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Systemic Racism

Health Justice And Black Liberation: Shay-Akil McLean

October 13, 2020 Gwendolyn Wallace and Roberto Sirvent, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
The way that people treat each other has biological consequences, meaning that our relationships to one another, institutions, and resources are directly linked to quality of life, life expectancy, and quality of death. State violence is a public health issue because what it does is differentially distribute morbidity and mortality to those that are deemed enemies of the state. All of forms of state violence entail the denial of basic needs and the self-determination of the people in one dimension and/or additional others.

Black Doctors Fight For More Equitable Coronavirus Testing

October 13, 2020 Nina Feldman, Kaiser Health News. , , ,
When the coronavirus arrived in Philadelphia in March, Dr. Ala Stanford hunkered down at home with her husband and kids. A pediatric surgeon with a private practice, she has staff privileges at a few suburban Philadelphia hospitals. For weeks, most of her usual procedures and patient visits were canceled. So she found herself, like a lot of people, spending the days in her pajamas, glued to the TV. And then, at the beginning of April, she started seeing media reports indicating that Black people were contracting the coronavirus and dying from COVID-19 at greater rates than other demographic groups.

Fight the Power: Resistance Radio At The Virtual GRC Summit

October 8, 2020 Ann Garrison, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
This year's Grassroots Radio Conference will be a virtual summit, Friday to Sunday, October 9 to 11. The annual event is typically hosted by a Pacifica Radio affiliate station, most recently by K UHS   H ot Springs-Arkansas  in 2016, WCAA-Alban y in 2017,  KB O O-Portland  in 2018, and three low-power FM stations, WXIR , WAYO , and WEPL  in Rochester, New York, in 2019. The coronavirus lockdown forced this year's conference to go virtual, but it will still be hosted as planned by WX OX -Louisville. WXOX broadcasts to the community still rising up in response to Louisville police killing emergency medical technician Breonna Taylor and  Kentucky National Guard killing barbecue chef David McAtee, both of whom were Black.

Racist Roots: Origins Of North Carolina’s Death Penalty

October 6, 2020 Henderson Hill, NC Policy Watch. , ,
Right now, our nation is in a moment of reckoning with our criminal punishment system. We are finally seeing clearly what should have been obvious long ago: The system has its knee on the necks of Black people. In North Carolina, as we begin a long-overdue conversation about the future of police and prisons, we must confront the punishment that sits at the top of that system, condoning all its other cruelties — the death penalty. When citizens have acclimated to the state strapping a person to a gurney and killing them in front of an audience, it becomes harder to shock them.

Report: Special Police Units Exclusively Used Force On Black People

September 30, 2020 Jacob Fenston, DCist. , , ,
The vast majority of people stopped, frisked, or arrested by officers in D.C.’s special gun recovery and narcotics units were Black, according to a new report mandated by the D.C. Council. Black people were the subjects of 87% of stops, 91% of arrests, and 100% of use-of-force incidents, despite making up 46% of the population. White people accounted for just 5% of stops. The report gives a more complete picture of the operations of these special units, which have been accused of using aggressive tactics with little oversight or transparency. The units are responsible for complex narcotics investigations, as well as efforts to get illegal guns off the streets.

New law Surfaces South’s Racist Beginnings Of Felon Voter Disenfranchisement

September 30, 2020 Iliana Hagenah, Scalawag Magazine. , , ,
Tennessee - In June, large crowds of Black Lives Matter protesters occupied the plaza in front of Tennessee's State Capitol, where inside, a 44-inch bust of the first Klu Klux Klan Grand Wizard, Nathan Bedford Forrest, has sat still in his bronze bearing for over 40 years. A line of state troopers stood silently on the other side of the encampment, making arrests and dragging protesters away. Those who remained chained themselves to the property, chanting and playing Kendrick Lamar through loudspeakers, annoying representatives inside the capitol, and making it clear—they were not leaving until the immortalizing bust of the KKK's first leader was removed or Governor Bill Lee would meet with them.

Let’s Talk About Racism And Health

September 26, 2020 Margaret Flowers, Popular Resistance. , , ,
The current uprising across the nation is a take-off moment for systemic racism in the United States. A take-off moment

Social Justice Demonstrations Mark First Week Of NFL

September 14, 2020 Justine Coleman, The Hill. , , ,
NFL players marked the first full weekend of professional football by participating in social justice demonstrations, with various teams opting to stay in the locker room, link arms or kneel during the national anthem. All eyes were on the NFL players after a summer of protests against racial injustice years after former NFL player Colin Kaepernick first began kneeling during the anthem to demonstrate against police brutality and racial injustice. 

Poll: Financial Pain From Coronavirus Pandemic ‘Much, Much Worse’ Than Expected

September 11, 2020 Joe Neel, NPR. , , ,
In America's four largest cities, at least half of people say they have experienced the loss of a job or a reduction in wages or work hours in their household since the start of the coronavirus outbreak. That's the finding of a new poll published Wednesday by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Many of these problems are concentrated among Black and Latino households in the four cities, according to the poll, which gathered responses from July 1 through Aug 3.

Shut Up, History

September 8, 2020 Susie Day, Counterpunch. , , ,
Awhile back, a friend and I were talking about History and rebellions, and I lamented how the 1871 Paris Commune had failed. My friend, a self-avowed psychic, said, “Yes, history records very few total victories over oppression. That’s because, on this worldly plane, most things are not supposed to work out. It’s all about the trying.” So this will be a short essay on trying. On how, in the late 1960s, two Africa-American men met at the Baltimore chapter of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense and tried to build “The Revolution.” And how, for the past six years, I’ve tried to write a book about them.

1,000 Strikes Since March 1st And More

September 7, 2020 Mike Elk, Payday Report. , , ,
We wanted to send a quick update to report that Payday’s Strike Tracker has now recorded more than 1,000 strikes across the U.S. since March 1. Earlier this week we surpassed the 1,000-strike count after a series of fast-food worker strikes hit both Tampa and LA.  (For more on this strike wave, see our long-form “How Black & Brown Workers Are Redefining Strikes in the Digital COVID Age.”) In Tampa, pro-worker forces attempted to raise support for Amendment 2, which would raise Florida’s minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2026. 

Black-Led Resistance Movements Are Paving The Way For Reparations

September 4, 2020 Sarah Freeman-Woolpert, Waging Nonviolence. , , ,
Months after the police killing of George Floyd sparked racial justice protests around the world, Black Lives Matter activists are once again flooding the streets — this time in response to the recent police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Among the demands that continue to ring out is the call for reparations, or payment to people of African descent. Several African countries — including Namibia, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo — have also joined the call, demanding reparations from European countries for the perpetration of genocide under colonialism.

Police Fatally Shoot Man 20 Times After Suspected Bike Violation

September 3, 2020 Lucy Nicholson and Steve Gorman, Reuters. , , ,
Los Angeles - A Black man who was stopped on his bicycle for an alleged “vehicle code” violation was shot to death by two Los Angeles sheriff’s deputies, who fired 15 to 20 rounds after the man punched one officer and dropped a pistol on the ground, authorities said on Tuesday. A semiautomatic handgun apparently fell from a bundle of clothes that the man, identified as Dijon Kizzee, 29, had been clutching and dropped when he struck an officer in the face, said Lieutenant Brandon Dean, a Los Angeles County sheriff’s spokesman. Dean said the two officers opened fire when Kizzee made “a motion that he’s going to pick up the firearm.”

An Outside View: Kenosha Is A Microcosm Of The US In 2020

September 1, 2020 Ramin Mazaheri, The Saker. , , ,
The situation in Kenosha is a microcosm of the United States in 2020 – tragedy on top of tragedy on top of tragedy: A Black man wantonly paralysed by cops, his three sons forced to watch, ethnic-based violence deteriorating a community already gutted by anti-patriotic neoliberal economics, shops frantically boarding up their windows after having been shuttered during a pandemic lockdown, a 17-year old shooting and killing two protesters – there is just a complete lack of security everywhere over here.

People Are Protesting The Desecration Of A Historic Black Cemetery

August 29, 2020 Kristina Gaddy, Washington City Paper. , , ,
This summer, on an industrial and commercial section of River Road near the Capital Crescent Trail in Bethesda, you can regularly find area musician Brian Farrow in the roadway playing “Potter’s Hornpipe,” a song written by Black composer Francis Johnson in 1816 in honor of a destroyed African American cemetery. Nearby, protestors hold signs that say “Black Ancestors Matter” and “Black Lives Matter from Cradle to Grave,” while Marsha Coleman-Adebayo of the Bethesda African Cemetery Coalition and Macedonia Baptist Church leads chants of “Save Moses Cemetery!”
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