Today's Liberal News

“Movements Work”: As Activists Occupy Seattle’s Capitol Hill, City Bans Tear Gas, Expels Police Union

In Seattle, the fight to demilitarize and defund the police continues as the King County Labor Council voted to expel the Seattle police union Wednesday, following weeks of protest. Seattle police sparked outrage for responding to massive protests against police brutality by using pepper spray, tear gas and flashbangs on demonstrators and reporters. Activists then formed an autonomous zone in response to the police department’s abandonment of a precinct building.

Rashad Robinson on Recent Spike in Hanging Deaths, the Cancellation of “Cops” & Boycotting Facebook

For more than a decade, the racial justice organization Color of Change led a push to cancel the long-running TV show “Cops,” which glorifies police aggression. Now the show has been cancelled, along with A&E’s “Live PD.” “The thing about these shows is that they call themselves reality programming, but they are only from the vision of the police officers,” says Rashad Robinson, president of Color of Change.

Murder Charge for Atlanta Cop Who Shot & Killed Rayshard Brooks Shows the “Power of a Movement”

Prosecutors have charged the Atlanta police officer who shot and killed Rayshard Brooks with felony murder, and accuse Garrett Rolfe of twice shooting Brooks in the back and then kicking him as he lay dying. A second officer, Devin Brosnan, faces four charges, including assault. We talk to Rashad Robinson of Color of Change about the charges in Atlanta and growing calls to defund the police.

Goodbye, Columbus: Bree Newsome Bass on the Movement to Topple Racist Statues Across the Globe

As protesters worldwide continue to topple monuments to racists, colonizers and Confederates as part of the wave of demonstrations against racism and state violence, we speak to Bree Newsome Bass, artist and antiracist activist based in North Carolina, who five years ago was arrested at the state Capitol in South Carolina after scaling a 30-foot flagpole to remove the Confederate flag.

PG&E pleads guilty to 84 counts of manslaughter in the 2018 Camp Fire California wildfires

On Tuesday, California’s largest utility company, Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), pleaded guilty to 84 counts of manslaughter related to the 2018 Camp Fire in Paradise, California. According to the BBC, in a Superior Court in California’s Butte County, Judge Michael Deems read all 84 victims’ names while PG&E chief executive Bill Johnson watched each victim’s image projected on a screen and vocally pleaded guilty to each count.

Rift increases between NYPD and prosecutors who have stopped ignoring police misconduct

New York City has been electing more and more prosecutors who want to reform law enforcement, ones who see the racial disparities in policing and in the (in)justice system and are doing something about it. Right now, that includes refusing to prosecute Black Lives Matter protesters who police arrested simply for being at the protests, and who weren’t violent and weren’t destroying property.

Megachurch pastor tries to rebrand ‘white privilege’ as ‘white blessing’ gifted from slavery

Atlanta megachurch pastor Louie Giglio gave the obligatory apology Tuesday after attempting to repackage the phrase “white privilege” as a “white blessing” during a talk about race and religion. “We understand the curse that was slavery, white people do,” Giglio said Sunday during the conversation. “And we say that was bad. But we miss the blessing of slavery, that it actually built up the framework for the world that white people live in.

‘She fears risk of imminent death’: Detainee who sued for ICE release tests positive for COVID-19

This past March, Marisol Mendoza sued for release from Arizona’s Eloy Detention Center as the novel coronavirus pandemic was hitting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities, pleading that her medical condition made her particularly vulnerable to risk should she get sick. “Instead, in a 19 May ruling, a federal judge ordered ICE to improve her conditions and make them constitutional,” The Guardian reports.

Welcome To The Mask Wars

Localities are moving in different directions on whether to require masks to slow the spread of COVID-19. It’s creating a national divide with deadly consequences.