"This past Sunday, a veto-proof majority of the council announced plans to disband its police department and invest in community-based public safety programs.
According to Friday's resolution, the city council will begin a year-long process of engaging "with every willing community member in Minneapolis" to develop a new public safety model.
"We acknowledge that the current system is not reformable — that we would like to end the current policing system as we know it," council member Alondra Cano said.
The council declared it would create a "transformative new model" of public safety in the city.
A "Future of Community Safety Work Group," will be formed and will include staff from city departments, including the offices of violence prevention and civil rights.
The council also voted unanimously on Friday to end the local emergency order that had been declared due to protests in the wake of Floyd's death. " Forbes
—————-
And then out in Seattle we have the "summer of love" mayor on TeeVee accepting something that looks like a miniature version of the Paris Commune while being framed on one side by "Old Glory" and on the other by Washington State's green flag with the face of George Washington (a prominent slaveholder and planter) featured thereon. Will it not be necessary to change the name of the state?
To repeat my earlier assertion it seems inevitable that there will be more, many more, "Communes" springing up across the US. The locale will be all important of course. I would recommend against trying this gambit anywhere in Texas. OTOH, just about anywhere in California will be fertile ground and Boston might be welcoming to an "Autonomous" enclave somewhere downtown. Any Democrat run area is a possibility really.
Trump is at West Point bloviating today. He has the right instincts concerning the need to maintain public order but he has never learned how to drive the machine of the Executive Branch and his personnel decisions have often been appalling.
It would be interesting to learn what a President Joe Biden and then the wise woman of color who succeeds him would do with the ongoing development of this situation. pl
The AG of Minnesota is Keith Ellison, once deputiy chair of the DNC, vice chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus when in the House. The left is busy destroying the police department as a conservative institution and is going to replace it with a “progressive” model in line with their ideology. It won’t be under the public’s control, it will be under the control of the political leadership of the party.
https://cdllife.com/2020/truck-drivers-say-they-wont-deliver-to-cities-with-defunded-police-departments/
“Truck Drivers Say They Won’t Deliver To Cities with Defunded Police Departments”
I wonder how the antifa and their government supporters will get their soy latte`s and food when the truck drivers wont deliver to their cities?…
I would think the autonomous zone would be counterproductive for the Democrats winning the white house. Many citizens must be scratching their heads thinking how can the mayor and governor let this go on.
If it does succeed in staying “viable” there may be rural copycats of a more conservative bent. I’m sure the media will not be as kindly disposed.
Neither will be good for the country as a whole.
I have been wondering about possible non-violent solutions to this fiasco. One such that came to mind, and I don’t know for sure whether it’s possible, has to do with city services that continue to function in this newly birthed “nation” as a form foreign aid provided by the good tax-paying public of the city of Seattle and state of Washington. Could not the city utilities cut electricity and water/plumbing services to these areas and let the inhabitants wallow in their own filth and darkness behind a wall of National Guardsmen? No one goes in, no one goes out. It should be relatively easy to isolate these people in their little hamlet without firing a shot. After all, we impose embargoes on entire nations. How difficult could it be with six city blocks? Since they are now a de facto nation unto themselves and hostile to the United States and its laws and customs, can’t we just enforce the border from our side as is our sovereign right? If they are declaring themselves autonomous, make them stand or fall on the very definition of the word “autonomous”. My guess is within four days of darkness and overflowing toilets, you’ll know who the “leaders” are, as the residents and businesses inside will revolt. Of course this would require the political will of the mayor and governor, and that is clearly not in the cards. It’ll also be interesting to see what happens when the Fentanyl overdoses start occurring. It’s only a matter of time.
I am feeling quite dispirited over the whole CHAZ situation. I always knew that Seattle was as looney tunes left as many parts of Chalifornia and as our “forty square miles surrounded by reality” here in Colorado–i.e, Boulder. I can accept left lifestyles in those cities. The are usually highlly educated (not saying they are smar) and living in expensive homes near upscale dining and lots of specialty coffee shops. What I don’t understand is that they seem to be o.k. right now with these interlopers who are destroying the “ambience” of their city. I am sure these squatters aren’t finding it easy to bathe and sit back and discuss all the esoteric ideas they have as they maintain their little autonomous zone boundaries while claining they really don’t like barriers.
I wonder if these are really the offspring of those who participated in the earlier “summer of love” and Woodstock.
Probably just bad genes. (and stinky jeans)
Gen. Michael Flynn’s lawyers tried to get redress from the U.S. Appeals Court after Judge Emmet Sullivan refused to the dismiss the case (after the DOJ dropped prosecution of the case). Unfortunately for Flynn, he had the “luck” of having another black activist judge at the appellate level.
From the NY Post:
It appears that most of the funds (except for 1%) of the BLM’s Defund Police Donations are going to Joe Biden’s Campaign via BLM’s partnership with ActBlue. ActBlue is a Democrat fundraising platform and a top donor to the Biden campaign. As of May 21 ActBlue has donated $119 Million dollars to the Biden Campaign (based on FEC data released 21 May 2020).
When one selects to donate on the BLM homepage, they are then re-routed to a site hosted by ActBlue.
Also the BLM leader is mobilizing a highly trained ‘military arm’ for its war on police.
An item that the CT centers need to concentrate on IMO are ID’ing the BLM’s ‘military advisors’.
Notice the Black Panthers part deux.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8384065/Black-Lives-Matter-leader-declares-war-police.html
There is a lot of merit in reconstituting police departments into a new organizations. Chauvin had 17 prior complaints and none stuck. Is the guy a bad apple protected by his union, or what?
We have the same thing locally; the Syracuse PD has paid out $5M in recent claims, some for really outrageous behavior. None of the individuals even had formal reprimands. The police union protects these guys and the taxpayers pay.
Until this week in NYS, rule 50-A locked personnel records of cops. Even guys that had been fired for cause. They could apply at a new department and the hiring PD wouldn’t even know! What was right about that?
Does anybody think this is typical even for UAW auto plants nowadays, much less a non union shop?
Forming a “Department of Public Safety” to replace a problematic police department might allow for interviewing all officers and not offering employment to guys like Chauvin with 17 complaints. And abrogating union contracts that cost the taxpayers dearly.
And to be clear, I believe we need cops. We have lost a loved one because of criminal behavior. But we should demand professionalism and high standards and not give a pass to bad actors.
Upstater,
Why not call it “The Committee Of Public Safety?”
It would be interesting to do a daily Zillow or Trulia search on properties in Minneapolis to see how many come on the market in the wake of this insurrectionary activity.
It would be more interesting to follow the money and determine just how 75,000 Somalis ended up in Minnesota (or all places) to begin with.
@ J, regarding BLM partnership with ActBlue, and other things: Maybe we should consider whether the CHAZ is a side-show, not serious, intended to distract from more serious mischief afoot.
Multiple players intend to benefit from the series of calamities besetting USA, including, even chief among them our good friend Israel.
Will Israel Capitalize On Opportunities to Create a New Strategic Environment?
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/middle-east-watch/will-israel-capitalize-opportunities-create-new-strategic-environment-161271
It could be that CHAZ the sideshow is intended to distract from the more serious business of getting every American vaccinated and that Israel produces i.e. profits from the vaccine.
Dershowitz said that federal government had the right to require vaccination, to the extent of military entering your home and “plunging a needle into your arm.”
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/tag/alan-dershowitz
And Trump has said the mobilization of US military “and others” to distribute vaccine was planned.
Using BLM to fund Biden’s campaign, and the whole Floyd-Chauvin episode as an extension of #Resist, the well-funded attempt to unseat Trump “six ways to Sunday” is one thing. (Cardinal Vigano believes they are related, connected to the “deep state” that he identifies as “Freemasons,” and that the Catholic institutional church has its own, interlinked “deep state” that is collaborating in the ‘plot.’ https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/archbishop-viganos-powerful-letter-to-president-trump-eternal-struggle-between-good-and-evil-playing-out-right-now
So what is going on in the center ring while the public is distracted by CHAZ, especially plans and schemes about vaccination, is far more concerning and worthy of our attention.
Colonel,
Yesterday I got the pop-up that I needed a password to sign in. Since I don’t have one I am relieved I have a chance to make one more post.
I grew up in Seattle and visited my parents periodically until I got too old to fly. Like all public educated Americans, the teaching of our history is selective. I heard of “Red Seattle” but was not taught about it and saw little of it. I was told (negatively) of the power of Harry Bridges and the Longshoremen or the Teamsters who kept Budweiser out of town to help the local union breweries. The 1999 WTO riots were a surprise to this Ex-Pat with a Brother and Sister still in town. My Grandparents were the last generation who came west who could make a good living opening up the frontier (except during the Great Depression). The problem is that Seattle is the end of the road. The malcontents and free thinkers have nowhere else to go. They are stopped by the Pacific Ocean to the West and China on the other side.
The divisions and conflicts of Eastern USA have moved west. But they are new to Pacific North Westerners. Some will fight the exploitation by the rich. It is in their blood.
Barrack Obama quickly dismantled the Occupy Movement when it got traction addressing inequality. Donald Trump can’t. He gets his support exclusively from one side of the division and has lost control of the government. The problem is that the Democrats get their donations from the rich too just like the Republicans. They use identity politics to aggravate the conflicts to receive their “pay to play”. Neither party will do a damn thing to restore the American Dream. Joe Biden is a worse than Hillary Clinton. He is older than I am and spearheaded the restart of the Cold War with Russia in Ukraine.
There is bipartisan denial on the necessary steps for the government to control the coronavirus pandemic, end the greatest economic depression, and survive the fall of the Western Empire. If these crises are left to fester, Seattle and other hotspots will replay Bloody Kansas a century and half ago.
Colonel,
Speaking of Biden, seems that their family is heavily invested in scamming, whether it be Joe Biden’s son tryhing to squirrel out of having to pay child support to a pole dancer in Arkansas, or Joe Biden’s brother James and his $1.5 Billion DoD contract to build more than 100,000 homes in Iraq with no experience, now it seems that Joe Biden’s brother Frank weaseled out of having to pay $1 million in damages to a crash victim all because he only had $29 dollars in his bank account, despite living a life of luxury.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8406427/Joe-Bidens-brother-Frank-just-29-bank-account-despite-owing-dead-mans-family-1M.html
Upstater,
“There is a lot of merit in reconstituting police departments into a new organizations.”
If only the Mineapolis Democratic Farm-Labor Party had done something about that in all those decades they have provided leadership. If only the DOJ consent decrees had an effect upon those career professionals.
“The Justice Department’s collaborative reform program was launched in 2011, so it’s too early to say whether there’s been lasting change.”
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2016/12/16/explaining-doj-stanthony-police-department
Voting politicians out of office because they fail never seems to be an option.
J,
ActBlue claims it is merely a pass through organization and that donations go the intended recipient. Sort of like a PayPal for liberal causes and candidates. So if you want the money you donate to go to Defund Police, then that’s where it goes; not to Biden. However, the whole thing appears to be somewhat murky. Who knows what happens behind the scenes? Seems like lots of wiggle room for manipulation of the money’s true destination.
This potential dark money relationship between groups like BLM to Democrats seems a little better documented –https://publicintegrity.org/politics/a-super-pac-has-raised-millions-to-mobilize-black-voters-does-it-matter-that-its-funders-are-white/
All
Someone said here that there are no more Communists. Curious to know what the governments and party are in China, North Korea and Cuba?
On China, I actually think it is a new phenomenon which must be understood in its own terms.
The Communist Party is like the analogue of the Mandarins of Imperial China.
The various state corporations akin to the old imperial monopolies, such as salt.
What is new is the introduction of capital markets as well as the structures of economic production for the mass markets for consumers all over the world.
The role of central planners is not dominant in contrast to USSR.
And unlike USSR, small-scale production or enterprises are not considered an enemy to be combatted.
The Chinese state has a presencec in many enterprises, either directly or through PLA.
Again, under FDR, USG was, for a period of time, in an analogous situation, that USG had socialized major areas of US Economy.
I do not think that Government of China will be privatizing major industries and services, ever.
Unlike USSR, there is no cradle-to-grave social safety net. If I recall correctly, only 9% of the Chinese population has any sort of pension or retirement plan and only 12% enjoys health insurance. Spain is more socialitic in these regards than China.
The absence of Liberty has been noted by others, but, unlike USSR, there is no “we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us” ethos.
Unlike USSR, US did her best to build up economic and government capacity in China. Since foreign corporations could try to make money in China, it was, by that vey definition, not Communist.
I think Deng’s China may be compared to the Meiji Restoration: top echelons of the hierarchy realized that they needed to reorganize the state and society in order to maintain their sovereignty.
In Japan, the clan leaders formed an oligarchy that adopted Mercantilism as its de facto operational paradigm. In China, the Communist Party played the role of the clan leaders of Japan, adopting the same economic orientation.
In the period of post-Meiji, the Western economies were quite eager to benefit from opportunities for trade with and investment in Japan. Like China today. And just like the Japanese Government selected sectors for development, like aircraft manufacturing, so has the Chinese government.
What is China? A centralized bureaucratic state held together and governed by a State-within-the-state called the Chinese Communist Party. Two overriding concerns: internal stability at any cost and external sovereignty, also at any cost.
Teachers unions and SEIU want a piece of the police union pie. They are using BLM to get it. That is why the link for BLM donations goes directly to ActBlue.
Teachers unions and SEIU fronted OWS for their own agenda back in 2008, and they are fronting BLM for their own purposes this time too. Declining tax revenues means the local public dollar will be a food fight, an internecine war between competing public sector unions.
That is why everything at the surface level makes no sense and their agenda is built entirely on lies. Because they don’t want you to know what their real agenda is: defang the police unions and take their money for themselves.
If you defund the police, give that money back to us so we can hire our own security guards.
If you want to litmus test BLM, ask them how they feel about charter schools. They will be so busted. Ask them about down-sizing government. You will bust them again since these are their corp values – grow the teachers unions and grow SEIU and use the police union money to do it.
The recent publicity given to the Ford Foundation grants to BLM leads to questions of how the money is used.
Apart from the straight charitable purpose of giving money to various movements the phenomenon of “movement capture” touched upon here –
https://www.niskanencenter.org/how-philanthropy-diverts-social-movements/ –
– seems to indicate that the money given comes with implicit conditions attached that dissuade the grantees from engaging in violent protest.
But when protests turn violent it leaves the charitable foundations open to the charge of encouraging unlawful behaviour.
The Ford Foundation publicity justifies the funding –
https://www.fordfoundation.org/ideas/equals-change-blog/posts/why-black-lives-matter-to-philanthropy/
Looks chancy to me. Well-meaning but naive charitable establishments pouring money into movements they don’t really know all that much about when it comes to activism on the ground.
This insurrectionary behavior is accelerating the global awakening of white racial consciousness that began way back in the time of the St. Skittles Hoax and the migrant invasion of Europe.
The craven response of puppet conservatism in the US and the UK might even wake a few people up to the evident reality that we cannot trust globalist-owned officials to fulfill even the most basic responsibilities of their positions.
In short, we are on our own.
I for one welcome a long hot summer of autonomous collectives and no-go zones.
English,
Naive is a word that is innacurate when applied to the Ford Foundation or many other prominent NGOs. “movement capture”, which I would term Ideological capture, happened to many of these organizations a long time ago. Corporate donations to these movements are simply extortion payments, a Dane-Geld if you will, made to ensure the political influence these groups have over the upper echelons of a political party’s leadership is directed away from them.
The current press reports put donations to these “Black LIves” associated non-profits at a over a billion dollars and rising. This is at the same time government shutdown orders have foced, and kept, tens of thousands of black owned businesses closed. The response to this government driven economic destruction serves multiple purposes – the foundations increase their influence over a political party’s leadership and candidate selection processes, it innoculates the multi-nationals from blame over their now increased market power in cities where competing firms have been driven out of business by government fiat, and, most importantly, it eliminates the growing independence of black citizens in cities run by the left for generations as they were gaining true, though modest, financial independence – and thus freedom from dependence upon government largesse. The latter poses a great threat to the the democratic party led governmental structures – the patronage available by almost complete party control of city governments – thus control of local regulatory agencies (a giant hindrance to financial independence), granting or witholding of contracts and all that implies, education and policing – the later both a mechanism for enforcement both by strict enforcement of trivial infractions, or the reverse by withholding policing at all.
Black success is a major threat to the political influence of the established leadership of the Democratic Party, their influence networks as exemplified by these foundations and new non-profits (It is onne reason Obama allowed Lois Lerner to use the IRS to constrain conservative applications), the established politicians with decades in office at state and federal levels, and in educational institutions at all levels. The last thing democrats want is for black Americans to become successful and financially secure – they will start thinking for themselves and start voting for ideas that are harmful to the people in power now.
ActBlue:
3.95% transaction fee on each contribution.
That is 1%+ more than other solutions like Stripe, etc. They are paying an extra 1% for a reason and it probably isn’t ignorance.
Babak makkinejad, thank you!
One of the best summations I’ve read about China.
CCP is still a powerful unifying cement. Not much formal freedom as we understand it. And we know little about the fate of the many minorities on the southern borders. Maybe, Potemkin Villages for tourists.
By Portland eliminating police in schools, reducing money to the police department and Seattle eliminating police is, I believe, a long play to gain majority backing to outlaw private gun ownership. Once students are killed in a school shooting and gang killings escalate there will be a loud out cry to take law abiding citizen’s guns. Sounds crazy but the progressives are crazy. They have destroyed the economy and used antifa as a paramilitary and the killing of George Floyd to win the next election. They are crazy.
There’s another autonomous zone (AZ)in Philadelphia that seems to be making a go of it. The Workers Revolutionary Collective, the Black and Brown Workers Cooperative and Occupy PHA (Philadelphia Housing Authority) renamed a Philly homeless encampment as Camp Maroon. They are mostly black and demanding this and several other homeless camps be recognized as cop free autonomous zones. CHAZ is getting all the publicity, but this one in Philly appears to be more seriously addressing a real problem – homelessness. That’s probably due to the presence of so many white anarchists in a trendy neighborhood in Seattle. A largely black homeless encampment is just not photogenic enough.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=mPsl5KTMp1c&feature=emb_logo
Protesters tried to set up an AZ in Asheville, NC. The cops broke that one up earlier this weekend. There’s talk of one going up in Portland, Oregon. Nothing there yet.
Regarding Seattle, I was impressed by this first-hand account:
https://www.theorganicprepper.com/truth-seattle-riot/
I noted the particular passage:
FINALLY the SPD Administration gave the green light and LESS LETHAL forms of riot control were deployed. As objects were continued to be thrown at us, SWAT finally deployed CS gas. The “protesters” proceeded to start vandalizing everything in the area. They smashed business windows, burned U.S. flags, lit dumpsters and other items on fire, and threw things on fire at us. We pushed them back in all directions about half a block but for some reason, we stopped pushing them back. They then regrouped and continued to vandalize the area with spray paint, breaking windows, and lighting things on fire. Around that time, the Guard was pulled back and we left East Precinct.
I returned the very next day at East Precinct, ready to continue the daily fight with these anarchists and communists. When I arrived, they were boarding up East Precinct. City employees were removing all the barriers and taking everything they could out of the precinct. We were ordered to about-face and leave. We went to a different precinct where it was announced that Durkan had decided to abandon East Precinct and to give it to the “protesters.” As we watched, Antifa took over the East Precinct and they erected walls at the adjacent intersections with the barricades we had used. They armed themselves, proceeded to vandalize the East Precinct with spray paint, and they declared Capitol Hill a Cop-Free, Autonomous Zone (CHAZ). It was hard enough for me to watch, but I saw Officers that were assigned to the East Precinct for decades, shield their faces, and walk out of the room in tears. The Capitol Hill area of the City of Seattle, to include East Precinct, was surrendered by its elected officials to the terrorists…
The same site has the following relevant article, which may be worthy of a glance:
https://www.theorganicprepper.com/playbook-step/
Back to the catalyst for all this:
https://medium.com/@gavrilodavid/why-derek-chauvin-may-get-off-his-murder-charge-2e2ad8d0911
It’s a long very informative article. Basically, Officer Chauvin was in compliance with Minneapolis PD official procedures. It sure looked bad but the cop did what he was supposed to do.
Defunding the police a remarkably bad idea and it really makes me wonder what happened to midwestern practicality?
As to CHAZ – all this hyperventilating by the right about some gay men and women with partially-shaved heads and tattoos running a soup kitchen is about on the same level as all the hyperventilating about Charlotte on the left. Much ado about very little.
Divadab,
So “some gay men and women with partially-shaved heads and tattoos ” set up a six block area kitchen complete with barriers and armed guards? That’s a heck of an interpretation of events.