What Has Happened to Police Filmed Hurting Protesters? So Far, Very Little.

Portland police officers pursue a crowd of about 200 protesters after dispersing the group from in front of the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office on August. 1, 2020, in Portland, Oregon.

NATHAN HOWARD / GETTY IMAGES

BY Zipporah Osei & Mollie Simon, ProPublica PUBLISHED August 2, 2020

It has been almost two months since a Los Angeles Police Department patrol car accelerated into Brooke Fortson during a protest over police violence. She still doesn’t know the name of the officer who hit her or whether that person is still policing the city’s streets. The officer did not stop after hitting Fortson and instead turned around, nearly hitting other demonstrators in the process, and sped off.

The LAPD almost surely knows who the officer is. The squad car’s number is clearly visible in one of the multiple videos that captured the incident. But the department hasn’t released any information: not the officer’s name, or whether that person has been disciplined. The police say the incident is still under investigation.

As hundreds of videos of police violence during protests have circulated, ProPublica wanted to see what happened to officers in the aftermath.

We set out to see whether the incidents caught on camera were investigated, whether officers were named and what information we could get about any investigations or discipline. We found a widespread lack of transparency that made it difficult to find out even the most basic details about whether and what sort of investigations were taking place.

ProPublica looked through hundreds of viral videos and focused on those that most clearly show an officer using apparently disproportionate force. We ended up with 68 videos involving more than 40 law enforcement agencies across the country, in both large cities and small towns.

We asked each police department a few simple questions: Who were the officers in the video, were they under investigation and have they been disciplined?

The departments mostly declined to give any specific information.

We learned that officers from eight videos have been disciplined so far. Officers from eight others will not be disciplined. And for two videos, police departments still insist they’re unsure of whether the officers involved are their own.

While officers have the right to use force if their own or others’ lives are in danger, the widespread violence against protesters has been unwarranted, said Chris Burbank, the former chief of the Salt Lake City Police Department.

“When you have a peaceful protest, people sitting on the ground, does that justify the use of tear gas or pepper spray on them? It absolutely does not,” said Burbank, who is now the vice president of law enforcement strategy at the Center for Policing Equity. “I see that as a violation of policy, violation of state and city ordinance and as a violation of common decency and what is good about policing.”

The LAPD told us it has moved 10 unnamed officers to non-field duties while it investigates incidents related to the recent protests. The department declined to say whether the officer who struck Fortson is on that list. Fortson has filed a claim for damages with the city and has retained a lawyer instead of filing a complaint with the Police Department.

Here’s what we learned while looking into these videos:
Officers Remain Anonymous — Even When They’re Caught on Camera

Departments have only named officers in 17 of the cases we examined as of publication. A name can allow the public to learn more about the disciplinary history of an officer and to see any patterns in prior allegations. It also could allow us to see if officers appear in multiple videos involving use of force.

Minneapolis has a public database of officers’ complaint histories. Still, the police department declined to identify the officers in videos we compiled, making it impossible to check their records in the database.

As protests have continued across the country, many states are struggling with how far to go in revealing officers’ disciplinary records.

In June, New Jersey’s attorney general directed the state’s law enforcement agencies to name officers who have been cited for serious disciplinary violations. In his directive, he noted that prematurely naming those accused of misconduct can be unfair if allegations are not ultimately proven. But, he argued, the likelihood of officers misbehaving increases when they “believe they can act with impunity; it decreases when officers know that their misconduct will be subject to public scrutiny and not protected.”

In some states, there are union contracts and laws preventing the disclosure of officer names, said Phil Stinson, a former officer and now a professor at Bowling Green State University. In other instances, though, Stinson said, departments may just be “stonewalling” or trying to get rid of problem officers before things become public.

“They just try to ride it out and hope it quiets down,” Stinson said.

In Florida, Miami-Dade Police Department spokeswoman Sgt. Erin Alfonso at first declined to provide the names of officers from a May 31 incident we examined. The video shows police abruptly arresting a man who was talking to them but not doing anything aggressive before an officer appears to grab him by his shirt. An internal report obtained by ProPublica through a public records request identified the officers as Roberto De la Nuez and Jorge Encinosa. Encinosa declined to comment on the arrest to ProPublica and De la Nuez did not respond to a request for comment. The department’s Professional Compliance Bureau is investigating the case, Alfonso said.

In San Jose, California, anti-bias trainer Derrick Sanderlin was shot in the groin with a rubber bullet after trying to talk to officers with his arms raised.

The incident, which took place May 29 and was reviewed by ProPublica, remains under investigation by the San Jose Police Department. Shivaun Nurre, the Independent Police Auditor for the city, confirmed that her office has received multiple complaints related to the incident. The office does not release the names of officers to complainants. According to a civil rights lawsuit filed by Sanderlin on July 18, three officers fired at him, but as of the initial filing, he had been unable to determine exactly who hit him and he was too far away to have caught badge names. “If someone else who wasn’t a police officer did the same thing, they would be held accountable,” Sanderlin said.

“All allegations, complaints, or concerns of the public will be taken seriously,” the San Jose Police Department said in a statement. The department said all videos provided by ProPublica are “part of an extensive Internal Affairs investigation. As such, this is a personnel investigation and [we] cannot communicate further.”

And in another instance, ProPublica requested the incident report related to a man’s arrest in Kansas City, Missouri. We were told that wouldn’t be possible to obtain because the charges against him and other protesters were dismissed and vacated by a city ordinance, meaning it was “as though it never happened,” a Police Department spokesperson said. The actions of the arresting officer remain under investigation, but without the report ProPublica is unable to obtain the officer’s name or see the rationale for the arrest. “We are not saying we don’t care and it isn’t a big deal,” the spokesperson said.
Investigations — if They Happen at All — Are Far From Transparent

In case after case, departments have cited ongoing investigations for not providing details such as whether officers captured in the videos remain on active duty; they also often can’t say how long the investigations might take. Sometimes, police union contracts prevent police departments from releasing such information.

In Portland, Oregon, the Bureau of Police would only say that all incidents of force were under investigation, including the two identified by ProPublica. Ross Caldwell, the director of the Independent Police Review, a civilian oversight office in the Portland auditor’s office, said that while he could confirm that both incidents were under investigation, he wasn’t “legally allowed to talk about these investigations.”

How long departments legally have to process complaints varies by jurisdiction. In at least 14 states, police officers have a “bills of rights” written into state law that provides special protections during investigations. There’s a one-year statute of limitations in California on police discipline cases. In Florida, investigations of police misconduct must conclude in 180 days. Both states have provisions to pause the clock if there’s a concurrent criminal investigation and California pauses for civil litigation, but otherwise, if a department can’t close out a case in time, officers cannot be disciplined, suspended, demoted or dismissed.

“They have gotten these protections, especially in state laws, through sheer political power and lobbying effort, and that’s a serious problem,” said Samuel Walker, a retired professor of criminal justice who has researched the bills of rights.
Officers Are Unlikely to Be Disciplined — at Least Publicly

Even in cases where victims are able to identify officers, they’re unlikely to see them face discipline.

Because there’s no federal mandate for police agencies to report details about the civilian complaints they receive, the most recent nationwide dataset about how many complaints are fully investigated and “sustained,” meaning the allegations of wrongdoing are confirmed, was published in 1993 by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, according to Carol Archbold, a police accountability expert and professor at North Dakota State University.

In New York City, where 10 of the videos we examined took place, the Civilian Complaint Review Board investigates allegations of excessive force against the police. The board investigated more than 3,000 allegations of misuse of force in 2018, but only 73 of them were substantiated. Los Angeles, which handles its complaints internally unless an officer asks for a review by a citizen Board of Rights, had 5% of complaints from the public sustained that same year.

In California, only investigations that result in sustained findings or those involving deadly force, discharge of a firearm or “great bodily injury” become public.

The picture is similar at smaller departments. Of the 206 citizen allegations against Omaha police officers in 2018, only 17% were sustained by the department’s internal review process. In Indianapolis, where a video from the protests captured officers beating a woman, that number was 7%.

When asked about a video showing officers kicking a protester who was backed up to a fence, the Omaha Police Department said all use of force incidents are being reviewed and that officers from other agencies were assisting. The department declined to comment further and said it is “bound by contractual language that prevents us from disclosing the contents of any personnel matter.”
Hundreds of Complaints Are Overwhelming the Oversight Agencies

Departments now face a mountain of work to sift through the events of the protests. There have been more than 750 complaints filed with New York City’s Civilian Complaint Review Board since protests began in late May, leading to over 200 open investigations. The LAPD has assigned 40 investigators to sift through protest complaints.

The Seattle Office of Police Accountability, an independent oversight body, has been contacted over 18,000 times about police actions at the protests and is aiming to increase transparency.

The agency’s new Demonstration Complaint Dashboard shows 28 ongoing investigations, but the department is continuing to work its way through complaints and plans to continue updating the tracker, said Anne Bettesworth, the deputy director of public affairs for OPA.

It typically takes 180 days for Seattle to investigate civilian allegations against officers, but Bettesworth said the agency is working to complete as many protest-related investigations as possible in under 90 days. It’s an “all hands on deck situation,” she said.

Zipporah Osei
Zipporah is a Scripps Howard Foundation research fellow at ProPublica. She studied journalism at Northeastern University and founded the First Gen newsletter, which covers the first-generation college student experience. Zipporah has interned at the Boston Globe, Chalkbeat, and the Chronicle of Higher Education.

If Governments Believe So Much in Nonviolence, They Should Try It

It’s time for governments that extol the virtues of nonviolence to lead by example and stop using armed police as the go-to solution for societal problems.

SELCUK ACAR / NURPHOTO VIA GETTY IMAGES

BY Jakeet Singh, Truthout PUBLISHED July 7, 202

Jakeet Singh is an assistant professor of political theory at York University in Toronto, Canada.

PART OF THE SERIES
The Road to Abolition

There’s something rather baffling about hearing politicians and high-level government officials condemn the usefulness of violence and extol the virtues of nonviolence.

In the recent documentary series about her life and political career, Hillary Clinton discusses the 1968 protest movements during her politically formative years, and claims: “I was never in the camp that thought violence was the answer to violence. I never believed that, and I still to this day don’t believe that.”

What’s striking about this claim is that there’s basically no way it could be true. Anyone, like Clinton, who has spent their career supporting and funding the police and backing numerous wars and military deployments must at some level believe that violence is very much the answer — not only in response to violence but also to many other challenges. As author and professor Alex Vitale said recently on the Rumble podcast, “Police are violence workers.… The tools the police have to manage social problems are tools of violence.” This nket claims from government leaders about the lack of utility of violence ring very hollow.

In response to the recent spate of protests and uprisings against anti-Black racism, we’ve heard condemnations of violence and corresponding valorizations of nonviolence from progressive mayors to conservative federal politicians. Together they sing the praises of nonviolence both for its moral superiority and its greater efficacy, and they reject violence for both its wrongness and its wrongheadedness.

“Violence never works,” proclaimed New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

“Violence and vandalism is [sic] never the answer, and they have no place in Dallas, Fort Worth, or anywhere in the state of Texas,” denounced Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.

“You’re not honoring the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement,” rebuked Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms.In recent years conservatives have become very adept at cynically weaponizing the moral rhetoric and mystique of nonviolence against protest movements.

While the motif of nonviolence has traditionally been less common on the right, in recent years conservatives have become very adept at cynically weaponizing the moral rhetoric and mystique of nonviolence against protest movements. Liberal and progressive politicians, on the other hand, often come across as more sincere in their praise of nonviolence, especially those who see themselves as having gained access to political power due to the work of nonviolent social movements.

“As someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr. King’s life work,” said a newly elected President Obama in his 2009 Nobel Peace Prize lecture, “I am living testimony to the moral force of nonviolence.” He even quoted King’s own 1964 Nobel lecture, saying, “Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem; it merely creates new and more complicated ones.”

So what allows for these statements to be made by public officials without a hint of irony or concern about flagrant hypocrisy? It is, of course, the longstanding doctrine that the state has “a monopoly on the legitimate use of force in a given territory,” in the famous words of social theorist Max Weber. In this view, violence is only properly entrusted to and wielded by governments; it is not to be used by social movements and other civil society actors. Violence is never the answer… for them.The strict binary between state and non-state violence is so loaded and taken for granted that it often makes the former not even appear as violence to many.

The strict binary between state and non-state violence is so loaded and taken for granted that it often makes the former not even appear as violence to many. Politicians can make blanket condemnations of violence without sounding hypocritical precisely because of this double standard. It also plays a role in why so many people can be outraged about riots and property destruction and not even mention the immense, highly-militarized violence of police during the recent uprisings, to say nothing about the Black lives lost at the hands of police that have provoked the protests.

Indeed, the necessity and utility of state violence was at the heart of Obama’s (in)famous pivot in his Nobel lecture, which immediately followed his praise and citation of King: “I know there is nothing weak, nothing passive, nothing naïve in the creed and lives of Gandhi and King. But as a head of state, sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by their examples alone.”

Something very interesting is happening, however, in the midst of the current uprisings against anti-Black racism. Where only two legitimate options have conventionally been recognized — state violence and non-state nonviolence — four quadrants are increasingly being taken seriously. The topic of non-state violence has often been so moralized as to not even be entertained, but today many more honest discussions are taking place regarding when and what kinds of non-state violence might actually be necessary, effective, and/or justified under deeply violent and oppressive conditions. Furthermore, an increasing number of questions are being raised about why the principles and techniques of nonviolence that are so often lauded for social movements are not adopted by the state itself.If nonviolence is as powerful and persuasive as government officials keep telling us it is, then why don’t they lead by example and implement it in their own institutions?

The current conversation about defunding and abolishing the police is the clearest example of the erosion of the conventional dualism around state violence and non-state nonviolence. The idea that the state must use force or the threat of force as a routine part of so many of its actions no longer seems so given; in fact, it increasingly appears rather misguided. Why are armed police dispatched to respond to mental health crises? Poverty and homelessness? Drug and alcohol issues? Noise complaints? School safety? Traffic violations?

The common sense around sending “violence workers” to deal with nonviolent offenses and social issues of all kinds, as well as to handle the aftermath of violent incidents when the threat is no longer imminent, is clearly and finally breaking down. The availability and threat of lethal force in these situations regularly generates more problems than it solves. Furthermore, important questions are being raised about w

Jakeet Singh is an assistant professor of political theory at York University in Toronto, Canada.hy the police seem so much less skilled in nonviolent techniques of de-escalation and conflict resolution than the average bartender, ambulance attendant and social worker. If nonviolence is as powerful and persuasive as government officials keep telling us it is, then why don’t they lead by example and implement it in their own institutions?

Politicians love to remind the public that “violence is not the answer.” If they actually believe that at all, and aren’t being entirely disingenuous, they certainly have an ideal opportunity to prove it.

Copyright © Truthout

Mass Arrests in 2020 Echo the Brutality Endured by RNC Protesters 20 Years Ago

Arrested protesters stand and sit on a barrier of the Vine Street Expressway after police shot tear gas to disperse the crowd on June 1, 2020, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

MARK MAKELA / GETTY IMAGES

BY Kris Hermes, Truthout PUBLISHED August 1, 2020

PART OF THE SERIES
The Road to Abolition

Police surrounded a West Philadelphia warehouse on the afternoon of August 1, where more than 70 protesters were making puppets. Multiple Pennsylvania state police officers infiltrated the group of “puppetistas” days earlier and, that afternoon, the deputy police commissioner of the Philadelphia Police Department (PPD) claimed that protesters had bomb-making materials inside. Everyone was arrested, including the owners of the warehouse.

That was 20 years ago, but it could have been yesterday given the repressive events over the past several weeks in the wake of George Floyd’s murder at the hands of a white Minneapolis police officer.

The “puppet warehouse” arrests occurred during the Republican National Convention (RNC) in 2000, with more than 400 people arrested in total that day. As I wrote in Crashing the Party: Legacies and Lessons from the RNC 2000 (PM Press), no bomb-making materials were ever found, but people paid the price for blocking roads by spending up to two weeks in jail and years of their lives defending themselves in court.

After more than three years of court battles with an acrimonious district attorney, nearly everyone’s charges were thrown out. Then, civil lawsuits ensued.

In some ways, Philadelphia and its methods of policing have changed dramatically over the past 20 years. In other ways, the city has managed to keep — or even enhance — its repressive playbook that harkens back to the era of Frank Rizzo, the city’s notorious police commissioner-turned-mayor, whom the current district attorney recently referred to as “neo-fascist.”

In some ways, Philadelphia is still living down its reputation of having one of the most brutal police departments in the country, and it got that reputation under Rizzo, who was also well known for his anti-Black racism and bigotry. As mayor, Rizzo opposed school and housing desegregation and oversaw the 1978 siege on the house of Black liberation group MOVE, which resulted in conviction and decades of imprisonment for nine members accused of killing a PPD officer in the police-instigated melee.
Criminal Legal Issues and Black-Led Uprisings

Both the city and protest organizers alike planned for months in advance of the RNC, a singular event that promised to bring commerce and prestige to Philadelphia. Although people were protesting some of the same criminal legal issues 20 years ago on August 1 — an end to police violence, abolition of the prison-industrial complex and freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal — the 2000 RNC took place at the height of the mostly-white global justice movement.

By contrast, the latest uprisings have been spontaneous, with people reaching a boiling point after decades of unaddressed structural racism and police violence. The current protests have been led by the people most impacted by that structural racism, and have lasted for several weeks.

Black-led organizations like the Student Liberation Action Movement from Hunter College influenced the direction of the RNC protests to be sure. But the Black Philly Radical Collective (BPRC) — currently making the most vocal and far-reaching demands of the Philadelphia power structure — includes longstanding organizations fighting for Black freedom and liberation, and represents a significant departure from the political dynamic in 2000.Some of the lawyers who were active in defending RNC protesters, like Paul Hetznecker, are now representing people protesting the murder of George Floyd.

Some of the same protest tactics were employed in both eras — from street blockades to property damage, including defacing the statue of Frank Rizzo. However, the more recent rage felt by persistent police violence and anti-Black racism in Philadelphia created the conditions for far more militant protests, including the destruction and dispossession of numerous businesses, and the burning of multiple police cars.

Like clockwork, in 2000 and today, the police commissioner and mayor publicly vilified anarchists in order to discredit and criminalize the protests generally, but also to sow division and justify a brutal police crackdown.
Police Response to Protests

A former beat cop with the New York City Police Department, John Timoney was the Philadelphia police commissioner in 2000 and one of the architects of today’s violent policing model, which social scientists refer to as “strategic incapacitation.” Timoney lived for media attention and infamously said, “the paramount goal for the Philadelphia Police Department: Not to be seen on the six o’clock news beating the living daylights out of protesters.”

Achieving his goal for the most part, police simply beat the living daylights out of protesters off-camera. Before the proliferation of cell phones, police more easily evaded public scrutiny. Police violence in 2000 was mostly limited to brute force, batons and pepper spray, but bicycles were also used as weapons against protesters.

Timoney deliberately avoided the use of tear gas and projectile weapons during the RNC and, arguably, gained greater public support as a result. As a side note, Timoney went on to become the police chief in Miami and then used a staggering array of weapons against protesters at the 2003 Free Trade Area of the Americas demonstrations.

The current police commissioner, Danielle Outlaw, came from Portland, Oregon, as the first Black woman to head that city’s police department. But, Commissioner Outlaw also faced national scrutiny at the time for her handling of protests involving far right and anti-fascist groups. She had been on the job in Philadelphia for less than three months when the uprisings began.

It’s fair to say that the PPD, both now and in 2000, reacted to protests with wanton violence and little regard for protesters, medics, legal observers, media or bystanders. In response to recent protests, however, the PPD used a far greater array of weapons than at any other time since the 1970s. In addition to brute force and batons, the police arsenal included tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets and bean bag rounds, according to Áine Ní Shionnaigh of Up Against the Law (UATL), a local collective providing legal support to protesters.

On May 31, a militarized police force marauded through a historically Black community of businesses and residential neighborhoods in West Philadelphia for hours that afternoon and into the evening. The area under police occupation was not far from where the city dropped a bomb on another MOVE house in 1985, killing 11 people, including five children, and burning to the ground an entire city block of residences.

Police shot “less-lethal” projectiles and pepper spray at anyone who got in their way. They shot tear gas from armored vehicles, incapacitating not only people in the streets, but also many residents, including small children. At least one tear gas canister landed on a family’s front porch, forcing them to evacuate their home. Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney defended the police actions in West Philadelphia for weeks, then in July offered a written apology. An internal investigation is still underway, and no officers have been disciplined for the attacks.

The most well-known example of police using this broad arsenal of weapons happened the next day, on June 1. In response to protests on Interstate-676, SWAT teams gave no warning or dispersal orders before attacking protesters with projectile and chemical weapons. One SWAT officer, who was later fired, was filmed pulling the masks off of protesters and pepper spraying them directly in the eyes and face.

As people were attempting to flee this attack and disperse from the freeway, police trapped scores of people on a fenced-in embankment and proceeded to tear gas the crowd and shoot at them with projectile weapons.

The city initially advanced a story that protesters had trapped a state trooper in his car, and were throwing projectiles at police. But, on June 25, more than three weeks after the incident, Commissioner Outlaw and Mayor Kenney were forced to recant and publicly apologize just hours after The New York Times published a detailed investigative report of the incident, which directly contradicted the official accounts.
Mass Arrests Are Still Used to Stifle Dissent

Similar to what they did in 2000, police recently used the tactic of mass arrests to clear the streets of protesters. More than 2,000 people were arrested for curfew violations, failure to disperse, disorderly conduct, and other misdemeanor and felony charges stemming from the George Floyd protests in late May and early June, according to the district attorney’s office.

When Mayor Kenney took office in 2016, he led an effort to “decriminalize” protest-related violations ahead of the Democratic National Convention (DNC) that year. It was said that Kenney wanted to use civil citations — equivalent to a traffic ticket — as a way to avoid repeating what occurred at the RNC in 2000. But, civil rights lawyers argue the policy is still used to unlawfully arrest people in large groups in order to stifle dissent.

Protesters were recently arrested in this fashion all over the city. Instead of citing and releasing people, police took arrestees into custody, and held many of them on buses for up to 12 hours with no air conditioning or water, and without medical attention, according to Ní Shionnaigh of UATL. This was a similar tactic and form of punishment used by police in 2000 that likewise prevented activists from reengaging in protest activity. Arrestees in May and June were also questioned and photographed, with some held for longer than 24 hours, before being cited and released.

Philadelphia also has an odd and troubling tendency to detain people in decommissioned facilities. Supposedly, to address capacity issues in 2000, some protesters were taken to Holmesburg, a condemned century-old prison. Holmesburg was the site of a 1973 prison uprising in which the warden and deputy warden were killed, and home to chilling and deadly “experiments” carried out on mostly Black prisoners during the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s.

During the recent uprisings, nearly 50 people were held at the old House of Corrections, for similar capacity reasons, according to the city. The House of Corrections was decommissioned two years ago and deemed by the city to be “unfit for human life.” Equally troubling, FBI agents were also on site interviewing arrestees while they were under arrest and without legal counsel.

Federal prosecutors have taken control of some cases, like that of a person accused of setting fire to two police cars. That federal case in particular illustrates the kind of digital surveillance the FBI is conducting against protesters and the Movement for Black Lives. While law enforcement still employs the same type of infiltration and human intelligence-gathering methods used during the RNC 2000, advancements in technology over the past 20 years have enabled police to conduct more remote and more invasive forms of surveillance.

On July 8, Mayor Kenney announced that all of the civil citations issued to protesters from May 30 to June 30 would be waived in “recognition of the core concerns that caused thousands to demonstrate on the streets of Philadelphia.” But, lawyers have said that most of the citations were illegally or improperly issued anyway, and law enforcement’s objective of clearing the streets was accomplished at the time of arrest.
Consistent and Robust Legal Support for Protesters

As part of the effort to support protests against the RNC in 2000, a legal collective called “R2K Legal” was formed, which helped to vindicate those arrested and criminally charged. Once those cases were resolved, some members of R2K Legal joined with others to form UATL, which has provided legal support to social justice activists in Philadelphia ever since.

For the protests in May and June, UATL staffed a legal hotline and tracked protesters as they navigated the arrest and detention process. Also part of the legal support effort, both now and then, was the local chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, which trained and deployed hundreds of legal observers to monitor police misconduct and record arrests. The Philadelphia Community Bail Fund posted bail for jailed protesters and, with others, is calling on the district attorney to drop the remaining charges against hundreds of protesters.

Some of the lawyers who were active in defending RNC protesters, like Paul Hetznecker, are now representing people protesting the murder of George Floyd. Hetznecker and several other lawyers also filed suit against the city and PPD for their violent response to recent demonstrations on I-676 and in West Philadelphia.

Hetznecker’s was one of three civil lawsuits filed in July in an effort to hold the city and its police force accountable. According to Hetznecker, the lawsuit he and other lawyers filed is seeking “significant reform” to the city’s police department in addition to monetary damages. Although he couldn’t say at this stage what reform might look like, Hetznecker did say that “demilitarizing the police is not nearly enough.”
Philadelphia’s Political Apparatus Used for Repression, Then and Now

In 2000, Philadelphia Mayor John Street, Police Commissioner Timoney and District Attorney Lynne Abraham worked hand-in-hand to ensure an untarnished convention. When that goal became threatened, the city’s leaders used their respective positions of authority to discredit, arrest and criminally prosecute hundreds of protesters.

Current Mayor Kenney was a city council member during the RNC, and did little to defend or support activists facing serious charges at the time. As mayor, he oversaw one of the most brutal attacks on the people of Philadelphia in more than 40 years. Hetznecker, who marched as a teenager in an anti-racist coalition in Philly under Rizzo, told me that he “never experienced anything close to this level of police violence against peaceful protesters.”

Kenney defended then apologized for his use of chemical and projectile weapons on more than one occasion. The mayor may have waived a majority of the protest-related citations, but many say he’s still culpable for suppressing a popular uprising.

Police commissioners Timoney and Outlaw share a certain contempt for protesters and both are willing to use widespread violence against them. But that may be where the similarities end. In addition to the obvious differences in race, gender, age and experience, the starkest disparity between Timoney and Outlaw is how they responded to accusations of police abuse.

Timoney stood by his patently violent officers and claimed they had all shown incredible restraint in their response to the 2000 RNC protests. While Outlaw has largely defended the violent actions of many on the PPD, she fired the notorious pepper-spraying SWAT officer on I-676, which is something Timoney would never have done. Outlaw is firing at least one other officer, Inspector Joseph Bologna, but only after District Attorney Larry Krasner filed assault charges against him for using a baton to crack open the head of a protester.

Firing two police officers, whose violent misconduct went viral online, is a small concession for the weeks-long assault on thousands of people. It is also inconsequential to groups like the BPRC and Movement for Black Lives that are demanding far deeper structural changes from the city.

Lynne Abraham was the district attorney in 2000, and had a long career in law enforcement, initially working in the Rizzo administration. Abraham was part of the city’s political machine, loved and feared by enough Philadelphians to get her reelected as district attorney for nearly 20 years. She was known as the “Deadliest DA” for her record on the death penalty, and Abraham had a record of refusing to prosecute police who murdered Black residents. As a Common Pleas Court judge, she signed the warrant that precipitated the police bombing of the MOVE house.

Abraham vigorously and unsuccessfully prosecuted hundreds of RNC 2000 cases to their fullest extent just because she could. One of the lawyers defending protesters against Abraham’s prosecutors at the time was Larry Krasner, Philadelphia’s current DA. They couldn’t be more different from each other.

Krasner campaigned in 2017 as a progressive candidate far outside the political machine. His platform included ending cash bail and the city’s stop-and-frisk practices, refusing to use the death penalty and prosecuting police for their abuse and misconduct. After taking office in 2018, Krasner’s reform efforts have received significant political blowback, including from the Pennsylvania state legislature and attorney general, as well as from Mayor Kenney and Commissioner Outlaw.

While Krasner said he may yet pursue hundreds of criminal charges against people arrested for property damage and commercial burglary in connection with the George Floyd protests — angering many who are calling for him to throw out all protest-related charges — he says he wants to use a “restorative justice” approach. In early June, Krasner also announced the creation of a task force to investigate the more than 2,000 protest-related arrests.
Meager Reforms Fail to Address Philadelphia’s Deep-Seated Problems

In the end, protests against police brutality on August 1, 2000, had minimal lasting effects on Philadelphia. Police shootings of Black people continued unabated, with no interest by law enforcement to do anything about it.

By contrast, the recent uprisings spread to every U.S. state and involved hundreds of thousands of protesters. As a result, unprecedented policy changes are taking place across the country, including efforts to defund the police.If we don’t want to be in the same place 20 years from now, policymakers should take heed and act.

After years of opposition to the Rizzo statue in the center of the city, Mayor Kenney had the sense to remove it in early June. The New York Times report on the police response to protest on I-676 compelled Commissioner Outlaw to announce a moratorium on tear gas. Philadelphia Managing Director Brian Abernathy, the main liaison between the mayor and PPD, has endured calls for his resignation since being appointed by Kenney in 2018, but was forced to resign in July.

More than a week into the recent unrest, Kenney rescinded his proposal to increase the police budget by $19 million. Then, in late June, the City Council passed modest criminal legal reforms, including cutting $33 million — less than 5 percent — from the police budget. In a pro-police town like Philadelphia, systemic change is hard fought.

Mike Africa Jr., a member of the MOVE family and an organizer with BPRC, has been working with others on these issues for decades. He told Truthout in July that the group is demanding, among several structural changes, that the city completely eliminate the police budget. “Their reign of terror is over!” he said. “They do not serve our community. They are unnecessary.”

Needless to say, the city’s meager policy reforms — especially by comparison to those in other cities — do not come close to addressing the demands of groups like BPRC. As uprisings continue across the country, people are refusing to accept anything less than structural change. The Movement for Black Lives is demanding not only that we rethink policing and the carceral system, but also that we address the systemic economic and social inequities that have been perpetuated against Black people for years. If we don’t want to be in the same place 20 years from now, policymakers should take heed and act on those demands.

Kris Hermes is a legal worker member of the National Lawyers Guild and author of Crashing the Party: Legacies and Lessons from the RNC 2000.
MORE BY THIS AUTHOR…

Poll: Majority of Americans Have Negative View of Trump’s Handling of Protests

A federal officer points a "less-lethal" weapon toward a crowd of a few hundred protesters in front of the Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse on July 23, 2020, in Portland, Oregon.NATHAN HOWARD / GETTY IMAGES

BY Chris Walker, Truthout PUBLISHED July 31, 2020

Most Americans do not believe the aggressive tactics which President Donald Trump has employed to quell uprisings in cities across the country are making the situation better, a new poll has found.

According to an ABC News/Ipsos poll released on Friday, just 36 percent of the country approves of the way Trump is responding to protests against racism and police violence. An overwhelming majority, 64 percent, say they disapprove of what he’s done.

Trump’s use of federal law enforcement officers from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Customs and Border Protection (CBP) as well as the U.S. Marshals Service to deal with protesters is having a negative effect, according to a majority of those polled.

Just 30 percent of respondents said the use of federal officers is making the situation better. Fifty-two percent said that their presence in cities is actually making matters worse, while 19 percent say they have no effect one way or the other.

The data from the ABC News/Ipsos poll aligns with what other data have shown when it comes to the national uprising. Earlier this week, a Gallup poll found that 65 percent of Americans support the protests, with 53 percent saying they will be helpful in the long run toward achieving the goal of racial equality.

Portland, Oregon, where agents have snatched protesters from the streets without first identifying themselves and placing them into unmarked vans.

Videos from the nightly demonstrations showcase a violent response to protesters from federal law enforcement officers, including use of tear gas, rubber bullets and flash-bang devices, including many instances where individuals did not appear to be engaged in an illegal or life-threatening act of any kind.

Many have suggested that the federal officers’ presence has escalated the situation on the ground, and that their actions have prompted Portland residents to take action to protect themselves. Mac Smiff, a Black organizer in the city, gave his opinion in a now-viral video.


This clip from @MacSmiff is essential. Protect this man at all costs.
pic.twitter.com/TY8lma2btr
— Joshua Potash (@JoshuaPotash) July 30, 2020

“We came out here dressed in T-shirts and twirling Hula-Hoops and stuff, and they started gassing us, so we came back with respirators, and they started shooting us, so we came back with vests, and they started aiming for the head, so we started wearing helmets, and now they call us terrorists,” Smiff said. “Who’s escalating this? It’s not us.”

Fifty years of research has consistently demonstrated that police departments oftentimes escalate situations at protests and demonstrations to the harm of protesters and themselves. Many states do not even offer de-escalation training options or regulations to local police forces, leaving it to municipalities to determine what standards should be used.

The situation in Portland may be even worse than that. According to The New York Times, the federal officers who were deployed to the city lacked any training in how to work with crowds or mass demonstrations prior to their arrival.

Mnuchin Justifies Slashing $600 Unemployment Boost With Debunked Talking Point
U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin walks with his security detail as he arrives at the Senate Republican policy luncheon in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on July 28, 2020, in Washington, D.C.DREW ANGERER / GETTY IMAGES

BYJake Johnson, Common Dreams PUBLISHED August 3, 2020

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin on Sunday recycled a debunked right-wing talking point to justify the GOP’s proposal to cut by more than half the $600-per-week federal boost in unemployment benefits that expired at the end of last week, depriving around 30 million Americans of a key economic lifeline as joblessness remains at historic levels.

In an appearance on ABC’s “This Week,” Mnuchin claimed “there’s no question” that the $600 weekly boost in unemployment insurance (UI) created a disincentive to work.

When host Martha Raddatz pointed to a recent Yale study that found “no evidence that more generous benefits disincentivized work,” Mnuchin responded, “I went to Yale, I agree on certain things, I don’t always agree.”

As a counterpoint, the Treasury Secretary cited a “Chicago study” — apparently referring to May research from the University of Chicago showing that under the $600-per-week boost, 68% of unemployed workers who were eligible for UI could have received benefits that exceeded their previous work income. That study, however, did not examine whether the benefits created a disincentive for the unemployed to seek work.

“There are cases where people are overpaid,” said Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs banker whose net worth is estimated to be around $400 million.

The $600 weekly payment amounts to around what a worker would earn working 40 hours per week at a $15-an-hour wage. The fact that some workers earned more under the enhanced unemployment benefits than they did from their jobs makes the case for raising wages, not cutting benefits, progressives have argued.

Senate Republicans have proposed cutting the $600 weekly boost to $200 — a $1,600 monthly benefit cut for tens of millions of people.


Treasury Secretary Mnuchin tells @MarthaRaddatz “there’s no question” that $600 unemployment insurance is a disincentive to find a job in “some cases.”
“There are cases where people are overpaid,” he adds when pressed about study refuting his argument. https://t.co/HNQgCe39RN pic.twitter.com/1zceOdxULW
— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) August 2, 2020

In response to Mnuchin’s remarks, Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) tweeted that “inflicting suffering on tens of millions of Americans by cutting unemployment benefits because of an anecdotal ‘some cases’ argument that has been refuted again and again by studies of actual data is a stupid way to make policy.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) slammed Mnuchin for wanting to to “slash $600 a week in unemployment benefits for 30 million workers who lost jobs” while supporting “the continuation of a $500 billion slush fund for corporations.”

“The Trump administration loves socialism for the rich, unfettered capitalism for everyone else,” said Sanders.

The $600-per-week increase in unemployment benefits expired on Friday as Republican and Democratic negotiators failed to reach an agreement to extend the payments — even amid dire warnings that a lapse could lead to a surge in evictions, increased hunger, and massive job loss.

Mnuchin on Sunday touted the White House’s offer of a one-week extension of the $600 payments, but Democratic congressional leaders and other critics dismissed the proposal as a “sham” given that it would likely take weeks for states to distribute the payments.

“They proposed it after it was too late to prevent a benefits lapse,” tweeted HuffPost’s Arthur Delaney. “The last checks had already gone out. State workforce agencies have thoroughly demonstrated they don’t do policy changes on a dime. Republicans opposed the $600 from before anyone received their first check and they made sure the benefits stopped.”

Democratic leaders met with Mnuchin and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows on Saturday for a rare weekend discussion as the two sides remain far apart on key priorities for the next Covid-19 stimulus package, from unemployment benefits to additional aid for state and local governments.

In a Dear Colleague letter on Saturday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) described the weekend meeting as “more productive than our previous discussions” but added that no agreement was reached.

“This is a very different kind of negotiation, because of what is at stake,” Pelosi wrote. “Millions of children are food insecure, millions of families are at risk of eviction, and for the nineteenth straight week, over one million Americans applied for unemployment insurance… All parties must understand the gravity of the situation in order to reach an agreement that protects Americans’ lives, livelihoods, and the life of our democracy.”

GOP Proposes Letting Fossil Fuel Firms Sue Sick Workers Seeking Compensation

President Trump delivers his remarks at Double Eagle Energy oil rig in Midland, Texas, on June 29, 2020.

KYLE MAZZA / ANADOLU AGENCY VIA GETTY IMAGES

BYAlexis Goldstein, Truthout PUBLISHED August 5, 2020

PART OF THE SERIES
Despair and Disparity: The Uneven Burdens of COVID-19

Fossil fuel firms have long argued that addressing climate change will kill jobs — but the main entities killing oil and gas jobs lately have been fossil fuel firms.

Rather than save jobs, oil firms have lined executive pockets just before declaring bankruptcy, and announced layoffs rather than cut into shareholder profits. Some oil workers are even dying on the job — and instead of increasing safety and transparency, oil companies have pushed Congress to make it impossible for workers and families to sue if they get sick due to unsafe conditions.

We have seen this pattern before with the coal industry, which has long fought efforts to fund benefits to workers who contracted “black lung” in mines. Now, it’s oil and gas firms that are putting profits ahead of the lives of their own workers.

For years, one of the main selling points that oil firms used to lure investors was the amount of dividends they pay to shareholders. Exxon is a case in point: It has raised its dividend 37 years in a row, paying out more than $14 billion in cash dividend payments to its shareholders in 2019. But facing a $2.63 billion loss in the second quarter, Exxon decided to lay off workers rather than cut its shareholder dividend. For workers who manage to survive the layoffs, Exxon will be ending its employer match to workers’ retirement savings plans — a common benefit at major corporations where the firm matches any contributions a worker makes to their 401(k).

This comes despite the implicit support Exxon has received from the Federal Reserve. The Fed has been leveraging $75 billion in public money provided by the CARES Act 10-to-1, allowing them to purchase up to $750 million in corporate bonds and exchange-traded funds through two new programs. The Fed has purchased nearly $300 million in debt from energy and utility companies — drawing scrutiny from 70 environmental and economic justice groups, who’ve asked the Fed to end these purchases.

The Fed’s purchases include $9 million worth of Exxon’s corporate bonds. But the central bank won’t be telling Exxon to save workers’ jobs: Congress and the Fed both failed to create any binding requirements that companies benefiting from these programs retain their workers.The response of fossil fuel firms and the Trump administration alike to the potentially lethal working conditions for oil and gas workers has been to bury the data and prevent workers from suing.

Many oil producers have struggled with a decade of bad bets that were compounded by the spring plunge in oil prices. But that hasn’t stopped them from pushing money out the door to their executives right before they collapse. Last week, the oil and gas drilling firm Noble Corp, which employs 1,600 workers, filed for bankruptcy. Only weeks prior, Noble Corp decided to pay all of its executives their full bonus for 2020, including a $4.2 million pay package for its CEO.

Noble Corp is hardly the first oil and gas firm to make sure its executives got their bonuses just before the company crumbled. Chesapeake Energy, struggling with $9 billion in debt amid crashing oil prices, decided in May to pre-pay 21 executives $25 million in bonuses to ensure they stayed motivated. By the end of June, they were bankrupt. Further, both Whiting Petroleum and Extraction Oil & Gas gave their executives millions in bonuses a mere week before going bankrupt — Whiting Petroleum executives nabbed $14.6 million in cash bonuses and Extraction executives pocketed $6.7 million.

The response of fossil fuel firms and the Trump administration alike to the potentially lethal working conditions for oil and gas workers has been to bury the data and prevent workers from suing. Fossil fuel giants like ConocoPhillips and Exxon lobbied Congress to grant them legal immunity should their workers get sick, as documented by Friends of the Earth. The liability shield proposed by Senate Republicans even allows firms to sue their own workers should they try and seek recompense if they get sick.The liability shield proposed by Senate Republicans even allows firms to sue their own workers should they try and seek recompense if they get sick.

This comes as reporting indicates offshore oil rigs may be hotbeds for the virus. On April 8, the Coast Guard reported that at least 26 workers on oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico had tested positive for COVID-19. Since then, the count has gone dark as the Trump administration refused to disclose new case numbers.

But the problem appears bleak based on numbers coming out of Mexico where 202 employees and five contractors have died of coronavirus at the state-owned oil producer Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) — the highest coronavirus death rate of any company in the world, according to Bloomberg. Pemex has been disclosing coronavirus deaths on a daily basis. By contrast, ExxonMobil has declined to report any information at all about the death of its workers due to coronavirus.

Fossil fuel firms are sacrificing their workers’ jobs and safety for profits. The sector can’t blame the pandemic for its troubles, as its troubles predate coronavirus.

By rewarding executives just before bankruptcy, slashing jobs to please investors and pushing for immunity even if they endanger their workers, these firms are proving themselves to be the real job killers. With the Fed’s ongoing purchase of fossil fuel firms’ debt, the public itself is an unwilling enabler of the sector’s approach of pursuing profits, no matter the cost.

New Sanders Bill Would Tax “Obscene” Pandemic Windfall of Billionaires

People participate in a "March on Billionaires" event on July 17, 2020, in New York City.

SPENCER PLATT / GETTY IMAGES

BYJake Johnson, Common Dreams

PUBLISHED August 6, 2020

Sen. Bernie Sanders plans to introduce legislation Thursday that would heavily tax the “obscene wealth gains” America’s billionaires have accumulated during the Covid-19 crisis to help fund the U.S. recovery from the pandemic and resulting economic collapse.

In a speech on the Senate floor Wednesday, Sanders said “if we taxed 60 percent of the windfall gains these billionaires made from March 18th until August 3rd, we could raise over $420 billion.”

“That’s enough revenue to allow Medicare to pay all of the out-of-pocket healthcare expenses for everyone in America over the next 12 months,” said Sanders. “By taxing 60% of the wealth gains made by just 467 billionaires during this horrific pandemic, we could guarantee healthcare as a right for an entire year.”

According to the latest figures from the Institute for Policy Studies and Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) — groups that have been tracking the wealth gains of the richest Americans since the start of the pandemic — U.S. billionaires have seen their wealth grow by more than $750 billion since mid-March, even as the economy plunged into a deep recession and tens of millions of Americans lost their jobs and health insurance.

“Billionaires & their corporations have received tons of bailout money,” ATF tweeted late Wednesday in support of Sanders’ proposal. “It’s time we ask them to step up and pay it forward.”


BREAKING: Tomorrow, Sen. Bernie Sanders will introduce a bill calling for a wealth tax on billionaires to fund our recovery from the coronavirus crisis.

Billionaires & their corporations have received tons of bailout money. It’s time we ask them to step up and pay it forward. https://t.co/7ARzhntpH6

— For Tax Fairness (@4TaxFairness) August 5, 2020

Condemning “do-nothing Republicans” for refusing to act, Sanders warned Wednesday that the United States is “currently witnessing what is likely the greatest transfer of wealth from the middle class and the poor to the very rich in the modern history of this country” as the U.S. Congress fails to provide additional relief to workers and the unemployed while continuing to bail out large corporations.

“In the midst of a pandemic, in the midst of an economic meltdown for working families, in the midst of a great struggle regarding systemic racism and police brutality, in the midst of the existential threat of climate change, in the midst of a president undermining democracy and moving us toward an authoritarian government, in the midst of all of that, we are seeing a massive increase in income and wealth inequality and the movement in this country toward oligarchy,” Sanders said.

The Vermont senator went on to list several examples of “morally obscene” billionaire profiteering during the pandemic:
While Amazon is denying paid sick leave, hazard pay and personal protective equipment to 450,000 of its workers, Jeff Bezos has increased his wealth by over $70 billion.
While U.S. taxpayers are subsidizing the starvation wages at Walmart, our nation’s largest private employer, the Walton family has made over $20 billion during the pandemic and now has a net worth of over $200 billion.
While 40 million Americans face eviction, Elon Musk has nearly tripled his wealth over the past four months and now has a net worth of more than $70 billion.
While millions of Americans are lining up at emergency food banks because they don’t have enough money to put food on the table, Mark Zuckerberg the founder of Facebook has increased his wealth by more than $37 billion during the pandemic and is now worth over $90 billion.

“At a time of enormous economic pain and suffering, we have a choice to make,” Sanders said. “We can continue to allow the very rich to get much richer while everyone else gets poorer and poorer. Or we can tax the winnings a handful of billionaires made during the pandemic to improve the health and well-being of tens of millions of Americans.”

Nearly 100 people in Ohio got sick after one man infected with the coronavirus attended a church service

Bill Bostock

People pray at St. Michael's Church in Brooklyn, NY, on May 26, 2020. Stephanie Keith/Getty Images

Ninety-one people caught COVID-19 after a man infected with the virus attended a church service in Ohio.

Governor Mike DeWine tweeted a graphic from the Ohio Department of Health on Tuesday, which showed how the 56-year-old man was responsible for 91 infections.

The man infected 53 people at the service, and 18 of them then passed the virus to at least one other person, the graphic said.

Experts have previously warned that religious ceremonies are breeding grounds for the virus.
Close to 100 people contracted the coronavirus in Ohio after one person who had the virus attended a church service and spread it to dozens others.

As a warning to religious institutions in the state, Gov. Mike DeWine tweeted a graphic from the Ohio Department of Health on Tuesday to show how the 56-year-old churchgoer essentially infected 91 people.

Fifty-three people who attended the church service fell ill, and 18 of them then gave it to at least one other person, the graphic showed.
—Governor Mike DeWine (@GovMikeDeWine) August 4, 2020

The service took place June 14, The Kansas City Star reported. By July 4, a total of 91 people ranging from ages one to 67 across four Ohio counties had tested positive for COVID-19, all stemmed from that one case, the newspaper said.


"It is vital that to control the spread of the virus that any time people gather together, including for religious services, that everyone wear masks, practice social distancing, wash hands, and also while indoors, making sure there is good ventilation and airflow," he said, according to The Kansas City Star.

It is not clear whether anyone at the church service wore masks or practiced social distancing. Ohio's mandatory face-mask only came into effect on July 23.

Ohio has a resurgence in coronavirus cases in recent weeks. As of Wednesday, it has recorded more than 96,000 COVID-19 cases and more than 3,600 deaths.

President Donald Trump holds a Bible while visiting St. John's Church in Washington, DC, on June 1, 2020, after authorities forcibly cleared the area of protesters. BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images

In late May, President Donald Trump declared religious institutions "essential" services and told state governors to let them start admitting people again.


But religious services have been identified as situations where the coronavirus can spread like wildfire.

Experts have warned that loud talking and singing could spread the coronavirus further than six feet. When people give exhalations that require more energy, the droplets they emit can travel further. Some research has also suggested that louder speech produces more droplets.

"It's an ideal setting for transmission," Carlos del Rio, an infectious-disease expert at Emory University, told The New York Times, referring to church services. "You have a lot of people in a closed space. And they're speaking loudly, they're singing. All those things are exactly what you don't want."

A number of churches have caught headlines after large chunks of their parishioners caught the coronavirus.
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In March, 35 people at a church in Arkansas caught COVID-19 after attending a service. Three of them later died of the virus.
In May, 107 people tested positive for coronavirus after attending a church service in Frankfurt, Germany.
In June, 236 people in Oregon got the coronavirus after a church held multiple services during lockdown.
During the early months of the pandemic, a secretive doomsday church in South Korea was accused of accelerating the outbreak in the city of Daegu. The city is now suing the church for endangering lives.


Do you have a personal experience with the coronavirus you'd like to share? Or a tip on how your town or community is handling the pandemic? Please email covidtips@businessinsider.com and tell us your story.

Get the latest coronavirus business & economic impact analysis from Business Insider Intelligence on how COVID-19 is affecting industries.

Trump Isn’t “Failing” on COVID Testing. He’s Carrying Out a Brutal Plan.

President Trump speaks during a news conference in the James Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House on August 4, 2020, in Washington, D.C.DREW ANGERER / 

GETTY IMAGES

BY William Rivers Pitt, Truthout

PUBLISHED August 6, 2020

The still-potent remnants of a dying hurricane rumbled up from the south on Tuesday night and landed a big wet haymaker on my little corner of the northern woods. Electricity, phones — land and cell — and internet were gone with the crash of falling trees and the howl of a humid wind, and for about 40 hours it was the 19th century around here.

For someone in the RIGHT NOW news biz, this was an unnatural state of affairs, but there was little I could do; I had to drive 25 minutes over broken branches and around closed roads, in fact, to find a signal so I could email my boss and tell her there was little I could do. My deadlines would have to hang fire until the utility workers put Humpty back together again, which they did, and in fine style. That kind of work is an especially hard hustle around here, as most of the power lines run through the woods. Downed lines and bears, o my.

The silence that descended once the storm passed was otherworldly. No braying TV in the corner, no phone beeping alerts for new messages and email, no news input of any kind, and for 40 sweet hours, no new Donald Trump horrors to encompass. For the first time in over five years, I was not getting lashed about in the maelstrom of Trumpian mayhem that my line of work has become. I didn’t know how exhausted and horrified I really was until the screaming stopped, and I was able, finally, to be still.

I saw a few things in that stillness that are probably obvious to others, but when your cerebral cortex is plugged directly into the Niagara Falls of news data that never, ever stops, a big-picture perspective can be elusive.

It has never been clearer to me just how deliberate all of this is. Not COVID-19 itself, but the manner in which Trump and his people have reacted to it. This is many light-years beyond mere incompetence, and even farther beyond anything that resembles cruel indifference. Men like White House adviser Stephen Miller are rolling out their most vivid fascist fantasies as the body count rises, and they are playing Trump like a badly tuned cello to do it.

Take COVID testing and the census, for one example. Aside from masks and social distancing, a rigorous national testing regimen is the only way the country will be able to get a handle on this thing absent an effective vaccine.

It is a week into August, and that national testing regimen still hasn’t come to pass because Donald Trump doesn’t want it to. His gibberish arguments that testing is counterproductive are the stuff of nightmares and very possibly illegal in their official neglect, but behind it all is a simple truth: He does not want testing because he does not want the country to know how sick it is. It is the information he fears most.

This is the same deliberate thinking that has led the Trump administration to trash the census process. As with COVID testing, it is the forthcoming knowledge Trump and his allies fear. They don’t want to know how Black the country really is, how Latinx, how anything but white, how young, how poor. Knowing this would rattle the underpinnings of the white power structure in the U.S., and so that information collection must be thwarted.

The census and COVID testing have failed in spectacular fashion, and neither collapse is due to incompetence or indifference. Both have been wrecked to benefit those in power, to help them stay in power. It is cruel, but it is no accident.

The question as ever with these brigands: cui bono? Who benefits?

This way of being has trickled down to local governments across the country, because if the president does it, so can they. Recently, a student at North Paulding High School, just west of Atlanta, snapped a photo of a hallway in his school packed shoulder-to-shoulder with students. The photo — an appalling example of how COVID safety measures are being ignored in the rush to reopen schools — went viral.

Rather than speak to the conditions captured in the photo, the school administrators threatened the student body. “Anything that’s going on social media that’s negative or alike without permission, photography, that’s video or anything, there will be consequences,” was the announcement at North Paulding High.

Inconvenient data? Make sure it never sees the light of day, even if you have to twist some arms to do it.

The Republican-controlled Senate went home today after once again failing to come up with a compromise stimulus package to help the millions of people whose lives are falling apart around them because of the pandemic. There is still no emergency unemployment benefit even as 1.2 million new unemployment claims were announced this morning.

One of the many looming side effects of mass unemployment is the potential for mass evictions. The longer Congress waits to help people who are about to lose their homes, the more likely it is that a terrifying number of people will be put out on the street.

Losing your home or being forced to move makes it much harder to vote — the change of address, perhaps no address at all, could leave many people unable to cast a ballot in November.

Cui bono? At this point, you don’t even have to ask.

That storm knocked down some trees, but around here, it sure let in the light.


William Rivers Pitt  is a senior editor and lead columnist at Truthout. He is also a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of three books: War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn’t Want You to Know, The Greatest Sedition Is Silence and House of Ill Repute: Reflections on War, Lies, and America’s Ravaged Reputation. His fourth book, The Mass Destruction of Iraq: Why It Is Happening, and Who Is Responsible, co-written with Dahr Jamail, is available now on Amazon. He lives and works in New Hampshire.

Trump executive order seeks to ban TikTok, WeChat 'transactions' in 45 days

The White House tells reporters Tencent's ban only applies to WeChat.

Richard Lawler, @Rjcc

Dado Ruvic / Reuters


A week ago Donald Trump said that he could and would ban the video sharing app TikTok, and on Thursday night he issued an executive order to block “transactions” with its parent company, ByteDance. It’s set to take effect in 45 days, which is just beyond the September 15th deadline Microsoft publicly announced for its negotiations to buy the company. At the same time, the US Senate voted to ban TikTok from government devices.

At same time, Trump also issued an executive order pushing the same ban for WeChat and its parent company Tencent. WeChat allows communication for people inside and outside China, and it’s unclear what a ban could mean for users in the US.

These orders will certainly be challenged in court and it’s unclear exactly what “transactions” means until the Secretary of Commerce explains it, but Tencent has investments in many US companies, including Snapchat’s parent company (update: see below, as the White House states this will only relate to transactions that involve WeChat). It operates games like PUBG Mobile, owns Riot Games which makes League of Legends and Valorant, plus it owns a significant portion of Fortnite developer Epic Games. Its ownership stake in Activision Blizzard became an issue last year when a Hearthstone esports player was banned for supporting the Hong Kong protests.

Tencent Films has also had a hand in producing many major movies recently, like Wonder Woman, Top Gun: Maverick, Terminator: Dark Fate and Venom. The same applies for music, as Tencent has a stake in Spotify after the companies swapped equity in 2018, recently closed a $3.3 billion deal to take an ownership stake in Universal Music Group and also owns a share of Warner Music.

In the orders, a justification given for the ban is “national emergency with respect to the information and communications technology and services supply chain.” It also claims they could “be used for disinformation campaigns that benefit the Chinese Communist Party.” As we noted previously, they also claim to be concerned about how TikTok “automatically captures vast swaths of information from its users, including Internet and other network activity information such as location data and browsing and search histories.”

We’ve contacted many of the companies potentially affected by this order and will update the article when more details are available.

Update (8/7 12:05 AM ET): LA Times reporter Sam Dean has heard from a White House spokesperson who says that despite the EO’s wording, it only applies to Tencent transactions that involve WeChat.


Same 45 days order to #WeChat and its owner #Tencent pic.twitter.com/C0ZPEURrH2— Jane Tang 唐家婕 (@ccjanetang) August 7, 2020


Trump also signed an EO related to WeChat, saying: “WeChat automatically captures vast swaths of information from its users —threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans' personal and proprietary information.“— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) August 7, 2020


Video game companies owned by Tencent will NOT be affected by this executive order!

White House official confirmed to the LA Times that the EO only blocks transactions related to WeChat

So Riot Games (League of Legends), Epic Games (Fortnite), et al are safe

(pending updates)— Sam Dean 🦅 (@SamAugustDean) August 7, 2020