Hello SJC Democrats,

Here is the Zoom link for our meeting this Saturday at 11:30:  https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83124521705?pwd=czNKOHdEOVByQi9Zb0c2cVA2TFZHQT09 . 
Contact me for the password if you are not on our email list.
Our meeting will be covering endorsements and a couple of resolutions.  If you have attended at least two meetings in the last year, you are a voting member and are welcome to vote on these items if you are in attendance.  If you aren’t sure if you have attended two meetings in the last year, email me and I will check our attendance records.

With all of the attention focused the last three weeks on police treatment of African Americans, you may be interested in a couple of articles whose links I will provide.  The first comes from local member Peggy Rhoads, and here is her synopsis and the link: “This attachment is long but if you have time to read it, it is a dynamite chapter from Lerone Bennett Jr’s book The Making of Black America. The chapter is titled “The Road Not Taken”. It would be good source material for a discussion on the origins of the police in America, not surprisingly, as armed men assigned to capture and return escaping slaves (my synopsis). Redirecting the massive funds spent on police oppression of minority, immigrant, and homeless populations would be just a beginning. Citizen review boards have been in general powerless.
https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/essays/bennettroad.html .

The second article is from Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now, and it provides details on how slave patrols led to some of our first police forces; an African American college professor discusses this.
https://www.democracynow.org/2020/6/10/khalil_gibran_muhammad_history_us_policing . 

Thanks, .
David Turnoy
Chair, San Juan County Democrats
360-376-4165
davidgeri@rockisland.com