White supremacists and militias have infiltrated police across US, report says

August 29, 2020August 29, 2020 by blackdemocrat1

Sam Levin in Los Angeles@SamTLevinThu 27 Aug 2020 10.13 EDT

A former FBI agent has documented links between serving officers and racist militant activities in more than a dozen states

Riot police move protesters after confrontations between protesters and militia members in Stone Mountain, Georgia. Photograph: Nathan Posner/Rex/Shutterstock

Last modified on Thu 27 Aug 2020 23.37 EDT

White supremacist groups have infiltrated US law enforcement agencies in every region of the country over the last two decades, according to a new report about the ties between police and far-right vigilante groups.

In a timely new analysis, Michael German, a former FBI special agent who has written extensively on the ways that US law enforcement have failed to respond to far-right domestic terror threats, concludes that US law enforcement officials have been tied to racist militant activities in more than a dozen states since 2000, and hundreds of police officers have been caught posting racist and bigoted social media content.Far-right leader and Washington officers face civil rights lawsuit over violent incident Read more

The report notes that over the years, police links to militias and white supremacist groups have been uncovered in states including Alabama, California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Michigan, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, Virginia, Washington and West Virginia.Advertisementhttps://tpc.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html

Police in Sacramento, California, in 2018 worked with neo-Nazis to pursue charges against anti-racist activists, including some who had been stabbed, according to records.

And just this summer, German writes, an Orange county sheriff’s deputy and a Chicago policeman were caught wearing far-right militia logos; an Olympia, Washington, officer was photographed posing with a militia group; and Philadelphia police officers were filmed standing by while armed mobs attacked protesters and journalists.

The exact scale of ties between law enforcement and militias is hard to determine, German told the Guardian. “Nobody is collecting the data and nobody is actively looking for these law enforcement officers,” he said.

Officers’ racist activities are often known within their departments and generally result in punishment or termination following public scandals, the report notes. Few police agencies have explicit policies against affiliating with white supremacist groups. If police officers are disciplined, the measures often lead to protracted litigation.

Concerns about alleged relations between far-right groups and law enforcement in the US have intensified since the start of the protest movement sparked by the police killing of George Floyd. Police in states including California, Oregon, Illinois and Washington are now facing investigations for their alleged affinity to far-right groups opposing Black Lives Matter, according to the report.

This week, police in Kenosha, Wisconsin, faced intense scrutiny over their response to armed white men and militia groups gathered in the city amid demonstrations by Black Lives Matter activists and others over the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black father of three who was left paralyzed after being shot in the back. On Wednesday, Kyle Rittenhouse, a 17-year-old who appeared to consider himself a militia member and had posted “blue lives matter” content, was arrested on suspicion of murder after the fatal shooting of two protesters.

Activists in Kenosha say police there have responded aggressively and violently to Black Lives Matter demonstrators, while doing little to stop armed white vigilantes. Supporting their claims is at least one video taken before the shooting that showed police tossing bottled water to what appeared to be armed civilians, including one who appeared to be the shooter, the AP noted: “We appreciate you being here,” an officer said on loudspeaker.

Police also reportedly let the gunman walk past them with a rifle as the crowd yelled for him to be arrested because he had shot people, according to witnesses and video reviewed by the news agency.

The Kenosha sheriff, David Beth, has said the incident was chaotic and stressful.

German told the Guardian on Wednesday: “Far-right militants are allowed to engage in violence and walk away while protesters are met with violent police actions.” This “negligent response”, he added, empowers violent groups in dangerous and potentially lethal ways: “The most violent elements within these far-right militant groups believe that their conduct is sanctioned by the government. And therefore they’re much more willing to come out and engage in acts of violence against protesters.”

There is growing awareness in some parts of the government about the intensifying threat of white supremacy. The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have directly identified white supremacists as the most lethal domestic terrorist threat in the country. According to German’s report, the FBI’s own internal documents have directly warned that the militia groups the agency is investigating often have “active links” to law enforcement.

And yet US agencies lack a national strategy to identify white supremacist police and root out this problem, German warned. Meanwhile, popular police reform efforts to address “implicit bias” have done nothing to confront explicit racism.

The FBI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

As the calls to defund police have grown in recent months, law enforcement alignment with violent and racist groups only adds further fuel to the movement, German said. “In a time when the effort to defund police is getting some salience, the police are behaving in such a way as to justify that argument.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/27/white-supremacists-militias-infiltrate-us-police-report

Racial inequalities in COVID-19 — the impact on black communities

June 23, 2020 by blackdemocrat1

by Medical News Today – Written by Ana Sandoiu on June 5, 2020 — Fact checked by Catherine Carver, MPH

In this Special Feature, we look at the racialized impact that COVID-19 has on black communities in the United States, using expert opinions and rounding up the available evidence.

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/us-map

The issue of how race-related health inequalities are affecting several disadvantaged groups, and black communities in particular, in the U.S. is very complex and has wide ramifications. COVID-19 has only served to unmask inequities that have existed for hundreds of years.

The current climate of social unrest in the U.S. and the thousands of people protesting against systemic racism and in support of the Black Lives Matter movement is bringing these inequities into even sharper focus, adding more political and emotional weight to a longstanding issue.

A few articles on the matter can only begin to scratch the surface — but the complexity of an issue should not deter us from tackling it.

A couple of weeks ago, Medical News Today dove into some ways in which COVID-19 is affecting people of color and minority groups. We also interviewed Prof. Tiffany Green about how racial inequities play into the disparities observed during the pandemic.

In this Special Feature, we follow up by looking at the available scientific evidence of the uneven and racialized impacts of the pandemic, as well as what other experts have to say about racial disparities during COVID-19 and in healthcare more broadly.

As the pandemic persists and more data become available, MNT will continue to address the broader issue and focus on the impact that COVID-19 is having on specific racial and ethnic groups.

For now, much of the evidence points to a disproportionate impact on black Americans, so the rest of this article will focus on this group.

Making sense of incomplete data

As the COVID-19 pandemic unfolds, more data are becoming available regarding infection rates, mortality rates, and testing, shedding light on the ways in which the crisis is affecting different sociodemographic groups.

However, in some countries — and perhaps most notably in the U.S., considering its high numbers of cases and deaths — the information is becoming available in dribs and drabs, as the relevant government bodies have been reluctant to gather and reveal data organized by specific sociodemographic factors.

For instance, sex-disaggregated data was not publicly available in the U.S. in mid-April 2020, when the country had the highest number of COVID-19 cases in the world.

Similarly, it took the federal government 3 months to start tracking COVID-19 deaths and infections in nursing homes, and even then the efforts were incomplete, despite outcry from researchers and public health experts.

Race- and ethnicity-related data have been no exception. In mid-April, almost 3 months after the start of the pandemic in the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) were breaking down only 35% of their data according to race and ethnicity.

At the time, according to some studies, the race or ethnicity of people receiving 78% of the diagnoses on a national level was “unknown,” and only half of the states were reporting COVID-19 mortality by race and ethnicity.

Researchers have pointed out that while, “1 in 5 counties, nationally, is disproportionately black and only represent 35% of the U.S. population […] these counties accounted for nearly half of COVID-19 cases and 58% of COVID-19 deaths.”

Inaccurate or incomplete reports of data can paint a misleading picture — one that can misinform public health policies.

A study that has yet to be peer-reviewed — led by researchers at Yale University, in New Haven, CT — noted in mid-May that “The CDC data suggests that white patients represent a higher proportion of COVID-19 diagnoses than their representation in the general population.”

“Yet data derived from specific regions that report race and ethnicity of COVID-19 decedents show that black patients are dying at a much higher rate than their population share.”

In the absence of a clear picture at a federal level, scientists, nonpartisan research groups, and advocacy groups have stepped in to gather as much data as possible in a systematic way.

Reports from disparate U.S. states, coupled with emerging studies, are all painting a worrying picture: Black Americans are being hit the hardest by the pandemic, along with Latinx communities, while Indigenous populations and other minority communities are also taking the brunt of COVID-19 in some states.

Black Americans up to 3 times more likely to die of COVID-19

The study led by Yale researchers, which appeared as a preprint in mid-May, used more recent data, assessed its quality, and adjusted for age in their analysis.

Lead study author Dr. Cary Gross and colleagues found that black Americans are 3.5 times more likely to die of COVID-19 than white Americans. In addition, the team found that Latinx people are almost twice as likely to die of the disease, compared with white people.

“We also found that the magnitude of these COVID-19 disparities varied substantially across states. While some states do not have demonstrable disparities, [black and Latinx populations] in other states face 5- or 10-fold or higher risk of death than their white counterparts,” say the authors.

Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, a professor of internal medicine at Yale and senior author of the study, comments, “We need high-quality data and a consensus on the metrics we use to direct resources and tackle staggering health inequities.”

It is worth noting that the CDC are now showing national averages by race, data that was not visible on its website a few weeks ago. However, it remains unclear whether they are using data from all 50 states and Washington, D.C. to reach these averages.

A report issued by the nonpartisan American Public Media (APM) Research Lab at the end of May found similar results.

“The latest overall COVID-19 mortality rate for black Americans is 2.4 times as high as the rate for whites and 2.2 times as high as the rate for Asians and Latinos.”

The APM report calculated these rates based on the total number of deaths up to May 19, at which point the scientists had information about the races and ethnicities of 89% of the people who had died of COVID-19. The information came from 40 of the 50 states and from the District of Columbia.

“While we have an incomplete picture of the toll of COVID-19,” the authors write, “the existing data reveals deep inequities by race, most dramatically for black Americans.”

Death rate for black Americans doubles their population share

For black people in the U.S., the death rate of COVID-19 is staggeringly high, compared with the population share.

As the APM report notes, collectively, black Americans make up 13% of the population in all U.S. areas that released COVID-19 mortality data, but they account for 25% of the deaths.

“In other words, they are dying of the virus at a rate of roughly double their population share, among all American deaths where race and ethnicity is known.”

By comparison, “Across all 41 reporting jurisdictions combined, whites are considerably less likely to die from COVID-19 than expected, given their share of the population. They represent 61.7% of the combined population, but have experienced 49.7% of deaths in America where race and ethnicity is known.”

Echoing the Yale study, the APM report found huge disparities in individual states. These disparities are much broader than the 2.4-times higher rate of mortality among black Americans, compared with white Americans.

For example, “In Kansas, black residents are 7 times more likely to have died than white residents, while in Washington, D.C., the rate among blacks is 6 times as high as it is for whites. In Missouri and Wisconsin, it is 5 times greater.”

The authors of the APM report also deplored the mishandling of this crisis by the U.S. federal government, in terms of the gathering and disseminating of data on race.

Andi Egbert, a senior researcher at APM Research Lab, said, “I won’t speculate about motive, but I can’t believe in a modern economy that we don’t have a mandated, uniform way of reporting the data across states.”

“We are in the midst of this tremendous crisis, and data is the best way of knowing who is suffering and how.”
– Andi Egbert

Dr. Uché Blackstock, CEO of Advancing Health Equity, also criticized the U.S. federal reaction to race-related disparities.

“The disparities are continuing to be reflected in the data, yet we still have a complete lack of guidance from the federal government about how to mitigate these divisions. There is no real plan how to deal with it.”

What explains the disparities? And how does racism play into it?

The evidence reveals enormous disparities and a bitter reality: COVID-19 is disproportionately affecting black people in the U.S., and black people are dying as a result of COVID-19 at an alarming rate. But what are the reasons behind the numbers? What explains these huge inequities?

Experts have been saying for years that we need to tackle systemic racism and the toll that it takes on the health of communities of color.

Prof. David R. Williams, chair of the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and professor of African and African American Studies and Sociology at Harvard University, is one such expert.

In a teleconference organized by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a public health philanthropic organization based in Princeton, NJ, Prof. Williams points out: “Racial inequities exist not only for COVID-19, but for almost every disease.”

The new coronavirus, he says, only serves as a “magnifying glass that helps us to see some long-standing shortfalls in health” that have existed for centuries.

“For over 100 years, research has documented that black people in America and Native Americans live sicker and shorter lives than the average American.”
– Prof. David R. Williams

The impact of wealth and income disparities

“What are the reasons for this?” the researcher goes on to ask. “One is the low socioeconomic status.” Gaps in income and wealth distribution are a huge contributing factor.

“For example, national data for the U.S. in 2015 reveals that for every dollar of household income white households receive, black households receive 59 cents, Latino households 79 cents, and Native American households 60 cents,” Prof. Williams says.

“What is stunning for the 59 cents figure for African Americans is that it is identical to the racial [black-white] gap in income in 1978. I did not misspeak, you heard me correctly — 1978, the peak year of the economic gain for black households, as a result of the war on poverty and the civil rights policies of the 1960s and 1970s.”
– Prof. David R. Williams

Furthermore, Prof. Williams points out, according to “Federal reserve board data for 2016, for every dollar of wealth that white households have in the U.S., black households have 10 pennies and latino households have 12 pennies.”

Economic status matters “profoundly” for reducing the risk of exposure to the new coronavirus, says Prof. Williams, as lower socioeconomic status means that a person is more likely to have to leave their home for work.

Prof. Tiffany Green echoed this in the interview that she gave to MNT.

“For example, non-Hispanic black and Hispanic Americans are more likely to end up in occupations that we have newly deemed “essential,” including, but not limited to, retail work (e.g., grocery stores), sanitation, farming, meatpacking plants, frontline healthcare workers in nursing homes, early child care educators, etc. Each of these occupations is critical in allowing the rest of society to stay at home and ‘flatten the curve.’”
– Prof. Tiffany Green

A similar sentiment is echoed by Dr. Camara Phyllis Jones, an epidemiologist and fellow of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. “We’re getting infected more because we are exposed more and less protected,” she says.

In addition, issues surrounding poverty and housing add to the risk of spreading the virus. “In poor neighborhoods, [physical] distancing is not a viable option, when residing in high-density, often multi-generational housing units,” says Prof. Williams.

The impact of comorbidities

When prompted to explain why the numbers of COVID-19 cases and mortalities in the U.S. are so high, though the country makes up only 5% of the world’s population, Alex Azar, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, said, “Unfortunately, the American population is a very diverse [population].”

He went on to mention the “greater risk profile” of black communities and minority groups, suggesting that the underlying diseases that African Americans are predisposed to contribute significantly to the higher death toll.

His remarks have attracted considerable criticism and have been seen as victim-blaming.

While comorbidities are an undeniable risk factor for COVID-19 severity, it is important to ask why those comorbidities exist in the first place.

Prof. Williams mentions in his talk that black Americans are indeed more likely to have diseases such as hypertension, heart disease, and diabetes — conditions that amplify the severity of COVID-19.

In fact, research has shown that not only do black Americans and minority populations develop these diseases at a greater rate than white Americans, they also tend to develop them at a younger age.

As to why this happens, stress and racial discrimination are a huge part of the answer. “Minorities experience higher levels of stress […] and greater clustering of stress,” says Prof. Williams in his webinar.

“In addition to the traditional stressors, minorities experience the stress of racial discrimination that has been shown to have negative effects on physical and mental health.”
– Prof. David R. Williams

The impact of systematic racism in healthcare

Importantly, these negative health effects do not only stem from racial discrimination on an interpersonal level — black Americans also experience this discrimination when they engage with the healthcare system.

Prof. Williams and Dr. Lisa A. Cooper, an epidemiologist and professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, in Baltimore, MD, note in a 2019 study that a report from the National Academy of Medicine draws a chilling conclusion.

“Across virtually every type of therapeutic intervention in the U.S., ranging from high-technology procedures to the most basic forms of diagnostic and treatment interventions, blacks and other minorities receive fewer procedures and poorer quality medical care than whites.”

“Access to care is a problem [and] access to testing is a problem,” Prof. Williams says.

Dr. Jones, who is also a former president of the American Public Health Association, expressed a similar sentiment.

Speaking of racial discrimination in healthcare and its effects on COVID-19 response, she observes, “Our nation has abdicated its responsibility to do that kind of work and ask those kinds of questions.”

“By creating unequal access to resources and opportunity, racism is a fundamental cause of racial inequities in health.”
– Prof. David R. Williams and Dr. Lisa A. Cooper

In her interview with MNT, Prof. Green emphasized the profound harm of racial discrimination in healthcare.

She highlighted some specific ways in which this bias manifests, including the use of face masks to criminalize black men, disparities in Medicaid policies, and gaps in the Affordable Care Act.

Prof. Green also spoke to the importance of enforcing civil rights laws. Her interview can be read in full here.

Prof. Williams said that COVID-19 serves as a magnifying glass that helps us see racial inequalities in health. Some who are not targeted by racial prejudice on a daily basis may feel as if they are seeing these inequalities for the first time, though the disparities have existed for centuries.

It could be argued that the current protests and the Black Lives Matter movement are fulfilling a similar role — awakening many who were privileged enough to ignore injustices that have existed for hundreds of years.

Using this magnified view as an opportunity to rectify injustices — in healthcare and other areas of our lives — is crucial and urgent. So is recognizing that concerning these issues, most of us have been downright blind.

For live updates on the latest developments regarding the novel coronavirus and COVID-19, click here.ADVERTISEMENTCOVID-19 at-home test – fast, accurate results

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https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/racial-inequalities-in-covid-19-the-impact-on-black-communities

A DECADE OF WATCHING BLACK PEOPLE DIE

June 23, 2020June 23, 2020 by blackdemocrat1

by Code Switch

The rate at which black Americans are killed by police is more than twice as high as the rate for white Americans. This is a non-comprehensive list of deaths at the hands of police in the U.S. since Eric Garner’s death in July 2014.LA Johnson/NPR

https://www.npr.org/2020/05/29/865261916/a-decade-of-watching-black-people-die

The last few weeks have been filled with devastating news — stories about the police killing black people. At this point, these calamities feel familiar — so familiar, in fact, that their details have begun to echo each other.

In July 2014, a cellphone video captured some of Eric Garner’s final words as New York City police officers sat on his head and pinned him to the ground on a sidewalk: “I can’t breathe.” On May 25 of this year, the same words were spoken by George Floyd, who pleaded for release as an officer knelt on his neck and pinned him to the ground on a Minneapolis street.

We’re at the point where the very words people use to plead for their lives can be repurposed as shorthand for completely separate tragedies.

Part of our job here at Code Switch is to contextualize and make sense of news like this. But it’s hard to come up with something new to say. We covered the events in Ferguson, Mo., in August 2014 after Michael Brown was killed by the police, and we were in Baltimore after Freddie Gray’s death in 2015. We covered the deaths of Eric Garner, Philando Castile, Alton Sterling, Delrawn Small.

We’ve talked about what happens when camera crews leave cities still reeling from police violence. We’ve reflected on how traumatizing it can be for black folks to consume news cycles about black death, the semantics of “uprisings” versus “riots” and how #HousingSegregationInEverything shapes police violence. All of these conversations are playing out again.

Since it’s hard to come up with fresh insights about this phenomenon over and over and over, we thought we’d look back to another time, back in 2015, when the nation turned its collective attention to this perpetual problem. We invited Jamil Smith, a senior writer at Rolling Stone, to read from an essay that he wrote at The New Republic more than five years ago titled “What Does Seeing Black Men Die Do for You?“

In it, he writes:

“It seems sickly fitting that those killed by police today are no longer transformed into the anointed or the condemned, but, thanks to more advanced and available technology, they become hashtags. With a flood of more videotaped killings, a hashtag seems a brutally meager epitaph, a mere declaration that a victim of police violence was once alive, human, and didn’t merit having her or his life stolen.

Unfortunately, the increased visibility of trauma and death at the hands of cops isn’t doing as much as it should be. The legacy of our increased exposure to black death has merely been the deadening of our collective senses.”

The essay is still hauntingly resonant today, as camera-phone videos of black people being killed by police circulate the Internet. And it’s a reminder that so much and so little has changed. Since Jan. 1, 2015, 1,252 black people have been shot and killed by police, according to The Washington Post’s database tracking police shootings; that doesn’t even include those who died in police custody or were killed using other methods.

We also spent time creating a (very non-comprehensive) list of names of black folks killed by the police since Eric Garner’s death in 2014. Using resources including Mapping Police Violence and The Guardian’s “The Counted” series, we read the names of people from across the country, of all ages. Some, like Tamir Rice and Sandra Bland, were familiar to us. But others were new — a reminder that many black deaths at the hands of police don’t make it to national news.

We wanted to learn more about each person’s final moments before the police ended their lives. Here’s some of what we learned:

Eric Garner had just broken up a fight, according to witness testimony.

Ezell Ford was walking in his neighborhood.

Michelle Cusseaux was changing the lock on her home’s door when police arrived to take her to a mental health facility.

Tanisha Anderson was having a bad mental health episode, and her brother called 911.

Tamir Rice was playing in a park.

Natasha McKenna was having a schizophrenic episode when she was tazed in Fairfax, Va.

Walter Scott was going to an auto-parts store.

Bettie Jones answered the door to let Chicago police officers in to help her upstairs neighbor, who had called 911 to resolve a domestic dispute.

Philando Castile was driving home from dinner with his girlfriend.

Botham Jean was eating ice cream in his living room in Dallas.

Atatiana Jefferson was babysitting her nephew at home in Fort Worth, Texas.

Eric Reason was pulling into a parking spot at a local chicken and fish shop.

Dominique Clayton was sleeping in her bed.

Breonna Taylor was also asleep in her bed.

And George Floyd was at the grocery store.

LIVE: Funeral for Rayshard Brooks held at Martin Luther King Jr.’s historic church

June 23, 2020 by blackdemocrat1

https://abc7news.com/society/live-funeral-for-rayshard-brooks-held-at-mlks-historic-church/6261242/

https://abc7news.com/video/embed/?pid=7704

June 23, 2020 by blackdemocrat1

killedbypolice.net

June 23, 2020 by blackdemocrat1

The Latest Police Shootings Database:

490 People Have Been Shot and Killed by Police in 2020 – Full database (Updated: 06/22/2020)

1004 People Have Been Shot and Killed by Police in 2019 – Full database

992 People Have Been Shot and Killed by Police in 2018 – Full database

986 People Have Been Shot and Killed by Police in 2017 – Full database

962 People Have Been Shot and Killed by Police in 2016 – Full database

994 People Have Been Shot and Killed by Police in 2015 – Full database

A RESOLUTION ON RACISM

June 23, 2020 by blackdemocrat1

Santa Clara County officials push to declare racism a public health crisis

Board of Supervisors to vote on resolution Tuesday, but community leaders say it’s not enough

By FIONA KELLIHER | fkelliher@bayareanewsgroup.com | Bay Area News GroupPUBLISHED: June 22, 2020 at 3:34 p.m. | UPDATED: June 23, 2020 at 3:50 a.m.

PHOTO BY https://sanjosespotlight.com/author/tran-nguyen/

Santa Clara County to declare racism as a public health crisis

Santa Clara County officials are pushing to declare racism a public health crisis in response to both the coronavirus pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement as local civil rights leaders call on them for more meaningful systemic change.

On Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors will vote on two resolutions spawned by both recent anti-police brutality protests and data showing that Black and Latinx residents have disproportionately been infected and died from COVID-19. If approved, the resolutions would publicly affirm that Black lives matter and explore ways to incorporate more race- and health-based initiatives into county government operations.

Local civil rights leaders called the resolutions a positive first step but emphasized that the county must push beyond symbolic gestures to uproot racism.

“This is the beginning of the conversation, and it’s a good start — and the community would like to see it go further and ensure that we have more than just words on paper, and that we attach measurable outcomes so we know we’re moving the needle toward meaningful racial equity,” said the Rev. Jethroe Moore, president of the San Jose-Silicon Valley NAACP, listing out specific policy changes ranging from removing police from schools to creating a race-based social work task force. TOP ARTICLES1/5READ MORESan Jose police seek woman who coughed on baby atbusiness

“We want that conversation part of this now, not tomorrow,” he added.

The resolutions, backed by Board of Supervisors President Cindy Chavez and Supervisor Dave Cortese, would take stock of options for reviewing human resources and hiring practices, along with codified ordinances, through a lens of racial equity. It would also push for training elected officials and staff on mitigating workplace biases, incorporating educational activities on anti-racism and encouraging policies prioritizing the health of people of color.

But without more sweeping changes to law enforcement funding and oversight, such efforts fall short of improving realities for Black people and other people of color, said Raj Jayadev, director of Silicon Valley De-Bug.

Last week, the San Jose City Council voted to maintain the police department’s $449 million budget, instead setting aside about $2 million for equity and policing reforms — a move that Jayadev called an “outright insult” to Black and brown communities countywide who have led a growing chorus to defund the department.

“While I am excited about a proclamation, a declaration, I am more excited about the invitation for policy changes that it is a premonition of,” Jayadev said. “Because what we know is that these last two weeks have been a calling for radical change, but also a time of empty political gestures — it’s been a time of law enforcement and elected officials trying to be on the right side of history.”

The effort isn’t the first to tie together race and coronavirus in the county. In late May, San Jose Councilwoman Magdalena Carrasco formed a race and equity task force to shape local policy surrounding language barriers and providing culturally competent testing and contact tracing.

Another group member, California Assemblyman Kansen Chu, has since come under fire for what the NAACP and other civil rights groups deemed racist and bigoted remarks in a Chinese language newspaper, prompting calls for his resignation.

Chavez and Cortese said that the moment called for much-needed conversations surrounding race and policing in the county.

“I want the Black community to know that we see them, hear them, support them, and are ready to learn from them,” Chavez said.

Santa Clara County officials push to declare racism a public health crisis

Since Weinstein, Here’s a Growing List of Men Accused of Sexual Misconduct…. we normally stick to politics, but this is serious stuff AND obviously from the #Trump-effect

November 10, 2017 by blackdemocrat1

https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/harvey-weinstein-scandal/louis-c-k-film-i-love-you-daddy-shelved-after-n819651

Since Weinstein, Here’s a Growing List of Men Accused of Sexual Misconduct

by DAN CORey

In early October, reports surfaced that movie mogul Harvey Weinstein allegedly sexually harassed or assaulted multiple women over decades.

The public condemnation of Weinstein has seemingly emboldened others to come forward with allegations of sexual misconduct against celebrities — with studios, networks and major companies responding — in what some have dubbed the “Weinstein ripple effect.”

Here’s a list of high-profile men who have been accused of sexual harassment, assault or both in the wake of the Weinstein scandal:

Harvey Weinstein

Number of accusers:More than 80

Harvey Weinstein speaks at an event for the film “Lion” in 2016. Alexander Koerner / Getty Images file

Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein was fired from the studio he co-founded after a wave of employees and actresses, including Gwyneth Paltrow and Angelina Jolie, alleged sexual harassment and assault in explosive back-to-back reports in The New York Times and The New Yorker.

Asia Argento, an Italian actress who told The New Yorker she was sexually assaulted by Weinstein in 1997, tweeted a list of names of more than 80 women who had allegedly been sexually harassed, assaulted, raped or molested by Weinstein dating back to the late 1970s. Argento said she compiled the list with help from other Weinstein accusers.

Actress Paz de la Huerta accused the disgraced mogul of raping her in 2010, Vanity Fair reported.

Weinstein has denied all allegations that he engaged in non-consensual sex with women, and no criminal charges have been brought against him. “Any allegations of non-consensual sex are unequivocally denied by Mr. Weinstein,” Weinstein’s spokeswoman, Sallie Hofmeister, said in a statement.

Ben Affleck

Number of accusers: 2

Ben Affleck arrives at the premiere of “The Accountant” in 2016. Gregg DeGuire / WireImage file

Hours after actor Ben Affleck released a statement condemning Harvey Weinstein’s alleged sexual misconduct, Affleck was accused of groping Hilarie Burton, an actress and former host of MTV’s “Total Request Live,” in the early 2000s.

“I was a kid,” Burton, now 35, said on Twitter. In a follow-up post, she included a video showing the uncensored “TRL” cold open in which she says, in apparent reference to Affleck, “He comes over and tweaks my left boob.”

“I acted inappropriately toward Ms. Burton and I sincerely apologize,” Affleck said on Twitter.

Makeup artist Annamarie Tendler also accused Affleck of inappropriately grabbing her during a 2014 party. “I would also love to get an apology from Ben Affleck who grabbed my ass at a Golden Globes party in 2014,” she said on Twitter, further describing the incident in follow-up posts.

Affleck told The Associated Press on Nov. 5 that he is “looking at my own behavior and addressing that and making sure I’m part of the solution.”

His spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Roy Price

Number of accusers: 1

Roy Price, director of Amazon Studios, poses during Amazon’s premiere screening of the TV series “Transparent” in 2014. Kevork Djansezian / Reuters file

Roy Price, the Amazon Studios chief, resigned from his job after reports surfaced of his alleged sexual misconduct toward an Amazon TV producer, CNBC reported.

“The Man in the High Castle” producer Isa Hackett said she and Price had been promoting the show in 2015 at Comic-Con in San Diego when they wound up in a taxi together with another former Amazon executive, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

“We take seriously any questions about the conduct of our employees,” an Amazon spokesperson said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter. “We encourage people to raise any concerns and we make it a priority to investigate and address them. Accordingly, we looked closely at this specific concern and addressed it directly with those involved.”

A spokesperson for Price declined to comment to The Hollywood Reporter.

Oliver Stone

Number of accusers: 1

Director Oliver Stone attends the premiere of the film “Snowden” in 2016. ANDREW KELLY / Reuters

Actress and former Playboy model Carrie Stevens accused writer and director Oliver Stone of groping her at a party during the 1990s in a tweet responding to Stone’s remarks about the Harvey Weinstein scandal.

“He was really cocky, had this big grin on his face like he was going to get away with something,” Stevens later told The New York Daily News, adding:

Stone has not responded publicly to Stevens’ allegation, but Stone’s initial response to the sexual misconduct accusations against Harvey Weinstein also caused controversy.

“It’s not easy what he’s going through,” Stone said. “I’m a believer that you wait until this thing gets to trial. I believe a man shouldn’t be condemned by a vigilante system.”

Bob Weinstein

Number of accusers: 1

Miramax co-founder Bob Weinstein appears at a premiere of “Sin City” in 2005. Chris Pizzello / AP file

Five days after blasting his brother, Harvey Weinstein, as a “very sick man” and a “world class liar,” Bob Weinstein was accused of making repeated romantic advances to a showrunner and refusing to take no for an answer. It was first reported by Variety.

Amanda Segel, an executive producer of “The Mist,” a Weinstein Co. drama that aired on Spike TV, said Bob Weinstein began harassing her in the summer of 2016 by repeatedly asking her to join him for private dinners.

The harassment allegedly occurred on and off for about three months, until Segel’s lawyer informed Weinstein Co. executives that she would leave the show if Bob Weinstein continued to contact her for personal matters.

“Variety’s story about Bob Weinstein is riddled with false and misleading assertions by Ms. Segel and we have the emails to prove it,” Bert Fields, Bob Weinstein’s lawyer, said in part, adding: “There is no way in the world that Bob Weinstein is guilty of sexual harassment.”

John Besh

Number of accusers: Multiple

Chef John Besh attends a benefit in New York in 2015. Brad Barket / Invision via AP

Celebrity chef John Besh, a prominent fixture of the New Orleans culinary scene, stepped down from the company he founded after more than two dozen current and former members of the restaurant group alleged they were sexually harassed by various employees, including Besh, while working for the company.

Twenty-five women described a hostile work environment where female employees faced unwanted advances, sexually inappropriate comments and, in some cases, superiors attempting to leverage their authority in return for sex, according to an investigation by NOLA.com and the Times-Picayune. The accusers also said that women who complained about being harassed were punished or ignored.

Besh has been credited with helping to make New Orleans a culinary destination after Hurricane Katrina. He said in a statement that he had a “consensual relationship” with a member of his team two years ago.

“Since then I have been seeking to rebuild my marriage and come to terms with my reckless actions given the profound love I have for my wife, my boys and my Catholic faith,” he said in the statement. “I also regret any harm this may have caused to my second family at the restaurant group, and sincerely apologize to anyone past and present who has worked for me who found my behavior as unacceptable as I do.”

James Toback

Number of accusers: Multiple

James Toback attends the New York premiere of the HBO documentary film “Night Will Fall” in 2015. Stephen Lovekin / Getty Images for HBO

More than 200 additional women contacted The Los Angeles Times in response to its initial investigation, in which 38 women described similar instances of sexual harassment from veteran Hollywood writer and director James Toback.

Toback has written or directed more than a dozen films, including “Tyson,” “The Pick-Up Artist” and “Bugsy,” for which he received an Oscar nomination.

Toback denied the allegations to The Times, saying that he had either never met his accusers or only did “for five minutes and have no recollection” of them. He also claimed it would have been “biologically impossible” for him to engage in the behavior the women described throughout the last 22 years, citing diabetes and a heart condition requiring medication.

Leon Wieseltier

Number of accusers: Multiple

Leon Wieseltier poses in 2013 in Tel Aviv. Dan Balilty / AP file

The benefactors of a new magazine set to be edited by Leon Wieseltier — a literary critic, former contributing editor for The Atlantic and a former New Republic editor — ended their business relationship with him after sexual harassment allegations surfaced, The New York Times reported. The Atlantic severed its ties with him on Oct. 27.

“For my offenses against some of my colleagues in the past I offer a shaken apology and ask for their forgiveness,” Wieseltier told The Times in an email. “The women with whom I worked are smart and good people. I am ashamed to know that I made any of them feel demeaned and disrespected. I assure them I will not waste this reckoning.”

Terry Richardson

Number of accusers: Multiple

Terry Richardson sits in the front row at New York Fashion Week in 2017. Swan Gallet / REX/Shutterstock via AP

Celebrity photographer Terry Richardson was banned from working with Condé Nast — the publisher of glossy magazines like Vogue, Glamour, GQ and Vanity Fair — after allegations surfaced of sexual misconduct during photo shoots.

“[Richardson] is an artist who has been known for his sexually explicit work so many of his professional interactions with subjects were sexual and explicit in nature, but all of the subjects of his work participated consensually,” a representative for Richardson said in a statement to E! News.

George H.W. Bush

Number of accusers: 4

Former President George H.W. Bush poses with the cast of AMC’s series TURN in Houston in 2014. Aaron M. Sprecher / Invision for AMC

Four women from separate incidents came forward to accuse former President George H.W. Bush of touching them from behind while he told a dirty joke as they posed beside him for photos.

Television actress Heather Lind was first to accuse the former president, and said in a now-deleted Instagram post that Bush inappropriately touched her during a 2014 screening of her AMC series, “TURN: Washington’s Spies,” in Houston. Lind appears alongside Bush, who’s seated in a wheelchair, while his wife, former First Lady Barbara Bush, was also present.

“At age 93, President Bush has been confined to a wheelchair for roughly five years, so his arm falls on the lower waist of people with whom he takes pictures,” Bush spokesman Jim McGrath said in a statement. “To try to put people at ease, the president routinely tells the same joke — and on occasion, he has patted women’s rears in what he intended to be a good-natured joke.”

New York actress Jordana Grolnick also accused the former president of inappropriate touching, followed by author Christina Baker Kline and Amanda Staples, a Republican candidate for Maine’s Senate. McGrath said the former president apologizes to anyone he has offended.

Mark Halperin

Number of accusers: 12

Mark Halperin appears at the Showtime Critics Association summer press tour in Beverly Hills in 2016. Richard Shotwell / AP

NBC News ended its relationship with senior political analyst Mark Halperin after multiple reports surfaced that he sexually harassed at least a dozen women while serving as political director for ABC News.

“I am profoundly sorry for the pain and anguish I have caused by my past actions,” Halperin said in a statement on Twitter. “I apologize sincerely to the women I mistreated.”

Halperin, a veteran political journalist with multiple book deals and projects, has also seen HBO, Showtime and Penguin Press have ended their associations with him.

Kevin Spacey

Number of accusers: Multiple

Kevin Spacey discusses his new play “Clarence Darrow” on May 24, 2017 in New York. Daniel Zuchnik / WireImage via Getty Images file

Broadway veteran Anthony Rapp accused “House of Cards” star Kevin Spacey of climbing on top of him in a sexual manner when he was 14 years old and Spacey was 26 or 27 at a party in Spacey’s New York apartment.

“I honestly do not remember the encounter, it would have been over 30 years ago,” Spacey wrote in a statement on Twitter. “But if I did behave then as he describes, I owe him the sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior, and I am sorry for the feelings he describes having carried with him all these years.”

Mexican actor Roberto Cavazos also accused Spacey of inappropriate touching during an encounter at the Old Vic theater in London, where Spacey served as artistic director from 2004 until 2015.

Spacey was later accused by eight people who currently or previously worked on the “House of Cards” set of creating a “toxic” work environment, CNN reported. Among those eight unnamed accusers, some also claimed the actor sexually harassed or assaulted them.

Harry Dreyfuss, an actor and son of Oscar winner Richard Dreyfuss, has accused Spacey of groping him in 2008. The younger Dreyfuss claimed in a Buzzfeed article that Spacey put his hand on his thigh and later groped his crotch when Dreyfuss was 18. Spacey “absolutely denies the allegations” from Dreyfuss, his lawyer Bryan Freedman told Buzzfeed.

Heather Unruh, a former television anchor, told reporters that Spacey bought her then 18-year-old son “drink after drink after drink” at a crowded restaurant in Nantucket, Massachusetts, in July 2016, and then “stuck his hand inside my son’s pants and grabbed his genitals.”

NBC News has not verified the allegations. Spacey’s attorney did not respond to a request for comment.

Earlier, his representatives said in a statement that “Kevin Spacey is taking the time necessary to seek evaluation and treatment.”

Michael Oreskes

Number of accusers: 8

Former Associated Press Vice President and Senior Managing Editor Mike Oreskes poses at AP headquarters in 2015. Chuck Zoeller / AP file

NPR news chief Michael Oreskes was ousted from his post on Nov. 1 after two women alleged he suddenly kissed them while discussing job prospects when he was The New York Times’ Washington bureau chief in the 1990s.

Since the original allegations were made public, 5 women at NPR have filed a formal harassment complaint against Oreskes, according to the Washington Post, bringing the number of accusers up to eight. The Post reported that the latest allegations occurred during the past three years.

Oreskes, who was placed on leave by NPR after The Post’s report, said he was deeply sorry to the people he hurt.

“My behavior was wrong and inexcusable, and I accept full responsibility,” he said.

Jeremy Piven

Number of accusers: 3

Jeremy Piven attends the Emmy Awards in Los Angeles in 2017. Mike Blake / Reuters

On Twitter, actress and reality television star Ariane Bellamar accused “Entourage” actor Jeremy Piven of groping her once on set, and again at the Playboy Mansion.

Bellamar claims that Piven grabbed her breasts without her consent after cornering her in his trailer on the “Entourage” set. Addressing the actor directly, Bellamar tweeted, “I tried to leave; you grabbed me by the ass, looked at yourself in the mirror [and] said what a ‘beautiful couple’ we made.” It is unclear whether she was referring to the set of the “Entourage” television series or its movie sequel.

Days later, actress Cassidy Freeman said in an Instagram post that Piven of making unwanted sexual advances toward her.

“I unequivocally deny the appalling allegations being peddled about me. It did not happen,” Piven said in a statement. “It takes a great deal of courage for victims to come forward with their histories, and my hope is that the allegations about me that didn’t happen, do not detract from stories that should be heard.”

About a week later, Tiffany Bacon Scourby told People that Piven exposed himself, rubbed his genitals against her and ejaculated on her clothing in October 2003 in New York City. She said she told a longtime friend immediately after the alleged incident and People said the friend corroborated the allegation.

Piven did not immediately return a request for comment about Scourby’s allegation.

Dustin Hoffman

Number of accusers: 2

Dustin Hoffman arrives at the Hollywood Foreign Press Association Grants Banquet in Beverly Hills in 2017. Jordan Strauss / Invision/AP file

Anna Graham Hunter was a 17-year-old production assistant for the 1985 film adaptation of “Death of a Salesman” when actor Dustin Hoffman grabbed her and used sexually explicit language with her, she said in a first-person account published by The Hollywood Reporter.

Playwright Wendy Riss Gatsiounis also said Hoffman sexually harassed her in 1991 and allegedly propositioned her and attempted to persuade her to accompany him to a store in a nearby hotel.

“I have the utmost respect for women and feel terrible that anything I might have done could have put her in an uncomfortable position,” Hoffman told The Hollywood Reporter. “I am sorry. It is not reflective of who I am.”

Brett Ratner

Number of accusers: 6

Brett Ratner arrives at the Wolfgang Puck’s Post-Hollywood Walk of Fame Star Ceremony Celebration in Beverly Hills in 2017 Willy Sanjuan / Invision/AP file

Actresses Olivia Munn, Katharine Towne, Jamie Ray Newman, Natasha Henstridge, Jorina King and model and singer Eri Sasaki all alleged varying accounts of inappropriate behavior from director Brett Ratner, The Los Angeles Times reported.

Munn and Henstridge both told The Times they experienced separate incidents early in their careers in which Ratner masturbated in front of them. Munn said she was delivering food as a favor in 2004 to what she believed was Ratner’s empty trailer, and was frightened to find him inside.

Ratner’s attorney, Martin Singer, staunchly denied each woman’s allegations and claimed Munn’s account was “a complete lie.”

“I have represented Mr. Ratner for two decades, and no woman has ever made a claim against him for sexual misconduct or sexual harassment,” Singer said in a letter to The Times. “Furthermore, no woman has ever requested or received any financial settlement from my client.”

In light of the allegations, Ratner said in a statement that he is choosing to “step away from all Warner Bros.-related activities.”

“I don’t want to have any possible negative impact to the studio until these personal issues are resolved,” Ratner said in the statement.

Ed Westwick

Number of accusers: 2

Ed Westwick arrives at the BAFTA Awards Season Tea Party at the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles on Nov. 7, 2017. Jordan Strauss / AP

Actress Kristina Cohen wrote a Facebook post saying that she and a boyfriend had gone to Ed Westwick’s home three years ago.

Cohen said she took a nap in one of the rooms, and that when she woke up, the “Gossip Girl” actor was sexually assaulting her. She said she tried to fight him off, but he was too strong.

“I couldn’t speak, I could no longer move. He held me down and raped me,” she wrote.

Westwick responded the following day on social media to deny the allegations: “I do not know this woman. I have never forced myself in any manner, on any woman. I certainly have never committed rape.”

The Los Angeles Police Department said Cohen filed a police report, which confirms an investigation but not evidence of a crime. There was no police report filed at the time of the alleged incident, sources said.

Following Cohen’s post, former actress Aurélie Wynn shared on Facebook a claim that she was raped by Westwick while taking a nap in July 2014.

Westwick later tweeted out a statement saying, “It is disheartening and sad to me that as a result of two unverified and provably untrue social media claims, there are some in this environment who could ever conclude I have had anything to do with such vile and horrific conduct. I have absolutely not, and I am cooperating with the authorities so that they can clear my name as soon as possible.”

Steven Seagal

Number of accusers: 2

American actor Steven Seagal in Moscow. Mikhail Japaridze / TASS via Getty file

At least two actresses have accused Steven Seagal of sexual harassment. Actress Portia de Rossi tweeted that she once auditioned for the former action star in his office, where he “said how important it was to have chemistry off-screen as he sat me down and unzipped his leather pants.”

De Rossi said she ran out and told her agent. She didn’t say when the alleged incident occurred.

Actress Rae Dawn Chong told The Hollywood Reporter of a similar story. She said the talent agency that represented her from 1989-90 had her meet Seagal inside of his hotel room at night. She said he exposed himself to her and that after she told her agent what happened, it impacted her career. She later left the agency, she said, “because it was like a pimp situation.”

Other women have claimed Seagal acted inappropriately or strangely with them, but not specifically of sexual misconduct. Julianna Margulies, who co-starred with Seagal in 1991’s “Out for Justice,” said on SiriusXM that when she was 23, she was told by a casting director to go to Seagal’s hotel room at night.

Margulies said that when she got there, she was alone. Seagal “made sure that I saw his gun, which I had never seen a gun in real life,” the actress said. “And I got out of there unscathed.”

Reps for Seagal did not immediately respond to a request for comment from NBC News.

Louis CK

Number of accusers: 5

Comedian Louis C.K. performs onstage at 2014 Stand Up For Heroes at Madison Square Garden on Nov. 5, 2014 in New York. Andrew H. Walker / Getty Images file

Five women have accused Emmy-winning comedian and actor Louis CK of sexual misconduct dating back at least 15 years, The New York Times reported.

Louis CK, the creator and star of the FX series “Louie,” allegedly masturbated in front of two women comedians in 2002, The Times reported. Three other women told The Times about other instances of alleged sexual misconduct.

NBC News has not verified the allegations.

After being contacted by The Times for an interview, Louis CK’s publicist, Lewis Kay, said his client would not respond. “Louis is not going to answer any questions,” Kay wrote to The Times in an email.

In the exposé published in The Times, comedians Dana Min Goodman and Julia Wolov allege Louis CK in 2002 invited them to his hotel room in Colorado, undressed himself, and masturbated in front of them. Abby Schachner, a comedian who says she called Louis CK to invite him to one of her performances in 2003, claims she could hear him masturbating during their phone conversation. Rebecca Corry, a writer and actress, alleges Louis CK asked if he could masturbate in front of her while they appeared together on a television pilot in 2005.

“The Russians,” Clapper told Politico, have “succeeded beyond their wildest expectations.” Via NPR

November 10, 2017November 10, 2017 by blackdemocrat1

AMERICA

Ex-U.S. Intel Chiefs Criticize CIA For Entertaining Russian Hack Conspiracy

November 9, 20176:25 AM ET

SCOTT NEUMAN

Enlarge this image

Former National Intelligence Director James Clapper testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, before the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism hearing: “Russian Interference in the 2016 United States Election,” in May.

Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP

THE TWO-WAY

CIA Director Pompeo Denounces WikiLeaks As ‘Hostile Intelligence Service’

THE TWO-WAY

CIA Backs Off Director’s Claim That Russian Meddling Didn’t Swing Election

A report that President Trump asked CIA Director Mike Pompeo to meet with a former NSA employee who denies Russian interference in the U.S. election has drawn fire from two ex-intelligence chiefs.

The claim that emails were “leaked” rather than “hacked” is at odds with the assessment of the U.S. intelligence community, including Pompeo himself, who told the Senate Intelligence Committee as much in May.

(Later, Pompeo said that U.S. intelligence agencies had concluded that the Russian attempts to influence the elections were ultimately unsuccessful, although the CIA later walked that assertion back.)

EUROPE

Russian Security Expert Maintains Putin Was Behind DNC Hack

The Intercept reports that Pompeo met last month with a former NSA officer, William Binney, who is described as a “whistleblower” and reportedly co-authored an analysis by a group of former intelligence officers that challenges the consensus that Russia was behind the hack of the Democratic National Committee’s emails. The website reports that in an interview with Binney, the ex-NSA officer contends that he and other former officials “argue that the DNC data was ‘leaked,’ not hacked, ‘by a person with physical access’ to the DNC’s computer system.”

According to The Intercept:

“Binney said Pompeo told him that President Donald Trump had urged the CIA director to meet with Binney to discuss his assessment that the DNC data theft was an inside job. During their hour-long meeting at CIA headquarters, Pompeo said Trump told him that if Pompeo ‘want[ed] to know the facts, he should talk to me,’ Binney said.”

“This episode, I think, adds to the image (perhaps unjustifiably) that Pompeo is a political activist, as a ‘go-to’ guy for Trump,” retired Gen. James Clapper, the former Director of National Intelligence under President Obama tells CNN. He added that it is “not a good place for a director of the CIA to be.”

Article continues after sponsorship

Clapper, who also served as the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency under Presidents Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush, was echoed in a separate interview with CNN by Retired Gen. Michael Hayden, who worked as the director of the National Security Agency and later the Central Intelligence Agency under three presidents.

“I suspect that this is something that Director Pompeo never wanted to do,” Hayden tells the news channel.

“He had to have been pushed” to take the meeting, Hayden said.

“The President’s insistence that he pursue such an obviously weak argument suggests a grasping at straws here,” he concluded.

Clapper, in particular, has been a harsh critic of Trump. Late last month, he told Politico that the 2016 hacking was real and aimed at electing Trump and amounted to a major victory for a foreign adversary.

“The Russians,” Clapper told Politico, have “succeeded beyond their wildest expectations.”

Democrats breakthrough Tuesday’s wins!!! Referendum anyone ?

November 10, 2017 by blackdemocrat1

Democrats see a digital breakthrough in Virginia wins

By Eric Bradner, CNN

Updated 6:14 AM ET, Fri November 10, 2017

JUST WATCHED
Best of Ralph Northam’s victory speech

Replay

MUST WATCH

Best of Ralph Northam’s victory speech 01:21

Washington (CNN)Democrats see Ralph Northam’s big win in the Virginia governor’s race as a breakthrough moment for the left’s digital efforts.

A year after Republicans leapfrogged the Democrats’ digital capacities on the way to President Donald Trump’s election, progressive groups combined spent nearly $3 million on an innovative effort to modernize the party’s digital advertising.

If Democrats can win Alabama, the Senate is in play in 2018

The effort, organized by Planned Parenthood and coordinated by veteran Democratic digital strategist Tara McGowan, reached 2.4 million Virginia voters without Northam’s campaign having to spend any money at all on digital advertising.

“It wasn’t just talking, sharing what plans were — it was really the nitty-gritty details of putting together a program we all felt really good about,” said McGowan, the head of the new digital firm ACRONYM.

Coordination is standard in politics when several outside groups are working to aid the same candidate. But Virginia’s laws allow campaigns and outside organizations to share plans and strategies — which opened the door for what became the Democratic Party’s best-coordinated joint digital effort yet.

Now progressive groups say they want to use similar tactics across the 2018 midterm map.

“There’s a lot of groups that are looking to invest more in digital right now, and I think everybody knows that we have to. That wasn’t the case two or four years ago necessarily,” McGowan said.

Of Democrats’ catch-up efforts ahead of the 2018 midterms, she added: “If you had asked me this six months ago, I would not have felt nearly as confident.”

McGowan led weekly conference calls that were kicked off with a summary of the Northam campaign’s messaging strategy from Northam digital director Alex Witt. The groups involved also kept up a running conversation on strategy and tactics on a Slack channel.

The list of groups participating included the Democratic super PAC Priorities USA, billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer’s NextGen America, the Virginia League of Conservation Voters PAC, the Eric Holder-led National Democratic Redistricting Committee, Progress Virginia and Black PAC. They were organized by Planned Parenthood — which was also the biggest spender. They combined for a budget of $2.9 million.

The groups’ coordination included sharing creative resources — that is, the ads themselves, and the content that went into them — as well as voter targeting and audience information and data that detailed how effective each ad had been.

Rather than simply placing TV ads online, the groups developed vertical content — which is consumed much more easily on mobile phones on platforms like Facebook, Snapchat ads and Instagram stories.

On Facebook, in particular, the groups took a new — and more complicated — approach to delivering their ads.

Facebook allows advertisers to deliver a second spot to users who engage with the first one — and a third to those who engage with the second one. Most campaigns don’t do that, because it’s much more time-consuming than delivering a single, effective spot over and over, and because it’s more expensive to produce the extra ads such a strategy requires. The progressive groups did, though.

The groups poured late energy into targeting demographic groups that could sway the election. Planned Parenthood found that messages focused on women’s health care moved black voters by about 20 percentage points — so it created more ads focused on that issue.

Meanwhile, the groups saved money by making sure to target different audiences. Facebook determines ads’ cost through an “auction” process. By gearing their ads for different demographics, the groups avoided bidding against each other.

“This effort will set the precedent for coordinated investment and execution of a digital media program to reach, persuade and mobilize voters in a statewide race,” said Jennifer Allen, CEO of Planned Parenthood Virginia PAC.

The win in Virginia showed that “building a robust digital infrastructure to break through echo chambers and reach voters online is more vital than ever, and Priorities will be working to replicate our success in races around the country in 2018,” said Priorities USA Chairman Guy Cecil.