The growing recognition that monuments to white men who supported oppression have no place in our public spaces has been a long time coming. It took a new generation of activists aroused by the public execution of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter Movement to affect change. We've witnessed predominantly young protesters of every description fighting for justice and equality. The protesters have identified these public monuments as symbols of racial repression and took action by removing them.

I support the protesters' use of force in removing public installations which they identified as symbols of racial injustice. These racist tributes and narratives had been maintained at taxpayer expense for decades and longer. Yet, there has been no concerted effort by public officials in many jurisdictions to effect their removal.

The nation has been captivated by the scope and breadth of the George Floyd protests which dwarf all previous grassroots political movements. The collective judgment of these protesters matters, but some of their methods for being heard have been controversial, including their broad condemnation of historic monuments and an an array of historic persons. Though I believe the protesters have gotten it right for the most part, they wield a blunt instrument.

Not surprisingly, President Trump once again chimed in to condemn the removal of Confederate monuments while vilifying the protesters. He appears oblivious to the moral force of this protest movement, and thinks it galvanizes his base to threaten prosecution and long prison terms for the protesters, labeling them as Marxists, anarchists, and looters while defending the Confederacy and its leaders men who took up arms against this republic. Unfortunately, these views are held by far too many.

In my formative years, I recall my first visit to Washington, DC. I toured the Capitol building and the hall of statues, and I wondered why in addition to the heroes, the hall contained tributes to Confederate military and political leaders. Here in the halls of Congress, the defenders of slavery are enshrined. Why this mixed messaging? What did their presence say about how I'm viewed as an African American? I recall my unease.

Over time, the public has grown accustomed to these political relics and has become numb to the hypocrisy of the public display of tributes to men whose notoriety stems from rebellion, war, and the tyranny of the antebellum south. For many Americans, these symbols have always been troubling. If the protesters hadn't taken action and provoked a long-overdue reckoning, who would have taken the initiative and when?

I find Confederate war monuments to be particularly objectionable. They amount to a public apology for defending the union and waging war against slavery. Many Americans seem to have forgotten that the Confederates were traitors to the United States. Their act of secession led to 215,000 deaths on the battlefield and polarized the civilian population for generations.

Trump's statements supporting these Confederate tributes are all the more loathsome because he is once again sending a message to Americans that there were "good people on both sides" and that the "good people" who fought to defend the institution of slavery were somehow justified.

Despite Trumps hostile opposition, the multitudes of Black Lives Matter protesters reinforce the inescapable conclusion that it is morally wrong to permit monuments with racist connotations to remain as permanent fixtures in our civic landscape. This protest-driven campaign to cleanse our public venues of racist symbols has been questioned by others. This was inevitable because there isn't a consensus on what monuments warrant removal and which do not.

The Bay Area finds itself in the midst of this controversy. The justification for the removal by protestors of monuments celebrating Father Junipero Sera and President Ulysses Grant, as well as the defacement of a bust honoring Judge Donald McCollum, have been sources of division.

The statue commemorating Sera which had adorned the entrance to Mission Despite Father Seras documented history of forcing the Christian conversion of Native Americans in California and contributing to their enslavement, the Catholic church continues to support and defend his legacy.

The protesters toppling of the Sera monument along with one honoring President Ulysses Grant in Golden Gate Park was undeserved in the eyes of some. President Ulysses Grant was notoriously anti-Semitic and briefly owned a slave whom he later freed. He was also a Union general and played a pivotal role in the defeat of the Confederacy. After the departure of southern sympathizer Andrew Johnson, Grant assumed the presidency and deployed Union troops throughout the south to pacify southerners who were resisting emancipation and defying federal reforms. Federal policies included efforts to ensure the property rights of African Americans, the freedom of movement, and the right to attend school and hold public office. These policies became known as Reconstruction. The withdrawal of federal troops after President Grant left office brought about the end of Reconstruction and ushered in Jim Crow and legal segregation. Both Father Sera and President Grant are deeply flawed historical figures who legacies warrant reevaluation.

Passions in the Black community in Oakland were heightened when protesters defaced a bust honoring Judge Donald McCollum. Judge McCollum was one of the first Black superior court judges in California. A civil rights activist, leader of the local NAACP, and a defender of African Americans' civil rights. His bust is located on the plaza of the Elihu Harris State Building in Downtown Oakland. The protesters' misstep, in this case, may reveal an underlying conviction that those in authority perpetuated the system and all its failings without much research into their targets.

The destruction of politically motivated racist symbols is not censorship, and must not interfere with the responsibility of preserving important works of art that depict our nations racist and oppressive history towards Blacks, Native Americans, and others. We own this legacy and it should not be erased. I put the Washington High School murals in San Francisco in this category. The school's renowned murals were commissioned by the WPA during the Roosevelt administration. A number of scenes depict the horrific treatment of Blacks and others in graphic terms. These murals teach an important lesson and deserve preservation.

At one point in my career, work required that I drive extensively through the southern states. I traveled on roadways dedicated to Confederate military officers including Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, crossed bridges honoring secessionist Jefferson Davis and segregationist Senator John Stennis. Often when I would pull over in commercial areas, I would see the prominent display of Confederate battle flags, bumper stickers, and t-shirts with racist and anti-government messages.

It felt like the Confederacy was still alive and well. These images caused me to consider whether I belonged there, and I wondered how African Americans that live there handled being constantly surrounded by symbols of racial animus. I assume the chilling effect they produce is the point of it all.

Racial messaging like that changes the environment and influences the people who are exposed to it, white and Black. If the 14th Amendment grants equal protection under the law for all Americans, then public officials should be duty-bound to eradicate racist monuments on public property and to change the names of streets, highways, public schools, and other institutions that honor racist figures.

An important step forward, nationally, would be to replace the current $20 note featuring President Andrew Jackson with a $20 note honoring Harriet Tubman. Jackson was responsible for driving Native Americans off their ancestral lands and the wholesale destruction of their tribes and cultures. He was also an enthusiastic slave owner. Tubman was a 19th century African American patriot, a prominent abolitionist, an early feminist, and civil rights icon. The Harriet Tubman note, which had been scheduled for release, is not yet in circulation due to opposition by the Trump Administration.

Removing these symbols alone will not eliminate racism in this country. But it's instructive to see how the German government views all symbols of hate and celebrations of Nazis. They now acknowledge that the Holocaust would not have been possible without the participation and acquiescence of most Germans, and they know the negative impact that the exposure to racist symbols and propaganda have on attitude and behavior. Therefore the government has enacted laws that ban all symbols promoting anti-Semitism, fascism, Hitler, and the Nazi regime.

Germany is confronting the repercussions of Hitler's 10-year regime over 80 years ago. Here in the United States, we are attempting to combat the legacy of 400 years of colonization, slavery, human exploitation, and how that history contributed to police violence and discrimination in its many manifestations.

Will Black Lives Matter protests result in a new perspective on public installations and who we honor? I think they may. In the future, there must be careful consideration given to who is a hero worthy of public recognition and who is not. That decision should be made through a transparent process that is representative of our nation's diversity.

Previously: Op-Ed: Changing Dispatching Practices In Law Enforcement Can Save Lives

Elliott Jones is a community organizer, public speaker, & philanthropist. Originally from Oakland, he has been working to help forge cultural understanding as an advocate and activist from California to Florida and every between. He is the founder of the public interest organization Ensure Progress and is also the grandson of the legendary Dr. Maya Angelou. Elliott contributes thoughts to SFist about progress in the Bay Area.

Continued here:

Op-Ed: Which Monuments Should Come Down And What Should Replace Them? - SFist

For years, Israelis especially the liberal and left-leaning among them have been accused of being apathetic and leaving political activism to the more nationalistic and religious-minded. However, in light of their governments failure to prevent a second wave of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic with its devastating consequences, their prime minister being tried on corruption charges, and the dangerous and utterly irresponsible folly of the annexation idea, these elements in Israeli society are at last finding their voice again. There are now almost daily demonstrations in front of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus official residence, with people calling for his resignation, along with similar protests in other cities and towns.

It is hard to believe that Israels leader has not already admitted to himself that his time in office is up and the curtain will be coming down sooner rather than later. The only remaining issue is how much longer he will continue to drag Israel down the path of deepening divisions and political instability, while heading a paralyzed government at a time when the country urgently needs exactly the opposite kind of leadership. Israel needs a government that is on top of halting the pandemics progress, will embark on a massive economic recovery plan to deal with the devastating trail of destruction left in its wake, and will heal the schisms in society, many of which have been cynically exploited by Netanyahu in order to retain his position.

It is no longer possible to discern whether the governments decision-making machine is working for the good of the country or merely to delay, postpone indefinitely or eventually abandon Netanyahus trial altogether. It is almost inevitable, now that the trial judges have scheduled proceedings to resume in January and be held three days a week, that the minds of Netanyahu and his family all of whom are very much involved in Israeli politics will be overwhelmingly preoccupied with his struggle for acquittal.

Instead of uniting all the forces in the country to fight the coronavirus, Netanyahu, who despite being a very wealthy man always prefers others picking up the tab for his lavish lifestyle, opened a new front with Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit by asking the court to allow Michigan-based real estate magnate Spencer Partrich to support his legal team to the tune of 10 million shekels ($2.9 million) a request Mandelblit opposes. Add to this the Knessets recent approval of his request that it fund some of the costs of maintaining the familys private house in the upmarket coastal town of Caesaria, which would normally come from his own pocket under Israeli law, at a time when millions of Israelis are wrestling with debilitating economic hardships due to the pandemic, and the picture of a prime minister who is both shameless and detached from the daily realities of most of the people he was elected to serve becomes way too clear.

In the past, those who demonstrated in front of Netanyahus residency in Jerusalem and elsewhere tended to be identified as more left and liberal-leaning Israelis, who also happened to oppose the occupation and the oppression of the Palestinian people. But the increasing numbers of protesters show that a much wider cross-section of Israeli society has now become disillusioned with the prime minister.

The contrast between the ostentatious lifestyle of the Netanyahus, with their expectation that the public pay for it, and the current unprecedented level of unemployment, which is pushing people deeper into poverty as so many small businesses collapse and homes are in danger of being repossessed, has fueled peoples outrage and driven them to take to the streets. Restaurateurs, for example, have become the latest group to join the demonstrations, furious with a government that offers no clarity about how they should operate and that changes the rules almost daily, sometimes even hourly, causing immense financial harm.

There are now many signs of Netanyahus dwindling hold on Israeli politics. They chiefly relate to his corruption trial and mishandling of the pandemic, but his dismal track record on longer-term issues such as affordable housing or even preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear capability also indicate that he is failing miserably after more than a decade in power.

If the first phase of the spread of coronavirus was handled responsibly including closing the countrys borders early on, keeping most people under lockdown and quarantining those who were returning from abroad then the current second wave, which is having a far greater impact, can be mostly attributed to Netanyahus triumphalism and arrogance in the face of the virus. To enhance his standing in the midst of forming a coalition government, Netanyahu declared victory over the coronavirus and threw caution to the wind in rapidly allowing normal life to resume: A move that is now resulting in more than 1,000 infections a day, a severe uptick of those in a serious condition and in need of a ventilator, and a tragic increase in fatalities.

A much wider cross-section of Israeli society has now become disillusioned with the prime minister.

Yossi Mekelberg

Consequently, the prime ministers approval ratings are rapidly falling, and he has even found himself challenged by legislators from his own Likud party, who are questioning his handling of the pandemic. Furthermore, after many weeks of failure to do so, he has only very recently managed to appoint a coronavirus czar after the position was rejected by a number of high-profile candidates, who realized that they would not be given the necessary power to deal effectively with containing COVID-19, but instead were being set up as a scapegoat should things go wrong.

And now the water cannons are coming out. True to his undemocratic tendencies, early on in the pandemic Netanyahu successfully leaned on his coalition partners to grant the government emergency powers. These powers might also be used to pave the way for him to escape justice. We are already witnessing an increase in police brutality in dealing with the protesters a situation that may well deteriorate as Netanyahu reaches the end of his political life and drags the country down with him.

Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not necessarily reflect Arab News' point-of-view

See the original post here:

Israelis at last finding their voice to protest Netanyahu - Arab News

Three patients of Pioneer Health Care Center in Rocky Ford who tested positive for COVID-19 (one test is awaiting confirmatory results) have died, Crowley / Otero Health Departments Director Rick Ritter told the Tribune-Democrat Friday. Ritter said the health department gives its condolences to their families.

"Any time this happens we are certainly sorry that they lost a loved one," Ritter said.

COVID-19 cases in Otero County totaled 36 as of Saturday, according to Colorado Public Health and Environment, although Ritter said in a news release that numbers reflected by the state were not up to date. In the same statement, Ritter confirmed that three coronavirus patients at Pioneer Health Care Center in Rocky Ford had died and at the nursing home two staff and a total of 13 patients tested positive for the novel coronavirus. Ritter noted that results of confirmatory tests for some patients were still awaiting results as of Saturday.

Following Gov. Jared Polis's executive order mandating mask use in indoor public facilities July 16, businesses and services have had to crack down on enforcing mask use. Although many businesses and public buildings have posted signs alerting prospective patrons to their mandated enforcement of mask use, others have posted notices that state they will not enforce mask use.

In some instances, the notices make questionable references to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, the 4th and 5th Amendments, or other facets of the U.S. Constitution or U.S. law.

Thaxton's Market in Fowler, for example, posted a sign in their window that read, "Due to HIPPA and the 4th Amendment, we cannot legally ask you what your medical condition is."

The sign continued to state that store employees would assume anyone entering without a mask was exempted from the statewide mandate. The Tribune-Democrat called Thaxton's Market last week to inquire about the store policy, but it did not hear back in time for publication.

Arkansas Valley Lumber outside Rocky Ford stirred up controversy when a sign it had posted in its entrance made rounds across local social media groups. The sign declared Arkansas Valley Lumber was no longer a public company and would only accept business from "United States citizens that believe in their constitutional right of freedom from oppression."

A day later, Arkansas Valley Lumber apologized on its official Facebook page and clarified that it would not discriminate against anyone, although it maintained that it would not enforce the use of masks.

Ritter isn't sold on Thaxton's claims or those of others, however.

"There's a lot of information I'm just going to come out and say it disinformation out there," said Ritter.

Ritter noted the statewide mask order makes exemptions for people with health conditions that complicate their breathing, such as asthma or COPD.

But contrary to what some businesses are claiming, a store is not legally prevented from offering patrons masks, nor is a store prohibited from asking someone who claims to have a medical condition that prevents mask use what that condition is, according to attorney to Otero County Nathan Schultz.

"I've seen a lot of people saying they're not going to ask about masks due to HIPPA," said Schultz. "The Fourth Amendment, then one store that says they're not going to ask about masks because of the Fifth Amendment. HIPPA is designed to protect information from covered entities, like doctors and hospitals, from disseminating that information without a release. That has absolutely no bearing on a grocery store. The Fourth Amendment and Fifth Amendment, both, any time you're trying to claim you have constitutional protection, there has to be government action."

Schultz agreed it was possible that some business owners might have conflated HIPPA with the American Disabilities Act, which prohibits discrimination based on disability. But even the American Disabilities Act allows for what Schultz called reasonable inquiry if someone doesn't have an obvious disability.

"I think the stores still have the duty to ask someone to wear a mask," Schultz said. "If they're saying they don't cause of health reasons, you can ask what the health reason is because then the store needs to establish what reasonable accommodations they can make."

Schultz said allowing someone to not wear a mask would probably not be a reasonable accommodation. Instead, though, a store could implement curbside service in such an instance, Schultz suggested.

Schultz said seeing misinformation circulate on social media has been frustrating. Counter to more claims from those opposed to mask use saying the governor's mandate was unlawful or does not have the same effect as law, Gov. Polis's executive order carries the full weight of law, Schultz said.

"Earlier this week, the public health order 20-31 came out, also mandating masks. Public health orders are enforceable by local law enforcement under 25-1-506," said Schultz. "Those can be punished civilly, they can do it administratively where they can pull your business license, or they can do it criminally up to a first degree misdemeanor."

Otero County Sheriff Shawn Mobley said his office will not enforce the mask mandate. Mobley referenced his short staffed department and ongoing criminal investigations. Schultz said he thinks Mobley's decision is okay, but that he was angered by sheriffs from other counties who claimed Polis's law was unconstitutional or did not carry legal weight.

Bent County Sheriffs Office also said in a joint statement with Bent County Public Health that the sheriffs office there would not be enforcing the mask mandate, although they did not provide additional reasoning with their statement.

Otero County will try to utilize civil and administrative means to regulate the mask mandate as opposed to pursuing criminal charges, Schultz said, noting it doesn't do anyone any good to start jailing more people right now.

Another piece of disinformation Schultz wanted to address was that of masks versus the size of COVID-19 particles. Schultz made the distinction that the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 is not airborne in the stirctest sense: The viruss primary mode of transmission from host to host is through respiratory particles in other words, spit.

"I'm still seeing a lot of misinformation about the cloth masks themselves," Schultz said. "A lot of people are pointing out micron sizes and all that. This virus has never been airborne, it's transferred through saliva droplets. So the cloth mask does nothing to protect the wearer, it's designed to protect the community from the wearer. So if everyone's wearing a mask, the saliva's less likely to spread to others.

In other words, posts on social media claiming that cloth masks dont stop COVID-19 from passing through them are missing the point, because COVID-19 travels primarily in much larger respiratory droplets that are stopped by a cloth face covering.

Health Director Rick Ritter stressed that many businesses have been compliant with the mask order and that the health department receives numerous calls daily from people looking to improve the safety of their establishments.

Ritter said hes seen people be dismissive of social distancing guidelines and mask use because they dont believe others are taking it seriously.

"To the people saying, 'Well nobody's doing it," that's absolutely wrong," said Ritter. "And that is disrespecting the businesses that are working hard to do what's right, to protect customers, employees, and this is not a hard thing to do, my gosh, we put on pants to cover our lower torso, we put on shirts, and that's not a violation of our constitutional rights.

"If I went out naked on the street, and you can print this, the police would be called. If I said, You can't make me put on pants, that's against my constitutional right to be naked, that wouldn't cut any ice. We're just covering our face and if somebody says, Well you put on pants for decency's sake, I say you put on a mask for decency's sake because you're protecting others.

"A mask is primarily worn to protect others, and that's what I'm saying. These cloth masks, if we all wear them like we're supposed to, it's a kindness to others, it's a consideration for others, and we're going to reduce risk."

Schultz added the health department is working around the clock to try to achieve the best outcome for the community.

Tribune-Democrat reporter Christian Burney can be reached by email at cburney@ljtdmail.com. Help support local journalism by subscribing to the La Junta Tribune-Democrat at lajuntatribunedemocrat.com/subscribenow.

See original here:

"It's the decent thing to do" - News - Bent County Democrat

The following is an excerpt from the introduction to The Plot to Change America: How Identity Politics is Dividing the Land of the Free, a new book by Mike Gonzalez, senior fellow at The Heritage Foundations Allison Center for Foreign Policy andAngeles T. ArredondoE Pluribus Unumfellow, published by Encounter Books.

Identity politics is all around us. Whether you know it or not, we are all bathing in it. Some Americans have embraced it gladly, while others have simply become inured to it and no longer bat an eyelid. Many others, however, have begun to take notice, and to them something does not seem right.

If you are one of the latter, you raise an eyebrow when the principal at your daughters school repeats the incantation diversity is our strength! and you hear that some subjects, even math, are taught differently depending on a students race.

You think of OrwellWar Is Peace, Freedom Is Slavery. But you understand why parents dont put up a fuss. Who wants to get on the wrong side of the principal by explaining to her that, in fact, we can observe in the laws of physics, and in the social sciences, that it is unity that forges strength? Who wants to tell her that two plus two always equals four no matter what your race is?

Likewise, at the office, when the head of human resources asks you to place a sign on your desk that reads, Im an ally! you stifle the urge to wisecrack, Why? Are we at war? Its the head of human resources, after all.

Again, you understand why so many of your colleagues put the darn sign on their desk, and you refrain from asking about rumors that another session is afoot to uncover employees subconscious bias.

>>> VIRTUAL EVENT: The Plot To Change America: How Identity Politics Divides America

Back at home, when the talking head on TV spends the first 10 minutes of airtime discussing all the identity groups that the newly elected dogcatcher belongs to, you want to snap back, Who cares? Can she catch strays?

Only crazy people talk to the TV, however. But you do talk back when the next news item is about a father who has lost custody of his 7-year-old son because he disagrees with his estranged wife, who wants the boy to transition into a girl.

Later that evening, when your own son, who is applying to college, announces he will identify as Hispanic because your mothers father was born in Monterrey, your first reaction is to tell him, But I never even met Grampa Ortiz.

On second thought, it might get Jimmy into Cornell, so you repress the unease you feel about gaming the system. You also feel relieved that, if hes no longer considered white, at least he wont be made to feel at fault for everything.

At the same time, it will sting your neighbor deeply when he finds out that his small company did not get the city contract. He couldnt produce a narrative of oppression, and someone else got the contract through a set-aside program.

His mothers father was born in Salerno, and after immigrating was repeatedly beat up by rough Irish kids in Boston. But that doesnt do your neighbor any good, since Italians are not one of the designated oppressed minorities.

Or say youre an immigrant from Perus port of Callao. You came to New York in the 1970s, settling in Queens with dreams of becoming American and one day having American children, the same as other Americans.

Soon after your arrival, however, you heard people on TV saying that you were now a third thing, a Hispanic, and you should be proud of belonging to this category. Joining the American mainstream was an unattainable goal, said these loud people, and you shouldnt aspire to it, anyway. America is a racist place, they went on, and if you wanted to have a measure of success, you had to join this massive new ethnic collective.

All this disturbed you somehow, even if you could not articulate why. Decades later, it dawns on you that you had been enlisted into a struggle to overturn the very country and system that had attracted you to emigrate in the first place, and you are not happy about this.

In all these small and large ways, identity politics has become the operating system of our national hardware. As with war, even if you are not interested in it, identity politics is interested in you.

But what is identity politics, anyway? In a Twitter exchange on this question with Vox Media reporter Jane Coaston last year, I took a stab at defining the term:

I mean the deliberate creation of pan-ethnic and other identity groups; the idea that members of this panoply of collectives should get compensatory justice; the culture of victimhood all of this engenders.

Twitters character limits force us to cram complicated ideas into pithy epigrams, and in my tweet I tried to concisely present the main elements of what has become an ideology of our times. The purpose of this book is to explain how and why these elements came together, who was behind the ideologys rise, and what we can do about it.

Many theories have been put forward to explain how this ideology was suddenly sprung on America. They cover the gamut, from the demise of the family, to the erosion of social capital in many working-class neighborhoods, to the absence of a unifying enemy following Americas victory in the Cold War.

What follows in this book is a more-or-less-chronological account of the rise of identity politics, put in the context of the doctrines and philosophies that fed into it, and discussion of its impact on the American system and the threat it poses to the liberties that sustain the American way of life.

We have identity politics today because our government has created ethnic and sexual categories whose members have been instilled with resentments against the country and its system and given real financial benefits for nursing their grievances. Insisting on group grievances thereby perpetuates the identity groups. If we stop this vicious cycle, we may be able to free ourselves from the grip of identity politics.

The book traces the origins of identity politics to the late 1960s and 1970s, when the white establishment panicked over the black riots then tearing up parts of northern cities.

This panic led to two main outcomes. First, members of the establishment offered temporary racial benefits to pacify Northern blacks, who had seen fewer advances than their Southern counterparts during the civil rights era.

Second, they accepted the assertion by leftist activists claiming to mediate on behalf of other groups that there was an analogy to be made between the suffering of blacks and the experiences of Americans of Mexican, Chinese, Puerto Rican, Japanese, Filipino, and other descents. This analogy, which was also extended to women as a group, was drawn over and over.

It was, of course, dishonest and deceitful: The experience of black Americans was in fact unique. Nevertheless, this way of thinking led in time to such absurdities as immigrants fresh off the boat receiving compensatory justice for the real and imagined suffering of their ancestors.

Racial preferences also never went away, but more than half a century later have become a fixture of American life, and keep being expanded.

As this book further demonstrates, activists of those earlier decades sought to move the country away from its limited-government traditions inherited from the Anglo-Scottish Enlightenment toward the centralized state planning drawn from the Continental Kantian, Hegelian, and Marxian worldviews.

Stated plainly, my goal is to change how the nation thinks about identity politics and identity groups.

We do not have to accept these categories, the discourses of privilege and victimhood, or politically loaded (and recent) terms such as minorities, diversity, and persons of color. Rather, I seek to snap the country out of its identity trance by exposing the actors, their actions, how they came up with these terms, and the theories that led us to this juncture.

The identity collectives have done nothing to alleviate the very real racial discrimination and social injustice that continues to exist in Americanor were they intended to do sobut have only exacerbated them.

Read the rest here:

Uncovering the Origins of Identity Politics - Heritage.org

The artist Petrit Halilaj has withdrawn from the Belgrade Biennial after the organizers of the exhibition dithered over how to present his nationality in accompanying materials.

Halilaj is from Kosovo, and the biennial is organized and hosted by the Cultural Centre of Belgrade in Serbia, a country that does not recognize Kosovo as an independent state. He pulled out of the show after he was unable to agree with the organizers about how his country of origin would be named in the list of participating artists.

Halilaj, who is based in Berlin, has written an open letter detailing his experience with the exhibition, which is officially called the 58th October Salon: Belgrade Biennial.

Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, and there is a fraught history between the two nations. During the Kosovo War of 199899, fought between the two nations,Halilaj himself was displaced and spent more than two years living in refugee camps. In his letter, Halilaj recalls how his and his familys passports were destroyed, and refers to the conflict as a genocide.

When I received the invitation to the Belgrade Biennial I was internally conflicted, but I also saw it as an opportunity to create a bridge, to open up a dialogue and to explore new paths of reconciliation through art, Halilaj writes.

Curated by Ilaria Marotta and Andrea Baccin, this iteration was called The Dreamers, and Halilaj had planned to show a video called Shkrepetima (Flash of Light) resulting from a theater performance he staged in his home city of Runik in Kosovo, inside the ruins of the citys House of Culture, which was destroyed during the conflict.

Organizers first omitted his country of origin from a document released in May. After he requested a correction, organizers introduced it with an asterisk, which Halilaj says reiterates the refusal of Serbia to recognize Kosovo as an independent country.

The asterisk does not even begin to repair a century of oppression and genocide that Serbia has inflicted on Kosovo and it is painful to witness in the context of an art institution that may have a different understanding of the issue, Halilaj writes.

Later, the institution ended up removing all mentions of the participating artists countries of origin, but Halilaj withdrew anyway out of fear that his work, which grapples with the plight of Kosovos multiethnic society, risked being miscommunicated and misinterpreted, or even politically instrumentalized.

The biennial is slated to open on October 16. Contacted by Artnet News, a spokesperson for the Cultural Center of Belgrade explained that as a public institution, it was obliged to follow Serbias official policy on Kosovo.

As you know the official policy of the Republic of Serbia doesnt recognize Kosovo as [an] independent country, so we as [a] public institution could not write [it] differently, the spokesperson said.

From the beginning of this unpleasant situation for Petrit Halilaj we were open for dialogue with the artist, the shows organizers said in a statement, adding that they hope he changes his mind and rejoins the exhibition.

They declined to elaborate on how they would deal with artists from Kosovo in the future.

Following Halilajs withdrawal, the organizers removed all cities and countries from the list of participating artists, which Halilaj says he hopes will be the biennials policy for future editions.

Read Halilajs open letter in full below.

GIVE US BACK OUR STARS

Petrit Halilajs withdrawal from The Dreamers, 58th Salon Belgrade Biennial

Open letter

In 2019 I was invited by Ilaria Marotta and Andrea Baccin to take part in the 58th Salon Belgrade Biennial, titled The Dreamers, organized and hosted by the Cultural Centre of Belgrade (KCB) and opening in October 2020. I was excited to collaborate with them and to travel to Belgrade for the first time as a Kosovar artist. I would exhibit the video resulting from Shkreptima, a theatre performance staged in Runik (the city where I grew up in Kosovo and the site of one of the earliest Neolithic settlements in the region) among the ruins of the Runiks House of Culturea symbol of the local multiethnic identity that has been closed down, emptied out and abandoned when the political situation with Serbia deteriorated in 1990s. When we started the project, the House of Culture was in a state of extreme abandonment and deterioration; trash had also been dumped there for years. We created a community of more than 80 people and cleaned up the space to give it back its life and cultural voice in Runik. Shkreptima is dedicated to the dreams of the citizens in Runik and it seemed to resonate with the aim of The Dreamers.

As many may know, Serbia does not recognize Kosovo as an independent country yet. After having silenced Kosovos cultural expression and cut education, in 19981999 Serbia undertook an armed invasion in Kosovo and violently repressed the Kosovar Albanian community which I am part of. This oppression has been referred to as a genocide, and it has urged other countries to take a side; it still does it today, when Kosovos unilateral Declaration of Independence (2008) is partly met with encouragement, partly neglected. During all these years, Serbia has officially treated the repression of Kosovo as if it were a matter of fiction. As if it never happened.

It did happen. In 19981999, I was one of the many people forced to live as a refugee and in camps for over two years after our houses had been burned to the ground. I consider myself lucky to have survived. My passport and that of all my family members were destroyed in front of us and we were suddenly neglected both our freedom of movement and our identity. So when I received the invitation to the Belgrade Biennial I was internally conflicted, but I also saw it as an opportunity to create a bridge, to open up a dialogue and to explore new paths of reconciliation through art. I wanted to overcome the dichotomy between us and them, between good and evil, to finally open up a shared space of discussion instead of broadening a division that has already forged so much hatred. I had the optimistic expectation that an art institution would be a space capable to represent a plurality of identities, eventually even taking a stand beyond the official politics around my country of origin, by just calling it by its name: Kosovo. The concept of The Dreamers, as well as the curators intention to transcend national divisions with this project supported my hope. Unfortunately I was confronted with a radically different reality.

With this letter I want to leave a trace of what I experienced in the past months, and what led to my withdrawal in June. This is my side of the story, of course, and I know that there are other viewpoints that should also be taken into account. On my side, I am making this public because a silent withdrawal would add another layer of impotence to the silencing I have experienced during this process, to the silencing and erasing of memories and experiences that runs through history. Instead, I hope to generate some discussion on the limits of political agency in government-funded art institutions located in countries that are still pursuing nationalistic and oppressive politics; on the potential of dreaming at all through art practices when the exhibition space becomes a frame that outlines the limits of the artists identity, and therefore of the dream itself; and more broadly, on the current political situation between Serbia and Kosovo.

The story begins in the second half of May, with the publication of the artists list.

Screenshot of KCB website, May 25th, 2020.

When the artist list of The Dreamers was made public, Ilaria Marotta noticed that my nationality, Kosovo, had been omitted from KCBs public communication. In the text, each artist was listed along with information regarding the year of birth, birthplace and country, as well as current living and working location. In my case, the name of the country was left blank after the comma, whichgiven the historic and current geopolitical contextI instinctively interpreted as an intentional omission of information. This omission had been decided by KCB independently from Ilaria and Andrea, with no previous notice, probably in the hope that no one would spot it or make a big deal about it.

As an artist, one imagines to be invited not because of nationality or place of birth, but rather for the ideas one aims to spread. This is why I would have agreed with this omission only if all the artists countries would have been omitted from the beginning, for example as a statement to explicitly transcend nation-state divides and to address their questionable relevance within an art project. On the contrary, like this, the omission of Kosovo from KCBs website acquired a much broader meaning and could only be read through the lenses of a wider and systematic political silencing. In my dream world, I wish that people could move freely with no exception beyond geographical boundaries and cultural barriers, as I like to imagine birds do. But we are still far, very far, from anything close to the realization of this dream and I believe such omissions shouldnt be left unnoticed, they have a political relevance that goes beyond my own experience, and speak of programmatic political and ideological interventions performed behind the scenes of art institutions.

This is not the first time that I have been invited to exhibit in a country that does not recognize Kosovos independence, but it is the first time that I feel the need to withdraw my work. My most recent project at the Palacio de Cristal, Museo Reina Sofa in Madrid, Spain, is also in a state-funded institution in a country that does not recognize Kosovo. However, in this case Kosovo appears. And even in the city of Belgrade, there are art spaces that write the name of Kosovo when a Kosovar artist is invited to exhibit their work.

I was aware that this omission did not respond to the curators direct will. I also understand that KCB may be actually composed of people with radically different political opinions, and that not all of them would agree with this state policy. But when do we have any agency? And if not, at what cost? For what cause? I discussed this with the curators to see this omission as an opportunity to open up a constructive dialogue around the issue of geopolitical recognition of countries that are still neglected zones on a global scale. The aim of The Dreamers is in fact to investigate the complexity of the current times, questioning not only the misleading nature of the real, but the space occupied by dreams, intended as the metaphorical embodiment of a space of freedom, which is able to challenge the certainty of the real world, of acquired knowledge and of our own beliefs. Accepting the omission of Kosovo, however, would have been a powerless surrender rather than the hopeful construction of a space of freedom. In the act of agreeing to this omission (which would have also meant to come to terms with being treated differently), I saw an indirect acceptance of the structural lack of free political opinion or agency in this art institution, which for me was in direct contrast with the initial aim of the show.

After my request to include Kosovo, KCB replied first by assuring that it had been a typo, then modifying it several times until adding Kosovo with an asterisk (*Kosovo.)

On KCBs website, the asterisk in *Kosovo seemed to be linked to the footnote In 2018, Board of the 57th October Salon made a decision to add the subtitle Belgrade Biennale to the name October Salon in the future. As an apparently harmless sign, it gives the impression of really being a typo; of having been wrongly slipped into the text and linked to something unrelated. It could have easily gone unnoticed.

Screenshot of KCB website, June 8th, 2020.

But the asterisk in *Kosovo is charged with strong political implications that were disguised on the website. * is the result of a 2012 agreement to allow Kosovo to represent its institutions without the authority of the UN Mission (until then, Kosovo was written as Kosovo-UNMIK). This asterisk only enables representatives from Kosovo to be referenced in regional meetings and in agreements with a footnote declaring that This designation is without prejudice to positions on status, and is in line with UNSCR 1244 and the ICJ Opinion on the Kosovo Declaration of Independence. This asterisk is a declaration of status-neutrality and it reiterates the refusal of Serbia to recognize Kosovo as an independent country. The asterisk does not even begin to repair a century of oppression and genocide that Serbia has inflicted on Kosovo and it is painful to witness in the context of an art institution that may have a different understanding of the issue.

During this process I learned that the cultural centre had been negotiating with the Minister of Foreign Affairs for the addition of Kosovo and the modification of the total number of participating countries. The time in between these modifications gave me the opportunity to think and to observe how unprepared we all were to face issues like these, but also to reflect upon and learn how to deal with them.

I want to believe that art has a transformative potential. This belief is also among the reasons why I devoted my life to it. But this experience begs the questions: What is the actual ability to dream of art institutions and what is the space they are willing to give artists to dream? And if artists are given a specific frame for their dreams, a frame that is outlined and monitored by the dominant power and politics, then how far can we go?

In an attempt to find a neutral solution and facing the impossibility of adding Kosovo, KCB modified the website again by deleting all the countries of all the artists participating, and leaving the cities only. They said this was as far as they could go.

Screenshot of KCB website, June 12th, 2020.

Nevertheless, I felt that a withdrawal of Shkreptima was necessary, and that an open letter could potentially be a better tool for discussion in a context where an artwork undergoes the risk of being miscommunicated and misinterpreted, or even politically instrumentalized beyond the power and intentions of the curators of The Dreamers or the direction of KCB.

Only after my withdrawal, KCB and the curators of this edition of the Belgrade Biennial decided to delete from the public communication all the names of the cities and countries involved, leaving only the artists year of birth. This sign left by my withdrawal has created an antecedent for the next edition, and I hope it will have a resonance beyond the regional context of Serbia and Kosovo.

Screenshot of KCB website, June 24th, 2020.

This letter is the result of weeks of exchanges, brainstormings and discussions with collaborators, colleagues, peers and friends, all of whom I am very grateful to. I am especially grateful to David Horvitz who will take part in the Belgrade Biennial and has proposed to modify his work Give Us Back Our Stars after my withdrawal. In this gesture, I see an important sign of solidarity and healing. One of those signs that give hope, and make one dream.

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Artist Petrit Halilaj Has Pulled Out of the Belgrade Biennial After Its Organizers Refused to Recognize His Nationality - artnet News