Renault to cut 15,000 jobs in 2 bn euro cost cutting plan

AFP/File / LOU BENOISTFrench auto giant Renault hopes to bring about the job cuts without redundancies through voluntary departures, internal mobility measures and retraining

French auto giant Renault plans to cut around 15,000 jobs worldwide, including 4,600 in France, as part of a two billion euro cost-cutting plan over three years, sources said Thursday.

The plan, which is set to be announced publicly on Friday, was explained to unions by the company on Thursday evening, multiple sources with knowledge of the matter told AFP.

The company hopes to bring about the job cuts without redundancies through voluntary departures, internal mobility measures and retraining, the sources added.

Its annual global production capacity will be reduced from a current figure of four million vehicles to around 3.3 million. Consultations with staff representatives in France will start from next month.

The car industry faces an existential crisis from the coronavirus pandemic, which has caused sales to plunge as governments have forced citizens to stay at home to slow the spread of the virus.

Renault is in talks with the French government to obtain a 5-billion-euro state-backed loan, but the French government has made this conditional on guarantees for workers and production to remain in the country.

It also pushed the automaker to join a European initiative on batteries for electric cars. The French state holds a 15 percent stake in Renault.

France had on Tuesday announced an 8 billion-euro plan to support the auto industry that President Emmanuel Macron said he hoped would help make the country the European leader in the manufacture of electric cars.

Renault and its partners Nissan and Mitsubishi had unveiled Wednesday a plan to deepen their alliance, a top global producer of cars, that only months ago seemed on the verge of breakup.

Even before the current crisis, Renault had been rocked by the departure of emblematic CEO Carlos Ghosn, who was arrested in Japan in November 2018 over allegations of financial misconduct, including under reporting salary and misuse of company assets at Renault partner Nissan.

Brazilian-born Ghosn, who also has French and Lebanese nationality, is now in Lebanon, where he fled in December after jumping bail in Japan.

'TIME FOR ARMED SELF DEFENSE' BLACK PANTHER PARTY MEMES

Latin America's slums facing losing battle against virus spread

AFP / Federico PARRA

The Petare slum in Caracas. The coronavirus pandemic is starting to unleash destruction on Latin America's most vulnerable

As the coronavirus pandemic swept across the globe, Latin America's slum dwellers waited defenseless in its path. Now, with the region becoming the new epicenter of the crisis, the virus is unleashing destruction on its most vulnerable populations.

With limited sanitation and little space, millions of people living cheek by jowl in slums cannot take even the most basic hand-washing and social distancing precautions recommended by health authorities.

"We are increasingly concerned about the poor and other vulnerable groups more at risk from disease and death from the virus," Pan American Health Organization chief Carissa Etienne said this week.

With infections continuing to climb in the pandemic's new epicenter Brazil, as well as Peru and Chile, experts warn the situation is rapidly worsening.

In a region where an estimated 54 percent are employed in the informal sector, slum residents are forced to choose between "starving or dying from the virus," according to Brazilian economist Dalia Maimon of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

Maimon sums up the prevailing belief as: "if dying of hunger is a certainty, by not working -- then I will take the risk of trying not to become infected by going out to work."

An economic crisis exacerbated by the shutdown has left millions of Latin Americans without a livelihood. In Brazil alone, five million people lost their jobs since the pandemic began, the government said Thursday.

- 'Staying home means starving' -

AFP / MARTIN BERNETTI

The Cerro 18 sector, east of Santiago, on May 22, 2020

"We are construction workers, people who sell things, people who go out every day. With confinement everything has changed for most of us. We find ourselves without any work," Oscar Gonzalez, 43, told AFP.

Gonzalez, a welder in the deprived Brisas del Sol area of Santiago, was employed in a workshop that closed down last month.

The neighborhood has seen an increase in social unrest this week as people took to the streets and erected barricades to demand state aid.

"We don't even get a little help from the government here. They believe that we can live without money. But how can we buy food?" Gonzalez asked.

It is a sentiment heard also in Santiago's sprawling La Pintana area, where locals lambast the state's slow reaction to the crisis.

"If we don't support each other, nobody helps us here," says Gloria Reyes, a 62-year-old seamstress who now runs a soup kitchen.

AFP / Cris BOURONCLE

The shantytown on the San Cristobal hill on the outskirts of Lima, Peru, on May 24, 2020

The virus "has stopped everything," said Claudia Gutierrez, 31, who runs a market stall selling second-hand clothes.

- Soup kitchens -

"I'm 55 years old, my family is from here and I have never seen so many soup kitchens in my life," said the La Pintana's mayor Claudia Pizarro, a member of the leftist opposition Democratic Party.

"Last week it was 20, and this week it's 40," she said.

La Pintana has more than 2,100 COVID-19 cases and "more than 50 percent of the PCR tests we are doing are positive," said the mayor, well above the 12-16 percent positives seen nationwide.

Fifteen people with COVID-19 died in the area, according to Pizarro.

In Sao Paulo, Brazil's sprawling megacity of 12.2 million, the coronavirus has killed more than 6,400 people of the 86,000 officially infected.

After the United States, Brazil is the country most affected by the pandemic in terms of numbers, with more than 25,000 deaths and 410,000 infections out of a population of 210 million.

"We must have our own public policies and create alternatives because of the absence of the government," said Gilson Rodrigues, an official in Paraisopolis, the second largest favela in Sao Paulo.

"We have to prepare for the worst-case scenario."

In Argentina, a spike in cases in a Buenos Aires slum last week forced the government to postpone plans to emerge from a 10-week lockdown.

On Monday another surge in the Villa Azul slum spread further alarm, and police enforced quarantine, as authorities fear the virus could spread to a much bigger slum nearby.

- Absent state -

AFP / MAURO PIMENTEL

The Pavao-Pavaozinho favela surrounded by the neighborhoods of Copacabana, Ipanema and Lagoa in Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil, on May 22, 2020


Elsewhere, the absence of the state -- a vacuum that existed even before the pandemic -- has led to criminal organizations moving in to extend their control by helping stricken communities.

The ability of these groups to fill the void left by the authorities "is the most alarming trend" since the virus struck, security expert Douglas Farah told a recent forum in Washington hosted by the Organization of American States.

In Mexico, cartels are distributing food and medicine; in Honduras, gangs organize vehicle disinfection campaigns, to protect themselves from the virus in the areas they control.

According to the UN, nearly 89 million people in the region do not have even basic sanitation services, making impossible regular hand-washing, the most basic protection against the coronavirus.

In Peru almost a third of Lima's 10 million population are facing serious water supply problems.

"The water crisis in Lima is a silent threat. The most vulnerable populations are those most at risk of being exposed to the pandemic," Mariella Sanchez, head of the Aquafondo NGO, told AFP.

Shortages of electricity and gasoline have added to the lack of water in Venezuela.

In the town of San Cristobal on Colombian border, Reinaldo Vega's family collects water in buckets from a pipeline in the street and uses what he terms "boy scout" techniques to get through.

"This is how we survive," he told AFP, as he went off to forage for firewood to cook.

burs-ll/ltl/jb-db/st

In the US, camera phones increasingly expose racism

AFP / Kerem Yucel

Demonstators protesting against the death of George Floyd in custody in Minneapolis

From the death of a black man in Minneapolis to a racist incident in Central Park, camera phones are increasingly being used as a weapon against racism even when justice doesn't always follow.

Two videos shot on smartphones spread from social media to mainstream media this week, highlighting how bystanders are now frequently capturing incidents that in the past may have gone unnoticed.

It was a member of the public who filmed George Floyd grasping for breath as a white Minneapolis policeman pressed his knee on Floyd's neck for at least five minutes on Monday.

Floyd went still and was later declared dead in hospital. Four police officers were fired from their jobs but remain free and the city has witnessed two nights of angry protests.

"If we did not have a video, would the officers have been fired as quickly? Ibram Kendi, director of the American University's anti-racism research center, asked in an interview with Democracy Now!

"Would they have believed all of those witnesses who were looking at what was happening and who was the asking officers to stop?

In the second incident, a white woman falsely reported Christian Cooper, an avid birdwatcher to police after he requested that she leash her dog in a wooded area of New York's Central Park.

"I'm going to tell them there's an African-American man threatening my life," she told Cooper as he filmed her dial 911 in a video that has been viewed over 43 million times on Twitter.

- Rodney King -

In February, Ahmaud Arbery -- also African American -- was shot and killed by two white residents while jogging in their neighborhood in Georgia.

A third man, who was later also charged over Arbery's death, filmed the murder, with the cellphone video sparking outrage when it was leaked onto social media earlier this month.

The filming of such violent incidents is not new.

Since the beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police in 1991, which was filmed by an amateur cameraman, videos have frequently documented acts of racism across the United States.

But in recent years the capturing of such incidents, with them subsequently going viral online and then being broadcast across major news networks, has becoming more systematic.

"Here's the sad reality," tweeted Senator Kamala Harris, a black former candidate to be the Democratic Party's presidential candidate.

"What happened to George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery & Christian Cooper has gone on for generations to Black Americans. Cell phones just made it more visible."

Katheryn Russell-Brown, director of the Center for the Study of Race and Race Relations at the University of Florida, said the videos remind us that "wherever people of color are there's a vulnerability.

"I would be hard pressed to think of cases involving Whites that show the same kind of instances of harm and assault particularly if we're talking about law enforcement," she told AFP.

The increased use of police officers wearing body cameras while on duty over the past decade had raised hopes that the use of force against African Americans would fall.

But after initial studies showed encouraging results, more in-depth reports found that "the cameras aren't producing the reductions in use of force that were expected," according to Urban Institute researcher Daniel Lawrence.

Many forces allow officers to turn the cameras off whenever they want, while some have been accused of editing the images before making them public.

- 'Torn apart' -

In the death of Eric Garner -- by asphyxiation at the hands of a New York police officer in 2014 which sparked the nationwide "Black Lives Matter" movement -- it was witnesses who filmed the incident, not police, like with Floyd's death.

"These videos that are published in public forms really do point to a kind of dysfunctionality in our criminal legal system," said Russell-Brown.

"It's sort of suggesting that we need private citizens to make it necessary to watch public officers or people in public spaces to achieve justice or to at least raise the alarm bells about justice," she added.

Russell-Brown also notes that the presence of a camera often doesn't prevent the act from being committed in the first place.

Filming can also have major repercussions, with specialists warning of the risks of rushing to judgment on social networks.

Within a day of the Central Park incident, Amy Cooper lost her job as vice-president of a wealth management company, her anonymity and her dog amid a media storm.

"I'm not excusing the racism. But I don't know if her life needed to be torn apart," said Christian Cooper, who is no relation to Amy.

As powerful as videos may be, they mean little, if the law doesn't run its course, say experts.

"They got fired," said Russell-Brown referring to the officers involved in Floyd's death.

"Is that enough? No. We have a dead person. So now we want the legal system to do what it's supposed to do."

Police precinct in flames in US protest over death of black man

" THE BURNING BUILDINGS ARE THE TEARS OF OUR RAGE" REP ILHAN OMAR

                                              

GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP / SCOTT OLSONA police building went up in flames in Minnesota during protests

A police precinct in Minnesota went up in flames late Thursday in a third day of demonstrations as the so-called Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul seethed over the shocking police killing of a handcuffed black man.

The precinct, which police had abandoned, burned after a group of protesters pushed through barriers around the building, breaking windows and chanting slogans. A much larger crowd demonstrated as the building went up in flames.

The crowd was protesting the death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man who died after Minneapolis police arrested him on Monday on suspicion of using a counterfeit banknote. Police handcuffed him and held him to the ground, with a bystander video showing an officer pressing his knee on Floyd's neck.

The videos showed Floyd saying that he couldn't breathe until he went silent and limp. He was later declared dead.

GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP / Stephen MaturenA large crowd gathered outside a police precinct to protest the death of George Floyd after his arrest by police

Hundreds of people had begun marching in Minneapolis in the late afternoon -- many wear masks as protection against the novel coronavirus -- while in St. Paul, just to the east, police said there was ongoing looting as multiple fires were reported.

But later in the evening a large crowd demonstrated outside the city's Third Precinct.

"Shortly after 10:00 pm tonight, in the interest of the safety of our personnel, the Minneapolis Police Department evacuated the 3rd Precinct of its staff," city police said in a statement.

- Probe under way -

Officials assured angry residents that investigations into Floyd's death were underway, and warned that violence would not be tolerated.

"We know there's a lot of anger. We know there's a lot of hurt," said St. Paul Police Chief Todd Axtel.

GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP / Stephen MaturenOfficials have warned violence will not be tolerated

"But we can't tolerate people using this as an opportunity to commit crimes," he said.

At the request of both cities, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz called up hundreds of National Guard troops and state police to help with security.

"George Floyd's death should lead to justice and systemic change, not more death and destruction," Walz said.

- Outrage spreads -

Floyd's family demanded the officer and three others who were present, all since fired from their jobs, face murder charges.

"You know, I want an arrest for all four of those officers tonight. A murder conviction for all four of those officers. I want the death penalty," Floyd's brother, Philonise Floyd, told CNN.

"I have not slept in four days, and those officers, they're at home sleeping," he said. "I can't stand for that."

GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP / SCOTT OLSONMinnesota Governor Tim Walz called up hundreds of National Guard troops and state police to help with security

"But people are torn and hurting because they are tired of seeing black men die, constantly, over and over again."

Two African American leaders of national stature, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, arrived in Minneapolis and urged more protests.

"We told the governor you must call murder a murder," Jackson told an audience at the Greater Friendship Missionary Baptist Church.

"When you put... your foot down somebody's neck until they can't breathe no longer, you murdered them," he said.

Sharpton said videos were all the evidence needed to arrest the police officers involved.

"We are going to make sure that this prosecution goes down," said Sharpton.

- Case is 'top priority' -

Local and federal investigators said they were working the explosive case as fast as they could.

"The Department of Justice has made the investigation in this case a top priority," said Erica MacDonald, the US federal attorney for Minnesota.

AFP / kerem yucelLocal and federal investigators said they were working the explosive case as fast as they could

"To be clear, President (Donald) Trump, as well as Attorney General William Barr, are directly and actively monitoring the investigation in this case."

The White House said Trump was "very upset" upon seeing the "egregious, appalling" video footage and demanded his staff see that the investigation was given top priority.

"He wants justice to be served," Trump's press secretary Kayleigh McEnany told reporters.

- Tear gas and rubber bullets -

Demonstrators clashed with law enforcement, looted stores and set fires to shops and a construction site overnight Wednesday in the busy Lake Street corridor of Minneapolis, and were met with police tear gas and rubber bullets.

One person died of a gunshot wound, and police were reportedly investigating whether he was shot by a store owner.

Some stores, including Minneapolis-based Target, afterward announced they would close multiple locations, as the US Postal Service suspended service to some areas and bus services were discontinued through the weekend in parts of the city.

Facebook/Darnella Frazier/AFP / Darnella FrazierA bystander video of a Minneapolis police officer holding his knee to George Floyd's neck has gone viral

Floyd's killing evoked memories of riots in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014 after a policeman shot dead an African American man suspected of robbery, and the case earlier the same year of New Yorker Eric Garner, who died after New York police put him in an illegal chokehold as they tried to detain him for selling cigarettes.

Sympathy protests erupted in other cities.

Several hundred people demonstrated in New York's Union Square on Thursday, leading to at least five arrests.

In Los Angeles, where there are longstanding tensions between law enforcement and black residents, protesters marched Wednesday on downtown and briefly blocked a major freeway.

Activists were planning a rally Friday in downtown Washington near the White House.

And protesters gathered in Denver, Colorado and Phoenix, Arizona Thursday evening, according to CNN.

Ilhan Omar, a black Somalia native who represents Minneapolis in Congress, called for calm but said there was "extreme frustration" in the community over the incident.

"Anger really is boiling over because justice still seems out of reach," she said.

POLICING THE USA
Benjamin Crump: When will African Americans have the right to self defense?
Breonna Taylor's boyfriend tried to stand his ground, but got charged with a crime instead.
Ben Crump
In America, we like to believe that the rights afforded under the Constitution and by law apply equally to everyone. But several recent, high-profile cases starkly document how justice in America is apportioned in black and white.

We know that black people are more likely to be stopped and more likely to be perceived as dangerous just by being. It has come to be known as doing something “while black” — walking while black, shopping while black, driving while black and now even bird-watching while black.

If it’s this difficult for black people to just be, imagine the barriers that prevent us from actually defending ourselves.

This raises some difficult but important questions:

Can black Americans exercise their Second Amendment right to bear arms? Can they stand their ground? Can they claim self-defense in shooting someone who threatens them with physical harm? Does the castle doctrine, which grants a person the right to use deadly force to protect their home from an intruder, apply to them?


COLUMN:Video of George Floyd pinned by Minneapolis cops is shocking but not surprising

Look no further than the cases of Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor for your answers.

In February, Arbery was jogging when he was chased down by two white men in a truck and shot to death. The alleged killers claimed they feared for their lives despite Arbery being unarmed — and the police took them at their word. If a white person says they feel threatened by a black person, no further evidence is required. Any level of force seems to be justified.




Only after the case made national news when a video of the shocking killing surfaced months later were suspects Gregory McMichael and Travis McMichael finally arrested and charged with murder.

Contrast the treatment of the McMichaels' with that of Kenneth Walker, a black man who fired one nonfatal round from a legally registered firearm against armed intruders in the middle of the night. Walker was defending his castle and his woman when police burst into his apartment unannounced on a misdirected drug raid.


COLUMN:In coronavirus crisis, lessons in humanity toward America's incarcerated

Just before 1 a.m. on March 13, Walker was asleep alongside his girlfriend, Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old EMT and hero in the COVID-19 pandemic, who daily put her life on the line to help others. Three plainclothes Louisville Metro Police officers stormed into Taylor’s apartment on a “no-knock warrant.” Walker called 911, grabbed his gun and fired a single shot.

After an officer was hit in the leg, police opened fire, spraying more than 20 bullets. Taylor, who was shot at least eight times, died. Walker was charged with attempted murder of a police officer. And unlike what happened to the McMichaels, it didn't take months for authorities to press charges. Walker was charged immediately. The charges were dropped only after months of advocacy and national media attention.

The police were looking for narcotics but didn’t find any. The suspect they were seeking was already in custody. Walker was a licensed gun owner who thought someone was breaking in. Clearly, he felt threatened. Where was his right to self-defense?

Recently, the Louisville Metro Police Department said it’s updating policies regarding no-knock warrants and body cameras in the wake of Taylor’s death. The changes will provide an “added level of scrutiny’’ for approval of no-knock warrants and require officers to wear cameras when serving warrants or in situations where they identify themselves as police officers.

That’s helpful, but it doesn’t get to the root problem — that we have two vastly different systems of justice in this country depending on whether you’re black or white. I’ve seen the pain firsthand because I represent the families of both Arbery and Taylor.

Would their stories have ended differently if Ahmaud were a white jogger and Walker were a white man defending a white woman asleep at his side?


It’s 2020 — well past time to surrender our implicit biases and ensure that black Americans are guaranteed the same right to self-defense as white Americans. Justice should be blind, not dependent on the color of the finger that pulled the trigger.

Ben Crump is a civil rights attorney and founder of the national law firm Ben Crump Law, based in Tallahassee, Florida.

Rage-filled protests erupt in Minneapolis after video circulates of racially charged killing by police

Protesters are shot with pepper spray as they confront police outside the Third Police Precinct on May 27, 2020 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. STEPHEN MATUREN/GETTY 

Protesters clashed with riot police firing tear gas for a second night in Minneapolis on Wednesday in an outpouring of rage over the death of a black man seen in a widely circulated video gasping for breath as a white officer knelt on his neck.

The video, taken by an onlooker to Monday night’s fatal encounter between police and George Floyd, 46, showed him lying face down and handcuffed, groaning for help and repeatedly saying, “please, I can’t breathe,” before growing motionless.

The second day of demonstrations, accompanied by looting and vandalism, began hours after Mayor Jacob Frey urged prosecutors to file criminal charges against the white policeman shown pinning Floyd to the street.

Protesters disperse as they clash with police during a demonstration over the killing of George Floyd by a policeman outside the Third Police Precinct on May 27, 2020 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. KEREM YUCEL / AFP

Floyd, who was unarmed and reportedly suspected of trying to pass counterfeit bills at a corner eatery, was taken by ambulance from the scene of his arrest and pronounced dead the same night at a hospital.

The policeman shown kneeling on Floyd’s neck and three fellow officers involved were dismissed from the police department on Tuesday as the FBI opened an investigation.

Hundreds of protesters, many with faces covered, thronged streets around the Third Precinct police station late on Wednesday, about half a mile from where Floyd had been arrested, chanting, “No justice, no peace” and “I can’t breathe.

The crowd grew to thousands as night fell and the protest turned into a standoff outside the station, where police in riot gear formed barricade lines while protesters taunted them from behind makeshift barricades of their own.

A car burns near the Third Police Precinct on May 27, 2020 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. STEPHEN MATUREN/GETTY IMAGES
Police, some taking positions on rooftops, used tear gas, plastic bullets and concussion grenades to keep the crowds at bay. Protesters pelted police with rocks and other projectiles. Some threw tear gas canisters back at the officers.

Television news images from a helicopter over the area showed dozens of people looting a Target store, running out with clothing and shopping carts full of merchandise.

Fires erupted after dark at several businesses, including an auto parts store. Eyewitnesses said the blazes appeared to be the work of arsonists. Media said a smaller, peaceful protest was held outside the home of one of the police officers.

Mayor Jacob Frey requested help from the state’s National Guard as local leaders pleaded for a peaceful resolution.

“Violence only begets violence. More force is only going to lead to more lives lost and more devastation,” Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., tweeted.

Outrage at Floyd’s death also triggered a rally in his name against police brutality by hundreds of people in downtown Los Angeles on Wednesday afternoon.

The murderer of #GeorgeFloyd is Derek Chauvin, who lives at 7517 17th Street North in Oakdale, Minnesota. pic.twitter.com/nO0nLtxKVm— Robert P Helms (@Gpzero57Helms) May 28, 2020

That demonstration turned violent after a crowd marched onto a nearby freeway and blocked traffic, then attacked two California Highway Patrol cruisers, smashing their windows, local media reported. One protester who clung to the hood of a patrol car fell to the pavement as it sped away, and was treated at the scene by paramedics, news footage of the incident showed.

The video of Monday’s deadly confrontation between Minneapolis police and Floyd led Frey to call on Wednesday for Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman “to charge the arresting officer in this case.”

The city identified the four officers as Derek Chauvin, Thomas Lane, Tou Thao and J Alexander Kueng. It did not say who knelt on Floyd’s neck, and gave no further information.

The local police union said the officers were cooperating with investigators and cautioned against a “rush to judgment.”

“We must review all video. We must wait for the medical examiner’s report,” the union statement said.

Protesters demonstrate against the death of George Floyd outside the 3rd Precinct Police Precinct on May 27, 2020 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. KEREM YUCEL/AFP

The county attorney’s office said it would decide how to proceed once investigators had concluded their inquiries.

The case was reminiscent of the 2014 killing of Eric Garner, an unarmed black man in New York City who died after being put in a banned police chokehold.

Garner’s dying words, “I can’t breathe,” became a rallying cry for the Black Lives Matter movement calling attention to a wave of killings of African-Americans by police using unjustified lethal force.

Colin Kaepernick expresses support for Minneapolis protesters after death of George Floyd

Nancy Armour
USA TODAY

Colin Kaepernick broke his silence on the death of George Floyd on Thursday, expressing support for the ongoing protests in Minneapolis.

Police have used tear gas and water cannons on protesters. On Wednesday night, the second night of protests, several stores were set ablaze and some were looted.

“When civility leads to death, revolting is the only logical reaction," Kaepernick said in posts on Instagram and Twitter. "The cries for peace will rain down, and when they do, they will land on deaf ears, because your violence has brought this resistance.

“We have the right to fight back!”

Kaepernick closed the post with, "Rest in Power George Floyd." It was liked on Instagram by LeBron James and was supported in the comments by Enes Kanter.




Floyd, who was black, died Monday after a white police officer knelt on his neck for several minutes, ignoring Floyd’s cries that he couldn’t breathe and witnesses’ pleas to stop. The incident was videotaped by a bystander.

The officer who knelt on Floyd’s neck, Derek Chauvin, was fired, as were three others who were there and did not intervene.

What we know:Minneapolis mayor calls for peace amid protests, fires, looting and anger erupt after George Floyd's death

More:Former NBA player Stephen Jackson gets emotional recalling friendship with George Floyd



Floyd’s death is another example of the police brutality against people of color that prompted Kaepernick, then a quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers, to begin protesting in 2016.

While some suggested Kaepernick was encouraging violence with his statement, it echoed earlier comments by Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey. During a news conference Thursday, Frey said the violence during protests was the “result of so much built-up anger and sadness.”

“Anger and sadness that has been ingrained in our black community, not just because of five minutes of horror. But 400 years,” an emotional Frey said. “If you’re feeling that sadness and that anger, it’s not only understandable, it’s right. It’s a reflection of the truth our black community has lived.

“While not from lived experience, that sadness must also be understood by our non-black communities,” Frey added. “To ignore it, to toss it out, would be to ignore the values we all claim to have. That are all the more important during a time of crisis.”

George Floyd video adds to trauma: 'When is the last time you saw a white person killed online?'

Analysis: African Americans face harmful mental health effects every time high-profile incidents of racism and police brutality go viral, especially when little changes in the aftermath.

Alia E. Dastagir
USA TODAY

Headline after headline, the same story: a black American dead.

George Floyd, after a police officer knelt on his neck. Ahmaud Arbery, while on a jog in Georgia. Breonna Taylor, while police raided her Louisville, Kentucky, home.

And the ones before: Eric Garner, who couldn't breathe. Philando Castile, in the car with his girlfriend and her 4-year-old daughter. Trayvon Martin, only a boy.

Scores of killings answered with acquittals. Now, as a pandemic rages, African Americans in communities across the country disproportionally devastated by COVID-19 are forced to bear witness to more deaths of black Americans.

The costs of these deaths ripple. When people of color experience racism, when they repeatedly witness racism, there is a profound emotional toll.


"The persistent pandemic is racism. That's the pandemic. Recent deaths of individuals of color and the deleterious impact of COVID-19 on communities of color stems all the way from 1776," said Alisha Moreland-Capuia, executive director of Oregon Health & Science University's Avel Gordly Center for Healing, which focuses on culturally sensitive care for the African American community.

"The emotional and psychological impact of racism means acutely, every day, being reminded that you are not enough, being reminded that you are not seen, being reminded that you are not valued, being reminded that you are not a citizen, being reminded that humanity is not something that applies to you."

'Stop killing black people':George Floyd's death sparks protests

Column:Video of George Floyd is shocking but not surprising

Research shows racism has harmful mental and physical effects. They can result from a person experiencing racism directly – as a bird-watcher did when a white woman in New York's Central Park told police he was threatening her life when he asked her to leash her dog – or vicariously, such as someone watching the video of Floyd's suffering.

Racism is associated with a host of psychological consequences, including depression, anxiety, and other serious, sometimes debilitating mental conditions including post-traumatic stress disorder and substance use disorders, mental health experts say.

High-profile incidents of racism and police brutality, especially when accompanied by viral videos, are triggering for people of color who see how little changes in their aftermath.

"Racism is traumatic for people of color," said Monnica Williams, a clinical psychologist and professor at the University of Ottawa in Canada, who studies African American mental health. "Everything that you have to carry around anyway as a black person in America, to add onto it having to watch people in your community who've done nothing killed at the hands of people in power who will probably suffer few, if any, consequences. I think there's no better word to describe it than traumatizing."


Four Minneapolis police officers were fired after Floyd's death, but no criminal charges have been filed.

Williams' niece, who is in Germany, tried to reach her this week after watching the footage of Floyd.

"She was so upset she couldn't sleep," Williams said.
Racial violence is 'repetitive trauma'

The video that spread on social media this week shows officer Derek Chauvin driving his knee into Floyd's neck as he repeatedly says, "I can't breathe."


This isn't the first time those words reverberated through this nation's conscience.

In 2014, Eric Garner was placed in a chokehold by white New York police officer Daniel Pantaleo after being arrested on suspicion of illegally selling loose cigarettes. His dying words were, "I can't breathe."

Pantaleo was fired in 2019, five years after Garner's death.

These incidents influence the experience of being black in America – how dangerous it is to drive, jog, stand on a corner, or even sit at home. They underscore no space is safe.

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"I can only describe the continued viewing of racial violence, torture, murder and disregard for the humanity of black bodies as repetitive trauma," said Danielle Jackson, a psychiatry resident and board member of the American Psychiatric Association's Caucus of Black Psychiatrists. "Perpetrators of racial violence may have changed uniforms, speech, and coded message, but the message remains the same, 'you – black person – are other, you are less than.'"


Police kill more than 300 black Americans – at least a quarter unarmed – each year in the U.S., according to a 2018 study in The Lancet, which found these killings have spillover effects on the mental health of black Americans not directly affected.

Research shows black Americans are 20% more likely to report serious psychological distress than non-Hispanic white Americans. In a study on black youth suicide, researchers found suicide attempts rose by 73% between 1991-2017 for black adolescents and listed exposure to racism as a factor.

Roberto Montenegro, an assistant professor in child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of Washington School of Medicine who studies the biological effects of discrimination, says living in a world where your body is a threat is painful and taxing.

People of color, he said, must engage in extra processing demands to try and assure safety. This leads to states of hypervigilance, arousal and avoidance, which can manifest physically as hypertension and insomnia.

It's called "racial battle fatigue," a term used to explain the psychological stress responses – frustration, shock, anger, disappointment, resentment, anxiety, helplessness, hopelessness, and fear – experienced by people of color in historically white spaces.


Montenegro says he has been frustrated and hurt by repeated racial blows, especially at work.

"I have had nurses, doctors, and other staff tell me that I was intimidating, too assertive, and didn't smile enough, and that this made them – white women – feel unsafe to approach me," he said. "They would not say this to a white doctor."
Video footage shocks. At what cost?

Videos of police brutality fuel outrage and galvanize movements. They also linger, long after the protests quiet.

Some mental health experts argue the explosive footage that accompanies many of these violent deaths are vital to raising public consciousness, even if they are disturbing.

"It powerfully shapes our discourse, much like the images of African American youth in the South who were being sprayed with powerful water hoses and bitten by police dogs when they protested during the Civil Rights Movement," said Brian Smedley, chief of psychology in the public interest at the American Psychological Association. "As disturbing as these images are, as tragic as it is for individuals who've lost their lives, or who have been abused in these circumstances, the reality is that their victimization is not in vain."

Others worry social media's amplification is a step too far, treading into gratuity.

Williams says she would rather not see videos l‪ike Floyd's propagated to such a degree. It can be re-traumatizing for people of color, she argues, and in some ways, its viral spread is yet another act of dehumanization.

"These are human beings and they deserve dignity, and the fact that you can just go online and ... watch a black person be killed – when is the last time you saw a white person killed online?"
Deaths upon deaths

People of color are witnessing these brutal deaths amid a global pandemic that is hitting African American and Latino communities especially hard. Many front-line jobs are disproportionately held by people of color. Also, people of color are more likely than white adults to report significant stressors in their life as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, including getting coronavirus (71% vs. 59%, respectively), basic needs (61% vs. 47%), and access to health care services (59% vs. 46%), according to the American Psychological Association's "Stress in America" report published in May.


'People are really suffering':Black and Latino communities help their own amid coronavirus crisis

"People of color already carry the burden of structural racism in our history and in our bodies," Montenegro said. "COVID has highlighted how power, privilege, and access to means and resources are distributed disproportionately."

Arline Geronimus, a professor of health behavior and health education at the University of Michigan, uses the term "weathering" to describe the way chronic stressors – which can include interpersonal microaggressions and institutionalized racism – erode bodies. These erosions can lead to chronic conditions among people of color which, Smedley said, make them more vulnerable to COVID-19.
No one should have to 'cope' with racism. So how do you?

Approximately 30% of African American adults with mental illness get treatment each year, below the U.S. average of 43%, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Many African Americans mistrust the health system, and socioeconomic factors can limit access to treatment.

But even mental health professionals recognize there are limits to what the system can do in the face of institutionalized racism. Williams said she's tired of talking about how to cope.

"So many people of color have to sit on their anger and stuff it down, and we know that that's taking a horrible physical and emotional toll on our communities," she said. "The most constructive thing that we can do is take that anger and rage and demand social change. Because going to get your nails done, or taking seven deep breaths, or what have you, that's not going to be enough."


Moreland-Capuia is exhausted by the outrage cycle: the performative responses, the social media flurries, the mainstream media, especially. A lot of well-meaning people post about these deaths, she said, but when it's time to do the work to save black lives, she often feels alone.

"Who is going to be with us to do the real work that's going to be required to help us adhere to that promise ... which is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?" she asked. "If we do not treat, manage, and effectively contain the disease of racism, the emotional and psychological toll will not only continue to kill black people, it will consume us all."

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Column: After George Floyd's death in Minnesota, still think Colin Kaepernick's knee was the problem? 

Opinion: Why is coronavirus killing so many black Americans? Because they are poor

1619: 400 years ago, a ship arrived in Virginia, bearing human cargo

Will Justin Trudeau unveil a four-day work week in Canada?

Author of the article:Bianca Bharti

1930 IWW.ORG

The idea of the long-desired four-day work week has gained more attention as Canadians near the end of Month 3 in coronavirus lockdown, but don’t expect three-day weekends just yet, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Wednesday.

“Right now we’re very much focused on getting through this particular crisis, and we’ll have plenty of time to talk about particularly creative ideas on moving forward, but I’m not going to speculate on what any of them might be,” he said in a response to a question from a CityNews reporter.

Will Justin Trudeau unveil a four-day work week in Canada?

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern floated the idea of a four-day work week in a Facebook live video a week ago.

Ardern flagged New Zealand’s tourism sector, which employs 15 per cent of the population and contributes about $13.8 billion to the country’s gross domestic product, as being one part of the economy that could benefit from people having long weekends.


Similarly, in Canada tourism plays an important role in the economy, where it’s valued at $102 billion a year. Pre-COVID-19, it was the country’s fifth-largest sector, outpacing telecommunications and mining, and employing 1.8 million Canadians.

“I hear lots of people suggesting we should have a four-day week. Ultimately that really sits between employers and employees, but as I’ve said, there’s lots of things we’ve learned about COVID and just that flexibility of people working from home, the productivity that can be driven out of it,” Ardern said.

“Really encourage people to think about, if they’re an employer and in a position to do so, to think about whether or not that is something that would work for their workplace because it certainly would help tourism all around the country.”

The status quo work week of Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., roughly dates back to the Industrial Revolution and the Ford Motor assembly line of the early 1900s.

In June 2018, nearly 70 per cent of Canadians said they would prefer working 10-hour days for four days a week, rather than eight-hour days, five days a week, according to an Angus Reid poll.

BETTER YET 

1930 IWW.ORG

The House of Commons, in 2016, contemplated a four-day work week for MPs to better manage their workloads, CBC reported, though it never came to fruition.

With files from Sharon Lindores.