One thing I have noticed is far more people say, "I've felt so anguished over the past few years, but I've been missing the piece about taking action, and I'm pledging to change that" than I have at other pivotal moments from the past years. I'm talking about very mainstream B-list influencers and things like that. So that's mildly nice. I don't want to overstate it - the action they're often talking about is actively promoting black-owned businesses and changing their own business model accordingly, so they're not, like, running for office. But I'm hopeful that this is a barometer for a meaningful sea-change in rhetoric in mainstream discourse - that expressing angst on social media is not going to fix our problems.
Well, I certainly don't think that anything is going to get solved this summer.
re: 1
I've seen that with a fair number of people I follow on Instagram.
Mostly musicians, and the odd actor or other B-list celebrity. I've also seen some of them doing sterling work arguing repeatedly with the racist shitbags in their comments, so they clearly aren't just chucking a black lives matter hashtag on, and sitting back to bask in the glow of the virtue-signalling.* Some of them have made verifiable pledges on various things, too. Now, admittedly, the people I follow, who aren't African American themselves, are often quite heavily involved in scenes with a lot of African-Americans in them and are already somewhat politically engaged. So it's maybe not that surprising, but still, it feels different.
* that last is a joke, btw. People who accuse others of virtue-signalling generally annoy the shit out of me.
The protests will be over very soon, as they were after the Trump inauguration, after Ferguson, etc. They would have died by now if not for Trump's boneheaded display of power, but that just added a few days. George Floyd's funeral has happened. The most specific objective, criminal charges against the four policemen, has been achieved. More protests if/when the four police are on trial and after verdicts come down.
Covid 19 will be part of the background of our lives until a vaccine and/or effective cure are widely available. Life will go on with marginally less traveling and handshaking. Governmentally, it will be treated as over except for occasional flare ups here, which will lead to two week school and restaurant closures in specific locations. Cases will continue, but with an adequate number of hospital beds, and most of the deaths inside the lowest end nursing homes (since better nursing homes are able to maintain better hygiene) and prisons, there won't be much public concern.
The biggest variable is whether the Republican convention happens, and whether it causes an obvious flare up. My guess is that the Democratic convention will be virtual, and the Republican convention will pretend to be happening but most delegates won't actually go, the major speeches will be in an outdoor football stadium or racetrack with room for distancing, and the subsequent increase in cases will not be noticeable since it will happen weeks later and be widely distributed around the country.
A convention with 5,000 people spread out in a stadium designed to hold ten times that is going to be a horrible visual. It will look like a Pirates home game in September and ruin the thing for Trump. The crowd needs to be jowl to jowl and feeding energy to Trump.
Here in Baltimore non-essential businesses except bars restaurants and gyms are reopening today.
In a city of ~600,000 people, we've had just over 200 covid 19 deaths, and 80% of those are in 2 nursing homes. Only about 50 non-nursing home deaths city wide.
Also 2 nights of organized protests with minimal violence/property damage.
It feels weird. "Baltimore is doing better than a lot of other places" isn't something you have occasion to say very often.
Hopefully I haven't just jinxed us.
Cops don't want to be seen to 'play favourites' with dumb fascist white men with guns: https://twitter.com/Satellit3Heart/status/1268863536299675648
5: I think unimaginative is probably right and that makes me sad. Stuff is getting talked about at my organization, and I am mildly optimistic, because Senior physicians, administrators- both black and Latino - are speaking out in a way that I haven't seen before.
I didn't feel as strongly about this as many white people seem to, because it's not surprising. But I'm glad to see people galvanized. Maybe the fact that the officer knew he was being videotaped made it that much more outrageous. And a lot of doctors feel a professional responsibility to speak out because of the autopsy.
I don't think the protests will end soon. Every day they're fueled by a new act of police brutality, making the goal a much stronger restriction on police departments across America. This isn't just about Minneapolis anymore.
For example, from the "cops shoving old men is totally understandable" department, this from Buffalo yesterday (warning: blood, head injury). Two of the cops involved have been put on unpaid (unpaid!) leave.
As for the intersection of Covid and the protests: I think the lockdown is a major cause in making these protests so widespread; so many people are unemployed, and even those who aren't are in worse moods and have more free time. I think this is clearer in the international response, in countries where there is racist policing but it isn't as extreme as the US. Surely there have been cases of on-the-face-of-it awful police violence in the last couple years, probably with clear videos of such, but nothing has really gone nation wide. Maybe because of Trump and the election taking up so much energy.
On 11, original report From that force was that someone had "Tripped and fell". If I have the timelines right, it took the release of this video and significant pressure before rolling that back and suspending a couple of cops. Exercise for the reader to decide how likely that would be in absence of the video.
I think it's likely that protests are mostly starting to wind down in most of the country. My home city has a big protest Tuesday and hasn't had protests since. But I'm not sure if that'll be true everywhere. In particular, Louisville and DC. A big question to me is whether DC statehood protests start happening in response to the military occupation. If the fencing near the whitehouse comes down, protests will restart in celebration. I also think we'll see at least one big regional COVID flare up, though maybe not until the fall.
12: Right, and there were a whole lot of cop witnesses. The initial report relied on none of them crying bullshit.
Also there's going to be big protests around the RNC both in DC (where there's already a big march being planned) and wherever the RNC is held. The latter is almost certain to include many filmed incidents of police brutality and may kick off national protests again.
12: The main footage there isn't from a cellphone it's a local new reporter, so I really don't see how they didn't know there was footage. Also there's at least one more video taken from the other side of the square. I think they're so up their own asses that they think they deserve to be taken at that word no matter how blatantly they lie.
Something that Kotsko pointed out on Twitter - this level of policing costs money when cities are already financially pressed. Curfews, overtime, extra shifts all add up, to a point where it's going to overwhelm city budgets, and not in a "let's just cut parks and libraries, lol those are for the poors" way. How long can it go on?
So cities have an incentive either to meet at least some demands in order to cool out the protests, get money from the feds to continue or to crush the protests as fast as possible. Or some weird combination - get money from the feds, meet minimum demands, crush remaining protest. (I'm betting on that one, now that I think about it.)
Like, any intelligent mayor (although how many there are, who knows) is going to be thinking about how much repression you can have without provoking a more intense response, especially when you're running out of money and material. Someone who is willing to kill a number of protesters in a very short time by, eg, firing on a crowd will probably be able to suppress the protests tout court, but then you have to be that city. You can't walk it back. Some mayors may be willing to do that, some won't. And a half-measure will just make things explode.
I think people are going to get weary of protesting eventually, though, especially with intensified repression. People keep talking about Hong Kong, but the thing about Hong Kong is that you're practically guaranteed that the police won't start shooting to kill.
My feeling - from inside the house due to health issues - is that people here are a bit more done with burning things. I think that if something else kicks off, it will involve more targeted destruction, and this is specifically because I think there's a lot of stress and grief around what's happened to small businesses. I don't feel like there's a lot of anger at protesters over this stuff, but seeing people lose their little tiny shops isn't easy for anyone. Also enough has come out to suggest that at least some of the fires were definitely started by white supremacists and I think that will make others draw back.
Speaking of which, the cops arrested someone in our alley with a suspicious backpack last night. The neighbors texted me but I'd fallen asleep. I don't know - and I'm not sure the neighbors know - if this was "dude has a suspicious backpack but is either not actually suspicious or is just a regular crime guy" or "dude had a backpack full of incendiaries". Anyway, I guess I'll be watching again tonight.
Also looking at the Minnesota numbers, I think the protest spike has started. It's about nine days since it all kicked off and cases were way up today, which is frankly terrifying.
16.last: Trump supporters are willing to do that. Truth is what they agree is useful to think.
5: I'm not sure. Evictions and unemployment are going to be through the roof while there's no local budget to help people AND the federal government won't do anything. (And I think the protests may crash the hospitals, which means a lot more deaths, which will change things. ) If the economy were to bounce back immediately, things might really die down, but when the unemployment runs out, what are people going to do? At this point, probably riot, at least some places.
And there's fire season, and there's tornado season, and there's hurricane season. And food prices are going up.
I'm actually sort of vaguely making "when we have to abandon the house and try to flee to family" plans - not for this month or next month, but if our jobs go (and mine could) we're done.
Be sure to support the correct party, comrades, if you want the Staties to let you drive home.
But if you make it home they might arrest you anyway.
Oops that belongs in the police thread. Ah whatever, it's all one thing now.
21: Dude was trying to get home to my neighborhood, too.
Libertarians are now seeing COVID-19 as less of a threat and more of an opportunity to drown state and local governments in a bathtub.
I am kind of curious if they'd have let him by if he'd had a Trump sticker. People always talk about how if you contribute to the PBA or Sargent's funds you get stickers to put on your window that make you less likely to get a ticket.
I do kinda think Senator Tom Cotton's latest editorial in the Times went too far.
17: they'll just cut education by 10% to give the police a raise.
I don't know if protests in general are dying down. Personally I'll be going to my first one tomorrow afternoon, here in DC. We might have gone earlier but we didn't want to take the time off, or take the kid to an evening protest - I know, slacktivism, sorry.
The DC mayor is definitely taking sides. Exhibit A. Exhibit B. It's "virtue signaling" - agreed with 4.last, more here - but it's "virtue signaling" that 95 percent of DC residents would agree with.
I'm actually optimistic about the November election. Call me crazy if you want, and I'm not optimistic about anything else, or at least I'd say it's way too early to be optimistic about anything else, but there's a hell of a lot of bad news lately and it seems harder to spin or deflect than usual.
I'm not so optimistic. A lot of people get spooked by civil disorder and yearn for the knout. Apparently 58% of registered voters support deploying the military.
Trump's contempt for constitutional rights is well known, but I admit it's surprising to see him edging so close to violating the third amendment.
I don't see the protests dying down soon. I didn't go on the weeknights this week, but I'll be out both weekend days this weekend.
Man, Garcetti shit the bed. (L.A. mayor) He was ambitious, too. Now I'll be surprised if he has any career. I haven't followed him closely, but I thought he was good on green stuff, too.
This summer? I can't predict things anymore. I was wondering what could take this the next notch up and thought that the next most shocking thing would be (touch wood) the death of a Supreme Court justice.
I think I put in my original prediction that people would be bored and over COVID by June.
In addition to protests around the conventions, I wouldn't be surprised if they flare up around Juneteenth and July 4.
The DC mayor is definitely taking sides. Exhibit A. Exhibit B. It's "virtue signaling" - agreed with 4.last, more here - but it's "virtue signaling" that 95 percent of DC residents would agree with.
I hadn't clicked on those links yesterday, but saw a Reuters story (with photo) today and that's very impressive!
Speaking of mayor failures, does the NYPD have dirt on DeBlasio? After his COVID response I expect him to be useless and incompetent, but his about-face on the NYPD goes beyond that.
I've been saying this in other venues, but NY politics always involves people behaving in ways that make no sense unless there's bribery, blackmail, or literal threats happening behind the scenes. Something weird happened with de Blasio, but god only knows what.
I think maybe NYPD has read the "Stationary Bandits" literature from political economics.
I wonder if the House of Representatives will maybe decide to have a session.
de Blasio explanations:
1. He literally fears for his/his family's life. Considering what happened to his daughter, not implausible!
2. He (accurately, I would guess) thinks that he cannot exert any meaningful control over the cops; attempting to exercise such control would reveal that, so instead he thinks he should go along with whatever they're doing so that he doesn't have to reveal that he couldn't stop it if he wanted to. (Source for this: felix; Kotsko.)
3. Blackmail I guess but it's legitimately hard for me to imagine what dark secret could explain this; his political career is toast and the human damage immense.
The problem with 2 is that going along with it because you can't stop it rather than revealing that you can't stop it ... also doesn't stop it and confers more legitimacy to it.
In either case, you'd think he could just retire (he'd lose protection, regarding the first concern, but would he still be a target?).
All the explanations seem plausible to me. I imagine him realizing that he was in this impossible situation as Mayor, and the only solution that came to mind was to run for President, as that might give him a way out.
25: In the Philly area, it used to be the case (and still might be) that if you were friends with a cop, they could give you business cards called "courtesy cards", and if you gave them to a copy you could get out of a speeding ticket. The best part was that they had expiration dates. You couldn't just stockpile them. You had to keep being friends with a cop to get out of speeding tickets.
Not just Philly: https://boingboing.net/2018/01/22/nice-vs-nightsticks.html
Re: 39.2, it had long been my theory that, back when the term "deep state" had a legitimate meaning, its existence explained much of why Clinton and Obama did relatively little to demilitarize American foreign policy. The theory being: the deep state has many ways to thwart the intent of any policy directives they do not wish to obey, and the president cannot diminish their perceived power by issuing orders that will not be obeyed.
I'm rather less apologetic towards the Clinton and Obama presidencies nowadays, so don't put as much stock in this explanation as I used to, but I'm entirely convinced that the NYPD effectively operates beyond democratic control.
There's a separate issue here, the NYPD could act completely beyond DeBlasio's control, but that doesn't explain their influence over what he says.
The same logic obtains: the mayor won't intentionally publicize his powerlessness by issuing orders to the NYPD that they will refuse to obey.
The third amendment! Bowser won't pay for Utah guardsmen, so they decamp DC for a different hotel.
The third amendment! Bowser won't pay for Utah guardsmen, so they decamp DC for a different hotel.
One more time, then you can be like peep.
47 and previous: and yet the only actual way out of this impasse is precisely to publicize it. There's no hoping that if he plays along long enough they'll get better, but just saying "these people are beyond civilian control", while probably humiliating for him, at least allows him to act honestly and, as the parlance has it, seek the aid he needs.
2 is too clever for me. It's already clear that de Blasio has no control over the cops, so we're not learning anything by his public statements. He's completely torched his reputation among his supporters. Whatever else he may have done, this is what his legacy will be. It's more likely that either he believes what he's saying, or something is happening behind the scenes.
51: That's true, but there's essentially no incentive at the personal level to do that. You might, maybe, improve things for the next office holder, but you yourself are demonstrating impotence. That's not the kind of demeanor that wins elections or breeds success in other endeavors.
I thought this was good:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/05/opinion/sunday/police-riots.html
Explains DeBlasio a bit more maybe. The connection between polities becoming more inclusive and the police thereby refusing to accept the authorities of those same polities looks right on the face of it. The contempt held by police for populations they are supposed to serve grown to malignant proportions. Always unacceptable, now maybe unfixable. So yes, defund, get rid, etc.
One thing that makes me hesitate on defunding is what happens afterwards. Not so much 'won't crime spiral upwards?' as 'won't impoverished former police become this terrible, bitter, white supremacist mob?'.
¿Por qué no los dos?
