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Ex-Minneapolis Officer Derek Chauvin, 45, Found Guilty on All 3 Counts of Murder in George Floyd’s Death

Post News Group Publisher Paul Cobb said of the verdict: “Darnella Frazier’s video action should be imitated and celebrated by all youth and adults nationwide.  We should defend (Oakland Police Chief) LeRonne Armstrong’s new policies to stop minor traffic stops around licenses, lights and so-called suspicious appearances. (I) hope this justice action causes a national voting movement of every Black, Brown and Asian citizen.  Demand our (future) Attorney General Bonta to take the same action that Minnesota Attorney General Ellison did. 

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George Floyd

Former policeman Derek Chauvin was found guilty Tuesday of all three counts of murder brought against him in the death of George Floyd, whose cruel death was caught on video in Minneapolis, Minn., on Memorial Day weekend last year.

Floyd, 46, was killed May 25, 2020, in front of Cup Foods, a neighborhood grocery store where the police had been called because Floyd had allegedly used a counterfeit bill to make a purchase.

After deliberating for about 10 hours over two days, the jury returned a verdict of guilty for second-degree involuntary murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. Chauvin faces a maximum of 40 years in prison.

Floyd’s 41-year-old brother Philonise was in the Minneapolis courthouse at the time of the verdict, brought by six white, four Black and two multiracial jurors.

Post News Group Publisher Paul Cobb said of the verdict: “Darnella Frazier’s video action should be imitated and celebrated by all youth and adults nationwide.  We should defend (Oakland Police Chief) LeRonne Armstrong’s new policies to stop minor traffic stops around licenses, lights and so-called suspicious appearances. (I) hope this justice action causes a national voting movement of every Black, Brown and Asian citizen.  Demand our (future) Attorney General Bonta to take the same action that Minnesota Attorney General Ellison did.

It is time for President Biden and Vice-President Harris to push through the George Floyd Justice bill.  We, as bystanders, should also bear witness.”

Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf told the Post: “today’s verdict is a just one, and it’s also an indictment.  The deep structural racism that pervades our country—and leads to the state-sponsored murder of Black men like George Floyd and too many others—must end.  Juries shouldn’t have to tell us this.”

Oakland Vice Mayor Rebecca Kaplan quoted Martin Luther King, Jr., when she talked to the Post about the verdict.  “’Let justice roll on like a river, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream,” she said.

“Though we understand that this is a victory for the people, we also understand that this system of policing will continue to cause violence and death until it is dismantled” said James Burch, policy director for the Anti-Police Terror Project.

The Oakland Police Department issued this statement:

We all must recognize that this moment is about accountability, justice, and reform. We must be compassionate, empathic, and forgiving.

All sides must unite as one community to effectively communicate. Together we will work towards rethinking policing in America.

In unity, we will move towards finding solutions for the safety of all people, notwithstanding your age, race, religion, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or disability.

We stand as one community grieving and healing as we move towards finding real solutions to effect change as we seek to strengthen police and community relations.

We extend our deepest condolences to George Floyd’s family and all communities.

Sentencing is scheduled in eight weeks.  His bail revoked, Chauvin was handcuffed and remanded into custody immediately.

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Activism

U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries Speaks on Democracy at Commonwealth Club

Based on his first speech as House minority leader, “The ABCs of Democracy” by Grand Central Publishing is an illustrated children’s book for people of all ages. Each letter contrasts what democracy is and isn’t, as in: “American Values over Autocracy”, “Benevolence over Bigotry” and “The Constitution over the Cult.”

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: House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries at the Commonwealth Club World Affairs Council on Dec. 2. Photo by Johnnie Burrell. Book cover: "The ABCs of Democracy" by Hakeem Jeffries.
: House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries at the Commonwealth Club World Affairs Council on Dec. 2. Photo by Johnnie Burrell. Book cover: "The ABCs of Democracy" by Hakeem Jeffries.

By Linda Parker Pennington
Special to The Post

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries addressed an enthusiastic overflow audience on Monday at San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club, launching his first book, “The ABCs of Democracy.”

Based on his first speech as House minority leader, “The ABCs of Democracy” by Grand Central Publishing is an illustrated children’s book for people of all ages.

Each letter contrasts what democracy is and isn’t, as in: “American Values over Autocracy”, “Benevolence over Bigotry” and “The Constitution over the Cult.”

Less than a month after the election that will return Donald Trump to the White House, Rep. Jeffries also gave a sobering assessment of what the Democrats learned.

“Our message just wasn’t connecting with the real struggles of the American people,” Jeffries said. “The party in power is the one that will always pay the price.”

On dealing with Trump, Jeffries warned, “We can’t fall into the trap of being outraged every day at what Trump does. That’s just part of his strategy. Remaining calm in the face of turmoil is a choice.”

He pointed out that the razor-thin margin that Republicans now hold in the House is the lowest since the Civil War.

Asked what the public can do, Jeffries spoke about the importance of being “appropriately engaged. Democracy is not on autopilot. It takes a citizenry to hold politicians accountable and a new generation of young people to come forward and serve in public office.”

With a Republican-led White House, Senate, House and Supreme Court, Democrats must “work to find bi-partisan common ground and push back against far-right extremism.”

He also described how he is shaping his own leadership style while his mentor, Speaker-Emeritus Nancy Pelosi, continues to represent San Francisco in Congress. “She says she is not hanging around to be like the mother-in-law in the kitchen, saying ‘my son likes his spaghetti sauce this way, not that way.’”

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Activism

MacArthur Fellow Dorothy Roberts’ Advocates Restructure of Child Welfare System

Roberts’s early work focused on Black women’s reproductive rights and their fight for reproductive justice. In “Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty 1997)”, she analyzes historical and contemporary policies and practices that denied agency to Black women and sought to control their childbearing—from forced procreation during slavery, to coercive sterilization and welfare reform—and advocates for an expanded understanding of reproductive freedom.

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Dorothy Roberts. Photo courtesy of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
Dorothy Roberts. Photo courtesy of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Special to The Post

When grants were announced Oct. 1, it was noted that eight of the 22 MacArthur Fellows were African American. Among the recipients of the so-called ‘genius grants’ are scholars, visual and media artists a poet/writer, historian, and dancer/choreographer who each receive $800,000 over a five-year period to spend as they see fit.

 Their names are Ruha Benjamin, Jericho Brown, Tony Cokes, Jennifer L. Morgan, Ebony G. Patterson, Shamel Pitts, Jason Reynolds, and Dorothy Roberts. This is the eighth and last in the series highlighting the Black awardees. The report below on Dorothy Roberts is excerpted from the MacArthur Fellows web site.

A graduate of Yale University with a law degree from Harvard, Dorothy Roberts is a legal scholar and public policy researcher exposing racial inequities embedded within health and social service systems.

Sine 2012, she has been a professor of Law and Sociology, and on the faculty in the department of Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

Roberts’s work encompasses reproductive health, bioethics, and child welfare. She sheds light on systemic inequities, amplifies the voices of those directly affected, and boldly calls for wholesale transformation of existing systems.

Roberts’s early work focused on Black women’s reproductive rights and their fight for reproductive justice. In “Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty 1997)”, she analyzes historical and contemporary policies and practices that denied agency to Black women and sought to control their childbearing—from forced procreation during slavery, to coercive sterilization and welfare reform—and advocates for an expanded understanding of reproductive freedom.

This work prompted Roberts to examine the treatment of children of color in the U.S. child welfare system.

After nearly two decades of research and advocacy work alongside parents, social workers, family defense lawyers, and organizations, Roberts has concluded that the current child welfare system is in fact a system of family policing with alarmingly unequal practices and outcomes. Her 2001 book, “Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare,” details the outsized role that race and class play in determining who is subject to state intervention and the results of those interventions.

Through interviews with Chicago mothers who had interacted with Child Protective Services (CPS), Roberts shows that institutions regularly punish the effects of poverty as neglect.

CPS disproportionately investigates Black and Indigenous families, especially if they are low-income, and children from these families are much more likely than white children to be removed from their families after CPS referral.

In “Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families—and How Abolition Can Build a Safer World (2022),” Roberts traces the historical, cultural, and political forces driving the racial and class imbalance in child welfare interventions.

These include stereotypes about Black parents as negligent, devaluation of Black family bonds, and stigmatization of parenting practices that fall outside a narrow set of norms.

She also shows that blaming marginalized individuals for structural problems, while ignoring the historical roots of economic and social inequality, fails families and communities.

Roberts argues that the engrained oppressive features of the current system render it beyond repair. She calls for creating an entirely new approach focused on supporting families rather than punishing them.

Her support for dismantling the current child welfare system is unsettling to some. Still, her provocation inspires many to think more critically about its poor track record and harmful design.

By uncovering the complex forces underlying social systems and institutions, and uplifting the experiences of people caught up in them, Roberts creates opportunities to imagine and build more equitable and responsive ways to ensure child and family safety.

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Activism

Oakland Post: Week of December 18 – 24, 2024

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of December 18 – 24, 2024

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