Part One:
RACIAL PROFILING — AGAIN!
HIDING THE TRUTH ” AGAIN!
Our first guest is Robert Hennelly, reporter for The Chief/Leader, a public employee union journal in NYC, and @stucknation. We talk first about the latest of many stories about police departments losing sight of their moral compass, and engaging in obfuscation rather than transparency. The public is only now being given information about a police killing that occurred more than two weeks ago. Even if the police are telling us the full truth now, how dare they leave the victim’s grieving family in the dark about how their son died or why! How dare they withhold even the most basic information: the victim was black and the officers who killed him were white.
This killing happened two days *before* George Floyd was murdered by police in Minneapolis. Maurice Gordon, a black man from Poughkeepsie, NY, was driving on a highway in NJ when he was stopped by NJ State Troopers. He died while in custody, after being handled by five (5) different municipal police departments. Why was he moved around and processed by 5 police depts? What actions did the various police officers take against his body during that time, and how did those actions result in his death? Would the officers have acted differently if the victim had been white?
And why did the authorities hide this news? Public protests over the killing of George Floyd by white police officers had been criss-crossing the US and the world for two weeks. Did Maurice Gordon’s killers try to make sure that their actions would not face public scrutiny during this time period? Maybe their violence would just slip through the cracks, like so many other police killings.
Unlike George Floyd, no bystander videotaped the arrest or killing of Maurice Gordon, so virtually *no information was released* to the public until yesterday, more than two (2) weeks later! Even the victims family was left in the dark as to the circumstances of the arrest and killing. The public was not even told the race of the victim (black) or the race of the arresting officer (white), not to mention how he died or why he was arrested in the first place. The state said it was conducting an investigation, but absolutely no facts or evidence were revealed until a data dump yesterday, 16 days after-the-fact.
Why are police departments still hiding information from the public (from whence they get their pay) and from the families whose hearts are broken by events like these? How many other, similar police killings have taken place — or will continue to take place — even after all the outrage, all the demonstrations, all the political expressions of intent to end systemic racism? (Do they really mean it this time? Didn’t they really mean it after Eric Garner’s murder? Or Tamir Rice’s murder? Or Freddie Grey, Philando Castile, Sandra Bland, Ahmaud Arbery, or Breonna Taylor’s?) If crimes like these are kept secret, how can our government be held accountable? If our government is not transparent, how will we hold officials responsible for their actions?
We discussed the paucity of inquisitive reporting at the national level and the disappearance of local media altogether. In the past, probing local reporters would keep close tabs on what local officials were doing (or not doing). They would ferret out money that somehow got siphoned out of public coffers. They would dig up information showing which cronies had been given sweetheart deals that they didn’t deserve. But nowadays we are left to rely on a random bystander with a cell phone, someone who is not steeped in local politics, history or culture, who may (or may not) be available to record the latest events — of course without any history or context as to how or why.
The police union, too, is complicit in maintaining systemic racism. The union vigorously defends the indicted police no matter what: Many white union leaders don’t care whether these officers were violating the law or enforcing it. If George Floyd had been white, does anyone think those other 3 officers would have allowed Chauvin to asphyxiate Mr. Floyd? Wouldn’t the 3 officers have arrested the person who was attempting murder? Where was their moral compass — and the police unions’?
For organized labor, this is the most *defining moment* since MLK was alive. Are the unions going to return to their progressive roots — upholding the ideal of *all* workers uniting to insist on fair pay and working conditions? Or are labor unions going to protect their own individual well-being and allow the bosses (the elite and the powerful owners of capital) to divide and conquer?
Part Two:
TRUMP WANTS TO DENOUNCE DEMOCRACY AND HOLD ONTO POWER BY FORCE
We speak with Hedrick Smith, Pulitzer Prize-winning former New York Times reporter and editor, and Emmy award-winning producer/correspondent. He is now Exec. Editor of Reclaim the American Dream, an informational gateway aimed at helping people who are upset about America today to get engaged in fixing our democracy and making our economy fairer at the local level, where people power still has clout.
We discuss Donald Trump’s repeated bashing of the idea that mail-in voting might be allowed in November’s election. The president claims — without factual basis — that rampant fraud would ensue if voters could mail in their ballots. He ignores years of history, in which a number of states have not only permitted voting-by-mail, but some states have made that the default method of voting. Trump doesn’t comment on the utter lack of real fraud or other problems under this method. More importantly, Trump ignores the reality of COVID-19. Many potential voters are in legitimate fear that the virus could seriously harm them or even kill them. Even voters who are not over the age of 65 and who don’t have pre-existing medical conditions. Trump is insisting that Americans be forced to choose between exercising their precious constitutional right to vote, and jeopardizing their health.
Smith believes that Pres. Trump’s true goal is to promote distrust in our democratic electoral system. He wants Americans to think — if he loses the election — that some fraudulent conspiracy robbed him of the presidency, that his loss is just “fake news.” Afraid that his reelection chances are lower if mail-in voting is allowed, Trump is looking for an excuse to refuse to accept the election results. He is planning to hold onto power by military force, claiming that the democratic election was rigged.
