Skip to content

Racism

A Majority Of Workers Are Fearful Of Coronavirus Infections At Work

June 18, 2020 By Peter Dorman and Lawrence Mishel, Economic Policy Institute. , , ,
The majority of workers and roughly 70% of Black and Hispanic workers who are currently working onsite at their workplaces, and not at home, believe they face considerable risks from the coronavirus. These workers are not being provided with sufficient protection on the job. Moreover, new polling commissioned by EPI shows that vulnerable workers are not receiving extra compensation proportionate to the risks they are being exposed to. Workers require and deserve both safety protections and extra compensation in these circumstances, and they should not be forced to choose between their health and having an income. There is widespread fear of risks from the coronavirus among workers who are working onsite at their workplace, instead of working from home, and these perceived risks are greater for those with the least power in the labor market.

Reporter Sues Newspaper For Prohibiting Her Coverage Of Protests

June 18, 2020 Louise Hall, The Independent. , , ,
A reporter in Pittsburgh is suing the newspaper she works for after the company prohibited her from covering the city’s Black Lives Matter protests because of a tweet concerning the issue. The suit claims that Ms. Johnson was prevented from pursuing stories on jailed protesters or social-media efforts to raise bail funds after she posted a tweet on 31 May highlighting the different treatment black and white people regarding property damage. “Horrifying scenes and aftermath from selfish LOOTERS who don’t care about this city!!!!!” the tweet says. “.... oh wait sorry. ”No, these are pictures from a Kenny Chesney concert tailgate. Whoops." Post-Gazette managing editor Karen Kane previously declined comment. Ms. Johnson’s fellow reporters, her union, and the city’s mayor have all voiced support for the reporter. Guild President Michael A Fuoco, who is also a Post-Gazette reporter, said that guild leaders were “appalled” by the paper's move.

What Would The Black Panthers Think Of Black Lives Matter?

June 18, 2020 Paul Street, Truthdig. , , ,
The U.S. ruling class, whose capitalist system is the historical midwife of modern racism, is not threatened by the racialist and black-capitalist BLM. But just to make sure that black anger is kept within safe political boundaries, a critical, cash-rich arm of concentrated wealth agreed last year to lavishly fund the group and a significant number of black middle class-led policy and advocacy groups coming in under its rubric. In August 2016, when I first heard that BLM had scored $100 million from the Ford Foundation and other elite philanthro-capitalists (including the Hill-Snowden Foundation, the NoVo Foundation, Solidaire, JPMorgan Chase and the Kellogg Foundation), I wrote it off as “fake news” from the right-wing noise machine. But the story checked out. The remarkable grant—a vast sum of money off the charts of normal foundation giving—was a matter of public record. Fred Hampton said "We’ve got to face the fact that some people say you fight fire best with fire, but we say you put fire out best with water. We say you don’t fight racism with racism. We’re gonna fight racism with solidarity. We say you don’t fight capitalism with no black capitalism; you fight capitalism with socialism."

UAW Work Stoppage On Juneteenth To End Racism

June 18, 2020 Rory L. Gamble, United Auto Workers. , , ,
As trade unionists and as Americans, we were outraged and heartsick at the horror of George Floyd’s death on May 25. It was yet another tragedy in a long and sorrowful history of the divisiveness of racism in this nation. Since that day in communities from coast to coast, we have seen Americans from all walks of life, black, brown and white, stand together to demand change. To demand – finally – that we address the systemic racial divide that has plagued our nation since its inception. On Friday, June 19, at 8:46 a.m. in each time zone, UAW members and allies across the globe will pause for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, the agonizing amount of time that George Floyd lay on an American street begging for his life. We do this in support of the millions who are demanding an end to racism and hate and calling for real reforms.

Pitchfork Union On Strike Over Racist Power Structures

June 18, 2020 Pitchfork Union, Popular Resistance. , , , ,
Today, the Pitchfork Union is engaging in a half-day work stoppage. From 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. EST, union members will not publish or promote any new content on the website in protest of a blatant act of union-busting by Condé Nast and Pitchfork management. On May 13, Condé Nast engaged in company-wide layoffs. The only person in our union targeted was our Unit Chair and only Senior Editor of color, Stacey Anderson, illustrating the larger pattern of employees of color being targeted throughout the company. We categorically opposed her layoff. We immediately began looking into alternatives, like those implemented at BuzzFeed News and The Los Angeles Times. 

Racism, Lack Of Jobs As Workers Face Social Pandemic

June 17, 2020 By G. Dunkel, Workers World. , , ,
The capitalist class in the United States now wants to force unemployed workers to take a job, any job, no matter how dangerous or low paid. This attack on workers’ incomes drags down the economy because workers won’t earn enough to buy the goods and services they would normally consume. For those workers who should qualify for unemployment insurance (UI), the requirements vary. Income levels and time worked are usually prominent reasons given for not providing UI. Undocumented workers are almost always excluded. Even documented foreign nationals often have problems. It can take weeks to open a UI claim. Most states have underfunded their systems and haven’t had the staff, computer capacity or phone lines to handle the COVID-19 surge that began in March.   Some jobless workers have waited 8 to 10 weeks to get the first payments on their unemployment claims. New York state supplies UI benefits on a cash card or direct deposit for workers who have a bank account that accepts such payments.

Act On Dr. King’s Call To Tackle Evils Of Racism, Economic Exploitation And War

June 16, 2020 Alice Slater, In-Depth News. , , ,
Martin Luther King, Jr. King called us to address “Three major evils—the evil of racism, the evil of poverty and the evil of war” to the consternation of the establishment. It is time to tell the truth about the US-Russian relationship and US complicity in driving the nuclear arms race if we are ever to reverse it as well as the race to weaponize space. Perhaps, by addressing the triple evils, we can fulfill King’s dream and the mission envisioned for the United Nations, to end the scourge of war! At a minimum, we should be promoting UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ call for a global ceasefire while our world attends to Mother Earth and addresses this murderous plague.

UN Should Establish A Commission Of Inquiry On Systemic Racism And Law Enforcement In The US

June 16, 2020 By E. Tendayi Achiume, Just Security. , , ,
On Wednesday, June 17, 2020, the United Nations Human Rights Council will hold an “Urgent Debate” on systemic racism in law enforcement. The proximate catalyst for this debate is the recent police killing of George Floyd and many other Black people in the United States, and the breath-taking national and transnational uprising of the past two weeks against systemic racism in law enforcement. The Urgent Debate is more than opportunity for discussion—it’s an opportunity for meaningful action. In a letter to the President of the UN Human Rights Council, I, along with the UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent, have urged the Human Rights Council to ensure the following outcomes from the debate

Growing Revolt Among Black Journalists

June 15, 2020 By Betsey Piette, Workers World. , , ,
Black and Brown reporters, journalists of color are speaking up and taking action against decades of major publications refusing to address racism — especially in two notable newsrooms — the Philadelphia Inquirer and the New York Times. On June 4, 44 journalists of color at the 200-year-old Philadelphia Inquirer staged a sick-out strike one day after forcing a public apology from the Inquirer editorial staff for a blatantly racist headline — “Buildings Matter, Too” — posted on June 1. This article addressed plans to repair property damages to buildings and infrastructure following May 31 anti-racist protests in communities of color that exploded in an expression of outrage over unaddressed systemic racism.

President Maduro: United States Is Living An Anti-Racist Spring

June 15, 2020 By HispanTV. , , ,
President Maduro said that the US is experiencing an anti-racist spring, in reference to the massive protests for the murder of George Floyd. “People on the street are saying who Donald Trump is every day,” said the Venezuelan president during his participation on Monday in the TV show “Between Values,” in which he also asserted that the American people “live an anti-racist spring”. On the other hand, he stressed that historical figures such as Malcolm X and Martin Luther King are more present today than ever among Americans who fight for their rights. “They are the martyrs for a future hope, for a new society that is emerging in the US,” he said. He also stressed that individualism and pettiness are the essence of systems of world domination through the denial of social being. “Capitalism is based on the use of collective work for enrichment and the conquest of individual power.”

Will The Death Of George Floyd Mark The Rebirth Of America?

June 15, 2020 By Nick Turse, Tom Dispatch. , , ,
I you had told me that, in the span of a few months, a novel coronavirus that dates back only to last year and systemic American racism that dates back to 1619 would somehow intersect, I wouldn’t have believed it. If you had told me that a man named George Floyd would survive Covid-19 only to be murdered by the police and that his brutal death would spark a worldwide movement, leading the council members of a major American city to announce their intent to defund the police and Europeans halfway across the planet to deface monuments to a murderous nineteenth-century monarch who slaughtered Africans, I would have dismissed you. But history works in mysterious ways.

Chris Hedges: Gaslighted By The Ruling Class

June 15, 2020 Chris Hedges, ScheerPost. , , , ,
The elites have no intention of instituting anything more than cosmetic changes. They refuse to ask the questions that matter because they do not want to hear the answers. They are systems managers. They use these symbolic gestures to gaslight the public and leave our failed democracy, from which they and their corporate benefactors benefit, untouched. The crisis we face is not, as the ruling elites want us to believe, limited to police violence. It is a class and generational revolt. It will not be solved with new police reforms. The problem is an economic and political system that has by design created a nation of serfs and obscenely rich masters.

The Uprising Is Only Beginning: Building Power To Win Our Demands

June 14, 2020 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, Popular Resistance. , , , , , , ,
The current uprising against police violence and racism is just beginning. It is rapidly shifting public consciousness on issues of policing, violence against Black people and others, and systemic racism. The movement is deepening and becoming broader as well as putting forward solutions and making demands. The confluence of crises including recent police violence, the COVID-19 pandemic, and economic collapse along with the ongoing crises of lack of healthcare, poverty, inequality, homelessness, personal debt, and climate plus awareness of mirage democracy in the United States have created a historic moment full of possibilities. If we continue to organize and build power, the potential for dramatic change is great.

Human Rights Expert Hopes COVID-19, Climate Change And Racial Injustice Are A ‘Wake-Up Call’

June 14, 2020 By Ilana Cohen, Inside Climate News. , , ,
The optimistic way is to see Covid-19 as a trial run for what's on the way with climate change in the sense that it really is a crisis that has affected vast numbers of people that has shown up the importance of being prepared and the importance of listening to the warning signals, and the potential for totally disproportionate impact on different groups of the population—whether by gender, class, race and so on. Covid-19 could provide some sort of wake-up call to those of us who are pretending that climate change is going to be manageable and we don't really need to do anything until it actually starts to hit ever more dramatically.  A much more pessimistic way of looking at it is to wonder if Covid-19, followed by the George Floyd pandemic of racial violence and inequality, is going to lead to a sort of crisis fatigue.

A Tale Of Two Protests

June 14, 2020 By Danny Haiphong, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
The rebellions in Hong Kong and Minneapolis have received vastly different responses from the U.S. ruling class. In Minneapolis, masses of people took to the streets on May 26th to express their outrage over the police murder of George Floyd and the many Black Americans who have shared a similar fate. The rebellion quickly spread to cities across the country with corporations, police stations, and even the CNN headquarters in Atlanta, GA all facing some form of property destruction. Protestors in Hong Kong have been treated with honor from the corporate media in stark contrast to the homegrown uprisings occurring in U.S. cities. 
«12345678910»

Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

Donate Here

Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! 

Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

Donate Here
Sign Up To Our Daily Digest

Independent media outlets are being suppressed and dropped by corporations like Google, Facebook and Twitter. Sign up for our daily email digest before it’s too late so you don’t miss the latest movement news.