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Racism

Ian Haney López: Dividing Races The Main Weapon Of The Rich

Donald Trump’s attacks on black U.S. Representative Elijah Cummings, the Reverend Al Sharpton, and the four progressive Congresswomen of color known as “the Squad” signal how the President, backed by other Republicans, intends to use racial divisiveness to stay in power. “Dividing the races has been the principal weapon of the rich in the class war they are winning,” as University of California-Berkeley law professor Ian Haney López told me in a recent phone interview.

“Culture Of Violence?” You Betcha, Mr. Trump, But It’s Not The Video Games

Give him credit for finally recognizing white supremacy and web sites that promote it as problems. But the other causes he mentioned – video games and mental illness – come straight out of Trumpian illogic. On the subject of video games, which Trump said make it “too easy today for troubled youths to surround themselves with a culture that celebrates violence,” Western Michigan University sociologist, Whitney DeCamp, along with others who have researched the subject, say it’s not likely.

Expanding The Powers Of The FBI Is Not The Solution To White Supremacist Violence

On August 3, a white supremacist attacked a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, killing at least 22 and wounding dozens more. Espousing racist conspiracy theories about a “Hispanic invasion,” the killer’s murderous rampage was cold-blooded—and appeared to target Latinx people. It’s only the latest high-profile act of white supremacist violence. And it comes at a time when Donald Trump and other Republican politicians are mainstreaming racist rhetoric. Faced with this climate, many well-meaning people are looking for a way to counter the very real danger of white supremacist violence.

Three Myths About Fighting White Supremacist Violence

In testimony before Congress, FBI officials have hidden behind the First Amendment to defend their abysmal record on fighting white supremacist violence. That’s hogwash. FBI rules on domestic operations are tremendously lax (too lax in fact), and the agency and their Joint Terrorism Task Forces have repeatedly and continuously infiltrated and surveilled peace, environmental, racial justice, economic justice, animal rights and solidarity groups throughout the bureau’s 100 year history. In 2010, the DOJ Inspector General called out the FBI for launching domestic terror investigations against Greenpeace, PETA, and anti-war groups. More recently, the FBI sent paid informants to infiltrate the Standing Rock protest camp and Occupy Cleveland, and other left-leaning protests.

Mass Shootings, Militarism And Policing Are Chapters In The Same Manifesto

This weekend, after two mass shooters killed and injured dozens of people in Texas and Ohio, Rep. Steve Cohen tweeted, “You want to shoot an assault weapon? Go to Afghanistan or Iraq. Enlist!” Cohen, a Democrat from Tennessee, apparently did not take issue with the El Paso shooter’s desire to slaughter people of color — he merely wanted to redirect his bullets toward people of color outside of the United States. His tweet was a chilling reminder of how the United States’ militarism against other countries and its domestic manifestations of white supremacy replicate and reinforce each other.  White people attack Brown and Black Muslims in the United States precisely because of the country’s wars abroad. The United States’ destructive trade agreements and military intervention in Central and South America drive North American refugee border crossings, and armed white militia groups patrol the desert to catch or kill refugees seeking help. 

Busting The Myths Of American Exceptionalism And Innocence

The United States has long considered itself to be above the law, and it has gotten away with it by manufacturing public support for its actions, no matter how heinous, through the myths that we are better than everyone else and that we mean well even when things don't work out. Roberto Sirvent and Danny Haiphong's new book busts through these myths and shows why all of the problems of today are consistent with the history of what "America" has always been. Every chapter exposes truths and raises questions about who we really are. We can only live up to the values we claim to support if we understand these hard truths and recognize that to fix anything, we must fix everything. While it sounds daunting, the world is changing and this book provides essential knowledge for a path to a better place.

Tennessee Antifascists Boldly Disrupt, Infiltrate And Expose Annual White Supremacist Gatherings

Despite mounting challenges from a state keen on welcoming white supremacists, antifascist activists are learning that deep organizing is the way they win. A wooden bridge guarded by two well-armed park rangers was all that separated us from more than 60 of the most infamous national and international white supremacists. It was the last weekend of June, and they had come to Montgomery Bell State Park in Burns, Tennessee for the National Solutions Conference, a gathering of “race realism” organizations from around the world.

Anti-Racist Organizations Remain Silent On The JNF

Parliament will soon hear a petition criticizing the only explicitly racist registered Canadian charity. Oddly, this important event will occur without help from self-declared anti-racist organizations. Recently Independent Jewish Voices (IJV) launched a parliamentary e-petition that begins by noting that the Jewish National Fund (JNF) “engages in discriminatory practices as its landholdings are chartered for exclusively Jewish ownership, lease, and benefit, as noted by the United Nations, the US State Department, a former attorney general of Israel, and the JNF itself.”

Border Patrol Condemns Secret Facebook Group, But Reveals Few Specifics

Long known for its insular culture and tendency toward secrecy, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency is saying little in the aftermath of news reports exposing a vulgar and hateful Facebook group for current and retired Border Patrol agents, including supervisors. While CBP officials have publicly condemned the offensive social media posts, they’ve disclosed few details about the steps the agency has taken to identify employees who behaved inappropriately online and hold them accountable.

Trouble At The Border, American Concentration Camps

Yes, we have a serious problem at the border — indeed, at every border we create and defend with force of arms and bureaucratic indifference. “‘If you want water, just drink from a toilet.’ That’s what border patrol told one thirsty woman we met on today’s #DemsAtTheBorder trip. These are the same CBP personnel who threatened to throw burritos at members of Congress. Changes must be made.” So tweeted U.S. Rep. Judy Chu in the wake of a visit by congressmen and women to Texas border facilities last week, stirring even further incredulity and disgust about the nature of these American concentration camps for immigrants. The problem we have is ourselves.

Secret Border Patrol Facebook Group Where Agents Joke About Migrant Deaths And Post Sexist Memes

Members of a secret Facebook group for current and former Border Patrol agents joked about the deaths of migrants, discussed throwing burritos at Latino members of Congress visiting a detention facility in Texas on Monday and posted a vulgar illustration depicting Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez engaged in oral sex with a detained migrant, according to screenshots of their postings. In one exchange, group members responded with indifference and wisecracks to the post of a news story about a 16-year-old Guatemalan migrant who died in May while in custody at a Border Patrol station in Weslaco, Texas. One member posted a GIF of Elmo with the quote, “Oh well.” Another responded with an image and the words “If he dies, he dies.”

New Report: Worst Monument In Charlottesville Can Be Removed

A new report released July 1, 2019, concludes that a major monument in Charlottesville, Virginia, can be legally removed. The monument, which depicts George Rogers Clark threatening Native American men and a woman holding an infant, is not covered by a Virginia state law that forbids removing war monuments, due to the date of the monument’s erection and its ownership by the University of Virginia rather than the County of Albemarle. George Rogers Clark said that he would have liked to “see the whole race of Indians extirpated” and that he would...

A Brief History Of US Concentration Camps

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has ignited a firestorm of criticism, from both the left and the right as well as the mainstream media, for calling US immigrant detention centers “concentration camps.” To her credit, Ocasio-Cortez has refused to back down, citing academic experts and blasting the Trump administration for forcibly holding undocumented migrants “where they are brutalized with dehumanizing conditions and dying.” She also cited history.

On Reparations, The Question Isn’t If, But When And How

For nearly 250 years, enslaved Africans and their descendants toiled on the land and in the homes of White enslavers in the United States. They planted, fed, weeded, mowed, and harvested crops that were not theirs; cared for and fed children they did not birth; and cleaned homes and tended lands they did not own. We’re all familiar with this uncomfortable but sanitized image of U.S. slavery. The harsh reality is that too many of the more than 300,000 African men, women, and children who were brought to this land for the sole purpose of providing free labor...

Chicago Police Tortured Victims With Electric Shocks, Burns And Beatings

Just months before we finally settled the Hampton case, Chicago was rocked by a series of fatal shootings of police officers in broad daylight. On February 9, 1982, two uniformed CPD officers, Richard O’Brien and William Fahey, were shot and killed during a routine traffic stop on Chicago’s south side. They had just attended the funeral of a Chicago police officer who had been shot only days before. Two Black men fled the scene in a brown Chevy, and mayor Jane Byrne and her police superintendent, Richard Brzeczek, mandated what would become the most massive manhunt in the City’s history.

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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.

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