Aline Piva, a researcher and journalist based in Sao Paulo, revealed that Brazilian police have been killing 10 people a day, many minors, during Brazil’s COVID-19 crisis. Communities have been protesting as a result, but the grinding poverty in many of Brazil’s most vulnerable communities makes enduring protest a challenge. Meanwhile, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is increasingly ignoring the country’s constitution, and while the military, a major source of his support, does not want to be the face of this government, that doesn’t mean it isn’t extremely powerful behind the scenes.
Eteng Ettah, a community organizer with Black Youth Project 100, DC Chapter, says there’s nothing more American than protecting property over people. What might be changing now is our understanding that this is systemic and foundational, not accidental and occasional. She explains that prison abolitionists do, of course, desire safe communities, but they recognize violence as a result of disinvestment in communities. Policing and imprisonment happen after a crisis. What if we shifted our approach to preventing these crises in the first place, and instead of disappearing offenders, addressed what actually works when it comes to recidivism and rehabilitation?
Ted Rall, author and award-winning political cartoonist, talks about Joe Biden’s deadly enthusiasm gap and the stagnation of both major parties in the US. He cautions listeners not to underestimate the political value of Trump’s dangerous and medically ill-advised Tulsa rally ‒ it is at least generating energy, which is something Biden can’t seem to conjure from his basement. The next movement to hit the streets will be explicitly attacking economic injustice, he predicts. They also break down the comedy of police strikes, Trump’s new Nazi-symbol campaign ads and Facebook’s response, and the resounding quiet of Democrats on so many of these issues.
Misfits Bob Schlehuber and Jamarl Thomas also got into Amy Klobuchar’s last act of campaign pettiness, the global surge in refugees, and, of course, aliens.
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