Night Owls, a themed open thread, appears at Daily Kos seven days a week
Rachel Ramirez at Vox writes—“A multi-year fight”: Activists say passing local ballot measures on policing is just the first step:
In the weeks after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, calls to defund the police could be seen on protesters’ signs, read in etchings on sidewalks, and heard in chants in America’s streets. The demand, generally, was to move money from massive police budgets to social services and other local agencies, diminishing the role of police. The goal was to end the racist and violent policing of Black people. [...]
And while media coverage of protests also dwindled as summer turned to fall, local activists kept pushing — much like they had before the protests erupted — to get police reform and defunding initiatives on the ballot. Their efforts, coupled with the momentum of the protests, seem to have paid off. [...]
On one hand, these wins prompt questions of what’s next, stirring the debate on what to do about the broken institution of policing — whether to fight for the incremental change of reform or to dismantle the entire system through defunding or even abolishment. On the other, that voters got behind so many measures at all shows a possible tide shift; Americans are recognizing something needs to be done about police violence and accountability. [...]
THREE OTHER ARTICLES WORTH READING
- Biden Won. Will the Climate? By Claire Elise Thompson. Five leaders point the way forward for a divided nation.
- How the Left Beat Trump in Michigan. By Ben Burgis. According to centrists, the “blue wave” didn’t materialize because of the Left. That’s nonsense—and in at least one crucial swing state, Joe Biden rode to victory because of the organizing of progressives and leftists.
- Democrats’ 2024 Problem Is Already Clear, by Ronald Brownstein. Joe Biden succeeded in bridging his party’s past and future coalitions—but the challenges of future elections are daunting.
“Let us try to see things from their better side:
You complain about seeing thorny rose bushes;
Me, I rejoice and give thanks to the gods
That thorns have roses.
~~Alphonse Karr, “Letters written from my garden,” 1853
At Daily Kos on this date in 2018—North Korea continues to expand nuclear program while Trump ... well, tweets, mostly:
Just in case you were wondering about the progress of Donald Trump's plan to denuclearize North Korea via an ambitious plan of lurching from incoherent mockery to lavish praise to ramshackle promises based on nothing at all, the answer is that North Korea is continuing to build up its nuclear arsenal and capabilities while ignoring his administration's demands.
A new study notes that known North Korean missile bases, identified via satellite images, continue to be active. North Korea denies the existence of these bases at all; experts remain concerned that Team Trump is so eager to ink a Trump-flattering deal that they will overlook it.
“It’s not like these bases have been frozen,” Mr. [Victor] Cha, the leader of the team that studied the images, said in an interview. “Work is continuing. What everybody is worried about is that Trump is going to accept a bad deal — they give us a single test site and dismantle a few other things, and in return they get a peace agreement” that formally ends the Korean War.
Cha was on Team Trump's shortlist for the South Korea ambassadorship post, but was nixed after he criticized administration policies toward North Korea. It is perhaps notable that he's using the "Everybody is worried" construct to publicly dump on Trump for being stupid enough to sign such a deal.