Poll also finds majority support for many police reform measures and doubts among Trump voters over the fairness of Chauvin’s trial and the justification of its outcome.

Results of a new nationwide University of Massachusetts Amherst / WCVB poll released today show that a wide majority of Americans polled in the days immediately following the Derek Chauvin trial believe that the guilty verdict against the former Minneapolis police officer in the murder of George Floyd was justified and that he received a fair trial. A plurality of the poll’s respondents also believes an appropriate sentence for Chauvin would be the maximum length he faces – 40 years in prison. (Press Release, UMass Amherst, 4/24/2021)

Ray La Raja, Professor of Political Science at UMass Amherst, is quoted in an article about the effect of a decrease in donations from political action committees and a concurrent increase in small donations to former President Trump’s political allies in Congress.  La Raja says increased fundraising from small donors is a “double-edged sword” because “politicians are relying on donors who are more extreme, and to reach those donors, the politicians have to message in more extreme ways.” (CNN, 4/17/21)

Sid Issar Publishes An Article On Anti-Black Racism, Settler Colonialism & Racial Capitalism. This article reconceptualises the Marxist notion of ‘primitive accumulation’, examining how settler colonialism and anti-Black racial domination structure American capitalism. The analysis intervenes in theorisations of primitive accumulation in both critiques of neoliberalism and the growing literature on racial capitalism. It shows how particular appropriations of primitive accumulation in the context of neoliberalism not only treat the concept as, ultimately, external to the core logic of capitalism, but also ignore the ways racial domination and colonisation configure capital’s violence. 

Ray La Raja, Professor of Political Science at UMass Amherst, is quoted in a column about how a recently proposed provision in voting rights legislation risks favoring candidates from either party who hold polarizing views, thereby widening ideological divisions. The provision, proposed by Congressional Democrats, offers an incentive for candidates to opt-in to public financing.  La Raja’s research has shown that small-dollar donors tend to be wealthier, better educated, and more partisan than average Americans. “They are as ideological, if not more so on several issues, than large donors,” he says. (Bloomberg, 4/7/20)