Wisconsin's Governor Called a Special Session on Police Reform. Republicans Stopped It After 30 Seco
A Kenosha, Wisconsin, police officer shot an unarmed black man seven times in the back. An armed teenage vigilante has been charged with five felonies for shooting three people, and killing two, at the ensuing protests. As marches continued, with armed white snipers observed on downtown Kenosha rooftops, the state’s governor called for a special session of the legislature on police violence and social justice.
When the Milwaukee Bucks sat out an NBA playoff game Wednesday, amid national protests after a Kenosha police officer shot Jacob Blake seven times in the back, the basketball team joined the call for their state legislature to reconvene and take action.
On Monday, Wisconsin’s state Senate and Assembly met. But it was more of a skeletal session than a special session. Both chambers gaveled in and out almost immediately. A television camera panned a gallery of empty mahogany chairs. By NBA standards, neither chamber stayed in session even the length of the 24-second shot clock. “Senators do not need to be present,” the Senate president’s chief of staff told reporters, “and no bills are being taken up.”
Wisconsin’s Republican-controlled legislature cannot be budged. Not by the governor. Not by the people. Not by vigilantes in the streets. Not by the Milwaukee Bucks. Wisconsin’s brutally gerrymandered state legislative maps — by almost every standard, the nation’s most biased — guarantee that they can’t even be budged at the ballot box. And so they remain an immovable and unaccountable force.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/wisconsin-legislature-jacob-blake-shooting-kenosha-gerrymander-gun-violence-1053561/
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