Notes of solidarity and encouragement have been pouring in from Public Citizen supporters all across America in reaction to the messages I sent yesterday and earlier in the week.
Thank you.
By request, both messages — the initial one from late Monday night followed by yesterday’s update — are copied below for anyone who might have missed them.
In unity,
- Robert
*** MY INITIAL MESSSAGE FROM MONDAY NIGHT ***
At this moment when it feels like the country is plummeting into a kind of deranged chaos, there are so many things that need to be said, so many feelings that need to be expressed to make sense of what’s happening and to think sensibly about what we can do about it.
Here are a few thoughts about events that are still unfolding.
HIS NAME WAS GEORGE FLOYD
All decent people are right to be sickened by the horrific, televised police murder of George Floyd — even as those of us who are white Americans must recognize the special pain it causes to black and brown people, who know first-hand that police abuse and violence remain commonplace in their communities.
We all should be sickened by the killing of George Floyd, but no one should profess surprise.
That’s because there’s nothing unusual about his murder.
Police violence kills roughly 1,100 Americans every year, with African Americans killed at a rate almost twice their share of the population. The numbers are disturbingly consistent from year to year.
The numbers are disturbingly consistent, but they are not a fact of nature.
They can change with policy. Today, we joined 400 organizations in signing a letter led by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights that outlined key federal steps to scale back police violence and abuse. Establish a federal standard that force be used only when necessary. Prohibit maneuvers that impede the flow of blood and oxygen to the brain. Stop transferring military equipment to police.
Communities that have adopted community review boards for policing, adopted community policing approaches and generally made clear that they won’t tolerate police violence have seen major reductions in police misconduct.
THE SICKNESS IN THE AIR
Police racism reflects the racism of our society.
The visceral inhumanity of one person taking the life of another rightfully draws our outrage, but the silent violence of racist policy and structural racism kills countless people of color every day.
The coronavirus pandemic reveals that basic truth. We don’t have complete data on the racial makeup of those who have contracted and been killed by COVID-19, but black and brown people have been disproportionately affected.
In fact, it appears that African American people have been killed disproportionately by Covid-19 at a rate that is roughly comparable to their disproportionate share of deaths at the hands of the police.
The Covid-19 disparities reflect inequalities in access to quality health care; the racially uneven burden of chronic disease among the population; and the over representation of people of color among the newly christened category of “essential workers.”
All of this, too, reflects political choices.
The choice not to make health care a right.
The choice to tolerate racial disparities in wealth and income.
The choice to allow predatory companies to target communities of color.
The choice to permit overt and covert, economic, social and cultural racism — and the resultant stress that helps drive health inequities.
There are alternatives to each of these choices: Medicare for All, fair housing policy, a living wage, unionization and protection of worker rights, civil rights law enforcement, and more.
DONALD TRUMP
Our racist president is super-charging our problems.
The president who claims to be upset about murder of George Floyd can barely pause to honor his memory — let alone acknowledge the terrible toll of police violence — before rushing to denounce protesters against racism.
The president who has stood by helplessly as a deadly pandemic sweeps the nation is eager to pound his chest to announce that he is the in-control, “law and order” president.
The president who has asserted that it is up to the states to make up their own plans to confront the worst acute public health crisis of the last 100 years has warned the nation’s governors that if they do not violently suppress protests, he will deploy the military in their states.
If this were just a matter of more maniacal tweets from Trump, we could simply ignore him.
But his calls for violence against protesters, using racist tropes, makes our country far more dangerous.
His denunciation of protesters as “terrorists” not only threatens civil liberties, it encourages violence not just by law enforcement, but by right-wing groupings — violence that will surely be directed primarily at people of color.
And his threat to deploy the military in our cities is a frightening warning of his existential threat to democracy.
All of this really may presage a slide to fascism — if we let it.
Against the backdrop of the daily death toll of the pandemic and the worst unemployment since the Great Depression, Trump stands ready to divide us and spread chaos. He may well believe, with reason, that chaos is his best hope for political survival.
ALL OF US
This is a scary time.
As I write, helicopters are flying overhead to help corner protesters in Washington, D.C.
The image of a white police officer with his knee on the neck of a black man who can’t breathe plays over and over in our heads.
So many of us know people who have lost their lives to the pandemic.
Our economic future seems perilously uncertain.
In this time of strife, what we have is each other.
We stand together, for each other.
This is not a time for Pollyannaish proclamations not to worry and that everything will be OK.
But for all the pain, fear and chaos, it’s not a time for knee-jerk pessimism, either.
Out of the multifaceted crises in which we find ourselves, our country has the opportunity to take great leaps forward.
To address racism honestly and steadfastly.
To promote solidarity instead of division.
To advance economic justice to replace revolting income and wealth inequality.
We’ll have much more about actions to take and policies to support in the coming days, as we always do.
For now, please stay safe.
Amid a pandemic that is isolating us all, know that you are not alone and that our strength lies in our togetherness.
- Robert Weissman, President of Public Citizen
P.S. This message is part of our ongoing outreach to help you stay informed and involved as our nation and the world grapple with the coronavirus emergency. Public Citizen — like many nonprofits and other small businesses — is feeling the financial strain of this crisis. If you can, please consider donating to support the critical work we’re doing together. Anything you chip in today will be matched dollar-for-dollar. Thank you.
*** AND MY FOLLOW-UP FROM FRIDAY ***
The past week has felt like a year — so much has happened and emotions have been so raw.
I wanted to share three observations, following up on my note to you earlier this week.
First, the protests are working.
The police officers responsible for the murder of George Floyd have now all been charged.
The Louisville police chief has been fired, after it turned out that officers who killed David McAtee, a protester who ran a barbeque stand, had turned off their bodycams.
Investigations are underway of the police killings of McAtee and Breonna Taylor, a woman killed in Louisville after police barged into her home at 1:00 a.m. without — according to Taylor’s boyfriend who was with her at the time — announcing themselves.
Cities across the country are quickly instituting policing reforms — including Louisville, which has suspended use of “no-knock” warrants.
In a sign of just how powerful the protests have become, cities are also beginning to move to redirect resources away from police departments to social needs.
This is a dramatic political and cultural shift. And it portends more to come.
Social change always comes from the ground up. We’re seeing that happen, yet again, before our eyes.
Second, Trump’s authoritarianism was dealt a major blow.
There have been few times when the establishment and a meaningful number of Republicans have denounced Trump for crossing democratic red lines.
But bringing out the military to patrol our streets has become one such occasion.
Trump’s maneuver to clear peaceful protesters from Lafayette Park, across the street from the White House — so that he could stage his cynical photo-op in front of a historic church — backfired dramatically.
Former Secretary of Defense James Mattis forcefully denounced Trump, as have other former Pentagon leaders.
Even the current Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper, has tried to distance himself from Trump.
It’s impossible to exaggerate the importance of these developments, because Trump’s authoritarian instincts are not subject to self-restraint.
There’s every reason to think he believes it is a good idea to have U.S. soldiers patrolling our cities.
Third, we must remain vigilant against Trump’s proto-fascist tendencies.
With the deadly toll of the coronavirus pandemic, soaring unemployment and now mass protests, the Trump team knows it is in political trouble.
The polls confirm their worry.
Trump officials are now making clear that they — and Trump himself — see only one path to political success: run as a “law-and-order” candidate.
Trump, of course, is almost certainly the most lawless president the country has ever known, evidenced by everything from his solicitation of political favors from Ukraine, to his ownership of the Trump Hotel in property leased from the U.S. government, to his failure to enforce environmental, civil rights and consumer protection laws.
“Law-and-order” has nothing to do with the law or democratic order.
It is shorthand for Trump’s blend of racism, proto-fascism and militarism.
The rhetoric alone is toxic enough, encouraging racist violence and dividing the nation.
But a desperate Trump will not, on his own, stop with just words.
He’ll look for excuses to deploy the military.
He’ll seek to clamp down on the press and protesters.
He’ll work to undermine fair elections and the guarantee that everyone has the right to vote and that every vote will be counted.
We know Trump is capable of all these things, because he has already done each of them.
But fearful of political defeat, he’s going to unleash words and policies that reflect his most dangerous and loathsome instincts.
Together, we can stop him.
We know we can stop Trump, because for all the damage this administration has inflicted — up to and including its deadly bungling of the pandemic response — we have prevented Trump from doing even worse.
Monday night, I wrote that it felt like the country was plunging into a kind of deranged chaos. In many ways, it still feels that way.
At the same time, the burgeoning protests are offering a much more hopeful future.
Above all, they remind us of our power when we join together.
And I know that, together, we will face the immense challenges ahead.
Stay safe.
- Robert Weissman, President of Public Citizen
P.S. This message is part of our ongoing outreach to help you stay informed and involved as our nation and the world grapple with the coronavirus emergency. Public Citizen — like many nonprofits and other small businesses — is feeling the financial strain of this crisis. If you can, please consider donating to support the critical work we’re doing together. Anything you chip in today will be matched dollar-for-dollar. Thank you.
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