Author: Common Dreams

After deliberating for just over 10 hours, the jury in the trial of Derek Chauvin found the former Minneapolis police officer guilty for the murder of unarmed Black man George Floyd last May. Chauvin was charged with second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter. He was found guilty on all counts. His sentencing is scheduled in eight weeks. The verdict by the 12 jurors, six white and six Black or multiracial, followed three weeks of testimony by dozens of witnesses and hours of video footage of Floyd’s final minutes of life. Chauvin, who invoked the Fifth Amendment, did...

“Get out of the car! Get out of the car NOW!” The officer, the mad man with a badge, probably shouted those words 50 times at the driver, Second Lt. Caron Nazario, at a gas station in Windsor, Virginia, all the while holding a gun a foot from his face. Nazario, who is Black and Latino, had just been pulled over for not having a rear license plate – he did have one. And of course the cops had their guns drawn. The incident happened last December, but the crazy video has only recently been made public. While it...

After spending much of his decades-long career raking in corporate cash and combating efforts to limit money in politics, Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on April 5 suddenly claimed to be deeply concerned by the political influence of “powerful and wealthy people” who have spoken out against the Georgia state GOP’s sweeping assault on voting rights. In a statement, the Kentucky Republican warned corporations that they will face unspecified “consequences” if they “become a vehicle for far-left mobs to hijack our country from outside the constitutional order,” a far-fetched portrayal of corporate America’s largely tepid and belated response...

April 4 marked the 53d anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination. Over half a century. Has America come any closer to his dream? He would be pleased at some of our progress. Segregation is no longer the law of the land. The Voting Rights Act helped open doors. Dr. King would be pleased that a majority of Americans joined to elect and re-elect an African American president. Georgians just elected a black minister from Dr. King’s own historic church to the U.S. Senate. There are now 60 African American members of Congress, 54 Latino members, 20 Asian American...

As Republicans predictably cried foul over Major League Baseball’s April 2 decision to relocate the 2021 All-Star Game from Atlanta in response to Georgia’s restrictive new voting law, prominent Democrats blamed the GOP for the economic toll the move will take on the Peach State. Voting rights campaigner and former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams—a Democrat whose loss some prominent observers have blamed on voter suppression—weighed in on MLB’s decision to deprive their state of an event that generates anywhere from tens of millions of dollars to over $100 million in revenue. Abrams said in a statement that the...