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In September 2018, President Donald Trump won an important First Amendment victory. By a 3-0 vote, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit ruled that neither Trump nor his campaign could be held liable for injuries suffered by protesters at the hands of Trump supporters during a March 2016 rally even though the then-candidate had yelled to get em out of here.

The courts reasoning was based on the straightforward application of free-speech principles: Trump had not advocated violence at the Kentucky rally (in fact, he had also said dont hurt em), and therefore he couldnt be successfully sued even though some people were roughed up.

The decision may have been a disappointment for those who thought Trump should be held accountable for his careless words. But under the First Amendment, political speech receives the highest level of protection except in the most extreme circumstances.

Now, though, those principles are in danger. Based on a similar set of facts, the 5th Circuit ruled recently that a police officer in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, can sue Black Lives Matter activist DeRay Mckesson for injuries he received at the hands of a rock-throwing protester even though, as The Washington Post reported, Mckesson did not throw the rock or tell anyone else to throw it.

Mckesson had organized the 2016 demonstration following the police killing of a black man named Alton Sterling. The police officer, whose identity has not been revealed, claims that Mckesson acted negligently by not foreseeing that the demonstration could become violent.

The goal of lawsuits like these is to prevent people from showing up at a protest out of the fear that they might be held responsible if anything happens, Mckesson said in a statement released by the ACLU, which earlier this month asked the Supreme Court to take up the case. If this precedent lasts, it could make organizers all across the country responsible for all types of things they have no control over, such as random people coming into a protest and causing problems. We cant let that happen.

The Supreme Court precedent that protected Trump and that, by all rights, should protect Mckesson is NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co., a case decided in 1982. The NAACP in 1966 called for a boycott of white-owned businesses in Claiborne County, Mississippi a nonviolent form of protest that nevertheless led to some acts of violence. In 1969, several of the business owners sued the NAACP and were successful in the state courts. But the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the NAACP could not be held liable for engaging in nonviolent free-speech activities regardless of actions taken by people not under the organizations control.

Although the cases against Trump and Mckesson, like the case against NAACP, were for alleged civil offenses, its also worth noting the high bar the Supreme Court has set for incitement to violence in criminal cases. In the landmark 1969 case of Brandenburg v. Ohio, the court threw out the conviction of Ku Klux Klan leader Clarence Brandenburg because the threats he made at a rally against African Americans and Jews were non-specific and would not result in imminent violence.

In their petition to the Supreme Court, the ACLUs lawyers argue that allowing the lawsuit against Mckesson to proceed would have a chilling effect on anyone who might wish to organize a nonviolent protest.

Given the regularity with which violence and First Amendment activity co-occur and the vagaries of state law liability rules, the lawyers wrote, only the most intrepid citizens would exercise their rights and risk ruinous liability if they could be held liable for the wrongful acts of others.

Ben Wizner, director of the ACLUs Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, put it this way in the Washington Post story: If this is allowed to stand, anybody can show up and throw a rock at a protest to bankrupt a movement they disagree with. People know when they step into the street that they might have to spend some hours in jail or pay a fine. But if they might have to pay a multi-million dollar civil judgment thats something theyre not prepared for, and cant possibly be expected to prepare for.

The case should prove to be a telling indicator of where the Supreme Court stands on free speech now that it has swung sharply to the right. Only four of the nine justices are needed take up the case.

Traditionally, even the courts more conservative members have proved to be staunch advocates of the First Amendment. But if Trumps justices, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, were to break with that tradition, the case of DeRay Mckesson v. John Doe could prove to be a signal moment in our march to a less open, less free society.

WGBH News contributor Dan Kennedys blog, Media Nation, is online at dankennedy.net.

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Why A Lawsuit Against A Black Lives Matter Activist Could Deal A Staggering Blow To The First Amendment - wgbh.org

Before entering 2020, Detroit Todays Stephen Henderson closesout this year and the decade by taking a look back to reflect on some of the biggest news stories, cultural moments and the people who leftus.

The panel includesCrains Detroit Business Senior Editor Chad Livengood, journalist and editor Nancy Derringer and political and communications consultant Greg Bowens.

Derringer says Donald Trump is the person of the decade, meanwhile Bowens says its the creator of the Bird Scooter TravisVanderZanden.

Livengood says his general overarching rule is that this has been the decade ofdisruption.

He says the last ten years have been about disruptors, both in business and in politics and culture,pointingto the self-implosion of K-Mart, the rise of Trump and services like DoorDash, Lyft andUber.

Henderson also mentions the passing of several notable figures including: Amy Winehouse, Aretha Franklin, John Conyers, John Dingell, Robin Williams, Nelson Mandela, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Prince, David Bowie, Glenn Frey, Gordie Howe, Muhammad Ali, Cokie Roberts, Maya Angelou, Damon Keith, Mike Ilitch, David DiChiera, Whitney Houston, L Brooks Patterson, Anthony Bourdain, Carrie Fisher, Debbie Reynolds, Tom Petty, Chuck Berry and Bill Milliken.

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The Decade of Disruption: Me Too, Black Lives Matter, Donald Trump and More - WDET

In an era when movements like Black Lives Matter and Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women are calling attention to the life-and-death issues facing communities of color, its easy to overlook the impact day-to-day interactions can have on police-community relations.

But experts on bias and policing say when a racial or ethnic group is over-policed, which can include being searched at a higher rate than other groups, it can breed a mutual disrespect and distrust that becomes the basis for bigger problems.

That kind of treatment expands that divide between you and law enforcement, who are people that are tasked to protect and serve you, said Katrina Johnson, a Seattle criminal-justice activist. Theyre causing trauma, because youre continually getting harassed or pulled over or whatever for nothing. Youre not doing anything. Who wouldnt get tired of getting in trouble without actually being in trouble?

An analysis of millions of traffic stops released this week by InvestigateWest found that Washington State Patrol troopers search Native Americans at a rate more than five times higher than white motorists. Black drivers were twice as likely to be searched as white drivers, and Latinos and Pacific Islanders were about 80 percent more likely to be searched. Yet white drivers were most likely to be found with drugs or other contraband. A similar analysis by Stanford University earlier this year that focused on black and Latino drivers found the same is true nationwide.

Nationwide, Native Americans are one of the groups most likely to be killed by police.

Theyre more likely to be victims of violent crime than any other race and theyre more likely to be the victims of a crime committed by another race.

Its no coincidence that Native people suffer from both the highest rate of police violence nationwide and over-policing in Washington State, Jesse Phelps, spokesman for the Lakota Peoples Law Project, wrote in an email. Its all too obvious that racial profiling is alive and well throughout the U.S.

Until we see more activism from the populace, better protections from elected officials and increased oversight from law enforcement authorities, people of color will no doubt continue to suffer disproportionately.

There are steps police departments can take to address overpolicing and one of its underlying causes, implicit bias. They include:

Johnson knows firsthand about the rift that over-policing can cause with communities of color. As a leader in the fight to prevent more deaths like that of her cousin Charleena Lyles, who was killed by Seattle police in 2017, Johnson still felt disconnected from and distrustful of the people who were supposed to be protecting and patrolling her neighborhood. Months after Lyless killing, when her own home was burglarized, Johnson said, she was afraid to call the police.

When Johnson in August 2018 started her work with the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion program, which refers low-level drug offenders to treatment instead of prosecution, she probably did not believe that there was a possibility that officers were good, she said.

As an activist, she traveled the country speaking with other activists and police leaders. But it wasnt until she began working for the LEAD program last year, Johnson said, that she got to know rank-and-file officers. The work has helped her realize that some prejudices are unconscious, but police officers need to be able to openly address their biases, she said. Being in personal contact with police changed her, too.

I just waved at a police officer. How weird was that? she said during an interview at her office. Theyre not all bad. So I want a greater understanding of whats happening during these interactions.

Bias and cultural competency training starts to humanize people, Johnson said. And it will make you think differently.

The State Patrol offers a 50-minute anti-bias class to cadets in training, and officials said bias is addressed in other parts of training, including refreshers. They also said new curriculum, mandated by the I-940 ballot initiative that was approved by Washington voters last year, should be in place when the March cadet class begins next year.

Activists say if police officers are more reflective of the communities they represent, and live in those communities, it can improve relations.

To know whether training is working, academics who study bias say, police agencies need to set goals and have a way to measure improvements. A State Patrol collaboration with Washington State University showed that there were disparities in how often some drivers were being searched and would have allowed officials to track improvements, but those studies ceased in 2007.

Clayton Mosher, one of the WSU professors involved in the studies, said he believes they could be restarted for about $50,000.

I think it is important, Mosher said. Of course, this seems to be the case nationally while there, of course, has been some focus post-Ferguson, etc., the kind of work we did with the (State Patrol) does not seem to be occurring, he said. Oregon has just released its first report of this kind and could prove a model for routine analysis of similar data.

There are more immediate policy changes agencies can make that take officers out of situations where their biases might play out.

Chris Burbank, who served as the chief of police for Salt Lake City from 2006 to 2015, said traffic stops and minor citations sometimes become a form of stop and frisk, the infamous New York City policy from the early 2000s that encouraged police to question and search people based on a low level of suspicion. Officers were found to have disproportionately targeted black and Latino men and a federal judge in New York eventually ruled that the city was violating the Constitution.

In Salt Lake City, Burbank said, officers were issuing jaywalking tickets almost exclusively near a homeless shelter and were using the citations as an excuse to conduct searches, or as he put it get in their pockets. To address the problem, Burbank simply put a moratorium on jaywalking citations. Using minor citations as pretexts for searches is shortcutting the police work and wastes resources on frivolous searches, he said.

In October, the Los Angeles Police Department announced it was dropping a controversial policy, derided as stop and frisk in a car, of using traffic stops to look for contraband in high-crime areas. The department ended the policy after a Los Angeles Times analysis found the unit was disproportionately stopping black drivers. Last month, the Oregon Supreme Court ruled that questions unrelated to an officers reason for stopping someone violated the states constitution. Civil libertarians hailed the ruling, saying it would protect people of color who are disproportionately targeted for searches.

The Washington State Patrol regulations say troopers are required to get clear and explicit consent and give drivers a written explanation of their rights where practical.

Burbank suggested that police agencies can address racial disparities in searches by informing drivers of their rights before asking consent to search a vehicle or pat someone down or by eliminating those so-called consent searches altogether, and requiring troopers to have probable cause before searching a vehicle. Or, Burbank said, agencies could go so far as to reduce or eliminate traffic citations.

These are small steps you can take, and most of these can be done at the police department level by an administrator, Burbank said. Youre just holding the cops to a higher standard than what the law says.

For its part, the Washington State Patrol says its considering once again partnering with an organization like Washington State University to conduct analyses like InvestigateWests. The State Patrol agrees there is a disparity in the search rate among blacks, whites, Latinos and Native Americans and that is not acceptable, said spokesman Chris Loftis. The agency is expanding its recruitment for diversity and recently hired a tribal liaison, with plans to hire another, Loftis said. He said the agency is committed to addressing the disparity InvestigateWest found, but said it will take time. The change that comes from new training programs and diverse hires is more of a process than an event, he said.

This story was supported in part by a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.

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How can police minimize racial profiling of Native Americans, others? - InvestigateWest

Formed in 1992 in New York, Wu-Tang Clan have sold over 40 million records worldwide to become one of the most influential hip hop groups of all time.

Euronews spoke with them backstage in their dressing room moments before they hit the stage at Dubais Sole DXB Festival.

It was the bands first time in Dubai, and they were finding it a lot more relaxed than their usual turf, New York City's Staten Island.

Raekwon told Euronews they had received a friendly welcome. We've been running around going to the mall and just meeting people and they been extra humble and you know, that's what I love is that you could go somewhere and, like if I dropped my wallet, you get your wallet back. You get your wallet back. So to me when you see people like that, it's like, it's a blessing.

U-God felt he felt he could let his guard down in the emirate.

I like the fact there's no guns really, no gun violence, he said. The laws are different and a little bit more strict. Theres certain things that need to be done.

Looking back on their 28-year career, Cappadonna described themselves as pioneers.

We paved the way and made it, you know, more possible for the upcoming artist struggling to get in there, and be creative, and make their own way too. But you know, at the same time, it's like we are still the kings of this right here.

Raekwon said their success was proof that dreams come true.

You know, you work hard and people see your work ethic is good and they know that you come from a history of poverty. And we did a lot. And like you say, we opened the doors for a lot of these youngsters, you know, and they look at us, they look at us in a godly fashion. And that comes from us knowing our struggle, knowing where we came from. But also knowing where we are going? And the music has been that vessel.

The group would not be drawn on politics and the Black Lives Matter movement.

All lives matter, Cappadonna said, while Raekwon said he believed US politics was starting to become like comedy.

Despite their success, the group says they still find inspiration in their daily lives.

U-God said: Keeping it real for me is just paying my bills and taking care of my babies and staying out of trouble, harm's way.

I'm trying to live and write stuff I still go through, because Im still going through drama. The drama never stops.

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The beat goes on: Wu-Tang Clan reflect on rap, racism and keeping it real. - Euronews

There are eras in history, like the 1950s, when older people set the cultural and moral terms for the young. And there are eras, like the 1960s, when its the other way around.

The current decade has been in the latter mold. Its true beginning was Dec. 17, 2010, when a 26-year-old street vendor in Tunisia, Mohamed Bouazizi, set himself on fire, setting off protests that quickly toppled governments across the region. Now it approaches its end with the 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg named Times Person of the Year.

In between, the decade has been fundamentally shaped by the technological creations of the young, in the form of social media and mobile apps; by the mass migrations of the young, from Africa and the Middle East to Europe and from Latin America to the U.S.; by the diseases of the (mostly) young, notably addiction and mental illness; and by the moral convictions of the young, from the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements in the U.S. to mass demonstrations from Cairo to Hong Kong.

Why and how did the young dominate the decade? Lets narrow the focus to America.

Demography first. What history usually thinks of as the sixties (beginning around 1964 with the Civil Rights Act and the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution) coincided, in the United States, with the coming-of-age of the baby boomers, roughly 75 million strong. Our current decade coincides with the coming-of-age of millennials, another generation of about 80 million. More people, more power or at least more influence. By comparison, my generation, the underwhelming Generation X, numbers only 65 million.

Next, anger. History is often a series of reactions and counterreactions. We remember the nonconformism of the 60s as a response to the conformism of the 50s. This decade, too, has been a reaction to the last: to two wars that began in moral fervors and ended in strategic fizzles; and to a financial crisis whose victims numbered in the millions and for which nobody accepted blame.

Not surprisingly, this decade has been marked by the intense hostility of the young toward truisms that once governed our thinking. As they saw it, the liberal international order didnt uphold the peace it bled us dry. Capitalism didnt make the country rich it made the rich richer. Silicon Valley didnt innovate technology it mined our data. The Church didnt save souls it raped children. The cops didnt serve and protect they profiled and killed. The media didnt tell the news they spun it.

This hostility isnt manifest just on the progressive left. It also accounts for the rise of the populist right.

As for tech, not only did the young invent and shape social media, social media shaped and reinvented the young. This was the decade when algorithms meant to cater to our tastes succeeded mainly in narrowing those tastes; when the creation of online communities led to our Balkanization into online tribes and the dissemination of disinformation and hate; when digital connection deepened our personal isolation, vulnerability and suggestibility; and when the ubiquity of portable screens with infinite data meant there was always something more interesting to do than interact with the person before us.

One result has been a kind of shallowing of our inner life: of time spent wondering, wandering, reading, daydreaming and just thinking things over. Another result has been a shallowing of our political life via the replacement of wit with snark and of reasoned arguments with rapid-fire tweets and hot takes.

Technology had another effect: It vastly accelerated the speed with which previously outlying ideas became, in the hands of their mainly youthful advocates, moral certitudes.

Some of those ideas, like marriage equality (the single greatest moral victory of the decade) were long overdue. Others, like intersectionality, gender fluidity, new standards of sexual consent or the purported centrality of racism to American identity, are much more debatable. Moral certitude isnt the exclusive posture of the young. But it is an easier one to hold when life hasnt yet given you sufficient time to leaven idealism with experience, second-guess yourself and learn that the things you once thought were most true arent quite so.

As with any decade, this one contains paradoxes and countercurrents. One paradox is the election of the oldest president in history. Yet Donald Trump, a baby boomer, embodies the spirit of the time as much as he rejects it, not least in his mastery of social media and the cynical, suspicious and angry nature of his politics.

One countercurrent is that some movements that have animated the decade are, at bottom, old-fashioned. So-called third-wave feminism contains a powerful streak of Victorianism. Similarly, the resistance to Trump is partly founded on the belief that moral character matters to presidential fitness, and that this president falls radically short.

Pedantic readers of this column will note that the decade wont really end until Dec. 31, 2020. Theyre right. We have a year to go before we can render a more final judgment on this decade of disillusion, and to begin to sense what comes next.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. Wed like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And heres our email: letters@nytimes.com.

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This Decade of Disillusion - The New York Times