Slavery supported the American economy throughout its early years, and continues to do so today, albeit in a disguised form that still manages to elude the majority of the American public into thinking that slavery is a relic of a bygone period, like segregation or Jim Crow laws, both of which also still persist in slightly modified forms to this day.

Racist structures of systemic oppression that take advantage of the black community have allowed America as we know it to exist for centuries, and in order for true racial progress to be achieved, a concrete path forward needs to be devised to remedy past atrocities and provide future opportunities. One possible path forward is that of reparations.

Martin Hopkins, an activist and entrepreneur in Columbus, Ohio shared her insight about the concept of reparations for black Americans and what this process might look like.

Past Reparations

When one mentions the idea of the United States addressing the wrongs it has committed against certain groups throughout the nations history, many people almost immediately react as if the idea is something radical and unheard of. But the United States and governments of other countries around the world have used reparations as a way to accept responsibility for past wrongdoings and attempt to remedy the often horrendous situations caused by these offenses.

Reparations have been paid out to several groups in the United States in the past so its not something thats unheard of and its definitely not something thats a radical idea or anything, Hopkins said. Take a look at the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which provided reparations to victims of World War II era Japanese internment camps, which is basically just a polite way of saying concentration camps. As you can see, in certain instances the United States government has taken it upon themselves to address the issues they have created as a result of their treatment of certain groups.

However Hopkins argues that the compensation awarded to groups such as former Japanese internees did not properly address the extent of the governments wrongdoing:

Another thing that I want to be clear about is that I believe that all of these groups deserve more than what they were awarded by the government I feel like what they did receive was kind of a slap in the face. Even when these reparations have been paid, its still been a miscarriage of justice. Its almost like theyre saying, were going to take everything from you, and you should be happy that youre even getting anything.

Hopkins also noted the example of settlements paid to victims of police brutality, themselves a form of reparations, which he also argues dont happen enough and are usually a mere pittance when compared to the atrocities these victims have suffered.

What would reparations look like?

Calls for reparations are often met with severe backlash, and Hopkins believes that a driving force behind this opposition is that when people here the term reparations, they just think of a check when in reality and practice it would mean something completely different.

America was largely built by slave labor, and systems of economic and social oppression have continued to exploit the black community up to the present day. This isnt just a little cut that some monetary hand-outs will bandage and heal.

For over 400 years weve been put at a major disadvantage, Hopkins said. Were forced to live in the worst neighborhoods, attend the worst schools and have the worst access to healthcare. The mistreatment goes back too far and theres no amount of money that can remedy this mistreatment, but what has to happen is that people of color need a true seat at the table because weve been denied that for far too long.

So what needs to be done in order to give people of color this true seat at the table? As Hopkins explains, financial freedom is the only way to level the playing field, and to get to that point theres a couple things that I think need to happen. Reparations shouldnt just come in the form of a check, they need to be based on housing, education and taxes. As a result of redlining, discriminatory housing laws and predatory lenders we were denied access to being able to build generational wealth. So I think our housing should be paid for and we should be able to attend public colleges without paying tuition. Im not saying that I should be able to go to Yale without paying for it but if I wanted to go to Columbus State or my daughter wanted to go to Columbus State, we should be able to do that tuition free, based on the work of our ancestors. I also stand with Ice Cube when he says that black people should not have to pay taxes because weve already paid our taxes in the form of slave labor.

Hopkins told Citizen Truth that he has heard opponents of reparations say things along the lines of, Your ancestors are the ones who did the work, you didnt do anything, but my reply to that is that there are white families still benefiting from the money that slaveowners were able to take as a result of my ancestors free labor. The privilege that white people benefit from is a privilege that is gained from the oppression of other people.

Until the playing field is leveled and people of color finally are allowed the place the deserve at the proverbial table, American society leaves these communities with few routes out of poverty and destitution. Hopkins puts it bluntly when he says that Weve been told to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps for centuries, but we don have boots.

Generational Trauma

Africans were kidnapped from their countries and sold as a source of free labor, but the black community was and continues to be deprived of far more than a paycheck. These people had nearly all aspects of their culture robbed from them and in most situations were deprived of any opportunity to hold on to their language, religion and other customs under the threat of the harshest punishments imaginable.

Christianity plays a large role in many black communities throughout America, but at the end of the day this faith was one that was pushed on slaves by their white, Christian owners. Hopkins points out that the Christianity piece of things has been so ingrained in our society that people will fight to protect it. There are a lot of black people that really dont understand that there was a huge miscarriage of justice with regards to religion. They dont understand that we were pulled away from our religious and cultural history, where we come from, who we were, where we belong all of that was erased. But some people in the black community still look at that and go, Well, you know sometimes God works in strange ways and makes people have to suffer. And its a very troubling conversation to have and think about because you know if this suffering didnt happen, I wouldnt be here.

This is an existential conundrum that the majority of black people in America must grapple with on a daily basis. Hopkins analyzed the situation from his perspective, explaining that with regards to slavery If it didnt happen, I wouldnt have met my wife and three year old daughter, who I love more than anything. Sometimes I think I would rather not exist and have all of this so that my ancestors didnt have to suffer like they did. And how do you even begin to process that and remedy that problem? Im forced to accept that my existence is only possible due to a massive amount of suffering.

The traumatic crisis of identity doesnt end there. Hopkins told Citizen Truth, America is my home, but it doesnt really feel like home. Countries in Africa dont feel like home. Black people in America have been misplaced throughout history. I have the blood of slaves and slave masters coursing through my veins so Im experiencing an incredibly intense internal struggle as well as an outer one. What number can be put on that? Theres nothing that can really be done to make things truly right. The only that can be done is that it is addressed.

The Persistence of Slavery

Theres a huge misconception that slavery was completely abolished in the United States, whereas the 13th amendment actually says that Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Hopkins described how slavery persisted on like a dormant virus long after the Emancipation Proclamation. You had black people with no land and no money being arrested for vagrancy and being put right back into the system they had just escaped. Many criminal charges such as vagrancy and loitering were explicitly created so that black people could continue to be exploited as a source of free labor long after slavery had supposedly ended.

The Path Forward

According to Hopkins, If America is supposed to be the shining beacon of light for the world, then we need to start leading by example. Once we take care of these situations at home, then we can start addressing other issues.

With regards to reparations, Hopkins wants to be clear. I dont want there to be any misunderstanding that this isnt something that were asking for. Its what were owed, its our inheritance, its our birthright. Give us our due and proper so that we can move forward. And the sooner we can move forward, the better off the whole world would be. And its at the risk of giving up just a little bit of power, thats basically the only risk factor involved.

America still has a long road ahead before broken systems are done away with and generations of mental and physical wounds can finally begin to heal. In keeping with this mindset, Hopkins told Citizen Truth that, Its the only way that theres going to be any progress made. And reparations dont just have to benefit black people. For example, I feel like the whole country would benefit from tuition free public education and free public housing. Whatever youre willing to do for black people in terms of reparations you should be willing to do for other disenfranchised groups as well. The other benefit is that it will open up the conversation about reparations more and make the discussion more inclusive. If theres too much emphasis on this being something exclusively for black people that white people are going to have to foot the bill for its never going to be received well by the general public.

After centuries of systematic oppression brought to the forefront by police violence during a global pandemic, America is finally being forced to confront her racist past and present and realize that a new road must be paved forward or what little remains of the flame of American liberty will be extinguished for once and for all. However, it will be impossible to build that new road without addressing and remedying the wrongs of the past in a way that ensures this new road provides everybody with equal rights and opportunities.

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Not a radical idea: The United States has previously paid reparations for the sins of its past - Milwaukee Independent

Last Updated On 29 July,202008:46 pm

Indian govt crosses all limits of oppression in IIOJK: Moeed Yusuf

(Web Desk) - Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on National Security, Moeed Yusuf says the 5th August will be observed as Youm-e-Istehsal to mark one year of military siege in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir.

Addressing an interactive session with Attaches and foreign media in Islamabad today (Wednesday), he said after the 5th August illegal action when the whole world was busy fighting against Coronavirus pandemic, India started demographic apartheid of Muslims in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir.

The Special Assistant said Pakistan always stood by the Kashmiris and will always stand by them till the decisions of 5th August are reversed and Kashmiris achieve their right to self-determination.

He the present Indian government has crossed all limits of oppression, human rights violations and breach of international laws by abrogating the special status of the disputed territory.

Moeed Yusuf said the global media needs to view India afresh by recognizing the fascist ideology being promoted by the ruling BJP against Muslims and especially Kashmiris.

He said if all is well in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir as India advocates then why it doesnt allow foreign media and the United Nations observers to visit the held territory.

Moeed Yusuf warned the international community that India can make a false flag operation to justify its expansionist designs by initiating military action against Pakistan.

He said Indian expansionist policies are becoming a threat to Indias neighbours and peace of the region.

Speaking on the occasion, Secretary Information and Broadcasting, Akbar Durrani said in the light of UN Security Council resolutions, any action aimed at justifying Indian occupation of Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir is illegal.

He said Kulbhushan Yadavs case is living example of Indian sponsored terrorism and with the latest conflict with China, it has emerged as the epicentre of tensions in the region.

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Indian govt crosses all limits of oppression in IIOJK: Moeed Yusuf - Dunya News

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As federal police pour into U.S. cities, the Trump administrations crackdown on racial justice protests has taken its most authoritarian turn yet. At the same time, during a global pandemic, the Trump administration has continued to ratchet up devastating sanctions on Iran, while edging toward more overt military confrontation.

Iranian-Black Solidarity is a must now more than ever. We need strong, transnational movements to democratize and de-militarize our states, reverse hostile foreign policies, and call for solidarity between our communities against racism and authoritarianism.

In the face of mass protests against institutionalized racism, police brutality, and militarism, U.S. authorities deployed police and military forces across the country. Images of tanks and soldiers confronting protesters in Washington, D.C. and other cities drew analogies to Kabul and Baghdad the capital cities of Afghanistan and Iraq, which no doubt reminded Iranians of the endless U.S. wars in their region.

To stop police killings and different forms of violence against Black people across the United States, activists have demanded urgent reforms including defunding police departments and investing in communities, with some early successes. These demands could be extended to call for defunding the Pentagon, which not only supplies local police departments with military-grade weapons but also exports violence against people of color all over the world.

While civil rights activists in the U.S. have been trying to connect anti-racist struggles with the anti-war movement since the Vietnam War, the post 9/11 war on terror has made the point dramatically. By the most conservative estimates, 157,000 Afghans and 295,000 Iraqis have been killed during the U.S. wars in those countries, alongside many others in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, Libya, and beyond.

Iranians have also suffered, dating back to the CIA-led coup detat in 1953 to overthrow Irans democratically elected government and install a brutal dictatorship in its place.

The unconditional support of the U.S. government for Saddam Hussein during the eight-year Iran-Iraq war and decades of devastating economic sanctions against the Iranian people have also exacted a terrible toll including the destruction of the countrys infrastructure, widespread economic instability, and medicine shortages continuing well into the global pandemic today. These sanctions have hurt all Iranians but especially betrayed the most vulnerable groups, including the working class, immigrants, and Afghan refugees.

In Iran, the politics around the U.S. movement for racial justice are complicated by the regimes relationship with Washington.

While the Iranian government has its own record of oppression, a number of regime hardliners have expressed support for the movement for Black lives in the United States. Opposition figures on the other hand, some of which are funded by the U.S. government and its regional allies, have often criticized the movement. Many have claimed that racism in the U.S. is not comparable to the systemic violence that Iranians experience, or blamed Black Americans themselves for failing to secure their rights in the U.S. constitutional system.

These discredited claims are further intensified by the whiteness illusion among some migrant Iranian and Iranian American communities. Although Iranian Americans have not been equally privileged as their European white peers, they are still officially counted as white in the U.S. census. Some embrace this identity, despite being the target of racist harassment up to and including the Trump administrations Muslim travel ban.

Iranians and Iranian Americans need to overcome these illusions. To bring meaningful peace and justice to our communities, we should be determined to address the intersections of racism and state oppression against all human beings, regardless of their religion, nationality, and ethnic background.

Historically, numerous barriers have limited opportunities to unite across borders to end Americas racist policies in the U.S. and abroad. That needs to change. As fellow victims of long-standing state oppression, Iranian communities, along with their American Black and brown peers, should break these barriers to demilitarize, end sanctions, and imagine a peaceful word based on equity and freedom.

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Iranian Communities Should Stand With Black Lives Matter - Foreign Policy In Focus

Within a couple of years, annexation of the territories morphed from a distorted vision in right-wing quarters to the declared policy of the Israeli government. The puzzling decision by Blue and White and Labor to join the Netanyahu government stoked the publics illusion that such a move was possible. Many of us shrug their shoulders and say, Actually, why not?Thus, without fully understanding the implications for our future, the Israeli Right with Netanyahu at the helm marketed one of the greatest dangers to the State of Israel as a legitimate achievement, without telling the public that such a unilateral declaration of annexation and its attendant legislation would install an apartheid regime in Israel.It should be stated up front: The idea of annexation was planted on the first day of the occupation, after the Six Day War. Already in late 1967, the Israeli government annexed eastern Jerusalem and its surroundings containing many Palestinian villages. The territory was annexed but the people one third of the citys population remained bereft of basic civil rights, giving rise to the first instance of institutionalized ethnic discrimination. It was not yet called apartheid, even though South Africas apartheid regime was at its height at that time and diplomatic relations between the two countries were almost a foregone conclusion.It bears noting that the word apartheid provokes moral revulsion worldwide as it recalls a deplorable criminal and inhuman regime, whereas among many Israelis it elicits a yawn and denial. However, the reality is clear: Laundered annexation is tantamount to apartheid. Its sad to see how the laundry works overtime in Israel.According to the Rome Convention, which serves as the source of authority for the International Criminal Court in The Hague, apartheid is a crime against humanity. The Israeli occupation regime in the West Bank is defined as temporary, and therefore the international community distinguishes between the military regime in the occupied territories and democracy in the State of Israel, despite the latters responsibility for the situation in the army-controlled West Bank, which bears clear characteristics of apartheid. Replacing the military occupation with annexation, or the synonymous application of Israeli law and jurisdiction in the occupied territories, is expected to make the world realize that an oppressive apartheid regime exists in Israel, with all that this implies.It is distressing that few of us know what took place in South Africas fearsome apartheid regime, how dark it was, and what institutions were established and laws enacted to allow the white minority to enjoy a high quality of life, at the expense of a violent and corrupt oppression of the black majority. The resemblance between then-South Africa to present-day Israel is heart-wrenching: one-sixth of South Africas population was white (a rate of 5:1), whereas in the West Bank settlers are one-sixth and Palestinians are five-sixths of the population (a rate of 1:5). In South Africa, whites enjoyed full privileges and blacks were deprived of any rights or future; in the West Bank, in contrast, it is the settlers who enjoy unique privileges and the Palestinians who have no rights or future, to the point that some even fantasize about deporting them to Jordan. Yet we deny reality and shrug off its consequences: Apartheid is already here! PEOPLE PLAY with laundered words and call it annexation, but the moment is approaching when Israeli institutions, including the Knesset and the government, will be able to enact laws that will apply to the occupied territories as well. In other words, a single regime may soon rule from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean with no recourse to the Supreme Court to stop it. This situation will turn Israel into an apartheid regime.A report by the Zulat Institute published this week under the name Laundromat shows how the Netanyahu government has methodically inured the Israeli public into believing that becoming an apartheid state is a legitimate and rational act. The systematic and deliberate use of laundered concepts such as annexation and applying sovereignty has become increasingly commonplace over time and has been advanced by politicians and media figures to divert attention elsewhere.As a result of this deliberate laundering, use of the term applying sovereignty in the media increased by 3,425% between December 2019 and January 2020, while mention of the word apartheid remained unchanged, and even declined in some media outlets.Applying sovereignty and partial annexation have been normalized and embedded in the public discourse, and have become policy moves expected to be approved by the Knesset with the passive/active support of Labor and Blue and White members, who are in the Knesset by virtue of the ballots cast by center and left-wing voters unfamiliar with their repercussions.It should be noted that the laundering mechanism strictly used the term applying sovereignty in the initial phases, while in subsequent stages the process went up one notch and the effort focused on emptying the concept of annexation itself and uploading it with a softer, more moderate and tolerable meaning. One of the key methods used to this end was to constantly emphasize the apparent difference between full and partial annexation.As part of the shift from the fringes to the mainstream, a growing number of voices started to be heard in Israeli politics and in the media much of it coming from the left-center whereby the implications are not disastrous, if at stake is only a partial annexation of settlement blocs or of the Jordan Valley. However, any annexation of territory that is not part of negotiations with the Palestinians be it large, partial, minimal or even symbolic runs counter to international law and to the post-World War II order created to prevent its recurrence. Annexation is annexation, and there is no fundamental, constitutional, political or security-based difference in the international arena where the chances of establishing a Palestinian state or our relations with the Arab countries, especially Jordan, are concerned.The sooner we understand it, the better: A bunch of laundered words will not change the fact that we are on the brink of the State of Israel becoming a full-blown apartheid regime, a move that will seriously impact our moral fortitude, international standing and national security.The writer is one of the founders of the Zulat Institute for Equality and Human Rights. He previously served as Israels ambassador to South Africa, and is currently chair of the Policy Working Group, an advocacy team on policy issues.

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What the government isn't telling you about annexation opinion - The Jerusalem Post

NYPD officers clash with protesters. (Tayfun Coskun / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

On July 28, a couple of hundred protesters in Manhattan watched helplessly as 18-year-old trans woman Nikki Stone was snatched off the street by plainclothes officers, shoved into an unmarked van, and taken who knows where.Ad Policy

Protesters who attempted to intervene were met with pepper spray to the face. Shortly after, video of the kidnapping was posted on Twitter for the world to see.

Stones crime that warranted a literal kidnapping? Allegedly damaging police cameras and spray painting.

In the months since the murder of George Floyd sparked nationwide protests against systemic racism and unjust policing practices, weve witnessed in person and on video federal and local law enforcement officials terrorize and brutalize protesters with impunity, making it ever more clear that were on the road away from democracy and getting closer to fascism. Just days before, we watched federal officers in Portland, Ore., snatch a protester in similar fashion. So, naturally, when Stone was taken, messages of fear and confusion proliferated quickly online. Were these federal officers? NYPD? Without clear markings, were these officers at all? An NYPD social media account came forward to take credit for the kidnapping, while also falsely claiming that officers were assaulted with rocks and bottles.

To those outside New York Citys border, and some within, this was new, novel, and terrifying. To those of us who have fought police terror in the city, its the same NYPD weve always known.

The division responsible for Stones kidnapping is known as the warrant squad. The name makes it sound like the officers ride around town like the A-Team, taking down the toughest criminals with unorthodox tactics, but for the right reasons. Quite the opposite. The warrant squad marshals the full weight of the departments multibillion-dollar budget to terrorize the citys most vulnerable communities.

A 2015 investigative report by John Surico for Vice highlighted the warrant squads repeated raids of homeless shelterswith a majority of arrests coming for nonviolent, minor offenses.Current Issue

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When I asked homeless people why this is happening, most said it was to meet quotasthe statistics-based policing that critics (and even some police officers) say is encouraged by One Police Plazaand that the homeless arrests can act as fodder for the stats, Surico wrote. This, they argued, may explain why the raids fluctuate: Some months have low numbers, perhaps meaning the cops dont need as many arrests; when the raids go up, the cops are presumably in need of some juice.

As a former public defender, Ive witnessed this police work masquerading as public safety up close. In the early years of my career, parades of warrant squad detainees were regularly marched into court, the rattle of chain gang shackles filling the room. Some were partially clothed, others missing shoes. The infractions that justified their appearing in this dehumanizing state were almost always dismissed. One by one, they were unshackled and sent on their waythe state acting like nothing had ever happened. Until the next raid.

Unlike many of the warrant squads incursions over the years, what happened to Stone on Tuesday night was witnessed by hundreds of thousands of people via cell phone cameras and social media. Several New York City Council members joined the righteous torrent of outrage, but many chose to look good rather than to do good when the time arrived to hold police accountable.

Last month, a multiracial coalition of New Yorkers did their part in working to disempower an out-of-control police force by advocating a $1 billion divestment from NYPD and an investment in social services. Those efforts were met with political chicanery when the City Council passed a budget that failed to cut the police budget in any meaningful way. The same legislators who are standing up now to express outrage and demand answers about Stones arrest sat down when their time came not just to demand accountability but to make real and lasting change.

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What happened to Stone should be a wake-up call to anyone who thought police violence would confine itself to Black, brown, and poor communities. That she was snatched from a dense throng of protesters shows the sophistication of NYPD surveillance. This was an intentional act meant to send a message to protesters: Speak out, and you too can be disappeared. If this happened in another country, wed be condemning the regime responsible, as we frequently do when foreign regimes that arent allies use their police forces to brutally suppress dissenting speech.

But it is easy to call out oppression beyond our borders, harder to do so when our government is waging violence and oppression against our own people. Difficulty cannot be a deterrent. History shows what happens when we fail to uproot oppression. The prophetic prose of Martin Niemllers First They Came rings loudly in my head. First they came for the Communists / And I did not speak out / Because I was not a Communist What started in the dark of night at homeless shelters is now in the streets in broad daylight. We are the last to speak for us. If you have not been already, its time to start shouting.

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The NYPD Took a Step Toward Fascism When It Kidnapped Nikki Stone - The Nation

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We must unmask the true source of so-called Black-on-Black violence

News Analysis

A 17-year-old young Black man was killed on Thursday, July 23, three blocks from the George Floyd Memorial. No one knows the circumstances, but many inherently know the reason, and it goes deeper than the reported dispute that ended with a gun and a death.

The police report will say where and how he was shot and suggest a possible motive, but it will not capture the true genesis that, according to the experts, most likely began in an environment deprived of the social and economic resources needed to feel good about oneself and be successful in the competitive society we know as the U.S. Some suggest that the violence stems from the same motive that caused the first Black man to shoot his brother after being kidnapped from Africa: racial oppression.

Any violence within the Black community is always connected to levels of oppression, poverty, or the involvement of State agencies in infiltrating and imposing weapons, conflict, etc. onto an already existing unequal society, explains Morgan State University Professor Jared Ball.

Though this recent murder occurred near the scene of Floyds murder, there was no apparent change in the demeanor of the Minneapolis police who responded to the scene, no sense of shame. Instead there was thinly disguised hostility toward the crowd that had gathered, coupled with an obvious us-versus-them attitude.

The murder was reported far and wide, the 37th such killing this year. It was recorded as just another death among many in the Black community with no real attempt to scientifically analyze or politically evaluate the cause of such tragedy.

Historically, Minneapolis and other major cities have proposed solving the problem of violence in the Black community by employing more police. Yet so-called Black-on-Black violence persists.

Adding more police in the Black community has proven paradoxical since, according to a New York Times report, over the last five years police in Minneapolis used force against Black people at a rate at least seven times that of White people.

It escapes few that Floyd was killed by Derek Chauvin while he was fulfilling the supposed duties of law enforcement. In 2019, according to a Star Tribune report, the Minneapolis police reported solving only 56% of the murders committed in the city. Nationally, police solve about 62% of murder cases.

Internecine Black crime is used by some to mock Black efforts at racial progress and racial justice. They imply that because a small minority of Black people participate in committing violence against other Black people, then they have no right to make demands on a system that African Americans categorically say is discriminatory and oppressive.

Critics of Blacks who protest police violence appear hypocritical when they say that Black people should oppose so-called Black-on-Black violence, yet object to them expressing outrage or even protesting violence committed against them by those from outside their community, namely the police.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune engaged in this practice recently in an editorial written by Katherine Kirsten, apparently a Strib favorite since her columns appear somewhat regularly in the newspaper. Kirsten claimed that to be an adherent of racial justice and police reform (Woke as she called it) one must at the same time ignore the issue of violence in the Black community.

However, the idea that Black people are soft on crime while being tough on police violence is viewed by most in the Black community as comparing apples to oranges, as unfair and unfounded. The accusation, though false, seems to play well in conservative and right-wing segments of society unwilling to face the truth or in denial about the source of the violence. In Minneapolis alone there are numerous groups dedicated to addressing the issue of violence that occurs in the Black community.

Street crime is perpetrated mainly by strangers who may be in close proximity, but strangers nevertheless, who have no compact with anybody. The government, on the other hand, represented by the police department, has a compact with all of its citizens, mainly to protect and serve the citizenry.

Therefore the government is supposed to protect the interests of its citizens who pay allegiance to it and even taxes, so when the government or an agency of the government kills or brutalizes someone, they have committed a betrayal. Unlike the street thug, the government has a responsibility to protect and not injure.

Ironically few critics of the Black communitys supposed lack of response, and even fewer articles that seek to address the issue, ask why the police are not successful in eliminating violent crime in the Black community. None point the finger at the police themselves for failing to stem the tide.

Conservative Black academic Orlando Patterson places the blame for Black violence on the victim. There is one long-term, fundamental change that can come only from within the Black community: a reduction in the number of kids born to single, usually poor, women.

Two of the identified causes of violent crime, drugs and access to illegal firearms, have not been successfully corralled by police. Nor does there appear to be any concerted effort to stop the flow of illegal drugs and illegal guns at their sources.

Recently, the Minneapolis City Council voted to reduce funding to the Minneapolis Police Department. The idea of defunding the police has become popular among some activists. The City has promised to put the funds into efforts to stem violence in the city. Some activists suggest the City go further and, after defunding, allow the Black community to decide how those funds should be invested.

The Center for Popular Democracy suggests rerouting funds from policing to educational, community, restorative justice, and employment programs that have been shown to improve community safety, including investments in community-based drug and mental health treatment.

But simply reducing and redirecting some police funding will not address the structural problems of the correctional system as it relates to the Black community. According to Professor Amos Wilson in his book Black-on-Black Violence, The criminal justice system is best understood as a multi-billion-dollar industry wherein the African American is utilized as its basic raw material, the processing and the refining of which provides income for White families, vendors, construction firms, professionals, law and security enforcement agencies.

So-called Black-on-Black crime is born of a multi-decade attempt to distract from this truth, that people hurt and kill who they live near or with, says Ball. Most violence is personal. Whites have been killing each other for millennia and long before they even knew the rest of the world existed.

Even today Whites have mostly only other Whites to worry about regarding their safety. Its all meant to put the focus on mythologies of White superiority and Black inhumanity as reasons for any existing world problem.

Related content: WORD ON THE STREET | Why the increase in violence and whats the solution?

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Another day, another dead Black body - MSR News Online

Celebrity sells it always has. But in the digital age, the boundaries of celebrity have changed. Once it was the prerogative of movie, sports or music stars to front a fashion label or promote perfume. But nowadays the marketplace is saturated with any number of online lifestyle and wellness influencers, social media users who by virtue of their taste, niche expertise or marketing savvy develop audiences of thousands sometimes millions who seek to emulate their lifestyle.

And promoting products is only the beginning. Such influencers can have a profound effect in imparting attitudes and beliefs, too.

Most of the time, this is harmless, a new thread in the media milieu. Yet at a time of pandemic, where medical advice is heavily contested and conspiracy theories from the dark reaches of the internet have proliferated, some online lifestyle influencers are amplifying misinformation and disinformation.

In a new twist during the Covid-19 crisis, three formerly distinct online ecosystems those occupied by lifestyle/wellness influencers, QAnon conspiracy believers, and violent extremists have in some instances become intertwined, through shared conspiracy-related hashtags and wild claims about the dangers of vaccines, 5G and the evils of the deep state.

QAnon is not only a conspiracy movement. It has also been deemed adomestic terror threat by the FBI.

Numerous recent studies and news reports have shown that extremist groups are exploiting the Covid-19 pandemic in an attempt to justify their narratives, recruit followers or incite violence. Extremist narratives have always contained strong conspiratorial elements, and this time is no different. Coronavirus-related conspiracies are deftly interwoven through extremist narratives and mobilisation efforts.

But the connection with online lifestyle and wellness influencers marks a change. This crossover came about after some online lifestyle and wellness influencers became entrepreneurs of conspiracy theories, using them to boost their profiles and to promote and validate their views of wellness. One of the more dangerous conspiracies promoted by lifestyle/wellness influencers are QAnon conspiracies.

The QAnon movement has its origins in the so-called pizzagate conspiracy of 2016. In its current form, QAnon alleges that there is a US government insider with a Q-level clearance who is communicating cryptically with his followers online. QAnon followers believe there is a deep state within the US government that is controlled by a cabal of Democrats and liberal Hollywood celebrities who are also Satan-worshiping paedophiles. Through Q, President Donald Trump was manifested to expose and shut down these ritualistic paedophile rings. During the Covid-19 pandemic, QAnon conspiracy groups and posts have also promoted the idea that the pandemic was, alternately, another deep-state plot, a hoax, and a Chinese bio-weapon, among other health disinformation.

However, QAnon is not only a conspiracy movement. It has also been deemed a domestic terror threat by the FBI. A leaked FBI memo written in May 2019 assessed QAnon believers as conspiracy-driven domestic extremists and that QAnon and other crowd sourced conspiracies would very likely motivate some domestic extremists to commit criminal and sometimes violent activity.

The memo cited two violent incidents linked to QAnon, but there have been at least three other violent incidents since its publication, with researchers also examining its spread beyond the United States. What started as a US-based pro-Trump conspiracy movement has now gone global and includes a number of proponents in Australia, reportedly including a family friend of the Prime Minister with a substantial social media following.

A recent article by Insider magazine highlighted a number of lifestyle influencers who were posting QAnon conspiracies related to the pandemic. Outlets such as Buzzfeed, Mother Jones and Huffington Post have also revealed a string of other popular lifestyle, design and wellness influencers who have become vectors of Covid-19 and QAnon conspiracies. Some have latched onto the discredited plandemic film released in May or QAnon memes, variously claiming the coronavirus is fake, or that the deep state is responsible for spreading the virus, or that pandemic lockdown measures are a tool of oppression. Still others have encouraged followers to attend anti-lockdown protests which have included a number of far-right extremists in their midst.

Ironically, one of the most widely shared erroneous memes about the virus being spread by people in China eating bat soup, which was created and circulated by conspiracy theorists and extremists alike, was itself appropriated from a Chinese online influencer and celebrity vlogger, who said that a video of her eating a local delicacy of bat soup in Palau for her vlog was hijacked by accounts fanning out malicious panic.

By promoting conspiracies or alternative information in the name of wellness and alternative lifestyles, the online influencers of today can serve, however unwittingly, as a gateway directing users to further, darker corners of the internet.

The intersection between wellness and violent conspiracies seems unexpected, but the wellness movement has its origins in anti-establishment and anti-mainstream medical circles. Scholars such as Charlotte Ward and David Vaos have examined the confluence of new age wellness and conspiracy, which they termed conspirituality, an intersection between new age wellness, belief in the dangers of a new world order and big pharma, and a shared emphasis on awakening and revealing truths.

Until recently, the convergence of wellness and conspiracy in a drive for awakening and societal change emphasised the non-violent and the peaceful. However, the emergence of the QAnon movement has pushed things in a more troubling direction.

The online links between far right, QAnon conspiracy groups and some online wellness and lifestyle influencers have grown during the pandemic, the ensuing lockdown and response to restrictions. Online wellness and lifestyle influencers who peddle QAnon conspiracy theories about the pandemic can potentially drive traffic to online extremist groups through shared QAnon related hashtags such as #QAnon, #TheGreatAwakening, #Plandemic, #GermJihad, #MAGA, #whitegenocide #WWG1WGA or #coronavirushoax. This can also be done when influencers have used memes and iconography also appropriated by right-wing extremists for example red pill blue pill, falling down the rabbit hole, or where we go one we go all.

More analysis is needed, but there is emerging evidence to suggest that online influencers posts related to QAnon are being cross-posted and referenced by extremists groups on online forums.And by promoting conspiracies or alternative information in the name of wellness and alternative lifestyles, the online influencers of today can serve, however unwittingly, as a gateway directing users to further, darker corners of the internet.

Social media lifestyle influencers posting about QAnon not only serve to normalise this fringe movement, but can potentially undermine efforts by internet companies to de-platform purveyors of disinformation, label misleading posts and weed out prohibited content (as identified in their terms of service). Internet companies such as Reddit have banned QAnon forums for inciting violence. Facebook has banned a number of QAnon pages for inauthentic behaviour ,and Apple has removed a QAnon app from its store. Twitter recently announced it is suspending thousands of QAnon accounts. But QAnon posts still flourish online.

Because lifestyle and wellness influencers generate substantial revenue, have helped build social media businesses, and have not generally intersected with extremist movements before, there is a danger that influencers will escape extremist content reporting and moderation. Furthermore, influencer posts are likely to reach a wider audience than extremist group posts as they are less scrutinised by social media mechanisms monitoring extremist content.

Lifestyle and wellness influencers are particularly challenging because, as numerous surveys have found, influencer marketing has exploded. More and more people are turning to influencers and online personalities for inspiration, recommendations and purchasing advise. Online influencers whove latched onto QAnon present conspiracies in an engaging, appealing and relatable manner, often interspersing posts promoting QAnon among stylised photos of fashion, workouts and recipes. The same skills that these influencers use for consumer brand marketing have helped turn an outlandish conspiracy theory into an acceptable option in the market place of ideas.

A expanded version of this article is available at Global Network on Extremism and Technology of which the Lowy Institute is a core partner. This post is part of a year long series examining extremism and technology.

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Under the influence: Peddling conspiracy in a pandemic - The Interpreter

Universities, Saul Bellow, the US novelist and Nobel prize-winner, once declared, were anti-free-speech centres. An absurd caricature surely. Yet in 2018, Christine Lagarde, former head of the IMF, and Condoleezza Rice, former secretary of state, were forced to withdraw from US university commencement addresses for being too controversial.

Still, you might think, this could not happen in tolerant Britain. Sadly, a report published today by Policy Exchange, based on the largest poll of UK-based academics in recent years, warns that we are not exempt. It shows little support for dismissal campaigns against academics holding unpopular views, but widespread support for discrimination on political grounds in publication, hiring and promotion. The report finds no evidence that the Left discriminates more than Right. But there are many more academics on the Left in the social sciences and the humanities than on the Right, and around half of the Right-leaning minority have self-censored, reporting a hostile climate for their beliefs.

There is, then, a chilling effect whereby minority views are kept under wraps. At Oxford, my old university, Nigel Biggar, regius professor of theology, leads an inquiry on the ethics of Empire. He has been excoriated by colleagues, entirely without justification, as racist and imperialist. A younger untenured colleague would have to be brave to take part in such an inquiry, yet its intellectual value could prove great.

Among students, the chilling effect occurs through no platforming, whereby organisers of meetings are pressured to disinvite speakers with unpopular views. At Oxford, Amber Rudd was disinvited by the UN Womens Society at 30 minutes notice; Prof Selina Todd was disinvited by an academic conference because of her views on transgender rights.

The effects of the hecklers veto can be devastating. Instead of being able to sharpen their wits through a robust exchange of views with those with whom they disagree, students find themselves cocooned at university, in a hermetically sealed intellectual environment which traffics only in pre-approved ideas, where they must think twice before speaking out.

Biggar has rightly pointed to the discrepancy between what counts as common sense in a university and among the public; and indeed, one could get a more vigorous debate on Empire, or on Brexit for that matter, in a pub in Hartlepool, than in the average senior common room or student union.

In his defence of free speech, John Stuart Mill pointed out that the greatest threat to it in a democracy came not from government but from prevailing opinion and feeling, which could give rise to a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression. It was, Mill suggested, legitimate to avoid contact with someone whose views one finds offensive. What was not legitimate was to use social pressure or boycott to deter the expression of unpopular views.

When the 1988 Education Reform bill was debated in the House of Lords, liberals, led by Roy Jenkins, insisted on statutory protection of academic freedom. They feared that Margaret Thatcher would use the abolition of tenure to discriminate against radicals in the universities. Today, by contrast, we need government to prevent discrimination by radicals in the universities. The Conservatives, in their 2019 manifesto, promised legislation to strengthen it. But legislation is not enough.

For the universities have been the great exception to that central trend of postwar politics, the decline of the state. They are almost as much of a public monopoly today as they were in the days of the Attlee government. Indeed, when, in the late Eighties, Thatchers education secretary, Kenneth Baker, visited the Soviet Union, he was congratulated on the degree of central control that he had achieved. A public monopoly is always in danger of encouraging conformity. Freedom is best defended not by the state, but by a healthy diversity of institutions. We have, at present, just two private universities Buckingham and the New College of the Humanities. We need many more.

Vernon Bogdanor is professor of government at Kings College, London. His book Britain and Europe in a Troubled World is out in September

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Universities are failing to protect academic freedom from the anti-free speech radicals - Telegraph.co.uk

As a Muslim woman living in the West, who is unfortunately too invested in the news cycle, Im all too aware of the fracturing human rights of Muslims across the globe. I wish this was an exaggeration but the collective experience of Muslims around the globe including the persecution of Uighur Muslims in China has made me long fear that, one day, a genocide against Muslims like me could become reality closer to home.

I stopped believing that those with the most power, those who reach the highest political offices, are driven by decency or humanity or the desire to make the world a better place a long time ago. Around the world, politicians and leaders like Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and Narendra Modhi have made it vogue to be openly Islamophobic.

This has created a hostile and fearful environment because it seems to be politically beneficial to be Islamophobic. It is now so normalised in our society that the general public has become desensitised to the abuses of Muslims across the world.

Whether its unfairly punishing an adult for a childs mistakes by making them stateless in the case of Shamima Begum. Or suddenly mandating everyone should wear facemasks in Europe following a burqa ban and years of stigma and abuse towards those who covered their faces for religious reason. In the UK niqabi Muslim women were labelled letterboxes and bank robbers, and a recent headscarf ban in Belgian universities restricted access to education for women.

Lets also not forget the Muslim ban in America, which stopped the travel of mostly Muslims entering the US a Virginia judge later ruled this ban as unconstitutional because there was a religious bias. The Citizenship Bill introduced in India last year, also known as the anti-Muslim law, offered amnesty to all refugees in India except Muslims. The law delegitimises Indian Muslims in the country who had long since been there without any citizenship protections and would not be viewed as illegal immigrants.

This everyday degradation by those in power and erasure of autonomy dehumanisies us and encourages others to do the same. If you treat people like they arent even a human then thats how society will eventually perceive them.

Recently the Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab publicly acknowledged the human rights abuses happening in China against Uighur Muslims. It was a gesture but thats all it was. Currently, there is a mass ethnic cleansing going on in China of Uighur Muslims but the rest of the world sits in ignorance or watches without taking action despite promises of never again. History is repeating itself.

In a BBC Panorama documentary, anthropologist Dr Adrian Zenz said: The world should acknowledge what this is, the largest internment of an ethnic minority since the holocaust. Since Raabs comments and the British Governments acknowledgements, the Muslim Council of Britain has asked that the Government follow up its condemnation, urging for sanctions against China to be imposed, and strong diplomatic power used before Uighur Muslims are subject to total destruction at the hands of the Chinese Government.

The US has recently imposed some sanctions in China due to the treatment of Uighur Muslims but they are fairly tame, with other countries simply turning a blind eye or being unwilling to question China.

More than a million Muslims have been placed in internment camps, according to human rights groups. China has claimed these they were correctional camps to help young people have a better life, but last year a document leaked to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) revealed that camps were basically run as high-security prisons where inmates had to seek permission for moving their bodies as well as being subjected to rigorous brainwashing and physical and sexual abuse. Recent reports claimed that Uighur Muslim women have been forcibly made to take birth control in an attempt to suppress the population.

In a recent BBC interview with Andrew Marr, the British-Chinese ambassador denied ethnic cleansing even after Marr quoted Chinese government statistics on population growth which said that the Uighur population in Xinjiang had fallen by 84 per cent in between 2015-2018. The ambassador responded with thats not right.

Though not surprising, the most deafening silence for me comes from the wider international Muslim community. In 2019 Pakistan, Saudia Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates blocked a motion led by Western ambassadors at the United Nations which called for China to allow independent international observation in the Xinjiang region.

Chinas actions unchallenged will further embolden global Islamophobia

It seems the same countries that were so enraged by drawings of the Prophet arent willing to intervene or even condemn a real-life mass ethnic cleansing of Muslims because it will not politically advantageous to them. At a press conference last year when Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan was asked about Chinas treatment of Uighur Muslim he admitted that Pakistans response to China was reflective of the help Pakistan had received from China when the country was at rock bottom.

Chinas actions unchallenged will further embolden global Islamophobia and yet it seems China is invincible even as it commits human rights abuses. So the question here is will any of the so-called global superpowers do anything? Or is politicking more important than basic human rights? Because right now the international community isnt doing anything to help Uighur Muslims and the silence is deafening.

There might not be internment camps in the Western world right now but internment is not the only way to dehumanise and oppress groups on mass. I fear that the everyday oppression of our rights in the West could one day lead to the erasure of Muslims and the Muslim identity.

Mariam Khan is the editor ofIts Not About the Burqa: Muslim Women on Faith, Feminism, Sexuality and Race

Excerpt from:

The world has stood by as China persecutes Uighur Muslims - and it makes me fear for my safety - iNews

Anyone who has spent any amount of time in Indigenous affairs would be familiar with the buzzwords used in the announcement of the new Closing the Gap targets.

As Prime Minister Scott Morrison said, the national Closing the Cap agreement is supposedly practical and ambitious. Minister for Indigenous Australians Ken Wyatt described it as new approach to Indigenous disadvantage.

Read more: We have 16 new Closing the Gap targets. Will governments now do what's needed to meet them?

Thursdays press conference also talked of a historic agreement framed by honourable intentions and an evidence-base. We heard much talk of partnership between community-controlled organisations and mainstream government agencies, along with responsibility for all, accountability and reform.

Sadly, there is nothing unprecedented about the agreement, or the language used to sell it. This discourse of Indigenous affairs - of promise and failure - does little more than create the illusion of Indigenous agency, racial progress and state benevolence.

Most media reports of the announcement, including from Indigenous outlets, readily accept and reproduce the political doublespeak with little scrutiny of the governments claims.

We heard nothing from Morrison or Wyatt about the learnings from 12 years of Closing the Gap failure and how these insights have shaped a supposed new approach beyond, of course, setting different targets.

In fact, Morrison insisted prime ministers before him have had a passion and dedication for Indigenous affairs, and indeed shared a frustration with the lack of progress in it. As he explained, the problem was previous governments were too ambitious without understanding the detail.

And certainly, there is little that is actually ambitious about this supposed new approach.

The 16 new targets, while doubling in number, no longer have parity with non-Indigenous Australia as their target within this generation. So effectively, they aim to do less, but you wouldnt know it from the coverage we have seen.

In examining the detail of the targets, we see references to increases and decreases with some specific percentages. There are also vague references to toward zero, with others simply declaring a goal of sustained increase.

Beyond the target of life expectancy, the agreement offers no sense of when parity might be achieved or even aspired to. This is striking, given the ideological foundation of Closing the Gap is literally about closing gaps of disadvantage. It is severely disappointing the federal government has largely escaped scrutiny over their claims surrounding this new national agreement.

Amid the global Black Lives Matter movement, the Closing the Gap agreement makes lofty claims to dismantle institutional racism.

While identify and eliminate racism featured as a transformation element of one of the priority reform areas, racism was then mentioned just ten times in the 47 pages of the actual agreement, with no definition in its definitions list. It is odd that the foundational structure of oppression, responsible for producing the racialised disparities this agreement is trying to ameliorate, is so poorly understood.

The lack of understanding shows. The agreement suggests racism will be fixed by pushing Indigenous peoples into mainstream institutions, on boards and identified leadership positions, which we know is a haven rather than remedy for everyday and systemic racism.

In lieu of race and racism, the terms culture and cultural are littered throughout the agreement. Culture, much like the agreement itself, provides an opportunity to blame Indigenous peoples for the structural disadvantage they are subject to.

The big solution we are told - both in the press conference and the partnership agreement - is data. Data is offered both as a priority reform as well as a strategy in and of itself. Each Closing the Gap target is outlined in a table that lists how they will be monitored.

We are not offered a sense of the complexity of the problem being addressed, or even a strategy. Instead, we are told what data should be collected in relation to the goals.

It seems the strategy for addressing Indigenous disadvantage is to find better ways to monitor other forms of progress incrementally. Yet the focus here is largely on Black bodies and behaviours. There is little to no analysis of the institutions and systems responsible for the production of the racialised disparities Indigenous peoples experience.

As such, the data will likely reproduce the story of Indigenous failure that we are all too familiar with.

There is also little that is new about increased surveillance of Indigenous people as a policy measure - which is what this is. There is, however, a strong evidence base that tells of the long history of failure of such interventions

Read more: Ten years on, it's time we learned the lessons from the failed Northern Territory Intervention

The failings in Indigenous affairs are not due to Indigenous people making poor choices. Nor is it because we lack data or evidence of what works. It is a result of a sustained indifference to the lives of Indigenous peoples, disguised as benevolence in fictitious claims of policy reform.

The issue is the failure - or rather refusal - to commit to structural reform that meaningfully attends to the relationship between Indigenous peoples and the state. Such reform demands recognition of the unique rights of Indigenous peoples, not simply more data on disadvantage and supposed Indigenous deviance.

Yet we are now being offered a partnership approach with government-funded Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations. Few have noted the power imbalance at the heart of this relationship. As Roy Ah-See, co-chair Uluru dialogues at UNSWs Indigenous Law Centre has said,

You are never going to bite the hand that feeds you, so how can these organisations be representative if they only received resources from government?

When we cut through the talk of the new Closing the Gap agreement, it is clear this discourse of change works precisely so that everything can stay the same. The only actual difference in this weeks announcement was Indigenous organisations signed up to it.

And, it is most telling that while Indigenous peoples on the streets are still fiercely proclaiming sovereignty never ceded amid a pandemic, the peaks that represent them have signed up to an agreement in which sovereignty was never mentioned.

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Chelsea Bond: The 'new' Closing the Gap is about buzzwords, not genuine change for Indigenous Australia - The Conversation AU

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In the two months since George Floyds death at the hands of police, Americans have marched, protested, rallied, and spoken out about the need for systemic change. Its the type of activism that the late U.S. Representative John Lewis, a key figure in the civil rights movement who died last month of pancreatic cancer, described as good trouble. Lewis sensed that this time with the massive scale, global impact, and inclusivity of the Black Lives Matter movement we are on the precipice of change.

There will be no turning back, he told CBS This Morning in June. What Lewis understood, having marched down the road for justice himself, was that its long past time for the United States to fulfill the promise of equal protection pledged in our constitution. As a young man, Lewis put his life on the line to challenge a system that today continues to penalize, prosecute, and strip away the civil rights of so many Black and brown Americans. We are tired. We are tired of being beat by policemen. We are tired of seeing our people locked up in jail over and over again, Lewis said in 1963 as he stood on the steps of Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington.

That is why, even after the initial fires of protest were extinguished in Minneapolis, the embers of discontent continued to burn as residents voiced their anger over their citys failure to address police misconduct. The racial disparities in arrests paint a stark picture: One 2015 analysis by the American Civil Liberties Union found that Minneapolis police arrested African Americans and Native Americans for low-level offenses at rates almost nine times higher than the rate for whites over a three-year period. The citys response in the past was never enough to truly reform policing or implement the type of systemic change that could address health and wealth inequities for people of color. As former mayor Betsy Hodges wrote in a recent first-person account, the citys white liberals have resisted systemic change for decades. Instead of doing the hard work of reforming zoning laws, addressing the lack of housing affordability, and providing for under-resourced schools, they put a Band-Aid on the citys problems by, for example, funding a rental assistance hotline and summer job programs for youth of color.

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These efforts make us feel better about racism, but fundamentally change little for the communities of color whose disadvantages often come from the hoarding of advantage by mostly white neighborhoods, wrote Hodges.

Today, were witnessing the tragic consequences of inaction for communities that have long been burdened by pollution and contamination and are now hardest hit by COVID-19. Everything in our health is determined by our environment, Linda Birnbaum, the former director of the National Institutes for Environmental Health Sciences and the National Toxicology Program, told the Intercept. Researchers are finding that many adults who are infected with COVID-19 are suffering the long-term effects of the environmental health damage they experienced as children, such as lead exposure and asthma.

In response to this health crisis, the newly-formed Title VI Environmental Justice Alliance, a coalition of environmental justice groups and their allies, issued a call to action in July to address the inequities that are exacerbating the spread of COVID-19 in communities across the country. The alliance has set out to address the systemic racism that has created these inequities by advocating for the ability of communities to challenge race discrimination in environmental decision-making under the Civil Rights Act, as well as the racially disparate effects of public policy decisions that lead communities of color to face greater exposure to environmental harms.

Its not a coincidence that race is the most salient factor explaining the location of hazardous waste sites and the worst polluters, says attorney Marianne Engelman Lado, an author of the call to action, member of the alliance, and expert on the effects of environmental contamination on vulnerable populations. Baked-in patterns of segregation have led to inequalities in environmental exposure, which are determined by the resources and the political power a community has to fight the siting of industrial facilities, as well as zoning and land-use decisions.

We have to start recognizing that all people have the right to equal protection, and we have to address these disparities in exposure to environmental hazards, said Engelman Lado. That means changing the way we do environmental decision-making: where we place things, and who has a say, and whether we listen to communities.

Addressing environmental disparities in neighborhoods where residents struggle to breathe due to pollution and contamination will also mean reckoning with the toxic environments created by other forms of oppression, such as police violence. The links between the two are undeniable, according to Angelo Logan, the campaign director of the Moving Forward Network in Los Angeles, which works to protect disadvantaged communities from the adverse effects of the global freight transportation system. He knows firsthand that the most vulnerable communities often endure a deadly combination of poverty, police oppression, and pollution.

In both cases youre physically choked, Logan said, by air pollution and by [law enforcement], whoever that might be.

For this reason, part of the dialogue around addressing the flaws in the criminal justice system should involve asking broader questions, such as: What can be done to prevent brown and Black men from landing in the criminal justice system to begin with? Some of the answers to that question lie quite literally in the ecological environment in which they are growing up. To get to the root of injustices facing communities of color, we must dig even deeper, by addressing the legacy of lead contamination in Americas cities in a comprehensive way. More specifically, we can begin by remediating contaminated soil in residential neighborhoods that were historically segregated and industrialized in the 20th century. Many believe that lead contamination in soil was addressed decades ago, but this invisible neurotoxin continues to be a threat in urban environments because it can take decades, if not longer, for lead to degrade in soil. Further, if municipal leaders fail to identify these hidden hazards in American cities and remove that threat of lead exposure, it puts the health of children and adults living in these polluted neighborhoods at risk for generations. In the 1980s, Howard Mielke, an urban geochemistry and health expert, did comprehensive soil testing across Minneapolis and provided ample evidence of the dangers facing residents in the citys urban center, as well as a roadmap of potential solutions. The question is: Did Minneapolis clean up its polluted environment?

On one hand, the state of Minnesota was a leader in convincing Congress that lead poisoning was a major problem across American cities, and that lead needed to be removed from gasoline. It was thanks to the testimony of a Minnesota delegation, which included Mielke, during a 1984 U.S. Senate committee hearing that Congress ultimately decided to phase out gasoline sooner than its projected 1988 target. But the phase-out of leaded gasoline was just the first step. Its the contamination left behind that must still be reckoned with. As Clair C. Patterson, the late California Institute of Technology geochemist who decades ago broke new ground on leads impact, once said: Sometime in the near future it probably will be shown that the older urban areas of the United States have been rendered more or less uninhabitable by the millions of tons of poisonous industrial lead residues that have accumulated in cities during the past century.

CHANDAN KHANNA / AFP via Getty Images

Minneapolis, despite its progressive reputation, is a deeply divided city geographically when it comes to race. Any discussion around how to address the implications of lead exposure requires an examination of how the citys neighborhoods were developed in the 20th century. Today, we have evidence that shows that housing segregation via racially restrictive housing covenants influenced the formation of poor communities of color near industrial zones and freeways that were built through historic African American communities. These same freeways were conduits for leaded gasoline emissions that settled into the surrounding neighborhoods.

The separate-but-equal era of injustice that galvanized a young John Lewis to take a stand paralleled Americas highway construction boom and the exponential growth of leaded gasoline use in cars. This spread the deadly neurotoxin at levels not seen before. Mielke, who teaches in the department of pharmacology at Tulane Universitys School of Medicine, has spent more than four decades investigating the dangers of lead contamination in soil across the country, including in Baltimore, where he researched his first lead soil study, and New Orleans, where hes currently based and has geographically mapped lead soil levels and investigated leads impact on childrens health and education.

Mielke has found that decades of contamination from leaded gasoline, lead-based paint, industrial emissions, and other sources has created invisible mountains of lead in Americas urban city centers that continue to harm children. Weve reached a point where [childhood blood lead levels] have come down enormously, but not evenly for the whole community. Its still in the environment, and its still exposing children at unacceptably high levels, said Mielke, a Minnesota native.

Mielke, other lead soil experts, and citizen-scientists have tested and mapped lead levels across America, so weve known for decades how extensive the lead contamination is in our soil: from Baltimore to Los Angeles, Cleveland to Chicago, Oakland to Indianapolis. But what has been done to address this environmental threat in American backyards? For the most part, not nearly enough to stop children from being exposed, says Mielke.

[Municipalities] seem to run away from it. Either they dont want to talk about it, they dont want to face it, or they look at it as an issue that they cant possibly do anything about that its way too expensive, said Mielke. In New Orleans, Mielke has diligently worked to show government officials and the public that there are low-cost solutions such as covering contaminated soil with geotextile, cleaner dirt, and vegetation to prevent more children from being exposed in childcare centers and parks. Mielkes Baltimore lead research in the late 1970s and early 1980s first opened his eyes to the awful problem of lead-contaminated soil, but it was his subsequent mapping in Minnesotas Twin Cities that led him to realize that America faced an extensive problem in its urban centers. It became his mission to do something about it.

Generation after generation living in the same place in the city theyre running into the same problems. And that can be resolved, but it takes concerted effort, said Mielke.

Today we know that even low-level lead exposure (blood lead concentrations below 5 micrograms per deciliter) affect not only a childs intellectual and academic abilities they are also a risk factor for higher rates of neurobehavioral disorders such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). A growing body of research also suggests that youth who have been exposed to lead run a higher risk of ending up in the criminal justice system. One 2008 University of Cincinnati study tracked 250 individuals and found that, when Cincinnati children reached adulthood, there was a strong relationship between their participation in criminalized activity and their exposure to lead in the womb, as well as their childhood exposure to lead. A 2017 study from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that suspensions and juvenile detentions rise with preschool blood lead levels. The study found that African American and Latino lead-burdened children were more likely to be suspended or detained in juvenile hall than their white counterparts. Historically, childhood lead exposure has disproportionately impacted Black and Latino children across the country, and one 2020 study found that a significant nationwide racial disparity in blood lead outcomes persists today for African American children, even after adjusting for risk factors and variables.

Harvard sociologist Robert Sampson has studied the relationship between neighborhood, lead toxicity, and racial segregation to understand the role of lead contamination as a source of environmental inequality in Chicago neighborhoods. His research has shown that lead toxicity, as shown through high blood lead levels among children, is closely linked to racial and ethnic segregation. As such, it has contributed to the legacy of Black disadvantage in the United States. Its what Sampson calls the ecology of toxic inequality, and it aligns with the links researchers have found between racial segregation, enviromental hazards, and poor health outcomes. Because lead exposure is concentrated in certain neighborhoods, Sampson also found in a 2018 study that lead exposure has a neighborhood effect much like inadequate housing, poverty, and violence that contributes to the reproduction of inequality over a persons lifetime.

The urgency to address lead contamination has been clear since the 1920s, when health experts cautioned the U.S. government about the dangers of putting lead in gasoline. In the 1960s, grassroots advocates in New York, Chicago, Boston, Oakland, and Baltimore called on government agencies to address the lead hazards in public housing. Their voices and advocacy reduced the impact of the toxin, but the lead problem never disappeared. And in the long run, the economic cost of inaction has been enormous. In 2002, researchers found that, even at low levels of lead exposure, the costs associated with direct medical care and potential productivity losses for lead-burdened U.S. children when they become adults amounts to $43 billion annually.

This urgency should be felt anew today. Then-President Barack Obama once described John Lewis as an American who knew that change could not wait for some other person or some other time, whose life is a lesson in the fierce urgency of now. Lewis may be gone, but his life, his actions, and his words are a reminder of the moral courage and political will thats required to address systemic disparities. He grew up in the cotton fields of Alabama as the son of sharecroppers, and he attended segregated public schools. In a moving CBS This Morning video where Lewis writes a letter to his young self, he describes how the activism of Rosa Parks and the words of Martin Luther King Jr. inspired him to join the civil rights movement. When you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have a moral obligation to continue to speak up, to speak out, he said in the video. He looked back on his life and it brought him to tears, because he understood exactly what it took to overcome systemic racism.

Sometimes I feel like crying tears of happiness, tears of joy to see the distance weve come, he said. He also knew how much further we had to go on that road to justice. So he spent his life fighting these battles in the halls of Congress, reminding us to persevere, to get out there and push and pull until we redeem the soul of America.

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John Lewis fought for equal protection. That means tackling pollution, poverty, and policing. - Grist

Mark Wilson/Getty ImagesSenator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, walking past a portrait of John C. Calhoun, leader of the proslavery forces in the Senate, Capitol Hill, Washington, D.C., February 23, 2016

Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, has introduced a bill in Congress that would punish school districts that use The New York Timess 1619 Project in their curriculum by withholding federal funding. In so doing, he announced in a newspaper interview that Americas schoolchildren need to learn that the nations Founders said slavery was the necessary evil upon which the union was built. His statement is as preposterous as it is false: presuming to clarify American history, Cotton has grievously distorted it.

(As this article went to press, Cotton supported his argument by citing me along with several other liberal historians who have criticized the 1619 Project; with my colleagues, I have fundamental publicized objections to the project, but these in no way mitigate Cottons serious misrepresentations of the historical record for evident political gain.)

None of the delegates who framed the Constitution in 1787 called slavery a necessary evil. Some of them called slavery an evil, but not a necessary one. Gouverneur Morris of New York, for example, declared to the Constitutional Convention that he would never concur in upholding domestic slavery, that nefarious institution based on the most cruel bondagesthe curse of heaven on the states where it prevailed. The great majority of the Framers joined Morris in fighting to ensure that slavery would be excluded from national law.

James Madison, the most influential delegate at the convention, explicitly repudiated the idea of building the union on slavery, stating that it would be wrong to admit in the Constitution the idea that there could be property in men. Though himself a slaveholder, Madison wanted to guarantee that the Constitution, while it might tolerate slavery in the states where it existed, would neither enshrine human bondage in national law nor recognize it as legitimate.

A minority of the Framers, from the lower South, disagreed, but they believed slavery was no evil at all. If slavery be wrong, Charles Pinckney of South Carolina declared, it is justified by the example of all the world.Far from a necessary evil, Pinckney thought slavery was a necessary good, as it had been for time immemorial. In all ages, he claimed, one half of mankind have been slaves.

There was, to be sure, one delegate who resembled Senator Cottons description: Pinckneys cousin, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, also from South Carolina. At one point in the convention debates, a perturbed Cotesworth Pinckney registered a complaint, seeming to desire, Madison noted, that some provision should be included in favor of property in slaves. That would have based the Union firmly on the constitutional right of slavery. And Cotesworth Pinckney did come close to calling slavery a necessary evil, noting that without it the Carolina economy could not survive (which was technically correct). But the convention majority, far from agreeing with anything he said, dismissed his objection out of hand.

The Constitution was hardly an antislavery document. Through fierce debates and by means of backroom deals, the lower South slaveholders managed to win compromises that offered some protection to slavery in the states: the notorious three-fifths clause giving an allotment of House seats and Electoral College votes based on a partial counting of enslaved persons; a twenty-year delay in authorizing Congress to abolish the nations involvement in the Atlantic slave trade; and a fugitive slave clause. Most importantly, the Constitution by implication barred the new federal government from directly interfering with slavery in the states where it already existed.

But neither did the Constitution, as Senator Cotton wrongly claims, establish slavery as necessary to the Union. Its true that a few proslavery delegates threatened that their states would refuse to join the Union unless their demands were met. This occurred with particular force with regard to the Atlantic slave trade. A majority of convention delegates wanted to empower the national government to abolish the horrific trade, striking the first blow against it anywhere in the Atlantic world in the name of a sovereign state. Appalled, the lower South delegates, led by South Carolinas oligarchs, threatened to bolt if the convention touched the slave trade in any way, but the majority called their bluff.

In the end, the proslavery delegates carved out the compromise that prevented abolishing the trade until 1808, salvaging a significant concession, though there could be little doubt that the trade was doomed. Even with this compromise, the leading Pennsylvania abolitionist Benjamin Rush hailed the slave trade clause as a great point obtained from the Southern States. His fellow Pennsylvanian and a delegate to convention, James Wilson, went so far as to say that the Constitution laid the foundation for banishing slavery out of this country.

History, of course, proved Wilson wrongbut not completely wrong. With the rise of the cotton economy, based on the invention of the cotton gin, which Wilson could not have foreseen, American slavery was far from stymied, but grew to become the mightiest and most expansive slavery regime on earth, engulfing further territoriesincluding Cottons own Arkansas.

The Framers compromises over slavery had little to do with it, however. The problem was not primarily constitutional but political: so long as a substantial number of Northerners remained either complacent about slaverys future, indifferent to the institutions oppression, or complicit in the growth of the new cotton kingdom, the Constitution would permit the spread of human bondage.

Even so, in fact, the Constitution contained powerful antislavery potential. By refusing to recognize slavery in national law, the Framers gave the national government the power to regulate or ban slavery in areas under its purview, notably the national territories not yet constituted as separate states. The same year that the Framers met, the existing Congress banned slavery from the existing territories north of the Ohio River under the Northwest Ordinance, a measure reflected in the Constitution, which the new Congress quickly affirmed when it met in 1789. Later antislavery champions, including Abraham Lincoln, always considered the Northwest Ordinance to be organic to the Constitution; proslavery advocates came to regard it as an illegitimate nullity.

In time, as antislavery sentiment built in the North, the condition of slavery in the territories and in connection with the admission of new states became the major flashpoint of conflict, from the Missouri crisis of 18191821 to the guerrilla warfare of Bleeding Kansas. Proslavery champions like John C. Calhoun of South Carolina invented an argument that denied the Congress any power over slavery in the territories; Lincoln and his fellow Republicans refuted that argument. And upon Lincolns election as president in 1860, this constitutional issue was enough to spark the secession that led to the Civil War and Emancipation.

Senator Cotton has some mistaken things to say about that history, too. The Framers, he asserts, built the Constitution in a way, as Lincoln said, to put slavery on the course to its ultimate extinction.This absurdly imputes to the Framers powers of clairvoyance. Although Lincoln sometimes suggested that the Framers had purposefully designed slaverys abolitioneven Lincoln could wishfully exaggeratethe Constitution hardly ensured slaverys doom. It took Lincolns and the antislavery Republicans concerted political efforts to vindicate the Constitutions antislavery elements that set the stage for what Lincoln in his House Divided speech of 1858 called ultimate extinction.

Far from establishing a Union based on what Senator Cotton calls the necessary evil of slavery, the Founders fought bitterly over human enslavement, producing a document that gave slavery some protection even as it denied slavery national status and gave the federal government the power to restrict its growthand so hasten its demise. The slaveholders, unable to abide that power, eventually seceded in an effort to form a new slaveholders republic, with a new Constitution built entirely on slavery: its cornerstone, as the Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens declaimed, was the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slaverysubordination to the superior raceis his natural and normal condition.

Senator Cottons contempt for constitutional rights was previously revealed in his intemperate call for the invocation of the Insurrection Act and federal military power against protesters exercising their First Amendment rights to decry racism. His ignorance of history and the Constitution is the latest evidence of how the current Republican Party is, to say the least, a distant cry from the party Lincoln helped to found. As far as a Union founded on the necessary evil of slavery is concerned, Cotton appears unaware of how profoundly the Constitution of the United States of America differed from that of the Confederate States of America.

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What Tom Cotton Gets So Wrong About Slavery and the Constitution - The New York Review of Books

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In 1970, Maher Ahmad and Bill Dry founded the Gay Liberation Front Northwesterns first gay rights advocacy group. The group hosted the first gay dance on campus, held demonstrations in the city and boycotted bars that had racist policies. Just a few years later, Vince McCoy would become the first black president of the Gay Liberation Front. Fifty years later, the two men recount their time with the Gay Liberation Front in this two-part series. Part 1.

MAHER AHMAD: April 1, 1970. Dear faculty member, male and female homosexuals at Northwestern have recently organized a gay liberation movement on campus.

We wish to make the members of faculty and student body aware of the fact that there does exist a large homosexual community both at Northwestern and in society in general that is no longer willing to hide as essential part of its identity in order to enjoy the rights that a supposedly free society should grant all of its citizens. Gay Liberation intends to actively oppose the oppression of homosexuals. We hope that you will support us and do all that you can to help us. If you would like some more information about this, you can call Gay Liberation at 338-9241.

Sincerely yours, William Dry; Maher Ahmad.

ALEX CHUN: Thats Maher Ahmad (Communication 71, 74), reading a letter that he and William Dry (Weinberg 69) wrote in the spring of 1970. Maher was a junior at Northwestern and the two men had just begun the Gay Liberation Front. They were asking University staff to support the formation of their group.

MAHER AHMAD: Well, first, let me say that I had completely forgotten that we had written this letter, okay? This was a seminal kind of thing that we did. But what strikes me now, interestingly, we werent just talking about making things better at Northwestern, okay? Were talking about making things better in society at large and engaging the University to help take us there, which is certainly the kind of ambitious goals one can have when ones a 20-year-old.

ALEX CHUN: The Gay Liberation Front was Northwesterns first gay advocacy group. Fifty years later, Mahers legacy continues through what is now Rainbow Alliance.

From the Daily Northwestern, Im Alex Chun, and this is Defining Safe: a podcast about marginalized communities at Northwestern. This episode is the first part of a two-part series about two gay mens time at Northwestern in the 60s and 70s. The two men are Mr. Maher Ahmad and Mr. Vince McCoy (Bienen 75, SPS 03).

In 1970, 50 years ago, Maher Ahmad started the Gay Liberation Front with William Dry. Recently, I spoke with Maher, and he shared a part of his story with me.

MAHER AHMAD: You know, memory is a very odd thing. And I can remember some things really specifically. Like when we started the gay rights meeting at Northwestern, we asked the student government for $67. I dont know how I remember that number. Theres a lot I dont remember. And very sadly, because there have been so many men that have passed on from AIDS, I cant tell you to go to this person or that person and see what they remember.

ALEX CHUN: And in 1970, Vince McCoy would arrive to campus, eventually joining the Gay Liberation Front and becoming the first black president of the organization. Heres Vince in November 2019 at an event hosted by Northwesterns Black Professionals Network.

VINCENT MCCOY: We all have our own songs to sing, and our songs are the stories of our lives. You may not recognize my tune or understand all of my words, yet every song must be heard. So, today, Im going to sing a little bit of my song for you.

ALEX CHUN: So, lets hear a bit of their songs.

ALEX CHUN: Maher Ahmad was born in Forty Fort, Pa. in 1960. His parents had moved to the United States after being displaced from Palestine, and he had three brothers. Maher described growing up as the only Muslim family in a predominantly white Protestant neighborhood, saying that his family members were largely regarded as outsiders.

MAHER AHMAD: My parents arent religious, but we were Muslim in a WASP community that predated the American Revolution. And that was an interesting situation because early in my life, neighbors didnt treat us well. And then as I began, even before I reached adolescence, I knew I had this longing or yearning that somehow was connected to men. And then, when I reached adolescence, okay, I realized I had a same sex attraction.

ALEX CHUN: However, this was the 1960s, and homosexuality wouldnt be decriminalized nationwide until decades later following the Lawrence v. Texas Supreme Court case in 2003. Heres a clip from a CBS Reports episode aired in 1967 titled The Homosexuals, hosted by Mike Wallace.

MIKE WALLACE: Homosexuality is an enigma. It remains a subject that people find disturbing. Embarrassing. And the reluctance to discuss it. Yet there is a growing concern about homosexuals in society. About their increasing visibility. We discovered that Americans consider homosexuality more harmful to society than adultery, abortion or prostitution.

ALEX CHUN: But Maher never felt like he was at odds with his sexuality. He credits his mother for his strong sense of self.

MAHER AHMAD: Now, for some reason, that I think has to do with genetics that I inherited from my mother who has always been an extremely kind person. And a rabble rouser. She was political from the get-go. She was a feminist. She was the first female broadcast journalist in Palestine. I didnt think there was anything wrong with me.

ALEX CHUN: Rather, when Maher first heard the word homosexual from his older brother, he experienced two feelings: self-realization and curiosity.

MAHER AHMAD: He defined it for me and I thought, Oh, Im a member of a class. And, being an industrious young person, I decided that I was going to find out about myself.

ALEX CHUN: So, Maher went to the local library. He searched through the card catalog and was able to find the call numbers of the few books that the library had about homosexuality. But the books werent on the shelves. When he asked the librarian for help finding them, she told him that they were in the locked case. But despite the climate at the time, Maher never felt like he was at odds with himself being gay.

MAHER AHMAD: And I kept a journal in my senior year. I wrote things like, I dont know, I wrote down, I am special. I wrote it twice, I am special, and I was proud of this. I never pretended to be straight. I absolutely refused to go to the senior prom because I wasnt going to go and put up this false thing and find a girl to be my beard to go to the senior prom with, so I didnt attend the senior prom. I remember there was one girl that chased me. Her name was Pixie, and we were at a party and she initiated a kiss with me and I kissed her and I felt nothing. And I thought to myself, Yeah, you know what, Im never doing this again. Im not interested. And so thats basically what it was like when I was in high school.

ALEX CHUN: Maher wanted to leave Forty Fort, Pa. and ultimately went to Northwestern to study theatre and theatre design. But Maher sensed that something was different. Revolution was in the air.

MAHER AHMAD: You know, its really wonderful to be on the cusp of anything. I started as an undergraduate in 1967. Kennedy was shot in 1963, which was a major historical marker. 1964 was the beginning of the Free Speech Movement on college campuses, where students were saying you have to stop treating us in loco parentis was the phrase, as if youre our parents, you have to stop restricting our rights. We are adults, and there are certain things that you cant make us do or cant prevent us from doing. So revolution was in the atmosphere. And, you know, 1969 was Stonewall.

ALEX CHUN: And protests were even taking place on Northwesterns campus as students protested the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. Maher was still an undergrad at the time.

MAHER AHMAD: So this whole kind of opening up this whole progressivism, this whole desire to throw off the strictures of the system that was in place that was repressive in so many different ways was in the air, and gay rights were a part of that.

ALEX CHUN: During Mahers junior year, he saw an ad in The Daily Northwestern that ultimately led to a reshaping of queer culture on campus.

MAHER AHMAD: It was just a tiny little ad of maybe 10 or 15 words. And it said, in the title and bigger letters, it was tiny, it was like an inch by two inches or something. It said gay liberation. And then it said, anyone, any men and women interested in starting your gay liberation group at Northwestern call Bill, and it had his phone number on it. And I saw this, and I thought, Well, Im interested in doing that. And I called the number and it ended up that I knew this guy, Bill Dry. We didnt know each other were gay. So we said, Yeah, lets do this. And then we got some other people to join us and that began the birth of the group on campus.

ALEX CHUN: The group was around 20 people, but a core group of six men were the most active. They held meetings at apartments off-campus. Among their first goals was to be recognized as an official campus organization. So they drafted a letter to faculty outlining three goals of the Gay Liberation Front.

ALEX CHUN: At the time, gay culture was largely underground and discrete. Small parties were held off-campus, but there were no public gay events. Gay students would go to bars in the city to party, but they had to be wary of police. Gay men who were arrested had their names published in the local newspaper.

MAHER AHMAD: I was able to go to gay bars when I was 19 and 20. But that was it. There was nothing social going on and in that letter that I wrote with Bill to the faculty, one of the things we said is we feel we need to have some kind of social mechanism on campus to associate with ourselves.

ALEX CHUN: The Gay Liberation Front then requested money from the student government to help them print leaflets. They needed $67 but had anticipated that they may not get the full amount requested. So they asked for $670 instead. To their surprise, their request was approved, and they were given the full $670. Later, Maher learned that the head of the committee at the time was a closeted gay student. With the extra money, the members of the Gay Liberation Front wanted to plan something special: a dance.

MAHER AHMAD: It was wonderful. Its very hard, I think, for young people today, who are both gay and straight, to conceive that back in 1970, no bars allowed any dancing. In Chicago, you had to get a dance license a bar had to get a dance licence to allow dancing, and the city would issue one to gay bars to allow same sex dancing, but the bars back then were sordid kind of affairs, as I say, theyre by and large owned by the mob. They paid off the police. And they had a captive clientele. So one of the things that we wanted to be able to do is to have sociability and some notion of normality. And instead of having our entire social lives circumscribed by surreptitious meetings in private apartments, or gay bars, we wanted to have a dance.

ALEX CHUN: The Gay Liberation Front rented the Patten Gymnasium on campus to hold their dance. A member of the group, Duncan, happened to know Corky Siegel, a member of the Siegel-Schwall blues band. So, Duncan asked them to play at the dance, and they agreed to do so.

MAHER AHMAD: Instead of it being just, you know, 20 or 30 gay people that were brave enough to be public and go to a public dance because we only charged $1 a ticket, which is well below the market rate for a Siegel-Schwall concert, we packed the gym! And it turned into a concert rather than a dance, which was, you know, unfortunate. And it was more geared to like this performance rather than than the gay people, but it was great, great fun. So suddenly, were this group, we got our $67 turned into $670. And rather than losing money on this dance from our bank, we got tons more money which then we could use to do other other kinds of things. And it was just a lot of fun.

ALEX CHUN: Corky Siegel, one of the bands co-founders, was 27 at the time. He remembers playing at the Patten Gym. The band played hits such as Hey, Billie Jean, I Dont Want You to Be My Girl and Angel Food Cake.

CORKY SIEGEL: Everyone was having a good time. It was a lot of fun, and we felt really good about doing it.

ALEX CHUN: Corky says the Siegel-Schwall Band was very political and often played at benefits. Corky believes that music can be political, and the Siegel-Schwalls support for the Gay Liberation Front was exactly that.

CORKY SIEGEL: It does really bring people together. Music is a form of compassion. What it does for people, individuals and for the world, and how it uplifts people its just a form of compassion. So, in that sense, anyone who plays music is putting that into the atmosphere. More practically, just a popular band thats showing support adds a little more power to the people.

ALEX CHUN: The Gay Liberation Front also worked to make safe spaces for everyone in the city. The Normandy Bar was the largest gay bar at the time, but would occasionally turn away non-white patrons. To protest, the Gay Liberation Front compiled a list of demands. They wanted the bar to stop pushing drinks on patrons, obtain a dancing license and to let all patrons enter regardless of their race.

MAHER AHMAD: Our biggest ask, our most radical ask was that they allow black people in, because they would not allow black people or any people of color as I recall. And the way they would keep them out was one of these traditional kinda things that white racists do. They would ask them for like three forms of photo government-issued identification. Now they wouldnt ask anybody else for that. They would let 18-year-olds in against the law. But black people had to show multiple forms of identification or they couldnt get in.

ALEX CHUN: The Gay Liberation Front organized a meeting with the owners of the Normandy Bar and read off the demands.

MAHER AHMAD: And we said, Okay, if you dont do that, were going to boycott your bar. And he laughed at us. And he said, Go ahead and boycott, thinking that what was this little scruffy group of college students going to do to his Normandy Bar that paid off the police, that got, I dont know how many people it held at night, it had to be at least 600 or 800, maybe as many as 1,000. And he laughed at us and told us to get the F out of his bar.

ALEX CHUN: So the Gay Liberation Front planned to hold a boycott that Friday night. There was just one issue. They only had about six men who were willing to publicly boycott the bar. But to their surprise, the International Socialist Group on campus agreed to join them in the boycott, making the group of boycotters about 20 people.

MAHER AHMAD: So we went out there early on a Friday night, and we started, you know, like marching around in a circle with our signs hoping that we could keep people from going in. People would turn around the corner two blocks down from the subway station, see this ruckus in front of the bar of people chanting slogans and carrying signs and walking around in a circle. And they would, discretion being the better part of valor, turn heel and go right back to the subway and go someplace else. Well, we killed their business that night. I think they had no business.

ALEX CHUN: The group boycotted the next week on Friday and Saturday as well, effectively killing the Normandy Bars business. Eventually, the owner of the bar gave in and agreed to meet with the Gay Liberation Front once more.

MAHER AHMAD: We signed up for a classroom in Kresge Centennial Hall in the basement, and we said meet us here and it was at night and this is an image that will ever be seared into my brain. The visual was so great. It was like six scruffy gay boys, the bright blaring fluorescent lights and us sitting around in the chairs and then these two mafioso types in ties and suits stuffed between the return arm and the back of the chair negotiating with us. And they agreed to all our demands, and they got a dancing license. It made the bar more popular than ever. And what happened because of the competition, other bars one after the other started getting dancing licenses.

ALEX CHUN: The Gay Liberation Front participated in other protests and demonstrations across the city, advocating for equality wherever they could. Some of the chants they used may sound familiar to activists today

MAHER AHMAD: And I remember one of the things this phrase was around when I was an undergraduate, so its at least that old, we would sing things like, Were here because were queer.

ALEX CHUN: Although the Gay Liberation Front had originated as an advocacy group for gay rights, Maher said he has always seen the fight against oppression as universal.

MAHER AHMAD: We can help all these other oppressed groups from all over the world because oppression is indivisible, okay? And when one tries to separate ones own oppression as being more legitimate or deserving of more attention, it diminishes the oppression of other people and diminishes the oppression of the group that considers themselves somehow raised above other oppressed groups or more worthy of attention.

ALEX CHUN: Today, Mahers support in the fight for equality hasnt diminished, and he remembers the importance of protests when he was fighting for liberation.

MAHER AHMAD: They are absolutely essential. 100 percent essential. Our Constitution, our founders these guys were your age. Our founders that wrote our Constitution, they didnt get some things right, but wow, what a system they came up with. And one of the things they realized was absolutely essential to a free society was the right to peaceably assemble because that is what will take the attention of people in power. I would hate to get stuck on a freeway in Los Angeles, because a whole bunch of gay rights activists or BLM activists sat down on the freeway and closed it up, but if these people are willing to sit in the freeway, be arrested, go to jail, fight the arrest, pay the fine, get released and do it again, more power to them. Because sometimes you gotta shout to be heard.

ALEX CHUN: From The Daily Northwestern, Im Alex Chun. Thanks for listening to another episode of Defining Safe. This episode was reported and produced by me, Alex Chun. The summer managing editors of The Daily are Sneha Dey and James Pollard. The summer editor-in-chief is Emma Edmund.

Email: [emailprotected]

Twitter: @apchun01

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Our songs are the stories of our lives: Two men remember the beginnings of gay liberation on campus - Daily Northwestern

(Updated at 4 p.m.) Arlington County should change its logo and seal, the local branch of the NAACP says.

The civil rights group says the logos use of Arlington House the former home of and a memorial to Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee is divisive and racist.

Enslaved people were forced to build the Greek revivalstylemansion, which overlooks the Potomac and was the centerpiece of a plantation that utilized slave labor. Until it was seized during the Civil War, Arlington House had primarily been the home of descendents of George Washington. The house is now a National Memorial and part of Arlington National Cemetery.

Arlington House, the NAACP said in a letter to the editor this afternoon, isa symbol of a slave labor camp. The racist plantation symbol should be removed, as it divides, rather than unites us, the branch said.

The call to change the logo which adorns the county flag, website, parks and other county-owned property comes amid a national reckoning about race, sparked by the police killing of George Floyd and subsequent national protests.

Prior to the protests, the Confederate-inspired names of Jefferson Davis Highway and Washington-Lee High School were changed in Arlington. The county is also in the early stages of renaming Lee Highway.

In 2018, the County Board responded to a residentsrequest for the logo to be redesignedby saying that the Board will certainly give the matter more thought as budget and staff resources become available in future years.

Reached for comment today, Arlington County Board Chair Libby Garvey said that the county has received numerous requests recently to change everything from the logo to the names of buildings, bridges and streets.

As for changing the logo, the county is happy to consider it, Garvey said, but only after a community engagement process a good solid conversation with everyone in Arlington.

When you take something away, you have to put something in its place, Garvey said.

The letter to the editor was written by NAACP Arlington Branch President Julius Spain, Sr., as well as branch member Carolynn Kane and former Arlington School Board memberDr. Emma Violand-Snchez. The full letter is below.

Arlington Countys most prominent symbol is its logo and seal. A symbol that is everywhere on government correspondence, uniforms, buildings, vehicles, websites. A symbol of a slave labor camp. A symbol of the southern plantation economy designed to ensure White privilege and Black subjugation. A place that the National Park Service named, Arlington House, The Robert E. Lee Memorial. This is the symbol placed in the center of our flag. A divisive and racist branding of our diverse, usually progressive community. It is a symbol that divides, rather than unites us. Yet, despite community members bringing this problem to their attention, it appears that the County Board is uninterested in changing its logo. Instead the County proudly states in its manual that this symbol reflects its values identity traditions; and tells residents that there are good sides to this racist plantation symbol.

We ask, how can the County have courageous conversations on race, tackle the inequities in Arlington, heal the deep historical wounds here or enact its platform to address racial inequities when it will not confront and change its own symbol? If it refuses to acknowledge its own blindness to the logos meaning, it cannot. The County Board must end its embrace of this symbol of Black bondage, oppression and pain. The Countys Robert E. Lee Memorial logo, flag and seal needs to be retired and a new era of inclusiveness and equity ushered in immediately. We call on the County Board and County Manager to stop delaying, put this item on the Boards Agenda, and vote. Now.

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It's Time to Ditch the County Logo, Arlington NAACP Says - ARLnow

Some observers are concerned that the national conversation about federal overreach in Portland has overshadowed the Portland Police Bureaus brutality against protesters

As the federal deployment of secretive law enforcement proved violent in the Trump administrations crackdown on protests, activists stressed that these officers behavior was largely familiar.

On July 22, as Mayor Ted Wheeler engaged in tense conversation with protesters walked from City Hall to the Mark O. Hatfield federal courthouse, a protester stepped in front of him and, without words, poured a bag of spent tear and crowd control munitions at his feet.

Minutes later, the crowd pressed in around Wheeler, and chants of Ted shot us too drowned him out as he tried to speak during his listening session. Less than an hour after that, the crowd chanted Youve been doing this for months, Ted and Youre just like them as he discussed being tear-gassed with national media.

Whenthe national spotlight was on the presence of federal officers in Portland and as many local elected officials also condemnedthese officers behavior some activists saidbrutality by local law enforcement wasgetting pushed out of the conversation.

Danialle James, a longtime Portland community activist and part of Dont Shoot Portland, said Wheeler, who is Portlands police commissioner, has unleashed a lot of violence on Portland, and that his response to protests set the groundwork for what (federal law enforcement) can do to us.

This was unleashed on us long before the federal government got here, she said. Its important to remind folks that while local law enforcement is sitting back and just watching except for (a couple of recent) of nights they painted the picture for how terrible to treat folks here.

James said there is a danger in focusing too heavily on the actions of federal law enforcement agencies and not on the Portland Police Bureau because, she said, it stands to overshadow what we were going through before the feds even got to town.

She is not alone in this sentiment. A number of local journalists and activists have reported this from the ground.

Elliot Young, a professor at Lewis and Clark College, described a similar pattern in an opinion article for the Houston Chronicle.

As the national media focuses on the unconstitutional abductions of protesters from the streets of Portland and the nightly litany of assaults on protesters, the much longer and more persistent history of local police engaging in some of the very same attacks is lost, he wrote.

While the Portland Police Bureau and other local law enforcement agencies have not been reported to use snatch-and-grab style detainments, many say their conduct echoes the tone and tactics of the federal law enforcement agencies response to Portlnad protests.

Since the George Floyd protests erupted in Portland, the local police have been using tear gas, pepper spray and flash bang grenades to disperse crowds of peaceful protesters, Young wrote.

PORTLAND PROTESTS: Pain, arrests and trauma: 4 injured protesters share their stories

These tactics, also deployed by federal law enforcement agencies, have gotten both federal and local law enforcement sued a number of times by a variety of parties, including Dont Shoot Portland, the Wall of Moms and Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum.

The suits primarily focus on both federal and local law enforcements extreme use of tear gas, similar chemical agents and potentially deadly crowd control munitions, and their targeting of press, medics and legal observers.

When asked about parallels between the actions of local and federal law enforcement, Rosenblum told Street Roots, Im not here to say that local law enforcements response has been perfect. There have been serious allegations about their use of force and the targeting of journalists and legal observers.

She said that while there may have been some missteps by PPB, the federal law enforcement agencies who are not accountable to Portlanders or to Oregonians in general have deployed violence and tactics which simply have no place in Portland streets and I believe do go beyond what we have seen (from Portland police).

To Rosenblum, the issue is uninvited, unwelcome federal officers, pursuing illegitimate goals, through means that seem to be illegal. She said the tactics that theyre using to quell the protests are designed to scare people and have often been targeted at journalists, legal observers and even medics.

Stressing that Portland police are more accountable to Portlanders and Oregonians than federal agents, Rosenblum pointed to a 14-day restraining order preventing Portland Police Bureau from using tear gas.

In a June special session, the state Legislature banned the use of tear gas, but the bureau has dodged the new restriction by frequently designating protests a riot rather than an unlawful assembly. The states ban on tear gas excludes situations where police declare a riot.

Maybe we need to address the definition of a riot, Rosenblum said when asked about this. Maybe the definition of a riot is too broad.

A blanket ban on tear gas is among bills Oregon lawmakers will consider either during another special session in August or during the regular session next year.

Both federal law enforcement and Portland police have ventured into the streets, seriously injuring protesters while deploying immense amounts of crowd control munitions and riot control agents, beating protesters and making extensive arrests.

OPINION: Struck by a rubber bullet: My experience as a Black woman at a Portland protest

Since the start of George Floyd protests in Portland, the local police bureau has arrested arrested more than 460 people, according to The Oregonian. Analysis of the U.S. Department of Homeland Securitys press releases and reporting by The Oregonian revealed that throughout the protests, federal law enforcement officers have arrested a least 77 people.

Local reporting has also documented widespread brutality by both federal and local law enforcement.

STREET ROOTS INTERVIEW: Feds sprayed chemicals into eyes of retired ER nurse and veteran

But beyond operating similarly, reporting from The Oregonian has shown the two agencies have worked together throughout the protests. Following outcry about this cooperation, City Council on July 22 banned Portland police from working with federal law enforcement agencies.

However, the two have worked together as recently as July 26 to clear areas and make arrests, according to Department of Homeland Security press releases.

This relationship between federal and local law enforcement is not new. In June 2018, journalist Mike Bivins tweeted videos of the Department of Homeland Securitys Federal Protective Service making arrests and firing crowd control munitions at protesters opposing fascist groups.

The practice of federal law enforcement agencies snatching people up is also not new, activist Morgan Godvin and legal Scholar Leo Beletsky note note in The Appeal. They explain agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement,which has also participated in the federal response to protests,do this every day in communities of color.

The Portland Police Bureau and Homeland Securitys Customs and Border Patrol stressed that they have different goals in their responses to Portland protests. Portland police told Street Roots it works to manage events with the goal of life safety while not allowing criminal acts. Border Patrol told Street Roots its officers have been deployed to Portland in direct support of the Presidential Executive Order and the newly established DHS Protecting American Communities Task Force (PACT) to support the Federal Protective Service (FPS).

However, both President Donald Trump and Daryl Turner, the head of the police union, Portland Police Association, have used similar language in describing the need for law enforcement talking about a city under siege by rioters. The two have both also criticized Portlands elected leadership.

Neither Turner nor the Portland Police Association responded to Street Roots request for comment.

Meanwhile, many of Oregons elected officials have condemned the presence of federal law enforcement while mostly ignoring the actions of local police.

Gov. Kate Brown and Oregons Democratic congressional delegation Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley and Reps. Earl Blumenauer, Suzanne Bonamici, Peter DeFazio and Kurt Schrader have published a combined 40 press releases on the conduct of federal law enforcement from May 28, when the protests started, to July 28, a couple of days before the federal officers began withdrawing from Portland.

None of them published any press releases about the actions of local law enforcement agencies during the same period of time.

Merkley and Wyden both responded to requests for comments for this article, but neither addressed Street Roots questions related to local polices behavior during the protests. Rather, both highlighted their recent work on national police reform legislation, including the Enhancing Oversight to End Discrimination in Policing Act.

Oregonians elected me to focus on the federal side, Wyden wrote. And thats exactly what Ive been doing by using all the tools available to push back against federal forces occupying our city uninvited, inciting violence and attacking peaceful protesters. Ending these abuses is my top priority.

Among state lawmakers, Oregon House Speaker Tina Kotek (D-Portland) strongly condemned Portland Police Bureaus violent and aggressive responses to protests, and in a marathon special session in June, Oregon legislators passed a number of police reform laws.

Among Portland elected officials, however, there was a split.

Wheeler, who did not respond to Street Roots request for comment, published a number of press releases condemning the actions of federal law enforcement agencies in Portland. He did not publish any criticism of the actions of local law enforcement, though he did once tweet that the Portland Police Bureaus targeting of the press was extremely concerning.

Commissioners Chloe Eudaly and Jo Ann Hardesty were the strongest voices on City Council against local law enforcements response to protests. Both have repeatedly blasted the actions of federal and local law enforcement officers for their brutality at protests.

Hardesty, a longtime community activist and police reform advocate, speaking on OPBs Think Out Loud, discussed her criticisms of Portland police in response to protests as well as a number of reforms she has been pushing. She did not respond to Street Roots request for comment.

Eudaly drew parallels between the federal forces behavior during Portlands protests and that of the local police.

The tactics being deployed by federal forces are nothing new to activists in Portland, who are accustomed to violent crowd control tactics by the Portland police, Eudaly told Street Roots in an email.

She stressed the importance of not losing sight of the fact the nation is in the midst of an outcry over police brutality against the Black community.

Many elected officials throughout our region recognize the need to transform our approach to policing and public safety, Eudaly said in her July 29 email, but that conversation has been overshadowed by this federal occupation. With yesterdays announcement of the Reimagine Oregon plan, and todays announcement of a withdrawal of federal forces from our city, the conversation is already refocusing on racial justice.

She said that while a significant amount control over the Portland Police Bureau has been bargained away by past Councils, the city still has control over its budget and position authority.

Thats not the case with the federal forces occupying our city, she said. Now that the federal government appears to be standing down, we need to get our own house in order.

Commissioner Amanda Fritz, who didnt respond to Street Roots request for comment, released a statement in which she condemned the actions of federal law enforcement officers and noted that policing is a part of a much larger system of oppression, but she stopped short of criticizing any aspect of local law enforcement agencies responses to protests.

Regardless of the actions and inactions of elected officials, all parties agree protests, which have lasted more than 65days will continue.

Federal law enforcement began withdrawing from Portland Thursday, July 30, and during the following two nights of mass, peaceful protest downtown, there was no obvious police presence and no conflict. It was a drastic change from nights of unrest leading up to the deployment of federal troops. It's yet to be seen how long Portland police will stand downas the protests continue to draw thousands of people to the city's center.

Meanwhile, James, who has been on the ground since the beginning of protests in Portland, said she is going to continue to hold Portland police accountable and exercise her rights. She has been supportive of Dont Shoot Portland founder Teressa Raifords mayoral write-in campaign.

STREET ROOTS PODCAST: Talking with Teressa Raiford of Dont Shoot Portland

Its important for us to speak out. Its important for us to be able to be out there and freely speak our voices, James said. So, my fight will continue in holding them accountable, and I look forward to that process.

View post:

Portland police are no better than the feds, activists say - Street Roots News

Olorogun Moses Taiga, President-General of the Urhobo Progress Union

By Okejoto Gochua

A century old history of rebellion against oppression and taxation without representation was re-enacted at Otor- Udu on Monday 27th July, 2020 with the marking of the 1927 anti-taxation revolt by the Urhobo and all the other ethnic nationalities that made up the Warri ( Delta ) Province; led by Chief Oshue Ogbiyerin of Orhuwhorun in Udu LGA of Delta State .

The event was organised under the auspices of the Udje Heritage Centre (UHC) and the Achoja Research Council (ARC).

The memorial event was attended by eminent personalities, dignitaries, leaders of socio-cultural organisations, women, youth, scholars, writers, activists, journalists and media experts. The occasion featured addresses, speeches, testimonies, musical performances, drama sketches on the 1927 Revolution, prayers and invocations. It was chaired by Chief (Hon.) Andrew Orugbo, the former Chairman of Udu LGA, Delta State Commissioner for Justice and Attorney General, and the current Chairman of Council of the Delta State Polytechnic, Otefe-Oghara. The President-General of the Urhobo Progress Union (UPU) Olorogun Moses Taiga (JP) was the Special Guest of Honour and the Distinguished Guest of Honour was Professor Amos Agbe Utuama (SAN) former Deputy Governor of Delta State (2007-2015).

The Royal Fathers of Honour were HRM (Barr.) Emmanuel Delekpe (JP) Ohworhu I, the Ovie of Udu Kingdom and HRM Matthew Ediri Egbi (JP) Owawha II, the Okobaro of Ughievwen Kingdom. Other Guests of Honour were Hon (Barr.) Evelyn Oboro, former Member, House of Representatives, Hon. Chief Peter Uviejitobor, Member, Delta State House of Assembly, Olorogun Vincent Oyibode (JP) Hon Commissioner, DESOPADEC (Udu, Ughelli South, Uvwie and Urhobo Kingdoms of Warri), Chief (Hon.) Jite Brown, the Chairman, Udu LGA, Chief Emmanuel Ono Okumagba (JP), Chairman, Urhobo President-Generals Forum, Chief Godwin Notoma, President-General, Udu Communities and Executive Committee Members of the Pan-Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF), Delta State Chapter.

The political and intellectual significance of the ceremony was also evident in the credentials of the Speakers, namely, Prof (Mrs) Rose Oro Aziza (former Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Delta State University, Abraka, Prof Sunny Awhefeada, Dean, Faculty of Arts, Delsu, Chief (Mrs) Margaret Unukegwo, Fmr Commissioner, Bendel State, and Member, Advisory and Peace-Building Council, Delta State, and Hon. Clement R. Oshue, former Vice-Chairman, Orhuwhorun Community. Entertainment was by the popular music maestros of Olorogun Oghene Bokor, Mrs Rume Otovotoma, and Mrs Ruth Christopher (nee Juju Debala). Overall coordination was by Prof Godini G. Darah, Chairman, Delta State Chapter of PANDEF and Delta State Delegate, 2014 National Conference.

His Royal Majesty, Barr Emmanuel Delekpe , the Ovie of Udu Kingdom spoke on the need for constant remembering and retelling of our stories so that we do not forget.

He said Oshue was a great man by his very courageous actions against oppression and injustice.

The Keynote Speakers and Stakeholders examined the political and economic significance of the Anti-Taxation revolt and affirmed that it was a revolutionary initiative that redefined the historical and cultural identity of the Western Niger Delta. According to Prof Godini G.Darah it was agreed that our ancestors undertook the audacious revolt to challenge British colonial policies of exploitation and injustice against the peoples of the region. In the light of these facts, we the inheritors of that proud heritage are bound by historical duty to revive that spirit of nationalism and self-determination in our current struggles to liberate the Niger Delta from decades of economic plunder and neglect as well as political oppression perpetuated by the Nigerian government and its foreign accomplices.

Accordingly, the Stakeholders in their communique resolved as follows:

1.

(i) Oppressive taxation and government neglect were the immediate causes of the 1927 uprising. Considering that peoples of the five nations still suffer from these unjust and oppressive policies 100 years after, therefore the meeting called on the Government of Delta State to grant a three-year tax holiday to low-income groups, and Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs) to enable them cope with the challenges of the COVID-19 Pandemic.

(ii) Abolition of all forms of illegal and arbitrary taxes, levies, and bribe-taking by corrupt members of the Police, Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), Joint Task Force (JTF), Customs, Immigration, Vehicle Inspection Officers (VIO), State Tax Board, Traffic Wardens, and Mobile Courts, Local Government Revenue Personnel as well as touts and vendors who behave worse than the British Warrant Officers and tax police during the colonial period 100 years ago.

(iii) In place of these menacing tax and extortion touts, Delta State Government should develop efficient corruption-free methods of raising public revenue by appointing accredited agents and vendors with capacity to deploy modern, technology-compliant instruments for highways, markets, super stores, educational institutions, courts, community centres, public facilities, utilities, etc. More revenue will be earned through these electronic methods.

2. The historic memorial gathering took place at Otor-Udu, in Udu LGA and the operational headquarters of the Oshue-led Revolution of 1927. Otor-Udu is also one of the host communities of the Utorogu Gas Plant, the largest in Black Africa. Therefore, it was resolved that:

a. Urgent and necessary measures be taken to make the Government of Nigeria and the management of the Utorogu Gas Plant to implement all policies relating to local content by way of employment, contracts, surveillance services and social responsibility obligations.

b. Completion of the Gas Revolution Industrial Park (GRIP) at Ogidigben and its Deep Sea Port at Okerenkoko in Warri Southwest LGA.

c. Establishment of Utorogu Institute of Technology (UIT) and Amai Institute of Technology (AIT) to develop global cities and infrastructure like those of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Silicon Valley in California State, USA.

3. As a fitting tribute to their sacrifice and patriotic spirit, the Government of Delta State and the appropriate Local Government Councils should name public places and centres after Chief Oshue Ogbiyerin and the other revolutionary leaders of the 1927 Anti-Taxation Movement to immortalise their legacy and inspire new generations of brave and selfless leaders.

4. The Stakeholders were gratified to note that the 1927 Anti-Taxation revolt was the first major anti-colonial uprising by minority ethnic groups in Southern Nigeria after the 1914 Amalgamation Policy by Captain Frederick Lugard. While saluting the bravery and sagacity of Oshue and his comrades, the meeting enjoined contemporary generations to celebrate other heroes and heroines of our people, including Ovie Oghwe, the Agbarha-Otor King arrested and exiled with Oba Ovonramwen Nogbaisi of Benin by the British in 1897, General Ogidigbo of Ughievwen Kingdom, HRM Ovedje Sadjere of Ovwor, Urhobo first-millionaire monarch; Chief Mukoro Mowoe, Messrs McNeil Gabriel Ejaife and Ezekiel Igho (the first Urhobo university graduates), Chief T.E.A. Salubi (first Urhobo Government Minister), Dr. Frederick Esiri (first medical doctor) and Chief Samuel Jereton Mariere, first Governor of Midwestern Region (1964-1966).

Other Urhobo cultural icons are Chief Yamu Numa of Ekuigbo, author of the book, Urhobo: Pride of a Nation (1948), Mrs Alice Obahor, eminent woman politician and merchant, Chief Michael Ibru, Africas pre-eminent business tycoon, Chief A.T. Rerri, pioneer investor in electronics education, Professor Frank Ukoli (first Urhobo Professor), General David Ejoor, (pioneer Military Governor of Midwestern Region), Dr. Mark Otedoh, expert-inventor of raffia palm industries, Professors Omafume Onoge, Onigu Otite and Peter Ekeh for global scholarship, Comrade Frank Ovie-Kokori, leader of Oil Workers Strike of 1994 against Gen. Sani Abachas terrorist regime, Ms Blessing Okagbare, Africas queen of Athletics and Olympic medalist.

5. The meeting lamented the problem of youth alienation and disorientation arising from the failure of parents and elders to inculcate cherished Urhobo values of hard work, industry, honesty and equity. A call was made to the leaders of Urhobo Kingdoms to rise up from their stupor and craze for material wealth to work with various government agencies to incorporate into the education curricula the traditional principles of incorruptible and accountable leadership, trado-medical knowledge, enterprise, and self-reliance.

Mothers, the prime managers of families are to re-educate themselves by being the cradle counsellors of children to insulate them from negative, foreign influences of riches-without-labour, moral laxity, sexual indiscipline, and tendency to criminal conduct. These are the best ways to engender the spirit of nationalism and revolutionary leadership epitomised by Oshue Ogbiyerin and his compatriots of Ijaw, Itsekiri, Isoko and Ukwuani.

6. On insecurity and influx of undesirable strangers into the Western Niger Delta, the Stakeholders gathering urged the apex socio-cultural organisations of the Urhobo, Ijaw, Itsekiri, Isoko, Ukwuani, Ika and Igbo nations to take immediate steps to free their lands of such elements (armed herdsmen, kidnappers, criminals, nomadic miscreants, etc) that threaten the peace, stability and socio-economic environment of the region.

7. The meeting expressed disappointment about the shameful conduct of Niger Delta executives at the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) and other interventionist agencies. The recent probe on corruption and graft by the National Assembly exposed unpatriotic and greedy Niger Delta personnel who have converted the NDDC into a source of illegal wealth acquisitions, responsible for the low performance of the Commission over the years.

The meeting endorsed severe penalties for these enemies of the region; they should be investigated and prosecuted for underdeveloping the region and for giving the false impression that the people of the region are not accountable and reliable in public office. All those found guilty in the probe must be compelled to refund all stolen resources and face appropriate jail terms. The meeting also observed that these scandalous cases of graft and corruption are common primarily because the Federal Government deliberately appoints political sycophants to head the agencies. The Government should abide by the Provision of the NDDC Act, dismantle the illegal Interim Management Committee, inaugurate the Board already confirmed by the National assembly, and pay the over One Trillion Naira arrears of Federal Government subvention to the NDDC to enable it function effectively.

8. Stakeholders underscored the point that the five nations of the former Warri Province are bona fide indigenes of their lands and waterways richly endowed by God and Nature with oil, natural gas, solid minerals, forests and precious biodiversity resources. It was further affirmed that revenues from our oil and gas resources account for 90% of Nigerias export earnings and are the mainstay of the national economy and political survival. Regrettably, the benefits of these abundant resources have been denied our people due to deliberate government neglect and punitive laws and policies for many decades. Consequently, the Niger Delta has been reduced to the poorest and the most wretched oil-rich region of the world. To redeem the region from perpetual political and economic slavery, the five nations of Urhobo, Ijaw, Itsekiri, Isoko and Ukwuani are implored to pursue the struggle for equity, justice and federalist autonomy through the peaceful platform of Restructuring endorsed by the Pan-Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF) and its allies in the other geo-political zones, with particular focus on the implementation of the progressive recommendations of the 2014 National Conference.

__________ A century old history of resistance to oppression and taxation without representation was re-enacted at Otor- Udu on Monday 27th July, 2020 with the marking of the 1927 anti-taxation revolt by the Urhobo and all the other ethnic nationalities that made up the Warri ( Delta ) Province; led by Chief Oshue Ogbiyerin of Orhuwhorun in Udu LGA of Delta State .

The event was organised under the auspices of the Udje Heritage Centre (UHC) and the Achoja Research Council (ARC).

The memorial event was attended by eminent personalities, dignitaries, leaders of socio-cultural organisations, women, youth, scholars, writers, activists, journalists and media experts. The occasion featured addresses, speeches, testimonies, musical performances, drama sketches on the 1927 Revolution, prayers and invocations. It was chaired by Chief (Hon.) Andrew Orugbo, the former Chairman of Udu LGA, Delta State Commissioner for Justice and Attorney General, and the current Chairman of Council of the Delta State Polytechnic, Otefe-Oghara. The President-General of the Urhobo Progress Union (UPU) Olorogun Moses Taiga (JP) was the Special Guest of Honour and the Distinguished Guest of Honour was Professor Amos Agbe Utuama (SAN) former Deputy Governor of Delta State (2007-2015).

The Royal Fathers of Honour were HRM (Barr.) Emmanuel Delekpe (JP) Ohworhu I, the Ovie of Udu Kingdom and HRM Matthew Ediri Egbi (JP) Owawha II, the Okobaro of Ughievwen Kingdom. Other Guests of Honour were Hon (Barr.) Evelyn Oboro, former Member, House of Representatives, Hon. Chief Peter Uviejitobor, Member, Delta State House of Assembly, Olorogun Vincent Oyibode (JP) Hon Commissioner, DESOPADEC (Udu, Ughelli South, Uvwie and Urhobo Kingdoms of Warri), Chief (Hon.) Jite Brown, the Chairman, Udu LGA, Chief Emmanuel Ono Okumagba (JP), Chairman, Urhobo President-Generals Forum, Chief Godwin Notoma, President-General, Udu Communities and Executive Committee Members of the Pan-Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF), Delta State Chapter.

The political and intellectual significance of the ceremony was also evident in the credentials of the Speakers, namely, Prof (Mrs) Rose Oro Aziza (former Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Delta State University, Abraka, Prof Sunny Awhefeada, Dean, Faculty of Arts, Delsu, Chief (Mrs) Margaret Unukegwo, Fmr Commissioner, Bendel State, and Member, Advisory and Peace-Building Council, Delta State, and Hon. Clement R. Oshue, former Vice-Chairman, Orhuwhorun Community. Entertainment was by the popular music maestros of Olorogun Oghene Bokor, Mrs Rume Otovotoma, and Mrs Ruth Christopher (nee Juju Debala). Overall coordination was by Prof Godini G. Darah, Chairman, Delta State Chapter of PANDEF and Delta State Delegate, 2014 National Conference.

His Royal Majesty, Barr Emmanuel Delekpe , the Ovie of Udu Kingdom spoke on the need for constant remembering and retelling of our stories so that we do not forget.

He said Oshue was a great man by his very courageous actions against oppression and injustice.

The Keynote Speakers and Stakeholders examined the political and economic significance of the Anti-Taxation revolt and affirmed that it was a revolutionary initiative that redefined the historical and cultural identity of the Western Niger Delta. According to Prof Godini G.Darah it was agreed that our ancestors undertook the audacious revolt to challenge British colonial policies of exploitation and injustice against the peoples of the region. In the light of these facts, we the inheritors of that proud heritage are bound by historical duty to revive that spirit of nationalism and self-determination in our current struggles to liberate the Niger Delta from decades of economic plunder and neglect as well as political oppression perpetuated by the Nigerian government and its foreign accomplices.

Accordingly, the Stakeholders in their communique resolved as follows:

1.

(i) Oppressive taxation and government neglect were the immediate causes of the 1927 uprising. Considering that peoples of the five nations still suffer from these unjust and oppressive policies 100 years after, therefore the meeting called on the Government of Delta State to grant a three-year tax holiday to low-income groups, and Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs) to enable them cope with the challenges of the COVID-19 Pandemic.

(ii) Abolition of all forms of illegal and arbitrary taxes, levies, and bribe-taking by corrupt members of the Police, Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), Joint Task Force (JTF), Customs, Immigration, Vehicle Inspection Officers (VIO), State Tax Board, Traffic Wardens, and Mobile Courts, Local Government Revenue Personnel as well as touts and vendors who behave worse than the British Warrant Officers and tax police during the colonial period 100 years ago.

(iii) In place of these menacing tax and extortion touts, Delta State Government should develop efficient corruption-free methods of raising public revenue by appointing accredited agents and vendors with capacity to deploy modern, technology-compliant instruments for highways, markets, super stores, educational institutions, courts, community centres, public facilities, utilities, etc. More revenue will be earned through these electronic methods.

2. The historic memorial gathering took place at Otor-Udu, in Udu LGA and the operational headquarters of the Oshue-led Revolution of 1927. Otor-Udu is also one of the host communities of the Utorogu Gas Plant, the largest in Black Africa. Therefore, it was resolved that:

a. Urgent and necessary measures be taken to make the Government of Nigeria and the management of the Utorogu Gas Plant to implement all policies relating to local content by way of employment, contracts, surveillance services and social responsibility obligations.

b. Completion of the Gas Revolution Industrial Park (GRIP) at Ogidigben and its Deep Sea Port at Okerenkoko in Warri Southwest LGA.

c. Establishment of Utorogu Institute of Technology (UIT) and Amai Institute of Technology (AIT) to develop global cities and infrastructure like those of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Silicon Valley in California State, USA.

3. As a fitting tribute to their sacrifice and patriotic spirit, the Government of Delta State and the appropriate Local Government Councils should name public places and centres after Chief Oshue Ogbiyerin and the other revolutionary leaders of the 1927 Anti-Taxation Movement to immortalise their legacy and inspire new generations of brave and selfless leaders.

4. The Stakeholders were gratified to note that the 1927 Anti-Taxation revolt was the first major anti-colonial uprising by minority ethnic groups in Southern Nigeria after the 1914 Amalgamation Policy by Captain Frederick Lugard. While saluting the bravery and sagacity of Oshue and his comrades, the meeting enjoined contemporary generations to celebrate other heroes and heroines of our people, including Ovie Oghwe, the Agbarha-Otor King arrested and exiled with Oba Ovonramwen Nogbaisi of Benin by the British in 1897, General Ogidigbo of Ughievwen Kingdom, HRM Ovedje Sadjere of Ovwor, Urhobo first-millionaire monarch; Chief Mukoro Mowoe, Messrs McNeil Gabriel Ejaife and Ezekiel Igho (the first Urhobo university graduates), Chief T.E.A. Salubi (first Urhobo Government Minister), Dr. Frederick Esiri (first medical doctor) and Chief Samuel Jereton Mariere, first Governor of Midwestern Region (1964-1966).

Other Urhobo cultural icons are Chief Yamu Numa of Ekuigbo, author of the book, Urhobo: Pride of a Nation (1948), Mrs Alice Obahor, eminent woman politician and merchant, Chief Michael Ibru, Africas pre-eminent business tycoon, Chief A.T. Rerri, pioneer investor in electronics education, Professor Frank Ukoli (first Urhobo Professor), General David Ejoor, (pioneer Military Governor of Midwestern Region), Dr. Mark Otedoh, expert-inventor of raffia palm industries, Professors Omafume Onoge, Onigu Otite and Peter Ekeh for global scholarship, Comrade Frank Ovie-Kokori, leader of Oil Workers Strike of 1994 against Gen. Sani Abachas terrorist regime, Ms Blessing Okagbare, Africas queen of Athletics and Olympic medalist.

5. The meeting lamented the problem of youth alienation and disorientation arising from the failure of parents and elders to inculcate cherished Urhobo values of hard work, industry, honesty and equity. A call was made to the leaders of Urhobo Kingdoms to rise up from their stupor and craze for material wealth to work with various government agencies to incorporate into the education curricula the traditional principles of incorruptible and accountable leadership, trado-medical knowledge, enterprise, and self-reliance.

Mothers, the prime managers of families are to re-educate themselves by being the cradle counsellors of children to insulate them from negative, foreign influences of riches-without-labour, moral laxity, sexual indiscipline, and tendency to criminal conduct. These are the best ways to engender the spirit of nationalism and revolutionary leadership epitomised by Oshue Ogbiyerin and his compatriots of Ijaw, Itsekiri, Isoko and Ukwuani.

6. On insecurity and influx of undesirable strangers into the Western Niger Delta, the Stakeholders gathering urged the apex socio-cultural organisations of the Urhobo, Ijaw, Itsekiri, Isoko, Ukwuani, Ika and Igbo nations to take immediate steps to free their lands of such elements (armed herdsmen, kidnappers, criminals, nomadic miscreants, etc) that threaten the peace, stability and socio-economic environment of the region.

7. The meeting expressed disappointment about the shameful conduct of Niger Delta executives at the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) and other interventionist agencies. The recent probe on corruption and graft by the National Assembly exposed unpatriotic and greedy Niger Delta personnel who have converted the NDDC into a source of illegal wealth acquisitions, responsible for the low performance of the Commission over the years.

The meeting endorsed severe penalties for these enemies of the region; they should be investigated and prosecuted for underdeveloping the region and for giving the false impression that the people of the region are not accountable and reliable in public office. All those found guilty in the probe must be compelled to refund all stolen resources and face appropriate jail terms. The meeting also observed that these scandalous cases of graft and corruption are common primarily because the Federal Government deliberately appoints political sycophants to head the agencies. The Government should abide by the Provision of the NDDC Act, dismantle the illegal Interim Management Committee, inaugurate the Board already confirmed by the National assembly, and pay the over One Trillion Naira arrears of Federal Government subvention to the NDDC to enable it function effectively.

8. Stakeholders underscored the point that the five nations of the former Warri Province are bona fide indigenes of their lands and waterways richly endowed by God and Nature with oil, natural gas, solid minerals, forests and precious biodiversity resources. It was further affirmed that revenues from our oil and gas resources account for 90% of Nigerias export earnings and are the mainstay of the national economy and political survival. Regrettably, the benefits of these abundant resources have been denied our people due to deliberate government neglect and punitive laws and policies for many decades. Consequently, the Niger Delta has been reduced to the poorest and the most wretched oil-rich region of the world. To redeem the region from perpetual political and economic slavery, the five nations of Urhobo, Ijaw, Itsekiri, Isoko and Ukwuani are implored to pursue the struggle for equity, justice and federalist autonomy through the peaceful platform of Restructuring endorsed by the Pan-Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF) and its allies in the other geo-political zones, with particular focus on the implementation of the progressive recommendations of the 2014 National Conference. In conclusion, there is the urgent need to underscore the point that Oshues Revolt was the first post amalgamation revolt in the southern region among the so-called minority groups. Prof Sunny Awhefeada noted how the revolt inspired a similar one in Owerri Province in 1929. He said the revolt also encouraged the formation of the UPU in 1931; which dovetailed into what he termed the Internal Colonialism and the Enemy Within, Awhefeada lamented that at present the Whitemen are gone but our own brothers now Oppress us and underdevelop our region. He cited the shameful and embarrassing revelations at the ongoing NDDC probe which shows how our own Niger Delta politicians steal our Commonwealth.

Overall speaker after speaker hinted on the need for economic revival of Urhobo land through indigenous production as well as our youths making themselves available to be mentored by the elderly .

Original post:

The Otor-Udu Declaration for Justice and Resource Control - The News

KUALA LUMPUR - Supporters of ex-premier Najib Razak have thrown wild accusations about Malaysian Justice Mohd Nazlan Mohd Ghazali, who found ex-premier Najib Razak guilty on Tuesday (July 28), as they try to discredit the court's judgment.

A staunch supporter of Najib, Mr Ramesh Rao, who leads a non-governmental organisation (NGO), claimed Justice Nazlan was either the grandson or grandnephew of former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad.

Others, in an attempt to show the judge is sympathetic to the opposition parties, pointed out on social media that Mr Nazlan was one of the judges who acquitted and discharged a lawmaker from the Democratic Action Party (DAP) on charges of supporting the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam terrorist group.

Datuk Lokman Noor Adam, who was a senior officer at the finance ministry when Najib was the finance minister, accused the High Court of making a "political decision".He claimed Najib is a threat to both Tun Dr Mahathir and Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin, according to Utusan Malaysia website.

"I am sure that what happened today (Tuesday) is the continuation of oppression conducted by Pakatan Harapan (PH)," he was quoted as telling reporters on Tuesday.

PH was ousted from power nearly five months ago, and replaced by the Perikatan Nasional government that included Najib's Umno party as an alliance member.

Najib was on Tuesday found guilty of corruption and sentenced to 12 years in jail and fined RM210 million (S$68 million) by the High Court, in the first of five trials he faces relating to the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) graft scandal.

Judge Nazlan found Najib, 67, guilty of every single charge, including abuse of power, and multiple counts of criminal breach of trust and money laundering for illegally receiving RM42 million from SRC International, a former subsidiary of 1MDB.

Contacted by Malaysiakini on Tuesday, Dr Mahathir's eldest child, Ms Marina Mahathir, 63, said such claims were untrue.

"We should be flattered that they think such a learned judge is related to us but he's not," she told Malaysiakini.

Dr Mahathir's eldest grandchild is 33 years old.

Justice Nazlan, who took over the case in August 2018, was reported then to be 51 years old.

He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Jurisprudence and a Master of Arts from the University of Oxford, and is a Barrister at Law of Lincoln's Inn, The Star newspaper reported then.

Dr Mahathir's youngest son, MP Mukhriz Mahathir, called the claims ofthe judge being related to his family as "baseless".

"The Attorney-General's Chambers should investigate these claims as they insult the judicial institution," he said in a post on Twitter late on Tuesday.

A group of Umnos young lawyers asked supporters to be careful so as not to be in contempt of the court and landthemselves in jail.

"Everything that has happened since the charges were laid is a process for Najib to seek justice," said Umno Youth young lawyers secretariat head Nik Saiful Adli Burhan,Malaysiakini on Wednesday (July 29) quoted him as saying. "We supporters should not (act in contempt) and land ourselves in jail".

He urged party supporters to respect the courts and the judicial system.

See more here:

Supporters of Najib throw wild claims at judge who found him guilty to discredit judgment - The Straits Times