Protesting Isn't Bad for Your Health; Racism Is.

The Need to Persist Has Never Been Greater

There are plenty of reasons to feel good about this week; two Supreme Court decisions came out better than expected, everybody and their mother has become an advocate for criminal justice reform, and Juneteenth has finally received some recognition beyond the Black community.

Consider the glass half-full for a few moments and enjoy the feeling. Take a deep breath. And now, the reasons to stay focused on current events...

Things with the coronavirus aren’t looking good, particularly at the federal level. A panoply of state run efforts has decreased the level of infection in some areas. Other areas like Arizona, Florida, and Texas and Oklahoma are moving in the other direction.

The President’s CoronaRally in Tulsa Oklahoma has the potential to put 60,000 (20k in one location, 40 in another) humans into close-in indoor environments, precisely the situations most feared by epidemiologists.

Not wearing a face mask has become a Dear Leader-approved way of saying “screw you” to people outside the cult.

https://twitter.com/TheDailyShow/status/1273736880656449543?s=20

Besides, the thinking in MAGAt circles goes, what about all the George Floyd protesters?

As usual “what about” excuses are just that: excuses. 

Early results from areas with massive protests are confirming the notion that being outdoors isn’t so bad. 

Via Slate: 

• Several recent studies have suggested that masks may be the single biggest impediment to the spread of the coronavirus. What’s new in the data about the demonstrations is that social distancing may be much less important, may be not much of a factor at all—at least if the crowds wear masks and the crowding takes place outdoors.

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While the Supreme Court’s ruling on DACA this week brought a sigh of relief in many circles, the Trump administration isn’t giving up. Remember that it took them three tries to get any semblance of a muslim a travel ban acceptable to the courts. 

Justice Roberts, who wrote the DACA decision, made it clear that he wasn’t dealing with whether or not eliminating the program was legal. His vote with the liberal justices was based on the incompetence of the process used by the administration. They may as well have written the proclamation ending the program in crayon as far as the court was concerned.

Although many pundits believe the administration doesn’t have what it takes to re-craft the order dissolving the program, and others view pursuing its termination as a political liability in an election year, my bet is the administration will move quickly to get DACA ended.

Going after immigrants with the nation’s security forces has the potential to keep the Trumpian hardliners motivated, and it’s my bet the administration has already written off the Latino vote.

The present situation with DACA exists because the Congress in 2012 couldn’t see its way through to approve comprehensive immigration reform. I doubt the cast of characters currently wallowing on Capitol Hill will do any better.

From the Associated Press:

• Through executive action, Trump could still take away the ability for 650,000 young immigrants to live and work legally in the United States. But with no legislative answer in Congress in sight, uncertainty continues for many immigrants who know of no other home except America.

• In a tweet Friday morning, Trump said, “The Supreme Court asked us to resubmit on DACA, nothing was lost or won. They “punted”, much like in a football game (where hopefully they would stand for our great American Flag). We will be submitting enhanced papers shortly.”

If everybody works hard on the various races for congress in the fall, the possibility for comprehensive reform and/or simply enabling DACA will exist.

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Here’s a real win:

San Diego voters will likely get the opportunity to vote in November on a charter amendment establishing a Commission on Police Practices capable of actually providing oversight.

After many months of meet and confer between the Police Officers Association and the City of San Diego, the final language of the charter amendment proposed by Women Occupy San Diego and supported by San Diegans for Justice has been released.

The four key components sought by advocates, independent legal counsel, independence from the Mayor’s Office, independent investigators and staff, and subpoena power, were all incorporated into the legislation.

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And here’s a not real win.

The San Diego District Attorney’s office has proposed actions to prevent excessive police use of force and weed out so-called “bad actors” in police agencies.

From Voice of San Diego:

• District Attorney Summer Stephan’s plan would treat reporting police abuse by others in the department similarly to teachers, who are legally mandated to report suspected child abuse, to increase transparency and accountability within law enforcement. Stephan also committed to enhance training for police officers in de-escalation methods, which includes an elimination of racial bias training.

• “As we know, our whole country and San Diego County is grieving,” Stephan said. “The impact on all our community, but especially the African-American community, is so deep. What my community needed from me were specific steps forward – positive solutions that truly address that there is a problem, there is discrimination, there is prejudice. We can’t move forward without addressing it. There are many steps, this just scratches the surface.”

• Experts told Voice of San Diego that steps like training and creating an independent, safe system for officers to report abuses of fellow officers are necessary, but don’t address perhaps the biggest and most underused tool in the DA’s toolkit: prosecuting officers who commit crimes.

The big problem here is establishing a framework allowing officers to report wrongdoing by their peers. The DA’s program is based on San Diego Unified School District’s model for mandated reporting, one that by all accounts has never worked, either to protect victims of wrongdoing or cull bad teachers out of the system.

https://twitter.com/evaposner/status/1274020257686937601?s=20

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Email me at WritetoDougPorter@Gmail.com