Tip Jar

This technically belongs in Benny’s post yesterday but I missed it at the time:

‘Absurd’: After US Bullying, Every Mention of United States Stripped From UN Resolution Spurred by George Floyd Killing

The United Nations Human Rights Council on Friday unanimously adopted a resolution condemning police abuses and ordering an inquiry into law enforcement actions that “resulted in the death of George Floyd and other Africans and people of African descent.”

But rights groups immediately slammed the resolution as overly broad and “absurd” because it was weakened to remove all references to one particularly relevant country: the United States.

“The final resolution passed by the United Nations strips mention of the United States, where police kill people, particularly Black people, at alarmingly higher rates compared to other developed countries,” Jamil Dakwar, director of the ACLU’s Human Rights Program, said in a statement.

An earlier draft of the resolution—which was introduced by African nations this week in the wake of Floyd’s killing on May 25—explicitly called for a U.N. investigation into police violence against black people in the United States, but all references to the world’s most powerful country were scrubbed from the text in closed-door negotiations.

Ahead of the vote on the final version of the resolution, Dakwar accused the U.S. of “bullying other countries to water down what would have been an historic resolution and exempting itself from international investigation.”

“The United States is yet again turning its back on victims of police violence and Black people,” said Dakwar.

Human Rights Watch, an advocacy organization based in the U.S., warned as the resolution was being finalized Thursday that stripping any mention of the United States from a resolution sparked by U.S. police violence “would transform it into an ‘all lives matter’ text, and risk making it so vague as to be meaningless.”

Rant.

Hello friends. Its been quite the past month +. First COVID had me working a million times more roles/responsibilities which eventually led to my having a seizure/passing out at work/hitting my head. The road to recovery has been foggy and a bit bumpy, but I went back to work the week after my incident . Then workers comp denied my claim so I’m having to fight that to get my bills paid etc. Well now suddenly after my accident, there are talks of my position being eliminated because of ‘covid changes’ but that was ‘just one of a lot of possibilities’ and up in the air. Well I get to work Tuesday and find my work account deactivated, etc… so I call my bosses and they claim its an HR accident and theres nothing to worry about, etc etc.. but by wednesday and thursday I still had no access to my account or any of my materials, so once again called and was assured that my position was fine, it was a true HR error, but admitted there were some concerns about my health and ability to perform job functions but I could continue in my role and that my account would be slow to be reactivated because of IT/HR shortage…but I should take Friday off since I wouldnt be able to get much done. Ok, sure. Took friday off, took a midday nap and woke up to a call from my boss saying that there had been a case of Covid in the building so me and anyone exposed to the building during that timeframe (coincidendally, just me) would be quarantined for two weeks and could not come in.

So all in all.. my job seems totally up in the air at the moment if not already gone… all because of a work-induced seizure that workers comp is now denying the claim for, and the game-playing/lack of communication on my long term job status has led to more anxiety that will ultimately likely trigger another seizure.

Good lord I hate the corporate world.

So basically JD and I have been working on selling most of our non-essential/unused household items, furniture, etc and are trying to find a small, reasonably priced RV to throw our few remaining belongings into and then escape the rat-race of the city and do the whole nomadic blogging thing for a while. It will still be some time as we are still in the hunt for an RV phase… but wanted to provide a bit of an update that at some point in the future we may be in your neighborhood :).

THank you all for the continued support and for keeping the nest in tip-top shape.

SEIU President: Expelling Police Unions From the Labor Movement “Has to Be Considered”

The 2 million-member SEIU—arguably America’s most politically powerful progressive union—passed a resolution last week vowing to align the union with the goals of the Movement for Black Lives. It included a call to divest from the police, notable in part because SEIU itself has both police and correctional officers as members.

What exactly will the SEIU’s statement mean in practice? And where does the union stand on the question of whether police even belong in the labor movement? We spoke to SEIU President Mary Kay Henry to find out.

Minneapolis Public Schools Abolished Their Police First

On June 7, the Minneapolis City Council announced its plan to disband the police force, setting off a wave of national coverage and support, with some cities, like Seattle, launching efforts to do the same, while others began taking steps to redirect money set aside for police into community resources.

The movement to defund the police has had unprecedented support across the country, as citizens in several states call for abolishing or diminishing the police presence rather than reforming the police. And while the city of Minneapolis is now considered a vanguard in this national effort, less acknowledged is its public school system, which has been several steps ahead.

Schools in Minneapolis had already made the decision to cut ties with the Minnesota Police Department (MPD) in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death. On May 27, the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities announced that it would be severely limiting its contact with the MPD and would no longer have police work security at football games and concerts. On June 2, the city’s public school board unanimously approved a resolution to end the district’s contract with the MPD that allowed officers on campus as school security.

Both decisions were largely driven by student pressure and were the result of several years of student activism.

According to Kim Ellison, the chair of the Minneapolis board of education for Minneapolis public schools, the Minneapolis school board was already hesitant to renew its three-year contract with the MPD in August after several complaints from students and staff about the police presence on campus. After George Floyd was killed by Minnesota police, however, the board knew it could no longer allow police on campus.

“We will no longer be funding the Minnesota police and there will no longer be police presence on campus, as the MPD does not share our values,” Ellison told The Nation. “Our budget to the police was $1.3 million last year alone. We’re now hoping to redirect those funds into our schools and our community.”

If Defeated by Booker in Democratic Primary, McGrath Urged to Hand Over Surplus Millions to Topple McConnell

Progressive advocacy groups are calling on Amy McGrath, running to unseat Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in Kentucky, to commit to dedicating millions of dollars in unspent campaign cash to defeating the powerful Republican in the general election should she lose the Democratic primary to a surging progressive challenger.

The call from the Sunrise Movement, Indivisible, Working Families Party, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, and The Collective came Thursday after new polling from the progressive think tank Data for Progress showed McGrath eight points behind state Rep. Charles Booker in the primary.

The survey of 898 Kentucky voters also found Booker—who is running on a platform including Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, and universal basic income—performing better than McGrath in a hypothetical general election head-to-head with McConnell. McConnell beat McGrath by 20 points in the poll; his lead against Booker was narrower, at 52% to 38%.

McGrath was expected to be the Democratic nominee for much of 2019 after she launched her campaign last July. But since announcing his candidacy in January, Booker has inspired progressives with his message that running from the “soft center that doesn’t take any positions” is not the way to defeat McConnell.

“Thousands of our members donated to Amy McGrath early on—not because they love her, but because she was assumed to be the Democratic nominee,” said Stephanie Taylor, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which endorsed Booker last week.

The group raised $21,000 for McGrath via 2,500 donations the first month of her campaign, and was adamant that its donors contributed to McGrath’s campaign for one reason: to defeat McConnell in 2020.

“Donors don’t want their money going into a slush fund for McGrath’s future campaigns or to bonuses for losing consultants,” said Taylor. “They don’t even want their money returned. They want to defeat one of the worst senators in history, Mitch McConnell.”

Even in Safe Races, the Democratic Establishment Hates Progressive Candidates

Whether Democrats win the US Senate — and whether their senators are progressive — could be the difference between life and death for millions of people. A Democratic Senate filled with proponents of a Green New Deal and Medicare for All is one that at least offers the slim possibility of averting climate and health care cataclysms. A Republican Senate — or a Senate run by corporate Democrats — will almost certainly make the climate and health care emergencies far worse, likely resulting in mass casualties and suffering.

In this life-or-death battle, winnable Senate seats in Democratic-leaning states are everything. If we’re going to have any chance to survive the crises in front of us, these Senate seats cannot be lost to Republicans. They also cannot be bequeathed to Democratic corporatists who will defend the status quo and behave in reckless ways that jeopardize the party’s prospects of winning a general election.

But that is what Democratic leaders in Washington are trying to do here in Colorado — the state that could end up deciding control of the Senate. They are now spending big to buy the June 30 primary for a candidate who has shilled for fossil fuel companies, opposed Medicare for All, violated anti-corruption laws, vilified progressives, and engulfed himself in high-profile scandals that could lose a general election. And they are doing this even though there is another Democrat who is not only far more progressive, but arguably better positioned to defeat the Republican incumbent.

For years, Democratic party leaders have publicly insisted they follow a “just win, baby” playbook that leads them to support any candidate — liberal or moderate — best positioned to win GOP seats. But activists have come to suspect that, in fact, party leaders are actually willing to prioritize crushing progressive candidates, even if that might risk losing general elections to Republicans.

Democratic leaders’ heavy-handed behavior in Colorado seems to confirm those suspicions — and it could now jeopardize the entire effort to take back Congress from Donald Trump’s party.