To all the youngsters out there, this is why so many of us older folks hoped and prayed that this time it would be different but feared that nothing was likely to change:
Political leaders in Minnesota promised sweeping reforms after George Floyd’s killing turned their state into a focal point for nationwide fury and grief over police killings and racism.
But those efforts collapsed early on Saturday as leaders in the Minnesota Legislature — the only one in the country where Democrats control one chamber and Republicans the other — failed to compromise on a package of law-enforcement reform measures before a special session ended.
Ultimately, legislators could not reach a deal that reconciled the Democrats’ calls for far-reaching changes to police oversight with Republican leaders who supported a shorter list of “common-sense police reforms” that included banning chokeholds in most situations and requiring officers to stop their colleagues from using unreasonable force.
Democrats said the plan passed by the Republican-led Senate consisted of tepid half-steps that were already in place in most law-enforcement agencies and did not rise to the moment’s calls for dramatic action. Republicans balked at the proposals passed by the Democrat-controlled House to restore voting rights to tens of thousands of felons and put the state’s attorney general, Keith Ellison, a Democrat, in charge of prosecuting police killings.
How many times do we have to watch the tragic farce of government complicity in racism through inaction ? How many deaths will it take ’til we know that too many people have died?
Adding: note the not-so-subtle anti-reform bias and both-siderism of the Times reporting. Note especially the Times’s assumption that it is reasonable for Republicans to call proposals that include chokeholds “common sense.”