https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/06/29/obama-police-reform-341685 https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/yvewn7/how-criminal-justice-reform-died-bill-keller
there have been grass roots efforts in the past that exploded into national movements, such as MLK's million man march, the core of which was economic justice. community involement by the police and holding the department and officers themselves to a higher standard with the goals put forth at the federal level and over-site from the feds was a policy of the obama administration implemented after the ferguson riots. the present administration abolished those standards and practices and by doing so has made themselve complicit in the current social unrest/riots IMHO. the underpinnings of the current demonstrations fall on the Trump administrations. BLM came out of Ferguson, and has become the standard bearer as the national organization of racial injustice in many ways because the isses still haven't been addressed or have gotten worse. criminal justice reform was a major effort by the obama administration that had a large coalition of divergent and groups including newt gingrich and the Koch brothers organization, yet McConnell in the senate refused to put the bipartisan bills up for a vote.
"And even the most modest proposals ran into fierce opposition from a handful of hawks such as Republican senators Tom Cotton, of Arkansas, and Jeff Sessions, of Alabama. (Cotton has indicated he might even
block a bill intended to protect juveniles from being locked up with adults, and to ban incarceration for "status offenses" like skipping school or breaking curfew. That measure is so non-controversial it
passed the House 382–29 last week.)"
"For example, a single senator can prevent a bill from getting expedited attention and consign it to a bureaucratic slow boat. Even though Speaker Ryan was
reportedly willing to hold a vote in the House, Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, refused to make room on the calendar for any issue that aroused dissent within his caucus."
those two quotes are from the link posted here. the justice reform bills were from 2014, so anyone saying the problems were caused by obama is being disingenuous. IMHO the republican senate is the major culprit in the case of a lack of meaningful criminal justice reform and the current administration for the lack of police reform including an executive order demilitarizing the police.
