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Racism

What The Heck Is Going On In Seattle?

June 14, 2020 By Emily Pothast, Medium. , , , ,
Since a lot of the narratives swirling around about Seattle right now are less-than-insightful, I’m sharing a few points to help contextualize the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone in the bigger picture of the dizzying terrain that is Seattle history. Meanwhile, in the interest of amplifying the work being done by the collective Black voices on the ground, I would like to direct your attention to this document, which explains what is being asked for in the aftermath of what they’re calling the “George Floyd Rebellion.” Also, Seattle author Ijeoma Oluo’s So You Want to Talk About Race is an important resource that just climbed to the top of the New York Times bestseller list. Finally, while you’re buying Seattle books, check out Black Imagination: Black Voices on Black Futures, curated by local artist Natasha Marin.

Group Behind Confederate Monuments Also Built A Memorial To The Klan

June 13, 2020 Greg Huffman, Facing South. , , , ,
It was a Saturday. The mailman never comes to my door, but there was his knock. A couple days earlier I had ordered a book on Amazon that I had seen before only in a library. "Sorry to bother you," he said, "but I had to have you sign for this one." The return address on the padded manila envelope was a post office box in Charlotte, North Carolina. No name. I cut the shipping tape and carefully pulled out the contents, wrapped inside a grocery bag. The worn 1941 first edition of Mrs. S.L. Smith's "North Carolina's Confederate Monuments and Memorials" — one of the only compilations by the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) itself, written by the historian of the North Carolina Division — had a new home.

Statues In The US and Around The World Are Being Beheaded And Torn Down

June 12, 2020 Teacher Poet Musician Glen Brown. , , ,
“Monuments and statues in the US and around the world that are dedicated to controversial historical figures with legacies of slavery and racism have become the target of demonstrations during the #BlackLivesMatter protests. In several cases, the statues have even been toppled by activists taking matters into their owns hands. “At a demonstration in Richmond, Virginia, on Tuesday night, a 93-year-old statue of Christopher Columbus was brought down, set on fire, and thrown into a lake as bystanders chanted ‘Tear it down.’ Left in place where the statue had previously stood was a cardboard sign with the words ‘Columbus Represents Genocide.’

Black Lives Matter Everywhere: Its Time To Defund The US Military

June 11, 2020 By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas Davies, Popular Resistance. , , ,
While the U.S. war on the black population at home is now exposed for all of America–and the world–to see, the victims of U.S. wars abroad continue to be hidden. Trump has escalated the horrific wars he inherited from Obama, dropping more bombs and missiles in 3 years than either Bush II or Obama did in their first terms. When retired generals speak out against Trump’s desire to deploy active-duty troops on America’s streets, we should understand that they are defending precisely this double standard. Just as we are exposing the rot in U.S. police forces and calling for defunding the police, so we must expose the rot in U.S. foreign policy and call for defunding the Pentagon. U.S. wars on people in other countries are driven by the same racism and ruling class economic interests as the war against African-Americans in our cities.

Confederate Statues And Christopher Columbus Toppled

June 11, 2020 Kevin Zeese, Popular Resistance. , , ,
People are showing their anger at the white supremacy and racism that continue in the United States in multiple ways. Confederate statutes have become a target in Richmond, which served as the capital of the Confederate States of America for almost the whole US Civil War. On Monument Avenue, the statue of Davis,  a Mississippi Democrat who served as the president of the Confederacy from 1861 until 1865, was among three statutes torn down within the past week in Richmond. Saturday, a statue of Confederate General Williams Carter Wickham was toppled from its pedestal. Tuesday, a statue of Christopher Columbus was torn down and dumped in a lake.

Health Workers March To Expose Racism As A Health Crisis

June 11, 2020 Hannah Weinberger, Crosscut. , , ,
Seattle, WA - Dr. Nkeirika Banda’s phone was vibrating. “I’m scared to check it,” said the HealthPoint family medicine resident. Her mom, who lives in Zambia, is a worrier — and Banda had just sent her family a photo from the intersection of James Street and Sixth Avenue, where she was supporting the Seattle’s Doctors for Justice rally against racism and police brutality. “So I obviously didn't tell her that I was coming [to the protest],” Banda said. Banda and thousands of other health care professionals gathered at 10 a.m. June 6 at Harborview Medical Center in solidarity with Seattle’s Black community.

Hong Kong’s ‘Pro Democracy’ Movement Allies With Far Right US Politicians

June 11, 2020 Ajit Singh, The Grayzone. , , ,
A leading Hong Kong “pro-democracy” figure, Jimmy Lai, has denounced nationwide protests in the United States against police brutality and systemic racism, which were sparked by the police killing of an African-American man, George Floyd. Lai’s views reflect a significant segment of the city’s protest movement, who affirm the exceptionalist myth of the US as a beacon of “freedom and democracy.” Hong Kong’s “pro-democracy” activists have gone so far as to derail the efforts of an African-American woman who attempted to organize a Black Lives Matter demonstration in the city, accusing her of being an agent of the police and Communist Party of China.

Abandoned Communities Arrange Black/Brown Truce

June 10, 2020 By  Jacqueline Serrato, Southside Weekly. , , ,
“After days of tensions and anti-black racism fueled by the Chicago Police Department, gangs from Little Village and the West Side are negotiating an understanding.” “Latinx and Black street organizations from the west side of the Little Village neighborhood and from North Lawndale have come together in a day understanding to commit to continuing working on Black and Brown unity,” the post continued. “We have confirmation similar conversations are happening in Humboldt Park, Cicero, and the west side of Chicago in an effort to stop the tensions that are being fueled by the police.” A dozen more Black Lives Matter marches from Belmont-Cragin to South Chicago, mutual aid efforts, mural projects, art campaigns, banner drops, and signs of solidarity have been organized since, as Black and brown neighborhoods lick their wounds and attempt to rebuild their communities. On Thursday, June 11, North Lawndale and Little Village residents are planning a Truce Peace March that will culminate in Douglass Park.

The Network In Defense Of Humanity Demands Justice For George Floyd

June 10, 2020 The Network in Defense of Humanity , , ,
The Network in Defense of Humanity adds its voice to those of thousands in the United States and around the world who are demanding Justice for George Floyd. The image of a man of African descent being killed by a racist policeman is very common in the United States. In fact, the police murder about a thousand people annually; a disproportionate number of them are Black. George Floyd’s murder was no different, but it has been on an exponential level since the scene of his death by torture was documented in detail as he told the white policeman “I can’t breathe”–first he appealed to his torturer, then to others to listen to him, and for the eleventh time, as his life was being extinguished, he pleaded to his dead mother. An indelible image was immediately etched into the consciousness of a world in turmoil under a pandemic that exploded onto the streets of 140 U.S. cities.

Why Covid-19 Racial Disparities Make The Case For Medicare For All

June 10, 2020 By Dean E. Robinson, The Smirking Chimp. , , ,
The racial disparities of COVID-19 have received much attention. Blacks are dying at a higher rate that is typically more than double the rate of whites. But we need to move beyond naming the problem of fighting for solutions. Medicare for All would go a long way to beginning to address racial disparities in health care in general and for COVID-19 in particular. The obvious and immediate need of black and other working-class populations caught in the teeth of the pandemic is the right to health care treatment without the burden of cost. Even before the pandemic, lower-income, Latino, and younger workers were more likely to be uninsured. Undocumented workers had the highest rates of uninsurance. The pronounced differences in COVID-19 mortality are not driven by a lack of health care per se but a reflection of how the virus compounds health problems created by inequality.

ILWU, ILA, And Teamsters Take Action In Honor Of George Floyd

June 10, 2020 By Frances Madeson, Spectre. , , ,
Members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters laid down their tools in a work stoppage for eight minutes and forty-six seconds, the precise measure of time that George Floyd, handcuffed and helpless to resist, was forced to endure a policeman’s lethal knee on his neck. Killed by Minneapolis police on May 25, Floyd was buried today in Houston. Trent Willis, president of ILWU Local 10, Keith Shanklin, president of ILWU Local 34, and Gabriel Prawl, former Secretary/ Treasurer of ILWU Local 52 in Seattle, all members of ILWU’s Committee Against Police Terror, conceived of bringing this powerful gesture into union workplaces as a way of honoring Floyd, who earned his livelihood as a truck driver and security guard. In connecting Floyd’s struggle for his last breath with workers’ struggles for survival in a drastically altered post-pandemic economy, they hope to point the way forward by demonstrating the power of the working class.

The Police Have Been Spying On Black Reporters And Activists for Years

June 10, 2020 By Wendi C. Thomas, MLK Memphis. , , ,
On Aug. 20, 2018, the first day of a federal police surveillance trial, I discovered that the Memphis Police Department was spying on me. The ACLU of Tennessee had sued the MPD, alleging that the department was in violation of a 1978 consent decree barring surveillance of residents for political purposes. One of the first witnesses called to the stand: Sgt. Timothy Reynolds, who is white. To get intel on activists and organizers, including those in the Black Lives Matter movement, he’d posed on Facebook as a “man of color,” befriending people and trying to infiltrate closed circles.

From ‘I Have a Dream’ To ‘I Can’t Breathe’

June 9, 2020 Katu Arkonada,  La Jornada. , , ,
The killing of George Floyd is just the tip of the iceberg of a system based on racism and class discrimination that allows 99% of deaths at the hands of the police to go unpunished, during the years 2013-2019, according to the website Mapping Police Violence. In 2019 alone, there were 1,042 people shot by the police.  According to a Washington Post investigation, this represents a proportion, per million people, of 12 white persons, 23 Hispanic persons, and 32 African American people.  That is to say, in the United States, you have a three times higher chance of dying by a police shooting if you are Black.  Another terrifying statistic shows that although about 50% of all people murdered are white, about 80% of those given the death penalty have been condemned to die for having killed a white person.

Joe Biden Is A Racist Who Loves Police Brutality

June 8, 2020 By  Rebecca Margolies, Left Voice. , , ,
Biden’s history of enthusiastic racism stretches back decades. From the moment he entered the U.S. Senate in the early 1970s, he vocally opposed busing to achieve school desegregation. “Opposing busing” has long been racist code for opposing Black and brown children going to school with white children. At a time when “separate but equal” was beginning to become politically unpalatable, Biden’s leadership against busing, in the most generous possible interpretation, provided cover for segregationists to continue their work. He has spent his life fighting for policies that make life worse for Black, Indigenous, and white working-class Americans. Why should anyone believe he will do anything different as president?

Photo Of Police Officer With Armed Men Prompts Outrage And Investigation

June 8, 2020 Sara Gentzler, The Olympian.   , ,
A photo circulating on social media Friday showing an Olympia Police officer posing with a group of armed men in front of Baskin Robbins on Olympia’s west side has prompted outrage from many, a response from Mayor Cheryl Selby, and an investigation by the police department. A Facebook post featuring the photo that was shared on Twitter Friday is captioned “this is us the 3% with a OPD at 140am when she came to that k (sic) us for being there and her partner on duty came and thanked us to.” The hand gesture is associated with the Three Percenters movement also mentioned in the photo’s caption. The gesture represented “wp” for “white power,” and eventually it was sincerely adopted by some white supremacists. In a statement Friday night, Interim Police Chief Aaron Jelcick described the men as “a group of armed individuals dressed in fatigue or militia like clothing.”
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