But unlike past attempts to reform the police in the wake of high-profile killings of people of color, which often centered on increased oversight or training, this time the demands are far more radical: defund police departments or abolish them entirely.
Efforts to cut off funding for police have already taken root in Minneapolis, where the police department’s budget currently totals $193 million. (In 2017, the department received 36 percent of the city’s general fund expenditures.)
Protesters rallied in Melbourne, Australia, standing in solidarity with US protesters while also protesting police violence against Indigenous Australians [Ali MC/Al Jazeera]
Protesters across Australia call for justice for Aboriginal Australians who have died at the hands of police. by Ali MC 3 hours ago
Tens of thousands of people protested across Australia in support of the Black Lives Matter movement while also addressing the deaths of Indigenous Australians in custody or at the hands of the police.
In Melbourne, thousands gathered peacefully on Saturday to listen to speeches from Indigenous Australians who had family members killed.
Gathering in front of the state’s Parliament House, protesters sang in Indigenous language, with thousands tapping their chest in accompaniment. Protesters held placards, with chants of “Black lives matter” and “always was, always will be Aboriginal land”.
Lawrence Austin and Murray Calgaret hold a placard of their relative Veronica Nelson who died in custody on January 2, 2020 [Ali MC/ Al Jazeera]
Like protesters in the United States and around the world, people chanted “I can’t breathe”.
What follows is a call to raise funds for those who have been beaten during the protests and have medical bills. Submitted to Enough 14. Support the Jail Mutual Aid Fund As the George Floyd protests continue to increase momentum, we have seen an escalation in police violence. We have seen children pepper sprayed, vans…
Activists break into the house of Kaotar Dee, to get her and her possessions back into her home of 21 years and for her to make a barricaded stand after being locked out by landlords during the coronavirus pandemic on May 29, 2020, in Los Angeles, California. The city has recently passed the right for […]
Calls to “cancel rent” are catching fire. First came a couple of tweets on Twitter. Then progressive firebrands like Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez endorsed the #CancelRent movement. Now, millions are on a rent strike. Even presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has declared his support for rent and mortgage forgiveness.
As millions of tenants mobilize to cancel rent, they are not asking nicely or relying on lip service from politicians. Rather, millions of tenants are taking action by using a powerful time-tested strategy: rent strikes.
As the desperation builds and another month of bills and rent arrears accrues, tenants are no longer politely asking for help. Tenants are rightfully taking matters into their own hands by organizing rent strikes to bring the fight to their landlords and elected officials to cancel rent. “When we fight, we win! We are here to let them know,” said Kim Statuto, who is a tenant leader for tenant organizing group
Community Action for Safe Apartments in the Bronx. “Thousands of people are on strike! Because we can’t pay and because it should not be on us to bail out the landlords!” While rent strikes are not new, I have never seen tenants come together on this scale before.
In New York, multiple unions that represent thousands of housing attorneys and legal services workers, including myself, have joined the cancel rent movement. As an attorney, I have represented tenant associations on countless rent strikes against their landlords in the past decade. In my experience, rent strikes are an incredibly effective strategy for tenants to reclaim their power and win meaningful demands.
Rent strikes have been used as early as 1907. In New York City, rent strikes have been closely intertwined with the civil rights struggles of African Americans for many generations — from landlords charging Black Americans higher rents than white Americans, or the city government’s racist housing policies, such as racially discriminatory rental practices and exclusion from public housing. And rent strikes have been incredibly successful in achieving huge victories, such as rent control in the 1940s.
As lawyers, we must caution clients about the legal risks they are undertaking. These are unprecedented times and there are looming questions: What new laws may pass? How will courts process landlords’ claims for nonpayment of rent? How will judges and juries interpret tenants’ legal defenses within a global health pandemic?
The scale of this housing crisis is terrifying for so many who do not see any relief in sight. It also means that individual tenants can, once again, turn to their neighbors for solidarity.
When tenants work together on a rent strike, it can: (1) build collective strength and pressure that summons landlords to the negotiating table; and (2) reduce the risk of retaliation for any individual tenant. Perhaps more importantly, tenants transform from passive and helpless witnesses to their own oppression to empowered actors ready to fight and claim their dignity.
Demonstrators hurled firebombs in a march towards the US Embassy compound in Athens on Wednesday in protest over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
Molotov cocktails erupted into flames on the street aimed towards the heavily-guarded embassy in central Athens. The police’s teargas couldn’t stop the onslaught.
Over 3000 demonstrators filled the streets of Athens holding banners and placards reading “Black lives matter” and “I can’t breathe”.
Protesters gather during a ‘Black Lives Matter’ demonstration against the death in Minneapolis police custody of African-American man George Floyd, in front of the U.S. Embassy in Copenhagen, Denmark May 31, 2020.
For the last week, cities across the US have erupted in uprisings against the police after George Floyd, a black man, was murdered in the streets by police officers. Across 50 states, people have been hurling projectiles at police, burning cop cars, and in a few cities, firing at police with guns in hit and run attacks.
A group prays near the intersection where David McAtee was killed in Louisville, Kentucky, on 2 June. Photograph: Darron Cummings/AP
In the moments before he was shot dead by law enforcement this week, David McAtee – otherwise known as YaYa or “the barbecue man” – was doing what he always did: cooking up meat for the crowds gathered at the intersection of Broadway and 26th in Louisville, Kentucky’s predominantly black West End.
People were sitting around at the Dino’s gas station and food mart across the street listening to music and having a good time. At his barbecue stand, McAtee was busy shuffling between the grills made out of oil drums that he cooked on and the kitchen. He had hoped to open a bricks-and-mortar restaurant one day.
None of them had the faintest idea that McAtee’s name would soon join the long list of those chanted by protesters across the US calling for an end to police violence against people of color.
“It was just a normal day. People just having fun. Not nobody was about trouble,” McAtee’s nephew, Marvin McAtee, told the Guardian as he stood next to the bullet-pocked wall beside the kitchen entrance. “Nothing that serious for the marshals to come over for us.”
Dwayne Simmons makes a memorial to David McAtee near the intersection of 26th and Broadway in Louisville, Kentucky, on 2 June. Photograph: Darron Cummings/AP
It was just after midnight on 1 June when at least two trucks of national guard troops and a number of Louisville metro police department (LMPD) officers arrived at the intersection with the goal of breaking up the crowd that was gathered there in violation of curfew. Protesters downtown had already been dispersed earlier with teargas, pepper balls and baton rounds. Now they were trying to put the city to bed.
![Protesters rallied in Melbourne, Australia, standing in solidarity with US protesters while also protesting police violence against Indigenous Australians [Ali MC/Al Jazeera]](https://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/imagecache/mbdxxlarge/mritems/Images/2020/6/6/4bd0d566fc9541c6b9692f44c432475a_18.jpg "Thousands protest Indigenous Australians' death in police custody")
Protesters gather during a ‘Black Lives Matter’ demonstration against the death in Minneapolis police custody of African-American man George Floyd, in front of the U.S. Embassy in Copenhagen, Denmark May 31, 2020. 
The Free 