There has been much discussion over the demands of protestors to ‘defund the police’, with right-wingers seizing upon the term and interpreting it in the most extreme way in order to discredit the idea, by raising scary images of (white) people being attacked by marauding (black) hordes who will come to take away their stuff if there are no police to protect them. But various commentators have been pushing back at the distortions.
Here is Seth Meyers on what defunding the police implies.
Terry Crews was a professional football player in the NFL from 1991 to 1997 and since then has made a successful transition to acting, showing himself to have real comedy chops. I have only seen him on the comedy show Brooklyn Nine-Nine where he makes fun of his own muscular appearance. He is a real scene-stealer.
He talks with Seth Meyers about what it was like to be a black football player and how the coaches and trainers treated them differently from the white players. He describes the indignities he faced and a harrowing incident where, while he was still a high profile football player playing for Los Angeles, he was stopped while driving in California and police officers from two squad cars came to him with their guns pointed at his head.
He says that he welcomes the NFL’s change in stance on players kneeling in protests but that he never expected them to do it. He also says that the NFL should bring back Colin Kaepernick if they are to really show their sincerity.
He says that the police are lashing out violently because the protests have had an impact. More and more people are coming out for the demonstrations and public opinion is overwhelmingly in favor of the protestors.
He also emphasizes that the rising stock market reveals what many of us have been saying for years, that the stock market has no relationship to the lives of most people but is just something that measures the how well the wealthy are doing. And it appears that they are doing very well indeed despite the pandemic and the turmoil.
On Sunday’s episode of Last Week Tonight, John Oliver devoted the entire show to the need for police reform in the US and what the options are. It is an excellent show about what needs to be done to deal with the toxic police culture in the US that has led to so much brutality. One of the things he focuses on is the very negative role played by police unions.
I am really glad that so many white, Hispanic, and Asian groups have identified with and joined in the protests. That is a sign of hope because we need a broad multi-racial and multi-ethnic and multi-generational coalition to get real change.
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Seth Meyers says that all the evidence points in that direction.
Comedian Amber Ruffin, one of the writers on Seth Meyers’ show, describes just two of the confrontational incidents that happened to her with the police. The stories themselves are disturbing but more so is the fact that she has even more and pretty much every black person in the US has many similar stories to tell.
Hasan Minhaj has a special episode where he lets loose his outrage at what has happened as a result of the George Floyd murder. During this 12-minutes clip, he also takes the Asian community to task for our hypocrisy and racism, taking advantage of all the benefits that we got because of the civil rights struggle led by the black community at great cost, while sitting on the sidelines or condemning the protests when the black community reacts to being under siege.
He does not mince his words. His anger is palpable. He speaks the truth.
Incidentally, Minhaj must have made this earlier yesterday because later in the day Minnesota state attorney general Keith Ellison did exactly what Minhaj urged him to do. He upgraded the murder charge against Derek Chauvin from third-degree murder to second-degree murder and charged the other three police officers on the scene with aiding and abetting second-degree murder. All four are now in custody.
