Racism

Korean Americans For Black Lives

July 31, 2020 By Lisa Kwon, LA Taco. Organize! Black Lives Matter (BLM), Korean-Americans, Racism, Rebellion2020

Liberty Park is one of the very few public green spaces left in Koreatown; the choice for ‘Ktown for Black Lives’ to meet here is intentional. Organized by the neighborhood’s activists and community members, the monthly gathering aims to mobilize residents against state-sanctioned violence that regularly takes the lives of Black and Brown people. Since its start in June, hundreds of ‘Ktown for Black Lives’ attendees have assembled on the 2.5 acres of land to participate in political education and mutual aid efforts such as the redistribution of meals and sanitary supplies. ‘Ktown for Black Lives’ points to the growing momentum among L.A.-based Korean and Asian American organizers standing in solidarity with Black Lives Matter and calling for Black liberation. The Korean response to today’s Black Lives Matter movement is rooted in deep personal education.

Fossil Fuel Industry Pollutes Black And Brown Communities

July 28, 2020 By Gin Armstrong and Derek Seidman, Eyes on the Ties. Educate! Oil and Gas Industry, Police abuse, pollution, Racism

Many of the most powerful oil and gas companies, private utilities, and financial institutions that drive environmental injustice are also backers of the same police departments – through their funding, sponsoring, and governing of police foundations – that tyrannize the very communities these corporate actors pollute. As demands continue to rise to defund the police and reinvest in Black and Brown communities, as well as to divest from the fossil fuel industry and reinvest in environmental justice and a just transition, the fossil fuel industry power structure presents a common foe for these interconnected fights.

Racism In Chile

July 24, 2020 Andre Vltchek, Orinoco Tribune. Educate! Chile, colonization, Indigenous People, Racism, White Supremacy

Recently, when a retired Chilean U.N. employee tried to enter ECLAC (United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, based in Santiago de Chile) to claim her pension in a bank inside the compound, her car was stopped by a U.N. security officer. She was asked to complete formalities. To her taste, the process was taking too much time, and she began honking. The head of security approached her, trying to explain the procedure, which had recently toughened up, due to the outbreak of COVID-19. The security head happened to be an African-Brazilian.

Virginia’s Energy Kingpin Could Finally Face A Reckoning Over Race

July 24, 2020 Alexander C. Kaufman, Huffington Post. Educate! Dominion Energy, Environmental racism, Fossil Fuels, Racism

Anti-poverty activist Rev. William Barber II denounced the compressor station as environmental racism in 2019, Dominion started running Facebook ads featuring video from a high school essay contest on civil rights that it had sponsored. Farrell’s role should “certainly be questioned” in the wake of the pipeline project, said Barber, a towering figure of the current civil rights movement. “A company that would attempt to do all this to communities and put its customers through this kind of fight should be challenged in so many ways,” he said. “Racism is not just about symbolism, it’s about substance.” Meanwhile, the company plowed ahead with plans to build the compressor station ― until a federal court intervened in early 2020, overturning the permit because Dominion had failed to resolve questions about how emissions would affect Union Hill. It had taken Union Hill activists five years to get redress from the courts.

Chris Hedges: This Is Kabir’s America

July 22, 2020 Chris Hedges, ScheerPost.com. Educate! Homeless, Prison, Prisoner rights, Racism

Robert “Kabir” Luma was 18 when he found himself in the wrong car with the wrong people. He would pay for that misjudgment with 16 years and 54 days of his life, locked away for a crime he did not participate in and did not know was going to take place. Released from prison, he was tossed onto the street, without financial resources and, because of fines and fees imposed on him by the court system, $7,000 of debt. He ended up broke in a homeless shelter in Newark, populated with others who could not afford a place to live, addicts and the mentally ill. The shelter was filthy, infested with lice and bedbugs. “You have to chain your food up in the refrigerator,” he said, wearing a worn, ripped sweatshirt, when I met him at the Newark train station. “There’s a chain on the door. There’s no stove. There’s one microwave that is on its way out. It stinks. I’m trying to stay positive.”

Portland: A Harbinger Of Things To Come?

July 21, 2020 the Black Alliance for Peace. Educate! Militarization, Police abuse, Police violence, Racism

Militarized federal agents deployed by the president to Portland, fired tear gas against protesters again overnight as the city’s mayor demanded that the agents be removed and as the state’s attorney general vowed to seek a restraining order against them. (Dave Killen/The Oregonian via AP) Masked men in unrecognizable police uniforms jump out of unmarked vans and grab an activist who has been involved in demonstrations against a repressive state. That person is disappeared. Is this Pinochet’s Chile, apartheid South Africa or a scene from a John Clancy novel? No, this is happening in Portland, Oregon, a major U.S. city. The culprits apparently are agents of the federal government who have essentially invaded the streets of that city over the objections of the mayor and the governor.

The GOP’s ‘Southern Strategy’ Shows How White Supremacy Fuels Class Exploitation

July 20, 2020 By Peter Montague, Truthout. Educate! Democracy, Racism, Southern Strategy, White Supremacy

Starting in the early 1970s, the Republican Party began to draw voters away from the Democrats by appealing to racism and racial anxiety in the electorate; Republicans called it their “Southern Strategy.” By 2000, with the presidency of George W. Bush, the Republican Party (and the U.S.) had been taken over by people who celebrate and emulate the Old South plantation system of social control — a rigid hierarchy featuring dominance of whites over people of color, of men over women, of humans over the natural world, and of violence and militarism over relationship-building and negotiation, with rich white men asserting unquestioned authority. Republicans then drove moderates out of the party. Why would white working-class and small-business people (some Tea Partiers, for example) vote against their own interests to keep billionaires in charge? It’s a fair question because the difference is stark between what the U.S. population wants and what Republicans in Congress aim to deliver.

Land Loss Has Plagued Black America Since Emancipation

July 20, 2020 Julian Agyeman and Kofi Boone, The Conversation. Strategize! Inequality, Land Rights, Racism, Slavery

Underlying the recent unrest sweeping U.S. cities over police brutality is a fundamental inequity in wealth, land, and power that has circumscribed black lives since the end of slavery in the U.S. The “40 acres and a mule” promised to formerly enslaved Africans never came to pass. There was no redistribution of land, no reparations for the wealth extracted from stolen land by stolen labor. June 19 is celebrated by black Americans as Juneteenth, marking the date in 1865 that former slaves were informed of their freedom, albeit two years after the Emancipation Proclamation. Coming this year at a time of protest over the continued police killing of black people, it provides an opportunity to look back at how black Americans were deprived of land ownership and the economic power that it brings. An expanded concept of the “black commons” – based on shared economic, cultural and digital resources as well as land – could act as one means of redress.

Toppling Statues As An Act Of Historical Redemption

July 15, 2020 Onur Acaroglu, ROAR Magazine. Educate! Racism, Rebellion2020, Slavery, Statues

The brutal murder of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police set off an unprecedented wave of protests. In a highly publicized, graphic execution, Floyd was killed in broad daylight for possession of an alleged counterfeit bill. The ensuing rebellion of global dimensions is undoubtedly fueled by the exposure to uncertainty, stress and anxiety that the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated. In the United States and beyond, frustration and anger at unprepared and incompetent governments overlap with the pressures of systemic racism, seen in sheer wealth gaps and repressive state practices. Across the pond, protests have also erupted in Britain. In a context of recession and repression, it is common for widespread rebellions to flare up at instances of injustice.

One Of The Wealthiest States Might Pass An Opportunity To Tackle Housing Segregation

July 13, 2020 By Jacqueline Rabe Thomas, The Connecticut Mirror. Create! Connecticut, Housing, Racism, Segregation

Despite its liberal reputation — and Democrats controlling the legislature for the last 23 years and the governor’s mansion for nine — Connecticut is one of the most segregated places in the country. And with thousands of residents pouring into the streets this month to protest racism, housing advocates and progressive Democrats saw an opportunity to change that, calling for an overhaul of the state’s exclusionary housing laws. That opportunity, however, appears to be fading. At the state Capitol, Gov. Ned Lamont and legislative leaders have shelved a raft of proposals that could spur more affordable housing, after ending the legislative session early this year because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Ajamu Baraka: Race, Class And US Protests Today

July 12, 2020 Look Left Online. Strategize! Racism, Rebellion2020, United States, Working Class

Speaking at an event organised by the Workers’ Party, the national organiser of the Black Alliance for Peace and the 2016 Green Party candidate for vice president said that: “The current ongoing capitalist crisis has created the most serious crisis of legitimacy since the collapse of the capitalist economy during the years referred to as the Great Depression. We are now seeing, within the economy, the genocidal implications of economic conditions in which young black workers have more value as human generators of profit locked up in prisons than as participants in the economy as low wage workers.” Founded in 2017, the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) seeks to recapture and redevelop the historic anti-war, anti-imperialist, and pro-peace positions of the radical black movement.

Rally Protests Anti-Racist Teacher’s Suspension

July 9, 2020 Lyn Neeley, Workers.org. Resist! Education, Racism, Teachers, Worker Rights

Milton, MA - Hundreds rallied on Juneteenth (June 19) in Milton, Mass., calling for an end to systemic racism in school curriculum and voicing support for Zakia Jarrett, an African-American sixth-grade English teacher. Jarrett was briefly put on administrative leave June 5 for her remarks on police violence during a lesson on racism. Jarrett, who has taught for 18 years, used the last line of the poem “Allowables” by Nikki Giovanni as a metaphor for racism. The line reads: “I don’t think I’m allowed to kill something because I am afraid.” Jarrett explained that killing out of fear leads to systemic racism and unconscious bias and that the men who killed Ahmaud Arbery did so because of the color of his skin, not because of something he did.

The Racist Underpinnings Of The American Way Of War

July 8, 2020 Walden Bello, Foreign Policy in Focus. Educate! Genocide, Racism, Wars and Militarism, White Supremacy

The U.S. military command’s pushback against President Donald Trump’s attempt to use the military against people demanding racial justice has received a lot of good press. But let’s not overdo the praise. For most of their existence, the U.S. Armed Forces were racially segregated. It was only in the 1950s that the slow process of integration began, with racial discrimination still a major problem in the ranks today. While race has been widely discussed with respect to the composition and organization of the military, much less attention has been paid to the way racism has been a central feature of how the United States has waged its wars. The military is an institution of American society, and as such its origins and development have been centrally influenced by the political economy of U.S. capitalism.

Black Militia Marches On Stone Mountain, Demands Removal Of Confederate Monument

July 7, 2020 Kevin Zeese, Popular Resistance. Resist! Black Militia, Confederate Monuments, Gun Rights, Racism

About 1,000 heavily armed militia, all of whom were Black, marched through Georgia's Stone Mountain Park on Saturday, challenging white nationalist groups in the area to either come out and fight or join them in demonstrating against the government. Stone Mountain State Park officials said the Black militia group was peaceful, orderly and escorted by police as they called for the removal of the country's largest Confederate monument near Atlanta. The Black militia is calling for the removal of the Confederate monument etched into Stone Mountain, GA. In 1915, the United Daughters of the Confederacy. It has been a site used for the racist KKK to hold rallies and where the Klan was reborn. It is the world's largest monument to white supremacy, completed in 1972 after the Civil Rights Acts were made into law. It was a way for racists to show that white supremacy still ruled.

Black Women In Italy Weren’t Being Heard, That’s Changed

July 7, 2020 Stefania Dignoti, The Lilly. Resist! Black Activists, Italy, Racism, Rebellion2020

Ariam Tekle had just begun co-hosting a podcast about black identities in Italy when, in late May, George Floyd was killed in police custody and a series of Black Lives Matter protests erupted across the United States. That outcry for social change resonated across the Atlantic, hitting many cities in Europe with unprecedented force, including her hometown of Milan. And for local black communities, the protests became an opportunity to speak out about issues of endemic racism beyond the U.S. experience. “We stand in solidarity with what is happening in the U.S., but we also want this to be a starting point to openly confront racism at home that is no less alarming than police brutality in America,” Tekle, a 31-year-old documentary filmmaker, says.

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