Month: May 2020

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Coronavirus Featured Racial profiling

Another Virus Is Spreading

Covid-19 has killed hundreds of thousands.

Racism has killed millions.

Only one of them is presently curable, but it looks like we’re spending more time and money on the one that isn’t, although it’s only been around for a few months. We are now in the middle of both a pandemic and an epidemic, and there’s no national leadership to get us through either one of them.

The death of George Floyd is far more than a reminder of how deeply racism infects the United States. It’s an indictment of how some police officers act when allowed and enabled to abuse their power, and how many citizens express their frustrations and anger. I don’t want to see any violence or rioting, but when the courts, the police, the power structure, the economy and now the virus demonstrate how prejudiced they are against African-Americans, it’s no wonder that many see violence as the only way to get the attention of those who have been willfully and culturally ignorant of their discrimination.

The key will be what happens when the violence ends. Right now it’s easy to focus on the immediate events and the terrible images we see hour by hour, but that will eventually stop. That’s when the real work begins, and if history is any guide, we are in for a long struggle. The president has spoken to the Floyd family, but at the same time he’s sent threatening Twitter messages that hearken back to the bad old days of white resistance to civil rights laws. His past messages and actions have done very little to send a message that he can lead on this issue.

And Joe Biden will need to be more forceful, more specific, and more responsible with his responses and proposed solutions. His record on racial issues is far better than Trump’s, but Biden has to provide workable policies that move beyond community outreach or complaint review boards, which have shown to be effective when they are given the power they need, but otherwise are forgotten after the tempers cool.

But of course the best solution is for all people who oppose the president’s policies to register and vote this November. The first step is to march and let people know that these actions are unacceptable. The second step is to vote. There is no excuse not to.



For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

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Featured Racial profiling

Obama’s Statement on George Floyd’s Killing – “This shouldn’t be normal in 2020 America”

Barack Obama, the former President of the United States, shared his feelings on the recent killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police earlier this week. In his statement, the former president states:

From Barack Obama:

I want to share parts of the conversation I’ve had with friends over the past couple days about the footage of George Floyd dying face down on the street under the knee of a police officer in Minnesota.

The first is an email from a middle-aged African American businessman.

“Dude I gotta tell you the George Floyd incident in Minnesota hurt. I cried when I saw that video. It broke me down. The ‘knee on the neck’ is a metaphor for how the system so cavalierly holds black folks down, ignoring the cries for help. People don’t care. Truly tragic.”

Another friend of mine used the powerful song that went viral from 12-year-old Keedron Bryant to describe the frustrations he was feeling.

The circumstances of my friend and Keedron may be different, but their anguish is the same. It’s shared by me and millions of others.

It’s natural to wish for life “to just get back to normal” as a pandemic and economic crisis upend everything around us. But we have to remember that for millions of Americans, being treated differently on account of race is tragically, painfully, maddeningly “normal” – whether it’s while dealing with the health care system, or interacting with the criminal justice system, or jogging down the street, or just watching birds in a park.

This shouldn’t be “normal” in 2020 America. It can’t be “normal.” If we want our children to grow up in a nation that lives up to its highest ideals, we can and must be better.

It will fall mainly on the officials of Minnesota to ensure that the circumstances surrounding George Floyd’s death are investigated thoroughly and that justice is ultimately done. But if falls on all of us, regardless of our race or station – including the majority of men and women in law enforcement who take pride in doing their tough job the right way, every day – to work together to create a “new normal” in which the legacy of bigotry and unequal treatment no longer infects our institutions or our hearts.

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Racial profiling

“Before You Call The Cops…” A black man’s Request – Video

I’m not sure if there was ever a time when the cops were called to serve and protect. Those days probably exist for a select few, but for black Americans, calling the cops was often not the go-to solution because you never really knew how that call was going to end. 

Cops being called to a scene involving a black person is almost sure to result in a negative outcome… for the black person. They say it’s not racism, but for minorities in this country, tomorrow is never promised when the cops are called.

When police in Minneapolis was called to investigate an incident, George Floyd, a black man, was removed from his vehicle, handcuffed, and thrown to the ground while a police officer knelt on his neck. Mr. Floyd cried out for breath multiple times before his death with the cop’s knee still on his neck. The police tried to justify the killing by saying Mr. Floyd resisted arrest, even though multiple videos taken at the scene showed no resistance from the man. 

The “Before you call” video below shows a black man, Tyler Merritt, explaining that he is not a monster, that he is just a regular man who should not have to die if those responsible for serving and protecting him is called.

Video

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Racial profiling

Another Black Man Says “I Can’t Breathe” as He is Killed by Minneapolis Police – Video

Another black man cries for air. All he wanted was another breath. But this basic necessity of life was denied, his cries fell on deft ears as a Minneapolis police officer kept his knee on the black man’s neck until his body succumbed to its untimely end.

Rest In Peace to George Floyd. You were taken down, pinned to the ground, and suffocated. The average human would not do this to an animal. But it was done to you. For what it’s worth, the world will remember your name.

Four police officers were fired after this incident, but with their trusted police union – an organization yet to find any fault with their members senselessly murdering black people –  you can almost guarantee that they will get their jobs back.

Categories
Coronavirus Featured

The Pandemic Schools the US

Reform blackboard - education reform or other. Hand writing REFORM with chalk on black chalkboard.

If only the education system would stand up to it.

Unfortunately, what we have at the national level is a know-very-little president and an Education Secretary who cares not a whit about anything to do with public education, and who made sure that public money is being funneled to private a religious institutions to the detriment of neighborhood schools. I certainly understand that parents should have a choice if they don’t want to send their child to a public school, but it’s their…choice, and public schools should always be the first recipient of public money. Which makes the public school system the next institution that will need significant reform. 

As this article says, the very manner in which we fund and organize public schools needs to change. It’s been true for a great number of years; the pandemic has simply exposed it. We have too many public school districts in this country, and they all compete for scarce dollars. Worse, though, is the inherent inequality that sits in side-by-side communities. There is no reason for this to occur. True, the neighborhood school has been part of American life for more than two centuries, but times have changed and education is a key to future opportunities. To deny anyone a quality education based on artificial lines only serves to exclude children from taking full advantage of what this country has to offer.

What we need to change is the way we distribute funds. In New Jersey, there are over 550 school districts and each one relies on local tax money for its funding. Districts that include wealthy towns can buy more services. Those that don’t have the same resources get less. Many districts get very little. Because of lawsuits aimed at increasing educational equity, many districts receive a great deal of state aid, while others, usually the wealthier ones, have to rely on ever-increasing property taxes for funding. Resentment runs deep when any politician hints at ending this home rule. But to keep it means continued inequities and fewer educational opportunities.

Changing borders and district lines makes sense because more students will have access to educational resources. Shared services and shared communities might help break down social barriers. There will be some pain, too. Teachers will lose their jobs and some towns might lose schools. It won’t be free.

Right now, though, we are living through a time when many children do not have computers or reliable internet connections. Many are missing meals. Many are not showing up to school because local or state governments can’t afford to provide remote services. Parents without reliable, or any, health insurance must continue to physically go to work, facing a choice between their money or their lives. This must stop. This country can afford to provide for its children. We need the political will to do that.


For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

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Featured

IRS Want Some People to Mail Back their Stimulus Checks

So… if you were one of the unfortunate Americans who lost a loved one during these trying times, and if the IRS sent a stimulus check to that deceased family member, the IRS is asking you to send them that money back.

In fact, the IRS says any checks issued to dead people should be sent back or repaid. Here’s exactly what the agency says:

A Payment made to someone who died before receipt of the Payment should be returned to the IRS by following the instructions in the Q&A about repayments. Return the entire Payment unless the Payment was made to joint filers and one spouse had not died before receipt of the Payment, in which case, you only need to return the portion of the Payment made on account of the decedent. This amount will be $1,200 unless adjusted gross income exceeded $150,000.

The new provision stating that payments to the deceased should be returned may come as a surprise. As MONEY has previously reported, tens of thousands of similar aid payments were mistakenly sent to dead people during the Great Recession, likely due to a lag in the reporting of deaths to government agencies. Back then, there was little to no effort on the part of the IRS to get the payments to dead people back. What’s more, in recent weeks many tax and legal experts had been under the impression that 2020 payments sent to dead people would probably not have to be returned.

Now the IRS is saying otherwise. Even so, it remains unclear what will happen if an ineligible payment is not returned to the IRS.

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Donald Trump

‘Morning in America’ – The Trump’s Version of America

Donald Trump is not Ronald Reagan, and should not even be mentioned in the same category as the loved and often praised Ronald Reagan. So when a political campaign ad titled ‘Morning in America’ debuted yesterday, many recalled the 1984 political ad by Reagan’s campaign with the same name.

Reagan’s ad highlighted some of the positive aspects of the economy under Reagan’s leadership. The 2020 version of Morning in America under Trump’s leadership, however, is very different.

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Featured

Silence On Education

For all of the stories I’ve read about online schooling and how difficult it is to entertain and engage children of all ages while being quarantined in one’s home, I still don’t get the sense that we are talking about education, and how profoundly the system must change in the post-pandemic United States.

What this crisis has uncovered is the dire state of education regarding schooling, infrastructure, funding, practice, equity, and opportunity. We’ve always thought of ourselves as a country whose system of public education reflects the democratic values upon which it was founded. Now we can’t even guarantee that all students are reporting for the daily or weekly Zoom call that forms the basis of their learning. And it wasn’t that before we all went online the education system was running smoothly or meeting the needs of all children. It was not. But now we know that we have gaping holes that will need to be fixed.

The crowd that currently holds power in Washington will say that education is the realm of the states, and constitutionally, they are right. Most states were free to create and maintain their school systems. What that’s done, though, is to create 50 separate systems divided into thousands of county and local school systems who are free to set their policies, to determine what they teach and generally how to teach it. Attempts such as the Common Core Curriculum Standards to tie the states together so they are teaching the same skills and holding students accountable to them received push-back from the right because of the loss of state control, and the left because of the focus on testing to determine student and teacher growth. Common Core is doomed to irrelevance.

Add in the problem of funding, and you see why we are where we are. Wealthier states and districts can afford to give every student a computer, and generally, those towns and suburbs are where the vast majority of homes have an internet connection. Those wealthier areas can also afford to pay teachers more and to provide them, and their students, with more resources and programs. Those towns also have a higher percentage of parents whose jobs have not been destroyed because of lockdowns. They also tend to be whiter.

And so, here we are.

What to do? We need a massive, federal investment in the schools. Every child should be given a computer to use and a reliable internet connection that will enable them to explore the world. Every child should have access to resources such as school trips, enrichment activities, speakers, literacy materials, and safe, sustainable buildings. Teachers should be paid a great deal more than they are now so they don’t have to worry about getting two jobs to support themselves.

And everybody–everybody–should have affordable, high-quality health insurance so they don’t have to worry about making a choice between education or food or housing or entertainment and getting medical care.

States cannot do this on their own because they must balance their budgets. Only the federal government can provide the funding and resources to provide what every child, and every family, needs to succeed. This is not going to happen under this administration or, I suspect, under any Republican presidency. We need a change.

Are you registered to vote?



For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

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Featured

After Worst Mass Shooting, Canada Bans Assault Weapons

Nine days after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau vowed to ban assault-style weapons in the wake of the worst mass shooting in modern Canadian history, he made good on that promise, Buzzfeed reports.

“These weapons were designed for one purpose and one purpose only: to kill the largest number of people in the shortest amount of time. There is no use and no place for such weapons in Canada,” Trudeau said on Friday. “Effective immediately, it is no longer permitted to buy, sell, transport, import, or use military-grade assault weapons in this country.”

Trudeau was able to institute the ban of 1,500 makes and models of “military-style” weapons without Parliament’s approval. Under the order, owners of current assault-style weapons will receive a two-year amnesty period. Justice Minister David Lametti said people who still possess the banned guns after April 2022 could face criminal penalties.

Trudeau also announced that his cabinet will work with Parliament to put into place a buyback program to provide current owners of the now-banned weapons with “fair compensation” for their losses. The government estimates that enforcing the ban could involve removing over 100,000 weapons from circulation. The buyback program could potentially cost Canadian taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.

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