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Racism

Maryland Supreme Court Decision Favors The Bethesda African Cemetery

September 27, 2024 Marsha Coleman-Adebayo and Ari Gutman, Black Agenda Report. , , , ,
On Friday, August 30, the Supreme Court of Maryland issued its decision in the case of Bethesda African Cemetery Coalition v. Housing Opportunities Commission of Montgomery County. The case, which began in the Circuit Court of Maryland in 2021, deals with the issue of whether or not the Housing Opportunities Commission (HOC), a government agency responsible for building, developing, financing, owning, and managing low and moderate-income housing, could legally sell an African Cemetery and the remains of African people without permission from descendants or the court. For decades, Montgomery County, the HOC and the State of Maryland have covered-up the desecration of Moses African Cemetery and the state-sponsored violent destruction of an African “Maroon” community in collusion with white supremacist groups, such as the ‘white caps’ and the KKK.

Eating Pets Or Devouring Sovereignty? Notes On Anti-Haitian Racism

September 21, 2024 Jemima Pierre, Black Agenda Report. , , , , , ,
The anti-Haitian utterances by the Republican presidential ticket unleashed an avalanche of racist memes and jokes about Haitians, Haitian migrants, and US citizens of Haitian descent. It began with Ohio senator and Vice Presidential candidate JD Vance’s tweet claiming – falsely – that “Haitian illegal immigrants” were “draining social services and generally causing chaos all over Springfield, Ohio.” Vance continued the lie by asserting, “Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn't be in this country.” Donald Trump was quick to follow up and double down on Vance’s slanderous comments.

Stop The Imminent Execution Of Innocent Prisoner Marcellus Williams

September 19, 2024 People's Dispatch. , , , ,
Marcellus Williams, 55 years old, is set to be executed by lethal injection in less than a week for a crime that he did not commit. Activists and supporters are fighting tooth and nail against the Missouri court system to save the life of a man who has been proven innocent by DNA evidence. In January of 2024, prosecuting attorney for St. Louis County Wesley Bell asked to vacate Marcellus Williams’ murder conviction based on “clear and convincing evidence” of Williams’ innocence. But despite this evidence, St. Louis County Judge Bruce Hilton denied Bell’s request to vacate and the state of Missouri is set to move forward with Williams’ execution on September 24.

How Feed Black Futures Is Challenging Structural Racism

September 19, 2024 Tina Jenkins Bell, Resilience. , , , ,
Don’t call it a food desert. “Food apartheid” is closer to the truth. Describing a place as a food desert, says food sovereignty activist Sophi Wilmore, “implies that this is a natural phenomenon—that the lack of healthy, fresh, nutritious foods in certain neighborhoods is par for the course, normal, organic.” On the contrary, says Wilmore: The real issue is structural racism, and unjust systems that keep people impoverished, hungry, and positioned for incarceration. Wilmore is the co-executive director of Feed Black Futures, a community-based, Black, queer-led food sovereignty organization in California that connects Black and brown farmers with Black mamas and caregivers whose lives and families have been impacted by incarceration and the criminal legal system.

Racist Hotel Owners File For Bankruptcy Ahead Of Civil Rights Trial

September 10, 2024 Brandy Calabaza, NDN Collective. , , , ,
Rapid City, SD – On Saturday, September 7 the Retsel Corporation, owners of the Grand Gateway Hotel, filed for bankruptcy just before the start of the federal civil rights trial brought by NDN Collective scheduled to begin Monday. NDN Collective filed a federal civil rights lawsuit in 2022 against the Grand Gateway Hotel after it denied service to Native Americans because of their race. The Retsel Corporation filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which allows the business to remain open as it reorganizes its debts. Under this filing, all other litigation must pause until the business settles in bankruptcy court and that timeline is still to be determined. As a result, the civil rights lawsuit against the Grand Gateway is on hold.

Letter From A Jailed Palestine Activist

September 9, 2024 Francesca Nadin, The Electronic Intifada. , , , , , , ,
My name is Francesca, and I speak to you from a prison cell where I am being unjustly held. Although I can’t be with you in person, these walls can’t silence the power of your support. Knowing that we stand united, even from a distance, fills me with strength. Letters, from people I’ve never even met, remind me daily that my sacrifice has meaning. I’m proud to represent our movement, and I thank you with all my heart. Prison is a microcosm of society. Recently, someone pointed out a new inmate – supposedly a protester like me. Here, I’m known as “The Protester.” But she wasn’t like me at all. She was part of the racist riots that plagued our streets in August.

BACC Declares Victory At The Supreme Court Of Maryland

September 4, 2024 Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, Popular Resistance. , , , ,
On Friday August 30, the Supreme Court of Maryland issued its decision in the case of Bethesda African Cemetery Coalition v.  Housing Opportunities Commission of Montgomery County. In its finding, the court acknowledges what BACC has been asserting for years: Moses African Cemetery “was a historic Black burial place that contains interments of many individuals, including formerly enslaved persons and their families” and “it appears likely that human remains are still interred in the land today, which is currently part of a property known as the Westwood Tower Apartments.” In light of the Maryland Supreme Court decision, we call on all elected officials to demand an immediate cessation of all desecration and erasure of Black History at the Westwood Towers site. 

What Will It Take To Make Black Lives Matter?

September 3, 2024 Detroit Will Breathe, Left Voice. , , , , ,
This summer, the American Midwest has been the epicenter of several notable police murders of Black people including John Zook, Jr. of Wayne, Mich., Sonya Massey of Springfield, Ill., Sherman Butler of Detroit, and Samuel Sharpe of Milwaukee. While most of these tragedies occurred many miles from one another, they all share common threads in that the victims were poor, Black, and suffering from some version of a mental health crisis at the time of their deaths. Samuel Sharpe, a veteran and well-known resident of an unhoused community in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Milwaukee, was gunned down without hesitation, just blocks from the Republican National Convention (RNC), as he turned to run away from police after being approached by officers in the midst of an argument with a neighbor.

The Past Is Not Always Our Guide

August 18, 2024 David Rosenburg, Morning Star. , , ,
As far-right hate and violence sweep across Britain, exploiting the Southport murders as a pretext but especially targeting Muslim communities, anti-fascists of a certain vintage are taking to social media and posting defiant images of an Anti-Nazi League (ANL) badge. It’s a way of saying: “We have seen this before, and we will stand up to it again.” The ANL, launched in autumn 1977, credits itself, with much justification, for defeating the National Front (NF) in that period. With 20,000 members nationally organised into local branches, and with a large hinterland of sympathisers, the NF terrorised inner-city migrant communities with incendiary racist propaganda and provocative marches.

James Baldwin At 100

August 15, 2024 Patrick Lawrence, Scheer Post. , , ,
James Baldwin would have celebrated his 100th birthday on Aug. 2, had he lived so long. He didn’t: He died young. He was but 63 on Dec. 1, 1987, the day he slipped away at the shabby-grand house in Saint–Paul-de–Vence, France, where he had lived since 1970, a refugee from … from a lot of things, not least America and what it was on the way to becoming.  There is a long, strange story behind the house and Baldwin’s residence in it, told satisfactorily in Jules Farber’s not-brilliantly-written James Baldwin: Escape From America, Exile in Provence (Pelican Publishing, 2016).  Harlem, Paris, a Swiss hamlet where he was the first black man the townsfolk had ever seen...

Borders And The Exchange Of Humans For Debt

August 13, 2024 Heba Gowayed, In These Times. , , , ,
The jagged shoreline of the island of Lesbos, Greece, which runs into the Aegean Sea just miles from the Turkish coastline, is a site of the macabre and systemic practice of ​“border externalization,” where wealthy states enlist less wealthy states — often indebted ones — to intercept and brutalize human beings destined for their borders. It is here that 23-year-old Ahmed — who left Gaza in 2021 to find refuge from a life behind Israel’s Iron Wall and violence, which promised ​“no future, no work, no possibilities” — was beaten by Greek border patrol and left adrift on a dinghy with a broken engine. It would take five attempts, full of terror and humiliation, for Ahmed to reach Greece, which was just one stop on a longer journey to Germany to reunite with cousins.

United States Elites Fail To Sink Chinese Swimmers

August 12, 2024 Rick Sterling, Resumen English. , , , , , ,
US political and media elites tried but failed to sink the Chinese swimming team at the Paris Olympics. The Chinese swimmers performed well despite the increased stress caused by media-induced rumors of “Chinese doping”. And now, the tables are being turned as the US anti-doping regime is coming under increasing scrutiny and criticism. The media manufactured cloud of suspicion Just a few months ago the NY Times and German ARD media ignited the controversy with an “investigation” regarding an incident from December 2021. At that time, 23 Chinese swimmers tested positive for a trace amount of the heart medication Trimetazadine (TMZ) during a swim meet for top swimmers from across the country.

Racists Riot In Britain

August 8, 2024 Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
The United Kingdom has recently experienced a wave of rioting and blame is placed upon people referred to as “the far right.” The individuals who fought police, looted, burned mosques, and physically attacked African descended people, are of the right wing politically, but they should be called racists. It is racism that has been accepted and amplified by the British political class and the media. It is racism that has created feelings of grievance among so many white people there. Britain’s politics have long been motivated by white supremacist thinking, and today’s rioters should not be let off the hook with a euphemism that doesn’t fully explain their actions.

Just Stop Oil Just Showed Exactly How The Left Needs To Organise

August 8, 2024 The Canary. , , , ,
Just Stop Oil is calling a pause on further actions while far-right race riots are continuing to affect many towns and cities around the country. In recent weeks, Just Stop Oil has been acting with groups internationally, to demand governments establish a Fossil Fuel Treaty to end the extraction and burning of oil, gas and coal by 2030. However, by pausing its own actions it means it can mobilise with communities and other groups to present a united front against the far-right – exactly the approach that’s needed. A Just Stop Oil spokesperson issued the following statement: “Like the entire country, our community has been deeply disturbed by the events of recent days. Disturbed, but not surprised. The civil unrest the country is experiencing is a taste of what science is telling us will happen, as climate chaos accelerates and makes the preservation of a stable society untenable.

Atlanta Activists Protest Trump/Vance Campaign Event

August 6, 2024 Fight Back! News. , , , , , ,
Atlanta, GA – On August 3, a coalition of local activists and community members gathered at Georgia State Convocation Center to protest a high-profile rally for former President Donald Trump and Republican Senator JD Vance. The demonstration, organized by the Atlanta Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression and Atlanta Democratic Socialists of America, was called in response to the extreme right-wing agenda promoted by Trump, Vance and the Republican Party as a whole. The protesters gathered directly outside the venue, facing off the thousands of MAGA supporters from around the Southeast, as evidenced by the number of people with wearing LSU and Alabama caps, who were unable to secure a spot inside.
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