Patriarch Giuliani is having another fit. Queen Bey sang and danced and rescued the Super Bowl Halftime show and the good mayor has never seen anything quite so outrageous. Why won’t black folks sing about plastic bags and the color of roses and love gone awry and leave the weighty stuff to people like the mayor and his fellow Fox pundits?
Black and brown people have a problem with police killing and maiming with impunity? Well then, the Mayor "will work on that."
"What we should be doing in the African-American community, and all communities, is build up respect for police officers, and focus on the fact that when something does go wrong, okay, we’ll work on that," Giuliani continued.”
Giuliani getting all bent out of shape over black folks expressing themselves comes as no surprise. Even less surprising is his blind support for cops. After all, it was under his stewardship that cops were given carte blanche to terrorize, traumatize, and humiliate black folks using the provisions of the odious and unconstitutionalStop and Frisk Ordinance (pdf).
Aggressive over-policing under Giuliani:
More pointedly, Giuliani instituted a zero-tolerance approach to crime-fighting, which allowed police to stop and frisk suspicious people and make arrests for minor infractions that once had been ignored. This approach was based on a theory called "Broken Windows," by criminologists George Kelling and James Q. Wilson, which contends that low-level disorder leads to increased blight and crime. Cracking down on minor offenses such as loitering, prostitution and aggressive panhandling is the way to prevent more serious ones.
During his tenure as mayor of NYC, Giuliani had ample opportunity to do something about over-policing in the NYPD. We know about that unarmed young man who was followed by overzealous cops to his front door who then proceeded to pump 19 shots into his unresisting body. We know, too, about Abner Louima and the savagery that was visited upon his defenseless person late one night at a police precinct. Those two cases just for starters as the list is a mile long. Did the aforementioned cases prompt the mouthy mayor to do something?
So forgive me if I choose not to wait for Rudolph Giuliani to do the work that must be done to change the culture of policing in this country.
In the meantime, Mr. Mayor, it has become painfully obvious that you have more than a little interest — some would say “unseemly interest” — in Beyoncé. We understand … and that’s okay, too. But you don’t have the authority to deprive her of her right to speak or protest. And you for damn sure do not have the right to lecture a people who bore the brunt of your shitty policies and who continue to suffer because of your failure to do what was right both morally and legally.
Update on Our Projects
We have been in contact with the office of Assemblywoman Shirley Weber in California. We are asking for her endorsement of the Over-Policed Rights Act as a ballot initiative in California. We think she would be the best person in the world to provide a thumb's up because she was the sponsor of the Racial and Identity Profiling Act of 2015 that was recently signed into law by Governor Brown. Moreover, our law, if enacted, would work hand-in-glove with her's.
We had a conversation with her office today, and doing her due diligence, she has requested additional information, which we will provide to her. This would be a big step in promoting the proposed law and in seeing racial justice done!
While we wait for the Attorney General’s office to satisfy the dictates of State Law, we are preparing for the next phase of our California Initiative. We will need to collect about 400,000 signatures. Will you help?
Send us a Kos Mail and let us know if there’s an individual or organization you know who’d be willing to help. Tell us in the comments if you are willing to help.
“We know that in order for our city to live up to its promise, it must be a city in which our young people thrive, a city that is economically viable as an institution and for/with its residents, and a city in which all are safe,” Mckesson states in the plan. “Together we will win.”
Black Lives Matter activists meet Civil Rights leaders:
President Obama is hosting an intergenerational group of civil rights leaders, including Black Lives Matter activists, for a first-of-its-kind meeting at the White House as the Administration celebrates the first black President’s final Black History Month.
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The meeting w/ @POTUS went well. It was originally scheduled for an hour & he extended it another 30 mins b/c of the robust convo.
This past weekend, as the fourth anniversary of Trayvon Martin’s death approaches, their music streaming company, Tidal, announced that it was giving away $1.5 million in grant money to Black Lives Matter and other civil rights groups, including Hands Up United and Dream Defenders.
About Support the Dream Defenders
(Wordcloud composed of Support the Dream Defenders, Michael Brown Over-Policed Rights Act, Expand Medicaid, Freedom of Information Act Project, Combat Racism, Demand Equality.)
Members of the Daily Kos group Support the Dream Defenders launched four ongoing projects:
1. We came together to support the Dream Defenders in Florida and their mission, our first project and the origin of our name. The Dream Defendersdefend the Dream of Martin Luther King Jr. by "develop[ing] the next generation of radical leaders to realize and exercise our independent collective power; building alternative systems and organizing to disrupt the structures that oppress our communities." Please donate here.
2. Our Michael Brown Over-Policed Rights Act, crowd-sourced at Daily Kos in the fall of 2014 after the death of Michael Brown. Our bill quickly earned endorsements from the NAACP and the ACLU. The NAACP forwarded our bill to members of Congress, and we distributed it to members of the Congressional Black Caucus and other progressive members of Congress. President Obama signed into a law a small piece of our bill in December 2014. The Department of Justice included parts of our law in their reports on Ferguson, Missouri, in 2015. Our state version of the MBOPRA is currently in committee in the Kansas legislature.
3. Our Freedom of Information Act project. Nineteen Republican governors chose to kill poor people by not expanding Medicaid. Ebola has killed about 9000 people in total; Republican governors kill 23,000 people PER YEAR by refusing federal support for Medicaid, a story ignored by traditional media. Our project forces those governors to out themselves, clapping them in a Catch 22. With the support of readers, we publicize our results through letters to the editor, press releases, and petitions.
You can receive all future diaries of Support the Dream Defenders in your Daily Kos Stream by clicking here. Then click "Follow," which will make all STDD diaries appear in "My Stream" of your Daily Kos page.
This is a community diary. Please Join us.
You are also welcome to join us on The Porch over at the Black Kos Community group on Friday afternoons at 4 p.m. ET."
