KQED's Forum

Bakari Sellers says the most important day of his life happened before he was even born; February 8 1968 when highway patrolmen opened fire on students protesting segregation in South Carolina, killing 3 and wounding 28, including Seller's father. Sellers, who became the youngest person to be elected to the South Carolina legislature, writes about how the trauma of the incident permeated his childhood in  his memoir, "My Vanishing Country."  Now a lawyer and CNN political analyst, Sellers joins us to talk about the effects of systemic racism and what the killing of George Floyd by police, more than a half a century after his father's shooting, tells us about the state of America.

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Journalists covering nationwide protests against the police killing of George Floyd  have been shot with rubber bullets, tear gassed, assaulted and arrested by police. Advocates for journalists say there has been an unprecedented amount of violence against reporters and photographers this week, which they say is threatening the rights of a free press. Forum discusses attacks on the news media and whether President Trump’s frequent criticisms have helped erode trust in the media and endanger reporters.

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When California Governor Gavin Newsom offered to deploy National Guard troops to San Jose this week, Mayor Sam Liccardo declined. We feel very strongly that it is really important for civilian police to be policing, Liccardo said at a city council meeting Tuesday. Mayor Liccardo joins us to talk about that decision, the protests, and the ongoing challenge of the coronavirus pandemic.

Cities around California have set curfews in the wake of protests over the killing of George Floyd. Officials in favor of a curfew argue that it helps maintain public safety.  But civil rights groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, have criticized these measures for lacking clarity and scope as well as violating first amendment rights. San Francisco--which had been operating under an 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew-- changed tack on Wednesday, with Mayor London Breed tweeting that the city will lift the curfew and “continue to facilitate any and all peaceful demonstrations.” In this hour, we talk about how effective, practical, and constitutional curfews really are.

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Images from protests around the country this week are evoking memories of the political and social upheaval of the 1960s, another period when demonstrations of this scope and scale engulfed the county. The 1968 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. sparked similar riots and protests across the country. A few years earlier, violent protests exploded in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles following an altercation between African Americans and police. Forum examines the history of black protest and civic uprising in the U.S. and what it teaches us about this moment.

As thousands of people take to the streets across America to protest police brutality, infectious disease experts warn that the nation could see an increase in coronavirus cases.  Yelling and chanting expel more of the airborne droplets that can spread the disease. Also, it’s unclear how tear gas affects the virus. We talk about the likelihood of catching the novel coronavirus at a protest and how to avoid infection.

In his column for the San Francisco Chronicle this week, Otis Taylor Jr. calls for more open conversations about race in America in the wake of protests over the killing of George Floyd. He writes that "racism, like the coronavirus, isn’t going to simply magically disappear." Taylor joins Forum to talk about the Bay Area's protests and share his thoughts on confronting racism in the U.S.

Two days after George Floyd’s killing, Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza wrote that a lot of people were suddenly asking her what they could do about police violence. Her answer: There are no easy answers. “There is not *one* easy thing you can do right now to make you or anyone else feel better about the fact that this country allows black people to be hunted and killed like animals,” she tweeted. But she did urge people to join the hard work of political and community organizing to bring about real systemic change. That’s exactly what Garza is focused on as head of Black Futures Lab, an organization she founded in 2018. She joins us to talk about her work.

The killing of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis focused the nation’s attention, once again, on police brutality. Now, as cities across the country erupt in protest over Floyd’s killing, attention also turns to how police are handling those protests -- from reported police attacks on protesters and journalists to police taking a knee in solidarity with demonstrators. Forum checks in with KQED criminal justice reporters about how these issues have been playing out in California.

Dozens of Facebook employees joined a virtual walkout Monday to protest CEO Mark Zuckerberg's decision not to remove an incendiary post by President Trump. Posting in the wake of the killing of George Floyd at the hands of Minnesota police, Trump wrote "when the looting starts, the shooting starts."  In a statement Friday, Zuckerberg said the post did not violate company policy. Meanwhile, Twitter attached a label to the same post, warning that it glorified violence. We'll talk about how the two social media companies are handling the president's rhetoric on their platforms.