onfocus

"Browse and download high-resolution, public domain artworks."

Endless art scrolling.

"In the last two weeks, American voters’ support for the Black Lives Matter movement increased almost as much as it had in the preceding two years."

"On top of that, experts said antifa isn't even a group; it's more of a diffuse movement of leftists who share a similar ideology in opposition to fascism."

How do you demonize an authentic public movement that a majority of people support? Make up an imaginary terrorist organization and say they are behind it.

"They were designed to fit inside existing firearms as an alternative to shooting someone with a real bullet, often as a way for authoritarian regimes to control a free-speaking, free-protesting populace. And that’s exactly what we’ve seen happen yet again today. As protesters have taken to the streets across the U.S. to protest the murder of George Floyd, they’ve been shot, indiscriminately, with military technologies that are known to maim and kill."

There are some graphic images in this article but it has a good history of how not-as-lethal weapons became ubiquitous. It gives important context to gut-wrenching stories like this: Activist who trained officers on bias ‘heartbroken’ after San Jose police seriously injure him with rubber bullet at protest.

Some impressive investigation using cell phone footage from the scene of the Lafayette Square protest.

"Nearly three-fourths of Americans view the death of George Floyd at the hands of a white police officer as a sign of an underlying racial injustice problem, a new ABC News/Ipsos poll finds, a significant shift from a similar question asked just six years ago."

The country isn't divided on this.

"A thin safety net, an expansive security state: This is the American way. At all levels of government, the country spends roughly double on police, prisons, and courts what it spends on food stamps, welfare, and income supplements."

I’ve seen slogans like ‘abolish police’ on protest signs and that didn’t make sense to me. Now I see that slogan more like a question: what type of society do we want to be?

"As I scrolled through endless collections of these online, I found it hard to escape the conclusion that America’s police forces are not just unfairly brutal — they also do not seem to care anymore about being caught on tape."

Cameras are capturing what our system with no consequences for bad actors looks like.

Speaking of Ezra Klein (we were!) this is a great interview with Ta-Nehisi Coates. It gets pretty deep on the nature of the State at one point and Coates has some optimism about *gestures around at everything* somehow.

Update: Here's a better link with a transcript: Why Ta-Nehisi Coates is hopeful.

Klein: Over the past couple of nights, as you’ve seen the collisions between police and protesters, what has that looked like to you?

Skinner: It looks like what we designed.

We ramped up police for a war on terror and now we’re getting a war.

By continuing to provide him with a platform, Facebook and Twitter have become a key mechanism in the president’s effort to silence his critics and violate their civil rights — not in their news feeds or timelines, but where they worship, where they gather, and even where they live.

I know I'm a broken record on this, but Facebook is a key piece of infrastructure for our lives and it's doing real harm in the world.