Saturday Snippets is a regular weekend feature at Daily Kos
• Gov. Gavin Newsom tells California cops to stop using carotid chokehold: In the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, the governor ordered the hold that stops blood flow to the brain to be removed from state police training materials. He called for updating law enforcement methods used in handling protests after a week of unprovoked police violence against demonstrators protesting police violence. “Protesters have the right not to be harassed,” Newsom told reporters. “Protesters have the right to do so without being arrested, gassed or shot at by projectiles.” The chokehold puts people’s lives at risk.” Several San Diego County agencies and the city of Minneapolis have banned its use.
Complaints about the chokehold aren’t new to California or elsewhere. Between 1975 and 1982, 16 people died from chokeholds delivered by officers of the Los Angeles Police Department, 12 of them Black men. “There was a pattern to it,” said Earl Ofari Hutchinson, director of the Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable. “You had the police continuing to use this chokehold and the victims were young African-American males. People were saying, ‘You are targeting us with a hold that has deadly consequence.’ ” The racist police chief, Daryl Gates, made matters worse in 1982 when he said, ''It seems to me that we may be finding that in some Blacks when [the chokehold] is applied, the veins or the arteries do not open as fast as they do on normal people.'' The NAACP sought his suspension for that and other behavior, but Gates continued with the department for another decade.
• Economic shutdown reduced carbon emissions, but not enough to keep last month from being the hottest May ever: As reports keep telling us, the worldwide economic response to the coronavirus pandemic has reduced carbon emissions, with as much as 8 percent less CO2 being pumped into the atmosphere compared with 2019. But this is temporary. And the Copernicus Climate Change Service notes that it wasn’t enough to keep May cool. Global surface temperatures were 0.63 degrees Celsius higher than the May 1981-2010 temperature average. A heat wave in Siberia was a big cause of this. Temperatures there reached 10 degrees Celsius above the post-1980 average. In the 12-month period ending in May, the average global temperature was 1.3 degrees Celsius above the preindustrial norm. At the same time, the atmospheric CO2 concentration hit a record level of 417 parts per million (ppm) this May, up from 414.8 ppm last May.
• Pandemic Recession forces big cuts at state and local governments: During the Great Recession, 585,000 state and local government employees lost their jobs as tax revenue plummeted in the economic downturn. By the end of 2018, there were still 93,000 fewer such jobs than in 2008. Public services took a huge hit at the time, with schoolteachers hurt the worst. And now things are getting worse. In the past two months, 1.55 million government workers have lost their jobs, 585,000 of them in May. That puts the number of government employees at the lowest level since 2001. Most of those job cuts are at the local level. A huge proportion comprises teachers and other educators at the elementary and secondary school level, a total of 758,000 in April and May. The impact of the cuts? “With that comes a decline in essential public services,” Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, said on a conference call with reporters. For instance, “911 calls are taking a long time to be answered.” He noted that clean drinking water and trash pickups also are affected in some places. Some states project a loss in tax revenue of 20% or more for the fiscal year starting next month.
MIDDAY TWEET
• While Navajo tribal leaders were focused on the coronavirus pandemic, Feds held virtual hearings on a proposal to permit new extractive operations near Native ancestral lands: The plan, if enacted, would allow fracking and mineral leasing around the Chaco Culture National Historical Park, land that the Pueblo Indians consider their homeland. Navajo leaders and some New Mexico lawmakers want to create a 10-mile buffer zone around the park. Acoma Pueblo Gov. Brian D. Vallo said, “The federal government has moved forward with the process even while tribes have made it clear we don’t have the resources in place, and that’s the people resources. Because of our tribal offices closures, and full concentration of COVID-19, this is not the best time to be directly engaged.” Public comments will be taken under September 28 at: federalregister.gov/…/notice-of-availability-of-the-farming…
• Famed graffiti artist Banksy supports Black Lives Matter with latest art: He wrote in an Instagram post: “At first I thought I should just shut up and listen to black people about this issue. But why would I do that? It’s not their problem, it’s mine. People of colour are being failed by the system. The white system. Like a broken pipe flooding the apartment of the people living downstairs. The faulty system is making their life a misery, but it’s not their job to fix it. They can’t, no one will let them in the apartment upstairs. This is a white problem. And if white people don’t fix it, someone will have to come upstairs and kick the door in.”
• Nearly 300 former senior U.S. diplomats and military leaders blasted Donald Trump for planning to use military units to handle protests against police violence: In a letter drafted by Douglas Silliman, the president’s former ambassador to Iraq; Deborah McCarthy, who served as U.S. ambassador to Lithuania during the Obama administration; and Thomas Countryman, a veteran diplomat who served as the State Department’s top arms control official, they wrote: “Many of us served across the globe, including in war zones, diplomats and military officers working side by side to advance American interests and values. We called out violations of human rights and the authoritarian regimes that deployed their military against their own citizens. We condemn all criminal acts against persons and property, but cannot agree that responding to these acts is beyond the capabilities of local and state authorities. There is no role for the U.S. military in dealing with American citizens exercising their constitutional right to free speech, however uncomfortable that speech may be for some.”