweeted that “peaceful protests underscore the urgency of addressing injustices,” but scolded the looting and vandalism that happened alongside them—less Trumpian than many of his fellow GOP lawmakers, but short of a full embrace. After federal police sprayed tear gas and fired rubber bullets at a crowd of protesters gathered outside the White House so the president could do a photo-op outside of a nearby church, Romney followed the typical GOP playbook of maintaining ignorance of the president’s actions, telling reporters, “I didn’t watch it closely enough to know [what happened].”
Since he won his Senate seat in 2018, Romney—the only GOP senator to vote for Trump’s impeachment—has had a record of contradicting Trump, though he’s often fallen short of fully condemning him. When the president tweeted that Democratic congresswomen of color should “go back” to their countries, Romney called the comments “destructive, demeaning, and disunifying.” He did not, however, call the president’s tweets racist.
The elder Gov. Romney was among a number of moderate and liberal Republican leaders who’d been supportive of the Civil Rights Act and forged bonds with Black civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. Sen. Romney’s tweet serves as a reminder of how far the Republican party has moved from the racial justice platform many of its members once supported.


motherjones--2020-06-06--Here’s Where the Movement to Defund Police Is Gaining Momentum

In Nashville , Tennessee on Tuesday , resident after masked resident lined up outside a public hearing on the city ’ s budget .
They waited , in some cases for hours , for their turn to share the same message with the city council : it was time to defund the police .
The hearing began at 6:30 p.m .
It didn ’ t conclude until nearly 5 a.m. the following day .
Nashville is far from alone .
As twin crises consume cities across the country—protests against police brutality and a pandemic that has battered the economy and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ say there ’ s an obvious response : cut funding to police departments and reinvest the money in other urgently needed public services .
This idea is not new but is gaining unprecedented momentum around the country as police violence against Black people has become the focus of nationwide protests following the May 25 killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer .
“ We need to shift resources out of these harmful punitive systems that we spend incredible amounts of money on—namely , police at the local level—and shift that to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ allow communities to be safe and to thrive , ” says Kumar Rao , director of the Justice Transformation program at the Center for Popular Democracy , a progressive advocacy group .
With an eye towards this type of redistribution of police funds , activist groups and lawmakers across the county have taken aim at local budgets .
In many municipalities , the fiscal year ends on June 30 , meaning that next year ’ s budgets are being finalized this month and will take effect in July .
In Minneapolis , groups @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Visions Collective , are urging the city to cut the police department ’ s budget by $ 45 million .
“ Our city is on fire , our people are hurting , and Black communities are crying out for health and safety in the midst of pandemic , ” notes a petition from Reclaim the Block .
“ Now is the time to invest in a safe , liberated future for our city .
We can ’ t afford to keep funding MPD ’ s attacks on Black lives.
” In New York @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have called on Mayor Bill de Blasio to slash millions in police funding as the state budget faces what one official called “ economic devastation not seen since the Great Depression.
” In Los Angeles , four City Council members have introduced a proposal to reverse the mayor ’ s planned 7 percent police funding increase .
In Durham , North Carolina , protestors gathered at a local theater this week for a “ Defund the Police ” protest .
In Milwaukee , Wisconsin , the African-American Roundtable—backed by more than 65 organizations—called @ @ @ @ @ @ @ million from the police department and to reinvest $ 50 million into public health , with the rest going to housing cooperatives .
In Philadelphia , where the mayor has proposed a $ 14 million increase in police funds , activists have been signing up in droves to testify virtually at a city budget hearing next week in protest .
Celebrities have also joined in the chorus of voices calling to reallocate police budgets .
An open letter reportedly signed by Lizzo and John Legend , among other notables , highlighted the disproportionate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ population in its call to defund the police and invest in healthcare instead .
“ The COVID-19 deaths and the deaths caused by police terror are connected and consequential to each other , ” the letter states .
“ The United States does not have a national healthcare system .
Instead , we have the largest military budget in the world , and some of the most well-funded and militarized police departments in the world , too.
” Racial justice and police reform advocates , including the Movement 4 Black Lives , have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ campaigns aimed at pulling money from police budgets and reinvesting it in community initiatives that stand to improve daily life and safety , from housing to infrastructure , and from healthcare to education .
Advocates note that these sorts of public investments are themselves tools for reducing crime—an idea supported by many studies .
“ We spend too much on an institution that fails to advance and often undermines safety and security in the community .
And we spend too little on structures that actually cultivate community safety and economic success , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ CPD report that examined police funding in 12 jurisdictions across the country .
Oakland spent 21.1 percent of its total operating budget on police—more than housing , parks , workforce development , and human services combined ; Floyd ’ s adopted hometown of Minneapolis spent more than 11 percent of its budget on policing—1.5 percent went to the Health Department .
These sorts of budgeting imbalances could get worse in light of the economic crisis wrought by COVID-19 .
Following huge losses of tax revenue due to coronavirus shutdowns , cities and states @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Analysts estimate a shortfall of anywhere between $ 500 billion and $ 899 billion . )
Some proposals to reinvest police funds are making legislative headway .
In New York City , where a $ 9 billion budget deficit is projected for fiscal year 2021 , the city council ’ s 21-member progressive caucus has set a meeting with criminal justice reform advocates to discuss their police funding proposals , after several months of advocacy for large cuts ; a coalition of dozens of criminal justice reform advocates sent a letter in April @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Speaker Corey Johnson , urging them to make “ significant reductions to the NYPD ’ s bloated budget.
” In 2019 , the letter noted , the city allocated $ 6 billion to the NYPD , more than “ on health , homeless services , youth development , and workforce development combined.
” In their own letter to de Blasio last week , Johnson and two other city council members noted that the cuts the mayor ’ s office has proposed so far are skewed in favor of the police ; they include @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Department of Youth and Community Development compared to a 0.4 percent reduction ( $ 23.8 million ) to the NYPD budget .
A coalition of 48 candidates for New York City office this week called on the city council to reduce the NYPD ’ s budget by $ 1 billion over the next four years , institute a temporary police hiring freeze , and halve the department ’ s $ 800 million in annual overtime spending .
Their proposal echoed the $ 1 billion in NYPD cuts suggested by the Policing and Social @ @ @ @ @ @ @ also calls for reducing funds for body cameras and a New York City surveillance program run by the NYPD .
Council Member Ben Kallos , the progressive caucus ’ s co-chair , told the New York Post that many members of the group “ have already come out in favor of # Defund NYPD and we will be taking a formal position as a caucus shortly , ” In Los Angeles , proponents of police funding cuts won a tangible victory .
On Wednesday , city council president Nury Martinez and three of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ between $ 100 to $ 150 million from the LAPD ’ s budget and allocate those funds to communities of color .
Their proposal came after a coalition of community groups , led by Black Lives Matter-Los Angeles , launched a “ People ’ s Budget ” campaign focused on slashing and reallocating much of next year ’ s LAPD budget , in the face of proposals by the city ’ s Mayor to increase it by $ 120 million .
These calls for funding reductions made an impression .
Hours after council @ @ @ @ @ @ @ funding , Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti called a press conference , where he announced the city would drop its plans to increase the police budget .
Instead , he said he would cut $ 250 million from the budget overall , redirecting those funds to public health , youth development , damages for those who ’ ve suffered discrimination , and “ peace centers ” to heal trauma .
At least $ 100 million of the cuts to fund these efforts are expected to come from the police budget .

In Nashville, Tennessee, on Tuesday, resident after masked resident lined up outside a public hearing on the city’s budget. They waited, in some cases for hours, for their turn to share the same message with the City Council: It was time to defund the police. The hearing began at 6:30 p.m. and didn’t conclude until nearly 5 a.m. the following day.
Nashville is far from alone. As twin crises consume cities across the country—protests against police brutality and a pandemic that has battered the economy and wiped out municipal revenues—many social justice advocates say there’s an obvious response: cut funding to police departments and reinvest the money in other urgently needed public services.
This idea is not new but is gaining unprecedented momentum around the country as police violence against Black people has become the focus of nationwide protests following the May 25 killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.
“We need to shift resources out of these harmful punitive systems that we spend incredible amounts of money on—namely, police at the local level—and shift that to the types of resources that will actually allow communities to be safe and to thrive,” says Kumar Rao, director of the Justice Transformation program at the Center for Popular Democracy, a progressive advocacy group.
With an eye toward this type of redistribution of police funds, activist groups and lawmakers across the county have taken aim at local budgets. In many municipalities, the fiscal year ends on June 30, meaning that next year’s budgets are being finalized this month and will take effect in July.
In Minneapolis, groups such as Reclaim the Block and Black Visions Collective are urging the city to cut the police department’s budget by $45 million. “Our city is on fire, our people are hurting, and Black communities are crying out for health and safety in the midst of pandemic,” notes a petition from Reclaim the Block. “Now is the time to invest in a safe, liberated future for our city. We can’t afford to keep funding MPD’s attacks on Black lives.”
In New York City, lawmakers and policing reform advocates have called on Mayor Bill de Blasio to slash millions in police funding as the state budget faces what one official called “economic devastation not seen since the Great Depression.” In Los Angeles, four City Council members have introduced a proposal to reverse the mayor’s planned 7 percent police funding increase. In Durham, North Carolina, protesters gathered at a local theater this week for a “Defund the Police” protest. In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the African American Roundtable—backed by more than 65 organizations—called on the city to divest $75 million from the police department and to reinvest $50 million into public health, with the rest going to housing cooperatives. In Philadelphia, where the mayor has proposed a $14 million increase in police funds, activists have been signing up in droves to testify virtually at a city budget hearing next week in protest.
Celebrities have also joined in the chorus of voices calling to reallocate police budgets. An open letter reportedly signed by Lizzo and John Legend, among other notables, highlighted the disproportionate rate of COVID-19 deaths in the Black population in its call to defund the police and invest in health care instead.
“The COVID-19 deaths and the deaths caused by police terror are connected and consequential to each other,” the letter states. “The United States does not have a national healthcare system. Instead, we have the largest military budget in the world, and some of the most well-funded and militarized police departments in the world, too.”
Racial justice and police reform advocates, including the Movement 4 Black Lives, have for years called for “invest/divest” campaigns aimed at pulling money from police budgets and reinvesting it in community initiatives that stand to improve daily life and safety, from housing to infrastructure, and from health care to education. Advocates note that these sorts of public investments are themselves tools for reducing crime—an idea supported by many studies.
“We spend too much on an institution that fails to advance and often undermines safety and security in the community. And we spend too little on structures that actually cultivate community safety and economic success,” says Rao.
Rao co-authored a 2017 CPD report that examined police funding in 12 jurisdictions across the country. Oakland spent 21.1 percent of its total operating budget on police—more than housing, parks, workforce development, and human services combined; Floyd’s adopted hometown of Minneapolis spent more than 11 percent of its budget on policing—1.5 percent went to the health department.
These sorts of budgeting imbalances could get worse in light of the economic crisis wrought by COVID-19. Following huge losses of tax revenue due to coronavirus shutdowns, cities and states are facing multibillion-dollar deficits. (Analysts estimate a shortfall of anywhere between $500 billion and $899 billion.)
Some proposals to reinvest police funds are making legislative headway. In New York City, where a $9 billion budget deficit is projected for fiscal year 2021, the City Council’s 21-member progressive caucus has set a meeting with criminal justice reform advocates to discuss their police funding proposals, after several months of advocacy for large cuts; a coalition of dozens of criminal justice reform advocates sent a letter in April to Mayor de Blasio and City Council Speaker Corey Johnson, urging them to make “significant reductions to the NYPD’s bloated budget.” In 2019, the letter noted, the city allocated $6 billion to the NYPD, more than “on health, homeless services, youth development, and workforce development combined.”
In their own letter to de Blasio last week, Johnson and two other City Council members noted that the cuts the mayor’s office has proposed so far are skewed in favor of the police; they include a proposed 32 percent cut to the Department of Youth and Community Development compared to a 0.4 percent reduction ($23.8 million) to the NYPD budget.
A coalition of 48 candidates for New York City office this week called on the City Council to reduce the NYPD’s budget by $1 billion over the next four years, institute a temporary police hiring freeze, and halve the department’s $800 million in annual overtime spending. Their proposal echoed the $1 billion in NYPD cuts suggested by the Policing and Social Justice Project at Brooklyn College, which also calls for reducing funds for body cameras and a New York City surveillance program run by the NYPD.
Council Member Ben Kallos, the progressive caucus’s co-chair, told the New York Post that many members of the group “have already come out in favor of #Defund NYPD and we will be taking a formal position as a caucus shortly,”
In Los Angeles, proponents of police funding cuts won a tangible victory. On Wednesday, city council president Nury Martinez and three of her colleagues released a proposal to cut between $100 to $150 million from the LAPD’s budget and allocate those funds to communities of color. Their proposal came after a coalition of community groups, led by Black Lives Matter–Los Angeles, launched a “People’s Budget” campaign focused on slashing and reallocating much of next year’s LAPD budget, in the face of proposals by the city’s mayor to increase it by $120 million.
These calls for funding reductions made an impression. Hours after council members released their proposal to slash LAPD funding, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti called a press conference, where he announced the city would drop its plans to increase the police budget. Instead, he said he would cut $250 million from the budget overall, redirecting those funds to public health, youth development, damages for those who’ve suffered discrimination, and “peace centers” to heal trauma. At least $100 million of the cuts to fund these efforts are expected to come from the police budget.


motherjones--2020-06-06--When They’re Protesters, They’re “Antifa.” When They’re Trump’s Fans, They’re “Incredible People”

President Donald Trump took a swing at the protesters who have been outside the White House on Saturday morning , calling them “ ANTIFA & other Wacko groups of Anarchists ” as he explained why the military presence he ’ s ordered to control demonstrations in DC this week doesn ’ t apply to his own crowds of supporters .
His comments come on the heels of a visit to Guilford , Maine , where the president visited a medical manufacturing plant on Friday .
YouTube personality Lily Marston tweeted a video of supporters lining the streets to welcome Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lack of riot gear or military control to ensure the protection and safety of this very large crowd ” —a tongue-in-cheek clapback to military enforcements present at the massive protests in Washington , DC , against the police killing of George Floyd and Trump ’ s race-baiting behavior and attitudes toward Black Americans .
Trump shared Marston ’ s tweet to explain that “ Riot gear or military control is not necessary because ANTIFA & other Wacko groups of Anarchists aren ’ t present to cause trouble , ” Trump wrote .
He @ @ @ @ @ @ @ incredible people.
” Trump has been referring to the protesters as “ antifa , ” short for “ antifascist.
” People who affiliate with the label sometimes use violence to oppose fascism .
After Trump ordered the National Guard to Minneapolis to break up protests on May 31 , Trump congratulated the troops for shutting down the “ ANTIFA led anarchists.
” On Wednesday , Trump referred to the protesters as “ killers , terrorists , arsonists , anarchists , thugs , hoodlums , looters , ANTIFA & others.
” The demonstrations have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ no evidence to suggest antifa has played any major role in them .
Even so , Trump has ordered a hefty military presence as huge crowds continue to gather outside the White House .
Their clashes became violent on Tuesday when the president ordered federal police to spray tear gas and fire rubber bullets at a crowd so he could walk to St. John ’ s Episcopal Church and take a photograph with a Bible .

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President Donald Trump took a swing at the protesters who have been outside the White House on Saturday morning, calling them “ANTIFA & other Wacko groups of Anarchists” as he explained why the military presence he’s ordered to control demonstrations in DC this week doesn’t apply to his own crowds of supporters.
His comments come on the heels of a visit to Guilford, Maine, where the president visited a medical manufacturing plant on Friday. YouTube personality Lily Marston tweeted a video of supporters lining the streets to welcome Trump’s arrival and noted the “lack of riot gear or military control to ensure the protection and safety of this very large crowd”—a tongue-in-cheek clapback to military enforcements present at the massive protests in Washington, DC, against the police killing of George Floyd and Trump’s race-baiting behavior and attitudes toward Black Americans.
Trump shared Marston’s tweet to explain that “Riot gear or military control is not necessary because ANTIFA & other Wacko groups of Anarchists aren’t present to cause trouble,” Trump wrote. He called his own throngs of fans “incredible people.”
Riot gear or military control is not necessary because ANTIFA & other Wacko groups of Anarchists aren’t present to cause trouble. Incredible people. Thank you Maine! https://t.co/KGOcoQORMg — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 6, 2020
Trump has been referring to the protesters as “antifa,” short for “antifascist.” People who affiliate with the label sometimes use violence to oppose fascism. After Trump ordered the National Guard to Minneapolis to break up protests on May 31, Trump congratulated the troops for shutting down the “ANTIFA led anarchists.” On Wednesday, Trump referred to the protesters as “killers, terrorists, arsonists, anarchists, thugs, hoodlums, looters, ANTIFA & others.” The demonstrations have been largely peaceful, and there is no evidence to suggest antifa has played any major role in them.
Even so, Trump has ordered a hefty military presence as huge crowds continue to gather outside the White House. Their clashes became violent on Monday* when the president ordered federal police to spray tear gas and fire rubber bullets at a crowd so he could walk to St. John’s Episcopal Church and take a photograph with a Bible.
*Correction: An original version of this post stated the photo op was on Tuesday, not Monday.