John Brown's Body

     This month, President Biden formally announced an executive order that has been in the works since at least January, an executive order signed on the second anniversary of George Floyd's death and one that makes sure, as Biden says, his name is "more than a hashtag." The four officers who murdered Floyd were all convicted of federal charges brought by Attorney General Merrick Garland while two have been convicted on state charges and two more await trial. Dozens of states and cities have passed hundreds of laws and ordinances reforming the police. Federal investigations, which were used only once by the Trump administration, were launched into the Minneapolis, Phoenix, Louisville, and Mount Vernon Police Departments in 2021 alone; the 2023 budget proposes more funding for investigations like these. The COPS Office has secured more than $125 million in new funding to build community policing, with much more expected in the coming years. Now, this executive order is th

     During the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, the right made a spectacle of looters and criminals who took advantage of diverted police attention to commit crimes. It's a stretch, for sure, given that 99 percent of protests were peaceful and those that were not often saw violence instigated by far-right groups like the Proud Boys, but lying is what the right does. Mike Pence falsely blamed the 2020 murder of a federal agent in California on nearby George Floyd protestors, when it was in fact committed by a follower of the far-right Boogaloo movement, which seeks to start a race war between blacks and whites.      However, one aspect of this that isn't talked about enough is that the instances of violence were less an assault on police and more a back-and-forth between police and rioters. On January 6th, not a single Capitol cop was ever charged for excessive force against rioters; in fact, most criticism came from officers not using enough force, although in many cases thes

     Ahmaud Arbery's family achieved accountability and justice with two separate criminal convictions for murder and a hate crime that each of the three murderers will spend the rest of their lives in prison for, state laws in Georgia establishing penalties for hate crimes and overhauling citizen's arrest statues, and the signing by President Biden of the Emmett Till Antilynching Act. Unfortunately, Breonna Taylor's family never saw accountability with the acquittal of the man who helped murder the young woman and also apparently had a history of sexually harassing women; in this case, we must keep up the pressure for the Justice Department to file charges while acknowledging that even the historic $12 million settlement the Taylor family reached with Louisville as well as a federal investigation into the department cannot bring her back. Slowly but surely, George Floyd's family is seeing the accountability and the justice they deserve.       Back in April 2021, Derek