A Small Step toward Accountability: CPR Commends Guilty Verdicts in the Murder of George Floyd
Racism runs much deeper than policing and law enforcement. Racial injustice is deeply embedded in our nation’s past and present. It is systemic, institutional, and interpersonal, but it is not insurmountable. It’s time for a national reckoning that takes racism and white supremacy seriously and delivers fully enforceable policies that stamp out discrimination in policing and all other institutions in our country. Black Americans and other marginalized people are entitled to the same tenets of life and liberty as guaranteed to white people. Systemic racism and lawlessness by state actors make that impossible.
Today, a jury found Derek Chauvin guilty of murdering George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, in May 2020. This is one small step toward accountability for those who perpetrate violence against Black people and other marginalized people. Still mourning the loss of George Floyd and calling out the names of Adam and Daunte and Breonna and the many others whose killers have not been punished, we urge bold legal and policy reforms to dismantle white supremacy and foster a culture of equity and justice.
All eyes were on Minneapolis today: Would the jury convict a police officer for a killing that the whole country witnessed …
Through the heroic legal efforts of our friends at Public Citizen and the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union, workers won a huge victory this week in federal court. A federal district court judge in Minnesota ruled that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) acted arbitrarily and capriciously when it eliminated line speed limits, and “cited mounds of evidence showing a relationship between high speeds and musculoskeletal injuries, lacerations, and amputations.” The judge vacated the Trump-era rule, showing that there is a limit to high line speeds — and corporate rapaciousness.
For the 500,000 workers in America’s meatpacking and poultry industry, few jobs have been more dangerous and less rewarding. Low wages, injury, and death have continued to characterize this workplace jungle since Upton Sinclair’s 1905 muckraking book The Jungle. (No relation, sadly.)
The COVID-19 pandemic has added to the toll with 57 …
To commemorate Women’s History Month, we’re interviewing women at the Center for Progressive Reform about how they’re building a more just America, whether by pursuing a just transition to clean energy, protections for food workers, or legal support for Native Americans.
This week, CPR’s Executive Director, Minor Sinclair, spoke with Member Scholar Maxine Burkett, professor of law at the William S. Richardson School of Law, University of Hawai'i at Manoa. Burkett has written extensively in diverse areas of climate law with a particular focus on climate justice, exploring the disparate impact of climate change on vulnerable communities in the United States and globally. Their conversation explored the roots of climate justice and its connections to present day climate action.
MS: Natural disasters can be discriminatory for a host of reasons, and climate change is part of that. Why are certain communities more vulnerable …
As many of you know, I started as the Center for Progressive Reform's new executive director this month. I am thrilled to join CPR in this historic moment, to commit the next stage of my life to fight for the integrity and strength of our democracy, and to establish, as FDR said 90 years ago, "the purpose of government to see that not only the legitimate interests of the few are protected but that the welfare and rights of the many are conserved."
CPR's mission speaks to me personally. My own winding story saw me raised in the American South, defending refugees and human rights in Central America in the '80s, living in Cuba in the '90s, and, for the past 15 years, working at Oxfam to defend workers' rights and socially vulnerable communities in the United States. The fault lines of race and entitlement that …
