20 June 20
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True.
Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News
Founder, Reader Supported News
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19 June 20
Andy Borowitz | Susan Collins Puts Bolton Book in Amazon Cart but Remains Undecided About Placing Order
Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker
Borowitz writes: "Senator Susan Collins has put John Bolton's new book in her Amazon cart but is undecided about placing an order for it, Collins confirmed on Thursday."
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Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker
Borowitz writes: "Senator Susan Collins has put John Bolton's new book in her Amazon cart but is undecided about placing an order for it, Collins confirmed on Thursday."
READ MORE
A memorial for Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky. (photo: Amy Harris/Shutterstock)
Josh Wood, Guardian UK
Excerpt: "Louisville's mayor said Friday that one of three police officers involved in the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor will be fired."
Greg Fisher, mayor, said the interim Louisville police chief, Robert Schroeder, has started termination proceedings for Brett Hankison. Two other officers remain on administrative reassignment while the shooting is investigated.
Fischer said officials could not answer questions about the firing because of state law. He referred all questions to the Jefferson county attorney’s office.
Taylor, who was black, was gunned down by officers who burst into her Louisville home using a no-knock warrant. She was shot eight times by officers conducting a narcotics investigation on 13 March. No drugs were found at her home.
Some of Wall Street's most prominent names have donated thousands of dollars to Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez's opponent in the upcoming Democratic primary in New York. (photo: Getty)
Wall Street CEOs Are Pouring Money Into the Campaign to Defeat AOC in a June Primary
Saloni Sardana, Business Insider
Sardana writes: "Some of Wall Street's most prominent names have donated thousands of dollars to Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez's opponent in the upcoming Democratic primary in New York, data from the FEC shows."
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Saloni Sardana, Business Insider
Sardana writes: "Some of Wall Street's most prominent names have donated thousands of dollars to Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez's opponent in the upcoming Democratic primary in New York, data from the FEC shows."
READ MORE
Supporters of President Donald Trump cheer as he speaks during a campaign rally, Feb. 28, 2020, in North Charleston, SC. (photo: Jacquelyn Martin/AP)
Trump Threatens Protesters With Harsh Policing Ahead of His Controversial Rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma
Elizabeth Thomas, ABC News
Thomas writes: "President Donald Trump on Friday, gearing up for his first campaign rally in months in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Saturday, threatened any protesters who show up outside or try to disrupt the event, saying 'it will be a much different scene' than how they've been dealt with in 'New York, Seattle, or Minneapolis.'"
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Elizabeth Thomas, ABC News
Thomas writes: "President Donald Trump on Friday, gearing up for his first campaign rally in months in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Saturday, threatened any protesters who show up outside or try to disrupt the event, saying 'it will be a much different scene' than how they've been dealt with in 'New York, Seattle, or Minneapolis.'"
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U.S. Army soldiers from the 3rd Infantry Division line up. (photo: Joy Dulen/U.S. Army)
Defund the Pentagon
Luke Savage, Jacobin
Savage writes: "Cutting America's bloated military budget and redirecting the funds to health care, education, and social welfare programs would represent a major step towards building a more humane and less violent country both at home and abroad."
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Luke Savage, Jacobin
Savage writes: "Cutting America's bloated military budget and redirecting the funds to health care, education, and social welfare programs would represent a major step towards building a more humane and less violent country both at home and abroad."
READ MORE
Israeli PM Netanyahu has vowed to annex the valley and all of Israel's far-flung West Bank settlements. (photo: Raven Sawafta/Reuters)
Palestinians Fear Displacement From an Annexed Jordan Valley
Al Jazeera
Excerpt: "Palestinians across the Jordan Valley have voiced concerns over Israel's annexation plan, saying it will further displace them from their lands and restrict access to their farmlands."
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Al Jazeera
Excerpt: "Palestinians across the Jordan Valley have voiced concerns over Israel's annexation plan, saying it will further displace them from their lands and restrict access to their farmlands."
READ MORE
A man addresses a row of police officers during a 'Justice for George Floyd' event in Houston, Texas. (photo: Mark Felix/Getty)
What Does Pollution Have to Do With Police Violence?
Angely Mercado, Grist
Mercado writes: "What does particulate matter pollution have to do with racist police violence? Quite a lot, according to two academics."
Angely Mercado, Grist
Mercado writes: "What does particulate matter pollution have to do with racist police violence? Quite a lot, according to two academics."
In 2016, University of California professors Julie Sze and Lindsey Dillon published a paper in which they put “environmental justice literature in conversation with critiques of anti-Black police violence, as a way of understanding the multiple ways that racism becomes embodied in the U.S. today.” The paper looks closely at the police killings of Eric Garner in 2014 and Mario Woods in 2015 and the role that environmental factors played in the way their deaths were understood (or, in some cases, misunderstood).
“We suggest that the phrase ‘I can’t breathe’ points to the embodied insecurity of Black lives,” Sze and Dillon write. “We explore this embodied insecurity through the everyday act of breathing and, specifically, the conditions through which breath is constricted or denied.”
I spoke to Sze, who is a professor of American studies at the University of California, Davis. (Her coauthor, Lindsey Dillon, is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz.) Sze has studied the intersection of race and the environment for more than 20 years. She’s noticed an uptick in interest in her 2016 paper since the massive wave of protests following the police killing of George Floyd in May, as well as data showing that Black Americans have faced disproportionately severe outcomes from COVID-19.
Our interview has been edited for clarity and condensed for length.
Q. When and how did you start making connections between over-policing and environmental racism?
A. Sze: I’ve been interested in race and health issues [around] vulnerability and premature death for a long time. A lot of the time, people who are killed by the police already have some sort of vulnerability [like obesity, asthma, or hypertension]… and their vulnerability gets weaponized against them. Like Eric Garner — that’s when that connection got really clear for me. Communities of color not being able to breathe — it’s kind of normalized: Black and Latino communities have [much higher rates] of childhood asthma and it is accepted and normalized.
Black Lives Matter and other insurgent social movements are basically saying that this ‘normal’ condition — of death for some people, and not others — is not okay. There’s nothing inherent or genetic about why communities of color are dying at higher rates from COVID or asthma or police brutality. These are social and structural problems.
Q. You mentioned Eric Garner and also highlighted him prominently in the paper. What about his death stood out, and what about his death made that intersection of racism and environmentalism very clear to you in your research?
A. Sze: He said “I can’t breathe” 11 times. Asthma is the inability to breathe — that just puts it out there. Also, the way the coroner’s report individualized [his death] — “oh, well, he had these conditions like obesity or hypertension” or whatever it was — the way that Black people’s bodies get individualized as hyper-dangerous, but also hyper-fragile.
None of [Garner’s] pre-existing conditions would have mattered if the police officer didn’t have a chokehold around his neck. It was like the sanctioning [of police brutality] through the official language of the death report. It’s the same thing with George Floyd: He had COVID…. That just diverts the blame.
Q. In the wake of the deaths of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and others, how do you connect your research on environmental racism to what’s happening in the Black Lives Matter movement today?
A. Sze: [Environmental justice has] been an ongoing fight over polluted space and premature death. Communities of color have always rejected that [and asked:] Why is that naturalized? Why is that accepted?
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