Foreign Correspondent: Police Lessons From Cuba

Accountability by Nancy Ohanian

Contrary to the image of brutal and repressive communists, police in Cuba offer an instructive example for activists in the United States.

-by Reese Erlich

A group of muscular cops carrying semi-automatic pistols and batons slowly move through the crowd at the end of an outdoor salsa concert. My friends and I have a bottle of rum, and I think for sure the cops will confiscate it, and maybe even arrest us.

Instead, the cops motion for us to drink up, and we quickly comply. They confiscate the glass bottle so it can’t be broken and used as a weapon.

This incident took place in Havana some years ago, and it tells a lot about what constitutes good policing. The cops were interested in preventing crime, not compounding it.

Contrary to the image of brutal and repressive communists, police in Cuba offer an instructive example for activists in the United States. Police live in the cities they patrol. They generally treat citizens with respect. As I documented in my book Dateline Havana, police beatings of criminals are rare and police murders are nonexistent. Cuba has one of the lowest crime rates in Latin America.

The ongoing protests for Black lives in the United States have forced an unprecedented national debate about the role of policing. Should police departments be defunded and that money be diverted to help poor communities? Should the police be abolished altogether?

Cuba has wrestled with policing issues since the 1959 revolution. The government, while certainly having its share of failures, has created a system of community-police interaction that reduces crime without reliance on brute force.

Crime fighting in Cuba begins with a social safety net, which provides every Cuban with free education, free health care, and subsidized cultural events. Cuba doesn’t suffer from the scourges of homelessness and cartel-instigated drug addiction, despite traffickers’ regular attempts to smuggle drugs into Cuba from Florida.

The socialist economy means Cuba doesn’t have extremes of wealth and poverty. I’ve visited the homes of high-ranking government officials who live in middle-income neighborhoods. I have met police officers who lived in a modest apartment complex in the same neighborhood they patrolled.

Cuba uses community pressure to discourage crime. The Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs) were originally set up in the early 1960s to root out U.S.-backed counter revolutionaries. Nowadays, the CDRs promote public health and act as neighborhood watch groups.

Humberto Carillo Ramirez, a national CDR leader, told me in a radio documentary that local residents often know who the criminals are.

“If a family isn’t sending their kids to school or if a young person isn’t working and is getting into trouble . . . we meet with them,” he says. “We live on [their] block . . . We explain why it’s bad for the country and we also explain the severe legal consequences for them.”

When residents are convicted of crimes, CDR members visit them in jail. “We want to . . . reincorporate them in society after they get out,” Carillo says.

In the early 1990s. Cuba faced a massive economic crisis brought on by the collapse of the Soviet Union and intensified by U.S. efforts to overthrow the government. Cubans faced severe shortages of gasoline, food, and electricity. Starting in 1996, the nation saw a sharp increase in home burglaries and street assaults; there was even an attempted armored car robbery.

By U.S. standards, crime in Cuba remained light, but it was more than Cubans were willing to accept. In 1999, the government passed a law that doubled some prison sentences. Judges also allowed fewer prisoners out on parole. Police were stationed on every corner in the tourist areas. The crackdown resulted in a 20 percent drop in crime, Supreme Court Justice Jorge Bodes Torres told me in an interview at the time.

He attributes the success to “law and order” measures and community organizing. “The majority of people are involved in fighting crime,” he says. “That’s the most important factor.”

Cuban political dissidents sharply disagree. They claim that police routinely beat and imprison government opponents. However, as I’ve documented, many of these dissidents are funded by Washington and regularly spread fake news, so their claims of systematic brutality lack credibility.

Some Cubans do have legitimate complaints. I’ve interviewed dozens of young Afro-Cuban men who have been stopped and questioned by police because they are Black.

Pablo Michel, a young Afro Cuban, tells me he was detained by police several times in the tourist areas of Havana. On one occasion, he drove two white women tourists to the Havana airport. Police stopped and questioned Michel, suspecting he was running an illegal taxi service. He says white Cubans taking foreigners to the airport “don’t have the same problems.”

Michel and others I interviewed say that police don’t conduct violent searches, and they don’t beat or shoot suspects. Nevertheless, too many police stereotype dark-skinned Cubans as thieves and hustlers, he says.

Late last year, the Cuban government announced a major anti-racism campaign. Officials plan to identify specific areas of discrimination, initiate a public debate, and educate the public.

“This is a real step forward, after we have fought for so many years,” Deyni Terri, founder of the Racial Unity Alliance in Havana, told Reuters last November. “It’s a good start.”

Obviously, institutions developed in Cuba can’t simply be transferred wholesale to the United States. But we can learn from the concept of community involvement, says Max Rameau, an organizer with the Washington, D.C.-based grassroots group Pan-African Community Action, who has studied Cuban police practices.

“We need different community entities for different tasks that are responsible for safety and wellbeing of the neighborhood,” he tells me in a phone interview. For instance, U.S. community groups can resolve mental health issues and family disputes without involving police.

But Rameau does not support getting rid of police altogether.

If a white supremacist attacks a Black church, as happened in South Carolina in 2015, he says, “We want to make sure our community safety team can respond. In any society with different classes, you will have police. But we should have control over them.”

The U.S. debate about policing has shifted distinctly leftward. After the 2014 police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, politicians called for police to wear body cameras. Today, after the murder of George Floyd, the Minneapolis City Council has voted to dismantle the police force, although it’s still hashing out the specifics.

Anti-police-brutality groups have developed a variety of plans to decentralize police departments into community forces, governed by civilian boards.

For the first time in recent history, people of all backgrounds in the United States are seriously discussing how to fundamentally change the police forces. Cuba’s experiences should be part of that discussion.

Defund The Police: Good Idea, Poor Choice Of Words

-by Noah and Exile Johnny

The police have not just been incidentally tainted by racism. For much of U.S. history, law enforcement meant enforcing laws that were explicitly designed to subjugate black people.

-Jon Oliver, HBO's Last Week Tonight, June 7, 2020

Of course, unfortunately, much of that law enforcement structure still exists, as most recently exemplified by a career criminal cop's knee on the streets of Minneapolis. George Floyd is dead but a lot of traditions die hard. Those 4 cops that we've seen on film thanks to a 17-year-old armed with a smartphone thought they had permission, not just from the President of the United States but even more so by the police culture they live in, and, certainly, as events have proven for decades, there is nothing unusual about the Minneapolis Police Dept. and no amount of sensitivity training has or will change a sociopath in a blue uniform.

So what happens now? We will always need some sort of entity to "protect and serve" but simply chanting "Defund The Police" is an offer of words that are way too easily used against those who chant them and justifiably demand change. For a large segment of the population, those three words are a non-starter. Older citizens, whether they are Democrats or easily scared FOX viewers aren't going to buy in. This has bothered me for the last several days as I heard the phrase. As a person who witnessed police violence live and in person 50 years ago, I got it but as an adult who marketed pop culture, I knew it was a poor choice of wording.

Yesterday morning, I got an email from a close friend. He goes by the name Exile Johnny and he shares the byline of this post. As you can see below, he feels the same. It ain't what you say. More often than not, it's how you say it. My friend grew up in a right wing working class neighborhood in the Bronx. It was the kind of neighborhood where, if you sold your house, you should offer it to your neighbors or members of your own extended family rather than put it on the market. That might lead to, you know, "the wrong kind of people" moving into the neighborhood. His own family inhabited a political mindset that was slightly better but was either apolitical or definitely leaned to the right. Until he was almost 40, he was of the apolitical variety and rarely voted. Then George W. Bush came along, followed by the passing of Obamacare which has been "a godsend" to his family. That was enough to set his mind seriously in motion about politics and he is particularly focused on the messaging used by the two major parties while painfully aware of the shortcomings of both. Here's Johnny:

...of why Republican win elections and Democrats lose them consistently:

Republicans pay millions of dollars to people like that guy, Frank Luntz, to come up with names and slogans like "The Freedom Caucus," or "Make America Great Again." They never give you a hint as to what these things really are. They never call their groups or causes "Make America White Again" or "The Racist Coalition" or "The Economic And Social Injustice League."

Could Democrats tee it up any better than they just have? Defund The Police? Surely, they could have taken 3 or 4 minutes and called this movement something like "The Social Unity Project or "The And Justice For All Movement." And those headings, at least would have been honest. If this was a Republican movement, they would be certain to name this something that is the opposite of what it really is. Instead of "Defund The Police," they'd call it the "New Law And Order Regime."

As usual, Democrats have gone out of their way to give Republicans fuel that they can use. There are swarms of older Democrats right now, who are saying aloud "Defund The Police, what the hell are they talking about? I'm not for that!" Even in a best case scenario, one where Dems get the presidency and both houses, I guarantee you this branding costs them at least a few elections where a candidate has already said that they are looking into or sympathize with "Defund The Police" and their opponent was able to use it against them, getting voters to think that that means the democrat wants to totally do away with their local police department.

Obviously, there's a ton of discussion on the subject to be had. As members of the Minneapolis City Council have said, you can't reform something that is rotten to the core. Across the country, city councils and the voting public are discussing variations on the same theme. Most center around restructuring what police departments should be doing. We've given way too much money and power to the police. We have 911 for a variety of services. Do so many have to be handled by the police? In some cities and towns, more people are taken to the hospital by police squad cars because there are many more squad cars than ambulances. It's an imbalance. Do cops always have to go to every domestic dispute or petty crime episode? Might a lot of the money we give police departments, including the money for tanks and high end military gear be better used for social programs that alleviate crime in the first place? Might the money be better used for prevention in the form of youth summer programs, job and economic development, more easily obtainable medical care, food security, and other things that provide hope and end despair? Here's an idea, how 'bout we do things that level the playing field and not literally steal whatever gains impoverished citizens can achieve if given a fair chance? Well, that's not the republican way at all, no matter what they say. They come up with frauds like "Trickle Down Economics" and laugh. "Trickle Down Economics" is one of the Republican Party's greatest hits. As Kimberly Jones says, the social contract is badly broken.

Americans May Be Ready For Real Change-- And We're Stuck Choosing Between Two Status Quo Stiffs

What? by Chip Proser

It's been about 2 weeks since several officers from the Minneapolis police department brutally and virtually routinely murdered George Floyd and then lied about it, not knowing they would be exposed by a cell phone tape. Those officers are responsible for a "Defund the Police" movement and more. Yesterday, Axios reported that the ugliness that has been nearly routine for Black America is now being exposed for everyone else in the country. And-- except for hard core Trump fanatics, no one likes it. A brand new poll of Michigan likely voters asked "Are deaths of black individuals isolated incidents, or signs of a bigger problem?" 68% said it was part of a bigger problem. Asked if policing practices need reform, 76% said yes and only 15% said no. When asked if demonstrators should be permitted to carry guns inside the state Capitol, 80% said no and just 13% said yes.

It's no longer the word of a police officer vs. the suspect. Now it's the police officer vs. video cameras, often held by members of the communities they patrol. At least three big police departments have been caught in the act in just the past few weeks because of video footage, AP notes.

• Minneapolis police initially told the public that George Floyd resisted arrest and that he died after a "medical incident during a police interaction." But George Floyd didn't resist arrest, and the Minneapolis police omitted the knee that a former officer placed on his neck for almost 9 minutes.
• Buffalo police said a protester "tripped and fell." Protester Martin Gugino, 75, was pushed by Buffalo police officers and suffered brain damage. President Trump tweeted a conspiracy theory about Gugino today, but you can watch the tape for yourself. The man was shoved to the ground by cops, and no one stopped to help. Even a handful of Republican senators recognize Trump's response as a potential catastrophe for the GOP and are trying to distance themselves from it.
• Philadelphia police alleged that a college student who suffered a serious head wound had assaulted an officer. The Philadelphia officer was seen on video striking a 21-year-old Temple University student in the head and neck with a metal baton. That student was released after prosecutors saw the video and decided to pursue the officer instead.

Civil rights lawyer Michael Avery, who is the board president of the National Police Accountability Project, told the AP that false claims by the police had long been known to inner-city communities. "But what is happening now with video, this is getting out into the larger world, into the media, into white communities, suburban communities, and people outside the affected communities are becoming more aware of what’s going on," he said. "It’s a completely different situation."

A Washington Post poll also found that most people are not all that sympathetic with the police. Dan Balz and Scott Clement wrote that "Americans overwhelmingly support the nationwide protests that have taken place since the killing of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis, and they say police forces have not done enough to ensure that blacks are treated equally to whites... Trump receives negative marks for his handling of the protests, with 61 percent saying they disapprove and 35 percent saying they approve. Much of the opposition to Trump is vehement, as 47 percent of Americans say they strongly disapprove of the way the president has responded to the protests."

The poll highlights how attitudes about police treatment of black Americans are changing dramatically. More than 2 in 3 Americans (69 percent) say the killing of Floyd represents a broader problem within law enforcement, compared with fewer than 1 in 3 (29 percent) who say the Minneapolis killing is an isolated incident.

That finding marks a significant shift when compared with the reactions in 2014 to police killings of unarmed black men in Ferguson, Missouri, and New York. Six years ago, 43 percent described those deaths as indicative of broader problems in policing while 51 percent saw them as isolated incidents.

Overall, 74 percent of Americans say they support the protests that have been carried out in cities and towns across the country since the May 25 killing of Floyd, which occurred after police held him on the ground and one officer pressed his knee to the victim’s neck for nearly nine minutes. “I can’t breathe,” Floyd said as he died.

The recent demonstrations have bipartisan appeal, with 87 percent of Democrats saying they support them, along with 76 percent of independents. Among Republicans, the majority-- 53 percent-- also back the protests.

The widespread support for the protests comes amid mixed views of whether those events have been mostly peaceful or mostly violent. On that question, Americans are evenly divided, with 43 percent saying the protests have been mostly peaceful and an identical percentage describing them as mostly violent. Thirteen percent say the protests have been equally peaceful and violent.

Views on this split along ideological and partisan lines: Most liberals (70 percent) and Democrats (56 percent) say the protests were mostly peaceful, while most conservatives (60 percent) and Republicans (65 percent) say they were largely violent. Independents are split similarly to the country overall, with 44 percent saying the protests were mostly peaceful, 42 percent mostly violent.

But support for the protests is evident regardless of whether they are seen as mostly violent or mainly peaceful.

...Casting ahead to the November election, which pits Trump against former vice president Joe Biden, half of all Americans (50 percent) say they prefer a president who can address the nation’s racial divisions, compared with 37 percent who say they want a president who can restore security by enforcing the law.

...Republicans generally agree with views of the protests expressed by Trump. Last week he called himself “your president of law and order and an ally of all peaceful protesters” in a Rose Garden statement, made as police and military troops forcibly cleared a demonstration near the White House. He also said the country was in the grip of “professional anarchists, violent mobs, arsonists, looters, criminals, rioters, antifa and others.” He told mayors and governors that they needed to dominate the streets to restore order.

More than 7 in 10 Republicans approve of Trump’s handling of the protests, a view shared by just over one-third (35 percent) of the overall population. Republicans also have a more negative view of the protests; while 43 percent of the public says the protests have been “mostly violent,” 65 percent of Republicans hold this view.

Almost half of all Americans (47 percent) say police have not used enough force in responding to episodes of looting and vandalism, a figure that rises to 72 percent among Republicans. And 63 percent of Republicans say they prefer a president who would restore security, when 50 percent of the overall population instead prefers someone who could deal with the country’s racial divisions.

Yesterday, the AFL-CIO's General Board endorsed what they claim is "a sweeping set of policing reforms" proposed by the Leadership Council on Civil and Human Rights, expressed support and solidarity with the Minnesota AFL-CIO's call for the resignation of the President of the Minneapolis Police Union (not affiliated with the AFL-CIO), expressed support for the King County Labor Council (Seattle)'s demands on the Seattle police union that they renounce racist practices of face expulsion, and committed the AFL-CIO to an accelerated and intensified process of internal dialogue and change around race in our own institutions. "The scourge of police violence against black people in America has reached a tipping point," get said in their statement, "and it is critical that we take comprehensive action to end this injustice once and for all. Union members live and work in every state and every community, so when police brutality occurs, it happens in our backyards and to our families. As such, we feel a special responsibility in the wake of George Floyd’s murder to support our civil rights allies and play a leading role in making sure this time is different. Whether it’s banning chokeholds, expanding use of body cameras, ending racial profiling, demilitiarizing our police forces or limiting no-knock warrants, the LCCHR’s recommendations on police reform have the potential to create a fairer, more community-centric policing culture."

Alan Grayson Wrote Legislation To Demilitarize The Police In 2014... Pelosi, Hoyer, Clyburn And Their Allies Made Sure It Failed

They were ready to roll the tanks if she got too frisky

Every Member of Congress loves-- or, until this month, used to love-- photo ops of them "delivering" goodies to their local police departments. They never consider that those goodies might one day be used against their own constituents. In August, 2014, garden variety policy brutality and murder brought on the "Ferguson unrest." Two months earlier, Alan Grayson introduced H.R. 4870, an amendment to an appropriations bill that attempted to demilitarize the police. Alan told me at the time that he bent over backwards to make it clear it was not about guns and ammunition. His amendment would have prevented the military-- under Clinton era's disastrous 1033 Program-- from sending local police departments "aircraft (including unmanned aerial vehicles), armored vehicles, grenade launchers, silencers, toxicological agents (including chemical agents, biological agents, and associated equipment), launch vehicles, guided missiles, ballistic missiles, rockets, torpedoes, bombs, mines, or nuclear weapons." So... all the guns they needed but... no tanks, guided missiles or nukes (to use against American civilians). Although Grayson managed to round up 62 supporters, there were 355 no votes, including, I might add, Lacy Clay, who supposedly represents Ferguson, Missouri.

Today Grayson told me that "After it was voted down, two months later, Ferguson happened.  We all saw tanks and militarized police there, on city streets. Two different Members of Congress came over to me and asked me, 'how did you know that was going to happen?'  I was too polite to give them my real answer. My real answer was: 'how did you not know that was going to happen?'... I introduced the Grayson amendment to keep [heavily military weapons] out of the hands of police because I have eyes, and I can see. What I see is endemic and pervasive racism, certainly not only in law enforcement, but in every corner of society, from umbilical cord to tombstone. When you put armored vehicles and drones into the hands of people who already have a monopoly on the legitimate use of force, isn’t it obvious in which neighborhoods they will be used? And if that’s not obvious, in which neighborhoods do you actually SEE them used? Neighborhoods of lefthanded people? Neighborhoods of redheads? Neighborhoods of people who prefer paper over plastic? No; you see them used in African-American neighborhoods, treating human beings in ways that we don’t even treat cattle."

After Ferguson, then-President Obama enacted Grayson's amendment by executive order and it was in place... until 2017, when Trump reversed the order and gave the Pentagon the green light to start selling "excess" military equipment to local police forces again. The other day, AOC was wondering aloud on Twitter why the Pentagon has so much "excess." Meanwhile, Trump's tiny pecker gets hard just thinking about scenes like this:

Since 2014, the program has facilitated the transfer of over $5 billion in "excess" military equipment to the police. Many people who are talking about "defunding" the police are specifically talking about that money.

One of the members who happily strutted up to the House well to vote against Grayson's amendment was was Albio Sires, reactionary New Dem of New Jersey. I asked his progressive opponent this cycle, Hector Oseguera, how he and Sires differ on the police problem. "You might wonder why some of these elected officials call themselves Democrats at all," he told me this morning. "My primary opponent was actually a registered Republican until the mid-90's, he regularly votes for Trump's war budgets, and recently voted to let the NSA read your browser history, so it's no surprise he's a fan of militarized policing. I stand as the polar opposite, and recently released a Social Justice platform that includes ending Qualified Immunity, and demilitarizing our local police forces, all things my opponent refuses to fight for. There is no legitimate reason to have a police force armed with chemical weapons, and ballistic missiles, but that's exactly what my primary opponent sought to allow. In a democracy, we should not accept the mixing of our police and military forces. Unfortunately, that's what Democrats like my primary opponent, constantly seek to do."

As long as we're discussing Grayson, I might as well bring up that he endorsed Mike Siegel (TX-10) for Congress. "Mike cares about the right things, which means that he can make a difference. Talk to any number of Democratic Members of Congress or candidates for any length of time, and you’ll realize that there are startling differences in what they say are important to them. Many Democrats neuter themselves, before they even get elected, because they can’t even articulate anything real, realistic and meaningful that they would like to achieve in office. Know what matters matters-- you can’t possibly accomplish anything useful if you don’t even know what you want to do. If you listen to Mike Siegel, you realize quickly that his head’s on straight, he’s got the right attitude, and that gives him a real chance to get good things done."

Pelosi is suddenly leading efforts to reform the way the police do their jobs, but in 2014 she made sure Grayson's amendment failed. I asked her progressive opponent, Shahid Buttar, how he and Pelosi differ on the police problem. "The biggest difference between me and Nancy Pelosi," he told me today, "is that she settles for acts of theater to advance her career dedicated to her corporate donors, whereas I am concerned about our communities-- and have dedicated my career to defending them, not only through legal activism, but with my body in the streets, as well. I’ve been an active participant in the movement for black lives since before the Ferguson  uprising, and announced in 2018 a policy platform including support for demilitarizing police, ending qualified immunity, and creating a national registry of violent police. We’re glad that-- as she has on so many other issues, from labor rights and congressional war powers to executive accountability and election security-- Speaker Pelosi has adopted some of our positions despite her earlier intransigence. Despite her recent shifts, however, she remains well behind the movement’s demands to defund police departments and end the disturbing phenomenon of private prisons, which we have also supported. Our communities need voices in Congress for whom solidarity is not a political stratagem, but rather a reflection of our longstanding commitments." That's why DownWithTyranny's only endorsed candidate so far this cycle is Shahid. You can help support his campaign at this link.

The Wrong Man-- In The Right Place At The Right Time

What a horrible Washington Post headline: Joe Biden Let Police Groups Write His Crime Bill.Now, His Agenda Has Changed. I saw a poll the other day released by CNN that shows Biden decisively beating Trump in November... sort of. 55% of registered voters say they will cast their ballots for Biden and just 41% say they'll vote for Señor Trumpanzee. That's a mammoth gap. BUT... just 37% of those Biden voters say they are voting for him, as opposed to 60% who say they are voting against Trump. That's an important distinction. (70% of Trump's voters are voting for Trump.)

Personally, I like voting for someone, not against someone worse. Biden is so the wrong man for this time. I can hardly think of any plausible Democrat who would be worse. (NOTE: Bloomberg is neither plausible nor a Democrat.) But Trump is not just worse. Trump appears to be an existential threat to democracy, America, the planet. Biden is... well, just ole Status Quo Joe. The guy who will probably go down as the man who became president because people figured he wasn't as bad as Trump. (Fingers crossed we're figuring this right; we have a bad track record lately.)

Biden has never been and will never be a leader-- which is what the times call for, post-Trump. He's a shrewd discerner of superficial public opinion who can hop aboard the train as it leaves the station. And now he has a team to figure that out for him and... well, he''ll be less likely to follow some of his worst instincts any longer. Some of them. But don't kid yourself about what the contours of a Biden presidency is going to look like. One place to start is looking at the 100 billionaires bankrolling his ascension to the presidency--men and women who aren't writing big checks because they like his facelifts and cosmetic dental work. Last month, Forbes made that task easy for us to see. Is 100 a lot? Well, it's actually 94 but,, yeah, it's a record number of billionaires-- and 2 more than Trump has. Yesterday Business Insider updated the Biden and the billionaires story. Hit the link to find all the billionaires giving Biden relatively small contributions and how LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman gave his SuperPAC millions, but there are other ways of looking at Biden's unsuitability.

Jacob Rosenberg at Mother Jones camp up with a perfect example that harkens back to that Washington Post headline up top: Joe Biden Doesn’t Want to Defund the Police. He wrote that Biden issued a statement making it clear as day that he "would not support defunding the police. He did say there is an 'urgent need for reform,' and he advocated for body-worn cameras and further diversification of the police force... This isn’t surprising news, exactly. Biden is a moderate. But it’s remarkable that he had to clarify his position at all. The Minneapolis City Council announced on Sunday it was disbanding the police to invest in community programs. Other municipalities are considering similar action. A world without cops, as our own Madison Pauly wrote about, is not only imaginable but increasingly something activists are putting on concrete lists of demands. Who would’ve thought a few weeks ago that Biden would have to specify that he supports keeping the cops around?"

Hector Oseguera is a first time candidate for Congress. He's running in northern New Jersey, in a district (NJ-08) that includes part of Newark, Jersey City, Bayonne and Elizabeth and all of Hoboken, Union City and West New York. Don't expect him-- or progressive candidates like him-- to see eye to eye with Biden or his status quo-like administration. Take policing. Oseguera: "Militarized policing is a perfect example of the bi-partisan slime that infects our government. Throughout the 90's, we saw the so-called Democrats cave to a right-wing perspective on policing, and pursue 'tough on crime' laws that disproportionately affected Black and Brown communities. My opponent, as recently as 2012, congratulated two police departments in Jersey City and Bayonne on $3 million grants to militarize local police forces. Just this week local activists went toe-to-toe, and won a fight against the unanimously Democratic Hudson County establishment, that in this political climate sought to spend $26k in taxpayer funds, to purchase riot gear. This announcement comes on the heels of two weeks of completely peaceful protests in New Jersey. After community activists mobilized, the local machinery backed down. Today, this campaign released its Social Justice platform that seeks to demilitarize the police, end the War on Drugs, abolish Qualified Immunity, and make "White Caller Crime" a federal hate crime. We are all too familiar with instances of White individuals calling the police on Black people for simply existing. These frivolous calls waste public resources, endanger the lives of Black brothers and sisters, and we should treat these 'White Called Crimes' as federal hate crimes. A militarized police force truly should be seen as a scourge in any democratic society, and I am proud to take a true progressive stance on the issue."

America is going to need men and women in Congress like Hector Oseguera to hold Biden's feet to the fire and remind him what it means to be a Democrat (in the best sense of the pre-JFK party). Please consider contributing to his campaign by clicking on the 2020 Blue America congressional thermometer above.

Reforming The Police, Part II-- No More Bully-Boy Brutality Towards Citizens

The Tipping Point by Nancy Ohanian

Part I of this series on police reform is here. It was somewhat ironic yesterday when a GOP flack for the NRCC, Michael McAdams, put out a statement for Tom Emmer (R-WI) oil response for Democrats looking at ways to reform out of control police departments. He said "No industry is safe from the Democrats’ abolish culture. First they wanted to abolish private health insurance, then it was capitalism and now it’s the police. What’s next, the fire department?" The irony, of course, that the only party trying to abolish the fire department is the GOP, which has tried in several jurisdictions to privatize it, the same way they're trying to abolish the post office and privatize that.

Politico began their coverage of the bill with a somewhat startling headline: "Black Americans want to stop being killed": Democrats unveil sweeping police reform bill". The bill-- the Justice in Policing Act-- was unveiled by Karen Bass, chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, along with Hoyer and Pelosi. Bass, an L.A. congresswoman and former Speaker of the California Assembly told the media that "The world is witnessing the birth of a new movement in our country. A profession where you have the power to kill should be a profession where you have highly trained officers accountable to the public." As of now, what the bill does is:

• Ban no-knock warrants
• Ban chokeholds
• Require body-cams
• Mandate a national police misconduct database
• Demilitarize police
• End racial profiling
• Limit qualified immunity, making it easier to sue cops who unjustly injure, brutalize or kill citizens
• Make lynching a federal crime (something that has passed both chambers but is being blocking by racist Kentucky Senator Rand Paul)

Just to give you an idea of how hard this is going to be to get to Trump's desk, let's remember that Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy went from this:

to this tweet yesterday:

and is now a puffed-up, liveried Trump butt boy. The clossest any Republican got to helping with writing the bill was ex-Republican Justin Amash (now an independent) who co-wrote a section with Ayanna Pressley that partially repeals qualified immunity but my sources on Capitol Hill tell me not even Amash will vote fo it.

By Washington standards, this is a pretty progressive bill and it will be hard enough to get the Blue Dogs and New Dems from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party to get onboard without trying to gut it, let alone any Republicans. Pelosi and Hoyer appear-- at least for now-- to be on the side of progressives here so who knows? Maybe they can turn it into a freight train that the Blue Dogs and New Dems will either hop on or get splattered by. Still, it's hard to imagine hard core conservative Democrats like Anthony Brindisi (Blue Dog-NY), Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX), Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN), Josh Gottheimer (Blue Dog-NJ), Ben McAdams (Blue Dog-UT) or Kendra Horn (Blue Dog-OK) backing this bill.


Robin Wilt is running for the seat representing Monroe County, New York and she's firmly on the side of reform-- very firmly. Last night she told me that we're in "a pivotal moment in history where those in the future will ask if you were with the dissenters-- who took to the street to unequivocally assert that Black Lives Matter-- or on the sidelines tacitly supporting an unjust status quo. My opponent, Joe Morelle, has chosen to be on the wrong side of history. Despite this transformative legislation being supported by 166 members of the House of Representatives and 35 Senators, as well as a broad coalition of civil rights organizations including: Demand Progress; Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law; Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights; National Action Network; National African American Clergy Network; NAACP; NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund; the National Coaliton on Black Civic Participation; Black Millennial Convention; and the National Urban League-- my opponent has remained silent. As Desmond Tutu famously opined: 'If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.' Over the past two weeks, the people of Rochester and Monroe County have taken to the streets to protest by the thousands. Joe Morelle had the nerve to show up at those protests for a photo opportunity. It is craven to be in a position to do something to help address the practices that lead to the unjust taking of Black lives, but then stand idly by when the opportunity is presented to take action. It is particularly cynical to do nothing after signing a toothless resolution that mouths the words that you support police accountability and reform. The people of the 25th Congressional District can’t endure any more of Joe Morelle’s empty promises and self-serving, performative allyship. We need courageous leadership that will allow us all to breathe."

Tomas Ramos is the best suited of all the candidates running in NY-15 to represent the South Bronx. Last night he told me that "'Defund the police’ or 'abolish the police' does not mean that when we wake up tomorrow and there are no law enforcement mechanisms there to protect the population. Rather, defunding the police is a concept which involves community led initiatives and ideas of what 'law enforcement' should look like rather than punitive racist policing measures. It is a multi-tiered plan that involves all community stakeholders and to reinvest police funding into community based entities. These progressive policies are a far cry from where modern American policing is derived from-- the slave patrols of the antebellum period, which ultimately sought to apprehend, and return runaway slaves and to maintain a form of discipline for the enslaved population. These efforts are important because it will lead to community based solutions rather than the traditional bureaucratic gridlock which does not effectively benefit the community and does not tear down the essence of systemic racism. Ruben Diaz Sr. an opponent of mine in this race has been endorsed by the NYPD’s strongest police union the PBA. Needless to say, my opponent does not share the same views as I do when it comes to this concept."

UPDATE: FLORIDA



Adam Christensen is the progressive Democrat running for the open seat in north central Florida in the Gainesville area. Early this morning he told me that he and his volunteers stand with the Black Lives Matter movement "and we want our actions to show that, not just our words. The Republican Party of Florida, including opponent Judson Sapp, have been completely silent on the issue of police brutality and refuse to even have the conversation about any changes we can make in the police system. People in this district and the entire country deserve better, because right now they have Congressman Ted Yoho representing them, who just voted against making lynching a federal crime. The entire system must have a complete overhaul. We first must require demilitarization of the police. Officers do not need to be armed with military-grade equipment for civilian issues. The next necessary task is reallocating funds from police departments to social programs meant to act as first responders rather than police. These social programs would include mental health experts and others meant to de-escalate situations. Police are trained to use a firearm and make an arrest, while also being forced to respond to every call. Imagine calling for help with a mental health issue, and instead of getting help, someone shows up, slaps handcuffs on you and takes you to jail. This could further damage someone’s mental state, rather than help fix the issue. We also must require police training  to expand de-escalation and inclusivity training. There are currently 34 states that do not require this training. The last thing we must do is hold police accountable. 99% of cases of police shootings end with no charges being filed. The majority of police who get fired as punishment for their actions later get re-hired by a different police force. The reason these tragedies keep occurring is because there is no accountability for police officers. It’s time we police the police."

"Don't Shoot!" by Nancy Ohanian