Mike Hixenbaugh first knew things had changed when someone on a four-wheeler started ripping up his lawn after his wife placed a Black Lives Matter sign outside their home on the suburban outskirts of Houston.
Hixenbaugh is an award-winning investigative reporter for NBC News. He’s covered wrongdoing within the child welfare system, safety lapses inside hospitals, and deadly failures in the US Navy. But when his front yard was torn apart in the summer of 2020 in the wake of the George Floyd protests, he saw a story about race and politics collide at his own front door. So like any investigative journalist, he started investigating, and his reporting about the growing divides in his neighborhood soon led him to the public schools.
As more than a dozen states sue the Trump administration over its policies aimed at ending public schools’ diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, More To The Story host Al Letson talks with Hixenbaugh about how America’s public schools have become “a microcosm” for the country’s political and cultural fights—“a way of zooming in deep into one community to try to tell the story of America.”
Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Digital producer: Nikki Frick | Interim executive producers: Brett Myers and Taki Telonidis | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson
The summer of 2020 was a hinge point in American history. The murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police inspired racial justice demonstrations nationwide. At the time, the FBI was convinced that extreme Black political activists could cross the line into domestic terrorism – a theory federal agents had first termed “Black identity extremism.”
That summer, Mickey Windecker approached the FBI. He drove a silver hearse, claimed to have been a volunteer fighter for the French Foreign Legion and the Peshmerga in Iraq, and had arrest records in four states that included convictions for misdemeanor sexual assault and menacing with a weapon, a felony. He claimed to the FBI that he had heard racial justice activists speak vaguely of training and violent revolution in Denver.
The FBI enlisted Windecker as a paid informant, gave him a recording device and instructed him to infiltrate Denver’s growing Black Lives Matter movement. For months, Windecker spied on activists and attempted to recruit two Black men into an FBI-engineered plot to assassinate the state’s attorney general.
Windecker’s undercover work is the first documented case of FBI efforts to infiltrate the 2020 racial justice movement. Journalist Trevor Aaronson obtained over a dozen hours of Windecker’s secret recordings and more than 300 pages of internal FBI reports for season 1 of the podcast series Alphabet Boys.
This episode of Reveal is a partnership with Alphabet Boys and production company Western Sound.
This is an update of an episode that originally aired in September 2023.
A House committee is considering legislation introduced by Colorado Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert that could leave taxpayers on the hook for up to $17.7 billion in costs associated with cleaning up oil and gas wells abandoned on public lands by fracking companies and other polluters, according to a new report from the watchdog group Public Citizen. Oil and gas industry lobbyists and their allies…
The summer of 2020 was a hinge point in American history. The murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police inspired racial justice demonstrations nationwide. At the time, the FBI was convinced that extreme Black political activists could cross the line into domestic terrorism – a theory federal agents had first termed “Black identity extremism.”
That summer, Mickey Windecker approached the FBI. He drove a silver hearse, claimed to have been a volunteer fighter for the French Foreign Legion and the Peshmerga in Iraq, and had arrest records in four states that included convictions for misdemeanor sexual assault and menacing with a weapon, a felony. He claimed to the FBI that he had heard racial justice activists speak vaguely of training and violent revolution in Denver.
The FBI enlisted Windecker as a paid informant, gave him a recording device and instructed him to infiltrate Denver’s growing Black Lives Matter movement. For months, Windecker spied on activists and attempted to recruit two Black men into an FBI-engineered plot to assassinate the state’s attorney general.
Windecker’s undercover work is the first documented case of FBI efforts to infiltrate the 2020 racial justice movement. Journalist Trevor Aaronson obtained over a dozen hours of Windecker’s secret recordings and more than 300 pages of internal FBI reports for season 1 of the podcast series Alphabet Boys.
This episode of Reveal is a partnership with Alphabet Boys and production company Western Sound.
The final episode of Mississippi Goddam shares new revelations that cast doubt on the official story that Billey Joe Johnson Jr. accidentally killed himself.
Our reporting brought up questions that the original investigation never looked into. Host Al Letson and reporter Jonathan Jones go back to Mississippi to interview the key people in the investigation, including Johnson’s ex-girlfriend – the first recorded interview she’s ever done with a media outlet. The team also shares its findings with lead investigator Joel Wallace and the medical examiner who looked into the case.
Finally, after three years of reporting, we share what we’ve learned with Johnson’s family and talk to them about the inadequacy of the investigation and reasons to reopen the case.
This episode was originally broadcast in December 2021.
Black communities around Mississippi have long raised concerns about suspicious deaths of young Black men, especially when law enforcement is involved.
Curley Clark, vice president of the Mississippi NAACP at the time of Reveal’s reporting, called Billey Joe Johnson Jr.’s case an example of “Mississippi justice.”
“It means that they still feel like the South should have won the Civil War,” Clark said. “And also the laws for the state of Mississippi are slanted in that direction.”
Before Johnson died during a traffic stop with a White sheriff’s deputy, friends say police had pulled him over dozens of times. And some members of the community raised concerns that police had been racially profiling Black people.
Reveal investigates Johnson’s interactions with law enforcement and one officer in particular.
This episode was originally broadcast in November 2021.
Billey Joe Johnson Jr. and Hannah Hollinghead met in their freshman year of high school. Hollinghead says Johnson was her first love, and in many ways, it was a typical teen romance. Friends say they would argue, break up, then get back together again. Some people were far from accepting of their interracial relationship.
On Dec. 8, 2008, they were both dating other people. According to Hollinghead and her mother, Johnson made an unexpected stop at her house, moments before he died of a gunshot wound during a traffic stop on the edge of town.
But it appears that investigators failed to corroborate statements or interview Johnson’s friends and family to get a better idea of what was going on in his life on the day he died. Reveal exposes deep flaws in the investigation and interviews the people closest to Johnson, who were never questioned during the initial investigation.
This episode was originally broadcast in November 2021.
Special Agent Joel Wallace of the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation was called in to investigate the death of Billey Joe Johnson Jr. He worked alongside two investigators from the George County district attorney’s office.
Wallace said that arrangement didn’t happen very often. And he now questions why they were assigned. “If you’ve got me investigating the case, then I’m an independent investigator,” he said. “But why would I need the district attorney investigator to oversee me investigating a case?”
The Johnson family was initially relieved because Wallace had experience investigating suspicious deaths. As a Black detective, he had dealt with racist backlash to his work.
Reveal host Al Letson and reporter Jonathan Jones visit Wallace, now retired, to talk about what happened with the investigation. When Wallace finds out what Reveal has uncovered, he begins to wonder whether the case should be reopened.
This episode was originally broadcast in November 2021.
After Billey Joe Johnson Jr. died in 2008, the state of Mississippi outsourced his autopsy. Al Letson and Jonathan Jones travel to Nashville, Tennessee, to interview the doctor who conducted it. Her findings helped lead a grand jury to determine Johnson’s death was an accidental shooting. However, Letson and Jones share another report that raises doubts about her original conclusions.
This episode was originally broadcast in October 2021.
On the morning of Billey Joe Johnson’s death, crime scene tape separates the Johnsons from their son’s body. Their shaky faith in the criminal justice system begins to buckle.
As Johnson’s family tries to get answers about his death, they get increasingly frustrated with the investigation. They feel that law enforcement officials, from the lead investigator to the district attorney, are keeping them out of the loop. While a majority-White grand jury rules that Johnson’s death was accidental, members of the family believe the possibility of foul play was never properly investigated.
This episode was originally broadcast in October 2021.
Billey Joe Johnson Jr. was a high school football star headed for the big time. Then, early one morning in 2008, the Black teenager died during a traffic stop with a White deputy. His family’s been searching for answers ever since.
More than a decade ago, Reveal host Al Letson traveled to Lucedale, Mississippi, to report on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. While there, locals told him there was another story he should be looking into: Johnson’s suspicious death.
During that traffic stop, police say Johnson died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. But for Johnson’s family, that explanation never made sense.
In the first episode of this seven-part series, Letson returns to Mississippi with reporter Jonathan Jones to explore what happened to Johnson – and what justice means in a place haunted by its history.
This episode was originally broadcast in October 2021.
The growth of the Black Lives Matter movement through the 2010s catalyzed a resurgence of Black activism in professional sports that had its climax in 2020 with the athletes’ boycott following the shooting of Jacob Blake. Just a few years later, this energy seems to have dissipated. What happened, and how can we comprehend these recent events in the longer arc of Black activism in sports? Sports journalist and author Howard Bryant joins Edge of Sports for a look at the build-up to 2020 and how many athletes’ politics were co-opted in the aftermath.
Howard Bryant is the author of ten books, including the forthcoming Kings and Pawns: Jackie Robinson and Paul Robeson in America. He has been a senior writer for ESPN since 2007 and has served as the sports correspondent for NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday since 2006.
Studio Production: David Hebden, Cameron Granadino Post-Production: Taylor Hebden Audio Post-Production: David Hebden Opening Sequence: Cameron Granadino Music by: Eze Jackson & Carlos Guillen
Transcript
Dave Zirin: Sports writing powerhouse Howard Bryant on the state of athletic protest; I got spicy things to say about the evils of sports betting; I’ve got a sports scholar that’s going to blow your mind talking about the Women’s World Cup – You gotta see it on Edge of Sports.
[Intro music]
Welcome to Edge of Sports, the TV show only on The Real News Network. I’m Dave Zirin, and we have on our program one of the best sports writers by any measure. I actually have a shelf in my house dedicated to his books. His name is Howard Bryant, and we’re talking about where all the activist energy in the sports world has gone.
I’ve also got choice words about the social cost of smartphone sports gambling becoming the economic lifeblood of the sports industry. And in our segment, Ask a Sports Scholar, I’ve got Hofstra prof, Brenda Elsey, whose research is about the development of women’s soccer internationally, which is kind of timely given that this tournament is coming up you might know about called the Women’s World Cup.
But first, the author of The Heritage: Black Athletes, A Divided America, and the Politics of Patriotism and the forthcoming Kings and Pawns: Jackie Robinson and Paul Robeson in America – Ooh, I’m excited about that one – Howard Bryant.
Howard Bryant, thanks so much for being here.
Howard Bryant: Good to be here, Dave.
Dave Zirin: All right, so just to background this critical conversation, I want to read a line you wrote in The Heritage. You wrote, “The Black athlete wanted to stick to sports. It was white America that would not let him.” Could you explain that, please?
Howard Bryant: Sure. I think that what it means is that when you think about the conversations of where Black athletes fit in the political realm, and so much of it is accusatory, so much of it is, why won’t you stop talking about politics? and, why do you have to ruin our games by talking about these things? and this isn’t the place where for you to choose that this is a topic that should be discussed. Now’s not the right time.
The historical roots of all of this come from white America. It comes from World War II. It comes from the 1936 Olympics. It comes from all of these different places where it was important that mainstream America hear from Black athletes that they supported the country. It was the Jewish athletes who were starting a boycott who wanted Black athletes to support them and join them in the ’36 boycott of the Munich Olympics.
And it was the Black athlete who was actually caught in the middle because there were Black athletes who sided and who were in support with the Jewish American athletes in boycotting the Olympics. And it was the mainstream press, the Westbrook Peglers of the world, who would write columns saying that the best way to show Hitler is for our guys to go over there and perform. This is politics. This isn’t Black athletes talking about their own rights. This is them being thrust into the political arena. It was Joe Louis.
And once again, when we think about the way that the United States government had been treating Black soldiers, it was a segregated military. There were huge percentages of military thought in America that didn’t even want to arm Black citizens who were soldiers. Give them menial tasks: Kitchen, mess, all of that stuff. That they were going to swab the decks. Do not give them guns.
And so then what do we see? We see Joe Louis on a poster with a rifle and a bayonet in his hands, which is antithetical to actually what a lot of folks want but it was the one way… You weren’t going to get the war effort drummed up by handing a 19-year-old Black male a mop in a poster. You had to let him fight.
And so once again, the Joe Louis is the guy. Jackie Robinson. There are so many examples where what we wanted from Black athletes was their voice. And then when they took control of that voice, nobody liked it.
Dave Zirin: White America, the power in America, they want Black athletes speaking out during the context of taking on, whether it’s Nazism or whether it’s communism, the Cold War. They want to counter the idea that the United States is an inherently racist society by saying, look at the Black athlete. But when Black athletes started using that voice for their own self-determination, that’s when you start to hear “shut up and dribble”. Am I encapsulating that right?
Howard Bryant: No. That’s 100% right. They want you to speak when they want you to speak. When they need you. And let’s remember that within these frameworks you had the United States’s foreign policy being criticized heavily by axis powers saying, well, how can you criticize our society? Look at your own. Look at how you treat Black people. You have an underclass of second-class citizens as well so who were you to criticize? So of course, to counter that, it was important that Black athletes spoke up.
Dave Zirin: So let’s go to summer of 2020 after the police killing of George Floyd. It was so common to say back then in the sports world that we were living in a time with more what we can call “sports activism” than any time since 1968. What did you think of that ’68 comparison in 2020, and did you find that historical parallel to be helpful?
Howard Bryant: I thought it was helpful from the standpoint that you needed some form of touchstone. And the 1960s is always the touchstone. I thought it was important from the standpoint to show that the 1960s was a long time ago. So if you’re in 2020 and you’re saying, well, we haven’t really seen this since 1968, that’s 52 years. And so I thought that was a very important benchmark to realize just how quiet things have been.
And I thought it was important for the athletes as well, in their own minds, to empower them, that they felt like they were part of this heritage. That maybe it would spur them to do more things if they were linked to the Muhammad Alis and the Tommy Smiths and the John Carloses, and really linked to real people who did real things, and that might affect them in a positive way. And I thought those comparisons were appropriate. I wasn’t sure they were completely appropriate because the times are so different, but I didn’t have a problem with it.
Dave Zirin: So that energy of 2020, I mean, you spoke about the importance of raising the issue of ’68 with regards to modern times in the hopes that more athletes would learn from it, feel a sense of connection, be inspired by it. And yet, that energy of 2020, we’re not feeling that right now in the sports world.
Howard Bryant: I think it’s very important to recognize what has been happening, and I think it’s important to realize the speed at which things are happening. 2020 was a perfect storm. 2020, you had a pandemic with everybody locked down. No one’s going anywhere. You also are still part of a remarkable decade going all the way back to the Miami Heat and Trayvon Martin with the hoodie. So we’ve been through this, whether it’s that or Freddie Gray or Ferguson. There are so many examples, nevermind Colin Kaepernick taking his knee in 2016.
So you have that as a backdrop. You have an incredibly polarizing election cycle on top of that. And so everything is happening at once. And at the same time, people are afraid to go outside. So that energy was not going to be sustainable.
But what I thought was really interesting about 2020 wasn’t just that you knew that you weren’t going to have that kind of energy over this much time. The speed in which that energy was co-opted, not just by the pandemic, but by the athletes’ response to the pandemic. That the players who had spent the last decade really positioning themselves as forces for good, that they were going to be citizens, suddenly became individualists, and suddenly they became libertarians, and suddenly they were not interested anymore in being part of the public solution.
Now you’ve got LeBron James who has been credited with building schools and getting people out to vote, and he’s more than an athlete, and now he’s sending out memes countering the vaccine effort by sending out memes equating COVID to a common cold. And so what’s interesting about this – And we’re going to see over the next several years – Is how those transitions affected the previous years. Did they undermine their own movement? And I think the answer, for now, is absolutely yes.
Dave Zirin: 2020, going back to it. Is that the sort of thing where the wine is out of the bottle, the cork is out, and 2020 should be seen, with ebbs and flows, as the beginnings… And of course going back years, Kaepernick, the response to Trayvon. So this whole period, should we look at it as the beginnings of something that, with ebbs and flows, is now part of the sports landscape? Or are they, in effect, putting the wine back in the bottle?
Howard Bryant: Well, I think it’s the beginning of the end of something. I think that when you’re looking at eras, just as you looked at the early 1970s as the end of the 1960s in terms of political movements, I think 2020 was the beginning of the end of something. And I say that because of two events. I think the first one was the realization in 2020 that the players had taken, collectively, they had taken a step from 2016.
2016, Donald Sterling in the Los Angeles Clippers scandal. The players are threatening to boycott a playoff game. But they don’t boycott. They throw their jerseys, they turn them inside out, they toss them out at half court, but they keep playing. The machine keeps rolling. Jacob Blake gets shot in Kenosha in August of 2020, and the players stopped playing. The machine comes to a halt.
That was a moment that we’re going to remember, and the response to that moment. Because the players then went to former President Obama, who essentially stopped their strike, told them to go back to work, lean in more deeply into the democracy. Even though the players weren’t protesting the lack of access to voting, they were protesting Jacob Blake’s shooting. And they went back to work and they dug in more deeply, and the Milwaukee Bucks set up polling centers, and LeBron James set up voter registration, and the Atlanta Dream got… And so all of the movements got back involved more deeply into the democracy. They became even better citizens.
And then six months after that, you get Jan. 6, and the very people, for the past decade, who have told you to shut up and play, who told you to stand for the flag and kneel for the cross, who told you to do all of these things, they are doing the most undemocratic thing we’ve seen in this country’s history for a very long time. They are attacking the most symbolically important legislative building in the world. These are the people who were offended by you protesting, taking a knee, raising your fist, and you said nothing.
And I think we’re going to remember their silence in response to that. It was, to me, the biggest slap in the face to every Black athlete in the country. And none of them said a word. And I was really surprised by that. Maybe they weren’t connecting those dots, or maybe the moment was over, or maybe they were thinking about vaccines, or whatever. But the bottom line is, you want to talk about irony, about doing things the right way, about the time being inappropriate. They did everything that they were accusing the players of doing, and the players didn’t do anything close to that. All the players did was a little silence during the national anthem.
Dave Zirin: Do you feel like, in some respects, the players lived through a, you could call it a rhyming version of that infamous time when the march on Washington had been called and Bob Kennedy said to John Lewis, why don’t you stop all this freedom riding, sitting in shit, and protesting, and in return you can do voter registration and we’ll give you tax-free status?
Howard Bryant: Yeah.
Dave Zirin: It feels like that. Let’s ingest you into the system –
Howard Bryant: Absolutely.
Dave Zirin: – To avert a challenge.
Howard Bryant: Well, no question. And what you end up with is a weakening of your movement. It’s a constant weakening and a diluting of your standing. And I think that that was something, that moment, at least to me, in looking at it, was a huge missed opportunity on the part of the players. Even if they didn’t produce any protests, just to call it out, to say something, to have some form of sustained response to it. That this is what you are doing. You are the very people who told us not to protest.
Dave Zirin: Yeah. So is it fear? Is it the quietude of broader resistance movements in recent years? Is it post-pandemic malaise? Is it the right wing feeling on the offensive and that actually scaring people? How do you understand putting a button on 2020? Because I didn’t see it. I thought, oh, this is about a birth of something even bigger, when it was more the end of something that was big, but maybe not as transformative as it could have been.
Howard Bryant: Yeah, I thought it was the end of something because of the Obama presence.
Dave Zirin: Got you.
Howard Bryant: I thought that this is what the players had been threatening to do for 50 years. We saw this in Missouri at the college level back in 2015.
Dave Zirin: Yeah, 2015. That’s right.
Howard Bryant: And this was averted by actual movement. So the players had an opportunity to really assert some control, and then that was diluted. And I think that there’s one school of thought that showing that you could do it and doing it for one day or for a weekend was enough, and enough was enough. Or there’s another school of thought that says, now’s the time, if you want something, to demand it, because they know that you’re serious. And what I always found interesting about that time period was Naomi Osaka was an athlete playing an individual sport, tennis, and she had simply said, “I’m not playing.”
And the tournament, Western and Southern in Cincinnati, had pretty much co-opted her protest and said, we’re all not playing. We’re going to just take a break. What did they call it? They called it a pause. And then the whole sports world took a pause, which tells you how much the industry was aware both of what the players can do and the optics of it. So it suddenly wasn’t a strike. It was a collective breather. It was a collective timeout, which is not what it was at all. It was the athletes saying, we’re not playing. Very different messaging.
Dave Zirin: I’m constantly scouring the landscape and trying to see, okay, when’s the next energy going to come to the fore, and where is that energy going to come from? Is it going to come from women athletes? Is it going to come from the college ranks? Just looking to see what’s bubbling and what’s not. I’d like to say that, because the attacks on the right have been so intense against transgender athletes, that you might see some broader solidarity in the sports world, the whole anyone can play, anyone should play slogan, which took root about a decade ago, and you’re not seeing that much at all.
I mean, to me, one of the most poignant parts or sad parts of the recent NBA finals was Heat players not really saying anything about the fact that the most famous Heat player of all, Dwayne Wade, just had to leave the state of Florida because he didn’t feel safe with his daughter. And the only person to say anything on the Heat about Ron DeSantis or anything was Udonis Haslem, who might have been playing in 1968. So you didn’t get any of the leaders stepping up to say anything about a governor who’s basically on a wrecking mission of all marginalized communities in the state of Florida. That, to me, the contrast of that to the Trayvon Martin response was pretty sharp.
Howard Bryant: Well, once again, what do we always say in sports? The smartest guy in the room is the guy with the biggest number of zeros on his paycheck. Who do we follow? We follow the guys with the biggest number of zeros on his paycheck. So you look at the leaders of the Miami Heat in 2023 are very different than the leaders of the Miami Heat in 2012 and 2011. And so the question has always been, for me, how much are we asking of these athletes, and is it foolish to ask that much of them?
I could not disagree more that the transgender movement is going to be the spot. It should be, because this is the reality for this new generation coming up. But when you combine the religious elements to it, when you combine the attacks, you look at the legislation that is being passed in different places around the country, whether it’s Montana or Utah, places where this isn’t even an issue, per se, it’s just an assault. The right wing is always on the offensive, as we’re seeing with the Supreme Court. The best defense is a good offense. You’re constantly on the defensive to make it seem as though you are the aggrieved party.
I don’t think the players are going to rally around this because I don’t think the players know. And I think you’ve got other athletes in the game who don’t know what to say yet. They don’t know how they feel. And you talk to them about all their notions of fair competition, et cetera, I don’t think anyone over there yet, at least en masse, feels comfortable taking a leadership position, because the opportunities have been there to do that, and they haven’t.
Dave Zirin: Yeah. And you mentioned the recent Supreme Court rulings. Again, a large silence in the face of that, which becomes jarring when you start… And this is part of the problem too, when we start looking to athletes habitually for the response as opposed to looking to ourselves, looking to protest movements. Because I find myself getting caught in that trap. You start looking for athletes to say and do things that you don’t see broader society playing in the hopes that they’ll be ahead of the pack and leading, but that is a lot to ask from people who, in 2023, a lot of them are corporations with legs.
Howard Bryant: That’s right. Well, we can’t have it both ways.
Dave Zirin: Exactly.
Howard Bryant: One of the things that I’ve always talked about, whether it was in The Heritage and then also the book that followed that, Full Dissidence, more so in Full Dissidence, is if we’re really being honest, the athletes never lead. They’ve really never led in a lot of ways. There are a handful of examples over the course of the century where you can say the athletes led. Normally what the athletes do is they amplify an existing movement. Even Muhammad Ali was amplifying an existing anti-war sentiment. When you look at what the players were doing during the last decade, it was the people who were actually in the street first. The people were the ones blocking traffic at the airports, and standing in the middle of the highways, and doing all these things, and protesting Freddie Gray.
It didn’t start with the players. The players recognized that they were reacting to Ferguson as well. So the reason why we look to them so much is because they have these massive, massive, massive platforms of accessibility. People listen to them. But they’re never leaders. I’m not really sure I can think of too many movements historically where it started with a professional athlete. Normally what happens is they’re following. Obviously inside of their own business, you may see some leadership, Curt Flood, for example. But Curt Flood was not a larger labor leader, Curt Flood was a labor pioneer in his industry.
Dave Zirin: Well, you’ve been so generous with your time. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that your next book, interestingly, is about two people who were part of movement leaderships and were people who spoke at rallies. Two of the most important examples of that and two of the lonely examples of that. I’m talking about Jackie Robinson and Paul Robeson. The book is called Kings and Pawns: Jackie Robinson and Paul Robeson in America. Why take on this as a writing topic? I think it’s fascinating. I can’t wait. Can you speak a little bit about the highlighting of Robinson and Robeson, when they came together, when they collided, and why you think that moment is so evocative?
Howard Bryant: Yeah. Thank you for that. I think that the biggest reason, for me, is because of fascination with these two giants, and certainly fascination with Paul Robeson in terms of what we do to people in this country, and how he has essentially been erased and erased from Black America, in a lot of ways at the hands of Black America, which I’m very interested in exploring. I’m fascinated by this moment in time because the moments that we’re in right now when you’re talking about Ron DeSantis and the political movement we’re in now is not that different, in some ways, from the hysterias of the 1950s and ’40s and McCarthyism.
So these two giants were obvious… And also for the writing that I’ve done over the course of my career, it’s always fascinated me that that moment, July 18, 1949 when Jackie Robinson testified against Paul Robeson in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee, has always been whittled down to a sentence. That’s a pretty damn big sentence that this moment happened, and I’m guilty of it myself. And when I’ve written about it, it’s just a line.
It’s not just a line. What happened? And what happened to us, what happened to those two individuals? I think what this book really is about is how you have these two people, who were essentially on opposite sides of a political spectrum, wound up, within 15 years, on the same side of political disillusionment as Black Americans. And this is the story of that day and how they both ended up wounded pretty fatally by this country.
Dave Zirin: I’m imagining an isosceles triangle. They start in two different places, but with some hope in humanity, if not in America, and they end up in a very similar place of, you could call it a radical disillusionment.
Howard Bryant: That’s right. And that’s exactly what the project is all about, and that’s why I’m really excited about it. Because you look and you see all the opportunities and you get to pinpoint… And that’s what we do as writers and as people who love history as well. You pinpoint these moments. As the great David Halberstam used to tell me all the time, you think about these intersections where history could have gone this way or history could have gone that way. You take those moments and you examine those moments and it will tell you so much about where you are today.
Dave Zirin: Wow. Howard Bryant, thank you so much for joining us here on Edge of Sports TV. I know you’ve got a great book topic because I’m totally jealous that you’re writing this, and I’m also super excited and jealous. It’s like some odd combination of emotions. So you’ve got it going, man. I’m just proud to know you and proud you’re writing this, so thank you.
Howard Bryant: I thank you, and thank you for having me on, Dave. And all I can say whenever I think about this book is I can’t wait for it to be done, because now you’re in the middle of it and you’re saying, okay, did I take on a little… It’s an incredible subject and it’s really, really fun. And you know how that is when you have a book project that you just love. It’s a great subject.
Dave Zirin: Every day is a joy. Those rare moments where that happens when you’re really in the sweet spot of loving something. Howard Bryant, thanks so much, man. I really appreciate you.
Howard Bryant: No, my pleasure. Thanks Dave.
Dave Zirin: And now some choice words. Okay, look, we need to talk about the new national pastime: sports betting. I’m old enough to remember, lo, the many years ago when Pete Rose was banned for life from Major League Baseball for placing bets on his own team. I remember when sports leagues said they would never put a team in Las Vegas because of the very physical proximity to legal gambling. I remember when the official line was that the integrity of the game and placing bets could not even exist in the same zip code.
Well, fast forward a few decades, hell, a few years, and it’s remarkable how much has changed. Now gambling is as much a part of sports as beer commercials. Smartphones have opened the door to sports betting apps, and the leagues have embraced the lucrative bounty created and generated by smartphone gambling. They’ve jumped on this with the wanton shamelessness of a puppy licking its bowl.
It’s dizzying how quickly the commissioners have made this turn from gambling is evil to selling it to fans as all fun and Americana. I won’t insult your intelligence by explaining this radical shift – It’s money. A ton of it. But it’s not just the league owners panting with their puppy bowls out. Sports media like the trendsetter, ESPN Sports Center and its tall, smoothly bald host, Scott Van Pelt, are always ready with a special sports betting segment. Also, the most esteemed commentators in the sports media world, like TNT’s studio hoops team led by Charles Barkley and Kenny Smith, now do their own giggly gambling bits.
In other words, a massive portion of the economic lifeblood of pro sports, from the leagues to the top of the media food chain, is being underwritten by sports gambling – Actually, that’s not quite right. It’s being underwritten by fans making bets they overwhelmingly lose. It’s a regressive tax on fans. Sort of like the lottery, except with one vital difference: It’s privatized. So instead of money going to build roads or schools, it goes into the pockets of billionaires.
Now, I know some, clearly most, will say it’s all good, clean fun. But this isn’t just about sports betting. It’s about access to betting and it’s about the apps. Yes, anyone, especially in the digital age, can gamble whenever one likes. But there’s something called a “hassle cost” that has been eliminated by the apps. Now if anyone wants to lay down some money, there is no need to find a bookie or even navigate a casino website. Just swipe your finger, and as quickly as checking text messages, you are done. They have taken the most dangerous part of gambling – And I do speak from experience here – And that’s that it’s addictive, and they’ve combined it with that other great modern addiction, the smartphone. And for the leagues, it’s been like cracking open Fort Knox.
Now, the phone app giants do have a warning label for gambling addicts, but it’s about as sincere as a lung cancer warning on a pack of smokes. The leagues do not care. And as long as the sweet dough trickles down to players and the now compromised media, no one else is going to raise a stink about this either.
But as Neil Young wrote, the devil fools with the best laid plans, and wow, has old Satan fooled with the plans here, because something incredibly predictable has taken place: The players are deciding, in every violation of every league rule, to place their own bets. As a result, the NFL has just suspended four more players for gambling. And they didn’t get any slap on the wrist, either. These players are suspended for the entire 2023 season. It’s an incredibly harsh punishment for doing what everyone in the sports world is promoting, from the boss to the media interviewing these players after the game.
The sports owners, let’s be clear about this, are terrified that if fans think players are operating in a way that compromises the alleged integrity of the games, the financial hit could be catastrophic. That makes referees as well – Who make a fraction of the players’ salaries – Particularly vulnerable to the allure of gambling, and players know it. The ugliest scene from the NBA season on the court was, for me, when Dallas Mavericks Superstar, Luca Doncic, late in a close game, started to make dollar signs with his fingers in the ref’s face to indicate that he thought the fix was in. Expect more of that.
So it’s Vegas for the fans, owners, and media, and the Vatican for the players and the refs. And this is a recipe for future disasters. Players will gamble. The commissioner’s office will hand out year-long suspensions. And the media will get in deeper with gambling companies they should be covering instead of profiting from.
The early sports organizers way back in the late 19th century were terrified of sports betting, fearful that fans would leave in droves if they felt like the outcomes were manipulated. A little more healthy fear, a little more introspection, a little more critical thinking, and a little less blind devotion to taxing fans would be a step in the right direction. But until there is a massive scandal – And that day is coming – We can only sit back and watch gambling swallow the sports world whole.
We’ll be back right after this with Ask a Sports Scholar.
And now in our segment, Ask a Sports Scholar, as promised, we have Dr. Brenda Elsey from Hofstra. How are you, Dr. Elsey?
Brenda Elsey: Good. Thanks for having me.
Dave Zirin: A thrill to have you, and I can’t think of anyone else I want to ask this question to more. As we approach the Women’s World Cup, which we’re all very excited about over here, how would you summarize the state of women’s soccer in Latin America?
Brenda Elsey: I think uneven is a really fair word. You have amazing things happening in the professional leagues in Mexico, for example, which is breaking attendance records and has been for several years, and yet we won’t see their national team. And yet on the other hand, you have Colombian professional leagues in shambles, and we will see their professional team. So there’s a lot going on, a lot of work being done at the grassroots level. Very little of that gets the glory it should. So we’re in a place where, as always, you do not lack for talent, you lack for support.
Dave Zirin: Wow. You call it a corrupt system steeped in misogyny. Could you speak to that? What is it about the system that’s steeped in… How does the misogyny operate to prevent full flowering of women’s soccer?
Brenda Elsey: Oh, that’s like my life’s work, Dave. It is a corrupt system, and it is one that requires misogyny, and misogyny requires… They work together. So what happens is things like the normalization of violence, the normalization of inequality happens through gender relations in Latin America. That really feeds into corruption. Lack of accountability. Even the kind of promises that are made to young players of, we operate in this system, you will never get in trouble for anything. There is no accountability.
And so I think the two work together. I don’t think Latin America is uniquely misogynist. I don’t think it’s uniquely corrupt. It’s just the place I study. And in this space, the two go hand in hand, and women are also very powerful in terms of making the federation look good and making them look like they care about development, but what’s happening on the ground is very different.
Dave Zirin: You just wrote an amazing article that I’ll put out on the show’s feed so everybody can read it. It’s called “‘Café con Mala Leche’: Colombian Women’s Football in Crisis”. “Café con mala leche” means “coffee with spoiled milk”. I was hoping you could explain the title and the current state of affairs in Colombia.
Brenda Elsey: The Colombian team often comes with different kinds of nicknames related to Coffee: [Spanish]. And of course, because Colombian coffee is such a national icon, a piece of identity that often goes with the team. And the team itself is wonderful and made up of amazing people; Linda Caicedo. People are really looking to her as the breakout star for Latin American soccer in this World Cup with good reason. She is a phenomenal player.
And yet, what we know is that, since 2015, this is a program that has actively avoided grappling with very serious charges of sexual assault, harassment, and other kinds of negligence in terms of fields, in terms of scheduling matches. I mean, it’s a really wide range. And that’s part of the problem, is that you might say, hey, what’s the big deal, women don’t get the same kind of fields? And what I’m trying to argue is that that all exists on a spectrum. And of course the most horrific charges are ones of sexual assault of minors, which has been ongoing since 2017. And yet we have the same federation president in Colombia, Ramón Jesurún, who has faced nothing. Even under investigation from the Colombian government all this time, he just continues to be promoted within FIFA and CONMEBOL.
Dave Zirin: Wow. Bigger question for you. Sports has always been integrated into feminist and women’s movements in the United States, for almost as long as there have been women’s movements in the United States. In Latin America, are we seeing sports becoming integrated into pushes for women’s rights and autonomy? Has it been a part of women’s movements in the past? If so, how recent? Could you speak about that particular intersection?
Brenda Elsey: I’m so glad you asked, because I think when people are looking for progress and looking for change, the most success that we’ve seen in the case of equal conditions for women’s sports is when it comes with feminist agendas and grassroots support from the feminist movement. Going back to the very first case of a professional woman who was unfairly fired from her club, Macarena Sanchez in Argentina, that became a really big feminist cause as part of [foreign language]. In Brazil, that’s probably been more true than anywhere else because of the law that banned women from playing football in Brazil. It was very early on a feminist cause.
So it hasn’t been the athletes that aren’t looking to be feminist, but the feminist movement itself, which was, like in most places, dominated by some very elite Latin American women that were more interested in things like education, perhaps, and didn’t really see sports always – Not all of them, of course. I’m speaking very broadly – As central to their cause. But right now, you saw the Brazilian women’s team arrive, they’ve been convoked, and they come with a message of support for Iranian women.
Dave Zirin: I saw that. That was incredible.
Brenda Elsey: So the whole region has had a ton of feminist solidarity since years. I was on your show a while ago talking about the very first official friendly of the Puerto Rican women’s team when they played Argentina and they did an on-field protest, and they asked the Argentine team, is it okay if we do this? And the Argentine team was like, oh my gosh, yes. We’re just going to let that ball sit there until you’re done. So there’s really wonderful solidarity among these teams, and not all of them might call themselves feminist, but I think it’s fair to say they’re challenging a patriarchy and their actions are feminist.
Dave Zirin: The last World Cup, the political cry that rang out was very US centric. It was about equal pay, it was beautiful, it was progressive. It was also, to repeat, very US centric. Are there reform measures on an international scale that those of us who are going to support and enjoy and cheer for the Women’s World Cup, are there reform measures that we can champion in the process that are international in scope?
Brenda Elsey: I think the number one area that has been really successful in terms of international organization is FIFPRO. FIFPRO, the International Players Union, has taken a really strong interest in women and said, hey, just because they’re not professionalized in Colombian labor law doesn’t mean we can’t advocate for them as workers. And so FIFPRO has put a number of measures out there, some have been picked up.
I think we have to keep our eye on where that FIFA money goes. There was that big announcement a few weeks ago by FIFA that said, we’re going to play the players directly after a number of federations: Nigeria, Colombia included, and others complained they weren’t paid. They said, we’re going to pay the players directly. But it’s still not clear. I mean, do they have their bank account details, or is this really going to go through the Federation? So I think we need to just keep watching and listening to the aftermath too, because the tournament’s going to be so exciting, but we have to make sure that they’re adequately compensated after.
Dave Zirin: One last question. You’ve been so great with your time. Earlier in the episode, I did a rather hard polemic against sports betting, so excuse my hypocrisy. But for sports bettors out there, what is the team that you see giving the best opportunity to knock off the United States? Who are the teams that you think we should be looking at that have a real shot at sending the US home without the top prize?
Brenda Elsey: Okay. You know that I, as an historian, not only am I totally against sports betting, but I’m also terrible at predicting the future [Zirin laughs] in any way, shape or form. I have heard almost nothing about Germany, and I’m surprised about that. Ada Hegerberg is back for Norway, so I’m interested in that. I always want Brazil to do better than we think they’re going to do. Their friendlies performance has not dazzled, but that’s a possibility as well. But I’m with you on sports betting.
Dave Zirin: I can’t wait for you to see my little rant, hopefully.
Brenda Elsey: I’m excited.
Dave Zirin: Yeah, I’ll send it to you, without question. Dr. Brenda Elsey, it’s such a joy. Thanks so much for being on the show.
Brenda Elsey: Thank you. It’s so wonderful to see you, Dave.
Dave Zirin: Well, that’s all the time for this week’s show. Oh, I love doing this show. I love what we’re doing because it’s unlike any sports show out there, and that’s what makes it fun, from my perspective at least. Yo, thank you so much, Howard Bryant. Thank you so much, Dr. Brenda Elsey. Thank you to everybody at The Real News Network. For everybody watching, please stay frosty. We are out of here. Peace.
Maximillian Alvarez: Thank you so much for watching The Real News Network, where we lift up the voices, stories, and struggles that you care about most. And we need your help to keep doing this work. So please, tap your screen now, subscribe, and donate to The Real News Network. Solidarity forever.
The name George Floyd has become a symbol across not only the US, but also the wider world. While George Floyd became known to most of us in death, he also lived a life that was deeply cherished by those closest to him. George’s brother, Philonise Floyd, and his sister-in-law, Keeta Floyd, join The Real News for an exclusive interview looking back on George’s life three years since his death at the hands of convicted former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. Philonise and Keeta, who have since established the Philonise and Keeta Floyd Institute for Social Change, continue to struggle for police accountability and racial justice.
Production: Nelly Cardoso, Michael Ma Post-Production: Michael Ma
Transcript
Philonise Floyd: Hi. I’m Philonise Floyd, brother of George Floyd.
Keeta Floyd: I’m Keeta Floyd, the VP of Philonise and Keeta Floyd Institute for Social Change and the wife of Philonise Floyd.
Maximillian Alvarez: Well, Philonise, Keeta, thank you both so much for sitting down with me here at The Real News Network. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it. I, frankly, don’t know how to say how sorry I am to you and your family for everything that you’ve been through. But we at The Real News, and our audience, I know are sending you nothing but love and solidarity from now into eternity.
The world and the rest of the country really came to know George, or Perry, because of what happened to him on the worst day and, ultimately, the last day of his life. I wanted to ask if we could change time and reality, and somehow the people of the world knew George because of what happened to him on the best day of his life. What do you think folks would know about him? What would you want folks to know about George in his happier days?
Philonise Floyd: Oh man, it’s so much. He was an amazing person when it come to speaking with others, encouraging others to do things. He taught people so much in church. Basketball was one of his passions. So, he taught a lot of people basketball. He taught them different moves in football. He even cut kids’ hair who was underprivileged, meaning that they mom was just going to put the… They call it the chili bowl.
Maximillian Alvarez: Yeah, yeah. The bowl.
Philonise Floyd: [All laugh] The bowl. And they were going to cut it like that. He couldn’t let them go to school like that. I remember him when he bought the clippers and he said, I can do a better job. But it turned out he did a better job than a whole bunch of the barbers. And people was lining up, I want my hair cut. I want my hair cut.
George, he did a lot of things in the community. He took a lot of kids to the YMCA. Even when the YMCA had closed down in the neighborhood, he was taking people to the Boys & Girls Club because he knew a lot of people from playing sports. When you go to church and stuff, you get to meet a lot of people. So by being in church, we get to greet other people. They just paved the way.
George, he was just an astonishing person to us because we prayed together, we slept together. We did so much. We ate banana mayonnaise sandwiches and stuff.
Maximillian Alvarez: [Laughs] I’ve heard about these sandwiches.
Philonise Floyd: Yeah. It’s a lot of stuff. We had salmon croquette for breakfast. If my mom couldn’t afford salmon croquette, we had mackerel. We ate grits and eggs with it. It was just always a day of love in the household. So, the memories that we cherished, me and my sister, we was just talking about him today, how much we miss him. We wish that he didn’t have to go through what he went through. Because all the money that they gave us, they can have it all back. I just want my brother.
Maximillian Alvarez: Okay. Keeta, what about you? What do you remember?
Keeta Floyd: For me, I don’t have the perfect love story, what childhood was like with George. I met George as an adult, at our wedding, actually. He was just so supportive. He was extremely proud of the fact that Philonise had just gotten married. He had just started trucking school, so he had started a business. George was eager and excited about all those new endeavors that we were coming up on. He was just excited that day.
One of the things that’s always stood out with him, for me, is that he always had something positive to say to the children. It’s like, hey, stay in school. Make sure you’re doing this. Make sure you’re doing that. And I thought that was amazing advice because here it is, he’s like seven feet tall, and all the kids looked up to him. He just always had a pleasant word of advice to give to them. So that’s my love story about George. He was just so sweet and humble. A humble guy, a gentle giant.
Philonise Floyd: You know what’s funny about it? Because I took our son over there to see George, and he was talking to [inaudible] because he played football too. He was like, I’m this good. You’re not better than me. And George was just sitting down the entire time. So George said, let me see what you got. He stood up, and he’s like, man, I never thought he was going to stop standing up [laughs]. He said that they was moving, you know how when you’re wrestling? My brother was just pushing him, pushing him out the way. My son was still trying to go.
But the fact that he said, he’s going to be a great athlete because he’s not scared. He said, most people look at me, they get intimidated. But he said, he kept on going. It shows that he’s a competitor. And he said, I like that. That’s what he told me. I still remember that.
Maximillian Alvarez: I mean, it sounds like you guys also just… like that was part of your life growing up. I mean, we’re sitting here at the University of Houston, 20-minute walk from Cuney Homes. I was wondering if you could say a little more about what it was like for you guys growing up, what you guys got up to.
Philonise Floyd: Oh man, it’s crazy. Oh, well, we would come up every day. We had cereal. Whatever we wanted to eat for breakfast, we could eat it in the house. So the thing about it is, as I got older I used to see these marks on the wall. I said, Mom, why are all these marks on the wall? She said, because your brother always want to measure his height, because he wants to get taller all the time. So I’m looking up like, man, I wonder, will I ever reach that level? But now, as I got older, I’m probably at a certain level now that I never knew.
It was the old Cuney Homes. It was before they fixed it up. It’s before Texas Southern had gates. It’s before the University of Houston had all of these buildings and stuff built. Because I think they still had a Hot… No, they call it the Fatita now. It’s not the Hot Fives no more. I remember watching him play there from Jack Hays High School, we going to different games at the Barnett Stadium. I remember him being in the neighborhood playing them pickup games. And when I was old enough – Well, I wasn’t really old enough to play, but they let me play.
And they was teaching me how to be physical and how to play the game. And I remember his friend. He told his friends, play against him just like he playing against grown men. So he put a move on me, and I just fell on the ground.
Maximillian Alvarez: He crossed you up?
Philonise Floyd: No, he clipped me! But nobody knew that he clipped me. And I was ashamed because I’m like, he didn’t cross me over because he didn’t have the ball, but he did a move on me where it made me fall. And then they gave him the ball and then he shot. But that’s the same guy who went overseas to play basketball. He was already a star. But I was trying to guard him and all he did was just shoot right over me.
The point I’m trying to make is he said, the only way you’re going to progress, you got to play against people that’s better than you. He said you can’t get comfortable playing with people that’s on the same level as you.
Keeta Floyd: It was just always positive advice coming from him. And he loved God.
Philonise Floyd: Yes.
Keeta Floyd: It was like everything was just so humble about him.
Philonise Floyd: Everything. On that same court, I remember when the pastor, he used to come out there and set the chairs up and stuff on the basketball court. Nobody would come out. And George came and sat down, and all of a sudden, when he sat down, everybody came out and wanted to have church.
So he started a movement right then and there with people in the community who wanted to attend church. Because he always said, you have to put the guns down. That’s the number one thing. He always said it’s too many people who’s struggling that can’t, and they trying to survive, but they’re going to shoot at each other for what? He said, you going to give these people your whole entire life and you’ll never see daylight again because you murdered somebody.
And that’s the same thing with the police officers that did the thing they did. If they could change everything, I know they would. I know they would want to. But the fact that once you go down the wrong path and you do something that vicious to somebody, it’s over with.
Keeta Floyd: There’s no turning back. Society doesn’t look at you the same.
Philonise Floyd: Yeah. One of those officers, he was Black, but nobody didn’t know. And his whole family, they just said, cast him away. We wasn’t raised like that.
Keeta Floyd: Wasn’t raised like that.
Philonise Floyd: Yeah.
Keeta Floyd: They reached out to us and they apologized on his behalf.
Maximillian Alvarez: Well, I wanted to ask about that with the few minutes I got left with you guys. And I don’t know, I feel just like everyone else in the country and have just been reliving the horrors of that moment, the injustice that George and your family and so many others endure in this country. It’s really good for my soul to hear these stories, and I’m really honored that we get to share them with our audience.
And I wanted to build on that positivity and ask about the work that you all are doing, and what it’s been like for you to step into that role. I imagine it’s a whirlwind. But now, as your shirts say, y’all founded the Philonise and Keeta Institute for Social Change. So tell me about what it’s been like stepping into this role out of so much pain? Trying to make change and trying to use this horrific thing that happened to George, to make sure that it doesn’t happen again?
Philonise Floyd: It’s going to always be emotional. Because the fact that every time I step out, I always tell myself I’m doing it for my brother. But the fact that it’s bigger than my brother, because there’s so many other individuals around the world who are going through the same thing.
As you can see, Ralph [inaudible], you can see the problem that he had. He was shot right outside of a door in the head and then in his arm, and still nobody wanted to give him any assistance. He went to like two or three houses and then nobody wanted to help him until he finally got some help. But my thing is, that, to me is, there’s no way I could have turned somebody back knowing that somebody was bleeding like that. So I look at that. I look at what happened to Dante Wright when we were down there.
Keeta Floyd: On trial.
Philonise Floyd: On trial. And we had to come out and speak. And I think about his mama and his dad, that was an interracial couple. And the fact that it doesn’t matter, they lost their son. And she’d say it all the time.
Keeta Floyd: Behind the air freshener.
Philonise Floyd: Hanging out.
Keeta Floyd: And a trained police officer thought that she pulled her Taser versus her gun. And she’d trained individuals on how to be safe with a Taser versus a gun.
And so what we do with our institution is we go in. And on a community side, we advocate with those families, we give them resources, we answer any questions that they may have. But for some reason, every time Philonise walks in the room, it’s just giving them a breath of fresh air that gives them hope. And they’re like, we can get through this, because you guys went through so much. And it’s like, but you’re going through it right now. And so our hearts just go out to them.
One of the biggest things that we do is we do a lot of policy changes. We review the policies and procedures with different government agencies. And so we let them know reasons as to why these policies should change. And not just a conversation of us being angry or us being bitter, because that’s not what the case is all about. You can’t argue numbers. So we bring all the statistics to them, and we let them know, this is what’s going on in this area. And unfortunately, it’s a lot of people of color that’s experiencing this. You don’t see that in other neighborhoods.
I remember one of our speaking engagements – Because we go throughout the country and we have these conversations with different entities – One of our speaking engagements, we were in the City of Vermont, and we were speaking to a crowd at a business. And the lady was the CEO of the company. And when we began to explain the difference in how we teach our children for something as simple as when you’re stopped by the police officer, here are the safety things you should follow: put your windows down, put hands on the wheel, it blew her away. She started crying. She became very emotional. She was like, I didn’t know that you guys had to teach your children that, because I just don’t do that. Caucasian lady versus African American upbringing.
Philonise Floyd: And she didn’t know.
Keeta Floyd: Yeah, she didn’t know. And so it touched her employees, because they’ve never seen that side of her. She’s always very structured and poised and militant. And so it blew them away to see that she did have a soft side and she did want to be about change.
And for me, the most valuable piece is voting, making sure that we vote the right people into office, and making sure we hold them accountable. I always like to say, casually, that we vote them in and we pay them with our tax dollars. And so why don’t we hold them accountable? Because if we start a business, we hire staff, we’re going to hold them accountable. So let’s hold them to the fire. If they say they’re going to do these things, let’s set attainable goals and objectives to where we can tap in and see if they’re actually fulfilling those duties. And so those are the things that Philonise and I stay on top of.
Philonise Floyd: The Philonise and Keeta Floyd Institute for Social Change, turning our pain into purpose.
Keeta Floyd: That’s right.
Philonise Floyd: We preach about everything from systemic racism, police reform, it’s a lot of different things.
Keeta Floyd: We do criminal justice reform, mental health awareness, youth enrichment programs.
Philonise Floyd: Mental health is huge.
Keeta Floyd: It’s huge. Because what happens is here in our own city, University… In Houston.
Philonise Floyd: You said University of Houston.
Keeta Floyd: Yes. I used to work here [Philonise Floyd]. So here in our own city of Houston, just not too long ago, we had to go and stand with Benjamin Crump for all of the casualties that they were having inside of the jail system. And they’re unexplained. No one can explain what happened to these people. You have cameras, you have trained professionals, and they’re supposed to be doing, watching a 24-hour surveillance and check in. So how could you not notice that someone is lying dead in a corner for hours, and then you have no outcome or solution as to what happened to them?
And so that’s what Philonise and I do. We get legal teams together to do the research and pull it together to see what’s really going on behind the scenes.
Philonise Floyd: Shake some stuff up.
Maximillian Alvarez: Hell yeah. Well, and thank you for doing that. And I just wanted to ask in the last 30 seconds I’ve got with you, what can folks out there do to continue to stand in solidarity with you, with the rest of the Floyd family, and to fight the injustice that stole your brother away?
Philonise Floyd: So get out and vote. Get out and pray. Get out and help work with others to help change laws, because we’re stronger in numbers.
Keeta Floyd: That’s right.
Philonise Floyd: That’s the number one thing. We’re stronger in numbers. The more people that we’re getting out here to vote and get things established in life, the more that we feel that we can succeed in life and get to change these laws.
Because it’s difficult as it is when you vote certain people in. But when you have other people who want to sit there and hold these people accountable, then I feel that we can get up to the level we need to get to. Because as of now, to me, it’s like people are trying to do whatever they want to do.
There’s much I could talk about. I can talk about Alec. I could talk about the stand-your-ground laws in Florida. I could talk about how Texas, we have an open policy with open carry with guns. And people feel that they can murder you at any moment. It shouldn’t be like that. People shouldn’t think, first let me shoot and ask questions later. Because at the end of the day, that’s somebody mama. That’s somebody brother. That’s somebody son. That’s somebody daughter that you murdering, and they will never see daylight again.
And then most of the time, if a police officer do it, they’re going to get a certain amount of time, and they’re going to get right back out – That’s if they get time. And then most of them have the military outside protecting their houses. Because they feel like they murdered somebody and it wasn’t wrong.
I seen a 20-year-old Caucasian girl, they went into the wrong yard. They were turning around to leave, and she got shot right in the neck. How you think those parents are feeling right now?
Keeta Floyd: That’s right. Regardless of color. It’s not about color always. It’s about a human life. The humanity of it all.
Philonise Floyd: The humanity.
Keeta Floyd: That’s somebody’s loved one, and they want them to come home just like we want you to go home. As, you know, professionals, you signed up to protect and serve. And we want you to do just that. We want everybody to go home safely.
One of the things for me, or a few things for me is to bring about awareness and educate your communities. Go and become familiar with those legislators or those state representatives in your community. Have those tough conversations with them. When they coming out campaigning, knocking on your door. Ask them. That’s your opportunity to ask them. If you can’t get off to go into the town hall meetings, somehow, someway, stay aware of what’s going on. Because laws are being changed, and it’s affecting our children. And tragedy should not hit your front door before you begin to say, oh, let me make this change now. Oh, I understand where you’re coming from now. That’s all it’s about.
Philonise Floyd: Yeah. Trayvon Martin was one of the tragedies that struck at when, from my time, being, because even though I heard about Rodney King, the fact that Trayvon Martin was murdered while he was walking home. And the operator had said, hey, sir, I don’t need you to follow him. And the guy kept following him, and he got off on a stand your ground law. How can you get off on a stand your ground law and you following somebody? Wouldn’t you think somebody trying to hurt you, if they’re following you? What you following me for?
Keeta Floyd: And that’s where the community can come together and rally against laws like that. You have a voice, use it to your advantage. Let them know that you don’t agree with this policy, and give them examples as to why. Force their hand like they force yours.
Philonise Floyd: Yeah. Coming up, we having an event. You want to do the honors? You can tell.
Keeta Floyd: Yes. We’re going to have the… Well on this year, it’s the remembrance of George Floyd, because it’s on the death of him. But Houston has actually named June 9 as George Floyd Day. So moving forward, we would like to celebrate his life versus his death. And so one of the things we’re going to be doing is going out into the Cuney Homes community center, hosting a basketball game, because George loved sports.
Philonise Floyd: He loved sports.
Keeta Floyd: For the youth. And we’re going to bring down a lot of different individuals. And we’re going to have panel discussions open to the public with a lot of advocates that’s on board on panel, like Al Sharpton, Ben Crump, different members of the organization that go out and they do activism with us. We stand alongside them.
Maximillian Alvarez: Hell, yeah. Well, Philonise, Keeta, thank you both so much for the work that you do, and thank you for sitting down with me here at The Real News. I really appreciate it.
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on April 9, 2023. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott drew widespread condemnation from legal experts after he said Saturday that he is “working as swiftly” as the law allows to pardon a man who was convicted the previous day of murdering a racial justice protester in 2020.
Daniel Perry, a U.S. Army sergeant, was convicted by an Austin jury on Friday of murder and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon for the fatal shooting of 28-year-old Garrett Foster, an armed Air Force veteran participating in a Black Lives Matter protest in the Texas capital following George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police.
After tweeting that he “might have to kill a few people on my way to work” as an Uber driver, Perry accelerated his car into a crowd of racial justice protesters in downtown Austin on July 25, 2020. As Foster, who was pushing his fiancée’s wheelchair, approached Perry’s vehicle carrying an AK-47 rifle in accordance with Texas law, Perry opened his window and shot Foster four times in the chest and abdomen with his .357 Magnum pistol. When asked by police if Foster had pointed his rifle at him, Perry admitted that he did not, but said that “I didn’t want to give him a chance to aim at me.”
After an eight-day trial and 17 hours of deliberation, the Austin jury rejected Perry’s claim of self-defense. However, Abbott tweeted that “Texas has one of the strongest ‘stand your ground’ laws of self-defense that cannot be nullified by a jury or a progressive district attorney,” a reference to Travis County District Attorney José Garza, a Democrat.
Less than 24 hours ago Daniel Perry was convicted by a jury of murder—after he shot a protestor point-blank during a BLM rally blocks away from the state Capitol.
Greg Abbott says he is working to pardon Perry one day later. Absolutely insane. pic.twitter.com/BXelJpQMjs
“Unlike the president or some other states, the Texas Constitution limits the governor’s pardon authority to only act on a recommendation by the Board of Pardons and Paroles,” Abbott wrote. “Texas law does allow the governor to request the Board of Pardons and Paroles to determine if a person should be granted a pardon. I have made that request and instructed the Board to expedite its review.”
“I look forward to approving the board’s pardon recommendation as soon as it hits my desk,” he added.
Rick Cofer, a partner at the Austin law firm of Cofer & Connelly, noted that “Garrett Foster was killed protesting the killing of George Floyd,” and that “in 2022, the Texas Board of Pardons unanimously recommended that Floyd be pardoned for a drug charge, in which a crooked cop planted drugs.”
“Facing pressure, Abbott got the board to yank the recommendation,” Cofer added. “Now the man who killed Garrett Foster, while Foster protested George Floyd’s murder, will be pardoned. George Floyd’s pardon is still stuck with the Board of Pardons. If a fiction author wrote this, no one would believe it.”
Daniel Perry murdered 28-year-old Air Force veteran Garrett Foster. A jury convicted him on Friday. But Texas’s Republican Governor Greg Abbott plans to pardon him because he killed a Black Lives Matter protester.
David Wahlberg, a former Travis County criminal court judge, said he has never heard of a case in which a governor sought to pardon a convicted felon before their verdict was appealed.
“I think it’s outrageously presumptuous for someone to make a judgment about the verdict of 12 unanimous jurors without actually hearing the evidence in person,” Wahlberg told the Austin American-Statesman.
Wendy Davis, an attorney and former Texas state lawmaker and Fort Worth city councilmember, called Abbott’s move “nothing more than a craven political maneuver.”
“Our democracy is imperiled when any branch of government moves to usurp another,” Davis argued on Twitter. “And it’s happening all over this country on a regular basis.”
Abbott’s announcement came less than 24 hours after Fox News opinion host Tucker Carlson sharply criticized the governor on his show, claiming that “there is no right of self-defense in Texas.”
The governor also faced pressure from right-wing figures including Kyle Rittenhouse, who was acquitted of murder and other charges after he shot dead two racial justice protesters and wounded a third in Kenosha, Wisconsin in 2020.
Abbott has also threatened to “exonerate” 19 Austin police officers indicted for attacking and injuring Black Lives Matter protesters in 2020, asserting that “those officers should be praised for their efforts, not prosecuted.”
Disclosures in the Chris Kaba case cast new light on the latest police killing of a young Black man. Kaba was shot dead by Metropolitan police officers in September. Kaba, who was 24, was about to become a father.
Some, including the right-wing press, had claimed the killing followed a vehicle pursuit in Streatham, south London. But the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) has shed more light on this.
Officers continued to follow the Audi until 10.07pm. The officers did not activate their lights or sirens.
Outside the hearing a member of the Kaba family told reporters:.
The family is pleased that, in this statement, the IOPC made public some of its initial findings about what happened that night. Every new fact is a step towards justice for Chris.
The inquest also heard that the officer who fired a single shot through the windscreen of Kaba’s car was currently suspended while investigations took place. The officer is named only as NX121.
We need answers. Not just this family, but the whole of London – the whole of the country – needs to know how something like this could occur? How can a young man, sitting in a car, unarmed, be shot in the head by police in London in 2022? This should never have happened. It must never happen again. We must never accept this as normal. Someone must be held accountable.”
Justice
The Kaba case, which was largely drowned out in the mainstream media by the Queen’s death, led to outpourings of grief and even a protest in central London which was bizarrely conflated with the royal mourning period.
Commentators echoed the Kaba family’s calls for justice. Some pointed out the parallels with other high profile police killings, including those where police claims were later found to be untrue:
‘Mark Duggan shot at police’ – confirmed as untrue
‘Jean Charles De Menezes vaulted the ticket barriers’ – confirmed as untrue
‘Deji Omishore armed with a screwdriver’ – confirmed as untrue
Chris Kaba…let me cut to the chase. The Met Police do not have our trust. This is true
Another emphasised that there had not been a car chase, as had been reported, before the shooting took place:
Chris Kaba shot to death by a police officer update: New IOPC statement ‘The officers did not activate their lights or sirens while following the vehicle. The intention was to use an ‘enforced stop extraction’ on the Audi’ It suggest Mr Kaba was not in a police chase @itvlondonpic.twitter.com/TlSdC46hOJ
This new information comes as the most senior Met officer pledged to root out racism and other forms of prejudice in the force. It follows a scandal centred on officers sharing racist memes in a Whatsapp group.
Sir Mark Rowley told reporters:
I will be ruthless in rooting out those corrupting officers and staff, including racists and misogynists, from our organisation.
An ex-Met police officer turned immigration officer is currently suspended over the Whatsapp revelations.
Recommendations ignored
As the Canary has reported, many of past inquiries into police violence have produced recommendations.
But they have failed to meaningfully implement the majority of the recommendations. The police themselves have demonstrated that it is impossible to reform an inherently oppressive and destructive institution.
This is just the latest high profile killing of a Black person by the Met Police. Given that recent studies have found that the police are up to four times more likely to use force on Black people, it can come as no surprise that some of these incidents result in fatalities.
Chris Kaba is just the latest victim. There have been many others over the years. Police violence against Black people is an endemic and enduring issue, and one where glacial promised reforms and mealy-mouthed pledges cannot begin to address.
The Tories love nothing more than pushing their version of the truth. Their latest effort to make sure their own version gets told is the new guidance on teaching political issues in schools. A 23-page document announced by education secretary Nadhim Zahawi was published on 17 February to considerable debate.
Black Lives Matter (BLM), Israel/Palestine and the British Empire are among the issues highlighted in the document. So it’s worth analysing what the Tories are up to with this new move. An accompanying blog on the guidance on the government’s education hub site states:
Everyone has their own views on particular subjects and issues and teachers are no different, but it is important that teachers explain things to their students in a way that is impartial. Teaching about political issues and the differing views on these is an essential part of the curriculum, helping pupils to form their own opinions and prepare them for later life.
The law states that teachers must not promote partisan political views and should offer a balanced overview of opposing views when political issues are taught.
And here is part of the problem. Laws already exist to ensure educators are fair and balanced. Teachers and senior trade union officials immediately questioned why, if this is already the case, we need more guidance. For example, National Education Union joint secretary Mary Bousted told the press:
There is absolutely no need for new guidance on how to appropriately handle political and social subjects… Very good guidance already exists and this is followed up and down the country.
Singled out
So is this just about Tories singling out certain issues they want to either exclude or push? Well, that case could certainly be made. Black Lives Matter (BLM) seems to be one of the topics the Tories are worried about. For example, it says anti-racist movements like BLM should be treated with caution:
Where schools wish to teach about specific campaigning organisations, such as some of those associated with the Black Lives Matter movement, they should be aware that this may cover partisan political views. These are views which go beyond the basic shared principle that racism is unacceptable, which is a view schools should reinforce.
And alternatives to oppressive, racialised policing seem to be beyond the pale:
Examples of such partisan political views include advocating specific views on how government resources should be used to address social issues, including withdrawing funding from the police.
Israel/Palestine
Perhaps unsurprisingly, their guidance says material on the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands should be carefully navigated, even treated with a sort of ‘both sides’ attitude. As if Israel/Palestine is a simple conflict of interests between two equal groups, rather than the oppression of one by the other. One scenario talks about using information from an outside organisation which may be partisan:
For instance, the apparently factual content includes partisan political views on both historical events in the region, presented without additional context that would make clear that these are contested views. Several quotes from political figures have been inappropriately abridged to present an inaccurate version of what was really said, and important contextual information about these quotes has been omitted.
This simply seems to mean that teachers and schools should check the information they are using. Which, again, already seems to be a legal obligation. Though it could also be argued that requiring massive amounts of Tory-approved context places the burden on individual teachers, already hard-pressed in their jobs and short of time.
Empire and socialism
The British empire and imperialism also make an appearance. While the document says the reformation and renaissance are unlikely to be an issue:
For more recent historical events including those which are particularly contentious and disputed, political issues may be presented to pupils. This includes many topics relating to empire and imperialism, on which there are differing partisan political views, and which should be taught in a balanced manner.
The framing hundreds of years of exploitation and occupation simply as a ‘partisan’ issue, surely downplays the continuing impacts of imperialism around the world.
Already law
Two days ahead of publication, NEU officials were questioning the new guidance. Joint secretary Mary Bousted challenged education minister Nadhim Zahawi directly on Twitter, accusing him of engaging in culture wars:
This is nonsense. What child is not swayed by what their parents think? What their friends think? Children do not come to school as blank slates. When ministers engage in culture wars ask yourself what is the news story that they don't want you to think about. https://t.co/aIdYG8LwpI
The Tory choice of topics is telling. Why Israel/Palestine, BLM and empire? Of all issues, why are these being treated as if two equally legitimate sides deserve to be heard. Also significant, is the government decision to reinforce with guidance what already appears to be law. We need to question why they are doing this.
The NEU seems to think this is not about enforcement existing rules. And non-impartial teaching doesn’t seem to be a major issue in our schools. So maybe it is the Tories, not teachers, who need a bit of self-reflection. Biased education isn’t the issue here. Biased culture war-style policies, however, do seem to be a recurring problem.
Right-wing figures seem very confused by the acquittal of those dubbed the Colston Four. The four activists were on trial for criminal damage relating to the toppling of Tory slaver Edward Colston’s statue into the River Avon in 2020. Rhian Graham, Milo Ponsford, Sage Willoughby and Jake Skuse were all found not guilty by a jury. There were scenes of celebration as a result of the ruling.
But not everyone was happy it seems. Right-wing commentators and politicians turned out on Twitter to express their sadness and confusion that those who toppled the slaver’s statue had been acquitted.
Confused
Among these was former Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie. MacKenzie simply could not understand why the four had been let off. He went as far as to question the jury’s mental health:
I can't help questioning the sanity of the jury who cleared 4 protestors who admitted pushing the statue of the 17th century slave trader and philanthropist Edward Colston into Bristol harbour. The accused claimed the statue was a hate crime. The jury seemed to agree. Madness.
Tory MP Robert Jenrick was similarly alarmed at the verdict. He suggested that toppling Colston – who, incidentally, was also a Tory MP – amounted to making vandalism an acceptable form of protest:
We undermine the rule of law, which underpins our democracy, if we accept vandalism and criminal damage are acceptable forms of political protest.
While Blackpool MP Scott Benton called the decision “appalling” and branded the original protest a “violent act”
An absolutely appalling decision. Are we now a nation which ignores violent acts of criminal damage? This sends out completely the wrong message. https://t.co/f81xnARVcc
Top prize for sad right-winger, however, must go to commentator Darren Grimes. Grimes lamented the idea that you could now “destroy public property” if it was a “noble” cause.
I cannot believe this news about those who toppled the statue of Edward Colston being found not guilty of criminal damage. Are we really now a country that says you can destroy public property as long as you're doing it for a purportedly noble political cause?
Though he failed to note that, unlike Colston’s statue, Marx’s Highgate monument is also the German revolutionary’s gravestone.
Slaver
But it’s important never to let Tories and statue defenders have the last word. On the matter of Colston, left-wing MP Zarah Sultana captured the real spirit of the man and his sordid business practices:
Edward Colston was responsible for violently transporting 84,000 Africans to the Caribbean. They were chained, beaten and raped, with 19,000 dying en route.
Grotesquely, a statue was put up to honour him in Bristol, but today in court those who toppled it were rightly cleared.
As Sultana rightly points out, Colston was involved in transporting tens of thousands of African people to the Caribbean. Nineteen thousand of whom died during the passage. Once there, they were further subjected to all the brutalities that characterised that disgusting practice.
And the Bristol band Massive Attack also weighed in, saying that the stature should never have been there in the first place:
It took 16 ordinary Bristol citizens – 4 innocent defendants & 12 jurors – to end a century of intransigence & delay at the hands of successive councils, elected mayors & the @SMVBristol. No monuments to crimes against humanity. #BLM#Colston4https://t.co/K5kdtULR49
Unlike the wealthy Tory slave-owner Edward Colston, few of his victims names are remembered. Seen in this light, the toppling of his statue in Bristol into the docks looks less like vandalism and more like a small meaure of justice for the victims of his horrendous actions.
The final episode of Mississippi Goddam shares new revelations that cast doubt on the official story that Billey Joe Johnson accidentally killed himself.
This week marks the 13th anniversary of Johnson’s death. His family is still seeking justice. Our reporting brought up questions that the original investigation never looked into. Host Al Letson and reporter Jonathan Jones go back to Mississippi to interview the key people in the investigation, including Johnson’s ex-girlfriend – the first recorded interview she’s ever done with a media outlet. The team also shares its findings with lead investigator Joel Wallace and the medical examiner who looked into the case.
Finally, after three years of reporting, we share what we’ve learned with Johnson’s family and talk to them about the inadequacy of the investigation and reasons to reopen the case.
Black communities around Mississippi have long raised concerns about the suspicious deaths of young Black men, especially when law enforcement is involved.
Curley Clark, vice president of the Mississippi NAACP, calls Billey Joe Johnson Jr.’s case an example of “Mississippi justice.”
“It means that they still feel like the South should have won the Civil War,” Clark said. “And also the laws for the state of Mississippi are slanted in that direction.”
Before Johnson died during a traffic stop with a White sheriff’s deputy, friends say police had pulled him over dozens of times. And some members of the community raised concerns that police had been racially profiling Black people.
Reveal investigates Johnson’s interactions with law enforcement and one officer in particular.
Billey Joe Johnson Jr. and Hannah Hollinghead met in their freshman year of high school. Hollinghead says Johnson was her first love, and in many ways, it was a typical teen romance. Friends say they would argue, break up, then get back together again. Some people were far from accepting of their interracial relationship.
On Dec. 8, 2008, they were both dating other people. According to Hollinghead and her mother, Johnson made an unexpected stop at her house, moments before he died of a gunshot wound during a traffic stop on the edge of town.
But it appears that investigators failed to corroborate statements or interview Johnson’s friends and family to get a better idea of what was going on in his life on the day he died. Reveal exposes deep flaws in the investigation and interviews the people closest to Johnson, who were never questioned during the initial investigation.
Special Agent Joel Wallace of the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation was called in to investigate the death of Billey Joe Johnson. He worked alongside two investigators from the George County district attorney’s office.
Wallace said that arrangement didn’t happen very often. And he now questions why they were assigned. “If you’ve got me investigating the case, then I’m an independent investigator,” he said. “But why would I need the district attorney investigator to oversee me investigating a case?”
The Johnsons were initially relieved, because Wallace had experience investigating suspicious deaths. As a Black detective, he had dealt with racist backlash to his work.
Reveal host Al Letson and reporter Jonathan Jones visit Wallace, now retired, to talk about what happened with the investigation. When Wallace finds out what Reveal has uncovered, he begins to wonder whether the case should be reopened.
After Billey Joe Johnson Jr. died in 2008, the state of Mississippi outsourced his autopsy. Al Letson and Jonathan Jones travel to Nashville, Tennessee, to interview the doctor who conducted it. Her findings helped lead the grand jury to determine Johnson’s death was an accidental shooting. However, Letson and Jones share another report that raises doubts about her original conclusions.
On the morning of Billey Joe Johnson’s death, crime scene tape separates the Johnsons from their son’s body. Their shaky faith in the criminal justice system begins to buckle.
As Billey Joe Johnson’s family tries to get answers about his death, they get increasingly frustrated with the investigation. They feel that law enforcement, from the lead investigator to the district attorney, are keeping them out of the loop. While a majority White grand jury rules that Johnson’s’s death was accidental, members of the family believe the possibility of foul play was never properly investigated.
Billey Joe Johnson Jr. was a high school football star headed for the big time. Then, early one morning in 2008, the Black teenager died during a traffic stop with a White deputy. His family’s been searching for answers ever since.
Ten years ago, Reveal host Al Letson traveled to Lucedale, Mississippi, to report on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. While there, locals told him there was another story he should be looking into: Johnson’s suspicious death.
During a traffic stop with a White deputy, police say Johnson died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. But for Johnson’s family, that explanation never made sense.
In the first episode of this seven-part series, Letson returns to Mississippi with reporter Jonathan Jones to explore what happened to Johnson – and what justice means in a place haunted by its history.
14 October is George Floyd’s birthday. Floyd’s murder by a police officer in Minneapolis in May 2020 sparked widespread protests across the US and overseas.
Police officer Derek Chauvin was later convicted of Floyd’s murder. As the officer knelt on his neck, Floyd repeatedly said “I can’t breathe”. Soon those words became a global rallying cry against racist policing. The judge said Chauvin’s 22 year sentence was based:
on your abuse of a position of trust and authority, and also the particular cruelty shown
Commemoration
One initiative set up for the occasion is #TeachTruth Day. It’s purpose is to honor George Floyd’s birthday. The day consists of online teach-ins which are being held around the US to address systemic racism. Campaigners say it’s a:
National Teach-in for Truth About Systemic Racism & Sexism in U.S. Curricula
Meanwhile, supporters gathered by a statue of Floyd in New York to remember him:
And one twitter user posted images of Floyd with his children. As well as images of the protests which followed his death. Data from the time of the killing showed that Black Americans were 2.5 times more likely to be killed by police than white people.
George Floyd should've turned 48 today. Happy Birthday to him & may he continue to to rest in peace. pic.twitter.com/cHNQC2hdgL
Since Floyd’s murder many reforms have been suggested. Some want a ban on chokeholds and implicit bias training for officers. Others want the police to be defunded. Elsewhere, national days of action began. And these included calls to decolonise education:
But, as another poster pointed out, the struggle is far from over. Some reforms have taken place within individual police forces. But these are largely ad hoc and do not seem to address the systemic problem of racism.
Tomorrow would have been George Floyd's 48th birthday. Derek Chauvin cheated him and his family of celebrating
Three other police officers present at the killing will be triedlater in 2021. While Derek Chauvin is currently appealing his 22 year sentence. Today will be a day to recall George Floyd’s life and legacy, but the struggle against racism and violent policing continues.
Sometimes one story can tell you everything about race and justice in America. Reveal’s new series, “Mississippi Goddam: the Ballad of Billey Joe” is that story. With a title inspired by Nina Simone’s civil rights anthem, Reveal weaves the history of the criminal justice system with the case of a Black high school football star who died during a traffic stop with a white deputy.
Hear this exclusive preview of Reveal’s new seven-part series, dropping weekly starting October 16, 2021.
Sometimes one story can tell you everything about race and justice in America. Reveal’s new series, “Mississippi Goddam: the Ballad of Billey Joe” is that story. With a title inspired by Nina Simone’s civil rights anthem, Reveal weaves the history of the criminal justice system with the case of a Black high school football star who died during a traffic stop with a white deputy.
Hear this exclusive preview of Reveal’s new seven-part series, dropping weekly starting October 16, 2021.
A Black uprising is shaking Cuba’s Communist regime,” read The Washington Post’s headline on the recent unrest on the Caribbean island. “Afro-Cubans Come Out In Droves To Protest Government,” wrote NPR. Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal went with “Cuba’s Black Communities Bear the Brunt of Regime’s Crackdown” as a title. These were examples of a slew of coverage in the nation’s top outlets, which presented what amounted to one day of U.S.-backed protests in July as a nationwide insurrection led by the country’s Black population — in effect, Cuba’s Black Lives Matter moment.
Known in the US as Juneteenth, 19 June will now be a nationwide holiday to celebrate the end of slavery. President Joe Biden signed a bill on 18 June which formalised the annual event. But some say the move is being used as a stand-in for measures that would actually help African American communities today.
It marks the moment in 1865 when the last slaves were freed. The actual date of the Abraham Lincoln’s emancipation proclamation was several years earlier. But Texas held out – and maintained slavery – until Union troops advanced into the state and read the declaration in the town of Galveston.
Great nations don’t ignore their most painful moments. Great nations don’t walk away. We come to terms with the mistakes we made. And remembering those moments, we begin to heal and grow stronger.
I’ve only been president for several months, but I think this will go down for me as one of the greatest honors I will have had as president.
Kamala Harris, the first Black US vice-president, said:
We are gathered here in a house built by enslaved people. We are footsteps away from where President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.
And we are here to witness President Joe Biden establish Juneteenth as a national holiday. We have come far, and we have far to go, but today is a day of celebration.
Emancipation?
Despite the generally positive reception, some were critical of the Biden administration for the measures they haven’t taken
One Twitter user pointed to the Biden government’s record on other important matters. He seemed to think the move was purely symbolic.
They painted BLM instead of defunding the police, clapped for essential workers instead of raising the wage, and made Juneteeth a holiday instead of making sure Black folks can vote. Always a symbolic victory instead of a material change.
— Read Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler (@JoshuaPotash) June 16, 2021
Another called the move an act of “perfomative liberation”.
The Senate unanimously passing Juneteenth as a federal holiday – and the Biden admin's championing of the cause – while actively obstructing raising minimum wages, student debt forgiveness, & gun reform is a reminder that performative liberation/resistance won't do a damn thing.
— D. Danyelle Thomas (@UnfitChristian) June 16, 2021
Writer Clint Smith told Democracy Now that the announcement was moment of “cognitive dissonance” which was “reflective of black experience as a whole”.
Biden’s move to make Juneteenth a federal holiday reflects the "marathon of cognitive dissonance" around the experiences of Black people in the U.S., says writer @ClintSmithIII. "We recognize that as a symbol, Juneteenth matters … but it is clearly not enough." pic.twitter.com/KGpjt7u9tm
It seems that while Juneteenth is understandably important to a great many people, it’s being seen by some as a largely symbolic measure. And it doesn’t come close to addressing the still existing inequalities faced by many black Americans.
Six years after Ferguson, St. Louis hasn’t seen a single substantive police reform. A group of young Black leaders have instead set their sights higher: taking control of city politics.
In 2014, then-Ferguson police Officer Darren Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown. His death sparked reports, blue-ribbon commissions and countless police reform efforts. But so many of those reforms fell short of their stated goals. Today, St. Louis leads the nation in police killings per capita.
As the nation continues to grapple with how to save Black lives from police violence, we’re partnering with The Missouri Independent to examine why police reform efforts so often fail. We follow a new generation of leaders who, as a part of the Ferguson movement, are finding new ways to change policing in the St. Louis region. Reporters Trey Bundy and Rebecca Rivas follow local activist Kayla Reed, who went from attending protests to organizing them. After years of frustratingly slow progress toward reform, Reed transformed herself into a political powerbroker who is upending city politics.
And there’s no way to talk about police reform without talking about the power of police unions. We look how the St. Louis Police Officers Association, the city’s main union, formed to protect white police officers from accountability after beating a Black man. And we talk with James Buchanan, one of the city’s few Black police officers in the 1960s, who went on to help start the Ethical Society of Police, a union founded by Black officers to fight for racial equity in the department and community.
This show is guest hosted by Kameel Stanley, executive producer of Witness Docs, a documentary podcast network from Stitcher and SiriusXM.
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It's one month since Chris Kaba was shot dead by the police. 
(@ScottBentonMP) 
