Comedian Trevor Noah has become not only a voice of comic relief in tough times, but a voice of thoughtfulness and reason on social issues, as well. As an immigrant to the U.S. from South Africa, Noah brings a unique perspective to the table, but it’s his ability to zero in on the truth at the heart of an issue that brings people to hear his social commentary.

This week, Noah posted a video with some thoughts on the police killing of Rayshard Brooks, a 27-year-old Atlanta man who fell asleep while drunk in his car in a Wendy’s drive-thru. According to CBS News, Brooks resisted arrest and took an officer’s Taser. As he was running away, police shot him twice in the back. One officer in the incident has been fired and another placed on administrative duty.

Noah described what surveillance video showed. He explained: “In the beginning, it seems like everything is going to be fine. The cops are talking to him like a person. They’re not being aggro, they’re not being disrespectful, they’re not being mean or anything. He’s being respectful. He’s calling them ‘sir’, he’s not cussing them out, he’s offering to walk home. Everything is going well…”

He continued, “And then in one moment, in just a few seconds, every part of that normal story turns into the abnormal ending that we’ve come to know as interactions with police and black people.”

Noah pointed out that the encounter never needed to get to that point. Despite the fact that the story is messy—Brooks was drunk, and he did resist arrest and took the police officer’s taser—the question remains, Why do we call on armed police in a situation like this in the first place?

“Why are armed police dealing with a man who’s sleeping in his car?” Noah asked. “These are the questions we need to ask: why, why, why, why, why, why? Why are armed police the first people who have to go and respond to somebody who’s sleeping in their car, who’s drunk?”

Noah laid out the way the story could have or should have played out, especially considering the fact that the man was drunk. The sober people in the situation are supposed to be the ones who can handle the situation responsibly. He also addressed the inevitable “ifs” that come up anytime people talk about an incident of police brutality.

“If you didn’t resist arrest, then you’d still be alive. Or if you didn’t run away from the cops, you’d still be alive. Well, if you didn’t have a toy gun and were 12 years old in the middle of a park, then you would have still been alive. Well, you know what, if you weren’t wearing a hoodie, then you would have still been alive. If you didn’t talk back to the cops, you would have been still been alive. If you weren’t sleeping in your bed as a black woman, you would have still been alive.

“There’s one common thread beyond all the ‘ifs’.” he concluded. Watch the video here:

Why Did Rayshard Brooks Have to Lose His Life? | The Daily Social Distancing Show

www.youtube.com

Noah’s questions are worth exploring. At what point do we fundamentally examine what the purpose of policing really is and whether or not the way we currently do it fulfils that purpose?

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“I can’t help but feel like a horrible person now.”

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Kyrie Irving has stepped up over the last week to be the leading voice pushing back against the NBA’s planned restart in the Disney bubble. His chief concern is whether playing basketball and resuming the season would distract from players efforts in social activism amid nationwide protests of racism and police brutality.

The NBA issued a memo to teams noting that they are committed to “create meaningful and generational change” with its restart and supporting the Black Lives Matter movement by working with the NBPA to figure out the best ways to do so. It’s a nice statement, but until a firm plan of action is in place, many will remain understandably skeptical of how significant the league’s contribution will be, whether that’s by a monetary investment that goes towards creating programs both internally and in the community, or in offering its massive platforms to allow players to make the statements they feel are necessary.

Avery Bradley issued a plan he’d like to see the league enact as part of a coalition with Irving before players agree to join the bubble (with a June 24 deadline to do so), but Kyrie seems to be moving full steam ahead on trying to convince players. According to Stefon Bondy of the New York Daily News, Irving “urged” his Nets teammates to skip the bubble in a group chat and also — and this is the part you’ll see discussed for days and weeks — threw out there that the players could leave the NBA and start their own league.

Irving not only led a discussion with close to 100 union members in a conference call, he also urged Nets players to skip the bubble recently in a separate group chat, the Daily News has learned. In that chat, Irving proposed that players could start their own league, according to a source.

As Russ Bengston noted, this isn’t unprecedented talk from a player, as there were whispers of such discussions when the NBA was in a lockout in 1998, but the difference there, of course, is that without a CBA, there are no contracts and, as such, there’s not as much difficulty in breaking them to set off on their own. Right now, there would be a logistical nightmare in doing so, beyond the other issues of creating the infrastructure of a new league and finding places to play and TV deals.

Still, it’d be fascinating to see what a players-led league would look like, even just in how they would structure things, from roster sizes to games played and more. Irving’s proposal, which may have just been a throwaway line in a group text for all we know, will end up being joked about for some time, but the overall point that I think he’s trying to make is that the players have more power in this situation than they may recognize. While I doubt he’s fully thought through the finer points of the difficulties of starting their own league, the reason the NBA is a multi-billion dollar business is because of the players and in this situation, they need to ensure they get the most out of the league on an issue in systemic racism that entities like the NBA often make nice statements about, create a diversity initiative, and donate money before moving on mostly with the status quo intact.

Players need to push for more this time, and Bradley’s plan — which includes calls for better hiring practices to get more Black coaches and executives into the sport as well as the league partnering with more Black-owned business — tries to address those things, along with securing financial commitments for organizations working for the movement.

NBA players have raised a number of questions about the league’s plan to restart the 2019-20 season in Orlando. One of the main questions has been how can players use a potential restart in order to spark social change amid nationwide protests against police brutality and systemic racism, with some arguing that the best approach may be to just not play at all and keep the focus on the current moment.

It’s an important conversation to have, and a number of players are doing what they can to get the league to have this conversation with them. As a result, Shams Charania of The Athletic reports that the league sent a memo to all 30 teams in which it made a commitment to making sure its restart is done in such away that the NBA can “drive action and create meaningful and generational change.”

Of course, there is a big difference between a statement in which a commitment is made and actually acting on it, and we’ll have to wait and see what the league would have in store to take on such a gigantic task. This will assuredly be something that gets ironed out over days, if not weeks, worth of conversations in the lead-up to Orlando, but at the very least, the NBA is making it clear that it hears players and will try to do right by them.

As Spain enters the final phase of lifting its lockdown, the country is testing reopening part of its tourism sector before they officially reopen borders to Shengen Area tourism — referring to the border-free zone in Europe between 26 European countries — later this month. Spain and Germany have teamed up to test a one-week pilot program that’ll allow around 10,900 German tourists to visit Spain’s Balearic Islands of Mallorca, Menorca, Ibiza, and Formentera.

Germany was chosen for the tourism test due to its epidemiological similarity with regards to COVID-19 to the islands (although Germany has a fairly low level of testing capability, even when compared to Spain). The program is called the “Safe Corridor” scheme and aims to analyze the risks of opening up the tourism sector and Spain’s ability to deal with an outbreak if it does occur.

The trips from Germany to Spain sold out in 36 hours when they went on sale just last week. Germans started arriving on 47 flights yesterday, June 15th, and have to stay at least five days. The program has some guidelines that’ll allow both countries to monitor the possibility of spreading COVID-19.

According to The Guardian, the German tourists will have to “fill out a public health form, have their temperature taken on arrival at the airport, and give the authorities their contact details and the address of their accommodation.” The Spanish authorities will not require a COVID-19 test before travel or observe the current, mandatory 14-day quarantine upon arrival to Spain. If someone falls ill, Spain has set up a special team to test for COVID and, if needed, isolate any ill person.

The Spanish government said they’re conducting this test “to see how the model for the lifting of temporary controls on internal borders and the return to freedom of movement is working.” The idea is to run a test before they officially reopen to international travel in July, allowing the authorities to figure out what they can handle in real-life and not just on paper.

Spain gets 12 percent of its GDP from the tourism sector alone. That can easily be dismissed as just a number, but in reality, that number has a massive effect on people who run everything from restaurants to hotels to tours to farms (and so much more) around the country. When you isolate the Balearic Islands, that number jumps to 35 percent.

Spain’s Canary Islands are planning on running a similar program in the second half of June that’ll see another 10,000 Germans arrive for a one-week holiday. This will serve as a similar test — to better judge the viability of actually reopening Spain’s international borders in July.

(Via The Guardian)

Even before HBO Max officially announced that it would “Release the Snyder Cut,” director Zack Snyder had been an open book when it comes to sharing his original vision for Justice League with fans, and he’s not showing signs of stopping anytime soon.

In a recent Q&A on Snyder’s preferred social media platform, Vero, he confirmed that the spray-painted Robin suit seen in Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice actually belonged to Dick Grayson and not Jason Todd as most fans believed. For non-comic book readers, Dick Grayson is the first Robin who eventually grew out of being Batman’s sidekick and went out on his own as the superhero Nightwing. Jason Todd became his replacement, but he experienced a tragic end after DC Comics let fans call a telephone number deciding if he should die at the Joker’s hands. To the shock of DC Comics editors, fans chose “Yes,” and Jason was murdered by the Joker in the classic Batman story A Death in the Family. (Although, he did come back to life in the early aughts because comic books.)

While replying to a fan’s question about whether he planned to explore Dick Grayson’s death, Snyder said there would’ve been a “hint” in his version of Justice League, but he didn’t elaborate on what the hint would be or whether it could show up in the upcoming Snyder Cut.

In a later question, however, Heroic Hollywood reports that Snyder had a streamlined plan for depicting Robin in the DC Extended Universe. In addition to eschewing comic book canon and making Dick Grayson the dead Robin, Snyder revealed that he planned to jump straight to Carrie Kelley in future films. Carrie Kelley is the female Robin featured in Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns where she fights alongside an elderly Batman at the end of his career.

Would Snyder’s fast and loose portrayal of the Dark Knight’s sidekicks have gone over well with fans? We’ll never know, but it’ll be interesting to see if any of his Bat-family plans make an appearance when the Snyder Cut hits HBO Max in 2021.

(Via Heroic Hollywood)

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