April, 20 2021, 12:00am EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Terence Long, Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, terence@ellabakercenter.org
Ashley Chambers, Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, ashley@ellabakercenter.org
Ella Baker Center Statement on the Upcoming Chauvin Trial Verdict
WASHINGTON
As the jury begins deliberating in the trial of police officer Derek Chauvin, we send our deepest heartfelt support and solidarity to the family of George Floyd.
We demand justice for the murder of Mr. Floyd, with the knowledge that a guilty verdict on its own will not deliver the kind of justice that will truly keep our communities safe.
Since the Chauvin trial began on March 29, cops have killed an average of three people each day, and more than half of the victims are Black and Latinx. Protestors marching in the wake of the deaths of Daunte Wright and Adam Toledo were met with police wielding assault rifles, teargas, and military-grade protective gear. The Chauvin trial has not stopped the now-familiar cycle of police committing harm, then responding to demands for justice with more violence.
The conviction of Derek Chauvin will not prevent police violence.
From the Kerner Commission recommendations after the 1967 uprisings, to the proposals after the vicious attack on Rodney King in 1991, to President Obama's Taskforce on Policing after Eric Garner and Michael Brown's murders in 2014, history has shown that reform does not stop state-sanctioned violence at the hands of police.
To move our communities closer to safety and stop the killing of Black people by the state, we must look toward community-based solutions, not the criminal justice system.
Justice comes when we divest the billions of dollars we spend on police each year and invest in community services, restorative justice models and mental health resources. Justice comes from our communities thriving without prisons and policing. Justice comes from affordable housing and healthcare, fully-funded education, access to healthy food, childcare, and good jobs.
As the nation awaits the verdict, the Ella Baker Center will be holding Community Healing Vigils where community members can come together to honor the lives of those lost to police violence, heal from the trauma of ongoing state violence, and generate support to enact change.
Because police don't keep us safe. We keep us safe.
LATEST NEWS
25 Arrested Blocking Netanyahu's Motorcade to UN General Assembly
"Our world leaders have done nothing to stop Netanyahu and his genocidal administration," said one organizer. "We must be the ones to stop him."
Sep 26, 2024
More than two dozen Palestinian and Jewish activists and allies were arrested in New York City Thursday after blocking the planned route of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's motorcade ahead of the right-wing leader's United Nations General Assembly speech.
Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), which co-organized the protest, said that 25 people including the actor Rowan Blanchard were arrested by New York police outside United Nations headquarters in midtown Manhattan.
"As Jewish New Yorkers we vehemently condemn Prime Minister Netanyahu's assault on Lebanon and genocide of Palestinians in Gaza," explained JVP's Jay Saper. "We will continue to raise our voices in dissent until the United States government stops arming Israel and Palestinians are able to live with the full freedom and dignity they deserve."
The protest and Netanyahu's New York visit came as Israeli forces continued the relentless assault on Gaza for which Israel is being tried for genocide at the International Court of Justice. According to Palestinian and international officials, more than 147,000 Gazans have been killed or wounded by Israeli forces since October 7, when Hamas led the deadliest attack on Israel since the country's founding in 1948.
Israel has also ramped up attacks on Lebanon in response to rockets launched from that country by the political and paramilitary group Hezbollah. Last week, a two-day bombings spree targeting Hezbollah communications devices that also killed civilians including children was attributed to Israel. Israeli airstrikes on Lebanon have killed hundreds of civilians and wounded thousands more.
"Our world leaders have done nothing to stop Netanyahu and his genocidal administration from murdering over 15,000 children and several times more adults," said Munir Marwan of protest co-organizer Palestinian Youth Movement. "As he plans to escalate the slaughter, we must be the ones to stop him."
Netanyahu is scheduled to address the General Assembly on Thursday.
Several world leaders condemned Israel's aggression during their U.N. speeches this week.
"Gaza is one of the worst humanitarian crises in recent history, and it is now dangerously spilling over into Lebanon," leftist Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said Tuesday.
Cyril Ramaphosa, the president of South Africa—which is leading the ICJ genocide lawsuit against Israel—said that "we will not sit silent and watch as apartheid is perpetrated against others."
In a separate case, the ICJ recently ruled that Israel's 57-year occupation of Palestine is an illegal form of apartheid that must immediately end.
"The only lasting solution is the establishment of a Palestinian state, a state that will exist side by side with Israel, with East Jerusalem as its capital," Ramaphosa added.
Leftist Colombian President Gustavo Petro asserted that "when Gaza dies, all of humanity will die."
"Those of us who have the power to sustain life speak without being paid attention to," he added. "That is why they do not listen to us when we vote to stop the genocide in Gaza. The presidents who can destroy humanity do not listen to us."
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Polling results released Wednesday, less than six weeks away from November's Election Day, show that a majority of Americans want to ditch the Electoral College and "would instead prefer to see the winner of the presidential election be the person who wins the most votes nationally."
Pew Research Center surveyed 9,720 adults across the United States in late August and early September, and found that 63% want to abolish the process outlined in the U.S. Constitution and replace it with a popular vote approach, compared with just 35% who favor keeping the current system.
The Electoral College is made up of electors who are supposed to act on behalf of their state's voters. Each state gets the same number of electors as its members of Congress, and Washington, D.C. gets three electors, bringing the current total to 538. The candidate who secures 270 electoral votes becomes the next president.
D.C. and most states allocate all of their electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote in their state, though Maine and Nebraska give two votes to the statewide winner, and the remaining votes to the most popular candidate in each congressional district.
Pew noted Wednesday that "some Republicans have been pressing to change Nebraska's rules so that the statewide winner gets all five of its electoral votes. This would likely work to former President Donald Trump's advantage, given Nebraska's consistent support of GOP presidential candidates."
Republican Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen confirmed Tuesday that he has no plans to call a special legislative session to restore a winner-takes-all approach before the November election, in which Trump is set to face Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.
There have been just five presidential contests in which the Electoral College winner did not also win the nationwide popular vote—1824, 1876, 1888, 2000, and most recently in 2016, when Trump beat Democrat Hillary Clinton by securing key "swing states."
Continuing a trend that's lasted over two decades, 8 in 10 Democrats and Democratic-leaning Independents told Pew that they prefer a popular vote system for the presidential contest, while Republicans and Independents who lean toward the GOP were more divided: 53% want to retain the Electoral College and 46% would like to replace it.
"Reference sources indicate that over the past 200 years more than 700 proposals have been introduced in Congress to reform or eliminate the Electoral College," according to the National Archives. "There have been more proposals for Constitutional amendments on changing the Electoral College than on any other subject."
Among them is a joint resolution that Congressman Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) introduced just days after Trump incited a violent mob to disrupt the certification of his 2020 loss by storming the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021—for which the Republican nominee faces ongoing legal trouble.
"Americans expect and deserve the winner of the popular vote for any office to win and assume that office," Cohen said at the time. "More than a century ago, we amended our Constitution to provide for the direct election of U.S. senators. It is past time to directly elect our president and vice president. The Electoral College is a vestige of the 18th Century when voters didn't know the candidates who now appear daily on their phones and television screens."
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'A Disgrace': Italy Issues New Detention Order for Ship Saving Lives in Mediterranean
"This is unacceptable for a country under the rule of law," said a representative for Doctors Without Borders.
Sep 26, 2024
International aid group Doctors Without Borders said Wednesday that it plans to appeal the latest detention orders placed by Italian authorities on its search and rescue vessel, Geo Barents, arguing the directives were aimed at preventing it from saving the lives of refugees in the Mediterranean Sea.
"This is unacceptable for a country under the rule of law," said Juan Matias Gil, a representative for the organization, which is also known by the French name Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).
The latest orders against the group and its ship were issued on Monday, days after MSF helped 206 refugees disembark in Genoa, Italy on September 19.
After that rescue, the group received a distress alert from a plane that monitors the passage of asylum-seekers across the Mediterranean, where thousands of people have drowned in the past decade while attempting to reach Europe after fleeing violent conflicts, political unrest, and poverty.
The Italian Maritime Rescue Coordination Center gave the Geo Barents crew approval to proceed to the overcrowded wooden boat detected by the plane, which was holding around 110 people from Syria, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Egypt.
But as MSF was about to complete the rescue, with just 20 people left in the boat, a Libyan Coast Guard patrol boat that had been donated by Italy arrived at the scene.
"They arrived, threatened to shoot, and carried out unsafe and intimidating maneuvers around the people in distress and the MSF rescue team," said Fulvia Conte, search and rescue team leader for MSF.
The group said the order, which requires the Geo Barents to be detained at a port for 60 days, is based on "twisted logic" and MSF's "alleged failure to comply with instructions from unreliable and often dangerous Libyan coast guards," said Judith Sunderland, associate director of the Europe and Central Asia Division of Human Rights Watch, who was aboard the Geo Barents as it completed the rescue.
"It is a disgrace that the Italian authorities still consider the Libyan Coast Guard to be a reliable actor and source of information."
"People fleeing Libya often tell us about violent interceptions at sea carried out by the E.U.-backed Libyan Coast Guard," said Gil. "It has been documented by the United Nations and independent investigative journalists that the Libyan Coast Guard is complicit in serious human rights violations amounting to crimes against humanity, and collusion with smugglers and traffickers. It is a disgrace that the Italian authorities still consider the Libyan Coast Guard to be a reliable actor and source of information."
Sunderland noted that earlier this month, a judge lifted a previous 60-day detention order against the ship, with Italian authorities claiming MSF had caused "a dangerous situation by rescuing dozens of people from the water at night."
"The judge concluded the rescue had been 'urgent and unavoidable' and the detention jeopardized the organization's humanitarian objectives," wrote Sunderland.
Even though MSF had approval to complete the rescue on September 19, the first detention order was issued under the Piantedosi Decree, a law introduced in 2023 which requires non-governmental rescue ships to sail to the assigned port after a rescue, without picking up people from other boats in distress.
The second order was issued Monday following an in-depth inspection of Geo Barents by the Port State Control, which said it found eight technical deficiencies on the vessel.
Conte said such inspections "are another layer of administrative and technical instrumentalization of laws and regulations that the authorities have been using for the past seven years to obstruct the work of humanitarian search and rescue vessels in the Mediterranean."
"This one seems to have the intention to ensure we don't operate anytime soon," she said. "We are moving to quickly address these deficiencies and to go back to prevent deaths at sea."
Kenneth Roth, former executive director of HRW, said the latest orders suggest the Italian government is doing everything in its power "to stop NGO rescue ships from operating in the Mediterranean because rescuing migrants gets in the way of Italy's (and the E.U.'s) preferred approach of using the risk of drowning as a deterrent to migration."
MSF has helped rescue more than 91,000 people in search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean, including 12,540 people who have been saved by the Geo Barents crew since 2021.
U.N. special rapporteur on human rights defenders Mary Lawlor said in 2023 that the punishment and criminalization of people working to save refugees from drowning was "a darkening stain on Italy and the E.U.'s commitment to human rights," after the Italian authorities brought criminal charges for "aiding and abetting unauthorized immigration" against nearly two dozen rescue crew members and rights advocates.
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