And the U.S. President is against the bill, sharing his feelings on Twitter: While the slogan sounds simple, “Defunding the police” isn’t as much about stripping police forces of resources needed to do their jobs and address crime but rather instituting reform and giving communities the support they need in areas that don’t require police involvement. As we reflect on five years of BLM, we would do well to consider the myriad ways that #blacklivesmatter has influenced our contemporary moment and given us a framework for imagining what democracy in action really looks like. SEATTLE – The ACLU of Washington has joined with the law firm of Perkins Coie and the Korematsu Center of the Seattle University School of Law to file an emergency lawsuit on behalf of Black Lives Matter Seattle-King County and individual plaintiffs to stop the use of chemical agents and projectiles for crowd control by the City of Seattle and the Seattle Police Department (SPD). ACLU v. Federal Bureau of Prisons August 25, 2020 D.C. Police Officers Coordinated with Federal Law Enforcement to... July 8, 2020 Black Lives Matter D.C. v. Trump – Challenging Federal Officers’... June 4, 2020 United States v. Reed - Challenging the Shifting of Certain... April 28, 2020

Historically and currently, Black people have been forced to navigate a world that is structured to dehumanize and criminalize them. What defunding the police does not call for is the total abolition of police, as summed up by Dr.Eugene Gu’s response to Trump’s tweet. For the black community, law enforcement has long been experienced as “harass and brutalize” rather than “protect and serve.” Human and civil rights advocacy groups have called for state and local governments to divest from police budgets and redirect that money to social services. Nothing could be further from the truth. Reinvestment would result in less crime, according to the ACLU. PROVIDENCE, R.I. — At a time when the Black Lives Matter movement has prompted demands for more police accountability in Rhode Island and across the country, the state Attorney General’s office has issued an Access to Public Records Act (APRA) opinion which makes it more difficult for the public to monitor allegations of misconduct by police officers in the state. For scale, the NYPD 2021 budget was set at $6 billion New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has said that NYPD resources will now be shifted into social services, specifics on how much will be reallocated will come ahead of the July 1 budget deadline.

“In California [George Floyd’s death] seems to have had a galvanizing impact on the people here and on the legislature,” Lizzie Buchen, ACLU criminal justice director, told Forbes. A “balancing test” to be used for considering the release of personally identifiable records – a test added to APRA in 2012 to make some of those records. Reports of final investigations of police misconduct do not. To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. “Time and time again, U.S. Attorney General Barr has proven that he is more committed to protecting Trump than protecting the rule of law,” Warner wrote. You may opt-out by, Impact 50: Investors Seeking Profit — And Pushing For Change, unions make it difficult to fire police officers, black people accounted for 24% of those killed by police, methods of “mass surveillance, racial profiling, and suppression of protest and dissent, higher the use of lethal force and fatalities. Advocates from Black immigrant communities say that should include theirs as well. Demands to defund the police have been heard among protesters in the uprising for George Floyd, there was also outcry for police divestment after Michael Brown’s death in Furgeson, Missouri in 2014, this sentiment now has political backing. A related case filed by the ACLU against the Pawtucket Police Department, which has thus far met a similar fate, is pending in Superior Court. Data collected on police killings reveal a clear and disturbing reality that for black people, police run-ins can result in life-altering altercations and death. Black Lives Matter, the organization, is a global decentralized network with over 30 chapters across the world. “The First Amendment right to protest is under attack, and we will not let this go unanswered.

Dallas, Philadelphia, and Nashville are looking into similar steps to gradually reduce their police budgets. Human rights advocates say this starts with defunding the police. It’s not that they shouldn’t have computers or we need to cut their salaries, it’s that they shouldn’t be employed,” Buchen said. BLM and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) are also calling for funds typically spent on more manpower to be reinvested in the black and brown communities, which the ACLU says are under higher scrutiny by police.

Freedom fighters around the globe commemorate July 13 as the day that three Black women helped give birth to a movement. In the five short years since #Black LivesMatter arrived on the scene — thanks to the creative genius of Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometti — the push for Black liberation from state-inflicted violence has evolved into one of the most influential social movements of the post-civil rights era. Ninety percent of Axon’s business comes from police departments with the remaining 8% from military and 2% from civilians. The ACLU is also working to ensure the implementation of new laws around records keeping of police misconduct in California. Students on the ground in Missouri, as part of the #ConcernedStudent1950 movement, helped lead to the resignation of the University of Missouri president over his failure to deal with racism on campus. What we see in demonstrations demanding justice for his murder at the hands of four Minneapolis police officers has reverberated across the commonwealth and across the nation. However, the police department claimed, notwithstanding the Supreme Court decisions cited by the ACLU, that all those reports were confidential. We demand investment in our communities and the resources to ensure Black people not only survive but thrive,” Black Lives Matter, the international anti-racist advocacy group, said in a statement. All throughout the country, BLM organizers are at work in their local communities feverishly fighting for change and relentlessly speaking truth to power. The civil rights groups also pointed out the president’s own history of “hostility towards viewpoints different than his own” to demonstrate the administration’s discriminatory motivation for kicking out the protesters, as well as Trump’s comments to governors that they should “dominate” protesters. “This idea that we should defund the police is divisive and not helpful,” Axon CEO Rick Smith told Forbes. The fact that these accomplishments have happened so quickly is an extraordinary achievement in and of itself.

The language of “abolition” comes directly from the work of grassroots activists, such as those in the Black Lives Matter Global Network. For Black Immigrants, Police and ICE Are Two Sides of the Same Coin. Heretofore policy has enabled the militarization of police. The ACLU of Pennsylvania strongly condemns the ongoing police brutality and violence at these demonstrations and calls for all officers involved in such violence to be held to account. Minneapolis City Council has vowed to “disband” the MPD and reinvest in community-led public safety. “George Floyd’s violent death was a breaking point — an all too familiar reminder that, for Black people, law enforcement doesn’t protect or save our lives. The fact that Democrats are gradually calling for the abolition of ICE is a testimony to the continued impact of BLM as a social movement. BLM will forever be remembered as the movement responsible for popularizing what has now become an indispensable tool in 21st-century organizing efforts: the phenomenon that scholars refer to as “mediated mobilization.” By using the tools of social media, BLM was the first U.S. social movement in history to successfully use the internet as a mass mobilization device. Black Lives Matter, the ACLU, and other civil rights groups are suing members of the Trump administration for clearing peaceful protesters in Washington DC with tear gas and rubber bullets. We also reiterate our whole-hearted support for Black Lives Matter and the goals towards which Black Lives Matter works: dignity, safety, liberty, and liberation for Black and brown lives.

Police unions make it difficult to fire police officers who abuse the rights of citizens. All for a photo for Donald Trump.”, — Trump Whines About His COVID-19 Victimhood as Campaign Flails— In Photos: Protests and Rage in Minneapolis, New York, Los Angeles, and More— James Clyburn on the Floyd Killing and the Role of Race in the Coming Election— Journalists Become Targets While Covering America’s Unraveling— Documents Expose FDA Commissioner’s Personal Interventions on Behalf of Trump’s Favorite Chloroquine Doctor— Why Trump’s New Campaign Slogan, “Transition to Greatness,” Sends a Disastrous Message— From the Archive: Inside Unspeakable Police Brutality in a Brooklyn Precinct Once Nicknamed Fort Tombstone. But the protesters of George Floyd’s murder are taking to the streets for a very different reason. President Trump evoked the 1967 saying coined by a racist cop that “when the looting starts the shooting starts” which some see as glorifying violence. What gets referred to as “the Black Lives Matter movement” is, in actuality, the collective labor of a wide range of Black liberation organizations, each which their own distinct histories.

In this current climate of distrust and strife, it is especially important that law enforcement agencies remain transparent and accountable.

This is the first of many lawsuits the ACLU intends to file across the country in response to police brutality against protesters.”, Despite the widespread condemnation of the Trump administration’s actions in forcibly clearing the Lafayette Square protesters for a photo op, the administration has doubled down, defending its actions and attempting to craft a less-reprehensible narrative. The BLM movement’s unrelenting work on the issue of police corruption, helped incite the release of four unprecedented U.S. Department of Justice reports that confirm the widespread presence of police corruption in Baltimore, Chicago, Ferguson, and Cleveland.

“The police presence in our country is far too large and it is absolutely unnecessary if your goal is safety and it is contrary to that of justice,” Buchen said. Although black people are about one-and-a-half times more likely to be unarmed than white people, they are three times as likely to be killed by police. We literally would not even be using the word “abolition” — let alone embracing it as a framework — had it not been for the labor of BLM activists. The freshest-and most essential-updates from Washington, Wall Street, and Silicon Valley. The ACLU Foundation of Southern California filed an emergency lawsuit on behalf of Black Lives Matter - Los Angeles (BLM-LA) and individual journalists, protesters, and other individuals — the suit challenges the draconian curfews imposed throughout Southern California to crack down on widespread protests against systemic police violence towards Black people. Axon is in a unique position of having supplied one of the cameras that captured George Floyd’s murder. SEATTLE – The ACLU of Washington has joined with the law firm of Perkins Coie and the Korematsu Center of the Seattle University School of Law to file an emergency lawsuit on behalf of Black Lives Matter Seattle-King County and individual plaintiffs to stop the use of chemical agents and projectiles for crowd control by the City of Seattle and the Seattle Police Department (SPD). A person requesting police misconduct records can be required to explain the public interest warranting disclosure of these records, notwithstanding APRA’s requirement that the burden of proof in on public bodies to demonstrate that a record should be withheld from public view.