Dear John,

Yesterday was the second anniversary of the murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis.

It was also the day after our nation’s latest mass shooting, in which 19 students and two teachers died during a 40 minute rampage by a gunman while police stood outside the building, working mostly to prevent parents from attempting to rescue their children.

We’re working hard to end the era of lethal violence, whether by police or by murderers empowered by idiotic laws and policies making guns more widely available than baby formula. Can you join us today to hold the bipartisan establishment accountable for its continuing failures?

On the anniversary of George Floyd’s death, President Biden issued an executive order addressing policing. While largely symbolic, one useful thing it did was finally create a national database of police misconduct. We’ve called for that since 2018, and are pleased to see the White House finally step up, even if the move is years late and too many lives short.

Other reforms that we brought forward include ending Qualified Immunity so that police can be held responsible in court for their abuses of civil rights, abolishing civil asset forfeiture, legalizing cannabis at the federal level, and ending cash bail across the United States.

Each of these measures remains vital, and important parts of a vision that amounts to more than the sum of its parts. Ultimately, our country needs to invest in alternatives to predatory policing, particularly social workers better poised to promote public safety and support people and communities in crisis.

Can you join us today to help continue the advocacy for long overdue justice that Washington continues to ignore?

The mass shooting in Uvalde, TX reveals many reasons why the era of predatory policing must finally end.

First among them is the simple fact that police are incapable of protecting public safety, as demonstrated by any number of examples and a consistent historical pattern. That might reflect their primary mission, which has always been to protect property—not people.

Local police in Uvalde did nothing to stop the shooting. They stood outside for 40 minutes while a gunman murdered children inside their classroom. Police may have actively gotten one of the students killed by inviting them to call out for help before subduing the assailant, which one child reportedly did—only to be shot.

That police department receives 40% of its town’s budget. But the waste of resources is just the tip of an iceberg.

Can you contribute to our campaign to improve public safety by shifting resources from an industrial slavery complex to solutions better poised to meet the needs of our communities?

Ultimately, it was a Border Patrol SWAT team that killed the gunman in Uvalde. That, too, indicates problems.

In a border town populated predominantly by Latino residents, the role played by a DHS immigration enforcement agency in stopping an attack on a school meant that many parents were afraid to go to the school to rescue their children.

When families face a faustian choice between armed vigilantes and hostile government agencies with long track records of human rights violations, what does that suggest?

Fascism entails many components. Paramilitarized state authorities are one component. Impunity for lethal state violence is another. Vulnerability to acts of vigilante violence are a third.

Our country unfortunately reflects many other components of fascism: xenophobia, international belligerence, runaway military spending, mass incarceration and industrialized slavery, and an increasing fusion of state power and private corporate capital.

Can you join us today to stop fascism in the United States? Many came to recognize it only recently, but I’ve seen this coming for 20 years and done everything conceivably possible to stop it.

After two years grappling with the Covid pandemic, many Americans long for a return to some normal. It’s an understandable wish—but it’s also increasingly impossible as our social fabric continues to fray at the seams.

What passed for “normal” before masked deep seated inequities, and a roiling cauldron of cultural conflict irresponsibly stoked by many aspirants to power.

With so many crises and a seemingly endless onslaught of incidents indicating social collapse, it can be easy to grow overwhelmed. But this is no time to hide.

How we each take action in the present will determine the course of the future. Thank you for standing with us to defend it from the failures of the past!

PS -- Want to help, but can't contribute financially? Your time can make a big difference from wherever you live! Sign up here to volunteer with our campaign to end the era of bipartisan corruption in Washington.