Racism

Why Conflict Is Escalating In Portland

September 1, 2020 David Rovics, Make Popular Education Popular Again. Resist! Police violence, Portland, Racism, Right-Wing

It's always been mythology that in the USA the First Amendment gives people the right to peacefully protest. It's always been mythology that when people commit acts of civil disobedience, such as marching or sitting down in the street, that they will generally be gingerly carried off with one cop taking each limb, carrying the arrested to an awaiting vehicle, and carefully placing them inside it. It's always been mythology that when there are two opposing groups of protesters, the police are there to act as a neutral party to keep them from hurting each other. Under certain circumstances, peaceful protests go off without a hitch, police escort marchers in the streets, and they keep protesters from killing each other, but there's nothing predictable about any of these things going that way. In fact, most often, they don't go like that at all, in Portland, or in most US cities.

Pennsylvania Will Rule On Mumia’s Case, After Proceeding In Secret

September 1, 2020 By Noelle Hanrahan, Prison Radio. Educate! Corruption, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Pennsylvania Supreme Court, Prisoner rights, Racism

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has put Mumia Abu-Jamal's evidentiary hearing on hold. The case is under seal and is proceeding in secret! This spring Mumia Abu-Jamal was back in court with a chance for freedom! The Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner had agreed with defense counsel that Mumia deserved a new evidentiary hearing based on the revelation of long-suppressed exculpatory evidence. The new documents — buried in the DA's office for 38 years — call into question the entire prosecution case against Mumia Abu-Jamal. The Fraternal Order of Police backed an extraordinary petition asking the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to kick anti-corruption DA Larry Krasner off the case. In April 2020, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court reached down from on high and suspended the criminal case. The ruling from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on the King's Bench petition could come down at any time.

Truth And Redistribution

September 1, 2020 By Darrick Hamilton & Naomi Zewde, YES Magazine. Create! New Economy, Racism, wealth inequality, Wealth Tax

In a nutshell, our racial dilemma is grounded in a political, economic, and identity-based devaluing of Black lives that has persisted ever since the first enslaved African arrived in Jamestown in 1619. The ensuing history of the United States is built on both racial and economic injustice, two related but distinct problems. These racial and economic injustices, while entrenched, can be addressed. Below are three complementary policies that can make meaningful progress toward undoing centuries of systemic inequities, while prospectively ensuring capital access going forward: (1) Reparations through which the nation acknowledges and redresses its exploitation and extraction of Black resources and personhood; (2) Baby Bonds (publicly funded trust accounts) to establish a birthright to capital; and (3) a wealth tax to break up the concentration of wealth among the capitalist elite and diffuse the political power that goes along with such concentration.

Obama, Harris And The Ruse Of Racial Representation

August 31, 2020 Nelson Maldonado-Torres , Black Agenda Report. Educate! 2020 Election, Barack Obama, Kamala Harris, Racism

The nomination of Senator Kamala Harris to the position of Vice President of the United States has been widely recognized as a triumph for Black and Asian women in the country. Something similar happened twelve years ago when then-Senator Barack Obama accepted the nomination for President. There is no doubt that representation in the media, politics, education, corporate leadership, sports, among so many other areas, matters. However, the more crucial questions are how does representation matter as well as for whom and for what does it matter. Without addressing these questions, representation can easily succumb to a mechanism that contributes to the disempowerment of the very sectors that presumably benefit from it. Two hundred forty-four years after the declaration of the US independence, and only twenty-two years away from 2042, when non-Hispanic whites are projected to lose the status of demographic majorities in the country, it is clear that liberal institutions in the country cannot perpetually be managed by white people only.

On Contact: Public Monuments And Racism

August 30, 2020 Chris Hedges, RT. Resistance Report Confederate Statues, Racism, Rebellion2020, White Supremacy

n the show this week, Chris Hedges, in his second interview with Professor James W Loewen, discusses public monuments and statues, who puts them up and why, and what may replace them. Prof Loewen is the author of ‘Lies Across America: What Our Historical Markers and Monuments Get Wrong’. "The uprisings sweeping the nation triggered by the police murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others have not only confronted systematic police abuse, but targeted statues, monuments and buildings commemorating white supremacy.

Black Families Purchased Land To Build Their Own City

August 29, 2020 Because of Them We Can. Create! Cooperatives, Georgia, Land Ownership, New Economy, Racism

In Toomsboro, Georgia, a group of 19 Black families banded together to create what has the potential to be the next Black Wall Steet. Black people are resilient, we've had to be to thrive under systems that weren't built for us. This resiliency has created innovative solutions to impossible problems such as racial injustices, food insecurity, and a lack of secure and safe communities. Ashley Scott, a realtor living in Stonecrest, Georgia, was reaching her breaking point after watching the murder of Ahmaud Arbery in her home state.

Organizing Call: After The DNC And RNC – We Can’t Breathe!

August 26, 2020 Coalition, Popular Resistance. Organize! 2020 Elections, Capitalism, Racism, Right to Protest, Strikes

The Democratic and Republican Conventions are not confronting the crises of our times - the economic collapse, COVID pandemic, lack of access to healthcare, inequality, racism, the cost of education, and never-ending wars and more. No matter which corporate-funded party wins the election, the people must rule from below. The national uprising against police violence and the hundreds of wildcat strikes and rent strikes are a few examples among many that show once again that the only way to challenge this racist, militarized system is with the explosive power of people making demands and shutting the system down. Regardless of what happens in November our only way forward is to stay mobilized! Join us for this important webinar: After The DNC And RNC - We Can’t Breathe!

How To Remember A Feminist Movement That Hasn’t Ended

August 24, 2020 By Erin L. Thompson, Tom Dispatch. Educate! Black Women, Racism, Statues, Women's Rights

Increasing outrage from critics over what the New York Times’ Brent Staples called the monument’s “lily-white version of history.” The proposed monument, wrote another critic in a similar vein, “manages to recapitulate the marginalization Black women experienced during the suffrage movement,” as when white organizers forced Black activists to walk at the back of a 1913 women’s march on Washington. Historian Martha Jones in an op-ed in the Washington Post criticized the way the planned monument promoted the “myth” that the fight for women’s rights was led by Anthony’s and Stanton’s “narrow, often racist vision,” and called for adding escaped slave, abolitionist, and women’s rights promoter Sojourner Truth. Although the New York City Public Design Commission had approved the design with just Anthony and Stanton, Monumental Women did indeed rework the monument, adding a portrait of Truth in June 2019. The sculptor would later make additional smaller changes in response to further criticism about her depiction of Truth, including changing the positioning of her hands and body to make her a more active participant in the scene.

Police Shoot Man; Video Shows Officer Firing Several Shots Into His Back At Close Range

August 24, 2020 Meg Jones, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Educate! Police abuse, Police violence, Racism, Wisconsin

Kenosha police shot a man Sunday evening, setting off unrest in the city after a video appeared to show the officer firing several shots at close range into the man's back. The shooting victim has been identified as Jacob Blake, a Black man, by Wisconsin officials. He was in serious condition at Froedtert Hospital in Milwaukee as of early Monday morning. The Wisconsin Department of Justice's Division of Criminal Investigation said early Monday that the involved officers have been placed on administrative leave. The Kenosha News reported that neighbors said Blake was trying to break up a fight between two women. Bystanders said he was Tased and then shot several times.

Lenders Deny Mortgages For Black Homeowners At A High Rate

August 22, 2020 By Diana Olick, CNBC. Educate! Big Banks, Housing, Inequality, Racism

Discrimination in home lending goes back to the beginning of home lending itself. During the last housing boom, when subprime mortgages were all the rage, predatory lending to minority borrowers was rampant. When the mortgage market came crashing down, taking the economy with it, some major lenders were held accountable. They ended up paying massive, multibillion-dollar settlements to the federal government. But there is clearly still bias in the market. A majority (59 percent), of Black homebuyers, are concerned about qualifying for a mortgage, while less than half (46 percent) of white buyers are, according to a recent survey by Zillow, a home listing website, which launched its own mortgage lending arm, Zillow Home Loans, late last year. That is because lenders deny mortgages for Black applicants at a rate 80 percent higher than that of white applicants, according to 2020 data from the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act. For refinances specifically, Black borrowers are denied mortgage refinance loans, on average, 30.22 percent of the time, far higher than the overall denial rate of 17.07 percent

The Daily Life Of Those Fighting For $15 And A Union

August 15, 2020 Al Neal, People's World. Organize! Fight for 15, Low Wage Workers, Racism, Worker Rights

The rank and file workers that came before us said a union was not the union hall nor the labor temple, nor was it the elected union officials that come and go. The union was its people—the honest, hardworking membership. Comrades of sweat and toil pushed and prodded too far for the sake of an industrial tyrant’s profits. Workers who reached a point and said, “enough is enough,” who joined together, demanded change, and organized. And in the current moment of economic turmoil and political upheaval, workers are experiencing quaint evocations of moments gone by—as if looking through an open window and scanning through the decades of militant union history, scouring the past to understand and confront today’s clear and present danger.

When Impossible Becomes Inevitable: The Fall Of ‘Petty Racism’

August 14, 2020 By Bill Mosley, Washington Socialist. Strategize! Confederate Monuments, Racism, Statues, United States

The removal of Confederate statues around Richmond, Va., had a personal resonance for me, a Richmond native who once lived around the corner from the Robert E. Lee monument – the only one of the five monuments to rebel figures still (as I write this) standing on Monument Avenue. I used to go jogging on the avenue’s median starting at Lee, veering around Jefferson Davis and turning to retrace my steps as I approached Stonewall Jackson. As Leon Trotsky said, “revolution is impossible until it’s inevitable.” He spoke from experience; the socialist revolution he sought seemed stuck in neutral until the events of 1917 opened the floodgates. Suddenly, Confederate statues began to fall one by one, not just in Richmond or Virginia but wherever they stood. DC’s only public monument to a Confederate figure – General Albert Pike – was pulled down and burned by activists on Juneteenth.

US Crimes Against Humanity At Home And Abroad

August 10, 2020 Bill Hackwell and Alicia Jrapko, Resumen English. Educate! Human Rights, Japan, Racism, Wars and Militarism

The US crimes against humanity did not begin or end with the dropping of the nuclear bombs on Japan. As militant civil rights leader Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin (formerly H. Rap Brown) pointed out years ago, “Violence is as American as cherry pie.” Since its inception, the US has been ingrained with a motor force of violent oppression against everyone and every country that stood in its way of its expansion for control of resources and its entitlement to a limitless accumulation of vast wealth for a few. The original thirteen colonies that rebelled against England were not motivated solely by being taxed without representation but more for the restrictions that King George had placed on the unbridled greed of the white settlers to expand and steal the lands of the indigenous nations and communities and to establish a system of slavery which was the main source of capitalist accumulation, especially for the southern colonies. At the time of the revolution close to 20% of the population consisted of Black slaves. Slavery actually ran contrary to British Common Law so the only way the emerging class of landowners in the colonies could flourish was to secede from the British Empire. In doing so it established a pivotal component of the original DNA of the United States; structural racism as a means to justify any level of discrimination and oppression

Racism Is A Public Health Crisis

August 2, 2020 Christine Vestal, Pew Trusts. Educate! Healthcare crisis, Local Government, Public Health, Racism

Being black is bad for your health. And pervasive racism is the cause. That’s the conclusion of multiple public health studies over more than three decades. “We do know that health inequities at their very core are due to racism,” said Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association. “There’s no doubt about that.” More recently, research has shown that racial health disparities don’t just affect poor African Americans, but they also cross class lines, Benjamin said. “As a black man, my status, my suit and tie don’t protect me.”

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