Night Owls, a themed open thread, appears at Daily Kos seven days a week
Maggie Koerth and Jamiles Lartey at FiveThirtyEight write—De-escalation Keeps Protesters And Police Safer. Departments Respond With Force Anyway:
But just because there’s no data about protests that can be easily compared in a chart doesn’t mean we’re bereft of information, said Pat Gillham, a professor of sociology at Western Washington University. There’s 50 years of research on violence at protests, dating back to the three federal commissions formed between 1967 and 1970. All three concluded that when police escalate force — using weapons, tear gas, mass arrests and other tools to make protesters do what the police want — those efforts can often go wrong, creating the very violence that force was meant to prevent. For example, the Kerner Commission, which was formed in 1967 to specifically investigate urban riots, found that police action was pivotal in starting half of the 24 riots the commission studied in detail. It recommended that police eliminate “abrasive policing tactics” and that cities establish fair ways to address complaints against police.
Experts say the following decades of research have turned up similar findings. Escalating force by police leads to more violence, not less. It tends to create feedback loops, where protesters escalate against police, police escalate even further, and both sides become increasingly angry and afraid. [...]
TOP COMMENTS • HIGH IMPACT STORIES
QUOTATION
“We must learn that passively to accept an unjust system is to cooperate with that system, and thereby to become a participant in its evil.”
~~Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love (1963)
TWEET(s) OF THE DAY
BLAST FROM THE PAST
At Daily Kos on this date in 2013—This week in the war on voting: Ohio looks to internet registration, NYC to use old voting machines:
A case of a Republican doing the right thing:Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell said Wednesday that he is waiving the waiting period and automatically restoring the voting rights of non-violent felons who have completed their sentences and satisfied certain conditions.
The decision by McDonnell, a former prosecutor who has supported restoring voting rights, underscores a long-held position. McDonnell (R) has granted the right to vote to more ex-felons than any of his predecessors at a time when other Republican across the country have adopted more strict voting requirements, including photo IDs and shortened early voting periods.
“When someone commits a crime, they must be justly punished,” the governor said during remarks in Richmond. “However, once these individuals have served their time and fully paid for the offenses they committed, they should be afforded a clear and fair opportunity to resume their lives as productive members of our society.
Some reform-minded Virginians have unsuccessfully sought to create a process to restore rights that don't require the governor's doing so on an individual basis.
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: So, how was your weekend? Greg Dworkin warns not to mistake 2020 for 1968, or Trump for Nixon. Yes, there are still polls. Also, there's still a virus. Will the protests cause a spike in infection rates? Or will it just be because everyone else has quit distancing?
RadioPublic|LibSyn|YouTube|Patreon|Square Cash (Share code: Send $5, get $5!)