Nearly four years after George Floyd suffocated to death while being pinned face down to the pavement by a police officer, Minnesota Democrats are fast-tracking legislation that would undo a less-than-year-old ban prohibiting school-based cops from using that same type of restraint on students.
As early as Monday, the state’s House of Representatives is slated to consider a proposal that presents a drastic departure from provisions approved by Democratic Gov. Tim Walz — rules that explicitly barred school resource officers from using face-down “prone restraint.”
The ban was part of a broader police reform movement that followed Floyd’s murder. The fatal physical hold led to the largest civil rights protest in U.S. history, a national reckoning on racism, policy reforms that sought to address police brutality and, in Minneapolis and dozens of districts nationwide, the removal of sworn officers from school campuses. In Minnesota, new state rules barred police officers from using chokeholds on people and prone restraints were banned in the state’s prisons.
Now, as the state’s Democrats make a 180-degree turn on the campus reform, education equity advocates have accused state leaders of falling to the political pressure of law enforcement groups ahead of a November election where party lawmakers seek to maintain their narrow majority in the state House. The proposal cleared the House Ways and Means committee earlier this week.
We need to stop pretending neoliberals are part of the democratic party.
For decades they have been invading the only left wing party and dragging it to the right.
That’s why they get the same corporate donations as Republicans. They want the same shit, and donors buying off both parties guarantees donors always win.
Unfortunately, a lot of the country will only vote for Democrats who barely dip their toe into the left side of the spectrum to throw people a bone on occasion.
That’s the only way a Democrat got elected to the Senate in West Virginia. It was Joe Manchin.
I hate it so much.
That’s the only way a Democrat got elected to the Senate in West Virginia. It was Joe Manchin.
If you ignore history…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_senators_from_West_Virginia
In 2015 a Republican became senator, the last Republican before that left office in 1959.
Granted, Manchin got Byrd’s seat after 50 years, and Byrd had pretty much the views you’d expect for a Senator that started in 1959.
But the recent change is Republican senators from WV.
I don’t think that really disproves my point when Byrd’s politics were not too far from Manchin’s.
Byrd largely turned around though…
Hell, 34 years ago he was more progressive than Biden:
In early 1990, Byrd proposed an amendment granting special aid to coal miners who would lose their jobs in the event that Congress passed clean air legislation. Byrd was initially confident in the number of votes he needed to secure its passage being made available but this was prevented by a vote from Democrat Joe Biden who said the measure’s passage would mean an assured veto by President Bush
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Byrd#George_H._W._Bush_era
Now Manchin is holding up the party on addressing climate change.
And the Dem the Republican took over from was against the Iraq war, for healthcare reform, and endorsed Obama during the 08 primary.
Manchin is more conservative that the last two WV Senators before him, and they were elected in the 50s.
Manchin is a backslide
Don’t forget the Democrat governor who switched parties as soon as he took office
That’s the only way a Democrat got elected to the Senate in West Virginia. It was Joe Manchin.
Manchin comes from an obscenely wealthy coal family in the state. He could have run under either party and won in a
landlordlandslide based on that alone.He just got more concessions from the Democrats, who were more than happy to trade away legislative priorities for a Senate Majority.
The Democratic Party is a neoliberal political party. Anything to the left is the rare exception.
The leaders of the party are, most of the politicians are, but a minority of Dem voters are.
unfortunately the democratic rank and file seem to have a humiliation kink cause the party heads keep humiliating their base and the base keeps voting for them.
That’s not really how it works…
Party leadership is decided by an open vote of about 450 people/organizations.
Some is elected officials like president, senator, and a shit ton of mayors. Some political organizations, ex Members, random ass people who are usually donors
But it’s an open vote, and the people running usually cutthroat.
So if you don’t toe the party line, the party might not support you later.
That’s when they do get to vote. There was like 30 years where no vote was held, people were just appointed.
The system is way more fucked up than most people realize. And it’s designed to hold onto all their power while presenting the illusion of democracy
The article doesn’t say who introduced this repeal. It just says “the democrats,” which sounds like right wing rhetoric. Does anyone have a name?
During a recent Senate Judiciary and Public Safety Committee hearing, Democratic Sen. Bonnie Westlin, lead sponsor of the Senate version of the bill that would restore prone restraints in schools,
Thank you. The article was very long, I must have missed it.
The other person provided the name, here is Bonnie Westland’s reasoning:
During a recent Senate Judiciary and Public Safety Committee hearing, Democratic Sen. Bonnie Westlin, lead sponsor of the Senate version of the bill that would restore prone restraints in schools, presented it less as a backtrack and more as an opportunity. The issue is about ensuring campus cops remain “important team members in our schools,” Westlin said, while creating uniformity across school resource officers’ duties, their training requirements and accountability.
What she’s referencing is the fact that police responded to the ban by removing 400 officers from schools. She wants cops back in schools for some reason, and she wants to give 150k tax dollars a year to police depts.
Along with removing restraint rules for school-based police and campus security staff, the pending legislation would allocate $150,000 this year to develop consistent, statewide training standards for school resource officers and require police to complete the lessons before working on campuses. The bill also seeks to clarify that school-based police officers should not be involved in routine student discipline.
Police won’t go to school if they can’t do that particular move, a deadly move that easily kills, on high school children. This ghoul is making the assumption we need or even want them there.
Ladies and gentlemen, i present to you the “Harm reduction party”
Cedrick Frazier is in on it, too. For some reason he rates a picture while Bonnie Westlin doesn’t. Presumably because of the comparisons the article/general press is making with these laws/Floyd and that Frazier is black. Saying anything about him being black in the article would be crass, but they’ll just drop a picture and not have to write anything. “Ooooh look, he must be a hypocrite!” I mean he kinda sorta is maybe, but not because he’s black but because the article says he was a champion of police reform after Floyd’s murder and now is walking back a reform.
The money is supposed to go to training. Seems reasonable enough. They have a “Captain of Investigations Tanya Harmoning” going on in there about how the cops only know how to do things one way. Seems like it could be good if they learned a different way. There is a little more detail, too: “But even without a ban on prone restraints, he said that state law would continue to prohibit school-based officers from pinning students to the ground in ways that restrict breathing.”
I despise that quote, because it is false on its face. The position they are unbanning is one that restricts breathing. I just saw a link on lemmy a few days ago about this very position and how dangerous it is.
As far as the money for training goes, i hate that too. Its ostensibly to train cops not to kill kids while using the move that we’re now allowing them to do because they had a tantrum and quit when we told them they couldn’t.
We don’t need cops in schools, period, and paying for the privilege of having them back? Has me straight fucking pissed.
None of this ire is directed at you, mind you, youre great :D
School? Oh, bcs there are cops at school. Wait, they restrain kids? Blessed poop that’s a depressing thought.
Let’s hope for change.
Was it just that he was being held in a prone position or was it perhaps complicated/exacerbated by you know, the cop kneeling on his neck? I mean surely that was the main contributing factor to Floyd’s death at the cops’ hands, wasn’t it? Not just that he was being held on the ground? This long article seems to avoid any details while using the comparison to amp its message.
I heard it was because he was on drugs.
No, I heard it was because he was already dying of heart failure and the cop was just providing medical assistance
Actually, I heard the cops found him like that.
There was no George Floyd. He’s been made up by the far left media to trick liberals into hating the police.
Prone restraint, in and of itself, is a risk
Here’s a research study about it - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33629624/
News story about deaths from prone restraint that starts off with the story of one where the officers were laying across their victim’s back, not standing on his neck - https://www.kpbs.org/news/public-safety/2024/02/29/deadly-restraint-despite-decades-of-warnings-police-continue-holding-people-facedown
Another news site has been doing a long running research project on this that started pre-George Floyd and has accumulated dozens of instances of prone restraint killing people - https://www.9news.com/article/news/investigations/prone-restraint-police-deaths/73-a4ae192c-ceb6-4815-9e72-2f8a8072765c
thanks for the additional information!
