Category Archives: Black Lives Matter

The Black Lives Matter foundation has revealed it received more than $90 million in donations last year despite the movement being splintered by ongoing feuds about the lack of funding.

The Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation announced the massive influx of money late Tuesday the very first time BLM has disclosed its finances in its nearly eight-year history.

With $8.4 million in expenses and $21.7 million committed to local chapters, the group ended 2020 with an approximate balance of $60 million, it stated in an impact statement.

We are no longer a small, scrappy movement. We are an institution, the foundation boasted.

We are entering spaces previously unimaginable.

The financial disclosure came amid heightened tensions in the network of activists with group of 10 chapters, called the #BLM10 and including ones in New Jersey and Hudson Valley, splitting in November while publicly ripping the main organization over financial transparency, decision making, and accountability.

To the best of our knowledge, most chapters have received little to no financial support from BLMGN since the launch in 2013, the 10-chapters insisted in a public demand for accountability.

That lack of funding came despite BLM getting donations from A-list celebrities such as Beyonc, Jay-Z and prior to his death in 2016 Prince, The Associated Press noted.

BLM co-founder Patrisse Cullors the foundations executive director insisted that the financial boost in 2020 was radically different than previous years, however, without releasing further records.

Because the BLM movement was larger than life and it is larger than life people made very huge assumptions about what our actual finances looked like, Cullors told the AP.

We were often scraping for money, and this year was the first year where we were resourced in the way we deserved to be.

The donations exploded following the May 2020 death of George Floyd, whose death under the knee of a white Minneapolis police officer sparked protests across the US and around the world, the foundation said.

That was matched by online interest, with the BLMGNF website getting a record 1.9 million visitors on June 2 an almost 5,000 percent increase over the most trafficked day in March, the report said.

BLM vowed to use the money to be more active.

Black folks have waited over 400 yearsto be seen, to be heard, to live in a world where their lives are fundamentally valued, the report stated.

Despite the strength of our movement, this has yet to happen. Our demands continue to go ignored. As the organization supporting this movement, weve decided that we will wait no longer.

Cullors told the AP that a key focus was now on a need to reinvest into black communities.

One of our biggest goals this year is taking the dollars we were able to raise in 2020 and building out the institution weve been trying to build for the last seven and a half years, she said in an interview.

With Post wires

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Black Lives Matter received over $90M in donations last year

Wednesday will be the second anniversary of the lurid street murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. The killings of Black people had become almost banal in their incessancy and redundancy, but something about this one captured during an advancing pandemic that had forced people apart and inside, watching the world through windows and screens drew thousands of people out into the streets, where boarded-up storefronts produced the tempting tableau of a country strewn with canvases.

Some saw in the uprising the potential for revolution. They talked about the protests in the lofty language of a racial reckoning, an inflection point, a fresh start on Americas path to absolution from its original sin.

But flashes of guilt, outrage and shame often stir fleeting fealties, and the heavy gravitational pull of racial privileges and power can quickly draw mercurial allies back into the refuge of the status quo.

Some good came of the protests, to be sure. Some states and local municipalities passed or instituted police reforms. Money poured into Black Lives Matter, as well as other racial justice organizations and Black institutions. Individuals began personal journeys to become more egalitarian and more actively antiracist. And artists produced hundreds of murals and thousands of pieces of other street art that, for a time, transformed this country.

In the end, transformative national change proved to be an illusion. Inflation, a war in Ukraine, public safety, abortion and even a baby formula crisis have overtaken the zeitgeist. Support for Black Lives Matter has diminished. Federal police reform and federal voter protection both failed to pass the Senate. And the founders of Black Lives Matter have been drawn into controversies about how they handled its money.

Ive learned not to expect much from America; it has a deep capacity for change but a shallow desire for it. I have embraced the wise desire not to be betrayed by too much hoping, as James Baldwin put it. But I worry about young people in all of this. It is their faith thats most vulnerable to damage. They were the ones who most believed that change was not only possible but imminent, only to have America retreat and retrench.

Now not only are their allies reversing course on issues like police reform; the country is also facing a full backlash toward protest itself. Dozens of states have passed laws restricting the right to protest (just this week, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida barred citizens from protesting outside private homes), and more than a dozen have now criminalized teaching full and accurate racial history.

The Great Erasure is underway, not so much an attempt to erase the uprising itself as an attempt to blunt its effects.

There is no example of this erasure more striking than the continual destruction, removal or slow vanishing of much of the street art produced in the wake of Floyds killing.

According to a database compiled by three professors at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota Heather Shirey, David Todd Lawrence and Paul Lorah there were once approximately 2,700 murals, graffiti, stickers, posters affixed to surfaces and light projections created in response to Floyds killing, mostly in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Shirey and Lawrence called it the largest proliferation of street art around one idea or issue or event in history. But many of those pieces have disappeared, sometimes because of exposure to traffic or the elements and sometimes because of deliberate attempts to erase them. Business owners quietly removed the graffitied planks from their storefronts. Some of the murals have been defaced.

For this project, my colleagues and I looked at 115 murals created after Floyds death and tried to determine how many had been maintained. (It is not a comprehensive list, although it is hard to imagine any such list could be.) Only 37 were fully intact. In cities from Oklahoma to California, few vestiges remain of what were once vibrant murals, painted on asphalt and walls.

In 2021, six police officers sued Palo Alto, Calif., because it had commissioned this mural, which included aportrait of Joanne Chesimard, a former member of the Black Liberation Army convicted of killing a state trooper in1973. The lawsuit was dismissed, but by that point,the city had already removed the mural.

This mural, designed by Avrion Jackson, was one of six that an army of some 1,000 volunteers paintedaround Kansas City in 2020. Last fall, the organizers said they planned to raise funds to restore the murals, but work on this one has not yet begun.

In spring 2020, city officials teamed up with local organizations to commission variousartists to design and paint each letter of this eclectic colorful mural. The city reopened the street to traffic that fall, and the paint has since worn away.

When this mural first appeared on Fulton Street in June 2020, the districts council member said he would seek to turn the street into a permanent pedestrian plaza. But it soon opened to traffic, which erased the lettering.

Over the past two months, I talked to art historians, museum directors and curators, activists and artists who had created murals. The picture that emerges is of a group determined to preserve as much of the art as possible while understanding that it cant all be saved, and an acknowledgement of the inherent, ephemeral nature of street art. This art was created in a moment, for a moment. Permanence was often not its central consideration. But to lose it would be to lose a cultural record of the time, a record of the profound significance and magnitude of what transpired: A generation of young people and young artists found their voice and used it, creating an arts movement that sits in the canon alongside the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 70s and the Harlem Renaissance. You might even say it mirrors on an enormous scale the Wall of Respect mural first painted in 1967 by the Visual Arts Workshop of the Organization of Black American Culture in Chicago.

What may have been different about this movement was the outlook of the generation that created it. Aaron Bryant, curator of photography, visual anthropology and contemporary history at the Smithsonians National Museum of African American History and Culture, described it to me as a sense of entitlement. These activists and artists believe they have an absolute right, and even a responsibility, to express themselves, he told me. They arent necessarily a generation that was raised to be silent.

The art produced during and after the uprising was powerful, emotional and energetic, like a lightning storm. But like lightning, the illuminated contours of the way it split the sky soon dimmed and vanished.

The art tapped into something and provided a language for it. As Franklin Sirmans, director of the Prez Art Museum Miami, put it, Some of the best art is created under situations of not only duress but of immediate response, and that is part and parcel with this sense of collective identity that I think many of us felt in that moment, and to see it visualized was really heartening.

For me, it was transcendent. It brought a fresh, abounding energy to a standing tradition.

Murals as instruments of memorial have long been a feature of Black grief and remembrance. They are what Amaka Okechukwu, assistant professor of sociology and anthropology at George Mason University, so eloquently describes as gravestone murals or wake work haunting the urban spaces where Black lives have been lost.

By no means are these murals the expression solely of African Americans. They can be found in many communities and in many cultures around the world, where the tradition of producing them is centuries old.

But in a way, Floyds murder globalized gravestone murals in service of a singular subject. Perhaps the most iconic of these murals were thoses with the words Black Lives Matter written in large block letters down the middle of streets. The first was painted by the District of Columbia and was so large that it was legible on satellite images.

People like Sarah Lewis, associate professor of history of art and architecture and African and African American studies at Harvard University, saw it as a powerful testament symbolizing the precarity of black life in open terrain. But activists soon pointed out that the politicians who supported the art often resisted policies designed to rectify the historic injustices Black Lives Matter had highlighted. When the District of Columbia painted its mural, the local Black Lives Matter chapter called it a performative distraction from real policy changes designed to appease white liberals while ignoring our demands. Mayor Muriel Bowser was on the wrong side of history, they said. Black Lives Matter means defund the police.

These tensions stretched beyond Washington.

In Minneapolis, at the intersection where Floyd was murdered now called George Floyd Square the George Floyd Global Memorial project has taken on the Herculean task of preserving all protest objects, items the group calls offerings, including art and murals, in the square. So far it has collected over 5,000 artifacts, preserved them with the help of art conservators and stored them in cardboard boxes in a small room in a community theater. The group has ambitions to one day build a museum to house it all. Some of the murals in George Floyd Square were being repainted when I visited this month, ahead of the observances of the second anniversary of Floyds murder. New ones have been added featuring other Black people killed elsewhere, some lost to community violence rather than state violence.

This level of ambition makes Minneapolis both the epicenter of the preservation efforts and an anomaly. Governments in cities across the country, like Tulsa, Okla. and Redwood City, Calif., have erased the murals, reflecting the reality that many lacked the true, sustained commitment to Black lives.

Activists painted this mural on what was once "Black Wall Street," the wealthy community ravaged in Tulsa's 1921 race massacre. City officials later removed themural because it was never officially approved, but before they did, protesters erected paper tombstones on the siteto memorialize Black lives lost to violence.

A married couple worked with volunteers to paint this mural on the fence outside their home in 2020. It was painted over the following year to comply with city ordinances that prohibit fences from being more than one color or from displaying words, pictures or signs.

Further complicating the preservation efforts is the degree to which these pieces of art were politicalized from the moment of their creation: Murals were going up as Confederate monuments in cities like Montgomery, Ala., continued to come down. It fueled the fears held by white supremacists that white people and white culture would eventually be superseded.

In their zero-sum worldview, BLMs pro-Blackness was inherently anti-white. President Donald Trump called a Black Lives Matter mural to be painted in front of Trump Tower in New York City a symbol of hate. Historical revisionists held fast to the lie that Confederate monuments were about history, rather than racism. The fight was over which art representing which points of view was more deserving of public display.

Its perhaps also no coincidence that much of the artwork created after Floyds death is vanishing as the public embrace of the Black Lives Matter movement is waning. Polls last year by the Pew Research Center found that support for Black Lives Matter, which peaked in the immediate aftermath of George Floyds death, had fallen back to its 2017 levels, pre-George Floyd. Black support had remained high; it was the support among white people that fell.

Activists chafe at the notion that the BLM movement itself is waning.

Every off year we write Black Lives Matters obituary, and we eulogize it and we talk about the waning Black Lives Matter Movement, Frank Leon Roberts, creator of the Black Lives Matter Syllabus, a public curriculum for teaching BLM in classrooms and communities, and newly appointed assistant professor of English and Black studies at Amherst College, told me.

The movement actually is not waning, he said. The movement from its inception has operated in waves. He predicts that there will inevitably be another heinous event of police violence which will once again incite something in the people, and then well be having this same conversation.

But police killings have continued unabated. In fact, last year saw a record number of police shootings, the most since The Washington Post began keeping count in 2015. The police killed 1,055 people across the country in 2021. And yet, there were no nationwide protests.

In my life I have arrived at the conclusion that real liberation equity, safety and the pursuit of happiness is not rooted in feelings and personal evolutions. Only a change in the parameters of power political, economic and cultural, who has it and who gets to exercise it, who is benefited by it and who is harmed by it can transform this country.

Passions flare and subside; power endures. Like the art, broad-based, transracial interest and energy to support the Black Lives Matter movement are fading. I mourn the loss of that energy, but I also mourn the loss of the movements art from public space. In the streets it was both declaration and confrontation, brazen and assertive. It was forcefully in your face.

Now, even among the artifacts that can be or have been saved, the context will change from the urgency of in-situ to the sterility of institutions or the impersonal distance of digital space.

The art that once shouted and demanded and documented the movement is being culled and reduced to the dulcet-toned advocacy of a few heroic curators.

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Opinion | George Floyd and the Fading Signs of Black Lives Matter - The New York Times

A new inscription will be unveiled at the Milton Keynes Rose in Campbell Park on Wednesday 25 May 2022 at 5pm with a ceremony that is open to the public.

25th May is the second anniversary of the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, an event which was instrumental in the development and spread of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Following a public consultation exercise in 2021, a new pillar inscription at the Milton Keynes Rose will mark 25 May and Black Lives Matter.

The wording on the inscription refers to George Floyds death and states:

No person should put their knee, chain or noose

on anothers neck because of their colour

Revd Edson Dube, who led the campaign to have the inscription on behalf of the MK Council of Faiths, said: "25th May is a date which globally will forever be commemorated and remembered for the crime that was committed against Mr. Floyd in Minneapolis.

"This date is one of deep importance to both the city and the people of Milton Keynes as the date stands as a consistent reminder of the need to eradicate hate, racism and prejudice from our community and the world."

Debbie Brock, Chair of the Milton Keynes Rose Trustsaid: "The Trust is grateful for the considered and helpful nomination it received in favour of the Black Lives Matter pillar and welcomes the day being commemorated for many years into the future to remind us of the horrific murder of George Floyd and to affirm that in Milton Keynes Black Lives Matter."

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New pillar honouring Black Lives Matter Movement to be unveiled at the Milton Keynes Rose - MKFM

The 2020 racial justice demonstrations in New York City became a stage for the brutal police tactics that drove protesters to the streets following the murder of George Floyd on May 25 of that year. Dozens of videos of New York City Police Department officers shoving, beating and pepper-spraying protesters emerged, sparking even more outcry. Former Mayor Bill de Blasio was widely criticized for his response or lack thereof to NYPD aggression against protesters, leading members of his own staff to publicly denounce his approach to criminal justice and policing.

What began as an emotional response to police brutality evolved into a movement to defund the police. Beyond calls for cuts to the massive NYPD budget, demands from protesters in 2020 were far-reaching, including everything from emptying Rikers to enhancing officer accountability.

On a state level, the Legislature responded to protesters demands by passing a package of reforms aimed at lifting the Blue Wall of Silence, a term that refers to police departments attempts to hide officer misconduct, by limiting the use of chokeholds by police and requiring officers to record demographics when making low-level arrests.

The City Council also passed a package of reforms that summer on officer accountability and to tamp down excessive force, along with cataloging surveillance technology.

But as the Black Lives Matter protests swept the city and the country, so did a pandemic-induced counterforce to the progressive policereform movement. The unraveling of societal norms contributed to a national increase in shootings and homicides.Domestic violence incidents spiked as victims were stuck at home with their abusers. The uncertainty drove record increases in gun sales across the U.S. School closures, along with household disruptions, were widely believed to have contributed to an increase in killings and violence among youth. Distrust in police reached an all-time high.

In the two years since Floyds murder by a white police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota and the popular movement sparked by his death these factors have contributed to a marked shift away from policies and rhetoric meant to radically change the role of policing in New York. New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a former police officer, has reinstated the controversial NYPD anti-crime unit and proposed an NYPD operating budget that maintains the increases under de Blasio, exceeding the budget put in place before the protests.

Adams participated in the 2020 protests as Brooklyn borough president. During the mayoral primary, he touted his work as a reformer of the NYPD who called out racism from the inside. He helped paint Black Lives Matter in front of Trump Tower in July of that year.

But the citys second Black mayor now finds himself on the opposite side of the police reform debate. While he once stood in solidarity with Black Lives Matter demonstrators, local leaders of the protest movement have reacted to many of his new policing policies with vitriol. Brooklyn Movement Center Executive Director Anthonine Pierre recently penned an op-ed in the Daily News in which she accused Adams of caving to the demands of the police instead of meeting the needs of Black communities.

Its really disheartening at this point to be going back to broken windows policing the way Giuliani did.

Jessica Sanclemente-Gomez, board chair of the Justice Committee

Its really disheartening at this point to be going back to broken windows policing the way Giuliani did.

Adams, in turn, has used the movements own rhetoric to contest the criticism and what he views as the movements lack of action against gun violence. If Black lives matter, then the thousands of people I saw on the street when Floyd was murdered should be on the streets right now stating that the lives of these Black children that are dying every night matter, Adams said in April on NY1, speaking about the Brooklyn subway shooting in April. We cant be hypocrites.

In this new political climate, Adams has also promised policies to target underlying causes of crime and community-police relations such as new investments in the citys mental health crisis teams and youth programs advocates said theyre overshadowed by a return to what they view as problematic policing tactics.

All Adams has done is create more of a narrative of The way we combat violence is by more policing, Jessica Sanclemente-Gomez, board chair of the police reform organization the Justice Committee, told City & State. And its really disheartening at this point to be going back to broken windows policing the way (former Mayor Rudy) Giuliani did. That clearly showed no real dent in creating a better system and better flow of accountability.

Adams, when asked by City & State where he thinks the city stands in implementing the reforms he and others called for in the wake of the 2020 protests, said he remains committed not only to holding bad cops accountable, but also to supporting police.

You had (calls to) defund the police. I didnt call for those. I support police accountability. I also support police support. We need to be there for law enforcement officers, he said during a Q&A with reporters on May 18. The small number that are not suitable to be police officers, they need to expeditiously be removed from our department because they hurt our police department.

There are some specific reforms I called for there may be reforms that I dont think are reforms. I think they could hurt public safety. And Im never going to do anything thats going to hurt public safety.

Reforms enacted at the state and city levels have resulted in some changes to holding police accountable for incidents of violence and racial bias, but they have also faced fierce legal challenges and stonewalling from police departments and their unions.

Heres where some of the most prominent police reforms that came out of the 2020 protests stand today.

What was promised: Amid calls from protesters, de Blasio agreed to cut the NYPD budget by $1 billion. The City Council approved the budget in August 2020, and council leaders and activists accused the mayor of using some budget trickery to create a perception that funding had been cut more significantly than it was.

Where we are now: De Blasio ultimately fell short of the demands, and the police budget has since been restored to an amount thats even higher than it was before the 2020 protests.

The fiscal year 2021 budget, which was approved in July 2020 amid the summer protests, included $4.9 billion in city-funded NYPD operating expenses, what was projected to be a $345 million reduction, according to the Citizens Budget Commission. A large portion of the proposed reduction came from unrealistic cuts to overtime, the CBC reported. These savings are unrealistic; they were not accompanied by a plan or operational strategy, and prior efforts to reduce overtime at the uniformed agencies have been more successful in slowing growth rather than decreasing expenses.

In reality, the city spent $317 million less on the NYPDs city-funded operating budget in fiscal year 2021 compared to fiscal year 2020, according to the CBC. Overtime expenses exceeded the projected cuts by $216 million.

The fiscal year 2022 NYPD budget raised the NYPDs operating expenses by $465 million to a level even higher than its preprotest budget.

In addition to promises to cut overtime spending, de Blasio also pledged to shift funding for school safety agents and crossing guards to the city Department of Education, but that never happened. Adams first proposed budget also keeps school safety agents under the NYPD.

There may be reforms that I dont think are reforms. I think they could hurt public safety. And Im never going to do anything thats going to hurt public safety.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams

There may be reforms that I dont think are reforms. I think they could hurt public safety. And Im never going to do anything thats going to hurt public safety.

Adams NYPD spending plan, pending approval from the City Council, raised city-funded operating expenses by $539 million, according to the CBC. This increase is largely due to the city employing a one-time, $500 million use of American Rescue Plan funds in the previous fiscal year, said CBC Deputy Research Director Ana Champeny. However, the full picture of projected NYPD spending in fiscal year 2023 has yet to be determined due to an expected influx of federal funds. As of now, city-funded operating expenses are budgeted at $5.3 billion.

Rather than calling for blanket budget cuts to the NYPD, progressive City Council members and community activists have become more targeted in their rhetoric, instead focusing on reinvestments in programs and services to curb the underlying causes of crime and negative interactions with cops.

In a statement responding to Adams Blueprint to End Gun Violence, the progressive advocacy group Communities United for Police Reform had a mixed reaction.

Pieces of Mayor Adams plan support non-police safety solutions that we have been demanding for years, like expanding the Summer Youth Employment Program and providing resources for programs and organizations in communities working to interrupt violence, the organization wrote in a statement. But these initiatives are made secondary to an approach that increases the power and reach of the NYPD, expands the notoriously violent plainclothes unit, and doubles down on dangerous police surveillance technologies.

Adams gun violence plan included plans to offer a record number of 100,000 summer job opportunities for young people ages 14-24. Advocates, however, have called for at least an additional 50,000 spots to meet the high demand for the program.

Reformists said that while theyre not marching the streets en masse, the 2020 protests shone a spotlight on their movement and drew new recruits and resources that they have used to further their goals. Theyre now working to strike a balance between the defund rhetoric and more practical solutions.

You cant just say, defund the police and that's it, Sanclemente-Gomez said. Its defund the police to redirect that funding to potentially pay teachers more or to provide more affordable housing. Communities want a lot more and for us to not really be able to dive deep into what that strategy could look like, is a disservice to us as organizers.

What was promised: Among the bills state lawmakers passed targeting police reform in the wake of Floyds death was the repeal of the states Section 50-a law. Sponsored by Assembly Member Daniel ODonnell and state Sen. Jamaal Bailey, the bill largely rescinded the 1976 law that shielded officer disciplinary records from the public. Under the 2020 legislation, disciplinary documents are subject to release via Freedom of Information Law requests.

Where we are now: The 2020 law has faced legal roadblocks from police unions that have sued to prohibit the release of records, some successfully. Police departments have also found ways to circumvent 50-as repeal by using narrow interpretations of the law to deny records requests. The New York Civil Liberties Unionsued the NYPD in September, claiming its complaint database published in March 2021 following 50-as repeal only included details of investigations that were substantiated.

Sanclemente-Gomez said the 50-a legislation was definitely progress and sparked a new conversation surrounding police accountability, but it is not the silver bullet by any means. We just chipped away at the problem.

Legislation introduced earlier this year by Assembly Member Jessica Gonzlez-Rojas and Baileysought to formally eliminate the availability of the unsubstantiated excuse. The bill would amend the 2020 law to explicitly state that records can not be denied because such records concern complaints, allegations or charges that have not yet been determined, did not result in disciplinary action or resulted in a disposition or finding other than substantiated or guilty, according to the bill text.

While the legislation is still in committee, another bill that changed some of the provisions under the repeal of 50-a was recently passed and signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul on March 18. The law removed the requirement that a judicial hearing be held to determine if disciplinary documents related to an ongoing investigation an exception frequently cited by police departments can be withheld. Instead, under the newly passed amendments, government agencies must simply obtain a certificate from the investigating agency that the FOIL-requested records may be withheld because they would impede an ongoing investigation, according to an explanation of the bill, which was sponsored by Democrats state Sen. James Skoufis and Assembly Member Steve Englebright.

There was some disagreement about whether the new changes would hinder or help public access to records. The government watchdog group Reinvent Albany said the newly enacted provisions improve transparency by requiring police departments to explain why releasing records would impede an ongoing investigation. But some legal experts have said it gives police departments more leeway in making those determinations by eliminating judicial intervention. We are back to a situation where the police simply have to give no justification, just blanket denials for access to information. They can simply cite the existence of an ongoing investigation, lawyer James Henry told the New York Post.

What was promised: Amid the protests, de Blasio promised to do away with the citys anti-crime unit that was notorious for its controversial use of stop and frisk. Former NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo, who put Eric Garner in a lethal chokehold while arresting him on Staten Island in 2014, was a member of the anti-crime unit. Made up of about 600 undercover police officers, the unit was formally disbanded in June 2020 under former NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea. I would consider this in the realm of closing on one of the last chapters on stop, question and frisk, Shea said at the time.

Where we are now: In one of his first major policing announcements, Adams said the city would bring back the anti-crime units, sparking criticism from progressive City Council members and criminal justice activists.

The anti-crime unit has just been rebranded in some other capacity, especially under Mayor Adams, Sanclemente-Gomez said. Were just going back to square one.

The units, now called Neighborhood Safety Teams, were deployed on March 14. The approximately 200 officers are divided into groups of five officers and one sergeant, stationed in 30 precincts and four housing police service areas where 80% of the citys gun violence occurs, officials have said. While the officers historically wore street clothes, they now wear a less conspicuous version of the NYPDs uniform. Adams said the officers selected for the teams would undergo enhanced training and a strict vetting process.

These anti-crime teams are not the anti-crime teams of old. They look different. Theyre vetted different. Theres significant oversight," NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell said during a March City Council hearing.

A spokesperson for the mayor said Adams will not allow abusive practices to take place within the NYPD. To show his commitment to transparency and accountable policing, Mayor Adams is making sure the NYPDs new anti-gun unit will not make the mistakes of the past. Like all uniformed officers of the NYPD, the Neighborhood Safety Teams all wear body-worn cameras. Additionally, all members of the anti-gun unit wear modified uniforms that clearly identify them as NYPD, spokesperson Fabien Levy said in a statement.

The units were supposed to be responsible for finding illegal guns, but department data showed most of their arrests have been for low-level crimes. As of April 5, the most frequent arrest made by the units was for criminal possession of a forged instrument, such as a fake ID. The teams had made 27 such arrests of 135 total, according to the NYPD. As of May 10, the unit had made 397 total arrests and removed 69 guns, according to the department.

Meanwhile, a federal monitor reported earlier this month that the NYPD continues to underreport stops but has made significant strides regarding stop and frisk, including increases in justifiable stops and the use of body-worn cameras. However, the monitor found that 29% of stops made by the NYPD last year were not properly documented, something the department said was, in part, an effect of the pandemic. This report describes many accomplishments primarily relying on data from 2019-2020, the NYPD said in a statement. In the time period since the report, compliance has steadily and consistently increased.

What was promised: First introduced in 2017, City Council legislation requiring the NYPD to publicly report technology it uses and plans to acquire in order to surveil the public, such as drones and license plate readers, gained momentum during the 2020 protests and passed in June of that year. In 2019, national backlash to the use of facial recognition software by police and bans on the technology in other cities, such as Oakland and San Francisco, also brought renewed attention to the legislation. The NYPD has used facial recognition on children as young as 11 years old to compare crime scene photos to mug shots, The New York Times reported. Department leaders staunchly opposed the legislation, stating that it would help criminals and terrorists and endanger police officers, Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence and Counterterrorism John Miller said in an interview with AM 970s John Catsimatidis in 2017.

Where we are now: The NYPD in January 2021 released a list of the surveillance technology it deploys, including geolocation tracking devices and mobile X-ray technology, along with an impact and use policy for each device. Advocates said the data dump did not go far enoughand did not disclosewho is shared on the information collected from the technology or how the NYPD prevents racial biases historically associated with the technologies. In general, the disclosures obscure the breadth, depth, and complexity of the NYPDs surveillance, and in some instances even include misrepresentations and inaccurate statements, the NYCLU wrote in response to the release of the information.

Advocates continued to report racial bias associated with facial recognition software technology that faced widespread criticism for its use during the 2020 protests. The technology was used to track down Black Lives Matter activist Derrick Ingram, a co-founder of the group Warriors in the Garden, who was accused of yelling in an officers ear through a megaphone during the protests. Days later, in August 2020, dozens of NYPD officers swarmed his Hells Kitchen apartment building in an hourslong standoff. Amnesty International, along with the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, sued the NYPD to demand it release records showing how it used facial recognition software during the protests.

In February, Amnesty International reported more troubling revelations about facial recognition software. The group mapped 25,500 CCTV cameras across the city and found that facial recognition technology was disproportionately used in nonwhite communities in Brooklyn, Bronx and Queens.

Adams Blueprint to End Gun Violence plan released in January suggested expanding the use of facial recognition, along with the responsible use of new technologies and software to identify dangerous individuals and those carrying weapons. He explained in a press conference: Were looking at all of this technology out there to make sure that we can be responsible within our laws. Were not going to do anything thats going to go in contrast to our laws. But were going to use this technology to make people safe.

What was promised: Both the New York City Council and the state Legislature passed laws banning the use of chokeholds by police. The Eric Garner Anti-Chokehold Act, sponsored by then-Assembly Member Walter Mosley and then-state Sen. Brian Benjamin, was passed by the Legislature in June 2020. The bill made it so a police officer who injures or kills someone by using a chokehold or similar restraint could be charged with a class C felony, punishable by up to 15 years in prison. The council legislation criminalized the use of restraints that restrict the flow of air or blood by compressing another individuals windpipe or arteries on the neck, or by putting pressure on the back or chest, by (a) police officer making an arrest. The NYPDs own policy has prohibited chokeholds for decades, but the new law made it so that officers who engage in the practice could face a class A misdemeanor charge under the law.

Where we are now: The NYPDs police unions sued over the legislation, and last yeara state Supreme Court judge ruled that the policy was unconstitutionally vague and must be rewritten. On May 19, an appeals court reinstated the law, writing the Supreme Court should have not found the diaphragm compression ban to be unconstitutionally vague. The diaphragm compression ban is sufficiently definite to give notice of the prohibited conduct and does not lack objective standards or create the potential for arbitrary or discriminatory enforcement.

Officers have continued to use the restraint tactic since Garners death, according to the New York City Civilian Complaint Review Board, which reported in January last year 40 instances in which officers have used chokeholds since Garners death.

What was promised: The NYPD Internal Affairs Bureau, along with the Civilian Complaint Review Board, was charged with investigating hundreds of complaints of officer misconduct during the 2020 protests. De Blasio, at the time, said he was concerned about the dozens of videos of officers behaving aggressively toward protesters, but he also expressed support for the departments handling of the demonstrations overall. Look, there are some specific instances I dont accept, where there needs to be discipline, the mayor told WNYCs Brian Lehrer on June 5, 2020. But the vast majority of what Ive seen is peaceful protest that has been respected as always, and folks making sure voices heard for change, and police have shown a lot of restraint.

Where we are now: The Civilian Complaint Review Board earlier this month reported that it has substantiated 267 of 316 cases of officer misconduct related to the 2020 protests and recommended the highest level of discipline for 88 officers. The NYPD has closed 44 of those cases and agreed with the Civilian Complaint Review Boards recommendations just 10 times. However, the board said it faced barriers in investigating many of the complaints due to its inability to identify some of the officers seen on the video footage engaging in aggressive tactics, forcing it to close 26% of cases for that reason.Some of the officers covered or refused to disclose their badge numbers when asked by protesters a violation of NYPD protocol under the 2018 Right to Know Act passed by the City Council. In releasing the results of the protest investigations on May 11, the Civilian Complaint Review Board said it would publish a report sometime this summer with recommendations on how to enhance the NYPDs protest response.

The CCRB was flooded with complaints, interim Chair Arva Rice said in a statement about the 2020 protests. In the height of the pandemic, our investigators used all possible resources, including thousands of hours of (body camera) footage, civilian footage, police records and more, to fairly and impartially investigate some of the most complicated cases the Agency has seen. She said, as of mid-May, the Civilian Complaint Review Board had finalized 98% of cases and submitted its recommendations to the NYPD.

with reporting by Jeff Coltin

See more here:

Two years after George Floyd's murder, where have all the police reforms gone? - City & State

On Monday night, Terry Crews was grilled over his criticism of Black Lives Matter by CNN host Don Lemon. As Gina Bontempo pointed out on Twitter: Don Lemon did everything he could to talk over Terry and silence him as soon as they started approaching what the BLM organization is *really* about.

So what is Black Lives Matter really about?

Many conservatives insist Black Lives Matter is a Marxist, anti-police, radical organization that wants to tear down America. Meanwhile, most liberals simply view Black Lives Matter as a heroic movement and powerful slogan signaling support for racial justice and opposition to police brutality.

Both are right. There is Black Lives Matter, and there is black lives matter.

Let me explain.

In 2013, the national outcry over Trayvon Martins death and George Zimmermans acquittal sparked a national outcry over racial injustice. Amid this controversy, three activists, Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi, started a hashtag, #BlackLivesMatter, which soon went viral. They then founded the national Black Lives Matter organization.

Black Lives Matter as a broad sentiment and movement then gained national attention and name recognition after the 2014 deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown. Meanwhile, the official group expanded and many more local chapters formed.

No doubt, the organization itself was quite radical from the very beginning. Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors described herself and fellow co-founder Alicia Garza as trained Marxists in a recently resurfaced video from 2015.

We actually do have an ideological frame[work], Cullors said of her organization. We are trained Marxists. We are super-versed on, sort of, ideological theories.

Meanwhile, the national organizations official platform, published in 2015, contained a specific call to [disrupt] the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure.

At the local level, official Black Lives Matter chapters are essentially far-left front groups that use racial justice as a Trojan horse for leftist policy and ideology. For example, the official organization Black Lives Matter DC openly dedicates itself to creating the conditions for Black Liberation through the abolition of systems and institutions of white supremacy, capitalism, patriarchy and colonialism.

Unsurprisingly, conservatives have bashed the radical group en masse.

Black Lives Matter is an openly Marxist, anti-American group, conservative commentator Mark Levin said. There's no denying it. And it is fully embraced by the Democrat Party and its media and cultural surrogates.

Black Lives Matter is a Marxist movement, Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz tweeted. Black Lives Matter is not about police, it's not about race, it's not about justice. It's about making us hate America so they can replace America.

You know, I know plenty of people who are for Black Lives Matter. A lot of them are nice people, Fox News Host Tucker Carlson recently said. Im not mad at them. I disagree I think Black Lives Matter is poison.

These kinds of conservative criticisms of Black Lives Matter are widespread. And on one hand, theyre right: The official Black Lives Matter organization is Marxist, is anti-American in its values, and its views are rightfully alarming to anyone who believes in the Constitution, capitalism, and civil society as we know it. But in applying their reflexive response to all Black Lives Matter supporters, conservative critics are failing to see the forest for the trees.

A whopping 51 percent of the public tells pollsters they support black lives matter. Most of these people, I suspect, dont even know that there is an official Black Lives Matter organization. And Im sure hardly any of them could name Patrisse Cullors or Alicia Garza.

Whether its where Im from in deep-blue Massachusetts or where I live now in Washington D.C., walking by a Black Lives Matter sign sticking out from someones yard is just about an everyday occurrence. After the death of George Floyd, more of my acquaintances, friends, and relatives than I could count posted #BlackLivesMatter. Many others changed their picture to a black square or otherwise signaled their support for the movement.

I can personally guarantee you that the vast majority of these people, while liberal, do not support ending capitalism or dismantling the family. Conservatives are led astray as soon as they apply their (valid) criticisms of Black Lives Matter the organization to the Black Lives Matter movement and its supporters broadly.

Just look at the way some on the Right responded to Sen. Mitt Romney after he attended a Washington, D.C. protest against police brutality, telling reporters he did so to make sure that people understand that Black Lives Matter.

Heres a sampling of how hostile the response was from some conservative pundits on Twitter:

Even President Trump attacked Romney over it:

No matter how you feel about the conservative Mormon senator politically (and Im far from a fan), no one can credibly argue that Romney supports destroying the nuclear family, ending capitalism, or abolishing the police.

Meanwhile, Sen. Mike Braun of Indiana faced a similar unfair backlash when he announced his support for Black Lives Matter and unveiled a modest police reform proposal:

It may well be true that in particular conservative circles, everyone is well aware of the obscure history of the Black Lives Matter founders Marxist roots. But the average person on the street and the average person who shares the hashtag are most certainly not. And the movement itself has become something much bigger, broader, and more benevolent than the original organization.

However, its by no means just conservatives who err in their approach to Black Lives Matter. For one, many on the Left fail to acknowledge at all the Marxist roots of the official Black Lives Matter organization, and thus, paint anyone who objects to the organization as racist, unthinkingly inveighing: How could anyone not support black lives? This kind of clever naming of a controversial movement, similar to Antifa supposedly standing for anti-fascist, makes it easy to baselessly paint critics as extreme and immoral. Yet this is a reductive oversimplification that serves only to divide.

So, too, much of the blame for the Black Lives Matter perception gap lies with liberals, Democrats, and others who support the movement for failing to adequately distance themselves from the radical organization.

For example, I visited one of my favorite coffee shops in Arlington, Virginia over the weekend. Like many a hipster coffee shop, it had a Black Lives Matter sign in the window and had a fundraiser going on for the cause as well. But I was dismayed to read the flyer and notice that the proceeds of the fundraiser were going to the official Black Lives Matter DC organizationyes, the same one that openly wants to abolish capitalism.

Now, I highly doubt that the owners of this coffee shop, even if they are progressives or Democrats, actually support Marxism. More importantly, Im certain that most customers who donated, even in the liberal-leaning neighborhood, do not realize they are donating to a Marxist, anti-American revolutionary organization by participating in the fundraiser. But they are.

Many a mainstream liberal has signaled support for the generic black lives matter cause by sharing fundraisers that, if you look closely, go to official Black Lives Matter organizations that do not actually represent their views. Meanwhile, liberal-leaning media outlets such as MSNBC regularly platform official members of the Marxist Black Lives Matter movement and pass the radical activists off as within the mainstream.

From corporations to politicians to random Facebook users, Black Lives Matter supporters need to do a much better job distancing themselves from the radical organization at the root of their slogan. (Or, alternatively, they should come up with a new and different slogan that doesnt have such malign associations.)

This lack of due diligence is lazy and irresponsible, but more importantly, its dangerous.

Marxism is a vicious ideology, and its one that is rooted in a divisive vision of irreconcilable class conflict. As important economist Ludwig von Mises noted, According to the Marxian view... human society is organized into classes whose interests stand in irreconcilable opposition. Moreover, as Mises explains, Marxists believe that peoples very thoughts ought to be determined by their class and that those who differ from the prescribed worldview are class traitors.

Such a divisive ideology only fuels perpetual conflict, not progress toward reconciliation. By failing to drive this toxic extremism out loudly and clearly from their side of the issue, the large majority of Black Lives Matter supporterswho simply seek reform, justice, and reconciliationtake a chainsaw to any chance of achieving common ground and consensus.

When Don Lemon took issue with Terry Crews's take on Black Lives Matter, Crews was crystal clear, saying, This is the thing. Its a great mantra. Its a true mantra. Black lives do matter. But, when youre talking about an organization, youre talking about the leaders, youre talking about the people who are responsible for putting these things together. Its two different things.

We need more of that kind of clarity in our discourse. Right now, the debate over Black Lives Matter is muddled and confused. Liberals and conservatives alike need to make an effort to listen and understand the other sides perspective, not the strawman caricature of it used as a punching bag in partisan echo chambers. Until both sides take the time to understand each other, we will keep talking past each otherand any real progress or harmony will remain a fantasy.

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Is Black Lives Matter Marxist? No and Yes. - Foundation ...

NEW YORK (AP) The foundation started by organizers of the Black Lives Matter movement is still worth tens of millions of dollars, after spending more than $37 million on grants, real estate, consultants, and other expenses, according to tax documents filed with the IRS.

In a new, 63-page Form 990 shared exclusively with The Associated Press, the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation Inc. reports that it invested $32 million in stocks from the $90 million it received as donations amid racial justice protests in 2020. That investment is expected to become an endowment to ensure the foundations work continues in the future, organizers say.

It ended its last fiscal year from July 1, 2020 to June 30, 2021 with nearly $42 million in net assets. The foundation had an operating budget of about $4 million, according to a board member.

The tax filing shows that nearly $6 million was spent on a Los Angeles-area compound. The Studio City property, which includes a home with six bedrooms and bathrooms, a swimming pool, a soundstage and office space, was intended as a campus for a Black artists fellowship and is currently used for that purpose, the board member said.

This is the BLM foundations first public accounting of its finances since incorporating in 2017. As a fledgling nonprofit, it had been under the fiscal sponsorship of a well-established charity, and wasnt required to publicly disclose its financials until it became an independent, 501(c)(3) nonprofit in December 2020.

The tax filing suggests the organization is still finding its footing: It currently has no executive director or in-house staff. Nonprofit experts tell the AP that the BLM foundation seems to be operating like a scrappy organization with far fewer resources, although some say Black-led charities face unfair scrutiny in an overwhelmingly white and wealthy philanthropic landscape.

Still, its governance structure makes it difficult to disprove allegations of impropriety, financial mismanagement and deviation from mission that have dogged the BLM foundation for years, one expert said.

It comes across as an early startup nonprofit, without substantial governance structure in place, that got a huge windfall, said Brian Mittendorf, a professor of accounting at Ohio State University who focuses on nonprofit organizations and their financial statements.

People are going to be quick to assume that mismatch reflects intent, he added. Whether theres anything improper here, that is another question. But whether they set themselves up for being criticized, I think that certainly is the case because they didnt plug a bunch of those gaps.

The BLM movement first emerged in 2013, after the acquittal of George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch volunteer who killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Florida. But it was the 2014 death of Michael Brown at the hands of police in Ferguson, Missouri, that made the slogan Black lives matter a rallying cry for progressives and a favorite target of derision for conservatives.

BLM co-founders Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza and Ay Tometi had pledged to build a decentralized organization governed by the consensus of BLM chapters. But just three years into existence, Cullors was the only movement founder involved in the organization.

And in 2020, a tidal wave of contributions in the aftermath of protests over George Floyds murder by Minneapolis police meant the BLM organization needed much more infrastructure.

When Cullors revealed the windfall of donations last year, local chapter organizers and families of police brutality victims reacted angrily. Until then, the foundation had not been transparent with the most devoted BLM organizers, many of whom accused Cullors of shutting them out of decisions about how financial resources would be allocated.

YahN Ndgo, an activist and former organizer with the BLM chapter in Philadelphia, said Cullors reneged on a promise to hand over control of the foundation's resources to grassroots organizers.

When resources came in, when opportunities came in, (the foundation) alone would be the ones to decide who was going to take advantage of them, without having to take any consideration of the other organizers whose work was giving them the access to these resources and opportunities in the first place, said Ndgo, who organized a group of chapters that confronted the foundation over issues of transparency and accountability.

In 2020, the foundation did spin off its network of chapters as a sister collective called BLM Grassroots. It has a fiscal sponsor managing money granted by the foundation. Melina Abdullah, cofounder of BLM's first chapter in Los Angeles, also directs the grassroots collective and said its organizers continue to have direct impact in communities across the country.

Well never stop doing that," Abdullah said. "Thats the work we were born out of.

In a recent interview with the AP, Cullors acknowledged the foundation was ill-prepared to handle the moment. The tax filing lists Cullors as an uncompensated founder and executive director. She resigned last year. The foundation also paid nearly $140,000 in severance to a former managing director who had been at odds with local BLM chapter organizers, prior to Cullorss tenure as director.

The filing shows Cullors reimbursed the organization $73,523 for a charter flight for foundation-related travel, which the organization says she took in 2021 out of concern for COVID-19 and security threats. She also paid the foundation $390 over her uses of the Studio City property for two private events.

During the last fiscal year, Cullors was the foundation boards sole voting director and held no board meetings, according to the filing. Although that is permissible under Delaware law, where the foundation is incorporated, that governance structure gives the appearance that Cullors alone decided who to hire and how to spend donations. That was never the truth, current board members said.

For all the questions raised about its oversight, the BLM foundations tax filing shows its stewards havent squandered donations. Instead, it granted tens of millions of dollars to BLM chapters, Black-led grassroots organizations and families of police brutality victims, whose names rallied the larger movement.

This 990 reveals that (the BLM foundation) is the largest Black abolitionist nonprofit organization that has ever existed in the nations history. What were doing has never been done before, said Shalomyah Bowers, who serves as the foundations board secretary.

We needed to get dollars out to grassroots organizations doing the work of abolition, doing the work that would shift the moral tide of this world towards one that does not have or believe in police, prisons, jails or violence, he said.

Earlier this month, the foundation announced Bowers as one of three members of its board of directors. He serves with board chair Cicley Gay, a communications professional with more than 20 years of experience in nonprofit and philanthropic organizations, and DZhane Parker, a member of BLMs Los Angeles chapter whose work focuses on the impact of mass incarceration on families.

We are decolonizing philanthropy, Gay said. We, as a board, are charged with disrupting traditional standards of what grant making in philanthropy looks like. It means investing in Black communities, trusting them with their dollars.

The foundation will launch a transparency and accountability center on its website to make its financial documents available for public inspection, Bowers said.

To get here, the foundation has relied on a small grouping of consultants, some of whom have close ties to founders and other BLM organizers. For example, the tax filing shows the foundation paid nearly $970,000 to Trap Heals LLC, a company founded by Damon Turner, who fathered a child with Cullors. The company was hired to produce live events and provide other creative services, Bowers said.

The foundation paid more than $840,000 to Cullors Protection LLC, a security firm run by Paul Cullors, Patrisses brother, according to the tax filing. Because the BLM movement is known for vehemently protesting law enforcement organizations, the foundation felt its protection could not be entrusted to former police professionals who typically run security firms, said Bowers, adding the foundation sought bids for other security contractors.

Bowers, who has previously served as deputy executive director, is founder and president of a firm that received the lions share of money spent on consultants in the last fiscal year. Bowers Consulting provided much of the foundations operational support, including staffing, fundraising and other key services and was paid more than $2.1 million, according to the tax filing.

The foundations reliance on consultants is not unusual for newer nonprofits, said Mittendorf, the Ohio State accounting professor. But having clear policies around business transactions could reduce any appearance of impropriety, he said.

Its a best practice not to engage in business transactions with people who have influence inside the organization or with companies affiliated with people who have influence inside the organization, Mittendorf said. Make sure you have conflict of interest policies and other controls in place, so that those transactions are all being done to benefit the organization and not to benefit the individuals.

The tax filing indicates the foundation has a conflict-of-interest policy. And Bowers said the last BLM board approved the contract with his firm when he was not a board member.

Our firm stepped in when Black Lives Matter had no structure and no staff, he said. We filled the gap, when nothing else existed. But let me be crystal clear, there was no conflict of interest.

Controversy surrounding the organizations finances has elicited probes by at least two state attorneys general. Board members said they are cooperating with civil investigations in Indiana and Ohio, and they have turned over relevant documents to those authorities.

Isabelle Leighton, interim executive director of the Donors of Color Network, an organization that promotes racial equity in philanthropy, said discrimination in the nonprofit sector leaves little room for Black-led progressive movement organizations to publicly make mistakes. Such organizations are typically receiving much less financial and operational support than wealthy, white-led nonprofits, but receive much more criticism, she said.

Its tapping into a deep narrative that people of color do not deserve to have the same resources that those who have already made it get, Leighton said. Its intended for people to start to doubt and create their own new echo chamber of criticizing who deserves to receive resources.

The foundations tax filing rebuts claims that the BLM foundation ignored the larger movement. Nearly $26 million, or 70% of its expenses, were grants to organizations and families in the last fiscal year.

Twelve BLM chapters, including those in Boulder, Colorado; Boston; Washington, D.C.; Detroit; Los Angeles; Gary, Indiana; and Philadelphia, received pledges for grants of up to $500,000. The family foundations created in honor of Floyd and others killed by police and vigilantes Trayvon Martin and Oscar Grant each received contributions of $200,000.

Jacari Harris, executive director of the George Floyd Memorial Foundation, said in a statement the organization was incredibly grateful for the grant, the largest one-time contribution we have received to date within the U.S. Harris said the funds will help provide college scholarships, mental health support to the Black community and educate about the dangers of police brutality around the world.

The Michael O.D. Brown: We Love Our Sons & Daughters Foundation, run by Michael Brown Jr.s mother, Lezley McSpadden, was approved for a larger multi-year grant of $1.4 million. A representative of the Brown foundation told the AP that an initial $500,000 had been received in 2021.

McSpadden is happy to have the BLM foundations support, the representative said.

Among its larger grants are $2.3 million to the Living Through Giving Foundation, a nonprofit charity platform that encourages giving at the local level; and $1.5 million to Team Blackbird, LLC, a rapid response communications and movement strategy project that increases the visibility of movement organizations.

The tax filing does not reveal the foundations largest donors.

Transparency and accountability is so important to us, but so is trust, said Gay, the BLM foundation chair. Presenting (donor) names after the fact, at this point, would likely be a betrayal of that trust.

____

Aaron Morrison writes about race and justice for the APs Race and Ethnicity team. Follow him on Twitter.

Link:

Black Lives Matter foundation has $42 million in assets - knkx.org

A Meta executive told employees on Thursday that they are prohibited from talking about abortion on Workplace, an internal version of Facebook, citing an increased risk that the company is seen as a hostile work environment.

The policy, which Meta put in place in 2019 but hasnt been reported until now, prohibits employees from discussing opinions or debates about abortion being right or wrong, availability or rights of abortion, and political, religious, and humanitarian views on the topic, according to a section of the companys internal Respectful Communication Policy seen by The Verge. Some employees have called on management to do away with the policy in the aftermath of a leaked Supreme Court draft opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade, arguing that the ban is at odds with employees being allowed to talk respectfully about issues like Black Lives Matter, immigration, and trans rights.

During an all-hands meeting with employees Thursday, Metas VP of HR, Janelle Gale, said that abortion was the most divisive and reported topic by employees on Workplace. She said that even if people are respectful, and theyre attempting to be respectful about their view on abortion, it can still leave people feeling like theyre being targeted based on their gender or religion, according to a recording of her comments obtained by The Verge. Its the one unique topic that kind of trips that line on a protected class pretty much in every instance.

A spokesperson for Meta didnt have a comment for this story by press time.

Most large companies have yet to clearly state their stance on abortion bans, though several have signaled their opposition. Amazon and Tesla have said they would cover some expenses for pregnant employees who need to travel for an abortion, and Salesforce told employees in September that it would assist with moving expenses if they wanted to leave Texas due to its abortion ban. Lyft and Uber have promised to cover legal bills for drivers who are sued under state laws for driving a person seeking an abortion. One of the strongest stances taken has been by Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman, who argued in an op-ed that companies need to take a stand on reproductive rights.

After Politico published the leaked Supreme Court draft opinion seeking to overturn abortion rights at a federal level, Metas number-two executive, Sheryl Sandberg, called abortion one of our most fundamental rights on her public Facebook page. Every woman, no matter where she lives, must be free to choose whether and when she becomes a mother, she wrote. Few things are more important to womens health and equality.

But Meta proceeded to push back on discussion of abortion internally soon thereafter. The day after Sandbergs public comments, one of Metas most senior executives, Naomi Gleit, wrote in an internal post seen by The Verge explaining why the company had placed restrictions around discussion of abortion. At work, there are many sensitivities around this topic, which makes it difficult to discuss on Workplace, Gleit wrote. She said that employees were only allowed to discuss abortion at work with a trusted colleague in a private setting (e.g. live, chat, etc.) and in a listening session with a small group of up to 5 like-minded people to show solidarity. She encouraged employees to use Metas social apps to share their views in their personal capacity, and that the company will continue to offer our employees access to reproductive healthcare in the U.S. regardless of where they live.

The policy banning discussion of abortion has caused division among employees in recent weeks, with some supporting it and others sharing their frustration about having posts on the topic removed, according to screenshots of Workplace posts and comments seen by The Verge. During the all-hands meeting led by Sandberg, Gale, and other execs Thursday, several comments about the policy were posted by employees underneath the livestream and removed as the meeting progressed.

In an internal post earlier this month titled Support & Silence, a female employee who has been at the company for 10 years wrote that the policy had led her to feel a strong sense of silence and isolation on Workplace. She wrote that an earlier version of her post had been taken down and that the new version had much of the content removed.

The same policy explicitly allows us to discuss similarly sensitive issues and movements including immigration, trans rights, climate change, Black Lives Matter, gun rights / gun control, and vaccination, she wrote. The argument about why our policy treats one issue quite differently than other sensitive issues feels flimsy and unconvincing to me. The entire process of dealing with the Respectful Communication policy, being told why my post is violating, and crafting this new post has felt dehumanizing and dystopian.

Read more here:

Meta tells employees to stop discussing abortion at work - The Verge

Ethics

By Debra Cassens Weiss

April 25, 2022, 8:42 am CDT

Image from Shutterstock.

A Colorado lawyer has received a three-year suspension from law practice following his guilty plea for allegedly shooting the driver of a truck during a Black Lives Matter protest in June 2020.

The Colorado presiding disciplinary judge approved the stipulated suspension of James Edward Marshall IV of Alamosa, Colorado, in an April 4 order noted by the Legal Profession Blog.

He had been sentenced to 11 years in prison in December 2021 for shooting the driver in the back of the head, report the Alamosa News and the Canon City Daily Record.

The driver, Danny Pruitt of Canon City, Colorado, survived but suffered a traumatic brain injury, according to the local coverage.

Marshall has said he fired his gun because he thought that his wife was in danger of being hit or run over by Pruitt. In reality, Marshalls wife was behind the truck and not in danger, prosecutors said.

Marshall was initially charged with crimes that included second-degree attempted homicide and first-degree assault. He pleaded guilty to tampering with a deceased human body. Marshalls lawyer told 9News that there was no factual basis for the tampering charge, but prosecutors wanted Marshall to plead guilty to a class three felony, and Marshall didnt want to plead guilty to a crime of violence.

At his sentencing hearing, Marshall apologized to the victim, the court and the community for his actions during the protest of George Floyds death, according to coverage by the Canon City Daily Record.

I recognize the incredible irony of protesting unlawful violence against a man and engaging in unlawful violence against a man, he said.

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Lawyer gets 3-year suspension after alleged shooting of driver at BLM protest - ABA Journal

Prompted by George Floyds murder on May 25, 2020, major retail companies touted their commitment to racial justice. Some publicly supported the Black Lives Matter movement. The Vermont-based ice cream manufacturer Ben & Jerrys went further and issued a list of actions aimed at dismantl[ing] white supremacy in all its forms.

Popular clothing company Ralph Lauren launched its own initiatives in 2020 and most recently in March 2022 when it announced a partnership with two historically Black colleges to design a commemorative clothing line. The Polo Ralph Lauren Exclusively for Morehouse and Spelman Colleges Collection is the brainchild of two company staffers, Morehouse alum James Jeter and Spelman alum Dara Douglas.

In the words of company founder Ralph Lauren, the partnership with Morehouse and Spelman offers a more complete and authentic portrait of American style and of the American dream.

For a company that prides itself on what it calls a distinctive American perspective, Ralph Laurens image is still limited in this new collection to the most respectable and easily monetized Black people that animate the Black American story.

In my forthcoming book, Branding Black Womanhood: Media Citizenship from Black Power to Black Girl Magic, I explore the history of this practice of wooing Black consumers through commercial campaigns that use social movement rhetoric.

Then, as now, my research has shown how Americas household brands have appropriated affirming images and slogans and transformed them into advertisements designed to attract middle-class Black shoppers.

Companies that packaged such products believed that they could secure a new, loyal Black customer base simply by representing them glamorously.

As the costs of Ralph Laurens new line of clothing reveals, wearing the latest fashion trend comes at a premium to often overlooked communities.

Prices for the Morehouse collection start at $69.50 for a maroon ball cap and soar to $2,498.00 for a wool coat. The least expensive item in the Spelman collection is a $98 silk scarf, with a $998 wool coat in the colleges signature sky blue landing at the high end.

A purported $1 trillion in Black buying power a number contested by some scholars is likely part of what draws Ralph Lauren to this project on Black history.

Yet, a racial wealth gap where the average Black family claims just under $13% of the wealth that the average white family holds, reported as $188,200 in 2019, suggests that the value of such celebratory campaigns is limited.

Shortly after the George Floyd murder, Ralph Lauren joined the rush of corporations releasing public statements with an open letter on racial equality on June 10, 2020.

The letter described systemic racism as an American problem and a fashion problem and summarized the companys strategy for addressing its own failures.

In addition to expanding already established initiatives, such as dialogue groups, internal diversity training, and support for the United Negro College Fund, Ralph Lauren also promised to interview at least one Black or African American candidate for vacant senior leadership positions.

Since then, Ralph Lauren has unveiled its Morehouse and Spelman collection and explained that it has an even broader list of commitments. Among them is a $2 million pledge to the United Negro College Fund and dedicated internship offers for HBCU students.

In addition, Ralph Lauren produced a documentary film, A Portrait of the American Dream, commemorating each institutions legacy and the Ivy-esque style that students made their own from the 1920s through the 1950s.

The documentary is transparent about the brands intention to correct its limited framing of American style by writing untold chapters into the story of classic collegiate fashion.

Ralph Laurens belated recognition trails a long history in which Black communities have imbued American culture with a distinct aesthetic, especially in the realm of clothing.

In fact, the move by Ralph Lauren to spotlight Black style before 1960 overlooks a more recent and direct connection between Ralph Lauren and members of the hip-hop generation.

A group of young African American and Latino New Yorkers glorified the brand in the 1980s, attaching it to what was then an emergent, urban subculture. The group called themselves the Lo Lifes, a riff off the Polo name and a sarcastic admission that despite their affinity for the clothing, they were excluded from the brands white, upper crust, target customer.

Although Ralph Lauren initially resisted this less affluent fan base, the mostly one-sided love affair between hip-hop and Polo persists.

The idea of Black excellence is nothing new. Nor is commercializing Black pride.

Even retailers such as Walmart are trying to cash in on Juneteenth, the holiday commemorating June 19, 1865, when Union soldiers reached Galveston, Texas, and compelled slaveholders to free the enslaved.

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But questions remain on whether a new line of clothing can lead to a greater understanding of the spirit of Black excellence that fueled the Black students at Morehouse and Spelman during the Civil Rights era.

One thing is clear: Ralph Lauren has at least increased the visibility of Black life and culture during this era of racial reckoning.

Continue reading here:

In age of racial reckoning, Ralph Lauren partners with Morehouse and Spelman grads on vintage Black fashion styles - The Conversation

This story is jointly published by nonprofits Amplify Utah and The Salt Lake Tribune, in collaboration with Salt Lake Community College, to elevate diverse perspectives in local media through student journalism.

It was a small sticker, a black-and-white image of an American flag with a single stripe, colored blue.

One Tuesday evening in February, it was on display in the top right corner of the window for Salt Lake Community Colleges South City security office. By Wednesday morning, the sticker was gone.

The flag image, usually called the Thin Blue Line flag, is seen by some as a symbol of solidarity with law enforcement and by others, particularly African Americans, a divisive icon.

The image rose to cultural prominence in response to protests against police brutality in 2014 reinforcing an uncomfortable view of law enforcement held by many in the Black community because of Americas history of police violence against people of color, said Glory Johnson-Stanton, SLCCs manager of multicultural initiatives.

The symbol became even more associated with a racial divide when it was adopted by far-right groups, and waved at white-supremacist events, like the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va.

I dont think [a Black student] would feel comfortable going into that office or being around any of the officers here, Johnson-Stanton said.

Shane Crabtree, SLCCs executive director of public safety, said he did not know about the stickers presence. He added that he feels the flag symbols original intent was to honor law enforcement, but acknowledged that not everyone agrees.

Some people can view it as a symbol that represents law enforcement vs. them, Crabtree said, adding that he would not authorize the symbol in any of SLCCs safety offices.

In 2014, Andrew Jacob, a white college student at the University of Michigan, had the idea of putting a blue line on an American flag symbol as a show of support of law enforcement as protests against police brutality swept the country. (The phrase thin blue line describing police as the only force separating law-abiding citizens from criminals goes back to the early 1900s.)

Jacob now is president of Thin Blue Line USA, an online retailer that sells merchandise emblazoned with the black-and-white flag with the blue stripe: Christmas ornaments, face masks, t-shirts and, yes, stickers.

Jacobs company insists the symbol is apolitical. When the U.S. Capitol insurrectionists brandished the symbol on Jan. 6, 2021, the company swiftly issued a statement denouncing the attack.

The Thin Blue Line Flag stands for the sacrifice law enforcement officers of this nation make each day, the post read. We reject in the strongest possible terms any association of the flag with racism, hatred, bigotry, and violence. To use it in such a way tarnishes everything it and our nation stands for.

Kent Oggart, the South City campuss safety supervisor (who is not a member of law enforcement), said the symbol represents unity but people can view any symbol however they want to.

Johnson-Stanton argued that it is difficult to believe officers at SLCC are not aware of how many people African Americans, in particular have a different view of what the flag represents.

Whoever put it up, I believe that they had to know what it meant, she said.

Johnson-Stanton said the symbol was a direct reaction to the Black Lives Matter movement and a response to how that movement was misrepresented.

The more we talked about our lives mattering, the more it made other people angry, she said. She added that Black Lives Matter is not about police officers and other people not mattering, but an attempt to shine a light on the violence Black men and women were suffering at the hands of law enforcement.

Rae Duckworth, the interim director of Black Lives Matters Utah chapter, was more blunt: Thats an ugly, terrible, divisive symbol that was only created to overshadow the Black Lives Matter movement.

In Duckworths view, exhibiting the flag symbol at an institution that fosters diversity in education feels like a betrayal.

The fact that was being showcased is scary, she said. I feel fear for those students.

SLCC did not have any official awareness of the Thin Blue Line flag sticker being displayed on the South City campus, said Kathie Campbell, the schools interim dean of students and assistant vice principal. While displaying it falls under officers First Amendment rights, she said the sticker would probably not have been up if [school officials] had known it was up.

Campbell said she recognizes that SLCC is a microcosm of our surrounding community and must contend with the various prejudices found in the culture. In the last year or so, the school has dealt with the discovery of the letters KKK written on a school whiteboard and the racist interruptions of virtual school events.

Sgt. Cameron Roden, public information officer for the Utah Highway Patrol the agency that handles police services at SLCCs South City, Taylorsville and Jordan campuses said the Thin Blue Line flag is not prohibited within the agency, but its not a symbol thats particularly endorsed.

(The flag sticker appeared near the UHPs beehive logo on the window at the South City safety office.)

At SLCC, troopers have met with student groups, Roden said, to open up avenues of conversation [and] make inroads so that everybody feels like they can come to law enforcement there at the college.

Peter Moosman, coordinator at SLCCs Gender and Sexuality Student Resource Center, confirmed the schools safety office has made efforts recently to mend its relationship with communities that have a historical mistrust or a negative history with law enforcement. He said the presence of that symbol would make students already uncomfortable reaching out to campus law enforcement would be even less inclined to do so.

Deidre Tyler, a sociology professor at SLCC, said ones interpretation of the Thin Blue Flag depends on who you are and your experiences.

Tyler, who is Black, worked alongside law enforcement in the 1980s as a social worker in Mississippi, and found the experience largely positive. But times and attitudes change, and Tyler said she would find it hard to put herself in the mindset of a college student today.

What one thing means to [a 62-year-old] can mean something totally different to a 19-year-old, she said. Were so different in how we perceive things.

And those differences informed by age, experience or identity contribute to a culture that is increasingly divided, she said.

Will it change? Tyler asked. Your guess is as good as mine.

Will Stamp wrote this story as a journalism student at Salt Lake Community College. It is published as part of a new collaborative including nonprofits Amplify Utah and The Salt Lake Tribune.

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A controversial symbol shows up at SLCC's safety office, and then disappears - Salt Lake Tribune