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https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/06/03/pers-j03.html
3 June 2020
Following Trump’s announcement that he would deploy the military to crush protests against police violence throughout the country, the Democrats are working to cover up and downplay Trump’s illegal and unconstitutional coup d’état.
Trump has operationalized his efforts to establish a presidential dictatorship, based on the military and the police, through a massive military deployment in Washington, D.C., which is under his direct control. He is also escalating pressure on states to crack down on demonstrations after his threat on Monday to send in the military if they do not respond aggressively enough.
Late Tuesday night, Trump singled out New York City, writing on Twitter that “New York’s Finest are not being allowed to perform their MAGIC but regardless, and with the momentum that the Radical Left and others have been allowed to build, they will need additional help”—that is, the deployment of the military, under the president’s control.
In innumerable public statements, Democratic members of Congress, governors and mayors commenting on Trump’s actions ignored the fascistic and authoritarian character of Trump’s actions, focusing instead on declarations that Trump is not being “helpful” in controlling the demonstrations.
“Let’s not overreact,” said Democratic Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, calling Trump’s statements “bluster.” Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who was asked if she would request military intervention, replied that this would only be necessary “because they’ve [the Trump administration] thrown a lot more gas on a fire that was burning.”
In contrast to the heroism of the demonstrators, who showed up by the tens of thousands in defiance of Trump’s threats, the Democrats have responded with their typical display of fecklessness, cowardice and complicity.
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden delivered a 30-minute address on Tuesday full of mournful moralizing. He declared his wish that Trump had read the Bible, as he “could have learned something” and criticized Trump for fomenting “fear and division.”
Biden effectively equated the actions of protestors with the actions of the fascistic president and the police rampage he has incited. “There is no place for violence,” Biden said. “No place for looting or destroying property or burning churches, or destroying businesses. … Nor is it acceptable for our police, sworn to protect and serve all people, to escalate tensions or resort to excessive violence.”
Biden avoided the central political issue—that the president is engaging in illegal actions and seeking to overthrow the Constitution of the United States.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer issued a perfunctory four-paragraph statement on Trump’s Rose Garden speech which did not include the word “military.”
“At a time when our country cries out for unification, this President is ripping it apart,” they said. “We call upon the President, law enforcement and all entrusted with responsibility to respect the dignity and rights of all Americans.”
Mirroring Trump’s own photo-op in Washington following his speech, Pelosi clutched a Bible before cameras while giving a two-minute address Tuesday morning. “We would hope that the President of the United States would follow the lead of so many presidents before him to be a healer-in-chief and not a fanner of the flame,” Pelosi concluded.
Only six months ago, the impeachment campaign of the Democrats concluded in the House of Representatives, which was presided over by Pelosi. The House approved articles of impeachment against Trump for “high crimes and misdemeanors” that centered on a phone call with the president of Ukraine and allegations that Trump withheld military aid to the country in its war against Russia. Trump was ultimately acquitted by the Republican-controlled Senate.
While the Democrats considered the Ukraine call a basis for removing the President, they pass over in silence the attempt to deploy the military on US soil against domestic protests. Neither Pelosi nor any other Democrat has called for a reconvening of the House and the introduction of a new motion for Trump’s removal from office.
Trump’s demands that opposition to his government be “put down” by deployment of active duty military personnel is blatantly illegal. As Yale Law Professor Bruce Ackerman commented last year:
From the founding onward, the American constitutional tradition has profoundly opposed the President’s use of the military to enforce domestic law. A key provision, rooted in an 1878 statute and added to the law in 1956, declares that whoever “willfully uses any part of the Army or the Air Force” to execute a law domestically “shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years”—except when “expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress.”
As the WSWS has noted repeatedly, the aim of the Democrats in their opposition to Trump over the past three-and-a-half years was to carry out a palace coup. From the beginning of his administration, the Democrats worked to suppress and derail broad-based mass opposition to Trump’s fascistic policies, channeling it behind their own reactionary, anti-Russia campaign.
Now when there is a mass popular movement against Trump, the Democrats devote themselves to the futile effort at calming the situation. When they criticize Trump for “fanning the flames,” they are expressing their fear of a massive social eruption in the working class.
For the past three-and-a-half years, the Democrats have worked with Trump on the essential elements of the domestic policy of the financial oligarchy. Amidst the expanding coronavirus pandemic, they unanimously endorsed the multitrillion-dollar bailout of Wall Street and are helping to enforce the back-to-work campaign spearheaded by the Trump administration.
Absolutely nothing good will come from the Democratic Party. It is a party of Wall Street and the military-intelligence agencies. It is thoroughly hostile to the sentiments that are animating the massive and expanding protests against police violence and the broader social anger among workers that is behind them.
The struggle against the Trump regime can be taken forward only through the independent political mobilization of the working class, in opposition to the Democrats, Republicans and the entire political apparatus of the corporate and financial elite. The fight against police violence and Trump’s moves to presidential dictatorship must be fused with the struggle against inequality, exploitation and the capitalist system.
Andre Damon
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/06/03/bras-j03.html
By Tomas Castanheira
3 June 2020
Responding to the massive demonstrations around the United States and the world, thousands of people took to the streets in Brazilian capitals protesting against police violence, racism and the government of Brazil’s fascistic President Jair Bolsonaro.
On Sunday, hundreds of people participated in a demonstration in downtown Rio de Janeiro denouncing the deadly police operations in the favelas, which left 177 dead in April alone. The protest took as its symbol João Pedro Mattos, a 14-year-old black youth brutally murdered by the police in May. Although the protest was peaceful, the military police attacked the demonstrators, shooting them with rubber bullets and stun grenades. The TV station Globo filmed a policeman pointing a rifle at a defenseless demonstrator raising his hands in the air.
The same day, another demonstration took place in São Paulo, called by organized soccer fans who define themselves as “anti-fascists” and “in defense of democracy.” The protest was attended by more than a thousand people and made references to the murder of George Floyd. In a place nearby, there was a small group of fascist supporters of Bolsonaro, who have been demonstrating every weekend in support of a military intervention and the end of social distancing measures against the coronavirus.
The extreme right-wing militants provoked the demonstrators while being escorted by the military police, who then suppressed the protest with pepper spray, rubber bullets and a “rain of [tear gas and stun] grenades,” according to representatives of the Human Rights Commission of the OAB (Brazilian Bar Association). Six people were arrested.
Right-wing governor João Doria of the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB) welcomed the brutal action of the police, and said it was used to “protect” the demonstrators, preventing a possible conflict. He declared that his government will ban demonstrations in the same place and on the same day and said that the police will control more harshly those who attend future protests, i.e., will prevent them from happening.
After the protests in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, more than a thousand young people marched in Curitiba, capital of Paraná, on Monday night. The police brutally attacked the demonstrators and arrested eight people. Videos show policemen sweeping the streets of the city, throwing bombs and firing rubber bullets at the demonstrators. Police officers were also recorded attacking groups of demonstrators with batons, after they had already been dispersed.
In addition to street demonstrations, videos of Floyd's murder and images of protests and police violence in the US were widely shared on Brazilian social media. Hundreds of thousands felt immediate identification with the social conditions in the United States and with the political response against police violence that is growing internationally.
Brazil is one of the most unequal countries in the world and its contradictions are being intensified by the response of the ruling class to the coronavirus pandemic. The country already has more than 500,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19, a figure exceeded only by that of the United States. With the death toll having surpassed 30,000, the governments in every state, driven by Bolsonaro and a campaign by the media, are promoting the homicidal reopening of all economic activities.
Besides the danger of death from the virus, Brazilian workers are seriously threatened by misery and hunger. Unemployment, already staggering before the beginning of the pandemic, has grown with the cutting of more than five million jobs over the past few months. Among those who are still employed, wage cuts and contract suspensions already affect more than eight million.
The generalized economic despair is being answered by the Brazilian bourgeoisie with the intensification of state violence against workers, especially the most impoverished sections. The state of Rio de Janeiro, after registering last year a 92 percent increase in murders committed by the police, surpassed this rate during the pandemic. Compared to the same period last year, April and early May witnessed a 28 percent increase in the number of police raids on favelas, and a 58 percent rise in the deaths provoked by them.
The terror deliberately spread by the police in the favelas and outskirts of Brazilian cities, many of them majority black, only prepares the generalized employment of violence against the working class and its social opposition to capitalism.
The fascist Bolsonaro—just like US President Donald Trump—is seeking a political base among the police and military for a move toward an openly dictatorial regime. In February of this year, political figures of the Bolsonaro administration led a military police strike in Ceará and spoke on stages to the mutinous cops arguing that “for the first time we have a president who knows what it is to be a military police officer.”
A report by Portal Democratize website reveals that one of the individuals responsible for the repression of the demonstration in São Paulo Sunday is a military police colonel who works for the Center for High Studies in Security of the Military Police and is a fanatical pro-Bolsonaro militant.
Bolsonaro is reinforcing his appeal to the military every weekend in the fascist demonstrations in front of the government palace in Brasilia, in which he is making increasingly ostentatious appearances. Last Sunday the president flew over the demonstration in an official helicopter and then paraded among the demonstrators mounted on a police horse.
Among the organizers of the demonstration in Brasilia is a fascist group directly promoted by government officials, “Brazil's 300.” The day before, they had staged a march against the Supreme Court, carrying torches as in the fascist demonstrations of the American Ku Klux Klan.
Bolsonaro's defense of a police state regime is openly and insistently based on the danger of an uprising of the working class against the capitalist order in Brazil. He has justified his proposals to intensify the domestic use of the army against the population based upon the danger of a massive working class uprising, such as what occurred in Chile at the end of 2019, characterized by him as “terrorist acts.”
At the beginning of the pandemic, he again warned that, “what happened in Chile will be nothing compared to what may happen in Brazil.” And more recently, at a ministerial meeting on April 22, publicized by court order, he claimed that current social conditions are a “fertile ground” for uprisings that threaten the established political order.
The right-wing shift of the ruling class all around the globe, and especially in the United States, is perceived by Bolsonaro as the main point of support for his authoritarian project. On Sunday, as his palace advisors discussed the possibility of deploying the National Guard to repress the initial demonstrations in São Paulo, Bolsonaro retweeted Donald Trump's post that threatened to declare "Antifa" a terrorist organization.
The growing hostility, especially among the youth, to the advance of authoritarianism and the formation of state-financed fascist groups is an important political development.
However, the development of a genuine struggle against fascism and for democratic rights is only possible through a massive political movement of the working class advancing an internationalist and socialist program.
No step forward is possible under the leadership of the bourgeoisie and the pseudo-left parties, who are trying to dominate this movement and whose task is to channel the social opposition behind the bourgeois state. In alliance with the official media, they seek to falsify the nature of the protests that are taking place in the United States and the world, classifying them as a racial movement.
By hiding the multiracial composition of the protests, they are attempting to conceal their own petty-bourgeois class interests, limiting their objectives to the pursuit of state reforms. By establishing that the essence of police violence is “structural racism,” a crime of which all whites are guilty, these reactionary political forces want to silence the working class and push the idea that placing more blacks in positions of power in the state and corporate hierarchy is enough to resolve society's contradictions.
The Workers Party (PT), one of the chief advocates of this right-wing policy, is promoting the candidacy for mayor of Salvador, capital of Bahia, a military police major, alleging that the fact of she is black and a woman makes her a natural representative of “popular interests.”
What these political forces a fear the most, just as Bolsonaro and other bourgeois politicians, is increasing militancy within the working class. Workers in call centers, meat processing plants, hospitals and delivery services have staged independent strikes against exploitation and unsafe working conditions promoted by the capitalists. It is to this revolutionary social force that the youth coming into struggle today must turn.
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Brazilian Trotskyists issue call for working-class action against pandemic
[2 June 2020]
Police massacre nine youth in repression of dance in Sao Paulo favela
[3 December 2019]
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/06/03/fauc-j03.html
By Bryan Dyne
3 June 2020
As the coronavirus pandemic continues to spread in the United States, the Trump administration has begun to roll back its White House Coronavirus Task Force. This has in effect ended even token efforts at the federal level to contain the disease now that all fifty states have begun to reopen.
The last time there was a press briefing on the pandemic was on May 22, when there were 1.6 million officially confirmed cases in the country and 97,600 deaths. The last time the task force was assembled, led by Vice President Mike Pence, was May 28, when there were more than 1.7 million cases and at least 103,000 deaths. As of today, the coronavirus has infected nearly 1.9 million people and killed more than 108,000 men, women and children in the United States.
Trump himself has largely stopped talking to his public health advisers. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, last spoke to Trump on May 18 in a call with the governors on the disease, according to CNN. In an interview with Stat News, Fauci noted that the president has not been interested in discussing the progress in fighting the pandemic or making a vaccine for the virus in the past few weeks.
He said, “As you probably noticed, the task force meetings have not occurred as often lately. And certainly, my meetings with the president have been dramatically decreased.”
The abandonment of the task force comes in the wake of Trump’s touting of hydroxychlorquine, Remdesivir and Moderna’s vaccine, as well as ingested bleach as cures for the deadly contagion. In each case, Trump was forced to walk back claims that some sort of “miracle drug” had been found in the face of opposition from his own team as well as the medical industry itself.
The rising case numbers and death toll are a warning that, despite the claims at the end of April that the country had succeeded in “flattening the curve,” the pandemic is ongoing. Since mid-May, the number of newly confirmed infections has not been going down nationally but holding steady at an average of 20,000 new cases each day, along with an average of at least 1,000 new deaths.
The pandemic has in particular begun spreading in the American South and West, which had not been initially as hard hit as New York, New Jersey, Michigan, California and Illinois. Now, however, the disease is rapidly spreading in all regions of the country and the case counts per capita in each state are becoming more equal than they were a month ago.
The situation is similar if not worse internationally. The number of new cases each day has been rising since the middle of last month and spiked above 125,000 on May 29. There have been at least 100,000 new cases globally each day for the past seven days, bring the total number of cases to well over 6.4 million. There are at the same time more than 381,000 deaths caused by the pandemic internationally, a number that is poised to accelerate as the virus continues its deadly course.
Despite the increasing dangers from the disease, every state in the US has reopened its economy in some form, pulling back measures that were implemented in an effort to slow the spread of the virus.
Auto plants, Amazon warehouses and meatpacking factories, along with a whole host of other industries where the virus transmits easily from worker to worker, have forced their employees back to work with little to no personal protective equipment. There have already been reports of workers contracting the disease and dying as a result, with no doubt many more instances that have gone suppressed by the corporations and unreported in the mainstream media.
As a result of these reopenings, numerous scientific models of the pandemic now estimate that the number of cases in the US could soar as high as 4.3 million by the end of the summer, or 5.4 million if physical distancing rules are fully relaxed. The number of dead could rise to 293,000 in this time frame. By the end of the year, there could be as many as 1.2 million dead in the United States alone.
Moreover, no one in the political establishment has made serious mention of the fact that the nationwide protests against police violence will inevitably be followed by a rise in cases of COVID-19 despite efforts by organizers to promote social distancing and the wearing of face masks. The mass gatherings sparked by the murder of George Floyd will certainly spread the virus further, exacerbating an already dire public health crisis.
A further danger is that there is still not a clear understanding of the actual extent of the pandemic in the country. Estimates of the excess deaths in the United States, particularly those attributed to pneumonia, indicate that the true tally so far caused by the pandemic is about 50 percent higher than what is currently acknowledged. The spread of the disease has been similarly noted as being an undercount.
That the spread of the pandemic is not known is due to the dearth of testing in the United States, even now after more than four months of fighting the disease in the country. While the United States has performed the most tests in the world, it currently ranks 35th on a per capita basis.
In addition, because of the nation’s large population and massive spread, it was estimated in early May by researchers at the Harvard Global Health Institute that the country as a whole needed to ramp up testing to more than 900,000 a day by May 15 to be able to confidently know where the contagion is present. In the month since these predictions were made, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that, at most, half that are being done each day. The Harvard team explicitly noted that as physical distancing measures are relaxed, the number of tests performed each day will need to grow.
Multiple states as well as the CDC were also recently forced to revise the number of tests it had performed downward after it was uncovered that they had been counting the number of tests for the disease itself and tests for antibodies of the disease as essentially the same thing. While both are necessary for tracking the spread of the virus, counting them together artificially inflates the actual number of active coronavirus cases.
The author also recommends:
COVID-19 pandemic exposes a rapidly developing global health crisis
[2 June 2020]
"This president and this administration are at war with justice and well-being—particularly for the communities that lack these fundamentals the most."
by
Jessica Corbett, staff writer
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/06/02/targeted-strike-against-environmental-and-racial-justice-trump-epa-curbs-state-power
With the nation focused on the coronavirus pandemic and protests against U.S. police brutality that have sprung up across the globe, the Trump administration continues to quietly attack federal policies that protect public health and the environment to limit the legal burdens faced by planet-wrecking fossil fuel companies.
"Donald Trump and his administration are nothing if not vindictive, spiteful, and capricious," Food & Water Action executive director Wenonah Hauter said in a statement Tuesday. "This new rule from the EPA, which seeks to undermine a bedrock environmental law and hamstring the rights of states to protect communities from water contamination and climate change, is just the latest example."The Environmental Protection Agency on Monday announced a final rule (pdf) about the Clean Water Act Section 401 certification process for energy infrastructure projects. The rule, first proposed in August 2019, sets a one-year deadline for permitting decisions and restricts the scope of what state and tribal officials can consider.
The Trump administration has completed 66 rollbacks of climate and environmental policies and is pursuing 34 more, which brings the first term total so far to 100, according to a New York Times analysis updated on May 20. The greatest number of completed and in progress rollbacks relate to air pollution and emissions; 11 are about water.
Critics slammed the president and EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist, for curbing states' power to protect residents and the planet by rejecting dirty energy projects—and for making yet another assault on national environmental safeguards in the midst of multiple global crises.
The administration's new rule, Hauter declared, "is a direct response to repeated actions by concerned local communities and responsible state officials in New York and elsewhere to reject dangerous fossil fuel projects that have no business being built where they're not wanted."
"Like so much of what Trump is pursuing now, this is a targeted strike against environmental justice and racial justice," she said. "It's a fact that people of color and low-income communities are disproportionately impacted by the air pollution, water contamination, and climate chaos produced by fossil fuel projects."
"As we're seeing so clearly now across society," Hauter added, "this president and this administration are at war with justice and well-being—particularly for the communities that lack these fundamentals the most."
Wheeler said in a statement Monday that new rule comes in response to an April 2019 executive order from Trump, and is intended to "curb abuses of the Clean Water Act that have held our nation's energy infrastructure projects hostage, and to put in place clear guidelines that finally give these projects a path forward."
Wheeler also reportedly took aim at New York Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo, calling the governor's rejection of the Constitution Pipeline "probably the worst environmental decision by an elected official last year." The canceled pipeline would have brought fracked gas from Pennsylvania to the New York's Southern Tier.
In a series of major wins for climate campaigners, New York regulators and Cuomo have also repeatedly blocked construction of the $1 billion Williams Pipeline. Citing a longtime EPA employee, HuffPost explained how the new rule could impact state deliberations over projects including that one:
Pipelines―like the Williams Pipeline, which aimed to carry gas from the fracking fields of western Pennsylvania to homes in New York City and beyond―"might cross 20, 30, 40 streams, and each stream requires permits," said Mark Ryan, who specialized in Clean Water Act enforcement and permitting during his 24 years as the former EPA regional counsel for the Seattle area.
"With these very, very complex permits like with pipelines, the states will say, 'OK, we want more information... but we don't want to deny certification, but you have to withdraw the permit application,'" he said. "This new rule says states can't do that."
That means states must either grant or deny permits within 12 months or the EPA will deem the state permit waived. This incentivizes pipeline companies to withhold information states would need to fully assess a projects' impacts on water "to try to force the state to certify the permit," Ryan said.
Ryan told the Times the rule is "a pretty significant retreat from what they were doing the last 40 years" and could be "very vulnerable" to a legal challenge considering past rulings, including a 1994 U.S. Supreme Court decision. As he put it: "The EPA will have a very hard time convincing the Supreme Court that its current interpretation of the Clean Water Act is correct."
Hauter vowed that Food & Water Action "will be pursuing all avenues available—legal, electoral, and otherwise—to ensure that states have the right to reject fossil fuels as they see fit, and support vulnerable communities everywhere seeking to protect themselves from this malicious administration."
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The opposition party has significant power to halt the president’s authoritarian takeover -- if they don’t use that power right now, they are complicit.
David Sirota
Jun 2 
Donald Trump yesterday deployed federal police to attack peaceful protesters, all to stage a photo op of himself threatening to militarily invade his own country. In response, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer issued a press release, and promised no real action to do anything, days after House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer declared that the U.S. House won’t have any floor votes for another month.
Democrats would have you believe they are victims and have no power in this situation -- which is, in a word, horseshit. And not just run-of-the-mill horseshit we’ve all gotten used to -- this is especially dangerous horseshit, because we need them to actually use the power they currently have to oppose what’s going on. Right now.
They do have real power. The party controls one chamber of Congress that Trump needs to finance his power grab. They also fully control 15 state legislatures and have partial control of another 13 state legislatures. And they control nearly half the nation’s governorships, and most major cities’ mayoralties -- the former of which has authority over the national guard, and the latter of which run the police forces that are committing acts of violence in our streets.
That’s a lot of power to actually do something right now.
So...exactly what can they do? Here are ten kinds of things -- and many of them can be done unilaterally by House Democrats, by states and by cities, and they can be done immediately, not at some unspecified time in the distant future:
1. For the love of God, stop trying to give Trump more police power.
In the lead up to the protests, Democratic congressional leaders had been pushing to fortify Trump’s police powers. Yes, that’s right: They have repeatedly -- and at times stealthily -- worked with Republicans to try to reauthorize the Patriot Act in a way that would strengthen Trump’s warrantless surveillance power. Boosted by groups like Demand Progress, progressive Democratic lawmakers have thankfully helped temporarily stop the reauthorization for now -- but Pelosi has been actively trying to revive the legislation. Giving Trump more police power as he promises to violently crush protests is insane. Stop. Just stop.
2. Do not pass a Pentagon spending bill that would fund Trump’s military invasion of American cities.
During the Iraq War, Democratic lawmakers gave speeches demanding an end to the conflict, and then turned around and cast votes to pass appropriations bills that funded the war. Now we face the prospect of Democratic lawmakers issuing press releases telling Donald Trump to not militarily invade America, and then potentially turning right around and voting for the spending bills to fund that invasion. That would be absolutely unacceptable. House Democrats can halt the annual Pentagon appropriations bill, and write various restrictions into it preventing any resources from being used by the president to deploy troops into American cities, without the explicit consent of Congress. They can also amend the Insurrection Act. In 2006, Congress expanded that statute, which Trump would rely on to domestically deploy the military. Congress can now go the other way and reform that law in ways that reduce Trump’s ability to start a civil war in the United States.
3. Call Trump’s bluff, use his own plan to defund the police -- and launch investigations.
Trump recently proposed federal budgets cutting funding for local police departments. Democrats control the House that must pass a federal budget. Democrats could just sign onto the president’s own past proposals, and begin the process of defunding the police. They could also use their House majority to hold televised hearings spotlighting police abuses, and to issue subpoenas to fully investigate the situation in various cities. And, of course, they could also use all of these budget and oversight powers in legislatures, mayor’s offices and city councils to do the same at the state and municipal levels.
4. Stop giving military-grade weapons to local police departments.
Research has shown a link between police violence and the use of the Pentagon program that provides excess military equipment to local law enforcement agencies. Democrats right now have the power to restrict or fully eliminate that program. They could do it during the upcoming reauthorization of the NDAA, which is the overarching legislation that governs what the Pentagon can and cannot do. Or they could do it on the must-pass, annual Pentagon spending bill. In fact, they already have the legislative language to do that -- it was tried by some House Democrats in 2014, but Democrats helped the GOP-run House kill it back then. Now that the Democrats control the House, they could just pass it.
5. Fire the bad police chiefs and deescalate.
Democratic mayors can fire police chiefs whose police departments are out of control. If you see rampant acts of police violence, as we’ve seen in cities across the country, and you see your Democratic mayor standing by the police chief, then your Democratic mayor is complicit. Your Democratic mayor could instead do what Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer just did after a police shooting there. Your Democratic mayor can also order police to halt their antagonistic expressions of martial power -- the unnecessary flaunting of heavily armed law enforcement and the chest-thumping displays of police power are just heightening tensions. Mayors could instead follow the lead of Newark’s Ras Baraka -- the New York Times reports that his police force has “made a tactical decision not to position police officers in military-style gear along the route” and so far, the city has not seen the kind of violent clashes that we’ve seen in other population centers.
6. Prosecute the bad cops.
Democrats control many district attorneys offices and 22 state attorney generals offices. We’ve heard a lot about police mass arresting peaceful protesters -- we’ve heard much less about whether or not the Democratic Party will use the prosecutorial authority it has to charge police officers for their brutal acts of violence.
7. Restrict the National Guard.
Democratic governors have the power to use the national guard to militarize the situation in their states. But until Trump federalizes the National Guard, they also have the power to carefully restrict or demobilize the national guard’s actions and activities.
8. Pass legislation restricting the police and ending immunity.
Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna has a bill to change use-of-force standards at the federal level, so that under the law, violence must officially be a last resort in police conduct. As he notes: “the current legal standard gives nearly unfettered discretion to police over their use of force, as long as they claim to perceive a threat, even if there were other available options to de-escalate the situation.” There is also new legislation by independent Rep. Justin Amash to end the so-called “qualified immunity” standard that shields police officers and public officials from punishment for violating Americans’ constitutional rights. The House could pass both of these bills, and Democratic state legislatures could pass their own versions of these bills as well.
9. Repeal and block anti-protester laws, and pass state protections.
A recent PEN America report shows that 15 states have passed anti-protester laws and “nearly a third of all states have implemented new regulations on protest-related activity in the past five years.” Democrats in legislatures and governorships can work to repeal these laws, and block similar new laws. They can also be proactive by using their majorities in blue states like New York to pass packages of much-needed reforms designed to bring accountability to local police departments.
10. Stop taking money from police associations.
Among the reasons Democrats haven’t already used their power to protect civil liberties and create stronger accountability is the influence of money -- specifically, the very large sums of money that flow into state and local politics from police associations that oppose real accountability. New York Senate Deputy Majority Leader Mike Gianaris is one of a number of lawmakers who is now saying they will reject this money, and donate the money they have taken and use it to protect protesters. This should become a national trend.
Again, this is not a comprehensive list. However, it is a reminder that while Trump is the central threat to American liberties right now, we should not believe the Democrats’ current narrative that portrays themselves as innocent bystanders. They are in a position to actually deliver on their electoral promises to do whatever they can to oppose Trump.
If they don’t use the power they have right now, they are complicit.
"The commander of the joint chiefs is surveying the streets of D.C. in uniform like he's planning a military assault."
by
Jake Johnson, staff writer
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/06/02/isnt-healthy-democracy-warnings-domestic-military-threat-top-us-general-walks-dc
Why was U.S. Army Gen. Mark Milley, the highest-ranking military officer in the United States, strolling through the streets of the nation's capital Monday night?
That question was raised by alarmed observers after videos on social media showed the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—dressed in full combat fatigues—walking around Washington, D.C. in the wake of the brutal attack on peaceful protesters by National Guard troops and U.S. Park Police.
Soldiers and law enforcement officials, some of them on horseback, beat demonstrators with batons and hurled tear gas canisters into crowds Monday evening to clear the path for President Donald Trump's theatrical walk from the White House to St. John's Episcopal Church, where the president held a photo-op with a Bible in hand.
Milley joined Trump's walk to the church, as did Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Attorney General William Barr.
Critics denounced Milley's participation in Trump's stunt and his subsequent solo appearance in the streets of D.C. as an alarming symbol of the U.S. military's intervention in America's cities in response to protests over the police killing of George Floyd. Late Monday night, as Common Dreams reported, military helicopters flew low over crowds of protesters in the U.S. capital in an apparent "show of force" against the demonstrations.
"The military and civilian leaders who acquiesced in the deployment of uniformed personnel in an American city and who strode the streets of Washington as if it were the scene of a battle, and not a place where fellow citizens were peacefully exercising their legal right to assemble, bear a heavy responsibility," the Palm Center, an independent research institute, said in a statement.
"The U.S. military is not a crowd control instrument," the Palm Center added. "Nor is it a tool for settling political differences, or an extension of a campaign... We urge uniformed and civilian leaders to show wisdom and refrain from deploying the active-duty force in American cities. Anything else risks a place of shame in the history books."
Asked by reporters about his presence in the streets of the nation's capital, Milley said he was merely assessing the National Guard's performance.
"This isn't a healthy democracy," tweeted Politico reporter Eric Geller.
Trump said during a conference call with U.S. governors Monday that he has placed Milley "in charge" of the federal government's response to protests over Floyd's killing, which have spread across the U.S. and around the world.
During a speech at the Rose Garden Monday evening, Trump said he is "dispatching thousands and thousands of heavily armed soldiers, military personnel, and law enforcement officers" to confront protesters in the streets of Washington, D.C. and other U.S. cities, a plan that Democratic lawmakers condemned as a "declaration of war" against the U.S. public.
Milley has not publicly commented on Trump's plan to deploy the military against protesters.
In a one-sentence letter to Milley on Monday, Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) posed a simple question to the general: "Do you intend to obey illegal orders from the president?"
"Trump says Chairman Milley is in charge," Gallego tweeted. "We need to know whether he intends to uphold his oath."
It is not clear whether Milley has responded to the letter.
Common Defense, an advocacy organization of 150,000 veterans, tweeted Tuesday that Trump's threat to use the U.S. military against demonstrators "is nothing less than fascism."
"We call on troops and Guard to exercise their rights," the group said, "and for veterans to speak out with a loud, overwhelming, united voice."
"What Trump did tonight is going to be remembered as a significant and grave moment in this horror of an era we are living through."
by
Jake Johnson, staff writer
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/06/02/after-trumps-authoritarian-law-and-order-speech-military-helicopters-descend-low
Hours after President Donald Trump vowed in a White House address Monday to deploy "all available federal resources" against demonstrators protesting the police killing of George Floyd, military helicopters hovered dangerously low over crowds gathered in Washington, D.C. in an apparent effort to clear the streets with an intimidation tactic commonly used by the U.S. overseas.
New York Times homeland security reporter Zolan Kanno-Youngs, covering the demonstrations on the ground in D.C., said Lakota helicopters and at least one Black Hawk "were positioned just above rooftops, sending gusts of dust into the air. A part of a tree fell, nearly hitting passersby."
"These are Lakota helicopters performing what's known as a show of force, which is often conducted by low-flying jets in combat zones to scare away insurgents," Kanno-Youngs wrote in a tweet accompanying videos from the scene. "A Black Hawk performed the maneuver minutes later."
Thomas Gibbons-Neff, a Times reporter and U.S. Marine Corps veteran, also tweeted late Monday that "Army Black Hawks are conducting 'show of force' passes on protestors."
The New York Police Department used the same tactic to harass disperse protesters over the weekend.
Videos of the helicopters from different perspectives spread across social media late Monday as demonstrators who remained in the heavily militarized streets of D.C. after Trump's newly imposed 7 pm curfew were chased down, pepper sprayed, and arrested by police.
"Helicopter just flew extremely low over remaining protesters in D.C.," tweeted Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson. "Terrifying and impossible to keep eyes open—too much debris whipped around. People scattering in all directions."
"You may think it's only a small thing that the military used helicopters to intimidate American civilians in the nation's capital. It's not," tweeted Walter Shaub, former director of the Office of Government Ethics. "A line was crossed tonight. There will be other lines. This is Trump conditioning them to cross those lines."
The helicopter flyovers came after Trump declared from the Rose Garden of the White House that he is "dispatching thousands and thousands of heavily armed soldiers, military personnel, and law enforcement officers" to Washington, D.C. to confront demonstrators and encouraged governors to "dominate" protesters in their states with force. Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, strolled through the streets of D.C. after Trump's speech, taking questions from reporters and assessing the military presence in the nation's capital.
Following his remarks, the president walked from the White House to St. John's Church for a photo-op, his path violently cleared of peaceful protesters by police using batons, tear gas, rubber bullets, and stun grenades—a chaotic and brutal scene that was captured on live television.
"Unleashing state violence against peaceful American demonstrators and journalists to create a photo-op is a violation of the president's oath to defend the Constitution," Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) said in a statement. "Every American looking on in horror tonight at the uniformed officers who are paid with their tax dollars beating and gassing innocent people should consider that Trump wants this scene repeated in cities across the country."
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) tweeted that "the fascist speech Donald Trump just delivered verged on a declaration of war against American citizens."
"I fear for our country tonight and will not stop defending America against Trump's assault," Wyden wrote.
In a series of tweets late Monday, The Intercept's Jeremy Scahill described the president's behavior as that of an "authoritarian dictator" and condemned the police for "acting as lawless violent militias with military gear."
"They have used drones, are using military and intelligence grade surveillance systems, and they are operating like a violent counterinsurgency force," Scahill wrote. "It is just a matter of time before we see the results of Trump's 'second amendment' dog whistling tonight."
"What Trump did tonight," Scahill added, "is going to be remembered as a significant and grave moment in this horror of an era we are living through."
