As other large cities see gun violence spiking this year, Philadelphia now ranks second in total number of homicides among U.S. cities. It falls behind Chicago (433), but outpaces larger cities like New York City (227) and Los Angeles (157).

Police Chief Outlaw said the top issues driving gun violence here are:

Existing rivalries between gangs and groups;
Competition for territory to sell drugs;
“Beefs” between individuals; and
A rise in the likelihood for individuals to carry firearms.

Krasner listed poverty as a significant cause of the city’s violence, saying “Poverty equals bullets.”

On Monday, Seattle’s KOMO reported that Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best has announced that she will retire from the Seattle Police Department, effective September 2.

In an email to the Seattle Police Department obtained by KOMO, Best said, “This was a difficult decision for me, but when it’s time, it’s time. I want to thank Mayor Durkan for her continuous support through good times and tough times. I am confident the department will make it through these difficult times. You truly are the best police department in the country, and please trust me when I say, the vast majority of people in Seattle support you and appreciate you.” She also stated that she looks forward to seeing “how this department moves forward through the process of re-envisioning public safety.”

Self-proclaimed Marxist and Black Lives Matter (BLM) co-founder Patrisse Cullors called on Democrats to make “sea changes” to their party platform and adopt radical legislation that calls to defund the police force, eliminate both the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and close all federal prisons and immigration detention centers, alongside various other radical demands — otherwise, “any claims of allyship and solidarity with our work to fight for black liberation are for naught.”

Until and unless our leaders become signatory to the BREATHE Act — to legislation that eliminates the federal government’s ability to give multi-million dollar grants to militarize police forces; dismantles punitive like ICE, Border Patrol, and the DEA; ends the use of surveillance systems being used to target protesters; and bans the use of police agencies to suppress political dissent — the Democratic Party of today will be remembered as the party of complicity. The party that refuses to sacrifice its own creature comforts and material securities to ensure it walked the walk. So before you leave today, I want you to answer this question for yourselves: Which side of history is my party actually on?

The BREATHE Act:

Formulated by the radical Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) — a coalition of more than 150 organizations and championed by Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) — the bill, posted on breatheact.org, is broken into four sections that focus on reforming federal institutions and policies.

The first section calls for moves such as divesting from police agencies like the DEA and ICE, dramatically reducing the Department of Defense budget, ending life sentences and mandatory minimum sentences, closing all federal prisons and immigration detention centers, and decriminalizing and retroactively expunging both state and federal drug offenses.

“Bull Connor may be gone, but today we witness with our own eyes police officers kneeling on the necks of Black Americans,” Obama said. “George Wallace may be gone, but we can witness our federal government sending agents to use tear gas and batons against peaceful demonstrators.”

While some may criticize those who “dwell on” such injustices during Lewis’ funeral, Obama said they were the same attacks on American democracy that Lewis devoted his entire life to combating. Obama took aim at recent efforts to disenfranchise voters and called on leaders to honor Lewis by revitalizing and protecting voting rights.

“We may not have to guess the number of jelly beans in a jar in order to cast a ballot, but even as we sit here, there are those in power who are doing their darnedest to discourage people from voting — by closing polling locations, and targeting minorities and students with restrictive ID laws," Obama continued.

"And attacking our voting rights with surgical precision, even undermining the postal service in the run-up to an election that’s going to be dependent on mail-in ballots so people don’t get sick."

A few days after the 2016 election, at an internal meeting later leaked to Breitbart News, top Google executives, including Sundar Pichai, Sergey Brin, and Kent Walker, lamented President Trump’s victory, comparing Trump voters to “extremists” and discussing their desire to make Trump’s election and the populist movement a “blip” in history.

True to their word, four years later, Google is deliberately working to interfere with the reelection of Trump in 2020.

There are several ways in which Google is interfering in the 2020 election, but this article will focus primarily on one of them: political search bias.

Google Has Been Purging Breitbart Content from Search Results Since the 2016 Election

Search visibility is a key industry measure of how findable a publisher’s content is in Google search. New data shows that Google has suppressed Breitbart’s search visibility by 99.7 percent since 2016.

Trader Joe's said it will change the names carried by some of its international food products in response to an online petition that called on the grocery chain to "remove racist branding and packaging."

The petition follows Quaker Oats' decision last month to rebrand Aunt Jemima syrup and pancakes, with the food company noting that "Aunt Jemima's origins are based on a racial stereotype." Other brands facing similar criticism have also recently pledged to review their packaging, including Uncle Ben's rice and Mrs. Butterworth's syrup.

In the case of Trader Joe's, about 2,400 people had signed the petition as of Monday morning. Specifically, the petitioners want the grocery chain to rename products labeled "Trader Ming's," "Trader José" or "Trader Giotto's," which refer to Chinese, Mexican or Italian food, respectively. In response, the chain said it has long been working to repackage the products and will soon complete the effort.

The label perpetuate harmful stereotypes, according to the social media campaign. "The Trader Joe's branding is racist because it exoticizes other cultures — it presents 'Joe' as the default 'normal' and the other characters falling outside of it — they are 'Arabian Joe,' 'Trader José' and 'Trader Joe San,' the petition states.

One of them pressures other whites to resign as well

Kent Brockman has said it before and he’ll say it again: “Democracy simply doesn’t work.”

It’s a view also embraced by the president and vice president of the University of Connecticut’s Undergraduate Student Government, who spurned the students who voted for them four months ago by resigning their elected positions.

Their rationale is both ludicrous and probably genuine: White people shouldn’t lead.

VP Alex Ose was the first to go last week, according to The Daily Campus. She cited “the climate and incidents of racial injustice across the country and at the university” without elaborating on what’s wrong at UConn (or why she can’t address the perceived problem as an elected official):

I feel that it is my duty to step down from my position to make space for BIPOC (black, indigineous and people of color) voices to truly rise and be heard. It is my responsibility to make space, not to create an echo.

Ose is also pressuring the remaining white members of the student government to resign, asking them to consider their “intent” in student leadership (to lead?) and whether they “truly” believe “they are making space for the voices that need to be heard right now” – the aforementioned BIPOCs.

President Joshua Crow didn’t go that far when he announced his own resignation prompted by white guilt two days later.

“It is important in this time to ensure that marginalized groups have the platforms they need,” he said, according to The Daily Campus. (Their paralyzing white guilt makes a little more sense when you consider that Crow and Ose beat a nonwhite ticket, Jase Valle and Guymara Manigat.)

Crow’s temporary replacement is … another white guy, Will Schad. But don’t worry! Schad’s whiteness won’t pollute the student government for much longer, at least as president.

At a Thursday town hall to “address racism within” the student government, as the Daily put it without a hint of bias, Schad emphasized he didn’t want the job and would schedule elections as soon as possible. Remember, elections were four months ago and students made their choices:

“This was never a job that I had my eyes on, but I’m going to be as committed to the students as possible and as committed to starting to solve issues of racial bias and injustice and as well as elitism, as I can be,” Schad said.

Schad also talked about his experience in working toward diversity and inclusion while in his position as speaker of the Senate. While in his former position, he said he was pushing for mandatory bias training, election reform, bias control policies within USG as well as advocating for greater access to resources for BIPOC students, such as mental health services.

MORE: Incoming student president under fire for pro-police march

You won’t believe what prompted this town hall and another hosted by Ose and Crow, whose feedback apparently prompted their race-based resignations.

Some students – whose privilege enables them to take offense at everything – had complained about a student government survey that asked undergraduates to anonymously share their own experiences of discrimination, from “microaggressions” to “Islamophobia.” It was crafted by the “Multi-Cultural and Diversity” senators.

Any reasonable person – i.e., not a UConn racial activist – would scratch their head at why students would criticize rather than thank their elected leaders for inviting their feedback.

You see, the perpetually aggrieved Huskies accused the student government of … survey appropriation, I guess you’d call it?

There were multiple comments under the [Instagram] post [sharing the survey] from students who said the survey was tone-deaf and that it seemed like the page was plagiarizing the idea from student-run anonymous social media accounts like Black at UConn.

“Why do you need surveys to know racism is wrong, you’re not amplifying anyone’s voice, you’re colonizing them,” one person commented.

Indeed, an hour after the post went up, the Black at UConn Instagram account shared an anonymous testimonial that called the student government “despicable” because “your Black and Latinx members are often talked over, looked past and not valued.” (The only example of this supposed oppression? A wonky dispute over compensating members of the executive board, which was mostly nonwhite when the compensation rule took effect.)

Though the student government quickly apologized for asking for student feedback without the sufficient wokeness, it didn’t really matter. Crow already declared at his town hall that UConn was an “inherently racist institution,” and several attendees flat-out said any executive board that was not majority nonwhite was illegitimate.

It would be nice to see student leaders of any color emphasize that skin color is not destiny, and that blacks can capably represent whites and vice versa. Sadly, don’t expect to see such leadership anytime soon at UConn.

A city council in North Carolina unanimously approved reparations for black citizens while apologizing for the city’s role in slavery, according to reports.

The historic measure was passed by the Asheville City Council in a 7-0 vote Tuesday night, the Citizen Times reported.

“Hundreds of years of black blood spilled that basically fills the cup we drink from today,” said Councilman Keith Young, who is one of two black council members.

The reparations won’t come in the form of direct payments to black residents — instead, investments will be made in areas that see racial disparities, the Citizen Times said.

A Community Reparations Commission will be formed to recommend how those resources will be used.