The second season of Hulu’s Ramy, the critically acclaimed Muslim-American comedy series from Hulu (produced by A24) with a title character who’s loosely fashioned upon creator Ramy Youssef, recently released its second season. This remains a poignant series, although less sweet this time around, and it arrived during what can only be described as a fraught time for marginalized U.S. communities. The timing is purely coincidental, of course, but the show does provide an opportunity to watch one young adult’s attempts to truly grasp his own culture as he fruitlessly works toward enlightenment. And Ramy (this part is fascinating), like those who hashtag their way into feeling like they’re making a difference without action, often ends up inadvertently doing more harm than good, despite his professed desire to be a decent person.

Actually, Ramy (the character, not the series, which is still great) becomes pretty insufferable by the end of this season. I trust that the show’s writers have a plan for him, and that he might eventually experience true growth, rather than always trying to maximize his personal gains without any effort to earn what he’s already got in hand. He’s a guy who coasts on his apparent earnestness and but ends up f*cking over those who trust in him. By the end of the season, he’s lost almost all his allies, and it will be interesting to see how he can truly claw his way to redemption.

In the meantime, I’m going to attempt to spoil as little as possible while providing some reasons why you should watch Ramy — after all, Youssef joked during his Golden Globe win that “you guys haven’t seen my show” — and appreciate that life might feel tough right now, but at least you didn’t make half the mistakes he’s made lately.

1. So Much Comeuppance For A Lead Character:

Yes, Ramy’s the protagonist, but damn, he’s one hell of a hot mess, and I appreciate that the show doesn’t indulge him without consequence. During the first season, I simply appreciated watching a young adult male looking for love in all the worst places while feeling pressured by his family (and culture) to tie the knot with a nice young lady. That’s something that women feel all the time, regardless of social or religious affiliation, and it’s still reflected throughout popular culture even though romcoms at the movies haven’t been a real thing for years. This year, though, it was time for Ramy to make good on his promises, and boy did he screw them up. And the show was prepared, especially in this second season, to not let him escape unscathed.

Look, Ramy isn’t a terrible person at heart, but he does a lot of indefensible things. He’s also guilty of believing that wanting to be a good guy gives him endless chances to f*ck up and hurt people while pleading for forgiveness that he hasn’t earned. He has terrible judgment, and a lot of times, people get hurt as a result. Sometimes, they get hurt physically (and brutally), but many other times, he hurts people emotionally and spiritually. This doesn’t always involve his love life — he befriends and thoughtlessly vouches for a PTSD-afflicted Iraqi vet (despite the guy really loathing Muslims), and this turned out disastrously. Ramy simply doesn’t think beyond himself because “helping” the vet was a way for him to try and pump up his own reputation with Sheikh Malik.

That brings me to my next point…

2. Mahershala Ali, That’s The Whole Point:

The Oscar winner does not disappoint while joining the show’s sophomore run. Yes, he’s being referred to as the “Hot Sheikh” (a play on the fox-fearing Hot Priest from Fleabag), but Mahershala drives his role home with the utmost seriousness. The truly telling development is that while he’s Ramy’s new spiritual advisor, he also ends up learning a lot along the way as well. This Sheikh’s governed by peace and coolness, and while he’s rarely ruffled, he finds himself tested by his charge. He even alludes to his “old ways” at one point, and we don’t learn what he’s talking about, but it sure sounds ominous.

If Mahershala Ali ever said this ^^^ to me, I’d be terrified into changing my ways forever. Will Ramy adapt, though? This show leaves him in a precarious position after an impeccably plotted lead-up. And it’s a wise (and bold) move for the show to not only roast its protagonist but use such a charismatic and in-demand actor to do so. Ramy also builds up its “sidelined” characters along the way, as I’ll touch on below. That way, other players can shine, and we’re not simply hate-watching the leading dude.

3. Some Engrossing Character Studies:

The second season keeps itself poppin’ by knocking out some capsule episodes to flesh out Ramy’s family, including some arguably overdue focus for his sister, Dena, portrayed by May Calamawy. She plays a “normal” Muslim women, meaning that she’s not simply written under the male gaze, and it’s a refreshing approach. Dena gets her own capsule episode, along with much more face time during the second season, while all hell crashes down around her brother. The character’s up for the challenge, deftly illustrating the difference between generations while dancing between tradition and modernity as she navigates being treated differently as a practicing Muslim than her brother.

Another valuable show inclusion occurs near the end of Season 2 with Dena and Ramy’s uncle, Naseem (Laith Nakli). This guy is everyone’s racist uncle. He’s truly abhorrent (and homophobic) and can often be found swinging his d*ck around in the gym’s weight section. He’s a womanizer who degrades and sexualizes every female, including his own niece, and he’s filled with frustration because he’s probably the most inauthentic person on the series. We learn a lot about Naseem (and his ilk) during his capsule episode, including how he became this way and why he’s such a danger to not only the Muslim community but the world at large. It’s a powerful display from the show on how it’s not only willing to highlight the positive examples within the community but the bad-PR bunch as well. And hopefully, we won’t see Ramy turn into this guy.

4. A Rare Deep Dive For The Muslim-American Experience:

The subject of a practicing Muslim family attempting to feel out life in New Jersey isn’t exactly something that’s been explored in popular culture (especially at this level of depth) until now. Despite all of Ramy’s departures from intent, the Muslim faith receives the utmost respect in this series while also showing its struggles. Take Ramy’s trip to Egypt, for example, when he was left aghast to be told that he was joyriding through other people’s trauma. And look at how he attempted to only seize upon practices (like rationalizing that he should have more than one wife) that are convenient to him. The show doesn’t shy away from illustrating exactly why American (and in Ramy’s case, Muslim-American) stereotypes of the community can hurt (a lot).

More than that, the experiences of the women in Ramy’s family aren’t shoved to the backburner. His mother, Maysa (Hiam Abbass), takes on a telling journey during her Lyft gig, which she insists upon doing to overcome her loneliness. She is, of course, hapless while attempting social skills on her rides, but she’s trying, which is more than what one can say for her son. And when she becomes a U.S. citizen, she tells a portrait of President Trump exactly what she thinks. Granted, I’m not sure that most people would want to be in the United States in 2020, if given the chance to be in, say, New Zealand or even Antarctica. Yet under ideal U.S. circumstances, it’s a fine place to be, and Ramy’s mom has made it known that she ain’t leaving.

5. Ramy Encourages Our Own Self-Examination:

As discussed above, Ramy presents us with an exceedingly flawed protagonist. The show doesn’t want to make him an example, and we not only see the beautiful aspects of his experiences but also the ridiculous ones. We watch him struggle to observe Ramadan, and we’ve seen him attempt to justify a porn addiction because it keeps him from having premarital sex (that doesn’t last long). And he’s exceedingly greedy (details would be a spoiler) this season in his love life. Yet Ramy is a mirror for the audience to gaze upon itself and consider the ways that we can become better. Maybe we don’t need to be perfect, but we all must learn how to coexist without hurting others.

That’s what it all comes down too, that Golden Rule. And as much as we’d like to admit, Ramy’s actions are rarely as far-fetched as viewers would like to imagine. He makes the wrong decisions, time and time again, not unlike characters from Always Sunny or Seinfeld, and with often more permanent and damaging consequences, but he is relatable. I want to believe that Ramy’s capable of living without causing collateral damage, which is something that should be a universal aspiration. And I’m looking forward to seeing if he improves (after all that naval-gazing) in a third season.

The second season of Hulu’s ‘Ramy’ is currently streaming.

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When WWE first put out their statement condemning racial injustice, in which they noticeably avoided the phrase “black lives matter,” a lot of us wondered what, if anything, they actually planned to do about it. That’s a queston that continues to linger after Stephanie McMahon’s recent appearance on The Female Quotient, a YouTube channel about women in business, in which she talked about the issue of race in the U.S. and WWE’s theoretical dedication to doing something about it, but didn’t offer much in the way of specifics.

As transcribed by 411Mania, Stephanie spoke about the importance of speaking out:

I do think sometimes there is fear in speaking out. And it’s not that there’s not fear. It’s not that we’re not afraid, but there’s so much fear, we all need to speak. And yes, sometimes we might misspeak, we might misstep, we might not all say exactly the right thing. But it’s important to have a voice. And Dr. King’s words ring so true to me: “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

And I had the honor of being part of a fellowship, and it was actually — we were an experiment, which I didn’t know. We were the most diverse grouping of people that they had ever put together. And one of the readings that we read is ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail.’ And in it, Dr. King talks about, you know, being a moderate. Being a white moderate in particular, but being a moderate. And that means not using your voice. And what this quote means and what’s funny is, internally I had some feedback because I actually posted this. And there was some strong reaction right away like, “No, we’re not supposed to be silent right now. You don’t want to post that.” And I’m like, “Guys, re-read the quote. It’s not about being silent, it’s about not being silent.” It’s about the worst thing that your enemy can say, what’s worse than that is your best friend not saying anything. Not doing anything.

Then she went on to add that speaking, while important, isn’t enough — you have have to do something. And WWE is doing something, she insists. Now’s not the time to say what, but something.

Well you know, it’s not enough to just put out a statement and say you’re going to do something. So we’ve actually been doing any number of things across multiple sectors. So from employees, we’re looking at different types of training and resources and platforms to really encourage our employees to speak, and to let them know that they are heard. And of course, any action items that come out of that. We’re also looking to partner with a few different organizations to really make sure that we’re able to amplify and use out platforms in the best way possible — education, I think to me at this moment, being primary. So we’re, you know, I’m not ready to make some kind of formal announcement yet, but we’re getting further down the pike in something I think will be very meaningful hopefully for our entire community. For the WWE community and larger than that. Because it is not enough to just say “Oh yeah, I take a stand.” You have to prove it. And that’s something that I believe in wholeheartedly.

I would say it will be enlightening to find out what WWE is working on that she’s not ready to announce yet. But I also remember how Stephanie McMahon promised in 2016 that LGBT characters were coming to WWE, and in the four years since they’ve declined to let Sonya Deville pursue a gay storyline, and have offered nothing more to LGBT viewers than a few lines of dialogue during a straight wedding angle that didn’t lead anywhere or please anyone. So Steph’s right — a statement with no action behind it isn’t enough. But time will tell if WWE will actually be doing anything more.

DaBaby and Roddy Ricch have the No. 1 song in the country right now with “Rockstar,” and they recently teased a new edition of the track. Earlier this month, DaBaby previewed a new verse addressing police brutality, a verse that appears on the new “BLM Remix” of the song that dropped today.

DaBaby raps on the track. “As a juvenile, police pulled their guns like they scared of me / And we’re used to how crackers treat us, now that’s the scary thing / Want anything we good at and we cherish it / Now we all fed up and n****s comin’ back for everything / Rockstars, n****, just watch the news, they burnin’ cop cars, n**** / Kill another n****, break the law, then call us outlaws, n**** / What happened? Want us to keep it peaceful.”

After the song reached the top of the charts last week, DaBaby offered a reflection on his origins, writing, “I came from nothing. Nah fr, I really came from nothing. I’m not perfect at all but look, I done been through it all, and still got PLENTY more to go through. If you willing to go through it with me, grab my hand let’s go. If not, F*CK YA. I wish you the best.”

Listen to the “BLM Remix” of “Rockstar” above.

Roddy Ricch is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

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Netflix is giving cinephiles a real gift this week. That’s because Spike Lee’s Vietnam War thriller is finally making its way to the streaming platform. An all-star cast, a genre-bending story, and a director with a proven track-record for injecting exciting relevancy into forgotten history means that this is a film you’ll definitely want to add to your queue. And after you’ve done that, consider bingeing more Patriot Act from Daily Show vet, Hasan Minhaj. You’ll laugh, and you’ll learn some sh*t. Win, win.

Here’s everything coming to (and leaving) Netflix this week of June 12.

Da 5 Bloods (Netflix film streaming 6/12)

This Spike Lee streaming joint couldn’t come at a better time. Lee’s recruited a talented cast that includes Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman to shine a light on another little-known part of history with this story about a group of Black Vietnam war vets, who risked their lives for their country and weren’t rewarded for it. Boseman plays the squadron leader. His team returns to the country decades later to retrieve his remains, and find the buried gold they left behind. It’s part history lesson, part war-flick, part thriller and it does all genres well.

Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj: Volume 6 (Netflix original series streaming 6/7)

Speaking of good timing, Netflix is bringing us another volume of Hasan Minhaj’s informative talk show when we need it most. As host, Minhaj has perfected a formula that’s equal parts comedy and valuable information, and he’s only getting better this season as he takes on everything from police brutality to COVID-19 and the whitewashing of the legalized marijuana industry. Will you laugh over his beef with Nick Lachey? Yes, but you’ll also learn a hell of a lot about racism, social distancing, police training, and more.

Here’s a full list of what’s been added in the last week:

Avail. 6/6
Queen of the South: Season 4

Avail. 6/7
Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj: Volume 6 (Netflix Original)

Avail. 6/8
Before I Fall

Avail. 6/10
DC’s Legends of Tomorrow: Season 5
Lenox Hill (Netflix Documentary)
Middle Men
My Mister: Season 1
Reality Z (Netflix Original)

Avail. 6/11
Pose: Season 2

Avail. 6/12
Da 5 Bloods (Netflix Film)
Dating Around: Season 2 (Netflix Original)
F is for Family: Season 4 (Netflix Original)
Jo Koy: In His Elements (Netflix Comedy)
Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts: Season 2 (Netflix Family)
One Piece: Alabasta
One Piece: East Blue
One Piece: Enter Chopper at the Winter Island
One Piece: Entering into the Grand Line
Pokémon Journeys: The Series (Netflix Family)
The Search (Netflix Original)
The Woods (Netflix Original)

And here’s what’s leaving next week, so it’s your last chance:

Leaving 6/16
The Stanford Prison Experiment

There’s a bounty of just-released goods from Netflix today, including Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods and a surprise comedy special from Dave Chappelle (it’s available on YouTube). In 8:46, named after the length of time white police officer Derek Chauvin had his knee on the neck of unarmed black man George Floyd, Chappelle riffs on police brutality, conservative pundits Candace Owens and Laura Ingraham, and CNN host Don Lemon calling out celebrities for “sitting in your mansions and doing nothing.”

“[Lemon] says, ‘Where are all these celebrities? Why are you not talking?’ This n*gger said, ‘Everybody.’ I was screaming at the TV, ‘I dare you to say me, n*gger, I dare you!’ Has anyone ever listened to me doing comedy? Have I not ever said anything about these things before? So now all of a sudden this n*gger expects me to step in front of the streets and talk over the work these people are doing as a celebrity,” Chappelle told the socially-distanced crowd in Beavercreek, Ohio, where 8:46 was filmed.

He continued, “Answer me: Do you want to see a celebrity right now? Do we give a f*ck what Ja Rule thinks? Does it matter about celebrity? No, this is the streets talking for themselves, they don’t need me right now. I kept my mouth shut. And I’ll still keep my mouth shut. But don’t think my silence is complicit… Why would anyone care what their favorite comedian thinks after they saw a police officer kneel on a man’s neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds? I can’t get that number out of my head.”

Chappelle didn’t randomly pick Ja Rule — it’s a reference to one of his most famous jokes. In his 2004 special For What It’s Worth, the Chappelle’s Show star reminisced about the time MTV asked for the rapper’s thoughts on the September 11 attacks.

“I remember right around September 11, Ja Rule was on MTV. That’s what they said: ‘We got Ja Rule on the phone. Let’s see what Ja’s thoughts are on this tragedy.’ Who gives a f*ck what Ja Rule thinks at a time like this? This is ridiculous. I don’t want to dance. I’m scared to death. I want some answers that Ja Rule might not have right now. You think when bad sh*t happens to me, I’ll be in the crib like, Oh! My God, this is terrible. Could somebody please find Ja Rule? Get hold of this motherf*cker, so I can make sense of all this. Where is Ja? Help me Ja Rule!”

Ja Rule jokes hit even harder now.

Earlier this week, it was announced that Coachella had been canceled for 2020. That news didn’t come via festival organizers Goldenvoice, though. Instead, it was Riverside County public health officer Dr. Cameron Kaiser who said the festival had been shut down. Now, Coachella has offered a statement, in which they confirm the cancelation and reveal when the 2021 installment will take place: On two weekends in April.

The message from Coachella begins, “Under the continuing health guidance of the County of Riverside, Coachella and Stagecoach 2020 will not take place this October as previously rescheduled. This is not the future that any of us hoped to confront, but our main focus remains the well-being of our fans, staff, artists, desert partners and everyone involved in the festival.”

It goes on to reveal the dates for next year’s festival, as well as the dates for Stagecoach 2020: “A year without Coachella and Stagecoach is hard for us to comprehend, but we have every intention of returning in 2021. As of now, Coachella weekend one will take place April 9-11, 2021 and weekend two will be April 16-18, 2021. Stagecoach is set for April 23-25, 2021. We look forward to sharing our new lineups and more information. We can’t wait to be together in the desert again when it is safe.”

Coachella’s message doesn’t address the reports that Coachella could be operating at a reduced capacity in April, so time will tell if that ends up being the case.

One of the most important things the George Floyd protests have done is to make “Defund the Police” part of mainstream discourse. The push has grown out of a paradox where, in the face of three decades of declining violent crime (which actually peaked way back in the early 90s), police departments have become even more militarized. If you disagree with the premise that our police are overly militarized, I would remind you that we once let Steven Seagal bulldoze a guy’s house with a tank over a cockfighting allegation.

If one problem is police itching to use all their high-tech weaponry, so the thinking goes, one way to fix it is to take away the money they spend on that weaponry. (One hopes we may eventually apply the same thinking to the actual military). While the defund police movement may have finally found its watershed moment this year (so says Wesley Lowery in this seminal piece for The Atlantic), it’s been building for some time. Along with the high-profile killings of Eric Garner, Philando Castile, Michael Brown, et. al (“too many to list” is an understatement) over the past five years, many of us watched online just this past December when 18 Florida cops unloaded on two robbers on a jam-packed freeway during a car chase, killing a UPS driver who’d been taken hostage and a bystander, along with the two robbers.

About a year before that, the LAPD had chased a murder suspect into a Trader Joe’s parking lot in Los Angeles’ Silverlake neighborhood. The suspect shot at police as he ran towards the door, and on a crowded shopping day, officers returned fire at the entrance to the store. One of the shots hit a store manager, 27-year-old Mely Corado, in the chest, killing her.

That none of the officers involved in these shootings were so much as reprimanded (the Florida ones were even praised by their police chief) speaks volumes about the way we’ve been trained to view police and how police view themselves. Both we and they seem to prioritize “getting the bad guy” over protecting the public. After decades of pop culture feeding us fictional cops taking the law into their own hands, real cops tackling shirtless poor people on Cops, superheroes battling evil, and violent vigilantes “takin’ out the trash,” we’ve arguably recruited a class of police who were largely inspired by ideas of righteous vengeance (see: real policemen’s well-publicized love of The Punisher). And in many cases stuck them into departments with historic ties to white supremacist organizations. This may partly explain the gulf between the way we’ve seen police treat rightwing and leftwing protests in the past month.

These are issues both of culture and of accountability. While police officials repeat “bad apples” like an incantation every time individual officers hurt someone, those same organizations have been notoriously bad at actually removing those “bad apples” lest they spoil the proverbial bin. Daniel Pantaleo, who was caught on video using an illegal chokehold to kill Eric Garner in 2014, wasn’t fired until 2019. Dan Donovan, the DA who couldn’t convince a grand jury to bring charges, got elected to congress.

This is all personal for Albert Corado, a 31-year-old community organizer who has been at the forefront of fighting for a “People’s Budget” in LA. It was Albert’s sister who was killed when the LAPD fired into that crowded Trader Joe’s. One key aspect of the People’s Budget includes diverting funding away from the police into other programs.

Part of the idea is that a lot of the services we currently rely on the police for — mentally ill people in the midst of an episode, unhoused disrupting a business, etc — don’t actually involve fighting bad guys, and thus would be better performed by other agencies. I spoke to Albert this week about the origins and goals of the defund the police movement, and the incident that spurred him to get involved.

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So how would you explain the People’s Budget?

It’s an alternative budget to what the mayor had put together and the city council was planning on passing. It’s our way of taking much-needed money from the LAPD, who misuses funds and also just straight-up murders people and buys unnecessary things, and giving it to services and programs that help people. Whether that’s unhoused people or kids, just giving it back to the community instead of just giving it to policing. [The current budget] gives too much power to the police. So we wanted to draft something that would give more power to the people of Los Angeles.

There’s starting to be a little bit of consensus that the police are overly militarized. Is there a way to de-militarize the police?

I mean, listen, personally, I’m an abolitionist. I know that’s a hard sell for some people because as Americans, we’ve been so indoctrinated to believe that we need the police, that any less police or cut in police budgets is going to result in criminals running loose and people being killed and robberies and stuff like that. If we’re going to be realistic, obviously, we’re not going to defund the police overnight. It would take time. It would also take an alternative. So I think a good step is to not let them have military-style weapons. My sister was killed by the LAPD a couple of years ago. The officers who killed her are never going to see the inside of jail cell because they’re protected. My sister was killed while they were pursuing a suspect so they have a built-in immunity. Basically, they lose all accountability. [“Qualified immunity” is a legal doctrine that has been used to shield officers from civil suits.]

So we’re trying to have the conversation of defunding the police. It’s a hard sell for a lot of people so we have to be realistic, but we’re trying to find that compromise. We’re trying to engage people more on the idea. We’re being held hostage by this idea that, “Well, if you take away the police, people run wild.” And I don’t think that’s necessarily the truth. There’s a lot of stuff proving otherwise. The NYPD went on strike not too long ago and crime went down. It’s just a matter of looking for alternatives to giving police high-powered weapons. But I mean, the fact that the phrase “defund the police” is even in the zeitgeist right now is insane to me. That’s something I’d never thought I’d see happen.

When police get calls, are there any statistics on how many calls are actually about catching bad guys and how many are mental health issues or domestic violence calls that they probably don’t want to be on any way?

I’m sure there is, I don’t have them in front of me. I think that what has happened is that police want more money, and so they argue for more power and responsibility. But they have no place in trying to take care of someone who’s having a mental health episode, or even, I mean, unfortunately, I’ve read and known women in my life who have been raped, and the cops don’t do anything. Like you said, a lot of times the cops don’t want to be out there having to approach maybe an unhoused person who’s having a mental health episode. Yet the answer has always been, “more policing, policing is going to take care of everything.”

When your whole ethos as an organization is, “We’re heroes. We’re out here putting our lives on the line,” it doesn’t leave much room for being compassionate. You’re the put upon one. You’re the one that goes out there and puts your life on the line and everyone else just doesn’t ever know what it’s going to be like.

We need, first and foremost, alternatives. If someone is having a mental health episode, you do not call the police. You have a team of people who can do this sort of thing. Police know how to put people in cuffs. They think what they say is supposed to be the commandment so they’ll push you up against the wall if you don’t obey them. They’re not equipped to engage with vulnerable communities.

What are some of the circumstances around your sister’s death and what was the outcome for the officers that were involved?

She was a manager at the Trader Joe’s in Silverlake, I don’t know if you’re familiar with that case. They were chasing a suspect [who ran] inside the store, and so they shot inside the store trying to kill him.

Yeah.

As soon as it happened, I was living in another state and I came home. We knew that night that it was a police officer who shot her. Everybody who was in that store knew that it was the police officer. Officially no one was saying anything that night. They were trying to figure out what happened. But again, my dad was there and a lot of my sister’s friends and coworkers were there and confirm that it was a police bullet. We knew that we were going to have to sue them. We obviously didn’t say anything for a few months because there was a lot of media attention, and it was pretty overwhelming.

Another thing that happened that night was that the LAPD came out and told the LA Times reporter that it was [the suspect], they said that it was him that had killed my sister. They already were trying to wash their hands of it. And then, of course, it came out two days later that it was them. I mean, they knew all along, they were just trying to figure out if there was a way to make it seem like he did it.

So again, we knew that these cops were not going to serve any jail time. Probably the worst thing that happened to them was they had to take a few weeks of paid leave and fill out a lot of time of paperwork and collect the overtime pay. But we filed a lawsuit four months later and… I mean, depositions are being taken and we’re gathering discovery evidence, but it’s been almost two years already and our trial is not even due to start till next March.

Obviously there’s a problem with accountability. What are some of the specific barriers to accountability that people might be trying to change?

Well, I think one of the major things is that the police commission, they’re the ones that decide whether or not a shooting is in policy, right? If [the officers] follow protocol, if they did everything they could before they have to shoot. They weigh a bunch of factors in making the decision. So if they make a decision that says, “This was not in policy,” then they can then pursue some sort of disciplinary or whatever sort of action against the officer. But again, from the get-go, even at the time of not being super familiar with the way this stuff worked like I am now, we knew that they were not going to do anything. Again, it’s this thing of like, “Well, they were chasing a suspect and it was collateral damage.”

I think that the fact that those are built in to protect cops and you rarely, rarely see cops be held responsible for that, it says a lot about how we view police officers. We want to protect them at all costs, and if some innocent people die, then that’s how it is. If I could sue them to put these people in prison, I’d rather do that. That’s what counts to me. But you also have a system in LA and in a lot of places where the district attorney — who can try to bring charges — loves cops and gets money donated to them by the police union — like a million dollars last year. (An LA Times analysis of public records found that law enforcement unions gave nearly $2.2 million in contributions to outside committees benefiting Los Angeles DA Jackie Lacey.)

You have so many roadblocks before you would even be able to bring charges against an officer and it’s designed that way because again, cops are seen to be the heroes. The system is built to protect cops at all costs. People just don’t know what it’s like to lose someone to this or what they would be saying that if a person that they loved died the same way.

Were you guys able to access any of the police’s disciplinary records that were involved in the shooting?

No. See, that’s it. Because of it being “in policy,” that kind of closes a lot of doors. We wanted to know like their training packet and any prior instances of use of force, and that’s just not something that’s available to us. (In the time since this interview, the New York legislature voted to repeal 50-A, a measure shielding police disciplinary records from the public.)

The whole fraternal order of police, this brotherhood, this thing of we’re all in this to protect one another and nobody else, it’s infected people in the city to now where you see some of the city attorneys buddying up to cops and traveling with their own LAPD escort. The LAPD has such immense power and everyone’s so scared of them in City Hall that no one is ever going to stand up to them, and definitely not Mayor Garcetti.

What are some places that we could spend the money where it’d be more useful [than the police department]?

I mean, honestly, I think that the biggest problem the city had before COVID, before the protests, and the National Guard being here, is the homelessness issue. We have 60,000, likely more than 60,000, especially now after COVID, we have 60,000 to 70,000 unhoused people. We have probably three or four times that in vacant apartment units. And we’re constantly building things. We’re constantly building buildings that sit half empty because people can’t afford them.

My first foray into activism and organizing was through homelessness outreach and I think that we need to spend it on housing people. I’ve seen people from 19, 20-year-olds to even in Echo Park, there’s an older man named Ramon who was pushing 70. And he’s walking around with a cane and I saw the cops try to tear down his tent and throw away his every belonging. So that would be my first area of giving more money. And then stuff like infrastructure, fixing the city and expanding transit.

What about the Defund the Police movement are you most proud of?

I think our biggest victory is that now people, regular-ass people, are engaging with the city budget. I think that that’s not going to change. I’m happy because that means we’re not going to let this shit slide. By the time next year hits, when that budget comes out, there’s going to be another big fight. It’s either going to be, we’re going to put so much pressure on them that they’re going to present a budget that’s actually acceptable, or there’s going to be another big fight and we’re going to take it to the street again. So it’s up to them.

Read more about the People’s Budget here. Vince Mancini is on Twitter.

The murmurs started earlier in the week. Dave Chappelle was hosting impromptu comedy sets in Ohio. The performances, held in an outdoor theater, were said to be loose, follow social distancing protocols, and vaguely resemble the variety show format of Dave Chapelle’s Block Party. Thursday night, one of Chappelle’s sets from these shows was quietly released on Netflix’s YouTube account, titled 8:46 — the length of time that police officer Derek Chauvin kneeled on the neck of George Floyd, killing him.

The comedy aspect of the 27-minute performance works whenever Chappelle goes for laughs. He makes a throwaway joke about Azealia Banks and curses out both Laura Ingraham and Candance Owens. His ability to make people crack up with nothing more than well-placed emphasis is on full display. But it quickly becomes clear that a real, raw conversation was much more important to Chappelle in creating this set than punchlines. The description of the video on Netflix says as much — “Normally I wouldn’t show you something so unrefined, I hope you understand.”

Halfway through his set, Chappelle goes even further in explaining his motivations for speaking up.

“The only reason people want to hear from people like me,” he says at one point, “is because you trust me. You don’t expect me to be perfect, but I don’t lie to you. I’m just a guy, but I don’t lie to you. And every institution that we trust lies to you.”

This agreement with the audience becomes something of an unspoken contract. The hometown audience is ready for whatever Chappelle wants to talk about. Every time he pauses to ask the crowd if they’re bored or want more jokes, the answer is a resounding “no.” In exchange for their attention, they get insight and truth from one of the nation’s foremost comedic voices during a time of uncertainty and upheaval. A man who feels the pain, anger, and outrage shared by so many Americans and synthesizes it into something genuinely powerful.