Monday, June 1, 2020
NO MORE COP UNIONS
By Kim Kelly, The New Republic.
May 30, 2020
https://popularresistance.org/no-more-cop-unions/
Abolishing Police Unions Should Be Part Of The Broader Fight To Defund, Demilitarize, And Ultimately Dismantle The U.S. Police Force.
When Derek Chauvin of the Minneapolis Police Department killed 46-year-old George Floyd in cold blood last week, he showed the world exactly what kind of man he is. Chauvin has been cited multiple times for using excessive force on the job; he has been involved in at least two other police shootings, including that of Ira Latrell Toles, who is Black, in 2008. Chauvin has repeatedly abused his power, privilege, and authority to menace and terrorize—and he’s now been shown killing a human being on camera. Even so, he remains free to cower in his house and order delivery while demonstrators protest outside. And thanks to the tangled auspices of union affiliation, he’s also someone who technically counts as my “union brother.”
Today just 12 percent of the American workforce is unionized, and labor laws bar a vast swath of workers (particularly those who are classified as independent contractors or who are undocumented) from basic labor protections. But police are a high-density union profession—which creates no small amount of distress to labor activists in a moment like this. True, the 2018 Janus vs. AFSCME Supreme Court decision on public-sector union organizing had some cop unions nervous about their membership rolls, but police forces remain heavily unionized throughout the country. Police unions represent hundreds of thousands of members in state, federal, and local jurisdictions. (The Fraternal Order of Police, the nation’s largest cop union, has more than 340,000 members.)
And most of these union members are independent from any other labor organizations—which means, in turn, that they’re at best marginally involved with the most pressing mission of today’s labor movement, which concentrates on organizing many of the same low-wage, service-sector communities of color who are disproportionately abused and harassed by police. It wouldn’t make any sort of strategic sense for police-affiliated unions to try and make nice with the rest of the movement. So that leaves one obvious, if tricky, option: abolishing police unions as part of the broader fight to defund, demilitarize, and ultimately dismantle the U.S. police force as it currently exists. Labor leaders should seize upon this crucial moment to fully embrace this aim—and some already have.
However, it’s not exactly a simple or straightforward proposition. The International Union of Police Associations, which represents over 100,000 law enforcement employees as well as emergency medical personnel, is officially affiliated with the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, the largest federation of unions in the United States. Its membership comprises 55 national and international unions, and it counts 12 million active and retired members. But if the federation wants to prove that it’s seriously committed to racial justice and true worker solidarity, the AFL-CIO must permanently disaffiliate from the IUPA and sever its ties with any and all other police associations.
There is already precedent for such a move. The AFL-CIO has disaffiliated from other unions in the recent past, most notably the Teamsters, the Service Employees International Union, and most recently, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, whose leaders criticized the federation for failing to throw its considerable weight behind progressive health care and immigration policy. Given the ongoing epidemic of racist police violence against the Black community and other communities of color in the U.S., there is no better reason—and no better time—to take a stand. It’s already been a long time coming.
After all, the partnership between the police unions and the federation is hardly shatterproof. The IUPA only chartered with the AFL-CIO in 1979; since then, the cops’ union has expanded into affiliations with law enforcement and corrections officers in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. And much like the AFL-CIO-affiliated National Border Patrol Council, which has overseen its own brand of racist terror, police unions seem to realize they’re not exactly welcome among the unions that have been forced to accept them as peers.
“Legally, unions are responsible for representing their members,” Booker Hodges, a former Minnestota police officer who now works as an assistant commissioner for the state’s Department of Public Safety, wrote in a 2018 blog post on Police One. “The public seems to support this premise when it concerns other labor unions, but not those who represent police officers. Even members of other labor unions, particularly those who belong to educator unions, don’t seem to support this premise when it comes to police unions. Many of them have taken to the streets to protest against police officers, criticized police unions for defending their members and called for an end of binding arbitration for police officers.”
It’s also not as though the police unions’ leaders are taking any pains to show solidarity, or even sympathy, with their fellow workers. Rather, police unions have a long, wretched history of doing exactly the opposite: playing on public fears and misconceptions to push damaging “no angel” narratives about the victims of police violence, while also howling about the “bravery” and “sacrifice” their employees make to “protect” fellow citizens.
For example, on its official website, the IUPA linked to a May 27 Police magazine article that characterized George Floyd’s killing as “the death of a suspect during an arrest in which a Minneapolis officer put his knee on the back of the man’s neck to pin him to the ground.” This was a naked attempt to mislead readers and convince them that Chauvin has to be categorically innocent. It’s also in keeping with the “thin blue line” model of deference to the life-and-death authority granted by reflex to most municipal cops: The law enforcement community—and especially its unions’—first response, when one of its officers is caught red-handed, is to circle the wagons, vilify the victim or survivor, and bat away any criticism or dissent as virtual sedition. If and when reforms are introduced in the wake of an abuse of police powers, police and their unions remain in wagon-circling mode, determined to shoot them down. The bottom line here is all too plain: The police do not want reform; they want the freedom to operate with impunity.
The article IUPA boosted also took care to note that, in Minneapolis, kneeling on a suspect’s neck is apparently considered a “non-deadly force option” (albeit one that is banned elsewhere in Minnesota). And in a gruesome twist, Lieutenant Bob Kroll, the president of the Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis, has not only allowed his membership to continue utilizing these violent, fear-based training tactics but also has actively encouraged their use. After Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey banned such tactics in 2019, Kroll pushed back and went so far as to offer free “warrior-style” classes to the union’s 800 members over the remaining three years of Frey’s term. Now Kroll and the union have George Floyd’s blood on their hands and are finally facing some much-needed and long-overdue scrutiny.
One of the only public statements that Kroll has made following Floyd’s murder has been to correct the rumor that Chauvin took part in a recent Trump rally. The photos actually depicted Mike Gallagher, the president of the police union in Bloomington, Minnesota, where a Somali-American police officer was convicted of murdering a white woman in 2017. That officer, Mohamed Noor, holds the dubious honor of being the only Minneapolis police officer to be convicted in an on-duty, fatal shooting, and Kroll drew criticism for throwing said officer, who is Black, under the bus.
For his part, Chauvin had 18 prior complaints filed with Minneapolis Police Department’s Internal Affairs, while his accomplice Tou Thao was the subject of six complaints (including one that was still open as of the time of his firing). This is, among other things, a stiff rebuke to the effort to dismiss systemic violence as the work of “a few bad apples.” These two apples were, in fact, already known to be rotten—yet there they were, armed, dangerous, and interacting daily with the public.
Unfortunately, union protection plays no small role in keeping cops like Chauvin and Thao out on the streets. Collective bargaining agreements for police generally include normal language around wages and benefits but can also act as an unbreachable firewall between the cops and those they have injured. Typically, such contracts are chock full of special protections that are negotiated behind closed doors. Employment contract provisions also insulate police from any meaningful accountability for their actions and rig any processes hearings in their favor; fired cops are able to appeal and win their jobs back, even after the most egregious offenses. When Daniel Pantaleo, an NYPD officer who was involved in the 2014 murder of Eric Garner, was finally fired, the police union immediately appealed for his reinstatement and threatened a work slowdown. Now the Sergeants Benevolent Association’s official Twitter account spends most of its time needling New York City Mayor De Blasio and spouting profanity and pro-Trump propaganda.
Ultimately, police unions protect their own, and the contracts they bargain keep killers, domestic abusers, and white supremacists in positions of deadly power—or provide them with generous pensions should they leave. The only solidarity they show is for their fellow police officers; other workers are mere targets. Their interests, as well as those of other right-wing oppressors’ unions like those that represent ICE, border patrol, and prison guards, are diametrically opposed to those of the workers whom the labor movement was launched to protect. As retired NYPD commander Corey Pegues wrote in his memoir, Once a Cop, police unions are “a blanket system of covering up police officers.”
Despite their union membership, police have also been no friend to workers, especially during strikes or protests. Their purpose is to protect property, not people, and labor history is littered with accounts of police moonlighting as strikebreakers or charging in to harass or injure striking workers. The first recorded strike fatalities in U.S. history came at the hands of police, who shot two New York tailors dead as they tried to disperse. During the Battle of Blair Mountain, the police fought striking coal miners on the bosses’ behalf. In 1937, during the Little Steel Strike, Chicago police gunned down 10 striking steelworkers in what became known as the Memorial Day Massacre. In 1968, days after Dr. Martin Luther King addressed a group of sanitation workers, Memphis cops maced and assaulted the striking workers and their supporters, killing a 16-year-old boy.
As the Industrial Worker noted on Twitter, current AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka was president of the United Mineworkers of America during the 1989 Pittston Coal Strike, and he “harshly criticized” the police for engaging in violence against the striking miners. Trumka’s long career as a union official has furnished him with decades of object lessons in the lengths to which the state will go to protect financial power and the interests of elites; he has also seen firsthand how readily striking or protesting workers are thrown into the line of fire by the police and military. During his tenure at the AFL-CIO, Trumka has supported progressive causes and spoken out against the legacies of racism, within and without the labor movement. This week, Trumka astutely tweeted that “racism plays an insidious role in the daily lives of all working people of color. This is a labor issue because it is a workplace issue. It is a community issue, and unions are the community.”
In a 2008 speech at a United Steelworkers convention in support of then-candidate Barack Obama, Trumka quoted conservative philosopher Edmund Burke, saying “all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.” More than a decade later, it’s all too clear that evil continues to triumph. Doing nothing in this context means allowing police unions to continue holding a comfortable berth within the labor movement, even as they keep shielding and supporting racists, abusers, and killers. As Trumka has also said, we can no longer sit still and avoid confronting issues of racial and economic inequality.
It’s imperative to take action now. The AFL-CIO has a chance to atone for its past racial transgressions by moving toward a more just, equitable, and intersectional labor movement. Disaffiliating with the IUPA is only a start, but it would be an important step in the right direction. The decision would draw a line in the sand and show the federation’s broader membership that union leaders truly believe that Black lives matter—and that the working class deserves to feel safe and protected in our own communities. The Industrial Workers of the World has long barred law enforcement (and prison guards) from its membership rolls; it’s high time for the AFL-CIO to follow its lead.
The age-old query “Which side are you on?” has rung out at rallies and picket lines and vigils since Florence Reece put the slogan to paper in 1931. It hung in the air while police were maiming striking coal miners then, and it remains on the lips of the millions of modern workers fighting for a fair shake. As we once more raise our voices and ask ourselves that question, the only acceptable response is crystal-clear: that we’re on the side of the workers, not their abusers and oppressors. As Reece once sang, there can be no neutrals here.
HEALTH CARE WORKERS CALL ON LABOR MOVEMENT TO TAKE ACTION
https://popularresistance.org/health-care-workers-call-on-labor-movement-to-take-action/
A Group Of Socialist Health Care Workers Put Forward A Statement In Solidarity With Actions Against Police And Racist Violence, Demanding Justice For George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, Ahmaud Arbery, And Sean Reed, And Call On Unions And Healthcare Organizations To Take Up This Struggle.
We Condemn the Racist Police Murder of George Floyd and Believe Police Violence is a Public Health Crisis
As health care workers, we condemn the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers as an act of racist violence. We condemn the murder of Breonna Taylor by Louisville police officers as an act of racist violence. We condemn the murder of Tony McDade by Tallahassee police officers as an act of racist violence. Their killings are just a handful of countless examples of police brutality responsible for the early deaths of many Black people in the United States. Black people are three times more likely than white people to die by police violence. As health care workers, we witness first-hand how widespread racist police brutality harms Black and brown people. We understand the anti-Black, racist origins of the institution of policing, initially created to patrol and entrap people who had escaped enslavement. Thus, we recognize police violence as a critical public health threat, and racism as a public health crisis.
CLICK HERE TO SIGN ON.
We Condemn Racist Enforcing of Social Distance Measures in Black and Brown Communities
In New York City, the NYPD arrested 40 individuals for ‘breaking’ social distancing measures during the Covid-19 pandemic, 35 of whom were Black. Meanwhile, multiple photographic and video evidence showed white groups congregating in parks and public venues without disruption. This invasive and selective enforcement of policing, surveillance, and punishment of Black and Brown communities reflects racist practices in the name of public health.
We Believe Health Care Workers Are Working Class and Should Stand in Solidarity with Black-and-Indigenous-Led Movements, Especially During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Health care workers are part of a multi-racial, multi-ethnic working class that is repeatedly subjected to racist bigotry and violence. Inside the U.S.corporatized healthcare system, we are reduced to conduits of profit-generation for large hospital and clinic systems that prioritize their capital interests over patient health and worker safety. The labor of health care workers is exploited similarly to non-health care workers, but in the age of COVID-19, health care workers are the sole recipients of “thanks” and “praise” for being on the “frontlines” of a global pandemic. In stark contrast, the underpaid, underprotected, and underprotected members of the Black and brown working class keep our cities moving, but are most frequently subjected to the systemic racism of frantic 911 calls, escalated police violence, and ultimately, early demise.
As health care workers, we oppose the racism that permeates our institutions and we oppose the economic structure that elevates profits over people. We commit to uplifting the narratives of Black and Indigenous people, and intentionally supporting their leadership in the movement.
We Denounce Professionalism and Dual Loyalty
We denounce practices and expectations of professionalism and dual loyalty. As healthcare workers we are often told to maintain “professionalism” while interacting with representatives of institutions that harm our patients. This maintenance of professionalism can lead us to accept and be cordial with institutions harming the health of the public. It reinforces the status quo of white supremacy. It legitimizes institutions like racist policing and helps protect such destructive institutions from being challenged, while keeping us silent around issues that matter. Black, Indigenous, and other healthcare workers of color perhaps understand best the terrifying nature of dual loyalties. We will no longer stand by, normalizing and maintaining white supremacist and class power, as the patients we serve are killed on the street.
We Denounce Worker Expendability Under Racial Capitalism, Especially Under COVID-19
We denounce capitalism’s subjugation of workers and its dependence on structural racism and racist policing. We see the effects of this dynamic in everyday interactions with our patients. The division and control of workers under racial capitalism forces us all to work in unsafe conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic. We believe it is no coincidence that in our systemically racist society, the bulk of “essential workers” are the same Black and brown people who are disproportionately affected by COVID-19.
We Stand in Solidarity with Actions Against Racist Violence
We recognize that racist, white nationalist violent acts are increasing with President Trump’s continued racist and xenophobic rhetoric. The people of Minnesota, along with others around the country, are rising up against racist and capitalist oppression through the use of a variety of strategic and direct methods. We recognize these mixed methods as legitimate and necessary expressions of righteous anger felt by people pushed to the edge by a social order meant to disenfranchise them, and believe in their revolutionary potential.
As healthcare workers we stand in solidarity with those resisting the racism that exists in the United States, a country founded on genocide and enslavement and conceived on stolen indigenous land. We condemn racist police terrorizing the communities we serve and we will no longer remain silent while this continues. We believe in eliminating the disease of policing, the white supremacist capitalist structure that underlies it, and all other systems that benefit from terrorizing communities in this country and around the world.
We demand that our unions and respective healthcare organizations take up and support this fight immediately. We demand justice for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, Ahmaud Arbery, Sean Reed and all the victims of police violence. Firing these officers is not enough. Instead there must be detention and prosecution of the police involved in these killings. In the words of Minneapolis protestors, “Prosecute the police! No Justice, No Peace!”
We will join this fight.
CLICK HERE TO SIGN ON.
Email: socialisthealthcareworkers@gmail.com
Signed,
Tre Kwon – Registered Nurse, NYC.
Jillian Primiano – Registered Nurse, NYC
Mike Pappas – Physician, NYC
Shreya Mahajan – Nurse, DC
Jocelyn Camacho – Nurse, NYC
Musaub Khan – Medical Doctor, NYC
Vanessa Ferrel – Medical Doctor, NYC
Nicole Denuccio – Registered Nurse, NYC
Derrick Smith – Registered Nurse, NYC
Sarah Baden – Medical Doctor, New York
Timothy Munier – Registered Nurse, New York
Ashley Guadalupe-Padgett -Physician, New York
Mara Phelan – Resident Doctor, New York
Mark Bornstein – Physician, New Yorknyc
Kavya Minama Reddy – Physician, NYC
Mallika Govindan – Physician, NYC
Peter Marcus – Physician, NY
Tonie McKenzie – Resident physician, Brooklyn, NY
Lakshmi Babu – Physician, Unionville
Natasha Marks – Registered Nurse, NYC
Anuj Rao – Medical Doctor, NYC
Tasha Smith – Nurse Practitioner, New York
Arielle Gerard – Physician, Brooklyn, NY
Lara Weiss – Medical Doctor, NYC
Mark Edouard – Resident Physician, NYC
Jordano Sanchez – Resident Physician, New York
Vanessa Van Doren – Physician, Atlanta
Lukmanafis Babajide – Physician, Newark
Alexander Jordan – Medical Doctor, NYC
Alex Ewenczyk – Medical Doctor, psychiatry pgy3, NYC
Cori Hompesch – Registered Nurse, NYC
Erica Anunwah – Medical Student, San Diego
Jenna Schmitz – MPH, Midwife, Bronx
Katherine Mullins – Medical Doctor, NYC
Hugo Ortega – Medical Doctor, NYC
Leopoldine Matialeu – Medical Doctor, San Diego, CA
Libby Brubaker – Resident Physician – New York
Anita Sreedhar – Incoming medicine resident – New York City
Kimberly Jocelyn – Supervisor, Public Health Advisor & Public Health Analyst , New York
Payal Desai – Resident Physician, Oakland, CA
Anne Chmilewski – Physician, AZ
Antoinette mason – Physician, Santa Rosa, CA
Jennifer Fish – Medical Doctor, Santa Rosa, CA
Cecilia Divin – MD Family medicine physician, Sacramento,CA
Ramsey Salem – Resident, Los Angeles
Daniel Woolridge – Medical Doctor, San Francisco
Jennifer Tsoi Keihner – Physician, Long Beach, CA
Kristin Brownell – Physician, San Diego
Jennifer devries – Resident physician, Martinez, california
Martha Muna – Medical Doctor, San Francisco
Karla Panameño – Resident , Santa Rosa
Conner Paez – Medical student, San Diego
Christine Fitzsimmons – Registered Nurse, New York
Karla Panameño – Resident, Santa Rosa
Mariah Hansen – Psychologist, Santa Rosa
Darshan Patel – Physician, Albuquerque, NM
Tahereh Naderi – Medical Doctor, Santa Rosa, CA
Vanessa Cobian – Medical Doctor, San Diego
Safi Ahmed – Physician, Santa Rosa CA
Jackie Zewe – Medical Student, San Diego
Lisa Damberger – New Grad RN, Santa Rosa
Musaub Khan – MD, New York
Jennifer Menjivar-Lopez – Doctor, San Francisco
Jamille Rancourt – Physician Assistant, New Haven CT
Jennifer McArthur – Physician, Memphis
Kathleen Mayor-Lynn – Medical Doctor, Nashville
Yen Truong – Physician, Castro Valley, CA
Michelle Mc Abee – Public Health Professional, NY
Nilima Singh – Medical Doctor, Kendall Park
Cassidy Mellin – Medical Doctor, San Francisco
Padade Vue – Medical Doctor, Seattle
Aaron Shapiro – Medical Resident, Bronx, NY
Ekatherina Osman – Physician, Brooklyn
Rachel Clark – Medical doctor, NYC
Kelsey Wilson-Henjum – Physician, New York City
Nasir Malim – DO , NYC
Stasha O’Callaghan – Medical Doctor, New York
Sara Bazan – Physician, Columbus, Ohio
Yuliana Noah – Resident Physician, NYC
Cindy Prettypaul – Resident, New York
Amelia Bueche – Physician, Ashland, Oregon
York Chen – MD, New York City
Sonia Abuzakhm – Medical Doctor, Columbus Ohio
Tess Fraad-Wolff – Mental Health Care, New York
Robert Rock – Medical Doctor, New York City
Darcy Cassidy – Health Educator, NYC
Mary Paul – Medical Doctor, Long Island, NY
Beatrice Whitaker – Ophthalmologist, Brooklyn, NY
Anita Somani – Medical Doctor, Columbus
Mari Janowsky – Physician, San Diego
Judit Andrea Staneata – Physician, Fayetteville, NC
Kareem.Royes – Doctor, NYC
Natalie Moulton-Levy – Physician, New York, NY
Theresa Meotti – Physician, New York
Sunday, May 31, 2020
Protests against police killing of frontline worker Breonna Taylor escalate in Louisville, Kentucky
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/05/30/tayl-m30.html
By Dominic Gustavo
30 May 2020
Hundreds of demonstrators protested Thursday outside Metro Hall in downtown Louisville, Kentucky, demanding the charging and arrest of the police officers involved in the killing of 26-year-old emergency medical technician (EMT) Breonna Taylor. Demonstrators chanted “no justice, no peace” as the crowd continued to grow. They were met by police in riot gear, who fired smoke bombs and tear gas into the crowds and could be seen grappling with protesters. At least 7 people were injured by live gunfire.
The protests continued throughout the day and into the evening Friday, with demonstrators marching through downtown Louisville and blocking intersections chanting “I can’t breathe,” the last words of George Floyd, a 46-year-old African-American man who was killed Monday by police officers in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His death, caught on bystander video, has sparked four nights of angry protests against police violence across the United States.
Taylor, who was also African-American, was shot dead by police in her home on March 13. The Louisville Metropolitan Police Department (LMPD) officers were serving a “no-knock” warrant as part of a narcotics investigation. According to a complaint submitted on behalf of Taylor’s mother, Tamika Palmer, the police burst into the apartment without announcing themselves.
The legal brief goes on, “The Defendants then proceeded to spray gunfire into the residence with a total disregard for the value of human life. Shots were blindly fired by the officers all throughout Breonna’s home and also into the adjacent home, where a five-year-old child and a pregnant mother had been sleeping. Breonna was shot at least eight times by the officer’s gunfire and died as a result.” No drugs were found in the apartment.
None of the three policemen—LMPD Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly and officers Brett Hankison and Myles Cosgrove—have been charged in the killing of Taylor. However, Kenneth Walker, the boyfriend of Breonna Taylor, was charged with first-degree assault and attempted murder of a police officer. Walker had fired back at the police with his own gun, believing it to be a home invasion. One policeman was struck in the leg.
The police claimed that they announced themselves before breaking into the apartment with a battering ram. But Taylor’s family members and neighbors maintain that the police never announced themselves and that the two believed they were facing a home invasion.
Two months after the murder, and in response to the wrongful death lawsuit filed by Taylor’s family, Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer, a Democrat, was forced to comment publicly on the case for the first time, writing on Twitter: “The Breonna Taylor case is currently under investigation. Therefore, expansive comments are not appropriate until all the facts are known.”
Fischer stated that the LMPD was conducting an internal audit and the results would then be announced publicly. Such internal audits routinely accept police officers’ accounts of events and are often used as means to whitewash cases of official criminality.
On Tuesday, state prosecutors were compelled to drop all charges against Walker. Commonwealth Attorney Tom Wine, who had asked the judge to dismiss charges, told ABC affiliate WHAS11: "There is no amount of cocaine, heroin, marijuana...worth the life of a human being, whether it's a civilian or police officer."
Also this week, Taylor’s lawyers obtained a recording of the 911 emergency call placed by Walker on the night of his partner’s shooting. The recording undermines the LMPD’s story that Walker fired on police after they identified themselves. In the heart wrenching call, Walker can be heard calling out to Taylor, whom has just been shot nearly a dozen times by police. “I don’t know what is happening. Somebody kicked in the door and shot my girlfriend,” Walker states to the police dispatcher on the other end of the line.
The dropping of charges against Walker comes in the midst of the nationwide explosion of popular anger against police brutality. Mass protests in Minneapolis have spiraled out of the authorities’ control, culminating in the burning of the Third Police Precinct building Thursday. President Donald Trump responded by threatening to deploy the National Guard to shoot protesters.
The senseless killing of Taylor, who had been working on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic, has likewise provoked widespread anger and condemnation. A certain parallel can be drawn between her case and that of Floyd. In the case of Floyd, the 4 officers involved have been fired, a largely symbolic action meant to stave off popular unrest, much like the dismissal of charges against Kenneth Walker. Additionally, Derek Chauvin, the police officer shown on video putting his knee on Floyd’s neck, has been arrested and faces charges of third-degree murder and manslaughter.
The authorities clearly hope to neutralize the growing upsurge of anger by the use of these symbolic gestures, but thus far they have been unsuccessful. The demonstrations in Louisville and Minneapolis have been mirrored all over the United States. As of this writing, protests have taken place in New York City; Ypsilanti, Michigan; Columbus, Ohio; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Pensacola, Florida and Los Angeles, California.
The fact that state and local administrations have made limited concessions marks a new stage in the upsurge of the class struggle. The actions of the state, characterized on the one hand by unrestrained brutality, and on the other by frenzied attempts to make amends, are symptomatic of a capitalist system that increasingly finds itself threatened and under siege.
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