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anonymous

A Year After Breonna Taylor's Killing, Family Says There's 'No Accountability' : NPR - 0 views

  • Before Breonna Taylor's name became synonymous with police violence against Black Americans, she was an emergency medical technician in Louisville, Ky.The 26-year-old Black woman's friends and family say she was beloved, and relished the opportunity to brighten someone else's day.
  • Exactly one year ago, Louisville police gunned her down in her home. Now, her name is a ubiquitous rallying cry at protests calling for police reforms, and many social justice advocates point to her story as an example of how difficult it can be to hold police accountable for violent acts. The Louisville incident unfolded during a botched narcotics raid, when officers forced their way into her apartment in the early morning hours of March 13, 2020. Taylor was not the target of the raid and the suspect police were searching for was not at Taylor's home.
  • A year after Taylor's death, none of the officers who fired their service weapons — a total of 32 rounds — face criminal charges directly over Taylor's killing. At least three officers with connections to the raid have been terminated from the force.
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  • Some advocates are calling for Kentucky's Republican-controlled legislature to pass "Breonna's Law," which would ban no-knock warrants statewide. The Kentucky Senate passed a bill late last month restricting such warrants in certain situations, which many activists and Democratic lawmakers say does not go far enough. They had introduced a similar bill in the House in August, called "Breonna's Law," but the House Judiciary Committee voted on Wednesday to move forward with the Republican-sponsored proposal, according to WFPL.
  • But many advocates believe justice has not been done, citing the lack of criminal charges and saying they want to see broader criminal justice reform. Demonstrators plan to gather in downtown Louisville on Saturday to mark the anniversary of Taylor's death, member station WFPL reported. Activists say they hope to keep her memory alive and renew calls for justice, after the winter dampened on-the-ground protests.
  • In September, the city of Louisville announced a $12 million settlement in the wrongful death lawsuit filed by Taylor's family, which also included several police reforms.
  • Cameron, whose office took over as special prosecutor in the case in May, said at the press conference that both Mattingly and Cosgrove "were justified in their use of force."After the two officers forced their way into Taylor's apartment, her boyfriend Kenneth Walker fired on them. Walker, a licensed gun owner, has maintained that he did not hear the officers announce themselves before entering and mistook them for intruders. He fired a shot, which hit Mattingly in the leg.
  • Ju'Niyah Palmer, Taylor's sister, wrote on Instagram earlier this year that her heart was "heavy because we are only 2 months away from me not hearing, seeing or cuddling you for a whole year." Her mother, Tamika Palmer, recently filed complaints with the police department's professional standards unit against six officers for their role in the investigation that included the raid. In an Thursday interview with a Louisville CBS affiliate, Palmer expressed her frustration with the lack of accountability in the case and called on the community to continue demanding justice.
  • Last September, after months of protests in and around Louisville, the city was braced to hear whether a grand jury would hand down criminal indictments for LMPD officers Brett Hankison, Jonathan Mattingly and Myles Cosgrove. At a press briefing Sept. 23, Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron announced no charges directly tied to Taylor's death. The grand jury handed down three criminal counts of wanton endangerment to Hankison, over shooting through Taylor's apartment into a neighboring residence.
  • The grand jury did not charge Mattingly, who shot six times, and Cosgrove, who fired a total of 16 rounds, including what federal investigators determined to be the round that ultimately killed Taylor.
  • Louisville Democratic Rep. Attica Scott, the primary sponsor of Breonna's Law, told NPR's All Things Considered on Friday that committee officials have said they will consider proposed amendments that would bring the two bills further into alignment.She also said she had written a letter to newly-confirmed Attorney General Merrick Garland this week, asking him to fully investigate Taylor's killing.
  • Cameron, Kentucky's first Black attorney general, told reporters that "evidence shows that officers both knocked and announced their presence at the apartment." He cited the officers' statements and one additional witness as evidence, but also acknowledged there is no video or body camera footage of the officers executing the search warrant.
  • Cameron's announcement sparked fresh outrage and demonstrations in Louisville, Atlanta, Denver, and Portland, among other cities. It added fuel to an already tense period in American society, where national protests focusing on racial justice inequities became a near-daily occurrence following high-profile police incidents with Black Americans, including George Floyd, Rayshard Brooks, Jacob Blake, Daniel Prude and others who were killed or seriously injured.
  • Days after Cameron's press conference, Taylor's mother, Palmer, said she was "reassured ... of why I have no faith in the legal system, in the police, in the law. ... They are not made to protect us Black and brown people."
  • In that same press conference, Crump raised questions about what evidence Cameron presented on behalf of Taylor to the grand jury. He also publicly called for the release of the transcripts of the proceedings, something that is extremely rare in grand jury cases. The court did so several weeks later, after some jurors took issue with Cameron's explanation for why no officer was directly charged in Taylor's death.
  • Hankison was terminated from LMPD in June, after the department found he fired "wantonly and blindly" into Taylor's apartment. In January, some nine months after Taylor's killing, the department formally terminated Cosgrove and another officer connected to the incident.
  • Both Cosgrove and Detective Joshua Jaynes, who secured the warrant for the raid on Taylor's home, were found to have violated department protocols, according to the termination letters made public on Jan. 6.
  • LMPD officials said that for Jaynes, "the evidence in this case revealed a sustained untruthfulness violation based on information included in an affidavit completed by you and submitted to a judge."LMPD said Cosgrove violated the department's protocols on use of deadly force and failed to activate his officer-worn body camera.
  • In that same batch of documents, LMPD also said that Mattingly, who was shot during the raid, was exonerated on both counts of violating department procedures on use of deadly force and de-escalation. It added, "no disciplinary action taken and the complaint will be dismissed." The disciplinary documents were released the same day Fischer, the Louisville mayor, formally announced that Erika Shields would be the city's next permanent police chief.
  • Shields resigned her post as Atlanta's police chief in the immediate aftermath of the killing of Rayshard Brooks, a Black man who was shot in the back during an encounter with white officers in a Wendy's parking lot in June.
hannahcarter11

Live Breonna Taylor News Tracker: Suspect Charged in Shooting of 2 Officers - The New Y... - 0 views

    • hannahcarter11
       
      So terrible that a literal wall matters more than Breonna's life. While the shooting was reckless period, the officers should've been charged about her murder.
  • plans to plead not guilty to the charges in the indictment
  • Breonna Taylor’s case as both the tragic death of a young woman, and the continuation of a long pattern of devaluation and violence that Black women and men face in our country, as they have historically,
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    • hannahcarter11
       
      It's astonishing how they're so quick to attempt to arrest the person who shot the police officers yet have done everything to not face the consequences for their own actions.
  • “We need our whole city to come out,”
  • Ms. Helm said that she was nervous for the safety of protesters, especially after seeing the significant law enforcement presence that was patrolling Louisville on Wednesday evening
  • Shortly after midnight, the police declared the protest unlawful and ordered people to disperse.
  • Anger over Ms. Taylor’s killing and the prosecutors’ handling of the case has spread far from Louisville, with protests on Wednesday night drawing crowds in New York, Chicago and Seattle. Some rallies, like those in Portland, Maine, and Memphis, were small but vocal.
  • “There are Breonnas everywhere.”
  • the people want justice even if the system doesn’t,
  • “I don’t want this incident to get swept under the rug and everybody forgets about all the innocent lives that have been taken
  • female athletes have been instrumental in directing attention to the investigation.
  • This isn’t a bad apple, it’s a rotten tree.”
  • The lack of a murder or manslaughter indictment against any of the officers involved in the shooting death of Breonna Taylor was an outrage to many — but not a surprise.
  • A grand jury indicted a former Louisville police detective on Wednesday for endangering Breonna Taylor’s neighbors with reckless gunfire during a raid on her apartment in March, but the two officers who shot Ms. Taylor were not charged in her death.
  • Three officers fired a total of 32 shots
  • Ms. Taylor’s name and image have become part of the national movement over racial injustice since May, with celebrities writing open letters and erecting billboards that demanded the white officers be criminally charged.
  • Angry demonstrators took to the streets on Wednesday after a Kentucky grand jury did not charge police officers with killing Ms. Taylor. A suspect was in custody, accused of shooting two Louisville officers.
  • The city erupted in angry demonstrations Wednesday after a grand jury decided not to bring charges against the police officers who shot and killed Breonna Taylor during a botched nighttime raid on her apartment in March.
carolinehayter

Breonna Taylor Grand Jury Recording Released: Live Updates - The New York Times - 0 views

  • An audio recording of the grand jury inquiry into the killing of Breonna Taylor was made public on Friday, a rare disclosure that shed light on the evidence jurors considered in the proceedings.
  • 15 hours long
  • captured interviews with witnesses, audio of 911 calls and other evidence presented to jurors over two and a half days.
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  • He has insisted that the 12 jurors were given “all of the evidence” and were free to pursue additional charges.
  • As is customary in the recording of Grand Jury proceedings, juror deliberations and prosecutor recommendations and statements were not recorded, as they are not evidence,
  • The audio files do not include statements or recommendations from prosecutors about which charges they think should be brought against the officers. Mr. Cameron has said that jurors were told that the two officers who shot Ms. Taylor were justified in their actions. Ultimately, the jurors indicted a former officer last week on three charges of endangering Ms. Taylor’s neighbors by firing into their home during a raid of her apartment in March, but did not charge either of the officers who shot her.
  • Grand jurors are given broad powers to request evidence, call witnesses and determine which charges to pursue, but prosecutors often closely guide the jurors, presenting them with certain charges and telling them about their own roles. The process almost always remains secret.
  • grand jurors indicted Brett Hankison, a former detective, on three counts of “wanton endangerment” last week, saying Mr. Hankison had recklessly fired his gun during the raid after Ms. Taylor’s boyfriend — who has said he thought intruders were entering the apartment — shot an officer in the leg.
  • Mr. Hankison’s rounds did not hit anyone, investigators have said, but some of them flew into an apartment behind Ms. Taylor’s, leading to the three charges.
  • Detective Myles Cosgrove, who the F.B.I. said fired the shot that killed Ms. Taylor, described a disorienting scene of flashing lights as officers breached the door and seemed to suggest uncertainty about exactly what happened.
  • But, he added, “It’s like a surreal thing. If you told me I didn’t do something at that time, I’d believe you. If you told me I did do something, I’d probably believe you, too.”
  • Detective Cosgrove said he also saw a shadow of a person, a “larger than normal human shadow,” when they raided the apartment and he saw flashing lights.
  • The first witness was an investigator for the Attorney General’s office, who presented photos and videos of the scene, including the body camera videos of three officers who arrived after the shots were fired
  • Grand jurors asked whether Kenneth Walker, Ms. Taylor’s boyfriend, had been named in the search warrant (he had not), what exactly the officers saw when the apartment door opened, and whether the officers executing the warrant were aware that the police had already found Jamarcus Glover, who was the target of an illegal drug investigation.
  • Mr. Glover was Ms. Taylor’s ex-boyfriend, and he was in custody by the time they raided her apartment. At times, the jurors’ questions suggested they were skeptical of what they were being shown: one asked about the time stamps on the video. Another asked why they had not seen the room where the gun was found; the investigator said that would be shown in a different video.
  • Grand jurors heard at least two Louisville police officers who were at the raid on Ms. Taylor’s apartment say the group knocked and announced their presence several times before breaking down the door, according to a recording of the proceedings released on Friday.Those accounts, which have been questioned by several of Ms. Taylor’s neighbors and her boyfriend, were included among roughly 15 hours of audio filed by the attorney general on Friday, which includes interviews heard by the grand jury over several days last week.
  • The unidentified neighbor yelled at them, “something about leave her alone, there was some girl there,” Detective Cosgrove said in an interview with police investigators last month that was played for the grand jury.
  • He said officers were outside knocking for 90 seconds, and that the volume escalated from “gentle knocking” to “forceful pounding” to pounding while yelling “police.”
  • Detective Nobles, who held the battering ram that broke through Ms. Taylor’s door, said he stood at the door, knocking and announcing himself as police for one or two minutes before he used the battering ram to force his way into Ms. Taylor’s apartment. His interview was also played for grand jurors. He said it took three knocks with the battering ram to break down the door completely.The first blow hit the handle, he said. The second broke the door, but left it still on the hinges. The third broke down the door completely. When he entered, Mr. Nobles said it was “pitch black,” and that Sgt. John Mattingly, one of the officers who shot Ms. Taylor, was quickly shot in the leg after the team entered the building.
  • In previous interviews with The Times, 11 of 12 of Ms. Taylor’s neighbors said they never heard the police identify themselves. One neighbor said he heard the group say “Police,” just once.
  • Grand jurors were played recordings of radio calls from Mr. Hankison, the detective who fired blindly from outside the apartment and has been charged with wanton endangerment, as well as 911 calls that came in after the shooting began.
  • The calls suggest that Mr. Hankison, who was fired after the shooting for violating department procedure, believed that Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly had been wounded by someone with an “A.R.” who was “barricaded” inside the apartment. Mr. Hankison’s reference to an “A.R.” on the call appears to be a reference to either an assault rile or the AR-15, a type of a military-style semiautomatic rifle.
  • The only charges brought by the grand jury were three counts of “wanton endangerment in the first degree” against Mr. Hankison for his actions during the raid.
  • Under Kentucky law, a person commits that crime when he or she “wantonly engages in conduct which creates a substantial danger of death or serious physical injury to another person,” and does so “under circumstances manifesting extreme indifference to the value of human life.” Other states may use terms like “reckless endangerment” for an equivalent offense.
  • But the charges against Mr. Hankison are not for killing Ms. Taylor. None of the 10 shots he fired are known to have struck her. Instead, the Kentucky attorney general said the former detective was charged by the grand jury because the shots he fired had passed through Ms. Taylor’s apartment walls into a neighboring apartment, endangering three people there.
  • The crime is a Class D felony in Kentucky, which means it can carry a sentence of up to five years in prison and a fine on conviction for each count.
  • A person can be guilty of wanton endangerment even if they did not intend to harm anyone or to commit a crime; it is sufficient to recklessly disregard the peril that one’s actions create.
  • Mr. Hankison was fired from the force. During the raid, he fired into her apartment from outside, through a sliding glass patio door and a window that were covered with blinds, in violation of a department policy that requires officers to have a line of sight.
  • The name Breonna Taylor has echoed across the nation for months as demonstrators demanded the police be held accountable for her death.
  • The police killing of George Floyd, a Black man who died in May after being handcuffed and pinned to the ground by a white police officer’s knee, brought renewed attention to deadly episodes involving the police, including Ms. Taylor’s death, and fueled Black Lives Matter protests that persisted throughout the summer.
  • In September, when the grand jury announced no charges against the officers who killed Ms. Taylor, protesters poured into the streets of Louisville with renewed strength and anger, demanding stronger charges. The protesters called for all three officers, who are white, to be held to account for Ms. Taylor’s death. Ms. Taylor’s family, too, has pleaded for justice, pushing for criminal charges against the officers. Ms. Taylor’s case has also been the center of campaigns from several celebrities and athletes, some of whom have dedicated their seasons to keeping a spotlight on her case.
delgadool

The Breonna Taylor Decision: Live Updates and Analysis - The New York Times - 0 views

  • A grand jury didn’t charge any officers with shooting Ms. Taylor in her Louisville apartment. A former officer, accused of firing recklessly, was indicted on three counts of “wanton endangerment.”
  • “If we simply act on outrage, there is no justice — mob justice is not justice. Justice sought by violence is not justice. It just becomes revenge.”
  • Many legal experts said before the charges were announced that indictments for killing Ms. Taylor would be unlikely, given the state’s statute allowing citizens to use lethal force in self-defense. John W. Stewart, a former assistant attorney general in Kentucky, said he believed that at least Sergeant Mattingly and Detective Cosgrove were protected by that law.
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  • “It tells people, cops can kill you in the sanctity of your own home,” Linda Sarsour, a Palestinian-American activist, said as she wiped tears from her face.
  • After protesters marched loudly but peacefully through the streets for more than two hours, they were stopped by a line of officers in riot gear in the Highlands section of town.
  • 2a”If anyone can get killed how Breonna got killed by the police, there’s no way we should live in a society where that’s possible,” he said.
  • “our criminal justice system is fundamentally broken.”
  • Under Kentucky law, a person is guilty of the crime when “under circumstances manifesting extreme indifference to the value of human life, he wantonly engages in conduct which creates a substantial danger of death or serious physical injury to another person.”
  • For months, Ms. Taylor’s death has been a rallying cry. Michelle Obama and Kamala Harris, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, called out her name during the Democratic National Convention. Oprah Winfrey paid for billboards demanding the officers be charged, writing in her magazine, “We have to use whatever megaphone we can.”
anonymous

Merrick Garland rapidly erasing Trump effect at Justice Department - Axios - 0 views

  • Attorney General Merrick Garland is quickly negating the Trump administration’s law enforcement legacy, dismaying conservatives with a burst of aggressive reversals and new policies.
  • Liberal fears that the soft-spoken Garland might resist prosecuting Trump and his allies for the sake of unity were partially eased on Wednesday, when news broke that federal agents had raided the Manhattan home of Rudy Giuliani.
  • "Pattern or practice" investigations into the Minneapolis and Louisville police departments, following the deaths last year of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.
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  • The revocation of a Trump-era policy that restricted federal funding for "sanctuary cities."
  • under Attorney General Bill Barr, the department repeatedly blocked SDNY prosecutors from executing a search warrant for Giuliani's electronic records in the final months of 2020,
anonymous

A Black Nonprofit Got A 6-Figure Payment From Someone Whose Family Enslaved People : NPR - 0 views

  • A nonprofit group that helps Black and marginalized communities in Kentucky has received a six-figure donation from a white donor who says they recently inherited family wealth — and then learned that their great-grandfather owned enslaved people.
  • As they received their windfall, the inheritor grew curious about the origins of the family's money."They investigated their family history to find out their great-grandfather had enslaved six individuals in Bourbon [County], Ky.," Croney said as the nonprofit announced the donation this week.
  • Because the great-grandfather did not record the enslaved persons' names, the donor couldn't track down the descendants of the people the ancestor had owned. Croney said that because the donor was "aware of how hoarding wealth is a huge contributing factor of inequity in this country, they decided that they should give most of it away."
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  • The donation is the latest in a string of high-value reparations payments from white people who have unearthed ties to racism and slavery in their family history — finding details such as the value assigned to enslaved people in a ledger, and notes identifying a grandmother as a member of the Ku Klux Klan.
  • The money brings a significant boost for Change Today, Change Tomorrow, which has grown remarkably since Ryan first started the organization as a way to secure school supplies for teachers. Its programs now range from providing hot meals and snacks for students to public health outreach for new parents and menstruation products for those who need them, as well as making food deliveries — including fresh produce from a Black-owned farm.
  • The donor's identity has not been revealed, but the nonprofit said the person lives in the South.
  • Among those receiving reparations is Soul2Soul Sisters, a Colorado group co-founded by the Rev. Dawn Riley Duval. The money helped her organization grow — and like Ryan, Riley Duval says reparations are absolutely necessary, given the ties that have long bound racism and economic inequality in the United States
  • The donor who wired money to Change Today, Change Tomorrow is calling for other white people to pay reparations, even if their ancestors didn't own enslaved people.
  • The leaders of Change Today, Change Tomorrow echoed that sentiment. And they acknowledged that, given the sum heading their way, it wasn't until a wire transfer had taken place that it seemed real. Now, they added, they have more work to do.
  • Referring to the reparations payment, she added, "We don't have the luxury to kind of just sit on it, so it's literally money that's going to go right back into the community."The donor has never lived in Kentucky, Croney said, adding that the person found the organization by searching around on the internet. Louisville has played a prominent role in the national discussion on racism and police violence since last year when police officers shot and killed Breonna Taylor in her home. Activists are still calling for accountability in that case.
dytonka

Law Enforcement Officials Worry About Post-Election Violence | Time - 0 views

  • By refusing to pledge a peaceful transfer of power if he loses to Joe Biden in November, President Donald Trump is raising the stakes on an already contentious election by signaling how his supporters should respond if the vote doesn’t go their way.
  • Hours after the president spoke, for instance, there were violent clashes in Louisville, Ky., after a grand jury brought no charges for Breonna Taylor’s death. Two police officers were shot and wounded, 46 people were taken into custody and groups of right-wing militiamen were seen on the street clad in body armor and carrying assault rifles.
  • All political elections are combative, but the 2020 U.S. election has devolved into particularly hostile one. Democrats and Republicans alike have portrayed America’s choice in apocalyptic terms—one in which the rise of fascism or communism hangs in the balance for defining the nation’s future.
ethanshilling

Why Charges Against Protesters Are Being Dismissed by the Thousands - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Prosecutors declined to pursue many of the cases because they concluded the protesters were exercising their basic civil rights.
  • An English teacher at Marion C. Moore School at that time, Mr. Kaufmann was among more than 800 people swept up by the police in Louisville during the many months of demonstrations prompted by the police killings of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Louisville.
  • Now, more than five months later, as Mr. Kaufmann’s case and those of thousands of others finally land in courts across the United States, a vast majority of cases against protesters are being dismissed. Only cases involving more substantial charges like property destruction or other violence remain.
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  • Prosecutors called the scale of both the mass arrests and mass dismissals within a few short months unrivaled, at least since the civil rights protests of the early 1960s.
  • There was also the recognition that law enforcement officers often use mass arrests as a technique to help clear the streets, not to confront illegal behavior.
  • “This is the hangover from months of protests,” said Ted Shouse, a criminal defense attorney in Louisville who helped to organize more than 100 volunteer defense attorneys.
  • Defense attorneys working on cases in numerous cities said more people of color than white people were charged, but it was not a universal pattern.
  • A recent study by The Louisville Courier-Journal found that Black people constituted 53 percent of those arrested there during the four months starting May 29, but that they faced 69 percent of the felony charges.
  • “Seventy to 80 percent would not survive constitutional challenges,” said Mr. Schmidt, who added that the costs far outweighed any benefit to public safety.
  • In Louisville, those cases are referred to as being in the “parking lot.” There are some 22,000 such cases over all, with just four of 10 trial courts functioning in the Jefferson County Courthouse. Across two days in late October, 300 protest case arraignments were jammed onto the calendar, about 10 times the normal rate.
  • “We were dumbfounded, we were shocked,” Mr. Kaufmann said. “The country does not live up to the values that we have been teaching in class.”
  • “My young Black male and female friends who I met through the protests were in greater danger than I was and some of them are still dealing with these charges,” he said. “It is not fair, it is not consistent and we have to do better.”
katherineharron

Breonna Taylor case: Two Louisville officers shot during protests over grand jury decis... - 0 views

  • The long-awaited grand jury decisions on the three officers come more than six months after Taylor was shot to death after Louisville police officers broke down the door to her apartment while executing a late-night warrant in a narcotics investigation on March 13.
  • The charges against the former detective, Brett Hankison, were immediately criticized
  • Sgt. John Mattingly and Det. Myles Cosgrove, the two other officers, will face no charges following months of demonstrations and unrest over the killing.
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  • Daniel Cameron on Wednesday said the officers were "justified in their use of force" because Taylor's boyfriend fired at officers first.
  • After the decision was announced, members of the Kentucky National Guard and state police were activated as protesters took to the streets and some clashes erupted with officers in riot gear.
  • "No justice, no peace," the protesters chanted.
clairemann

Duke University investigating printout of George Floyd's toxicology report on Black His... - 0 views

  • As he got closer, he realized it was a printout of Floyd’s toxicology report from his autopsy. And on the sheet of paper was a handwritten note suggesting that Floyd was to blame when he died in Minneapolis police custody last spring after an officer knelt on his neck for more than nine minutes.“Mix of drugs presents in difficulty breathing! Overdose? Good man? Use of fake currency is a felony!” read a note written in pink.
  • “I was really incredulous that someone would actually go to the effort of finding the report in its original form,” Mohn said. “It seemed almost more audacious than just writing a slur or putting up something more overtly hateful.”
  • Mohn found the note on Saturday inside a dorm that has a hallway bulletin board commemorating Black victims of police violence, including Philando Castile and Breonna Taylor. Just like Floyd’s post, each picture was accompanied by a summary of the incident related to their death.
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  • “I remember shaking in that moment,” Manns, who is Black, told CNN. “That happened right down the hall from where I sleep, from where I’m supposed to be safe. … The thought that it could be someone I’ve lived with all these months really terrified me.”
Javier E

Opinion | Planned Parenthood Is Done Making Excuses for Margaret Sanger - The New York ... - 0 views

  • And sometimes, that’s how Planned Parenthood has acted. By privileging whiteness, we’ve contributed to America harming Black women and other women of color. And when we focus too narrowly on “women’s health,” we have excluded trans and nonbinary people.
  • We pledge to fight the many types of dehumanization we are seeing right now: the dehumanization of Black and Latino victims of police violence such as Adam Toledo, Daunte Wright, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and too many others. The dehumanization of transgender people whose health care and rights are being denied in states across the country, and who face attacks not just from the right but also from trans-exclusionary radical “feminists.”
anonymous

Activists seek political power months after the murder of George Floyd - CNNPolitics - 0 views

shared by anonymous on 06 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • Carter was one of many activists protesting in the wake of Floyd's murder in Minneapolis at the hands of police. And now a year later, Floyd's death is a big part of the reason why many activists are running for local office across the country.
  • Carter decided to run for mayor in Sandy Springs, Georgia, after he said he grew emotionally exhausted from attending what felt like unending protests for Black people killed during police encounters and other racists attacks.
  • Videos capturing the killings of Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man shot and killed while running in a Georgia neighborhood, and George Floyd gave him something to point out the inequalities Carter knew, but perhaps others hadn't seen.
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  • For Carter, it's about more than just social justice movements. He believes his city's leadership, especially the executive office, should reflect the population.
  • For Carter and other activists-turned-political candidates, making the decision to run felt like an actionable step after a year of such frustration and anger.
  • Tate took on criminal justice reform years before protests for Floyd took over streets across the country.
  • He created a name for himself while leading marches and protests following the deaths of Floyd and Breonna Taylor, a Black woman shot and killed by police in Louisville, Kentucky.
  • LaTonya Tate is not new to the fight to make the justice system more just. As a Black woman in the South and part of a family with a history of activism, it has been ever-present. And as a retired parole officer, she knows a good deal about the justice system and its failures.
  • Ossé is running for a seat on the city council representing his district in Brooklyn, New York. If elected, he would become one of the youngest, and one of the first self-described queer city council members in New York City.
  • She believes she can lead desperately needed and uncomfortable conversations if she is elected to the city council in Birmingham, Alabama.
  • Tate is advocating for community policing. She believes in reallocating funds from police to invest in the community with mental health training, health care, education, youth programs and social services.
  • Francois Alexandre believes that a community policing role is crucial for accountability. It's what he'd like to change when it comes to law enforcement in his district in Miami if he wins a seat on the Miami City Commission.
  • Charlotte, North Carolina City Council member Braxton Winston knows the path these activists are taking well. He was the subject of an iconic photo depicting the tension between police and protesters after an officer shot and killed Keith Scott, a Black Charlotte resident in 2016.
  • Winston's gained victories to defund chemical agents for crowd control, which he says led to a broader conversation about the overall role of government in ensuring public safety. He says he has learned that support and political will are essential and in ways he is not set up to succeed.
  • The Black Voters Matter organization, which aims to increase power in the black community through voter outreach and advocacy, says efforts are underway to engage black voters and to build voting power.
  • In June, the organization plans to launch a bus campaign to engage Black voters while commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Freedom Rides movement, bus tours taken by civil rights activists in the '60s to fight segregation in the South.
  • Carter hopes this can be a moment where the country looks deep into its soul and reckons with its past.
aniyahbarnett

Evanston, Illinois, approves the country's first reparations program for Black resident... - 0 views

  • offering reparations to Black residents whose families have felt the effects of decades of discriminatory housing practices,
  • from a 3% tax on legalized cannabis into assistance for home loans.
  • We had to do something radically different to address the racial divide that we had in our city,
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  • the first major American bank to endorse HR 40, a piece of legislation sponsored by US Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee that creates a commission to develop reparation proposals for African Americans.
  • three decades ago.
  • "as real and right as the fight we had for the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act,
  • more attentive ears with Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden in office.
  • "targeted resources into public schools and neighborhoods that have been generationally deprived of the similar types of investments that white neighborhoods have gotten,"
  • voted overwhelmingly in favor of appropriating funds for the benefit of Black residents
  • "remains unanimously supportive"
  • she called upon National African-American Reparations Commission (NAARC) convener and Institute of the Black World 21st Century (IBW) President Ron Daniels to help Evanston develop an action plan.
  • "the community process"
  • The first is the transfer of wealth to descendants of American slavery via individual cash payments,
  • I've never seen the issue of reparations being taken as seriously as it is now,"
  • , I think the process has been quite flawed when you look at it next to an HR 40
  • , there are some Black residents in Evanston who question if these policies go far enough,
  • "the strict enforcement of existing civil rights law."
  • They fear the limited funds will result in an application process that only high-credit Evanstonians would have access to.
  • "Modernity is our challenge, not social justice"
  • The City Council agrees with that
  • HR 40 was still very much in its infancy,
  • it was designed to establish a commission to examine enslavement and other derivative outcomes
  • It did, however, gain the endorsement of major civil rights organizations
  • Congress was not ready for the bill.
  • Black celebrities
  • In the over three decades since HR 40 reached the House floor, the case for reparations has only grown more organized and action-oriented. Today, the bill has more than 170 co-sponsors and a Senate companion resolution.
  • So it's really an attempt to address both the moral harm, and the crime that slavery and Jim Crow were, but also the wealth gap that was created by both of these institutions,"
  • In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement's resurgence last year,
  • Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and Ahmaud Arbery,
  • cultural experts and the executive branch of government that America has reneged on its promises to African Americans
  • "I think the reality is that we will as Black Americans never gain an entitlement that is commensurate with the suffering we endured.
  • "is that Black Americans will get about exactly as far as they take themselves,
  • However, Simmons sees the critique as an opportunity for more conversations on what reparations could look like for residents
  • Over a century of both legally enforced and de-facto housing discrimination and redlining, blockage from small business loans, and suppression of constitutionally protected civil rights until well into the 1960s
  • n 1920 to roughly 1.3% of US farmers in 2017.
  • history was not studied, it was not known.
anonymous

New York State Sues NYPD Over Its Handling Of 2020 Racial Justice Protests : NPR - 0 views

  • New York Attorney General Letitia James has filed a lawsuit against the New York City Police Department, citing "a pattern of using excessive force and making false arrests against New Yorkers during peaceful protests" that sought racial justice and other changes.
  • The Black Lives Matter movement and other activists organized large protests in New York and other states last year, after the Memorial Day death of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis. Demonstrations grew over similar incidents, including the killing of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Ky.
  • "more than 1,300 complaints and pieces of evidence" about the police response to the protests in New York City. It's now seeking a court order "declaring that the policies and practices that the NYPD used during these protests were unlawful."
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  • Along with the court order, the attorney general is asking for policy reforms, as well as a monitor to be installed to oversee the NYPD's tactics and handling of future protests.
  • The NYPD has been sharply criticized over a number of its officers' actions in the past year. Last May, police SUVs were shown in a video of a protest in Brooklyn, surging into a crowd that had surrounded them. In another incident, an officer drew his gun and pointed it at a crowd of people.
  • The NYPD did not immediately respond to a request for comment. After the lawsuit was filed, the Police Benevolent Association of the City of New York issued a statement blaming the city's leadership for the problems at the protests.
  • The police actions broke state and federal law, James says. The lawsuit alleges that New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio, NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea and NYPD Chief of Department Terence Monahan "failed to prevent and address the pattern or practice of excessive force and false arrests by officers against peaceful protesters in violation of the First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution"
  • James announced the lawsuit against the NYPD Thursday morning, in a virtual news conference that began shortly before New York Gov.
  • Last June, the NYPD suspended at least two officers for their behavior during protests, including an officer who was captured on video pushing a woman to the ground in Brooklyn. Another officer was punished for "pulling down an individual's face mask in Brooklyn and spraying pepper spray at him,
  • Human Rights Watch, an independent watchdog group, issued a report last year on the police misconduct in Brooklyn which said that clearly identified medics and legal observers were among those zip-tied and beaten by police, in a response to the protest which was "intentional, planned, and unjustified."
  • The lawsuit says the police department sent thousands of poorly trained officers to cope with large-scale protests, resulting in mass arrests and attempts to suppress demonstrations. It also says the NYPD made a practice out of "kettling" – corralling people by using physical force and obstructions – to arrest protesters rather than allow crowds to disperse.
  • A Minnesota judge ruled this week that Derek Chauvin, the former police officer who kept his knee on Floyd's neck for several minutes, will stand trial alone when proceedings begin in March. Chauvin is charged with second-degree murder and manslaughter. Readability mode is unavailable for this webpage. Please visit cache page or original page Top - A + ==== Serif ====PT SerifMerriweatherMartelNoto SerifSlabo 27pxAndadaLoraRoboto Slab== Sans Serif ==Source Sans ProOpen SansLato
anonymous

Colorado officials resume review of ketamine program after Elijah McClain's death - CNN - 0 views

shared by anonymous on 16 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • Colorado health officials will resume their review of a program allowing ketamine to be administered outside of hospital settings, an investigation initially announced after the death of Elijah McClain in police custody. The 23-year-old Black man died in August 2019 after paramedics administered the powerful anesthetic during a confrontation with police. A grand jury investigation into McClain's death was announced earlier this month.
  • The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) first announced the ketamine program review last summer, about a year after McClain's death,
  • Without reviewing individual cases, the CDPHE said it would evaluate authorization for "ketamine use in Colorado, in the prehospital setting and associated outcomes at a statewide level." "This more clearly defined scope will allow us to do a review that examines the health outcomes of ketamine administration by EMS providers in the field, broadly,
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  • Ketamine has been used illegally as a club drug. The medication, which is used in hospitals primarily as an anesthetic, generates an intense high and dissociative effects. EMS providers in Colorado need a waiver from the CDPHE to use ketamine in the field. The drug is allowed to be administered for patients "with a presumptive diagnosis or excited delirium,"
  • Paramedics administered ketamine to McClain after he was stopped one night in August 2019 by three White Aurora police officers as he walked home from a convenience store. A 911 called had reported a "suspicious person," according to a police news release that said McClain "resisted contact" with officers before a struggle ensued. McClain is heard in footage from an officer's body camera telling the officers, "I'm an introvert, please respect the boundaries that I am speaking."
  • Paramedics arrived and administered ketamine, the letter said. McClain was taken to a hospital but suffered a heart attack on the way, and he was declared brain dead three days later, the letter said.
  • The report noted McClain's history of asthma and the carotid hold, though the autopsy did not determine whether it contributed to McClain's death. The concentration of ketamine in his system was at a "therapeutic level," the report said.
  • The district attorney declined to file criminal charges at the time, but the case attracted renewed attention last summer after the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. As protests took place across the country, demonstrations in the Denver suburb focused on McClain and his family's calls for justice, and Gov. Jared Polis tapped Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser to review the case. Weiser announced this month he was opening a grand jury investigation into McClain's death
mimiterranova

Med Students Craft Hippocratic Oath Addressing Racial Injustice : Shots - Health News :... - 0 views

  • "We start our medical journey amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, and a national civil rights movement reinvigorated by the killings of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery,"
  • Increasingly, medical professionals are joining protests for racial justice and acknowledging racism's impact on public health. For example, Black residents of Allegheny County, where Pittsburgh is the county seat, have been disproportionately hurt by the coronavirus, as have Blacks in other parts of the United States. Though 13% of Allegheny County is Black, Black residents make up nearly 19% of cases and 30% of COVID-19 hospitalizations.
  • The new oath asks physicians to eliminate their personal biases, combat disinformation to improve health literacy and be an ally to minorities and other underserved groups in society.
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  • It also calls on each doctor to pledge to learn about the social determinants of health "to use my voice as a physician to advocate for a more equitable health care system from the local to the global level."
  • Some doctors have said they worry that the proliferation of different versions of physician oaths could weaken their intended effect on the profession
katherineharron

Activists move from 'protests to the polls' in a push to shape a slew of local races on... - 0 views

  • Progressive activists are working to turn this year's nationwide protests over police brutality and racial injustice into results at the polls on Election Day,
  • Georgia Democrats need to flip 16 seats out of 180 to take control of the chamber.
  • In addition, the Color of Change PAC, the political arm of a longstanding civil rights organization, has endorsed a slate of what it defines as progressive prosecutors. And liberal organizations recently created The Frontline initiative to turn out young people of color.
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  • The Working Families Party, aligned with high-profile progressives, such as New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is battling on behalf of liberal candidates in contests that will decide who holds positions as sheriffs and prosecutors.
  • "We're going from protests to the polls," Angela Angel, a former Maryland state legislator who is a senior adviser to the new Black Lives Matter PAC, told CNN. "We understand in this moment that the real power is in exercising our right to vote."
  • the group has targeted young voters in more than a dozen key states with a particular focus on reaching people who had requested absentee ballots but had not yet returned them.
  • In Georgia, a traditionally red state now in play in this year's presidential and US Senate elections, the Black Lives Matter PAC is backing Joyce Barlow, a Democrat running for the Georgia House of Representatives to represent a swath of rural southwest Georgia.
  • A study released earlier this year by the Prosecutors and Politics Project at the University of North Carolina's Law School at Chapel Hill examined more than 2,300 prosecutors' races around the country and found contested elections in fewer than 700 -- or less than a third -- in either the primary or general election.
  • The groups engaged in electoral politics include Black Lives Matter, the sprawling social justice organization closely associated with this year's protests.
  • Tuesday's election "isn't just about the presidency. Your money, your minimum wage is on the ballot."
  • "We saw that very different outcomes were realized by Black people killed by police violence, based on the prosecutors elected in their jurisdictions," said Arisha Hatch, who oversees the Color of Change PAC.
  • Taylor's mother has sought the appointment of an independent prosecutor to handle the case. In September, Cameron announced that a grand jury indicted one former Louisville Metro Police Department Detective Brett Hankison, with three counts of first-degree wanton endangerment in connection with his actions on the night of the raid.
  • But the Color of Change PAC and other liberal groups are putting their political muscle into local prosecutors' races around the country
  • In Florida, meanwhile, the PAC is urging a "yes" vote on Amendment 2, which would phase in a $15-an-hour minimum wage in the Sunshine State by 2026.
  • Rural counties might lack enough lawyers to mount a challenge to an incumbent. Prosecutor elections don't generate much attention. And voters don't always understand the power local county and district attorneys wield.
  • The Working Families Party mailers in the race tout Rucker's opposition to cash bail for non-violent offenses. "People shouldn't be sitting in jail because they can't afford to not be there," Rucker said in an interview with CNN.
  • The Working Families Party's "people's charter" calls to "shift resources away from policing, jails and detention centers" and into schools, housing and jobs programs.
Javier E

'Can We Please Talk About Black Lives Matter for One Second?' - The New York Times - 0 views

  • “I’m tired of white people talking for me,” the speaker continued. “I love you guys — you’re all my allies, and I love you all — but I would love for all the Black people to talk up here.
  • for all the council members and affiliates, please stop using Black Lives Matter for your political campaigns. I’m really sorry. I want to tax Amazon, too; I want to do all those things, too. But this is not a movement for you to be politically active, for you to be politically correct and for you to gain all these votes
  • What should be done about all these white people? Protest data is notoriously bad, but it hardly seems controversial to ask whether there has ever been an American civil rights moment in which hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of white people have taken to the streets, thousands of whom have been tear-gassed, beaten or chased down by the police
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  • yet most of these proposals are mere proposals. Even if the goal extends only to reforming Police Departments, pressure must still come from the streets; white people will have to continue to show up.
  • The speech could also double as a prompt for a full-throated debate on the left about the complex interplay between representation-based identity politics and other political goals.
  • If every action turns into a voter-registration party, the movement will have failed to secure the bare minimum of what it set out to accomplish: a radical change in policing.
  • he future of these national protests depends, in no small part, on the careful navigation between Swalwell’s sloganeering, gestural version of identity politics and a Black-centered radical movement that calls, in the words of the C.R.C., for an inclusive politics that also fights for “women, third world and working people.”
  • I have sensed in them an intense desire for some message of solidarity focused squarely on the deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor. This, as the City Hall speaker pointed out, cannot be a carrot to keep white people engaged, nor should it stop only at police reform.
Javier E

Donald in Blunderland: Trump won't commit to peaceful power transfer at surreal press b... - 0 views

  • “Will you commit to make sure there’s a peaceful transferral of power after the election?” Karem asked. All of his 43 predecessors would have said yes, presumably. But Trump replied: “We’re going to have to see what happens, you know that. I’ve been complaining very strongly about the ballots, and the ballots are a disaster.”
  • Karem shot back: “I understand that, but people are rioting. Do you commit to make sure that there’s a peaceful transferral of power?” Still Trump refused to commit. “Get rid of the ballots and you’ll have a very peaceful — there won’t be a transfer, frankly. There will be a continuation. The ballots are out of control. You know it. And you know who knows it better than anybody else? The Democrats know it better than anybody else.”
Javier E

The American Nightmare - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • Another racial text—published by the nation’s premier social-science organization, the American Economic Association, and classified by the historian Evelynn Hammonds as “one of the most influential documents in social science at the turn of the 20th century”—elicited more shock in 1896.
  • “Nothing is more clearly shown from this investigation than that the southern black man at the time of emancipation was healthy in body and cheerful in mind,” Frederick Hoffman wrote in Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro. “What are the conditions thirty years after?” Hoffman concluded from “the plain language of the facts” that black Americans were better off enslaved. They are now “on the downward grade,” he wrote, headed toward “gradual extinction.”
  • Hoffman knew his work was “a most severe condemnation of moderate attempts of superior races to lift inferior races to their elevated positions.” He rejected that sort of assimilationist racism, in favor of his own segregationist racism. The data “speak for themselves,” he wrote. White Americans had been naturally selected for health, life, and evolution. Black Americans had been naturally selected for disease, death, and extinction. “Gradual extinction,” the book concluded, “is only a question of time.
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  • With its pages and pages of statistical charts, Race Traits helped catapult Hoffman into national and international prominence as the “dean” of American statisticians. In his day, Hoffman “achieved greatness,” assessed his biographer. “His career illustrates the fulfillment of the ‘American dream.’”
  • e don’t see any American dream,” Malcolm X said in 1964. “We’ve experienced only the American nightmare.”
  • A nightmare is essentially a horror story of danger, but it is not wholly a horror story. Black people experience joy, love, peace, safety. But as in any horror story, those unforgettable moments of toil, terror, and trauma have made danger essential to the black experience in racist America. What one black American experiences, many black Americans experience. Black Americans are constantly stepping into the toil and terror and trauma of other black Americans
  • Because they know: They could have been them; they are them. Because they know it is dangerous to be black in America, because racist Americans see blacks as dangerous.
  • To be black and conscious of anti-black racism is to stare into the mirror of your own extinction.
  • Ask the souls of the 10,000 black victims of COVID-19 who might still be living if they had been white. Ask the souls of those who were told the pandemic was the “great equalizer.” Ask the souls of those forced to choose between their low-wage jobs and their treasured life. Ask the souls of those blamed for their own death. Ask the souls of those who disproportionately lost their jobs and then their life as others disproportionately raged about losing their freedom to infect us all. Ask the souls of those ignored by the governors reopening their states.
  • The American nightmare has everything and nothing to do with the pandemic. Ask the souls of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and George Floyd. Step into their souls.
  • History ignored you. Hoffman ignored you. Racist America ignored you. The state did not want you to breathe. But your loved ones did not ignore you. They did not ignore your nightmare. They share the same nightmare.
  • Your loved ones are protesting your murder, and the president calls for their murder, calls them “THUGS,” calls them “OUT OF STATE” agitators. Others call the violence against property senseless—but not the police violence against you that drove them to violence. Others call both senseless, but take no immediate steps to stem police violence against you, only to stem the violence against property and police.
  • Hoffman compiled racial health disparities to argue that black Americans are, by their very nature and behavior, a diseased and dying people. Hoffman cataloged higher black mortality rates and showed that black Americans were more likely to suffer from syphilis, tuberculosis, and other infectious diseases than white Americans.
  • perhaps the worst of the nightmare is knowing that racist Americans will never end it. Anti-racism is on you, and only you. Racist Americans deny your nightmare, deny their racism, claim you have a dream like a King, when even his dream in 1967 “turned into a nightmare.”
  • Black people are supposed to be feared by all, murdered by police officers, lynched by citizens, and killed by COVID-19 and other lethal diseases. It has been proved. No there there. Black life is the “hopeless problem,” as Hoffman wrote.
  • In the first nationwide compilation of racial crime data, Hoffman used the higher arrest and incarceration rates of black Americans to argue that they are, by their very nature and behavior, a dangerous and violent people—as racist Americans still say today.
  • Mayors issue curfews. Governors rattle their sabers. The National Guard arrives to protect property and police. Where was the National Guard when you faced violent police officers, violent white terrorists, the violence of racial health disparities, the violence of COVID-19—all the racist power and policy and ideas that kept the black experience in the American nightmare for 400 years?
  • While black Americans view their experience as the American nightmare, racist Americans view black Americans as the American nightmare.
  • Racist Americans, especially those racists who are white, view themselves as the embodiment of the American dream. All that makes America great. All that will make America great again. All that will keep America great.
  • Their American dream—that this is a land of equal opportunity, committed to freedom and equality, where police officers protect and serve—is a lie. Their American dream—that they have more because they are more, that when black people have more, they were given more—is a lie. Their American dream—that they have the civil right to kill black Americans with impunity and that black Americans do not have the human right to live—is a lie.
  • Take Minneapolis. Black residents are more likely than white residents to be pulled over, arrested, and victimized by its police force. Even as black residents account for 20 percent of the city’s population, they make up 64 percent of the people Minneapolis police restrained by the neck since 2018, and more than 60 percent of the victims of Minneapolis police shootings from late 2009 to May 2019. According to Samuel Sinyangwe of Mapping Police Violence, Minneapolis police are 13 times more likely to kill black residents than to kill white residents, one of the largest racial disparities in the nation. And these police officers rarely get prosecuted.
  • A typical black family in Minneapolis earns less than half as much as a typical white family—a $47,000 annual difference that is one of the largest racial disparities in the nation. Statewide, black residents are 6 percent of the Minnesota population, but 30 percent of the coronavirus cases as of Saturday, one of the largest black case disparities in the nation, according to the COVID Racial Data Tracker.
  • In April, many Americans chose the racist explanation: saying black people were not taking the coronavirus as seriously as white people, until challenged by survey data and majority-white demonstrations demanding that states reopen. Then they argued that black Americans were disproportionately dying from COVID-19 because they have more preexisting conditions, due to their uniquely unhealthy behaviors. But according to the Foundation for AIDS Research, structural factors such as employment, access to health insurance and medical care, and the air and water quality in neighborhoods are drivers of black infections and deaths, and not “intrinsic characteristics of black communities or individual-level factors.”
  • Americans should be asking: Why are so many unarmed black people being killed by police while armed white people are simply arrested? Why are officials addressing violent crime in poorer neighborhoods by adding more police instead of more jobs? Why are black (and Latino) people during this pandemic less likely to be working from home; less likely to be insured; more likely to live in trauma-care deserts, lacking access to advanced emergency care; and more likely to live in polluted neighborhoods? The answer is what the Frederick Hoffmans of today refuse to believe: racism.
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