#William Finnegan, "The Blue Wall," The New Yorker, August 3 & 9, 2020.
"Law enforcement kills more than a thousand Americans a year. Many are unarmed, and the disproportionate number are African Americans. Very few of the officials face serious, if any, consequences, and much of that impunity is owed to the power of police unions." "In their territorial 'safe zone,' police unions can offer their members extraordinary protections."
"In the city's large, and largely segregated, Black community, police brutality had been a first-order for decades." "By the end of the sixties, a racialized law-and-order ideology had emerged as a sort of unexamined American consensus, and it has basically prevailed since then, providing the political context in which police unions thrive." "White cops, Black and brown suspects; that remains the dominant paradigm."
"But, statistically, law enforcement does not make a list of the ten most dangerous jobs in America." "Studies of patrol officers service calls have shown that less than five per cent are related to violent crimes." "Pro-police analysts always talk about the 'bad apples'; it's only a few cops who misbehave -- ten per cent, tops. But the problem is that the other ninety per cent inevitably know about their misconduct, and thus are made compliant." Ben Breecoto, a sociologist at Rhode Island College, says: 'These organizations function as lobbies both to resist accountability legislation, and shield implicated officers,' he writes. It is a relic of mid-century policing, "when cops were always right and usually white, and could take a free hand in Black and brown neighborhoods."
#Bill Fletcher Jr., "No!, The Nation, November 2-9, 2020.
"Much of white organized labor took pride in building this exclusionary state, and now finds it difficult, if not impossible, to come to terms with its role in racist oppression and imperial expansion." "Also, unions are understandably afraid that the expulsion of police from organized labor could expose themselves to a right-wing assault on public sector collective bargaining."
"But racial injustice is not just about the extinguishing of Black lives; it is also about segregated housing, poor health care, exclusion from skilled employment, and an education that prepares particular racial minorities only for prisons and menial work."
#Kim Kelly, "Yes!" The Nation, November 2-9, 2020.
"You'll never see cops join a picket line; instead, they're the force that the bosses call to break the strike." "Report after report reveals the proliferation of white supremacists and far-right rhetoric within the ranks of law enforcement." "We cannot stand by and watch as our so-called union of brothers continue to brutalize and extinguish working-class lives with impunity." "It is imperative that labor unions address and eradicate the poison from rank-and-file members up to the highest levels of leadership."
"In 2016, nearly 40 percent of union members voted for Donald Trump, including over 50 percent of white male members, but the problem is not a new one."
#Iraq War Deaths
The last complete census in Iraq, conducted in 1997, found 4,050 million households in Iraq, a figure used by Opinion Research Business (ORB) in face-to-face interviews with 2,414 adults. The interviews revealed that 20% of the people had at least one death in their household as a result of the conflict, rather than natural causes. ORB concluded that approximately 1.03 million had died as a result of the war. The margin of error was 1.7%, giving a range of 946,258 to 1.12 million.
A 2015 report by Physicians for Social Responsibility found that the 'Lancet' medical journal, in reports conducted in 2004 and 2006, estimated that 600,000 Iraqis were killed in the first 40 months of the war, along with 54,000 non-violent, but still war-related deaths. Salon carries the death toll to the present.
ADDENDUMS:
*Chris Chistie has called the Trump lawyers a "national embarrassment."
*Trump's "Platinum Plan" for African Americans is only two pages long. Biden's "Lift Every Voice" plan is much more comprehensive.
*Trump reinstated the federal death penalty. There are 55 death row prisoners, and 25 are African Americans.
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