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Mr. Cuomo has also lost the support of nearly every major union in New York State: the unions representing hotel workers, teachers, building service workers, transit workers, retail workers and municipal employees, as well as the head of New Yorks umbrella labor organization, the AFL-CIO.

Laura Curran, whom Mr. Cuomo backed for Nassau County executive and whose swearing-in he memorialized on his website, has also called for him to resign. In an interview, she suggested that his defense on Tuesday was tone-deaf and fell flat in her suburban county, which backed him in the 2018 primary with nearly 78 percent of the vote.

Im hearing, you know, his tone of his own victimhood, and his tone of self-pity, was the wrong note to hit, she said. Thats what people found really off-putting. Along with, of course, the findings. But that on top of it that this was something that was being done to him is a turnoff to many people that Im speaking to.

Those who have not demanded the governors head some of them longtime allies who have business before the state are avoiding making public statements on his standing.

Mr. Gresham, the president of 1199 SEIU, a powerful health care union, declined multiple requests for comment. A spokesman for the New York State Public Employees Federation also said nothing. Gary LaBarbera, the president of the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York, was similarly circumspect.

According to his spokesman, Jordan Isenstadt, the union is letting the process play out.

On Tuesday evening, the Rev. Al Sharpton, the civil rights activist, met with New York City leaders at the National Action Network, then had a Wednesday-morning call with leaders from upstate New York.

We have not come to a consensus, Mr. Sharpton said on Wednesday afternoon. But I can say it is leaning heavily toward calling for his resignation.

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The Abandonment of Andrew Cuomo: Unions, Party Leaders and Deep Allies - The New York Times

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State Rep. Ron Reynolds and U.S. Rep. Al Green were both arrested Tuesday at the U.S. Capitol while demonstrating for federal voting legislation.

The two Democratic lawmakers were at a rally organized by the National Clergy United for Justice that civil rights activists Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton also attended.

Green, a Houston Democrat, told The Texas Tribune that he and his colleagues moved to the street after praying in front of the Supreme Court when they were approached by Capitol police. He said protesters were told they would be arrested if they hadnt moved after three warnings.

According to Greens office, the lawmakers were arrested on charges of crowding, obstructing, or incommoding.

Reynolds, of Missouri City, is the first Texas House Democrat arrested during the groups decampment to Washington, D.C., to block a state voting restrictions bill. The state lawmakers have been out of Texas for more than three weeks. Theyve spent that time lobbying their federal counterparts to pass voting rights legislation like the For the People Act, which they believe could preempt the proposed voting restrictions back home.

The state has a long history of voter suppression, and the latest iteration of it involves denying people the right to vote in hours that are convenient to them when theyre getting off of work, Green said in reference to one aspect of the GOP-backed voter restrictions, which looks to ban 24-hour voting in the state.

Reynolds said in an interview that he remains confident in his partys efforts to stall the bills because the special session ends this week.

I think that our position is strong. Were essentially a few days away from killing all [Gov. Greg] Abbotts items that he put on call for the special session, he said.

Still, Abbott has vowed to continue calling special sessions until the Texas bill passes.

Tuesdays arrests come after U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Houston, was arrested last week as she demonstrated in support of federal voting legislation.

Efforts to pass federal voting legislation have remained futile, mainly because of a filibuster backed by the GOP and Democratic senators like Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin that requires 60 senators to put a bill on the floor. If passed, the For the People Act would end partisan gerrymandering and create a nationwide automatic voter registration system.

We believe that this has been a very necessary trip where we have moved the needle. Now we havent gotten federal legislation passed, but were certainly right there a lot closer than we were when we came here to D.C. three weeks ago, Reynolds said.

In a video posted from Greens Twitter account Tuesday, he and Reynolds sang along to We Shall Overcome as Capitol police officers came over to handcuff them. The song was a frequent refrain during the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

The post was captioned with the hashtag #GoodTrouble a reference to the late congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis, who encouraged defying the law in pursuit of moral good.

Get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and help redeem the soul of America, Lewis said on the 55th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, when civil rights marchers were assaulted by state and local police at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama.

Another one of the federal voting bills stalled in Congress is the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which could bring back federal preclearance a policy that gives the federal government the authority to vet state voting laws for discrimination against voters of color.

For Green, the references to Lewis are personal.

I was arrested twice with John Lewis, and we were taken to jail, Green said. And we were detained and jailed for some time he and I were cellmates.

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State Rep. Ron Reynolds and U.S. Rep. Al Green arrested while demonstrating for federal voting bill at U.S. Capitol - The Texas Tribune

The Rev. Al Sharpton and civil rights attorney Ben Crump are shifting their focus to a white teenager who was killed by police in Arkansas, after advocacy efforts that largely focused on Black individuals who have died during police encounters.

Sharpton and Crump were two of the mostprominent figuresfollowing themurder of George Floyd, a Black man who died in May 2020 after a white Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for more than nine minutes.

Crump, who represented Floyds family after the incident,has also represented the families of Breonna Taylor and Michael Brown, both of whom were fatally shot by police.

Sharpton and Crump are now drawing attention tothe death of 17-year-old Hunter Brittain, who was fatally shot during a traffic stop on June 23.

An officer wasrelieved of his dutiesearlier this monthafter failing to turn on his body camera during his alleged involvement in Brittains death.

Crump told The Washington Post in an interview that Brittains death will help muster greater interracial support amid a push to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act in Congress because his blood is now on this legislation, just as Floyds and Breonna Taylors blood is.

The lawyer said the picture of an unarmed white teenager being fatally shot by police will start to change the narrative and perception of the problem of police violence as the country sees that children of all races and ethnicities can be victims.

It is closer to home now, for people who probably could not comprehend when it was happening to Black teenagers, he told the Post.

Crump, who has been called Black Americas attorney general by Sharpton, emphasized that his mission has always been to make sure that all our children can get home safely and not be killed by the police who are supposed to protect and defend them."

We have always said its about trying to make sure that all our children can get home safely and not be killed by the people who are supposed to protect and defend them Crump told the newspaper.

Before Brittains memorial service last week, Sharpton told reporters:Hunter did nothing wrong, just like we felt George Floyd did nothing wrong. But if we segregate how we react, then were wrong.

Originally posted here:
Sharpton, Crump shifting focus to white teen killed by police in Arkansas | TheHill - The Hill

Al Sharpton went on MSNBC on Thursday to gush over Joe Biden, praising the president for his speech on voting rights in Philadelphia the day before.

Sharpton went so far as to say that Bidens speech in which helikened recent GOP-led voting integrity laws to Jim Crow laws was monumental.

I think he made a monumental speech, Sharpton declared. For a president to stand there in the shadows of where they signed the Declaration of Independence and attack Jim Crow 21st century was something that I was not expecting.

And I also thought the fact that he did not, in any way, shape or form, duck the racial aspect of what were seeing in terms of the pushback by many states in coming with new restrictions, he said. That is where we are, but now what are we going to do about where we are?

Related: Al Sharpton Claims A Lot Of People Have Taken Advantage Of Our Pain Rather Than Trying To Ease Our Pain

During this same appearance on Morning Joe, Sharpton doubled down on calling for a workaround for the filibuster to enact voting rights legislation.

And I think that what he has got to do is, in a firm way, figure out how to work around the filibuster, if they will not end the filibuster, he said.

The question, the dilemma that he has, and the White House has, is do they have the votes to end the filibuster if they came out and joined us, and I certainly want to see it ended, but you need the votes in the Senate to even end it. So, can you do a workaround like you do on economic or fiscal policies? he continued. And I think thats where he, being someone thats been in the Senate for so long, can use his personal relationships.

Sharpton had slammed the filibuster days before.

I certainly support, and have been saying this for some time, that we must have a way that we raise the issue of voting around the filibuster, Sharpton said. Filibuster should not stand in the way of democracy, should not stand in the way of our constitutional rights.

Full Story: Al Sharpton Slams The Filibuster Says It Should Not Stand In The Way Of Democracy

I said to the president, along with my seven colleagues that lead national civil rights organizations, that he ought to take that position, he continued. I do not know what he will say today, but we certainly encourage him to speak forcefully.

If he talks history, if he talks about, weve been here before, and what we had to do to get past that, I think thats a good thing, Sharpton said. If he also deals with the fact that we need to have a workaround a filibuster, I think that will be a great thing. I intend to be there to hear what he has to say. Im glad hes speaking up, though.

This piece was written by James Samson on July 16, 2021. It originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.

Read more at LifeZette:George Floyd Mural Struck by Lightning and Completely Reduced to RubbleTrump Gushes Over Beyond Incredible Georgia News Hand Recount Was Wrong By 60%North Korea Starving, Ridden With COVID

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Al Sharpton Gushes Over Biden And His 'Monumental' Voting Rights Speech The pink report news - The pink report news

Theres no doubt that left-wing culture warriors have done great harm to the Democratic cause. Some of it is mere foolishness. Ive never forgotten being chided at a college talk several years ago for using the word murderess to describe a character in my book Widows Web who shot her husband in his sleep and later orchestrated a plot to kill her defense lawyers wife.

Murderess, one professor said, was unacceptably gendered language. To quibble about it would have been pointlessly distracting. Even so, Ive wondered about it ever since. After all, is murderer an honorific?

But its when cant touches upon real-world concerns that the trouble starts. Consider the phrase Defund the Police. Has there ever been a dumber, more politically maladroit slogan in American political history? Worse even than Hillary Clintons basket of deplorables.

Far worse, actually. Clintons remark merely convinced people that she was a snob. Rhetoric about doing away with cops made voters think that liberal Democrats inhabit a different planet. In an interview with VOX, veteran political operative James Carville put it this way: Maybe tweeting that we should abolish the police isnt the smartest thing to do because almost no one wants to do that.

Words matter, Carville insists. You ever get the sense that people in faculty lounges in fancy colleges use a different language than ordinary people? They come up with a word like Latinx. ... Or they use a phrase like communities of color. I dont know anyone who speaks like that. I dont know anyone who lives in a community of color. This is not how voters talk. And doing it anyway is a signal that youre talking one language and the people you want to vote for you are speaking another language.

In the real world, for example, people wake up to headlines like these, which arrived in my inbox as I composed the preceding paragraph: UAMS officer kills gun-wielding man; Police ID man fatally shot at apartment complex; and 15-year-old arrested in killing of Jacksonville man.

One medium-sized southern city; one ordinary weekday in July.

Abolish the police? In which solar system, pray tell?

So no, what with homicide rates rising sharply nationwide, I was not surprised to see Eric Adams, a Black former NYPD captain who campaigned on making New Yorkers feel safe and restoring confidence in the citys police, winning a Democratic primary that makes him the citys de facto mayor-elect.

The debate around policing has been reduced to a false choice, Adams declared. You are either with police, or you are against them. That is simply wrong because we are all for safety. We need the NYPD we just need them to be better.

Whether or not Adams can deliver, thats exactly how Democrats should be talking. Also, contrary to a lot of loose rhetoric, its all about the guns. Property crimes burglary and theft are actually decreasing in many places. Gun battles between rival gangs and drive-by shootings of innocent bystanders are way up.

Although youve not heard about it in the national news, something else that happened in my backyard has convinced me that ordinary people are hungry for change. In the farming community of Lonoke, Arkansas, roughly 35 miles northeast of Little Rock, a sheriffs deputy shot a 17-year-old white kid named Hunter Brittain to death during a 3 a.m. traffic stop. The boy was unarmed and had no criminal history. Hed been working late to fix his uncles truck transmission.

Details are scant, because the state police have kept their investigation close, although a special prosecutor has been appointed. And the deputy never turned on his body camera, for which hes been fired. Nightly protests began outside the sheriffs department, growing steadily more intense. His family likened young Brittain to Minneapolis murder victim George Floyd. Even Little Rock media, however, showed limited interest.

Until the Rev. Al Sharpton showed up in town to preach Hunter Brittains funeral, along with Ben Crump, George Floyds attorney virtually the only Black faces among hundreds of mourners.

Sharpton referenced a can of antifreeze the victim held as he died. Weve been frozen in our race; weve been frozen in our own class, he said to thunderous applause. I believe today Hunter is calling to us. Its time for some antifreeze.

Ive got my reservations about Sharpton, but the symbolism of his appearing was impossible to ignore: Americans are ready to talk.

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Dems need to do better job of speaking to voters - Chicago Sun-Times