CRAIG MURRAY—A court will judge whether there was intent to kill George Floyd; what is absolutely apparent is there was certainly no intent by the police to preserve his life or health. It is also plain that the force used was wildly disproportionate for the alleged offence. It is further undeniable that police violence in the USA impacts particularly on black people, and that in dealing with black people the police act with an arrogance founded on anticipated impunity. The societal change whereby the majority of adults have camera phones at the ready has given a new power of resistance to the public in this regard. That must be reinforced by exemplary sentencing.
RACISM
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Racism Today: Intervu w. Chairman Fred Hampton, Jr., the Black Panther Pantha Cubs & their revolution for self-determination
118 minutes readJEFF J. BROWN—Few interviews over the years have touched me the way this one has, with Chairman Fred Hampton, Jr. … William Blake wrote about the doors of perception. Already humbly further along my arc of anti-imperial awareness (https://chinarising.puntopress.com/china-rising-the-book/) than most Westerners, researching about the Black Panthers, getting to know Chairman Fred and chatting with his mother, Akua Njeri, quite simply blew my understanding of the United States off its metaphorical hinges and into outer space.
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Thousands Protest George Floyd’s Murder in Minneapolis
15 minutes readSARAH LAHM—Although the officers’ firings were celebrated at the May 26 protest, and taken as a sign of progress, many in the crowd demanded that Chauvin, the officer who kneeled on Floyd’s neck, also be indicted on murder charges.
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GLEN FORD—Researchers are hoping to find a vaccine for Covid-19, possibly within the year, but the Blue Plague only grows more deadly over time and enjoys a host of immunities. Although Black people had hoped that the historic expansion in the number of Black elected officials would create political antibodies to limit the spread of the Blue Plague, the opposite has happened. In 2014, just months before Michael Brown’s life was cut short by the Blue Plague, in Ferguson, Missouri, 80 percent of the Congressional Black Caucus voted to continue funneling billions of dollars in military weapons, gear and training to local infestations of the plague, despite ample evidence that such infusions have made the scourge even more toxic to Black life.
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MARGARET KIMBERLEY—Americans don’t like to think of themselves as being propagandized but we are. Most definitely propagandized from childhood on, about the nature of this nation, which was founded as a settler-colonial state, which means that the original inhabitants — the indigenous population — were immediately the victims of genocide. And that continued with chattel slavery. So we have two great crimes which impacted this nation, its founding, and its history to this very day.