What You Should Know This Week 4/30/21

Don’t Call The Police.

We’re relieved that Derek Chauvin has been held accountable and acknowledge the tremendous amount of work left to be done so that families and communities like George Floyd’s never have to experience the pain and suffering they’ve endured. We recognize the important difference between accountability and justice and are choosing to see last Tuesday’s verdict in the murder of George Floyd not as a small victory but the outcome that should be afforded to every American in our justice system. 

Unfortunately, the verdict could barely offer the relief we’ve craved in this case for so long because it came just after the state-sanctioned murder of Daunte Wright and before the state-sanctioned murders of Ma’Khia Bryant in Columbus, Ohio, and of Andrew Brown Jr. of North Carolina.

So we’d like to take a big step back and process these events in context. 

The reform question has continued to come up after last year's demonstrations and elections and the verdict in Derek Chauvin’s trial have the mainstream media and establishment politicians asking what can be done to make the police stop killing innocent Black Americans. 

We seem to be circling back to reform and that can’t happen.

Nothing other than defunding the police and severely limiting the scope and impact of policing itself in American life will reduce the number of Black Americans killed by the police. This concept exists on a gradient, from defunding police departments and shifting resources to community services, to abolishing police and prisons. 

The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act has passed the U.S. House of Representatives along party lines, with 220 Democrats in support and 212 Republicans in opposition. The bill, which would ban chokeholds and qualified immunity for police officers, among other things, now faces an uphill battle in the Senate. A legislative victory will take weeks to months in a divided Senate and we’re also right to question whether the bill falls under the “reform” umbrella of approaches to reducing police violence. 

We can’t rely on the same institutions that created mass incarceration to dismantle it. Despite it’s well intentions, the legislation doesn’t keep the police from killing innocent people right now. So we’d like to share one very important resource with you, with the hopes you’ll never need it. 


Don’t call the police. Instead, use these city-specific alternatives to resolve situations.

This is only one of many practical steps we can take to limit the role of police in our society, but the ultimate goal should always be to make the police obsolete and therefore eradicate the violence that encompasses their presence. 

We encourage you to continue to seek out and embrace other steps along with the Defund (or Abolish!) the Police movement so we may keep everyone in our communities safe and prevent future stories from being possible.

The Census & Apportionment 

On Monday, the Census Bureau released its findings from the 2020 Census. 

The once-in-a-decade count of the U.S. population helps us determine where to allocate federal funding to communities. It’s also a key factor in securing political power, as representation in Congress is determined by state populations. A state can gain, maintain, or lose seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the conventional thinking is that more seats equal more power. Adding or losing seats also presents an opportunity for drawing “new lines” or the geographic regions a Congressional member will represent. That process is dominated by Republicans across the country and opens our communities up to increased gerrymandering.

What are the results?

• States that voted for Joe Biden for president will lose 3 net seats in Congress.

• California, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia are losing one seat.

• Colorado, Florida, Montana, North Carolina, Oregon will gain one seat each, while Texas will gain two.

• New York wouldn’t have lost a seat if only 89 more people had filled out the Census. Yikes! Remember that in 2030, y’all.
  

What did the Census generally tell us? 

The U.S. experienced a growth rate of 7.4%, which is the second slowest rate of growth since the 1930s. This is credited to, among other factors, economic recovery after the Great Recession and the economic impacts of COVID. Migration out of North and Northeastern states, and into the South and West, as geographers have predicted, is truly taking place and will accelerate over time. 

But what’s it mean politically?

It’s not a crisis for Democrats, even if it looks like it on paper! Yes, California and New York lost seats and Texas gained two. Colorado will become a reliably blue state, North Carolina is making progressive gains and is on that way, and Texas will become less and less red over time. It’s nothing to freak out over. With that said, it demonstrates how critically important the Census is and reminds us why we should all fill it out next time, to ensure we don’t risk another loss like New York!

D.C. Statehood Now!

Last Thursday, the House passed a bill to make Washington D.C. the 51st state. As is typical these days, the vote came along party lines, with 216 Democrats in favor and 208 Republicans in opposition. The passage sets up yet another contentious Senate battle for Democrats with slim control and an obstructionist GOP caucus led by Mitch McConnell.

The main argument for D.C. statehood is simple: the 712,000 residents of Washington D.C. have no federal representation in Congress. No House member. No senators. No voice on the issues that affect us all. That alone is enough to make you want to advocate for D.C. statehood, but it’s especially egregious considering that D.C. residents pay more in federal taxes than residents of 21 other states. 

If you ask us, that doesn’t sound very democratic. It sounds a lot like taxation without representation. So if the GOP loves our founding fathers so much, shouldn’t D.C. statehood be a shoo-in? 

Nope. 

The conservative argument in the statehood debate is that Democrats are using D.C. statehood as a power grab to secure more representation in Congress, considering that 90% of D.C. residents vote Democrat.

It’s an even more interesting debate when you consider the racial implications: D.C. would become the only state with a plurality of Black residents. Wyoming, with 573,000 residents is 93% white. Vermont, with 623,000 residents is 94% white. D.C, which has 712,000 residents is 45% Black, has NO federal representation, something we’re sure most Republican members of Congress and Republican voters are happy with.

D.C. statehood, despite the significant challenge it faces in the Senate, is an important issue that should be at the top of our minds. It’s an intersectional issue on economic, social, and racial justice and one that national Democrats cannot back down from if they claim to work towards a more perfect union.