Dear friends,
It’s good we had a weekend to take in the astonishing claims of the Republican National Committee that the investigation of the events on January 6 is a threat to
There were scant few Republicans willing to question this characterization of the events of January 6 by Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee.
Lisa Murkowski commented:
What happened on January 6, 2021 was an effort to overturn a lawful election resulting in violence and destruction at the Capitol. We must not legitimize those actions which resulted in loss of life and we must learn from that horrible event so history does not repeat itself.
Mitt Romney, who is McDaniel’s uncle, tweeted to defend Cheney and Kinzinger for participating in the bipartisan committee work of uncovering the frankly alarming machinations to steal the election from Biden.
Shame falls on a party that would censure persons of conscience, who seek truth in the face of vitriol. Honor attaches to Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for seeking truth even when doing so comes at great personal cost.
It is quaint that Romney believes that the mass of GOP members are still capable of shame, given the 13 months they’ve spent minimizing the insurrection, blaming it alternatively on Antifa or the FBI or both, and now declaring it to be “legitimate political discourse.”
Sign the statement from Common Cause: The January 6 Insurrection was not legitimate political discourse.
On Saturday, protesters took to the streets in bitter cold Minneapolis to protest yet another police killing of a Black man. Amir Locke, 22, was crashing on his cousin’s couch when the cops entered the apartment with a no-knock warrant. Officer Mark Hanneman shot Locke three times.
Breonna Taylor was killed two years ago in Kentucky when officers entered her home with a no-knock warrant. Like Taylor, Locke was not the person named in the warrant. Like Taylor’s boyfriend, Locke responded to the police invasion by reaching for a legal firearm. Locke did not even touch the trigger.
Jeff Storms, a lawyer representing Mr. Locke’s family, noted that the Minneapolis PD continues to seek no-knock warrants at the same high rate, in spite of the policy change in 2020 to use them only in extreme circumstances.
[Storms] went on to add that “the entire country learned the lessons of the danger of no-knock warrants via the tragic death of Breonna Taylor. Minneapolis had a chance to learn from that.”
On Friday, the mayor declared a moratorium on no-knock warrants. Stacey Burns, who participated in Saturday’s protest expressed frustration with the pace of change:
“It’s just chipping away at the edges — we’ll make this adjustment, we’ll make this reform — and then they don’t even do that,” Ms. Burns said. “And then this is what happens. Another young Black man with his whole future ahead of him is dead.”
Take Action Minnesota has been working to educate and engage voters using something called deep canvassing. Deep canvassing draws voters into long conversations, without
talking points or pamphlets, but by getting them to talk about their experiences and feelings.
Ultimately, the goal is to get voters to support a specific policy, but also to change their minds for the long term, not just in one election or on one issue.
Last fall, Take Action Minnesota worked to build support for a ballot measure that would have created a Department of Public Safety to replace the Minneapolis Police Department. In organizing, you haven’t lost until you give up. Here’s what we can do in response to the murder of Amir Locke:
Support Take Action Minnesota.
for no apparent reason other than their race or ethnicity.
The judge in the case, who has since retired, ordered the appointment of a federal monitor. Based on the NYPD’s own data, there continues to be a significant underreporting of police stops, with more than a third of stops recorded on body cameras not included in the reporting data.
The Department acknowledged the problem that officers assume they only need to file reports when arrests are made. Stop reports are still required.
The monitor has repeatedly noted this problem, citing internal NYPD Quality Assurance Division reports that found 36% of the stops made by cops in 2018 and 2019 were not reported. And they cite a random sampling of the department’s body camera pilot program in 2017 that estimated cops wearing cameras filed 39% more stop reports than cops in the control group who were camera-less.
There is now a new judge and a new monitor working on this matter. The plaintiffs and their advocates, have asked the new judge overseeing the case to “establish new norms” that including meaningful community involvement.
Shira Scheindlin, the judge who made the original order,
noted that the type of community engagement the plaintiffs are seeking was foundational to her original ruling.
“I had hoped for much more interaction with the community and those people who live in those areas most affected by this,” she said. “I would hope that they were very involved and their concerns would be heard.”
Support the advocacy groups — Latino Justice and Bronx Defenders — that work every day to fight over-policing of Black and Brown people.
There is so much work to do.
with love,
L