Today's Liberal News

Even with a guilty verdict for Chauvin, anti-Black police violence continues

This story was originally published at Prism. 

A single cop has been held accountable, but the lethally unjust system of policing that enabled George Floyd’s murder grinds on undeterred. Barely an hour after the Hennepin County, Minnesota, jury read out the guilty verdict against Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, news came that police in Columbus, Ohio, had snuffed out yet another Black life, fatally shooting 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant.

In volatile New Hampshire, Republicans retook the legislature even though Biden won most districts

Daily Kos Elections is pleased to present the first installment in our project to calculate the results of the 2020 presidential election for the nation’s 6,766 legislative districts, starting with the perennial swing state of New Hampshire. Last fall, both the state Senate and state House changed hands in the Granite State, making them the only legislative chambers in the country to flip sides in November.

The nation’s largest coal mining union is ready to admit that coal mines are going away

At one time, the United Mine Workers of America boasted more than 800,000 members. When the union went on strike, it brought the nation to its knees, got U.S. presidents involved in negotiations with mine owners—and became the target of mercenary armies, federal troops, and military bombers sent by the Army.

But that was then. Today the UMWA still counts 80,000 members, but fewer than 20,000 are actually working coal miners.

George Floyd Was Also a Father

BEN CRUMP LAW FIRM
An image of George Floyd and his daughter Gianna has been circulating around social media since yesterday. George is sitting in the driver’s seat of a car, wearing a black T-shirt and black baseball cap with the word Houston emblazoned in cursive letters above the brim.In the passenger seat is Gianna, who is now 7 years old, but in the photo—taken a few years ago—looks as if she isn’t more than 3 or 4.

What HBO’s New Crime Show Gets Exactly Right

There’s a scene in the second episode of Mare of Easttown, HBO’s new crime series, that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about since I watched it. Mare, the show’s titular police detective (played by Kate Winslet), visits a rural spot where a girl’s body has been found and prepares to inform the girl’s father.

What Grief Tastes Like

The musician Michelle Zauner’s mother died on October 18, 2014, a date that Zauner would have trouble remembering in the years that followed. She wasn’t quite sure why she was always forgetting it. Maybe this amnesia was her mind’s way of protecting itself. Maybe she scrubbed the detail from memory because it seemed so minute compared to all else she endured as her mother succumbed to cancer.But Zauner hasn’t been able to forget what her mother ate.

We Are Turning COVID-19 Into a Young Person’s Disease

Like many parents, Jason Newland, a pediatrician at Washington University in St. Louis and a dad to three teens ages 19, 17, and 15, now lives in a mixed-vaccination household. His 19-year-old got vaccinated with Johnson & Johnson’s shot two weeks ago and the 17-year-old with Pfizer’s, which is available to teens as young as 16.The 15-year-old is still waiting for her shot, though—a bit impatiently now.

Historian Khalil Gibran Muhammad: Policing in U.S. Was Built on Racism & Should Be Put on Trial

A Minnesota jury’s conviction of former police officer Derek Chauvin on three counts for murdering George Floyd does not go far enough in dismantling police brutality and state-sanctioned violence, says historian and author Khalil Gibran Muhammad. “We know that while the prosecution was performing in such a way to make the case that Derek Chauvin was a rogue actor, the truth is that policing should have been on trial in that case,” Muhammad says.

Black Visions Collective: We Need to Abolish the Police & End Militarized Occupations of Our Cities

The police murder of George Floyd added jet fuel to a nationwide push to defund the police. We go to Minneapolis to speak with Kandace Montgomery, co-executive director of Black Visions Collective, about their response to the guilty verdict for former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd and an update on the push to divest from Minneapolis police and invest in communities.

Guilty on All Counts: Derek Chauvin Verdict Triggers Relief & Determination to Keep Fighting

A jury in Minneapolis has convicted former police officer Derek Chauvin on three counts for murdering George Floyd by kneeling on his neck for nine minutes and 29 seconds last year. The jury reached its decision after 10 hours of deliberation. Derek Chauvin will be sentenced in two months. He faces up to 40 years in prison for the most serious charge, second-degree murder. He is the first white police officer in Minnesota to ever be convicted of killing a Black man.