Contributing Writers

In Seattle, the fight to demilitarize and defund the police continues as the King County Labor Council voted to expel the Seattle police union Wednesday, following weeks of protest. Seattle police sparked outrage for responding to massive protests against police brutality by using pepper spray, tear gas and flashbangs on demonstrators and reporters. Activists then formed an autonomous zone in response to the police department’s abandonment of a precinct building.

As police officers in nearly 100 U.S. cities and towns have fired tear gas on protesters in recent weeks and left many with severe injuries, a new Amnesty International report finds the use of tear gas continues to grow each year, and fuels police human rights violations against peaceful protesters on a global scale.

For more than a decade, the racial justice organization Color of Change led a push to cancel the long-running TV show “Cops,” which glorifies police aggression. Now the show has been cancelled, along with A&E’s “Live PD.” “The thing about these shows is that they call themselves reality programming, but they are only from the vision of the police officers,” says Rashad Robinson, president of Color of Change.

Prosecutors have charged the Atlanta police officer who shot and killed Rayshard Brooks with felony murder, and accuse Garrett Rolfe of twice shooting Brooks in the back and then kicking him as he lay dying. A second officer, Devin Brosnan, faces four charges, including assault. We talk to Rashad Robinson of Color of Change about the charges in Atlanta and growing calls to defund the police.

As protesters worldwide continue to topple monuments to racists, colonizers and Confederates as part of the wave of demonstrations against racism and state violence, we speak to Bree Newsome Bass, artist and antiracist activist based in North Carolina, who five years ago was arrested at the state Capitol in South Carolina after scaling a 30-foot flagpole to remove the Confederate flag.

In the Bronx, the second most economically unequal district in New York state, the insurgent primary campaign of former middle school principal Jamaal Bowman threatens to unseat 16-term Democratic congressmember and House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Eliot Engel. Bowman supports defunding the police, Medicare for All and a Green New Deal.

As hurricane season begins, we look at moves to privatize Puerto Rico’s electric grid and a new investigation that reveals the island’s government failed to follow proper oversight or examine the environmental impact when it issued a $1.5 billion contract to a company for the first large power generation project since Hurricane Maria, that will continue its reliance on fossil fuels.

President Donald Trump says he will push ahead with a massive campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Saturday, even as COVID cases are surging there as the state reopens. Trump delayed the rally by one day after it was originally scheduled for June 19, Juneteenth, a celebration marking the emancipation of enslaved people. Tulsa is also the site of one of the deadliest massacres in U.S.

In a rare development, a New York police officer has been charged with assault, criminal mischief, harassment and menacing, after a viral video showed him violently shoving a peaceful protester to the ground as he shouted an expletive and a misogynistic slur. We speak with Dounya Zayer about the attack she faced during a protest against police brutality in Brooklyn on May 29 and how she suffered a seizure and was hospitalized with a concussion.

As protesters worldwide continue to topple monuments to racists, colonizers and Confederates as part of the wave of demonstrations against racism and state violence, we speak to Bree Newsome Bass, artist and antiracist activist based in North Carolina, who five years ago was arrested at the state Capitol in South Carolina after scaling a 30-foot flagpole to remove the Confederate flag.

At least 15,000 people marched through Brooklyn Sunday to protest violence against Black transgender people, particularly women, who face disproportionate levels of violence at the hands of police and on the streets. The protest came as two more Black trans women were killed last week, in Ohio and Pennsylvania. They are believed to be at least the 13th and 14th violent deaths of transgender people in the United States this year.

In a historic 6-3 ruling, the Supreme Court ruled Monday that Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, forbidding workplace discrimination on the basis of sex, applies to gay and transgender people. The decision comes just days after the Trump administration reversed health protections for transgender people under the Affordable Care Act. “This truly is a historic ruling,” says Chase Strangio, deputy director for transgender justice with the ACLU’s LGBT & HIV Project.

“Neither party represents the future that we need in this country — both parties remain connected to corporate capitalism,” Angela Davis says of the 2020 election. “We’re going to have to translate some of the passion that has characterized these demonstrations into work within the electoral arena, recognizing that the electoral arena is not the best place for the expression of radical politics.