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With the announcement of 'unlock-2' (phase-2 of openingof lockdown), except for few areas, industries or establishmentshave gradually started inching towards operations of businesseswith the limited workforce or resources to not only sustain thebusinesses but also to contribute to the economic growth ofIndia.

Since COVID-19 has led to slow down of economic growth in India,besides the federal (central) government, state governments havealso commenced introducing various measures by way of amendinglabour and employment statutes, such as granting exemption inworking hours and raising the statutory thresholds, amongst others,to ease the financial burden on employers

The subject "labour" falls under the concurrent listof the Constitution of India, thus giving power to both federal andstate governments to make laws regulating labour and employment,with the exception of certain matters being reserved for thefederal government. State governments generally provide foramendment, exemptions, or additions concerning the subject"labour" either by introducing a subject specific statuterelevant for such a state or by amending the federal statutes,within the rights available to states, which requires assent of theHon'ble President of India.

State governments derive power from Article 2131 ofthe Constitution of India which allows amendments by way ofordinances in the statutes (when not exercising the powers givenwithin the statutes). In the last few weeks, state governments,exercising the powers under Article 213, have passed certainordinances to carry out major amendments in federal laws, whichwould come into force as soon as the ordinances receivePresident's Assent. Simultaneously, exercising the rightsavailable within the statutes, various state governments havebrought in several changes, which are relevant for the specificperiod.

A. UTTAR PRADESH

The Uttar Pradesh ("UP") Governmenton May 08, 2020 has introduced the Uttar Pradesh TemporaryExemption from Certain Labour Laws Ordinance, 2020, applicable toall factories and establishments engaged in manufacturing processand intends to exempt the said factories and manufacturingestablishments from the operation of certain labour laws for atemporary period of 3 years subject to the conditions,amongst others, mentioned therein:

B. MADHYA PRADESH

The Madhya Pradesh ("MP") Governmenton May 06, 2020 also has introduced the Madhya Pradesh Labour Laws(Amendment) Ordinance, 2020, which aims at amending two state laws,the Madhya Pradesh Industrial Employment (Standing Orders) Act,1961 and the Madhya Pradesh Shram Kalyan Nidhi Adhiniyam, 1982.

The Madhya Pradesh Industrial Employment (Standing Orders) Act,1961 is applicable to all the undertakings2 having 50employees3. The MP Government by way of an amendmentintends to increase the applicability threshold to 100 or moreemployees.

The Madhya Pradesh Shram Kalyan Nidhi Adhiniyam, 1982 providesfor constitution of a labour welfare fund that will finance theactivities related to welfare of labour. Under the said Act, anemployer is required to deposit contribution on behalf of bothemployer and employee4 at the rate of INR 1(employee's contribution) and INR 3 (employer'scontribution) every 6 months. The proposed ordinance intends toamend the said Act by including a new section to allow theGovernment of MP to exempt any establishment or class ofestablishments from the provisions of the said Act through anotification.

C. GOA

Vide the Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) (GoaAmendment) Ordinance, 2020 introduced on June 26, 2020, the StateGovernment of Goa intends to amend the threshold of employees from205 workmen to 50 as prescribed under Section 1(4)6 of the Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition)Act, 1970 (the "CLRA Act") forapplicability of CLRA Act in the State of Goa and, also incorporatea new section with respect to compounding of offences, dependingupon number of workmen employed in the establishment and number oftimes such an offence is committed.

Further, vide the Industrial Disputes (Goa Amendment) Ordinance,2020 introduced on June 26, 2020, the State Government of Goa wantsto amend the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 (the "IDAct"), as in force in the state of Goa. The StateGovernment of Goa intends to lower the limitation period from 3years to 1 year under Section 2 A (3)7 of the IDAct.

Further, a new sub-section (4) in Section 2A is proposed to beinserted which makes it mandatory for raising the dispute beforeconciliation officer within 1 year from the date of discharge,dismissal, retrenchment or termination in order to qualify as an"industrial dispute" under the ID Act.

The Government of Goa intends to amend the threshold regardingapplicability from 100 to 300 workmen, as provided in Section25K8 (Chapter V-B) of the ID Act (special provisionsrelating to lay-off, retrenchment and closure in certainestablishments). In case of retrenchment (under Section25F9 and Section 25N of the ID Act) or closure of anundertaking (under Section 25O of the ID Act), compensation to bepaid to workmen is sought to be enhanced from 15 days' averagepay to 45 days' average pay, for every completed year ofservice part in excess of 6 months.

Further a new Section 31 A relating to compounding of offencesis proposed to be incorporated for any offence punishable underSections 25Q, 25R, 25U, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30A and subsections (1) and(2) of Section 31.

D. ASSAM

The Factories (Assam Amendment) Ordinance, 2020 introduced onJune 30, 2020 aims at amending the threshold of employees in thedefinition of factory10, as defined in the FactoriesAct, 1948, from 10 workers (where manufacturing process is with theaid of power) to 20 and from 20 workers (where manufacturingprocess is without the aid of power) to 40.

E. BIHAR

The Factories (Bihar Amendment) Ordinance, 2020 introduced onJuly 02, 2020, aims at amending the threshold of employees in thedefinition of factory, as defined in the Factories Act, 1948, from10 workers (where manufacturing process is with the aid of power)to 20 and from 20 workers (where manufacturing process is withoutthe aid of power) to 40.

Vide the Industrial Disputes (Bihar Amendment) Ordinance, 2020promulgated on July 02, 2020, the state government intends to amendthe threshold regarding applicability from 100 to 300 workmen, asprovided in Section 25K (Chapter-V-B) of the ID Act (specialprovisions relating to lay-off, retrenchment and closure in certainestablishments).

The Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) (Bihar Amendment)Ordinance, 2020 promulgated on July 02, 2020 proposes to amend thethreshold regarding applicability of statute from 20 to 50 workmen,as prescribed under Section 1 (4) of the CLRA Act.

F. GUJARAT

The Factories (Gujarat Amendment) Ordinance, 2020 introduced onJuly 02, 2020 aims at amending the threshold of employees in thedefinition of factory, as defined in the Factories Act, 1948, from10 workers (where manufacturing process is with the aid of power)to 20 and from 20 workers (where manufacturing process is withoutthe aid of power) to 40.

Further, the State Government of Gujarat also intends toincorporate a new section with respect to compounding of offences,which may be specified by the State Government of Gujarat by way ofnotification.

The Industrial Disputes (Gujarat Amendment) Ordinance, 2020introduced on July 03, 2020 aims to amend the threshold regardingapplicability from 100 to 300 workmen, as provided in Section 25K(Chapter-V-B) of the ID Act (special provisions relating tolay-off, retrenchment and closure in certain establishments).

Under Section 25N of the ID Act, the option to pay the workmanwages in lieu of 3 months' notice is sought to be done awaywith. Further, in case of a retrenchment (under Section 25N of theID Act) or closure of an undertaking (under Section 25O of the IDAct), an amount equivalent to the workman's last threemonths' average pay has been added in the last of eachsection.

The Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Gujarat AmendmentOrdinance, 2020 introduced on July 20, 2020 aims at amending thethreshold regarding applicability of statute from 20 workers to 50,as prescribed under Section 1 (4) of the CLRA Act.

G. HIMACHAL PRADESH

The Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Himachal PradeshAmendment Ordinance, 2020 introduced on July 09, 2020 aims atamending the threshold regarding applicability of statute from 20workers to 30, as prescribed under Section 1 (4) of the CLRAAct.

The Industrial Disputes (Himachal Pradesh Amendment) Ordinance,2020 promulgated on July 09, 2020 aims to amend the thresholdregarding applicability from 100 to 200 workmen, as provided inSection 25K (Chapter-V-B) of the ID Act (special provisionsrelating to lay-off, retrenchment and closure in certainestablishments). Further, in case of retrenchment (under Section25F of the ID Act), the compensation is sought to be increased from15 days' average pay to 60 days' average pay for everycompleted year of continuous service or part thereof more than 6months. Further, the provisions governing prohibition of strikesand lock-outs under Section 2211 is sought to be madeapplicable to public utility and non-public utility services.

The Factories (Himachal Pradesh Amendment) Ordinance, 2020promulgated on July 09, 2020 aims at amending the threshold ofemployees in the definition of factory, as defined in the FactoriesAct, 1948, from 10 workers (where manufacturing process is with theaid of power) to 20 and from 20 workers (where manufacturingprocess is without the aid of power) to 40.

Further, the State Government of Himachal Pradesh also intendsto incorporate a new section with respect to compounding ofoffences which are punishable with fine only and committed for thefirst time.

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Footnotes

1. 213. Power of Governor to promulgateOrdinances during recess of Legislature

(1) If at any time, except when theLegislative Assembly of a State is in session, or where there is aLegislative Council in a State, except when both Houses of theLegislature are in session, the Governor is satisfied thatcircumstances exist which render it necessary for him to takeimmediate action, he may promulgate such Ordinance as thecircumstances appear to him to require: Provided that the Governorshall not, without instructions from the President, promulgate anysuch Ordinance if

(a) a Bill containing the same provisionswould under this Constitution have required the previous sanctionof the President for the introduction thereof into the Legislature;or

(b) he would have deemed it necessary toreserve a Bill containing the same provisions for the considerationof the President; or

(c) an Act of the Legislature of theState containing the same provisions would under this Constitutionhave been invalid unless, having been reserved for theconsideration of the President, it had received the assent of thePresident

(2) An Ordinance promulgated under thisarticle shall have the same force and effect as an Act ofLegislature of the State assented to by the Governor, but everysuch Ordinance

(a) shall be laid before the legislativeAssembly of the State, or where there is a Legislative Council inthe State, before both the House, and shall cease to operate at theexpiration of six weeks from the reassembly of the Legislature, orif before the expiration of that period a resolution disapprovingit is passed by the Legislative Assembly and agreed to by theLegislative Council, if any, upon the passing of the resolution or,as the case may be, on the resolution being agreed to by theCouncil; and

(b) may be withdrawn at any time by theGovernor Explanation Where the Houses of the Legislature of a Statehaving a Legislative Council are summoned to reassemble ondifferent dates, the period of six weeks shall be reckoned from thelater of those dates for the purposes of this clause

(3) If and so far as an Ordinance underthis article makes any provision which would not be valid ifenacted in an Act of the legislature of the State assented to bythe Governor, it shall be void: Provided that, for the purposes ofthe provisions of this Constitution relating to the effect of anAct of the Legislature of a State which is repugnant to an Act ofParliament or an existing law with respect to a matter enumeratedin the Concurrent List, an Ordinance promulgated under this articlein the Concurrent List, an Ordinance promulgated under this articlein pursuance of instructions from the President shall be deemed tobe an Act of the Legislature of the State which has been reservedfor the consideration of the president and assented to by him.

2. The Madhya Pradesh IndustrialRelations Act, 1960 defines 'Undertaking' as a concern inany industry. 'Industry' means:

(a) any business, trade, manufacture orundertaking or calling of employers.

(b) any calling, service, employment,handicraft, or industrial occupation or avocation of employees, andincludes-

(i) agriculture and agricultureoperations;

(ii) any branch of an industry or groupof industries which the State Government may by notification,declare to be an industry for the purposes of this Act.

3.The Madhya Pradesh Industrial RelationsAct, 1960 defines 'employee' as any person employed in anyindustry to do any skilled, unskilled, manual, supervisory,technical or clerical work for hire or reward, whether the terms ofemployment be express or implied, and includes

(a) a person employed by a contractor todo any work for him in the execution of a contract with an employerwithin the meaning of sub-clause(e) of clause 14, and

(b) an apprentice other than anapprentice under sub-clause (v) but does not include anyperson-

(i) who is subject to the Army Act, 1950,or the Air Force Act, 1950 or the Navy Discipline Act 1957; or

(ii) who is employed in the PoliceService or as an officer or other employee of prison; or

(iii) who is employed mainly in amanagerial capacity; or

(iv) who being employed in a supervisorycapacity draws wages exceeding one thousand and six hundred rupeesper mensum; or

(v) who is a craftsman or an apprenticeworking under a scheme approved by the State Government on thecondition that such craftsman or apprentice shall not be deemed tobe an employee under this Act;

Explanation An employee who hasbeen dismissed, discharged or retrenched from employment or whoseemployment has been otherwise terminated shall, in respect ofmatters relating to such dismissal. discharge, retrenchment ortermination, be deemed etc., be an employee for the purposes ofthis Act.

4. Under Section 2(3),"employee" means any person who is employed for hire onreward to do any skilled, semi-skilled or un-skilled, manual,clerical, supervisory, or technical work in an establishment butdoes not include any person:

(a) who is employed mainly in amanagerial or administrative capacity; or

(b) who, being employed in a supervisorycapacity draws wages exceeding one thousand and six hundred rupeesper mensem or exercises, either by the nature of the dutiesattached to the office, or by reason of the powers vested in him,functions mainly of a managerial nature.

5. The Goa government had already reducedthe threshold from 20 to 10 employees for the applicability of theContract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970 vide GazetteNotification dated April 30, 2001.

6. 1 (4) It applies -(a) to everyestablishment in which twenty or more workmen, art employed or wereemployed on any day of the preceding twelve months as contractlabour;

(b) to every contractor who employs orwho employed on any day of the preceding twelve months twenty ormore workmen. Provided that the appropriate Government may, aftergiving not less than two months' notice of its intention so todo, by notification in the Official Gazette, apply the provisionsof this Act to any establishment or contractor employing suchnumber of workmen less than twenty as may be specified in thenotification.

7. (3) The application referred to insub-section (2) shall be made to the Labour Court or Tribunalbefore the expiry of three years from the date of discharge,dismissal, retrenchment or otherwise termination of service asspecified in sub-section (1).

8. 25K. Application of Chapter V-B.- (1)The provisions of this Chapter shall apply to an industrialestablishment (not being an establishment of a seasonal characteror in which work is performed only intermittently) in which notless than 2[one hundred] workmen were employed on an average perworking day for the preceding twelve months. (2) If a questionarises whether an industrial establishment is of a seasonalcharacter or whether work is performed therein only intermittently,the decision of the appropriate Government thereon shall befinal.

9. 25F. Conditions precedent toretrenchment of workmen

No workman employed in any industry whohas been in continuous service for not less than one year under anemployer shall be retrenched by that employer until,

(a) the workman has been given onemonth's notice in writing indicating the reasons forretrenchment and the period of notice has expired, or the workmanhas been paid in lieu of such notice, wages for the period of thenotice:

(b) the workman has been paid, at thetime of retrenchment, compensation which shall be equivalent tofifteen days' average pay for every completed year ofcontinuous service or any part thereof more than six months;and

(c) notice in the prescribed manner isserved on the appropriate Government or such authority as may bespecified by the appropriate Government by notification in theOfficial Gazette.

10. (m) "factory" means anypremises including the precincts thereof-

(i) whereon ten or more workers areworking, or were working on any day of the preceding twelve months,and in any part of which a manufacturing process is being carriedon with the aid of power, or is ordinarily so carried on, or

(ii) whereon twenty or more workers areworking, or were working on any day of the preceding twelve months,and in any part of which a manufacturing process is being carriedon without the aid of power, or is ordinarily so carried on,-

but does not include a mine subject tothe operation of the Mines Act, 1952 (35 of 1952), or a mobile unitbelonging to the armed forces of the Union, a railway running shedor a hotel, restaurant or eating place.

Explanation. I--For computing the numberof workers for the purposes of this clause all the workers indifferent groups and relays in a day shall be taken intoaccount;

Explanation. II.--For the purposes ofthis clause, the mere fact that an Electronic Data Processing Unitor a Computer Unit is installed in any premises or part thereof,shall not be construed to make it a factory if no manufacturingprocess is being carried on in such premises or part thereof;

11. 22. Prohibition of strikes andlock-outs

(1) No person employed in a publicutility service shall go on strike in breach of contract,

(a) without giving to the employer noticeof strike, as herein-after provided, within six weeks beforestriking; or

(b) within fourteen days of giving suchnotice; or

(c) before the expiry of the date ofstrike specified in any such notice as aforesaid; or

(d) during the pendency of anyconciliation proceedings before a conciliation officer and sevendays after the conclusion of such proceedings.

(2) No employer carrying on any publicutility service shall lock-out any of his workmen,

(a) without giving them notice oflock-out as hereinafter provided, within six weeks before lockingout; or

(b) within fourteen days of giving suchnotice; or

(c) before the expiry of the date oflock-out specified in any such notice as aforesaid; or

(d) during the pendency of anyconciliation proceedings before a conciliation officer and sevendays after the conclusion of such proceedings.

(3) The notice of lock-out or strikeunder this section shall not be necessary where there is already inexistence a strike or, as the case may be, lock-out in the publicutility service, but the employer shall send intimation of suchlock-out or strike on the day on which it is declared, to suchauthority as may be specified by the appropriate Government eithergenerally or for a particular area or for a particular class ofpublic utility services.

(4) The notice of strike referred to insub-section (1) shall be given by such number of persons to suchperson or persons and in such manner as may be prescribed.

(5) The notice of lock-out referred to insub-section (2) shall be given in such manner as may beprescribed.

(6) If on any day an employer receivesfrom any persons employed by him any such notices as are referredto in sub-section (1) or gives to any persons employed by him anysuch notices as are referred to in sub-section (2), he shall withinfive days thereof report to the appropriate Government or to suchauthority as that Government may prescribe the number of suchnotices received or given on that day.

The content of this article is intended to provide a generalguide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be soughtabout your specific circumstances.

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Labour Laws Amendments - Initiatives By State Governments To Provide Impetus To Economic Activity - Employment and HR - India - Mondaq News Alerts

His life began in 1828 on Lile Feydeau in Nantes then an idyllic little island set in the Loire river. He was educated at a local boarding school, where his teacher told romanticised tales of her sea-captain husband, who had gone missing on a voyage 30 years earlier. According to her, he was not dead, but had been shipwrecked on a paradisiacal desert island and one day just like Robinson Crusoe he would return. The six-year-old Verne listened avidly, wide-eyed with excitement. Perhaps this was the moment when his fathers ambitions for him to become a corporate lawyer melted away and the feverish imagination that would later transform him into an adventure writer was first sparked into action.

Within five years of hearing these stories, the young Verne was ready for his own adventure. Secretly gaining employment as a cabin boy, he managed to set sail for the West Indies before his parents noticed his absence. He had set his heart on discovering buried treasure and bringing back a coral necklace for the cousin he hoped one day to marry.

In modern times, it would be inconceivable for a child to gain employment without their parents permission, but back in the 1800s, no one batted an eyelid. The young adventurer sailed as far as Paimboeuf on the southern banks of the Loire before his distraught father caught up with him. He made his son promise never to travel again, unless in his imagination. Whether or not this legend was true, for a time, Verne substituted exploration of the real world with a passion for conjuring up fiction.

Later, he reluctantly attended a Parisian law school during the maelstrom of the 1848 French Revolution. Yet Verne, it seems, was oblivious to the political upheaval surrounding Napoleons election, instead losing himself in the works of Victor Hugo. Before long, he had read Notre-Dame de Paris so many times that he could recite by heart huge chunks at a time.

Despite passing his law exams with flying colours, he shunned all expectations that he would follow in his fathers footsteps. Even when an increasingly desperate Verne Senior offered his son ownership of the familys law firm, he refused point-blank, simply quipping, literature above all else.

Verne produced a play with Alexandre Dumass son called Les Pailles Rompues, which appeared at Pariss Theatre Historique. To his fathers horror, he accepted the position of secretary at the theatre in return for a near non-existent salary and then, with 10 chums, launched the self-deprecating Onze Sans Femmes bachelors supper club. Even after his eventual marriage, Verne read, wrote and travelled voraciously.

In 1862, Verne had a literary breakthrough when Pierre-Jules Hetzel the publisher of George Sand, Balzac and Victor Hugo released his novel, Five Weeks in a Balloon. A series called the Voyages Extraordinaires followed, in which Verne revisited his fascination with adventures at sea, while outlining all the geographical, geological, physical, and astronomical knowledge amassed by modern science and recounting the history of the universe. Thanks to Vernes imagination and rigorous academic research, he realised these lofty ambitions.

He wrote novels including Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea, in which he accurately predicted the submarine before it had even been invented. He also relived childhood escape fantasies in A Captain at Fifteen, in which a teenage boy becomes the commander of a ship after its captain and crew are murdered. The ships conniving cook then lures him and a group of castaways off their route and into Africa, where he attempts to sell them into slavery.

This theme is controversial for Verne. His wealthy ancestors were leading lights in the shipbuilding industry, and therefore indirectly complicit in slave trafficking. Nantes allegedly transported more than half a million people from African slave forts to colonies in the Caribbean, to harvest sugar cane and cacao which would be transported back to France.

In sentiment at least, Verne condemned slavery, although he clashed with Hetzel when the publisher argued that Captain Nemo should be made an enemy of the slave trade. Vernes vision of Nemo was one of a vengeful scientist seeking to settle the score against the Russians who had slaughtered his family during the January Uprising. Yet profit-hungry Hetzel feared alienating his lucrative Russian audience. Hetzel also rejected Vernes thriller The Mysterious Island, but disagreements did not mar his popularity. Verne was admired by many, including Jean-Paul Sartre, and legend has it that without Verne, novels like Bram Stokers Dracula might never have existed, as his novel The Carpathian Castle sparked Stokers imagination.

Following a brief political career and assassination attempt by his mentally unwell nephew, Verne died in Amiens in 1905 from complications caused by his diabetes.

The tales of his worldwide voyages and literary successes not to mention a childhood that fuelled his love of the ocean can be found in Nantes today at the museum dedicated to him. Those interested in following in Vernes footsteps can also visit the Memorial to the Abolition of Slavery in Nantes, which documents a controversial past that both inspired the writers work and involved his ancestors. His former boarding school is now a restaurant, Bistro Regent, and there are historical associations aplenty elsewhere in the city for those adventurous enough to seek them out.

From France Today magazine

See the article here:

In the Footsteps of Jules Verne in Nantes - FranceToday.com

In the winter of 2017, Blanche Jacobs North Philadelphia apartment got so cold, she moved her bed into the kitchen at night and turned on the oven for warmth.

She says the heat in the building never worked right, but the landlord still asked tenants to pay utilities.

The building was real old, everything was a mess, she said in a July interview. But they still wanted the money whether it was heated or not.

Jacobs said she called the citys Department of Licenses and Inspections and eventually began withholding rent after a doctor diagnosed her with pneumonia in the spring of 2018. Her landlord moved to evict her several months later over unpaid rent.

One day, she heard a knock at her door. As Jacobs rose and turned the doorknob, a short man dressed in black, wearing a badge and carrying a gun pushed his way in with enough force to knock the 55-year-old with a disability to the ground, she recalled.

Jacobs said the man indicated he was with law enforcement, but she sensed something was amiss that he might have been hired by her landlord.

He said he was a police officer. But I dont know if he was. He didnt have the blue clothes on like a regular cop, Jacobs says now. I had to call the regular cops on him because I couldnt believe what was happening. He really hurt me.

Like many thousands of Philadelphians, she was locked out of her home not by a court employee or law enforcement, but a private security contractor. This man, like others, was hired by an obscure law office appointed by the courts to collect fees from landlords and serve the two court orders that formally boot tenants from their homes known as a writ of possession and an alias writ.

Unlike many other jurisdictions, Philadelphia Municipal Court relies on an appointed Landlord and Tenant Officer, to handle this paperwork and employ hired muscle to encourage tenants to leave, like the man Jacobs encountered. This post is largely unknown to the public but quite lucrative, entailing the collection of millions in related fees for landlords.

And, like many valuable functionary positions orbiting city government, the current appointee, lawyer Marisa Silberstein Shuter, has family ties: She is married to Municipal Court Judge David C. Shuter, who personally presides over certain eviction cases, and is the daughter of that courts former President Judge, Alan K. Silberstein.

Legal observers say the arrangement is reflective of a larger culture of nepotism within the courts and presents a serious conflict of interest.

Court records show several eviction cases over the past year in which Judge Shuter ruled in favor of landlords. These judgments resulted in landlords paying an associated service fee directly to his wifes office to deliver writs. On the judges statement of financial interests, he listed his spouse as a source of income.

Speaking generally, Richard Long, chief counsel for Pennsylvanias Judicial Conduct Board, said ethical guidelines prohibit judges from advancing the economic interests of relatives or associates through their conduct on the bench.

Obviously, if a judge is taking actions that are intended to benefit a spouse, thats concerning, Long said. Theyre not making their decisions on the law and the facts of a case.

Barry Thompson, who was himself evicted and now works with a tenant support organization, said that the informal nature of the office operated from Marisa Shuters private office on South Broad Street often confused his clients, blurring the line between law enforcement and mercenary. Landlords or their representative are required to be present for the final eviction, adding another layer of confusion.

People ask, Are these people from the court? Thompson said. Or are they just people the landlords have hired?

In an email, Shuter said her deputies were licensed to carry firearms, held court-issued identity cards and were trained in eviction law by her office.

Most if not all of the deputies are either retired police officers or constables, or at least have extensive background in a security related field, she said of the officers who serve the final writ and lock out tenants. The goal of the Landlord-Tenant Officer is to do everything possible to maintain a peaceful, smooth, safe, and non-confrontational process.

However, because Shuters office is privately run, the identities of these deputies are not publicly available. A court spokesperson said there were no formal credentialing guidelines for these positions.

While the Philadelphia Sheriffs Office is also empowered to handle Municipal Court evictions, landlord groups like the Homeowner Association of Philadelphia primarily direct their members to Shuter, largely because she acts more quickly and charges around $80 dollars less in writ fees.

Although the individual fees her office collects are small, between $95 to $140 per eviction, they quickly add up.

Because the private attorney collects fees directly, a court spokesperson couldnt say how much Shuter had earned since taking over the position in January 2017. Shuter similarly declined to disclose how much her office had earned from fees, but the courts confirmed that from the start of her appointment through the end of 2019 she had served final eviction writs to 16,984 households. That figure would at least entail the collection of fees amounting to roughly $2.25 million.

Currently, her business is set to boom with the expiration of a COVID-era eviction moratorium just over the horizon. Advocates, like Phil Lord, an attorney with the Tenant Union Representative Network, said an office that primarily derived its value from appealing to landlords desire for faster and cheaper evictions, risked making a bad situation worse.

These people are working for the landlords. Their job is to get the house vacant, he said of Shuters office. Why is this private business doing the courts work?

The Wild West

The story of Shuters ascendancy to Landlord and Tenant Officer is the latest chapter in a nearly 50-year-old failure to reform Philadelphias eviction process.

A unique feature in Pennsylvania, the citys current Landlord and Tenant Office dates back to 1970 and was initially introduced as a civil reform to the citys ancient constabulary system. That 17th-century system of appointing men to handle tax collection and court service had, by the 20th century, lost many traditional powers due to government reorganization. By the 1960s, people elected to constable positions in Philadelphia functioned primarily as politically connected bounty hunters, charged with enforcing court eviction orders for profit often by any means necessary.

During that decade, the constabulary system became a lightning rod for criticism over graft and lack of oversight. Renters routinely reported being harassed out of their homes or evicted without cause. The men doing the evictions held constable sales or distress sales to recoup their costs and time, auctioning off furniture or clothing belonging to displaced tenants.

A 1965 state attorney generals inquest into the system recommended abolishing the positions and transferring their duties wholesale to the city Sheriffs Office.

[Philadelphias] constables are engaging in practices designed to terrify the average citizen, the report reads, describing many constables as glorified bill collectors operating under official marque.

Sam Stretton, a longtime ethics lawyer in Philadelphia, said he recalled now-deceased U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter making a case for dismantling the constabulary system as a central plank of his campaigns for Philadelphia District Attorney in the 1960s.

It was the wild west out there, he said, of the constables. It was bribes and everything else.

Outcry and a court injunction followed an episode in 1969 in which a constable sought to auction the furniture of a North Philadelphia family that put rental payments in escrow after the inspectors deemed their landlords property unfit for human habitation. In a subsequent lawsuit, filed by legal aid group Community Legal Services, federal courts ruled these sales unconstitutional, ordering the abolition of Philadelphias constabulary offices and the judicial appointment of theoretically more formalized Landlord and Tenant officers.

But the ensuing reform soon became a source of controversy itself. And the new system quickly came to resemble the old.

One of the first Landlord and Tenant officers, Edward A. Green, was sued by Community Legal Services for attempting in 1970 to shake down tenants for travel costs and service fees on top of what he was legally allowed to collect. Al Sacks, another Landlord and Tenant officer himself a former constable was also sued by the legal nonprofit in 1986 for allegedly bilking tenants into paying bogus legal fees.

The legislative reformsput the Landlord and Tenant Officers in Philadelphia in the same position as the constables were prior to those reforms, lamented plaintiffs in the suit against Green.

By the late 1980s, the position came under the aegis of the law firm of Robert H. Messerman. This attorney was appointed by Marisa Shuters father, former President Judge Silberstein, who presided over Municipal Court from 1986 to 1999. Messerman would hold this appointment for nearly 30 years.

Reached by phone in July, the attorney said he could recall few details of the offices operations. But records show Messerman subcontracted much of the eviction work to surrogates. A so-called deputy landlord-tenant officer that was shot and killed in a 1990s dispute with a West Philadelphia tenant was later revealed to be a contract worker paid by Messerman, according to an Inquirer report. A later lawsuit filed against Messermans office indicated that work was also sometimes subbed out to a local process service firm called B&R Services for Professionals, Inc.

Meanwhile, Silbersteins daughter, Marisa Shuter, graduated from Temple Universitys Beasley School of Law in 1993 and soon went to work in the family trade administering the citys court system. After a stint as an associate in the real estate department at Blank Rome, she began her career in the court system. While her father served as Municipal Courts president judge, the court hired her as a law clerk around 1996. She later joined Messermans office in 2006, serving as a staff attorney and office manager, according to First Judicial District spokesperson Marty ORourke.

When Messerman eventually retired from his post as Landlord and Tenant Officer, Marisa Shuter was appointed by then-President Judge Marsha Neifield Williams to replace him in January 2017.

Today, she runs the office much as Messerman did, relying on independent contractors to do the heavy lifting of writ service. ORourke said all these people are formally deputized, but court rules do not require them to be trained or certified law enforcement.

The court does not require the Landlord-Tenant Officer or the Deputy Landlord-Tenant Officers to meet any specific law enforcement credentials, ORourke said.

Marisa Shuter said, in practice, many did have a background in police work or had served as suburban magisterial constables. She reiterated that she requires deputies to have a license to carry a firearm, own a vehicle and that all received significant job training.

I personally explain all of the laws to them and the process from start to finish, she wrote. They ride along with an experienced deputy for a period of time before being assigned to handle evictions on their own so that they can learn the job.

Michael Williams, a Philadelphia housing attorney, said the distinction between these deputies and actual law enforcement was often vague.

Sometimes tenants will call them the sheriff, but thats wrong, Williams said. Theyre from the landlord-tenant office. Sometimes, they will still refer to themselves as constables.

Some, like ethics lawyer Sam Stretton, said the courts shouldnt be empowering private entities with little duty to disclose information to the public to force residents from their homes.

This office is held out as part of the government when, in fact, its a private law firm, he said. Theres still no standards. They could just get some monster, and say hes just the toughest guy I found.

Ethical nowhereland

It may be unsurprising that the daughter of the former president judge would come to work for a man he appointed Silberstein long held an enthusiastic attitude toward family and government service. He hired his own wife as a judicial aide in the 1980s and, after his own retirement, replaced her in a seat she would occupy on the citys Board of Revision of Taxes, in the 2000s. The BRT was itself later dismantled amid allegations of political dealing. Silberstein did not respond to a request for comment.

ORourke defended Shuters appointment, citing her pedigree in the field and conduct to date.

Ms. Shuter learned every aspect of how to manage the office and handle the legal issues faced by the Landlord-Tenant Officer. She also served as the courts point of contact and effectively managed the office to the courts satisfaction, he said.

While Shuters father had long since retired by the time she took over the office, her husband served on Municipal Court both then and now. ORourke explained that the appointment did not trigger anti-nepotism rules because of the unique nature the Landlord and Tenant Office occupies within the municipal bureaucracy Shuter is paid directly through fee collection and is not otherwise a salaried or contracted employee of the courts.

The Landlord-Tenant Officer neither receives compensation from nor is an employee of the City, State, or First Judicial District, he said. The Citys ethics rulesare not applicable to the Landlord-Tenant Officer because the officer is neither a City officer nor a City employee.

But Judge Shuter ruled on eviction cases before his wife became the person doing the evicting and records show he continued to do so afterward. Municipal Court employs a rotation system where all judges occasionally share the burden of pushing along thousands of eviction cases each year although many individual suits spend little time under the scrutiny of the court.

Rob Caruso, executive director of the State Ethics Commission, acknowledged that other court appointees, like special masters appointed in divorce proceedings, do fall into an ethical nowhereland in state guidelines. But that did not necessarily mean Shuters arrangement was conflict-free.

What doesnt make sense is why her husband is not recusing himself from these eviction cases, Caruso said.

Neither Marisa Shuter nor Judge Shuter responded to requests for comment about this relationship. But ORourke defended the judges conduct.

Judge Shuter very rarely hears landlord-tenant cases and has a reputation for fairness and honesty, he said.

Ethics lawyer Stretton said that, after nearly a half-century, it appeared that the landlord-tenant office had changed little from the 1960s.

Thats Philadelphia for you. Some traditions are wonderful, and some arent, like nepotism, he said. The office should be abolished.

Calls for reform

Research has shown that evictions disproportionately impact Black residents, particularly women-led households across the United States. Locally, a study from the 2000s found that 80% of tenants targeted for eviction in Philadelphia were people of color and 70% were women of color. The city is ranked fourth nationally in the highest number of people it seeks to evict annually.

Some tenants, like Judith Jones, said they felt like the landlord-tenant officer did not treat them fairly. Jones withheld rent after her apartments heater broke, but her landlord later won a Municipal Court judgment evicting her. While tenants are entitled to a minimum three week grace period after a judgment, she struggled to get Shuters office to tell her exactly when she would be locked out of the apartment.

The courts told me to call the office every day to find out when the landlord-tenant is coming, Jones said. I called them every day.

Shuter, reached by email, acknowledged that the office did not disclose the date or time of eviction to reduce conflict.

It is the policy of the office not to disclose the date and time of the eviction to the tenant in order to protect the safety of tenants, landlords and their representatives and Deputy Landlord-Tenant Officers, she said.

Jones eventually packed up and left early, to avoid running into the Landlord and Tenant Officers deputies. She now also works with a tenants rights group and said she has come to understand why it was so hard to get an answer to a simple question.

They try to catch people off guard, Jones said.

For those who experience evictions, the memories are often searing. Munira Edens-McClean, now a community organizer leading a housing justice campaign with nonprofit OnePA, said she still remembers the day the landlord-tenant officers came to her familys home.

I had them come to my door and tell me we had an hour to get out. I still remember it, from when I was a child, she said. Thats part of the reason Im doing this stuff.

To some, its an unavoidable consequence of the reality of a rental market in an impoverished city, regardless of who arrived to change the locks.

Sometimes, maybe the tenant didnt get the notice. But a lot of times, its really just that they couldnt pay their bills because they lost their job. Or people were in another bad situation, said housing attorney Michael Williams. Its sad, losing your house while your kids are standing there next to you. Its just awful.

But lawyers at CLS the housing law organization responsible, in a sense, for the creation of the Landlord and Tenant Office say today that the office is in need of reform, much as it was a half-century ago.

CLS has advocated for tenants rights for years, and we are hoping to see changes in the near future that will involve increased accountability from the Landlord-Tenant Officer in the performance of its duties, said attorney Ian Charlton.

Councilwoman Helen Gym, who helped co-author a raft of renter protections earlier this year, agreed the office should be abolished.

While the sheriffs office has had its own history of ethics problems, she said merging landlord-tenant functions would at least provide a bare minimum of oversight and credentialing.

We already have a process to handle this, she said. They go through the sheriffs office where they are at least tracked and held publicly accountable. There is a public process and a means of appeal.

Barry Thompson, someone who went through the process himself, said even small stopgaps or more warnings could be critical for those already in a personal maelstrom when the eviction workers come.

Its like being caught up in a fire in the wee hours of the morning, youre not in your right state of mind, he said. Youre being told to grab this, grab that, you forget things. You forget your blood pressure pill, your ID. You get around the corner and you realize you dont have it, but the door is already locked.

View original post here:

Philly lawyer collects millions evicting people for city courts. She's married to an eviction judge - The Philadelphia Tribune

University of Georgia College of Education professor Bettina Love founded the Abolitionist Teaching Network to advocate at the intersection of racism, education and abolition.

The movement aims to abolish an outdated education system that doesnt support children of color abolition refers to getting rid of systemic racism in educational systems, Love said.

The projects mission is to develop and support educators to fight injustice within institutions and communities. The network brings together abolitionists, community organizers, educators, parents, social workers, counselors, lawyers and health care providers to take direct action for educational freedom.

The goal is to interrupt racism through multiple measures such as choosing Black authors, selecting resources that are authentic and multifaceted, and advocating for the election of Black people to school boards, said Brandelyn Tosolt, an associate professor in the College of Education at Northern Kentucky University and a co-founder of the ATN.

Other possible measures are changing dress and behavior policies to eradicate anti-Blackness in these codes, and removing police forces from schools, Tosolt said.

When people hear the word abolition, they hear something that is so radical, and in a way, it is, but what they dont understand is that we are advocating to be treated as humans, Love said. We are advocating for a school system that works for all children, not just Black or Brown children. But what we are going to do first and foremost is start with those kids who have been marginalized and neglected for centuries.

Tosolt describes abolition as a process as much as its an outcome. She said the teachers in the ATN work toward abolishing an unjust education system every day.

Tosolt works with a doctoral program for educators where she prepares them on how to be anti-racist and to create environments that center the experiences of Black, brown and queer people in educational institutions.

In order to help teachers become abolitionists, Love hopes to teach and support educators through webinars, conferences and direct action. After the COVID-19 era, board members hope their organization allows for Black liberation to take place.

Our work is to help teachers dream. We want them to dream about what it would look like to create a classroom that centers Black joy and love for students. We will help these teachers ask questions, have conversations and brainstorm together, Tosolt said.

Bettina Love, UGA professor and founder of the Abolitionist Teaching Network

The projects activist and residency program is where activists work with a community and individuals. Love said they are going to put a person on the ground who understands the implications and is going to do the grunt work.

We want to be in solidarity with one another and direct action is the main aspect of the project, Love said. We are not fighting for a solution that is just putting a bandaid on the problem.

The project has multiple online workshops. Tosolt plans to lead a workshop called Cultivating Co-Conspirators, Workshop for White people, which will help people develop a practice of co-conspiratorship being allies for marginalized communities.

Tosolt said she hopes to aid white members to unlearn their whiteness by recognizing the whiteness embedded in their institutions and teaching them to use their privilege to get rid of their privilege.

We are planning an entire year of programming around supporting teachers doing this work in local context, Tosolt said.Our big focus is to create teachers and educational activists and help them adjust these ideals to their own classrooms because every state has their own systems.

As a UGA professor, Love said she hopes the ATN will help teachers in Athens start to reckon with racism.

My concern is that this project will be a network and hub where teachers throughout Clarke County organize and understand that they can use us as a resource to disrupt the current oppressive educational system thoughtfully, Love said.

The project will be a resource that helps train and educate faculty and staff. The ATN board is currently taking a year to recruit and fundraise. Love and her team raised $54,000 since July 6, the day they began the project.

Love also hopes ATN becomes a national and local model of how to destroy current systems that do not serve children of color. Starting in 2022, ATN will hold a yearly conference in Atlanta to gather radical minds around the issues that impact schools and communities.

We are not interested in reform or small measures that do not target the root of the problem, which is racism and whiteness that is deeply embedded within education, Love said.

Read more from the original source:

UGA professor founds racial equality education project - Red and Black

*Editor's note: When this article went to print, eight protesters were arrested on July 28, two more were arrested bringing up the total to 10 arrests on July 28, and 55 total arrests in July. The online article has been updated with the most up-to-date information.

This past weekend, through planned acts of civil disobedience, 25 protesters were arrested by the Winston-Salem Police Department on charges of impeding traffic. In groups of three to five people, protesters consecutively walked out and linked hands as they stood and knelt in the crosswalks waiting peacefully to be arrested by a fleet of bike patrollers. Some held up their fists, while the rest of the group held signs that read: Answer our demands, Ban the hogtie, and Notify the public of all jail deaths. On July 24, (Day 10), a group of at least 40 protesters walked from Bailey Park up to the corner of Fourth and Liberty Streets, where a historical marker notated North Carolinas first sit-in victory.

The marker states:

On February 8, 1960, Carl Wesley Matthews began the citys sit-in demonstration alone at lunch counters near this site and was soon joined by students from Winston-Salem Teachers College, Atkins High School, and Wake Forest College. The nonviolent protest led to a desegregation agreement signed May 23rd by the City and local businesses. Mr. Matthews, the leader, was the first Black served at a desegregated counter on May 25th. The protest ended in a record 107 days.

(On July 28, 10 more protesters holding flowers were arrested on charges of impeding traffic at the same spot as the arrests on July 24.)

I think that it is indeed ironic, said Citlaly Mora, communications strategist from the ACLU of N.C. regarding the arrests next to the historical marker celebrating 107 days of civil disobedience. We are seeing the hypocrisy not only in Winston-Salem but all the movements that we have going on in the United States that are really shining a light on the history and resilience of civil disobedience movement, yet how little things have changed when it comes to suppressing the right to protest.

Mora pointed out that Winston-Salem and Greensboro both have strong roots in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.

Now, when we have movements building up with something that intersects race and how we police people, and who is a victim of police brutality. Again, we are seeing some type of suppression that really put it on its face and really shows that some of the reforms we have seen have been hollow and not an accurate representation of our appreciation of civil disobedience, Mora said. The John Neville case exemplifies how we report jail deaths, what counts as in-and out-of-state custody, what authority the sheriff has and who they report to, and their accountability. Those are still unanswered questions and concerns that need to be addressed, but it points to a larger issue that we have in N.C. with how we police, report and are transparent with the public, who essentially is funding these resources and law enforcement.

On July 24, after marching in a square around the crosswalks for about 30 minutes, the first two demonstratorsCalvin Pea, co-founder of The Unity Coalition; and Hannah Campbell, co-founder of Triad Abolition Projectwalked out into the street and wandered around peacefully while carefully dodging passing cars as the rest of their comrades chanted: Answer our demands. The 13 others that were arrested walked out in groups of three to five and followed Campbell and Peas peaceful lead.

Campbell wrote in a text message that she sought out like-minded folks wanting to work toward abolition because of how the prison industrial complex [PIC] and capitalism have affected her life and family. And because I see the immediate need for abolition echoed in the gaping holes the PIC leaves in our communities here in Winston-Salem, she wrote. Its personal.

It felt pretty surreal to be arrested for civil disobedience at such a historical marker in our city, Campbell continued. Knowing and seeing so immediately that folks came before me, though, gave me the strength and wherewithal to stand in that street. But it also illuminated for me just how long this fight has been and will continue to be.

Campbell said that she is grateful for Rep. John Lewis and activist Yvette Boulware, who made good trouble long before us, and who have shepherded us to continue to make good trouble to demand good change.

Pea said that his second arrest was easier than the first time around despite him getting the full tour on July 24.

The first time, it was apparent for whatever reasonthey kept me in longer (they took me in first and let me out last), he said. The same thing happened, but they gave me the full tourbooked me, had me pull up my bottom lip, my upper lipthe whole nine. It was an experience, but honestly, the joke is on them because I got to go in and meet some of the inmates who know about us on the outside fighting this fight.

According to the police report, there were no subsequent violations or injuries after the 15 protesters were arrested. Each group of protestors standing in the middle of the intersection was notified that they were violating the law by impeding traffic and to go back to the sidewalk. The listed protestors refused to comply.

Rev. Chad Armstong III was the man on the microphone for most of the day on July 24 and said that it was a productive day for the movement.

It seems to be that momentum is growing; community support is growing, he said. It seems to be that the visibility of the John Neville case is growing, which is obviously the intention and goal of what we are doing.

Armstrong said the demonstration location was not initially planned, but rather something that one of the other group members came up with right before the march began.

What was kind of tough was to see that there was the police and sheriffs department there who as ironically as they did, chose to arrest peaceful protesters in the space and spot where the City of Winston-Salem has erected a historical marker to civil disobedience and peaceful protests, Armstrong said. As a lifelong resident of the city and knowing its history, it was hard for him to see law enforcement make arrests in that spot.

For there to be the celebratory space of historical marker in once instance, but the degradation of that in the sense of responding to peaceful protesters in that wayit is kind of tough to process, he said. What was interesting, for me, was to hear one of the cops ask a question as to why we were forcing them to deal with this, which actually was posed to one of our organizersone of the cops whispered to one of our organizers, why are you making us deal with this?

Armstrong said that since the WSPD allegedly used an LRAD as an intimidation tactic on July 8, and because of their show of force with the 55 arrests they have made of peaceful protesters (so far) in July, they have intertwined themselves with the sheriffs department in this.

These protesters are protesting the sheriffs department, and what happened in a building that is operated by taxpayer dollars, Armstrong said. The tough part about it is, Chief Catrina Thompsons statement that she made in taking back the relationship that she seemed to try to garner with peaceful protesters is very confusing. Not for just one activist group, but for, I am sure, all of the local activist groups in Winston-Salem/Forsyth County community.

Even though Armstrong said #OccupyWSNC isnt shooting to break the 107-record set by Matthews in 1960, he said demonstrations and direct actions would continue if Sheriff Bobby Kimbrough and District Attorney Jim ONeill continue to remain silent by not answering questions or meeting the demands of the protesters. Armstrong said he hopes the community educates themselves about the Triad Abolition Project, The Unity Coalition, and the details surrounding what ONeill characterized as John Nevilles avoidable death and that the public did not know any details about it until seven months after it happened.

On July 25, in a strategic move, the occupiers took the movement to the heart of downtownin front of numerous outdoor diners of the citys Streatery and there, 10 were arrested on charges of impeding traffic. After marching around the crosswalks, garnering attention from diners with a microphone, cardboard signs, and chants, a group of four walked out on a crosswalk, hands linked facing a bike patroller. Six more followed suit.

It was a really fortunate thing to happen because the catch of all this happening during a pandemic, is that you cant really be as disruptive or you cant be as visible in the downtown area because businesses arent open right now, Pea said. Ideally, you have people who are out there trying to go about their day, as if we are not in the middle of the biggest Civil Rights movement in world history. Disruption, at least when it comes to protesting, involves reminding them, very clearly, that we are in some unprecedented times right now, and it is not the time to be enjoying yourself casually.

Multiple times during the march, Armstrong apologized to diners, gave downtown business owners a shout out and encouraged diners to leave a big tip for their servers.

Pea said that #OccupyWSNC has bail funds, community support and that the movement is happening strategically with every decision that is made.

We even have some of the police officers individually wondering, whats the point? They realize that the city is letting this go on, Pea said. It is not checkers; it is chess.

It is kind of funny that [WSPD] decided to stop protecting and supporting protesters as soon as we started asking questions about our city and our community and our law enforcement, Pea continued. I know we have the upper hand. We inherently have the moral high ground. There is no arguing that.

Chloe Brewer and Molly Southern were two of the demonstrators that were arrested on both Friday and Saturday.

I didnt know what to expect, but I had my friends and comrades with me, Brewer said. Brewer has been with the occupation since its first day, and she said she is part of the movement because she morally objects with policing.

It is based and was started in racism, and that is not cool. I am lucky enough where I dont go to school right now, and I have nothing else to do, and I know what my future holds for me, she said. I am lucky I can get arrested for this cause twice in two days. I know that my family is proud of me, and my friends are here standing with me.

We are getting in good trouble, and my family understands that this is something I believe in, she added.

Southern said she was held longer than any other protesters with the same charges on July 25, and she alleged that she was targeted. I think they saw me and Chloe out there, and they probably decided right then, one of you to make an example of you, Southern said. Which is exactly what happened, I got booked and was in there for five hours, I think. They wouldnt tell me what was happening. My mistake, I forgot to write down anyones [from #OccupyWSNC] number. So, I didnt have any contacts with anyone on the outside.

Southern alleged that even though she made bail, they kept her inside for an additional hour without any explanation of why. She said she wasnt scared or intimidated, though because she knew her comrades were out there waiting for methey are taking care of me, she said, I am doing this for a just cause, and I dont regret it at all.

Southern said that it felt good to be on the right side of history.

To be able to say that what we are doing is [getting in] good trouble, that feels really good and one of the things that make it really, really worth it.

Santino Ortiz, a former Marine, was also arrested on July 25. He said as a veteran, he was disappointed with the WSPD.

I think it is disappointing that they want to violate our First Amendment rightsI spent five years of my life defending the constitution and defending peoples rights to do this, Ortiz said. This is absolutely the most American thing you can do! So, it is just disappointing that our police want to supersede our constitutional rights. Inside the detention center, he said most of the officers were cordial, except for one, who kept talking about how ridiculous it was and how we were wasting their resources, preventing them from fighting real crime. When that cop said that, I spoke up and said, Excuse me, I spent five years in the Marine Corps, and I dont think our First Amendment rights are ridiculous. One other cop spoke up and said, I agree that you for your service.

Ortiz said this arrest isnt stopping him.

He said he would keep raising his fist and marching. Another person arrested on July 25 was Richard Hughes, who said that the strategy of going to the Streatery to protest was to cause a productive disruption and spread awareness.

We want people to know about the similar George Floyd case that we have right here in our own backyard, Hughes said. I will do this as many times as I need to until we get that justice.

Hughes feels that an explanation is owed to the public when someone dies on the taxpayers dime.

Something has to be said, you cant just cover this up and expect anyone not to ask questions; you owe us at least something tangiblesomething that provides substantial answers, and that is what we want, he said. Just do the right thing. For Bobby Kimbrough to be a Black man knowing what we face with police brutality, out of all people, he should understand.

John Bowhers, who was also arrested on Saturday, said he saw nothing but support at the Streatery from folks dining outside. He said it was necessary to march there and be in front of people otherwise, it is really easy to fall complacent and go about your day and not remember there are people whose lives are in danger every day right in the same city as you are. While he was being arrested, Bowhers was dressed in a suit and tie. I just figured I should represent myself in the way that I feel professionally, Bowhers said of his outfit. And to make it clear that someone who wears a suit and tie to work is also passionate about this cause. I treat this occupation very much like a job. I think that one thing I really appreciate about this group is the professionalism that everyone has brought to the table. I think that makes an organization strong, and I wanted to reflect that.

He has been at #OccupyWSNC since Day 1, and he feels that it is providing the right kind of visibility to sustain the movement.

I am learning a lot about the idea of abolition, anti-racism, and admittedly, I am getting up to speed with all of that myself, he said. I think more people need to take more time to read something that might make them feel uncomfortable. Actually, put some serious thought into something that doesnt align with their beliefs and see if they can consider the other side of the argument.

Bowhers described the occupiers as a group of kind and compassionate people who are really in this to see that the world could become more of a peaceful place.

I believe that this group of people is leading the thought process that we can help take care of each other without this potentially violent force that is supposed to be keeping us safe.

Desiree Dedolce was also arrested that same night, and she said she noticed that her bond was double the amount it was for others the day before. She believes this was an intimidation tactic to try and financially deter protesters from continuing these acts of civil disobedience. She said she hopes the sheriff and D.A. would come to Bailey Park to talk so that we wont have to do this again tomorrow.

I think there are a lot of people who look at us in the streets blocking traffic and that what we are doing is wrong, Dedolce said. I heard a lot of people say I can get behind it if you are peacefulwell, we have been peaceful, and it has obviously not worked out. And it is a shame that we have to escalate it this much just to get attention, but that is what its come to, so we wont give up until we get some answers.

In response to the 25 arrests this past weekend, Mora said that arresting peaceful protesters, especially during a pandemic, is not a wise thing to do.

Nothing should be punitive; everything in law enforcement should be for the protection of people. Arresting people, placing them in jail, poses a risk to them as doing quite the opposite.

Mora also commented that the use of bail is problematic in itself, so is raising the bail on peaceful protesters arrested on charges of impeding traffic, especially when there is clearly no risk to the community.

They shouldnt be making it higher and less affordable for people, especially when they are not posing a threat to people, and they are just protesting and expressing their rights.

Watching the arrests go down during the Streatery, one citizen said she was moved by one of the chants from the demonstration.

It wasnt a clich chant, said Capri Isles, a Winston-Salem resident of one year. I felt the true pain from the protest, because this is what democracy looks like says so much. This is what we stand for. This is what it looks like, yet we are not getting a fair chancewe are not getting the information that we need. That man was killed, and they tried to hide the information? I didnt even know about it until during the protest! I was Googling and figuring out who they were talking about.

Isles said it was sad to find out that John Nevilles death happened almost eight months ago, and that the public wasnt notified when it happened.

When I saw the protests, it moved me to know that there were people of all colors standing up for what is right, she added. I felt a pain in my heart to see people getting arrested like they were. I had to stop myself from really crying. It was sad seeing people get arrested for standing up for what is right.

Isles said that she didnt live in Forsyth County when Sheriff Kimbrough was elected into office. Isles said after learning about the death of John Neville, she would not be voting for Kimbrough.

Bailey Pittenger, a co-founder of TAP, said she continues to ask for transparency and accountability from the sheriff and D.A. When asked what she thought of the increase of detention center nurses, medical training for 50 detention officers on Aug. 1, the revised policy of duty to intervene that public information officer Christina Howell told YES! Weekly last week. Pittenger said she remains suspicious of policy changes that arent announced publicly.

We are asking for transparency and accountability in terms of all of our questions being answered. So, making policy changes away from the public eye, and not fully explaining why they would do that, or how it will impact things or even getting more details of what medical training is like for 50 detention officers and special response team members, Pittenger said. This never should have happened in the first place. They should have always put priority over the health of John Neville and our other brothers, sisters, and siblings incarcerated there.

Pittenger said she has been studying the sheriffs use of force policy alongside the medical examiners report, and she noticed a couple of things that were peculiar to her.

The use of force policy does say that IRB should have been in effect for any incarcerated members who have a serious bodily injury while in custody. I have not seen IRBs for any of the detention officers that have been involved, she said. The use of force policy also states that an IRB is done in addition to the SBI investigation, so I am just not seeing anything adding up still. I think going back to all those questions we very intentionally ask in terms of transparency and accountability need to be addressed, and our demands need to be addressed.

In response to the 25 arrests this past weekend, Pittenger said that TAP and occupiers are following in the footsteps of the recently fallen freedom fighter, Rep. John Lewis. That message, good trouble means that we will, or we have been standing in the street as direct, nonviolent action, she said. It is a statement toward the five that was first arrested on July 8, who really should not have been. But that message doesnt seem to be really getting across. Knowing that history and John Lewis is so important. He is also the one that said, be on the right side of history, we have been using that phrase here for weeks now, and seeing him pass recently, is overwhelming.

When asked if she was burned out from the occupation, Pittenger said not at all, in fact, she feels an urge to be present every day until demands are met, and questions are answered.

I dont have to buy groceries anymore because I just eat here, and the camaraderie is amazing, she said. It doesnt feel like a drag ever. I want to be here with these people, and I want to keep pushing. I dont see us stopping until our demands are met, and we are all on the same page.

Pittenger said even though she has sent countless emails, she has still not heard anything from the D.A. or sheriffs office. Pittenger said she is in touch with the ACLU of N.C. every day and that for now, Triad Abolition Project is only asking the ACLU of N.C. for amplification to attract more bodies to Bailey Park and more awareness of what is happening with #OccupyWSNC.

I have personal hope that we will see policy change that involves this community, and that is not done secretly, Pittenger said. I think that the voices in this group will be absolutely heard.

In regards to the significantly higher bonds set on Saturday than the day before for several protesters, Pittenger said she believes this to be an intimidation tactic.

Forsyth County Bail Fund posted on social media that they almost spent $28,000 just this week, and that is ridiculous and that the bail system needs to go away entirely, she said. In terms of our specific bail bonds increasing and two of our demonstrators being heldthey are definitely picking and choosing who they want to intimidate. Yet, when Molly was being held, we had the biggest show of people at the jail that night, still at Bailey Park dancing and waiting. They can intimidate, but it is really just really not doing anything but pushing us to continue the work that we need to do.

YES! Weekly emailed Mayor Allen Joines asking if he was aware of the #OccupyWSNC demands surrounding the death of John Neville, as well as his response to the arrests on charges of impeding traffic this weekend, his response to those same arrests so far in July, and his response to what some demonstrators called ironic that protesters arrests happened next to the historical marker celebrating civil disobedience and North Carolinas first sit-in victory.

Mayor Joines emailed back the following response:

We support peaceful, lawful protests. The Police supported 35 demonstrations before announcing that they would be asking demonstrators to follow city and state ordinances. The Police are enforcing those ordinances. The issues and demands regarding Mr. Neville deal with the Sheriffs Office and the District Attorney and not the City of Winston Salem.

Numerous attempts were made to contact D.A. Jim ONeill, but YES! Weekly has not received an email or call back. YES! Weekly also emailed Howell to see if Sheriff Kimbrough had a response to the #OccupyWSNC movement. Howell wrote in an email that all questions regarding John Neville would need to be directed to the D.A.s office.

We have very simple demands, and we are not asking for much, Brewer said when asked if she had anything to say to Sheriff Kimbrough, D.A. ONeill, or Chief Thompson.Very simple things like ban the hogtie because it kills people and notify your taxpayers when the death of an inmate happens at the hands of an officer.

When asked the same questions, Dedolce said that the WSPD needs to start practicing what they preach.

They made public statements saying they were on our side and would protect us, but once we turned the mirror around onto the jail here and the detention center and what happened there, they immediately decided that what we were doing was unlawful, she said. I would invite them to have a conversation with organizers our tax dollars are paying them, and they owe it to their community to come out and answer these questions that we have. The questions that we have are not only in regards to justice for John Neville or his family, but every single person in that detention center or will be in that detention center.

Pea said that the sheriff and D.A. already know what they need to do.

For anybody who thinks we are doing this willy-nilly, or that we dont know what we are doing, who arent taking us seriously, he said. Just know that we are willingly sending our comrades and ourselves into a place where people are unjustly killed. This isnt a game; we are not playing around; we are not joking. As much as we go in there with a plan, we go in there knowing that the man in the custody of the folks that work this building who handles uswe go in there knowing they killed him in December.

On Day 13 of the #OccupyWSNC movement, John Nevilles children, Kris and Brienne, showed up to the occupation to pick up the painting of their father by artist Robert Talley AKA Bobby Danger. While they were there, they offered words of encouragement to the occupiers and thanked them for all their efforts and support.

It is very humbling, and it fills my heart to know that so many people are working for the same cause, Kris Neville said. I was seeing all of this and people gathering together, and I never thought anybodyall of this is happening for my family? This is for my dad up there? It didnt seem real at first. It also didnt seem fair. I hate that people have to do this because of what happened. I really wish things could have been different. But it is definitely another catalyst for change for the future. It sucks, but it seems like gruesome shit has to happen for change to actually be made. It sucks for people to have to die for other people, especially locally, to wake up and realize they cant ignore the issue anymore. As someone who has existed in white spaces for most of my life, I have been with people who have absolutely ignored the issues because they had the privilege to do so, and never had to live their lives fearing what was going to happen the next day. They can safely get in their car and drive somewhere, and not have a worry in the world. But I dont have that same thing; I am always looking for copsconstantly checking my mirror. If anything happens, I never think of calling the cops. First, I always call my mother and friendsI am always praying that I never have to be in the situation or emergency because I dont want to have to rely on a system that doesnt really support me at its core. It is really great seeing everyone joined here today; I appreciate each and every one of youeven if I dont know your names. It really means a lot, a lot more than you will ever know to both of us and the rest of my family.

I am not even an emotional person, but this is tearing me apart, and not in a bad way, Brienne Neville said with tears in her eyes. It is a level of appreciation that people dont really understand because the truth is, we really have been alone in a way for seven months. We have been trying to cope with it; we have been trying to get our own answers, we have been trying to go about it in a way that would honor our dad, as opposed to acting crazy and dishonoring him, and just showing everything that we are trying to build up. As you know, it is not only you guys but the kids in Raleigh who slept in the freaking street all night to make sure that the bill did not get passed. The power of these thingsdont think that it is lost on us because we are not here with you guys every day. We watch, we just cant be here in the way that we want to. But we appreciate that you are not only here but arent afraid to ask questionsthat you care enough to make it about others and not yourselves. You are not here for the glory; you are not here just to make demands or just to go to jail so you can say you got arrested for fun...No one told you that you had to do that, each of you from your own hearts said, something is wrong, and we are going to make a stand for it; for us and for the men and women in therethat is powerful. Dont ever think that what you are doingeven if others dont say thank you, we thank you. We just may not know how to say it. We have spent months trying to edge our own grief, so to speak, trying to get to the cusp. And all of a sudden, we were thrown back into it. We are not upset about that, per se, because without this, the changes would never happen, the possibility of change would never happen. But it has been an emotional roller coaster; it has been a whirlwind for all of us.

We hear people who say that racism doesnt exist; slavery doesnt exist, but slavery still does exist because we are slaves to the system; we are the same slavesdifferent master, Brienne added. Systemic racism is the new masterthe way they dont want you to speak out even if you are white, or Hispanic. They dont want you to speak out because they want you to fall in line and follow an agenda that is not even for you. I applaud you for being brave enough to have your own thoughts and to speak out on your own thoughts. Dont ever let anyone tell you that you are not doing the right thing, because if you believe in something firm enough getting yourselves arrested for it that is powerful. Dont ever stop.

Campbell said the support of John Nevilles children is more than enough fuel for the journey.

I know well all hold tight to that as we continue pushing for transparency and accountability from our officials in this particular case.

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Protesters say they will continue getting in 'good trouble' - Yes! Weekly

The 90-minute program was divided into two parts with actors reenacting real situations faced by married couples sent to the shows website in the first half and an actual married couple sharing their issues in the second half of the program. The five panel members then took side with either the husband or wife, with the winner given 1 million won ($833).

In 2020, things that are more dramatic than any television drama are happening in the real lives of married couples. There are many diverse methods by which couples cheat on each other, and the divorce trend is changing rapidly, said Sky Channel producer Jeong Eun-ha at Mondays press conference before the first show.

Jeong hoped many people could relate and find consolation in hearing the honest problems of the married couples in their 30s and 40s shown on the program.

The five panel members of Doomed Marriage come from different backgrounds.

Actress Choi Hwa-jeong shares her insight from a single womans perspective and years of listening to the stories of other couples. Model and comedian Hong Jin-kyung shares her thoughts as a woman married for 17 years, while comedian Lee Yong-jin, who got married last year, represents the viewpoints of a newlywed man. Psychiatrist Yang Jae-jin, who is single, brings his professional insight, while actress Lee Sang-ah, who has been married and divorced three times, sheds light on the realistic aspects of marriage.

During the premiere, the shows panel members expressed surprise at the R-rated talk in the show, with Lee Sang-ah wondering if the show could actually air given its highly sexual nature.

Its 2020, and its about time this kind of program was made. Despite that being true, I think a lot will be said since we are a pioneering program, said Yang.

The first episode illustrated why the panel had expressed some apprehension about the adult content in the show.

Actors reenacted a case of a husband who cheated on his wife of two years with a colleague at work. The wife found out after a year and began gathering evidence of the betrayal. The story takes a turn when the wife confronts the co-worker, but the co-worker threatens to report tax evasion by the husbands company if the wife stands in the way of the affair. The story ends with the husband asking the wife to allow his affair until he settles his financial problems, and the wife asks the panel what she should do, as she requires financial stability to support her sick daughter.

The real-life story angered the panel at some points, but also made them think about the financial aspects and realities of marriage. Yang also pointed out how people engaged in extramarital affairs have been getting bolder since the abolition of the adultery law in 2015 and with divorce settlement fees remaining much lower in Korea than in other countries.

In the second part of Mondays show, a newlywed comedian couple appeared to discuss the biggest issue in their marriage. The female comedian expressed anger at the husband for not trying his best to have a baby, but the husband claimed he was doing the best he could.

Doomed Marriage airs Mondays at 10 p.m. on Sky Channel and Channel A.

By Lim Jang-won (ljw@heraldcorp.com)

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Doomed Marriage heats up Monday night with unfiltered adult talk - The Korea Herald

Reading Time: 7 minutesPeople attend Pope Francis celebration of Mass at the baseball stadium in Nagasaki, Japan.PHOTO: CNS/PAUL HARING

It is now 75 years since the United States dropped the second atomic bomb ever used in wartime on Nagasaki, resulting in a death toll of up to 70,000 by the end of 1945.

The Hiroshima bombing will be remembered on 6 August and the Nagasaki bombing on 9 August.

Of the dead at Nagasaki, approximately 8500 on the day were Catholics representing 60 to 75 per cent of their own community and over 10 per cent of the total.

Over the last 12 years, I have studied the immense implications of the Nagasaki bombing on the citys Catholic community through interviews with survivors, the community and local researchers.

Together with Yuki Miyamoto, an ethicist at Depaul University in Chicago, I have collated some discussion about how the 75th anniversary of the bombing would be impacted by the COVID-19 crisis.

In late 2019 I attended Mass with the people of Urakami, a northern suburb of Nagasaki, Catholics who had travelled from around Japan, onlookers, and Pope Francis, the second Pope to visit Japan after John Paul II in 1981.

The Mass was celebrated at the baseball ground in Urakami Valley just 200 metres from Ground Zero.

The evening before, I visited a hot springs overlooking the valley and couldnt help but visualise where the 12 survivors were at 11:02am on 9 August 1945, according to their subsequent interviews.

Oral historians write about palpable emotion in the interview. As I surveyed the scene, the emotion I had experienced in the interviews welled up deep within.

This year, the closing ceremony of the Olympics was planned for Nagasaki Day, as the nations government played up the opportunity to move past adversity into the future.

The Olympics are now postponed, perhaps to be cancelled, and the ongoing COVID crisis will have a major impact on the commemorations of the atomic bombings.

Today, in Tokyo, coronavirus infections are an ongoing concern. Given the emerging and unexpected situation, to what extent will the COVID-19 crisis impact the 75th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

Probably partly a result of the Catholic presence there, reactions to the atomic bomb in the Nagasaki community are often summarised by writers as prayer and the understanding of the devastation as Gods providence.

But my new book argues that Catholic atomic bomb survivors of Nagasaki protest the bombing and have complex and culturally specific memories of its impact and aftermath.

Based on a collective biography of the 12 survivors, I consider the connections between individuals and their communitys history, and their consciousness of historic communal marginalisation.

What became quickly clear as I studied the community of Catholic survivors was that their survival of the bomb was understood in parallel to their communitys astonishing endurance of 250 years of persecution which began prior to the Tokugawa Shogunate in 1603.

Their ancestors were the Hidden Christians of Japan who went underground, pretending to be Buddhist, in order to avoid maltreatment.

The decision of the Japanese Olympic planners to time the Closing Ceremony for Nagasaki Day had, I believe, dangerous implications, even if it was supposed to offer a sense of closure.

By remembering the bombing of Nagasaki, Japan would have brought to mind the Catholics devastated there, who were previously mistreated and made an underclass due to an Imperialist mindset which demonised the Other, colonialised and subsumed the nations neighbours.

I use the word dangerous (after Johann B. Metz) because memories can disturb, stoke emotions and unleash dangerous new insights about the past.

Dangerous memories question hegemonic power and those who oppress others for their beliefs. In particular, the subjugated experience such memories as dangerous, subversively resisting the prophets of historylessness, those who adopt victors justice and who would exclude the vanquished from history.

In my study of survivor narratives, I aimed to discover whether the Catholic narrative constituted such a dangerous memory for the wider Japanese community in the context of war-time militaristic and aggressive Japanese Imperial ambitions, also reporting on the human cost of the fateful United States decision to deploy the atomic bombs.

Both papal visits to Nagasaki (Pope John Paul II in 1981 and Pope Francis in 2019) occurred on days of inclement weather. Pope John Paul II visited in February.

When he arrived for an outdoor mass there was a rare snowstorm. Pictures of the rally show numbed but stoic believers on a white snowy field, patriotically waving Japanese flags.

Two of the survivors I interviewed, Ozaki Tomei and Mine Toru, had a personal connection to the now-canonised Pope.

The orphanage which took both of them in after the death of their mothers was founded by a Polish Franciscan priest-missionary, Maximilian Maria Kolbe (1894-1941), who gave up his own life on behalf of another, to eventually die in Auschwitz.

Ozaki became a brother in the Seibo no Kishi Knights of the Holy Mother order in Nagasaki and later travelled to Poland to meet the man whose life was saved by Kolbes actions.

Despite the freezing cold, the Nagasaki Christians went to an outdoor mass in the early morning snow and John Paul II is remembered for his strong message and his ability to deliver it in Japanese (and four other languages). War is the work of humanity, he told them.

War is destruction of human life; war is death. His speech influenced a gradual transformation of the religious communitys memory and interpretation of the bombing.

After the Pope stated that [war is the work of humanity], he said [we] must talk about it This was what changed, Kataoka Chizuko, a religious who is a past Principal of Junshin Girls University explained to me in an interview about the papal visit.

There were a whole lot of people who as victims [had experienced this pain of ours] [which] we hadnt talked about it, concealed within us.

However, the Pope urged that we had to work more for the sake of world peace, so if the Pope says so, even if it is painful, alright, our experiences should be added to the discussion I think this was the kind of change you see.

The Popes speech signalled a new paradigm for survivors when he said the bomb was a work of humanity.

Kataoka acknowledges an enormous difficulty in talking about traumatic experiences of the atomic bombing which is not only a personal matter, but is also related to earlier waves of ambivalence in the Nagasaki Church about atomic and nuclear weapons.

The Churchs official stance, especially in the strong Nagasaki archdiocese, was at best hesitant and I discuss in my book how a theology that the bombing may be understood as a part of the providence of God was at least at times damaging for survivors, struggling to even partially recover from the trauma they had experienced.

Pope Francis, though, was unambivalent in his message. Thirty-eight years later, central Nagasaki was shut down for the current Popes visit in late 2019.

I stood with the crowd 50 metres from the hypocentre Ground Zero cenotaph waiting for the cavalcade as we were soaked by a rainstorm.

Standing under an umbrella, Francis delivered a staunch anti-nuclear message. Eventually, the sun re-emerged for the mass and hundreds of local Catholics sang from high in the stands of the baseball stadium.

So how are we to understand painful events of the wartime past, even as like the rest of the world Nagasaki faces the deathly impact of the coronavirus?

The threat of nuclear war is still with us, as Francis pointed out so recently, lending an uneasiness to the upcoming anniversary.

Akira Kawasaki, a representative of Peaceboat Japan wrote to me that as the media directs its attention towards the COVID-19 crisis, it is disappointing for the hibakusha survivors who want to send a clear message about the abolition of nuclear weapons.

Seirai Yuichi, a novelist and previous director of the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum, agrees that the discussion of coronavirus appears to be stealing time from the discussion of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.

Society may miss the opportunity for reflection which the 75th anniversary offers, he wrote in an email to Miyamoto and I.

Meanwhile, the growing tendency of politicians and commentators in Japan to act as if Japans wrong acts in the past did not happen (which I would argue are dangerous to the status quo) must be challenged and its crucial to remember the negatives of the past, Kawasaki noted in his email.

Importantly, commemorations in Nagasaki offer a model of inter-religious collaboration.Nagai Tokusaburo, the grandson of Nagai Takashi, the well-known Catholic doctor who assisted in Nagasakis recovery efforts, writes that despite the threat of a loss of focus on the commemorations, there are unique religious collaborations in Nagasaki aimed at praying for peace.

Nagai mentioned the shuukyousha konwakai, religious group discussions where those of different persuasions can meet together and consider peace.

Seirai also writes of the inter-religious ireisai memorial service held on 8 August which is attended by Buddhist, Christian and Shinto group representatives to pray for the victims of the atomic bombing and for peace.

Another individual told me that for the Nagasaki Catholic church, which experienced the catastrophic damage of the atomic bomb directly, the consoling of the spirits of those who died and memorial events are deeply important.

He also noted that despite John Paul IIs unequivocal words about the bomb as the work of humanity, a discussion about the atomic bombing interpreted as Gods providence continued into the present and that the believers continued to have disagreements over this issue.

Contributing to this article was Dr Yuki Miyamoto, who lectures at Depaul University, Chicago.

Read more here:

Rising from the ashes - The Catholic Weekly

You are trapped in a net cast by a white man reeking of rum and smoke, and then dragged miles to the coast. You are processed, bound into chains, and led to vast wooden ships. You are packed into the hold and spend months on the ocean. You have little to eat, little to drink, little air to breathe. All around you there is coughing and fever. On deck, they make you dance to keep your muscles taut, to preserve your price at the market. If you resist, they will beat you; if you die, they will throw you overboard.

In time, you see land. You are paraded on the dockside, prodded and inspected. They feel your arms; they look at your teeth. One man says Yes. You are loaded on to a cart and driven over rough land along dirt tracks until you arrive at a house and fields. You suffer searing pain as a burning iron pushes into your skin. You are taken to a shed and thrown to the floor. You collapse and sleep, but the sun rises and then you work. You have not done this work before, but if you do it badly, they will whip you. If you complain, they will whip you again. If you refuse to work, or you fight back, they will kill you in front of the others. So, you work.

This was the life to which British planters and merchants subjected millions of African people from the late 16th century to the 1830s. These are the truths of slavery within the British empire. And yet, as Nicholas Rogers shows in his micro-history, Britons were capable of even worse.

The antagonist of Rogerss tale is John Kimber, a veteran of the slave trade who in 1791 skippered the Recovery, a near-200-ton ship, from Bristol to the slaving coast of west Africa. Kimbers first major crime on this voyage came at New Calabar in the Niger Delta. On finding that the locals would not provide him with either slaves or water, Kimber and his fellow British captains two more from Bristol, three from Liverpool bombarded the town. As Rogers tells us, the British sailors believed that a good volley of cannonballs would resolve outstanding contracts and force down the price of slaves. This prediction proved correct.

Back in London, the news of the attack caught the attention of the group of philanthropists who, since 1787, had been campaigning for the abolition of the trade that Kimber practised, under the political leadership of William Wilberforce. For Wilberforce, Kimbers actions were nothing more than bloody and inhuman butchery. It was during his brief investigation of the New Calabar outrage that Wilberforce learned of the murder onboard the Recovery that dominates Rogerss book.

It is trite to describe life on a slave ship as hell; as the historian Marcus Rediker has put it, there is no way to quantify horror. Even so, Rogers gives vital, awful details of the conditions that prevailed on British slave ships. There was piss and shit and blood, and plenty else besides. John Newton, the clergyman who wrote Amazing Grace and a former, repentant slave trader, recalled that when the women and girls are taken on board a ship, naked, trembling, terrified they are exposed to the wanton rudeness of white savages. He lamented how one of his sailors had seduced a slave down into the room and lay with her brutelike in view of the whole quarter deck. The former slave, merchant and adventurer Olaudah Equiano had also witnessed sailors gratify[ing] their brutal passions with females not 10 years old.

Kimbers victim in this case was a girl only slightly older. Since her enslavement and imprisonment on the Recovery, the girl had been raped, brutalised and inflicted with a severe case of gonorrhoea; of course, the blame for the spread of the disease was attached to the African women on board, not to the British sailors. When the girl would not dance with the other enslaved Africans, Kimber flogged her daily with whips and ropes. Soon, she was struggling to walk, suffering from a crooked knee. This presented Kimber with a problem: if the girl was infirm, she would fetch a much lower price when the ship docked at Grenada.

Kimbers solution was atrocious even by slaving standards. From the mizzen-mast of the ship he strung the girl up by her bad leg, then her other leg, and then by her arms. In each position he whipped her. The ordeal lasted half an hour, after which the girl crawled to the hatch, fell down the stairs into the hold, collapsed, convulsed and died. The bitch is sulky, Kimber concluded. There is no record of her name, her story, or her family; accordingly, and disturbingly, she is referred to as No-name throughout this book.

After denouncing Kimber in parliament, Wilberforce quickly brought charges of murder before the High Court of Admiralty, which was the only place to try a man for alleged crimes committed on the high seas. It is the result of this trial and its aftermath, rather than Kimbers brutality, that say most about Britains historical attitude towards slavery.

With the slaveholding West India Interest mustering an array of witnesses who spoke to Kimbers supposedly good character, the judge, Sir James Marriott, simply stopped the trial and directed the jury to find the accused not guilty. Even more perversely, Marriott immediately charged the prosecutions witnesses, two members of Kimbers crew who had testified against the captain, with perjury: one of them was convicted and sentenced to transportation.

As for Kimber, he tried to sue Wilberforce for damages but contented himself with lurking menacingly outside the abolitionists London home; only the intervention of the Earl of Sheffield put an end to the stalking. Growling, Kimber returned to the slave trade.

How could the British judicial system acquit a man of such crimes? How far did Kimbers monstrosity characterise British traders overall? Indeed, if Britain was the liberal bastion of abolitionism and philanthropy that is often imagined, how could such a killing not have caused a greater furore?

As ever, context is everything. The Haitian revolution had begun in 1791, jeopardising the future of slave colonies across the Caribbean; by the next year, the French Terror was in train; and the slave trade was still a vital artery running through the core of the British empire. To chastise Kimber and to prosecute men of his ilk was considered dangerous commercially, politically and strategically. These were the same concerns that would forestall abolition until 1807.

This was the cold and callous pragmatism that informed so much of British imperial policy; there was no room for sentiment here, and this is the world that Rogers exposes in recounting the death of a teenage girl. It is this history and not the triumphalist accounts of abolition and later emancipation that we must heed; it is this history that reveals the darker, shameful, but essential truths of our imperial past.

Michael Taylors The Interest: How the British Establishment Resisted the Abolition of Slavery will be published by Bodley Head in November. Murder on the Middle Passage is published by Boydell & Brewer (16.99).

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Murder on the Middle Passage by Nicholas Rogers review slavery and the British empire - The Guardian

Nearly 100 people gathered outside of the Maryland House of Delegates building in Annapolis Thursday in a call for their representatives to maintain funding and support for state and local law enforcement officers.

Hosted by Dels. Sid Saab (R-Anne Arundel) and Haven C. Shoemaker (R-Carroll), Republican lawmakers and police officials showed their support for officers in the field who have faced loud and very public criticism following the death of George Floyd at the feet of Minneapolis police officers on May 25.

Every time they go out, and theyre doing work and they leave behind their wives, their husbands, their kids, their loved ones they know the risks, and what were doing now in this world is not just the risks of they might get hurt, not the risks they might get shot trying to protect us, said Del. Jason C. Buckel (R-Allegany). Were now creating the risks that their lives may be ruined, they may be tarred and feathered forever, because they were just trying to do their job to protect themselves, to protect their fellow officers, to protect us and its not good enough for somebody with a cell phone camera.

Since Floyds death nearly two-months ago, protests have erupted across the country calling for the defunding and abolition of police agencies, which House Republicans decried Thursday.

Del. Matt Morgan (R-St. Marys) called Floyds death tragic and indefensible.

But it should have been a unifying tragedy, he said.

Morgan accused Democrats of using this incident as an excuse to drive a political narrative and dismantle the police departments taking specific shots at legislators from Baltimore City who have joined in on those calls.

One-hundred eighty-five murders, he said, providing an approximate count of murders in the city so far this year. You know the last thing you need to be doing is defunding the police.

The crowd erupted in applause.

Shoemaker joined Morgan in lambasting Democratic lawmakers, saying that any silly politician that blathers about defunding the police should have his or her security detail defunded.

Shoemaker took it a step further, knocking advocates cries to divert funding to public health and safety programs.

We want the noble men and women of law enforcement to know that the overwhelming silent majority of Marylanders feel that if some criminal is breaking into our houses, we dont want a social worker dispatched to help the crook get in touch with his feelings, he asserted. We want you. With guns.

Anne Arundel County Police Chief Timothy Altomare also spoke at the rally. His message was one of support for current officers and a warning for citizens who support the police and protesters who call for their abolition.

Folks, something bad is happening in this country and in this county, Altomare said. There is no group of people in this country in its history that have done more for poor communities of color across this nation than the American policeman. Take it to the bank.

The largely white crowd cheered.

Altomare announced Wednesday evening that he would be retiring from the post hes held since 2014. Before serving on the Anne Arundel County Police Department for 21 years, he was a member of the Annapolis Police Department. His retirement is effective Aug. 1.

To be called racist because I wear a uniform makes me sick to my stomach. I cant do it anymore and be silent, Altomare said. Thats why I retired.

The police chief debunked rumors that Anne Arundel County Executive Steuart Pittman (D) was forcing him out, saying that Pittman called him asking him not to resign.

So far, I think hes trying to follow his heart, and I have immense respect for him as a human being, he said. I do think, however, hes caught between a rock and a hard place, and the silence of the majority is not helping him at all to make good decisions about who are the good guys and who arent.

Altomare clarified in an op-ed published in the Capital Gazette this week that his retirement is also not in any way linked to a lawsuit surrounding a 2019 event in which Anne Arundel County police officers are alleged to have used excessive force.

During the rally, Carroll County Sheriff Jim DeWees, who has known Altomare since his 2014 appointment, read the op-ed to the crowd.

Carroll County Sheriff Jim DeWees offered a final salute to Anne Arundel County Police Chief Timothy Altomare, who is retiring effective August 1.

There is a movement in this nation and in this county to remove the teeth of the police, DeWees read. It is wrong and it will have grave and lasting effects that you will see and feel.

Altomare wrote that the silence of constituents backs their elected officials into corners where they feel compelled to act on the word of those protesting.

The alternative is anarchy and entropy, the op-ed reads.

Altomare wrote that he is proud of the police force in Anne Arundel County, and hopes that officers will continue to hold each other accountable and do it right.

Im not leaving because I want to, the departing chief wrote. Im leaving because I will not be a part of a movement that endangers you or the people were sworn to protect.

Altomare told the crowd that he is proud of the thin blue line, and that just because it exists doesnt mean that officers act immorally or unethically. He also asserted that it doesnt mean they are perfect.

Theres 850,000 cops in this country, he explained. Of course were going to have some problems. So do elected officials; so do clergy; so does everybody else.

We hold ourselves accountable and we do the right thing.

[emailprotected]

The rest is here:

House Republicans Rally in Support of Police, Blast Democrats Who Call for Defunding - Josh Kurtz

Sen. Tom CottonTom Bryant CottonWhite House, Congress talk next coronavirus relief bill as COVID-19 continues to surge Conservatives blast Supreme Court ruling: Roberts 'abandoned his oath' WSJ editorial board calls employee concerns about opinion page 'cancel culture' MORE (R-Ark.) faced criticism on Sunday afterhe claimed that the Founding Fathers viewedslavery as a "necessary evil" as part of the country's foundingwhile discussing his bill that wouldreducefederal funding for any school that includes The New York Times's 1619 Project in its curriculum.

In an interview with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, the senator accused the 1619 Project, a series of pieces by writers for the Times that examines the history of slavery in the U.S. and its role in the country's founding, of being "left-wing propaganda."

"Even a penny is too much to go to the 1619 Project in our public schools," Cotton told the news outlet. "The New York Times should not be teaching American history to our kids."

Laterin the interview, the Arkansas Republican addressed how he thought the legacy of slavery should be handled in America.

We have to study the history of slavery and its role and impact on the development of our country because otherwise we cant understand our country. As the Founding Fathers said, it was the necessary evil upon which the union was built, but the union was built in a way, as Lincoln said, to put slavery on the course to its ultimate extinction, he said.

Those remarks were sharply criticized on Twitter by Nikole Hannah-Jones, a New York Times reporter and director of the 1619 Project.

"If chattel slavery heritable, generational, permanent, race-based slavery where it was legal to rape, torture, and sell human beings for profit were a 'necessary evil' as@TomCottonAR says, its hard to imagine what cannot be justified if it is a means to an end," she tweeted.

If chattel slavery heritable, generational, permanent, race-based slavery where it was legal to rape, torture, and sell human beings for profit were a necessary evil as @TomCottonAR says, its hard to imagine what cannot be justified if it is a means to an end. https://t.co/yScNxPq6ds

Cotton responded in his own tweet, which was soon retweeted by President TrumpDonald John TrumpSeattle police declare riot amid ongoing protests Brazil's Bolsonaro says he's tested negative for coronavirus Reagan Foundation asks Trump campaign, RNC to stop using former president's name to raise money MORE, writing that Jones's statement amounted to "more lies from the debunked 1619 Project."

"Describing the *views of the Founders* and how they put the evil institution on a path to extinction, a point frequently made by Lincoln, is not endorsing or justifying slavery," he responded. "No surprise that the 1619 Project can't get facts right."

More lies from the debunked 1619 Project.

Describing the *views of the Founders* and how they put the evil institution on a path to extinction, a point frequently made by Lincoln, is not endorsing or justifying slavery.

No surprise that the 1619 Project can't get facts right. https://t.co/nLsb73X3Gi

Other journalists responded to Cotton's interview and subsequent remarks on Twitter, including CNN's Andrew Kaczynski, head of the network's investigative KFile unit.

"Wasn't the 'necessary evil' view of slavery of some founders as Tom Cotton cites basically completely discarded by southerns once cotton became extremely profitable? McPherson who is critical of the 1619 project writes that in Battle Cry of Freedom," he wrote, referring to Princeton University professor and Civil War historian James McPherson.

Wasn't the "necessary evil" view of slavery of some founders as Tom Cotton cites basically completely discarded by southerns once cotton became extremely profitable? McPherson who is critical of the 1619 project writes that in Battle Cry of Freedom.https://t.co/LW0D8a3fxT

"You know...very little about American history," added Politico contributing editor Joshua Zeitz in a tweet responding to Cotton. "The free labor thesis that predicted slaverys eventual demise was an antebellum theory. It post-dated the Revolution by 50+ years. And the Revolution produced an abolition moment in the North ('contagion of liberty')."

You know...very little about American history. The free labor thesis that predicted slaverys eventual demise was an antebellum theory. It post-dated the Revolution by 50+ years. And the Revolution produced an abolition moment in the North (contagion of liberty). https://t.co/cRlqFNEJ0V

Cotton's bill, if passed, would direct the Department of Education to determine which schools were using writings from the 1619 project in classrooms and reduce federal funding in a manner that reflects any cost associated with teaching the 1619 Project, including in planning time and teaching time.

A report from the nonprofit Pulitzer Center, which awarded Hannah-Jones its annual Pulitzer Prize for her work on the 1619 project, says on its website that teachers in all 50 states have accessed educational materials related to the project's reporting.

Updated at 10:20 p.m. to note that Sen. Cotton was referring to views of the Founding Fathers in his original remarks.

Original post:

Cotton called out for remarks on slavery in criticism of 1619 Project | TheHill - The Hill

When 29-year-old Raul Medina Perez stepped outside of the Aurora Contract Detention Facility on July 7, after nearly 11 months in immigration detention, he was greeted by a crowd of activists in the Colorado city who raised $8,000 to pay for his bail. In a state of disbelief, he held his fist in the air and his mother, Rosa Perez, cried on his shoulder.

Rosa, a housekeeper who participated in protests every day for her sons release, says she would not have been able to pay Rauls bail on her own. When the pandemic started, when coronavirus started, it was a moment of anguish, anguish and a lot of pain because I was worried my son would get infected and I wouldnt be able to do anything about it, Rosa tells TIME in Spanish.

Some of the Aurora activists who raised money for Rauls bail tell TIME that Rauls release from detention is an example of the success of their evolving strategy, which has escalated in recent months amid the coronavirus pandemic. The national movement to end Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention and to abolish ICE has existed since at least 2018, and was helped along into the mainstream by high profile progressives like Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. However, as the coronavirus spread across the U.S., killing more than 140,000 people and infecting more than 3.7 million, fears mounted for those being held in ICE detention, and calls for abolition and the release of detainees have become louder.

These activists for example, have camped outside of the Aurora facility, where roughly 400 people are still detained, for more than 50 days, protested in caravans of vehicles that drive around the facility, and have held vigils every night. But, they say, their successes happen far too infrequently.

Protesters participate in a car caravan to increase the pressure on ICE to release GEO detainees in front of GEO Aurora ICE Processing Center in Aurora, Colorado. April 9, 2020.

Photo by Hyoung Chang/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images

We believe that immigrants arent criminals and should never be criminalized, so facilities like [Aurora] shouldnt exist, period, Isabel Villalon, one of the camp protesters and a member of the organization Abolish ICE Denver, tells TIME. Thats something Abolish ICE has been fighting for for years, not only in Denver, but nationwide. Once COVID hit, that call to action became more urgent because now lives were at stake and there was an immediate need to do what we could to save lives.

Lawyers, advocates, researchers, politicians, medical professionals and the detainees themselves have criticized how ICE has responded to the pandemic. They worry that continued ICE deportations and transfers of detainees to and from facilities exposes people to the virus. They also worry about detainees being exposed to guards who come in and out of the facilities daily. Some detainees at three detention facilities, including Aurora and facilities in Texas and California, tell TIME it is difficult to regularly receive personal protective equipment (PPE). They say it is impossible to properly social distance in a detained setting with shared communal spaces. Cases of COVID-19 have also been confirmed by foreign countries receiving people who have been deported by ICE.

Several lawsuits against the Trump Administration also make these allegations. GEO Groupthe private company contracted by ICE to run the Aurora facilityvehemently denies any allegations that it has improperly responded to the pandemic.

More than 22,000 people are currently in ICE custody, according to ICE data, including children, people seeking asylum and, in some instances, violent criminal offenders (according to data by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, 64% of ICE detainees as of April 2019 had no criminal convictions). As of Monday July 20, ICE reports 3,657 people who have been in ICE custody have tested positive for the virus. An additional 45 ICE employees at detention centers have also tested positive. ICE does not report the number of contracted employees who test positive, such as those who work for GEO. At the Aurora facility, for example, 12 GEO employees have contracted the virus as of July 8, according to a report by Congressman Jason Crow.

Nationally, two ICE detainees have died of COVID-19 while in custody at facilities in San Diego and Atlanta, and a third man died from the virus shortly after he was released from custody in Ohio. On July 13, ICE announced a third man died while in custody in Miami. Though his exact cause of death has not been determined, the man did test positive for COVID-19 and was hospitalized on July 1 after reporting shortness of breath.

The Aurora facility confirmed its first detainee case of COVID-19 on May 21. By May 23, Abolish ICE Denver had set up a tent encampment on a grassy patch of land outside of the facility in protest. Among the roughly 50-tent set up are Kesha Davalos, her 7-year-old daughter and her mother, who have all camped out in front of the facility for weeks. Davaloss husband was detained inside the facility for about six months. On Saturday July 11, Davalos learned her husband was transferred to another facility in Colorado without notice.

This is just another reason why I should continue fighting at this encampment, she tells TIME. What [ICE is] doing is wrong. I will keep fighting for this system to go down.

While protesters remain camped outside of the Aurora facility, other detention centers and the federal government are facing lawsuits, petitions and other protest actions in an attempt to release people from ICE detention. On June 26 a judge ordered ICE to release all children in its custody by July 17though that deadline was later extended to July 27and an additional lawsuit brought against the Trump Administration by 37 families detained at ICE family residential centers calls for all parents to be released along with their children because of the risks posed by COVID-19.

On Thursday, the American Federation of Government Employees, a federal employee union, announced that some employees of ICE and Customs and Border Protection joined a lawsuit against the federal government claiming they are entitled to hazard pay for hazardous working conditions through the performance of their assigned duties brought on by COVID-19.

[ICE gets] away with things that are just beyond me, Raul tells TIME in an interview shortly after his release. They dont treat us like humans, they dont even treat us like animals. They treat us like a number, they treat us like a number or a dollar sign, and thats not okay.

Raul says that GEO is not keeping detainees safe from the virus; often, he says, up to four people live in small cells together in bunk beds only 3-feet apart. He says detainees only learned of the virus through news on televisions at the facility, and that when they did, they asked to be tested and to receive PPE, which GEO employees denied them of at first, citing Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidance at the time that masks werent necessary. He says that as the pandemic has continued in the U.S. for several months, guards have become more and more lax on wearing masks.

Davalos, and two other women who have husbands detained in the Aurora facility, made similar allegations to TIME. Claudia Robles, whos husband has asthma and has been detained since November, for example, tells TIME that her husband has struggled to acquire soap and water and said it is impossible to social distance.

We strongly reject these baseless allegations, GEO spokesperson Christopher Ferreira said in a statement to TIME. We take our responsibility to ensure the health and safety of all those in our care and our employees with the utmost seriousness.

Additionally, ICE says it has followed guidelines from the CDC. ICE continues to incorporate CDCs COVID-19 guidance, which is built upon the already established infectious disease monitoring and management protocols currently in use by the agency, Mary Houtmann, a spokesperson for ICE, said in a statement to TIME.

On March 24, ICE confirmed its first diagnosed case of COVID-19 at one of its facilities, but it wasnt until June 9 that ICE announced it had begun mass voluntary testing beginning with two of its facilities, one in Tacoma, Wash., and the Aurora facility. ICE has since conducted similar mass testing at several other facilities. Prior, testing was conducted on a case-by-case basis when a person exhibited signs of illness.

Research by a nonprofit organization estimates that the number of COVID-19 cases in ICE detention centers could be a lot higher than reported. By building an epidemiological model, researchers at the Vera Institute of Justice, which aims to decrease incarceration in the U.S., predict that cases of the virus in people detained by ICE between March 17 up to May 15 could be more than 10 times higher than what ICE has reported.

The model suggests theres no scenario in which the numbers that have been reported to the public reflect the true scope of COVID in detention, says Nina Siulc, director of research at the Vera Institute. Its too late to know for the 66,000 people who have passed through custody, how many of them may have been exposed to or [became] positive for COVID.

A security guard stands outside of the Aurora ICE Processing Center in Aurora, Colorado on July 5, 2020.

Amy HarrisShutterstock

Since the beginning of this issue, ICE has made great efforts to be transparent, providing detailed, continues [sic] information related to COVID-19 on our public facing website, Houtmann said in an emailed statement. Any allegation to the contrary is simply not true.

Since the start of the camp protest, the Aurora Police Department has responded to at least 26 different incidents at the facility as of July 15, according to police spokesperson Matthew Longshore. These incidents range from trespassing on their private property to employees being harassed as they enter/exit the facility. One of the most recent incidents involved the protesters kicking the fence and shooting off fireworks, Longshore said in a statement to TIME. No arrests have been made.

But the protesters say that they are within their legal rights to protest what is happening inside of the facility and deny they are trespassing or harassing anyone.

The objective is to save lives, Jeanette Vizguerra, founder of Abolish ICE Denver, tells TIME in Spanish. [ICE is] risking peoples lives right nowCOVID-19 isnt going away today, its not going away tomorrow, or in weeks, but Homeland Security is still working, Homeland Security is still detaining people, still deporting people.

The protest outside the center at Aurora continues and Raul said it was comforting while he was in ICE detention to see footage of the protesters gathered outside the facility through news stories about their camp protest and vigils. His mother, he knew, was among them, and he too now plans to become a regular part of the movement.

I came out here and I felt like I was a part of this, he says. I felt like everybody was here for me and believed in me, and its such a comforting feeling and I want to be able to give that to the next person that walks out that door.

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Write to Jasmine Aguilera at jasmine.aguilera@time.com.

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'The Objective Is to Save Lives.' Inside the Effort to Get ICE Detainees Released During the Coronavirus Pandemic - TIME

The Future isMs.is an ongoing series of news reports by young feminists. This seriesis made possible by a grant fromSayItForward.orgin support of teen journalists and the series editor, Katina Paron.

Sarvani Kunapareddys dream of going into the medical field after college was halted by the green card backlog.

The 17-year-old, alongside one million other immigrants, awaits for permanent residency from a lagging, 1990s-established quota system that leaves immigrants with advanced degrees in limbo for 151 years, according to the CATO Institute. A Senate bill could relocate unallocated visas towards health care workers, but teens like Kunapareddywho are under their parents statusare plagued with doubled tuition fees and ineligibility for financial aid because they are considered international students in college applications.

Its not just me, but theres so many people in this boat. Id say just people arent talking about it though, Kunapareddy said. Its not the front cover kind of thing.

Before COVID-19 occupied headlines, 100,000 letters were sent to Congress by the Skilled Immigrants in America (SIIA). As an SIIA advocate, Kunapareddy empowered her peers to write letters detailing the unfairness of the immigration system.

As a result, Utah Sen. Mike Lee introduced the Fairness for High Skilled Act in 2019. The proposed bill would abolish the per-country cap for employment-based categories and increase the per-country cap for family-sponsored immigration.

While it does not increase the amount of immigrants allowed in the country, the abolition of the per-country limit will provide a more fair opportunity for the immigrants affected by the backlog.

Here atMs., our team is continuing to report throughthis global health crisisdoing what we can to keep you informed andup-to-date on some of the most underreported issues of thispandemic.Weask that you consider supporting our work to bring you substantive, uniquereportingwe cant do it without you. Support our independent reporting and truth-telling for as little as $5 per month.

Through advocacy, Kunapareddy takes any opportunity to educate. In February 2018, Kunapareddy traveled to St. Louis to meet with then-state Senator Claire McCaskill, propelled by her data that captured how the backlog disadvantages skilled workers and students like her.

I try to stay cool-headed and remember that you cant control what other people think; you can only control what your actions are, she said.

She models herself after her mother, Krishna, an independent advocate who immigrated alone from India in 2006 for her masters degree in urban planning at University of Texas at Arlington, obtaining an H-1B visa, rather than a dependent on her husbands. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services states about 80 percent of H-1B holders are male.

She said it is difficult for backlogged families to advocate for their unstable residency status.

Even though there are people going through the issue, they dont want to accept it, Krishna said.

As a green card applicant under her parents, Kunapareddy is forced to reapply as an adult in four years if her parents are still stuck in the backlog. If she doesnt, she could face deportation.

Some people have been denied visas and stuck outside the country separated from their families, said Brent Renison, an immigration lawyer based out of Portland, Ore.

SIIA advocate, Prasenjit Shil, worries after he obtains residency, his nine-year-old son will face his own complications.

The way math stacks up, looks like Im not gonna get my green card until my son becomes 21 years old, Shil said.

Once a medical school hopeful, Kunapareddy set her eyes on computer science instead. University of Missouri-Kansas City, which used to be her college of interest, does not admit international students into their M.D. program.

Even people who are affected are like Oh its not a big deal, But in the end, its a very big deal, Kunapareddy said. Its going to affect how you live your life.

The Future is Ms. is committed to amplifying the voices of young women everywhere. Share one of your own stories about your path to empowerment at SayItForward.org.

The coronavirus pandemic and the response by federal, state and local authorities is fast-moving.During this time,Ms. is keeping a focus on aspects of the crisisespecially as it impacts women and their familiesoften not reported by mainstream media.If you found this article helpful,please consider supporting our independent reporting and truth-telling for as little as $5 per month.

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Teens Demand Action for Immigrants Halted by Green Card Backlog - Ms. Magazine

Featured photo: Activist Brittany Battle speaks at a Triad Abolition Project and Unity Coalition event. (photo by Michaela Ratliff)

Brittany Battles parents still laugh about the time she led a walk-out in her eighth grade class.

I felt like my teacher was being unjust, so I inspired my classmates to walk out of this mans class, Battle says in an interview.

She has had an eye towards social justice for as long as she can remember, aligning herself with Black Lives Matter Winston-Salem shortly after moving there last year. Her involvement with the activist group recently drew her to John Nevilles case.

I cant breathe, inmate John Neville repeatedly told Forsyth County detention officers as they placed him in a prone restraint. He would later die from a brain injury caused by the restraint. Many people were outraged that the Dec. 4, 2019 death was not made public until July 8, 2020, when Forsyth County District Attorney Jim ONeill announced five detention officers and a nurse were being charged with involuntary manslaughter for the death of Neville in a press conference.

Black Lives Matter Winston-Salem called an emergency meeting and then gathered outside of the Forsyth County Law Enforcement Detention Center that same day to protest the lack of timely communication to the public and the case of police brutality. The crowd of protesters erupted into cries of, Let them go! as five protesters were arrested for leaving the sidewalk and walking into the street. Battle was one of them.

She expressed that law enforcement held positive attitudes during the local protests for the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, saying that they rode bikes alongside them and blocked off streets for their safety.

Oh, those are bad cops in Louisville, those are bad cops in Minneapolis, she predicted the police said then. But when we start talking about bad cops in Winston-Salem and Forsyth county, the light is shone in their own house. They didnt like that.

They came out there with zip ties, she recalls. They came out there with an LRAD, which is a long-range acoustic device. Its frequently used against protesters. It can make them deaf or hard of hearing. Its supposed to be inconspicuous because people think its a speaker. They admitted it was an LRAD in the paperwork of one of my comrades who was arrested. They said they warned us via LRAD not to be in the street..

And yet, Battle remained fearless.

Theres no way in hell Im gonna let them intimidate me, she says.

Battle felt her arrest was intentional, saying police targeted those they recognized from being organizers of protests in the city. The drive to continue fighting even harder for social justice after her arrest wasnt the only thing she left the protest with. She now flaunts a black splint on her right wrist as a result of the recent arrest as she waits for her follow up appointment with an orthopedic surgeon to examine the extent of her injury.

After I got released, I went to the ER first for the wrist injury they did to me, she said, and then I went right to an organizing meeting after that. There was no stopping.

In addition to amplifying the actions of Black Lives Matter Winston-Salem, Battle is affiliated with the Triad Abolition Project, a newly-formed grassroots collective of people interested in sharing ideas and resources about abolishing the carceral system, as well as educating others about the meaning of abolition. The Triad Abolition Project, in partnership with the Unity Coalition, another newly formed group in Winston-Salem with similar objectives, organized Occupy the Block Winston-Salem, an ongoing peaceful resistance in Bailey Park which started on July 15. The group intends to hold a protest every day until the four main demands of the Triad Abolition Project are met which include: responding to all questions posed by the Triad Abolition Project and the Unity Coalition, banning the use of prone restraint on any civilian, incarcerated or not, sick or not, notifying the public of any death involving an officer or deputy immediately, and dismissing all charges against protestors from July 8th and 9th arrests.

An activist on the streets and in the classroom, Battle is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at Wake Forest University. She earned her masters in African-American studies from Temple University in 2012, and her PhD in Sociology from Rutgers University New Brunswick in 2019. She finds it difficult to balance her time between teaching and fighting racial injustice as her activism tends to infiltrate her classroom.

In spring I taught a class, Social Justice in the Social Sciences, she said. We talked about how social justice shows up in social theories, social research methods, and actual activist movements. I teach from a Black feminist perspective. I create syllabi that highlights the voices of Black women and Black queer folks.

She says she values elevating the voices of minorities as she was also a member of the NAACP and the Black Student Union during her undergraduate years.

Outside of activism and teaching, she can be found creating keepsake baby quilts for her friends who are new moms. She also loves to sew and create jewelry. When social-justice work gets to be overwhelming, she escapes to what she calls her happy place the beach. She also values relaxation exercises like meditation and sage burning to stay grounded, activities she incorporated into Occupy the Block.

We have people who will be coming out to lead a yoga session, she says. Every evening we have a vigil. Were out here burning sage and incense and stuff so were really taking the spiritual part of it seriously as well because this is a lot to be out here twelve hours a day. Weve gotta make sure people are taking care of themselves spiritually, mentally, and emotionally.

Battle is okay with the fact that her ultimate vision abolishing the carceral state will likely not happen in her lifetime, but that doesnt mean her efforts towards it will stop.

My real motivation is that my freedom and liberation is tied up in everybody elses, she says. If there are some of us out there that arent free, none of us are. Thats what inspires me to keep doing this type of work.

Learn more about the Triad Abolition Project by visiting their website at triadabolitionproject.org.

Read more from the original source:

Fearless activist Brittany Battle: Theres no way in hell Im gonna let them intimidate me. - Triad City Beat

As the Republican Party of Texas (RPT) online convention was marked by difficulty after difficulty, challenger and former Florida congressman, Allen West, soundly knocked off incumbent James Dickeyand will become the next chairman of the Texas GOP.

West tweeted when the results became clear, I just want to say how truly humbled I am by this honor, and that I will work hard for Texas and Texans. I would like to thank my amazing and dedicated team, as well as an incredible number of supporters. Thank you all! Now the work begins

In concession just after 4:00 a.m. on Monday morning, Dickey posted, It has been an incredible time as Chairman of the Republican Party of Texas. I am so grateful to the amazing supporters who rallied around my campaign.

We are truly a bottom-up Party here in Texas, written in our rules to be that way, allowing our voices to be truly representative of those who make our Party great. I wish Lt. Col. West the very best in this role. Thank you for the honor of serving as your Chair. Lets win in November. May God bless you and May God bless Texas, he concluded, congratulating West.

West teased his run for state GOP chair about a year ago and then made it official a month later. And after activist Amy Hedtke threw her name into contention at the last minute, it became a three-person race.

But in the end, West won rather handily.

During the campaign, he has criticized Dickey for disorganization amongst the party and for overseeing the 2018 midterms in which 12 Texas House seats and three State Senate seats all flipped blue and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) narrowly escaped an insurgent Beto ORourke.

Meanwhile, Dickey touted his fundraising prowess, having raised $8 million ahead of the 2020 general election. He also boasted that the partys program had registered 120,000 new likely GOP voters going into November.

Dickey became chairman in 2017 after appointment by the State Republican Executive Committee (SREC) and then won election for the next term at the 2018 state convention.

But a growing section of the delegates moved against Dickey both out of discontent with how the 2018 elections went and concern over the coming one.

Other contributors included his handling of the Speaker Bonnen-Empower Texans tape fiasco specifically, that he did not come out harder against the Republican speaker for his conduct; his quick denunciation, and call for resignation, of various county GOP chairs who shared a conspiracy theory about George Floyd and the circumstances surrounding his killing at the hands of Minneapolis police; and the Republican legislators failure to accomplish or even attempt to pass party legislative priorities like constitutional carry and the abolition of abortion.

And that was until the tremendous convention disarray was thrown into the mix after Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner canceled the partys contract to use the George R. Brown Convention Center for the in-person event less than a week before it was set to happen.

That sparked a series of legal challenges that ultimately proved mostly fruitless and the convention was held online, with complications abound. West criticized Dickey, calling the event a debacle, and accusing him of disenfranchising delegates. He then called on RPT to postpone the convention until all delegates could be properly credentialed.

At the beginning of proceedings Sunday, the RPT reported about 1,200 of the total near-7,500 registered delegates had not been properly credentialed.

But despite technical problems and issues credentialing delegates, the marquee convention business was completed.

National committee delegates were selected and presidential electors were approved, however, the partys legislative priorities and party planks have yet to be solidified. The general body voted to postpone the non-election items of business to be taken up at a time yet to be determined.

But the most anticipated portion was the chairmans election. That didnt come until the wee hours of Monday morning after tech problems and procedural delays continually pushed back the estimated time of the vote.

Right as the general body was set to go into their Senate District caucuses to vote on the chairman race, Dickey reported a distributed denial of service attack on the partys servers. This further delayed the actions and caused a weary convention body to grow even more irritated after a week of pandemonium.

In a press release, Wests campaign announced his challenge to Texas Democratic Party Chair Gilberto Hinojosa to educate the public on key policy differences between the parties.

West is a former lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army and served as a congressman in Floridas 22nd District.

We need to focus on maintaining the conservative policies that made Texas strong and drive voter outreach across the state, West stated.

Hes got his work to cut out for him. RealClearPolitics polling average show President Trump and Joe Biden in a dead heat, and Texas Democrats are emboldened by their 2018 gains, looking to continue the clawing back of the GOP majority this year, too.

With no downtime, Wests new job starts today with a clear mission: win in November.

Disclosure: Unlike almost every other media outlet, The Texan is not beholden to any special interests, does not apply for any type of state or federal funding, and relies exclusively on its readers for financial support. If youd like to become one of the people were financially accountable to, click here to subscribe.

A free bi-weekly commentary on current events by Konni Burton.

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Allen West Wins Election for Texas GOP Chair - The Texan

In May 1987, as part of the festivities marking the 200th anniversary of the United States constitution, Thurgood Marshall, the first African American to sit on the US Supreme Court, delivered a hugely controversial speech. Noting the quasi-religious reverence in which the framers of the constitution are held in America, Marshall expressed some scepticism about routine proclamations of their wisdom, foresight and sense of justice. The Founding Fathers, he pointed out, couldnt have been so very enlightened and far-sighted: after all, the slavery they tolerated caused untold suffering, and ended in a civil war that claimed 600,000 lives. While the Union survived the Civil War, he said, the constitution did not. In its place arose a new, more promising basis for justice and equality. That new, more promising regime was Reconstruction, an array of reforms undertaken between 1863 and 1877 to refashion a fractured nation.

In 1863 Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed all slaves then resident in jurisdictions involved in the rebellion against the federal government. Until this point, Lincoln had gone out of his way to make clear that in resorting to arms the federal government sought merely to suppress the uprising of the Confederacy, the 11 states that attempted to secede in 1861 in order to ensure the perpetuation of their peculiar institution: racial slavery. The leaders of the Confederacy, explicitly repudiating Thomas Jeffersons declaration that all men are created equal, had committed themselves to racial hierarchy. Our new government rests, the Confederate vice president, Alexander Stephens, observed, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition.

Lincoln did not believe that the federal government had the authority to do anything about slavery in the states in ordinary circumstances. He maintained, however, that as commander-in-chief of the armed forces, he had the constitutional authority to free slaves as a war measure aimed at quelling rebellion. A sentimental glow surrounds the Emancipation Proclamation, but in fact, as the historian Richard Hofstadter once said, it possessed all the moral grandeur of a bill of lading. It contained no criticism of slavery and did not free all slaves; the legal status of at least 800,000 slaves was not affected. The proclamation did not free those held in bondage in the four slave states that remained loyal to the Union: Missouri, Delaware, Kentucky and Maryland. Nor did it free the slaves in certain Southern territories already under Union control. These rather large exemptions moved the Spectator to observe that the underlying principle of the Emancipation Proclamation was not that a human being cannot justly own another, but that he cannot own him unless he is loyal to the United States. Still, the proclamation did free more than three million slaves, and many observers felt that it transformed the war for the Union into a war for the Union and freedom. When news of the proclamation arrived in South Carolina, slaves recited prayers and sang songs including My Country, Tis of Thee.

The proclamation announced that freedmen would now be allowed to join the United States military. Many enlisted. By the end of the Civil War 180,000 had served about a fifth of the countrys black male population aged between 18 and 45. In the Revolutionary War of 1775-83, when the 13 American colonies sought to secede from Britain, most African Americans who took up arms did so on behalf of King George III (having been promised emancipation for doing so). By contrast, in the Civil War, the overwhelming majority who took up arms fought for the United States (the Confederacy having stubbornly resisted proposals to arm slaves until the very eve of its collapse).

Although Lincoln planned to readmit the Confederate states into the Union quickly, on generous terms, he also seemed open to granting the vote to some black men the very intelligent and those who serve our cause as soldiers. When the actor John Wilkes Booth heard that remark he warned: That means nigger citizenship! Now, by God, Ill put him through. That is the last speech he will ever make. Three days later, on Good Friday, Booth made good on his threat, shooting Lincoln at Fords Theatre in Washington DC.

Lincolns successor, Andrew Johnson, was a fierce racist who militantly opposed giving African Americans an equal legal status to whites. He supported the ending of slavery but wanted blacks to be confined to a subordinate caste. That is one of the reasons Radicals in the Republican Party Lincolns party despised Johnson, who was a Democrat, and attempted to remove him from office by impeachment. Johnson survived he escaped conviction by one vote but the Republicans succeeded in enacting civil rights legislation despite his opposition. The Republicans also put the former Confederate states under military rule, stipulating that they would not be allowed to become self-governing and rejoin the Union until they permitted black men to participate in politics on the same basis as white men. The pariah states acceded, with remarkable results. You never saw a people more excited on the subject of politics than are the negroes of the South, one planter observed. They are perfectly wild. Blacks enrolled in organisations such as the Union League, which encouraged political education through speeches and debates. They petitioned local authorities; they attended Republican rallies and conventions; they voted and ran for office even in the face of violent opposition from resentful whites, who were appalled by the prospect of blacks, including former slaves, taking part in governance. Between 1870 and 1877, 16 blacks were elected to Congress, 18 to positions as state lieutenant governors, treasurers, secretaries of state or superintendents of education, and at least six hundred to state legislatures. Blacks never had decisive control over any state government, not even in Mississippi or South Carolina, where they constituted a majority of voters. But for a short period they wielded sufficient power in substantial parts of the South to insist on the establishment of public education, laws relatively favourable to workers, debtors and tenants, and prohibitions against various sorts of racial discrimination.

Reconstructions most durable and consequential achievements were three amendments to the federal constitution that remain in force today. The Thirteenth Amendment went beyond the Emancipation Proclamation by abolishing slavery throughout the United States (except as a punishment for crime). The Fourteenth Amendment created a constitutional definition of citizenship, declaring that anyone born in the United States (under its jurisdiction) automatically becomes a citizen. That amendment, the wordiest in the constitution, also imposed a new set of duties on states, requiring them to refrain from abridging the privileges or immunities of citizens; from depriving any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law; and from denying to any person the equal protection of the laws. The Fifteenth Amendment declares that the right of citizens to vote shall not be denied by the United States or by any state on account of race, colour or previous condition of servitude. Each of these amendments contained a provision authorising Congress to enforce it by appropriate legislation.

Reconstruction was under attack from the outset. There was never a consensus on its legitimacy, and in the end it sank under the weight of racism, indifference, fatigue, administrative weakness, economic depression, the ebbing of idealism, and the toll exacted by terrorism, as its enemies resorted to rape, mutilation, beating and murder to intimidate blacks and their white allies. In 1870, when an African American called Andrew Flowers prevailed over a white candidate for the position of justice of the peace in Chattanooga, Tennessee, he received a whipping at the hands of white supremacists affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan. They said they had nothing particular against me, he testified, but they did not intend any nigger to hold office in the United States. That same year in Greene County, Alabama armed whites broke up a Republican campaign rally, killing four blacks and wounding 54 others. In 1873 in Colfax, Louisiana black Republicans and white Democrats both claimed the right to govern. When the whites prevailed in battle they massacred fifty blacks as they tried to surrender. The era was dense with such atrocities.

By 1877 every Southern state had been redeemed that is, was under the control of people who aimed to reimpose the norms of white supremacy. Enemies of Reconstruction removed blacks as a factor in politics and consigned them to a degraded position within a rigid pigmentocracy. The constitutional amendments survived untouched. But, at least with respect to racial matters, they were narrowly construed, if not ignored altogether. By 1900 Reconstruction had been demolished, an experiment almost wholly repudiated.

For the first half of the 20th century, many white historians, commentators and politicians portrayed Reconstruction as a calamity that stemmed from a mistaken attempt to elevate African Americans to civil and political equality. Its crusade of hate and social equality, Claude Bowers wrote in The Tragic Era (1929),

was playing havoc with a race naturally kindly and trustful. Throughout the [Civil] War, when [white] men were far away on the battlefields, and the women were alone on far plantations with slaves, hardly a woman was attacked. Then came the scum of Northern society, emissaries of the politicians, soldiers of fortune, and not a few degenerates, inflaming the negroes egotism, and soon the lustful assaults began. Rape is the foul daughter of Reconstruction.

Bowerss sensational rendition mirrored the depiction of Reconstruction offered by leading academics such as William Dunning of Columbia University, who served as president of both the American Historical Association and the American Political Science Association. The negro, Dunning wrote in Reconstruction, Political and Economic, 1865-77 (1907),

had no pride of race and no aspiration or ideals save to be like the whites. With civil rights and political power, not won, but almost forced upon him, he came gradually to understand and crave those more elusive privileges that constitute social equality. A more intimate association with the other race than that which business and politics involved was the end toward which the ambition of the blacks tended consciously or unconsciously to direct itself. The manifestations of this ambition were infinite in their diversity. It played a part in the demand for mixed schools, in the legislative prohibition of discrimination between the races in hotels and theatres, and even in the hideous crime against white womanhood which now assumed new meaning in the annals of outrage.

This pejorative interpretation of Reconstruction performed important ideological work. It justified keeping blacks in their place by painting a frightening picture of what had happened when they last had civic equality and participated in governance.

Racial liberals including most black historians and, in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, a small number of white historians stressed that democracy had been enlarged during Reconstruction, public schooling improved and labour rights strengthened. They refuted allegations that black politicians and their white carpetbagger and scalawag allies had been unusually corrupt and incompetent. They emphasised the illegality and immorality of the means used to topple Reconstruction. The outstanding effort was W.E.B. DuBoiss sweeping, Marxian revisionist account, Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-80 (1935). Thirty years later, in 1965, the white historian Kenneth Stampp published The Era of Reconstruction: after that, most leading historians ceased to disparage Reconstruction. Stampps volume appeared the year the Voting Rights Act was passed, removing the most glaring racist impediments to suffrage. The increasing legitimacy of revisionist accounts of Reconstruction was reflected in and reinforced by the Civil Rights movement. When a federal court ruled in favour of black plaintiffs challenging racial segregation on buses in Birmingham, Alabama, a white supremacist judge, citing Bowerss The Tragic Era, urged his colleagues to recall the lessons of Reconstruction, a period which all Americans recall with sadness and shame. By then, however, growing numbers of Americans were thinking of Reconstruction with a new respect.

In 1988 Eric Foner published Reconstruction: Americas Unfinished Revolution, 1863-77, a grand narrative built on ground largely cleared of the racist litter left by previous scholars. It is a stupendous scholarly achievement: eloquent, accessible, punctiliously accurate, marvellously detailed, bristling with insight, conscious of broad economic, social and cultural forces, alert to personal quirks, and attentive to the ideas and activities of the actors often women and racial minorities historians often marginalise or ignore. For thirty years it has remained the leading work of Reconstruction historiography, despite ideological disputes and changes in methodological fashion.

In The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution, Foner narrows his focus to the key legal transformations of the era. He argues that the Reconstruction Amendments should not be seen simply as an alteration of an existing structure but as a constitutional revolution that created a fundamentally new document with a new definition of both the status of blacks and the rights of all Americans. Much of American history has been shaped by struggles over these amendments and whether they should be seen as mere alterations or as a fundamental remaking of the Founding Fathers handiwork. Conservatives tend to take the former view, liberals the latter. One reason this struggle has been so intense is that each side can adduce facts, ideas, sentiments and historical developments that support their position.

Foner supports the liberal position. He emphasises the gulf that separates life in America before the Reconstruction Amendments from life afterwards, particularly in its racial aspects. Before Reconstruction, the civil liberties enshrined in the constitution placed limits on the federal government, but not on individual states. The constitution aimed primarily to prevent the federal government encroaching on individual liberty, including the freedom to own slaves. With Reconstruction, reformers sought to empower the federal government to guarantee the rights afforded by the three new constitutional amendments, as well as the older rights some saw as being incorporated into the new regime. These older rights were contained in the first ten amendments to the constitution. Sometimes referred to as the Bill of Rights, these amendments, ratified in 1791, provided for (among other things) freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom to bear arms, a prohibition against quartering soldiers in homes, a right not to face unreasonable searches and seizures, and a right to speedy trial by an impartial jury.

Foner doesnt embrace Thurgood Marshalls claim that the Civil War extinguished the constitutional regime of 1787. That assertion wishful thinking perhaps goes too far. For good and for bad mostly bad the initial constitution displayed a striking resilience, inhibiting efforts to elevate former slaves, protect them against resentful whites, or undergird their new freedom with socio-economic support. Like Marshall, however, Foner does seek to alter the general view of the Reconstruction and increase its standing. The Founding Fathers including George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton enjoy widespread, if superficial, public recognition. By comparison, key framers of the Reconstruction Amendments James Ashley, Charles Sumner, Lyman Trumbull and Thaddeus Stevens are obscure. Unfamiliar, too, are the origins and back stories of their constitutional handiwork, which Foner ably describes.

Throughout his career Foner has championed progressive radicalism in the American political tradition. In an open letter written in 2015, he chided Bernie Sanders for invoking foreign political models, suggesting that he look instead to American reformers such as Frederick Douglass, Abby Kelley, Eugene Debs and A. Philip Randolph. In The Second Founding, Foner returns to this theme, stressing the exceptional and innovative nature of the Reconstruction Amendments. The Thirteenth Amendment ordered emancipation without compensation and was the first occasion on which the constitution expanded the power of the federal government, creating a new fundamental right to personal freedom, applicable to all persons in the United States regardless of race, gender, class or citizenship status. Few countries, Foner observes, and certainly none with as large a slave population, have experienced so radical a form of abolition. The Fourteenth Amendments creation of birthright citizenship, he writes, represents an eloquent statement about the nature of American society, a powerful force for assimilation and a repudiation of a long history of racism.

Foner stresses the speed with which the constitutional amendments elevated four million black slaves from bondage to citizenship to formal equality with whites. But The Second Founding is far from a triumphalist celebration. The sobering tale it tells has at least three tragic aspects. The first has to do with the enmity that the Reconstruction Amendments encountered from the start. Even after the defeat of the Confederacy, opposition to emancipation, much of it fuelled by Negrophobia, was sufficiently strong to prevent congressional approval of the Thirteenth Amendment the first time it was considered. Railing against the proposed amendment, Representative Fernando Wood, the former mayor of New York City, warned that it involves the extermination of the white men of the Southern states, and the forfeiture of all the land and other property belonging to them. The former Confederate states (with the exception of Tennessee) at first refused to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment. It would not have gained the approval of a sufficient number of states to become part of the constitution if the Republican Party hadnt made ratification a prerequisite for a states regaining congressional representation.

The second tragic aspect has to do with the amendments deficiencies. Consider Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment which provides that, with certain exceptions, when the right to vote is denied to adult males the basis of that states congressional representation is to be reduced. Some reformers saw this as a double betrayal: it betrayed blacks by continuing to permit states to exercise racial disenfranchisement (albeit at the cost of suffering a potential reduction in representation), and it betrayed women by introducing gender into the text of the constitution for the first time. While Section 2 supposedly penalised states for excluding men from the franchise (with black men especially in mind), it expressly permitted states to exclude women with no penalty at all. If that word male be inserted, Elizabeth Cady Stanton warned, it will take us a century at least to get it out.

These days, the Fourteenth Amendment tends to be unequivocally celebrated, with little or no awareness of its compromises. When it was drawn up, however, some reformers expressed keen disappointment. It falls far short of my wishes, Thaddeus Stevens said, but I believe it is all that can be obtained in the present state of public opinion. Outraged by its failure to guarantee black male suffrage, the abolitionist Wendell Phillips denounced it as a fatal and total surrender, and urged states to withhold ratification. When it was voted on by the Massachusetts legislature, its two black members rejected ratification.

The Fifteenth Amendment bars states and the federal government from using race as a criterion for voting. But the version of the amendment ultimately approved was among the most restricted of the alternatives considered. One senator proposed an amendment that would have prohibited states from denying the right to vote to any adult male citizen who had not been convicted of crime or participation in rebellion. Another proposed an amendment specifying nationally uniform voting requirements. But as a result of the hostility to the prospect of unrestricted male suffrage, the framers of the amendment designed an exceedingly narrow instrument that could have been foreseen as likely to enable the disfranchisement of perceived undesirables, such as immigrants from China and Ireland. In 1870, with the abolition of slavery only five years in the past, it was evident that literacy, property and similar voting requirements could accomplish much the same ends as outright racial exclusion. Henry Adams observed mordantly that the Fifteenth Amendment was more remarkable for what it does not than for what it does contain. Complaining that the version of the amendment chosen was the weakest considered, Senator Willard Warner argued that it was unworthy of the great opportunity now presented to us.

The third tragic aspect took a while to reveal itself. Racism encumbered the Reconstruction project from the outset, but after a brief interlude of egalitarian enthusiasm that yielded impressive advances, the always fragile commitment to racial justice embraced by the Reconstruction coalition weakened precipitously. The judiciary is the branch of government Foner finds most at fault. He notes ruefully that the Supreme Court constricted the potential reach of the Thirteenth Amendment: it addressed the problem of forced labour, but not the racially stigmatising policies that continued after slaverys demise to mark blacks as a despised minority. The court dismissed as frivolous, for example, the argument that the racial exclusion of blacks from public places trains, hotels, theatres etc amounted to a badge or incidence of slavery that Congress should be empowered to prohibit through the Thirteenth Amendment.

The Fourteenth Amendment bars states from making or enforcing any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States a formulation that might have allowed the recognition of a broad array of individual rights. The court, however, interpreted this new provision crabbily, construing it as protecting only a narrow range of activities, such as running for federal office. The amendment provides that no state shall deny to any person the equal protection of the laws. The court insisted that this new prohibition banned racially discriminatory state action but not private action. When Congress enacted legislation to punish racial aggression by private parties, the court held that such laws went beyond the authority bestowed by the Fourteenth Amendment. The court struck down, for example, a federal law that prohibited the owners of hotels, theatres, restaurants and other public accommodations from engaging in racial discrimination.

Then there was the question of what equal protection of the laws entailed. In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the Supreme Court upheld the validity of a Louisiana statute that required the separation of white and black train passengers. Opponents of the law argued that it was racially discriminatory and thus a violation of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In lonely dissent, Justice John Marshall Harlan asked rhetorically: What can more certainly arouse race hate, what more certainly create and perpetuate a feeling of distrust between these races, than state enactments which, in fact, proceed on the ground that coloured citizens are so inferior and degraded that they cannot be allowed to sit in public coaches occupied by white citizens? The majority ruled, however, that the law in question was constitutionally inoffensive since it promised separate but equal accommodation for the races. If blacks felt insulted, the court declared, they were being oversensitive.

Similarly disappointing to proponents of racial justice was the Supreme Courts early treatment of the Fifteenth Amendment. In Giles v. Harris (1903), plaintiffs claimed that the state of Alabama had participated in a conspiracy to disenfranchise African Americans. In an opinion written by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr, the court concluded that even if the allegation was true, there was nothing it could appropriately do to redress the wrong. No wonder the Harvard Law Review published an article in 1910entitled Is the Fifteenth Amendment Void?

Some of the ground lost in the long retreat from Reconstruction was regained during the Second Reconstruction the period roughly between 1950 and 1970 which saw an all-out challenge to white supremacism. Legislation was enacted to prohibit racial discrimination across swathes of social activity; racial disfranchisement was attacked by a series of increasingly aggressive laws; and the Supreme Court invalidated racial segregation imposed by government across the board, from schools (Brown v. Board of Education) to the marriage altar (Loving v. Virginia). The country, Foner writes, has come a long way toward filling the agenda of Reconstruction.

Foner qualifies this upbeat appraisal, however, with a list of significant dissatisfactions. The latent power of the Thirteenth Amendment, he points out, has almost never been invoked as a weapon against the racism that formed so powerful an element of American slavery, and the Fourteenth Amendments promise has never truly been fulfilled. To make things worse, wrong-headed rulings have made it increasingly difficult for racial minorities to obtain fairness. When it comes to racial justice, Foner writes, the court has lately proved more sympathetic to white plaintiffs complaining of reverse discrimination because of affirmative action policies than to blacks seeking assistance in overcoming the legacies of centuries of slavery and Jim Crow. Most distressing of all, to his mind, is the perilous position of the Fifteenth Amendment: To this day the right to vote remains the subject of bitter disputation. The most disturbing recent episode was Shelby County v. Holder (2013), in which the Supreme Court eviscerated a key provision of the Voting Rights Act that tamped down voter suppression schemes. Since then, such schemes have spread alarmingly. Acting strictly along party lines in states it controls, the Republican Party which has increasingly become the white mans party enacts legislation that makes it more difficult for certain sectors of the population to register to vote. Asserting that such laws are required to stem fraud (a claim that has been repeatedly discredited), the Republicans impose new requirements that invariably and invidiously disqualify racial minorities in disproportionate numbers. They also reduce early voting, eliminate state-supported voter registration drives, and systematically purge people from registration lists for spurious reasons. Reflecting on Shelby County, Foner complains that when conservative jurists discuss the allocation of authority between central and state government, they almost always concentrate on the ideas of 18th-century framers, ignoring those of the architects of Reconstruction.

The Second Founding exhibits the sterling qualities we have come to expect in Foners scholarship, particularly the careful, nuanced judgments. Resisting the overwrought pessimism currently fashionable in some parts of the left, he highlights a remarkable episode in which progressive change erupted unexpectedly. Who could have imagined in 1860 that within a decade an African American would replace the defeated president of the Confederacy as the representative of Mississippi in the Senate? But Foner also insists on recognising the strong pull of racism in American affairs. Rights can be gained, he observes, and rights can be taken away. A century and a half after the end of slavery, the project of equal citizenship remains unfinished.

See the original post here:

Randall Kennedy Racist Litter: The Lessons of Reconstruction LRB 30 July 2020 - London Review of Books

The streets are filled with protestors led by the Movement for Black Lives, and their calls for police de-funding, the abolition of the prison-industrial complex, and abolition of the principles of white supremacy in many other institutions and disciplines are spreading like wildfire, empowering people to act in different ways and directions in their immediate surroundings, in their workplaces and in their organizations. Id suggest that this situation as a whole should be viewed not only as the result of actions, but also of inaction in other words, of the potentialities opened up when, due to the pandemic, so many people have found themselves unconstrained by their ordinary positions of productivity.

Over the last few weeks, weve been experiencing something close to a general strike, perhaps the closest we or any of our generation have come to know. This is a radical moment, and at this point in time we should think about the picket line, and act to create it in different areas of activities. Such is the Hippocratic oath for architects not to build prisons, or the Tamara Lanier lawsuit to free the daguerreotype of Renty Taylor, her ancestor (seized from him when he was enslaved) from Harvard University and the Peabody Museum, or the call to stop circulate images of sexual violence against the bodies of their ancestors issued by Cases Rebelles, or the calls to stop circulating the video of the assassination of George Floyd, after millions were already on the streets and their voices demanding in uncompromising way accountability and police abolition had already become the placeholder for evidence that should no longer be posted. Photography though, is not about the world in which people go on strike, photography ought to continue to draw its picket line.

Photographic abolitionist imaginary cannot start or end with photographs of people on the streets. Rather than saying that public demonstrations are the ultimate manifestation of the body politic, we need to remind ourselves that the body politic is always there (even though many of its members are not be recognized as part of it) and it always manifests itself in different ways, many of them distinct from public protest. When its members are not taking to the streets together, the body politic manifests itself through its policed patterns of power relations. In line with the institutionally regulated forms and formations, members of the body politic affirm themselves in the positions that they are socialized or coerced into inhabiting, separated and classified along race, gender and/or class dividing lines, or through what I have called elsewhere the resolution of the suspect, or into the figure of the unmarked Man, the ultimate bearer of rights under the regime of white supremacy. Even in ordinary times, the streets are always filled with people, but their presence is marshaled into prescribed, familiar flows and arrangements. The variety of their assigned positions, constrained by clear rules of mobility and immobility, ensures that the relentless movement of extraction which simultaneously yields accumulation and dispossession, production and consumption will not allow this differential body politic to get out of control. It is this relentless movement of racialized capital that the pandemic has, to an extent, brought to a halt. Just to be clear I want to stress here that a stop has not been put to racism itself, but rather to much of the production and consumption with which it is intertwined. In this space that was open, activities may not resume in the same way to serve the racialized capital.

The pandemic has led to a partial withdrawal from labor. However, in and of itself, the pandemic is not a strike. Being on strike is the imposition of the condition under which the meanings of a cessation of labor that were formerly foreclosed become imaginable again. The policies of lockdown, quarantine and social distancing, when combined with the undeniably insecure working conditions of those defined as essential workers (and who have been required to ignore or break all the rules others has had to follow to protect themselves from the virus) have created conditions similar to those of a strike. Both those who have had to keep working and those who have been forced to stop working are part of a potential general strike. The July 20th Strike for Black Lives is another rehearsal. This mass withdrawal from positions of work is, in itself, a surprising, unfamiliar and radical manifestation of the body politic that should not be dismissed, but rather paired with the presence of the masses on the streets. Once seen in combination with the withdrawal from work, these street mobilizations are no longer just another interval of public protest but, instead, become something greater.

As many have remarked, with the assassination of George Floyd and the disproportionate number of Black Americans killed by the pandemic, racism has been revealed as the meaning of the pandemic. And, no less importantly, the general strike has been revealed as the meaning of the unproductivity of the masses on the streets, dislocated from their usual operative positions in the body politic. It is this pairing that has made it possible for Black Lives Matters abolitionist grammar to be naturalized in the language of millions. This shift has been so sudden that white institutions have felt compelled to issue statements cleansing them of their white-supremacist language of universalism. Make no mistake, these statements are often disingenuous, belated, and insufficient. However, they can serve as important starting points. Once such statements are made public, those who work in these institutions are collectively afforded the power to strike, to push these words beyond the screen and to use them to transform the institution in question. If, when the movement began in 2013, Black Lives Matters abolitionist and reparative grammar was met with attempts to imperially universalize it (all lives matter), the many who follow the movement today understand that this grammar is the picket line that must not be crossed. In other words, the many who are simultaneously outside their ordinary positions as operators of imperial technologies as they protest on the streets are now practicing this abolitionist-reparative grammar as proper grammar. Otherwise, would Minneapolis City Council members have gone beyond calling for individual indictments and police accountability to advocate the total defunding of the citys police department? Would the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone have existed as a police-free neighbourhood where protestors could draft their uncompromising demands to end white supremacist school-to-prison pipelines?

BLM grammar consists in rejecting the universal political grammar that has, for centuries, normalized crimes against Black people and postponed the ever-pressing abolition of imperial racializing regimes. Abolitionist demands, agendas and imaginaries are neither new nor unprecedented: now, however, they enjoy the status of a general strike that allows them to be uttered as part of the only proper grammar. It is a grammar that enables language to become referential again, to make sense in a world shared by all members of the body politic. With BLM grammar, truth claims are once again possible: for example, that George Floyd is one of many Black people assassinated by police officers, and that the organization that has spawned and nurtured this mass killing for years should be abolished. Also, with BLM grammar, the temporality of truth claims is transformed: events that are described in universal grammar as sporadic, individual killings are recoded in BLM grammar as further episodes of a mass killing. The police assassination of George Floyd is not a dissociated event, but rather an instantiation of forms of violence that are reproduced across time and place, materialized in organizations such as the police and the military, whose shared logic is predicated on the existence of Black suspects whose lives can be snuffed out on the spot. The immediate and uncompromising attacks on public monuments are a symptom of this grammatical change. The toppling of statues of enslavers and colonizers puts a brusque end to exhausting and pointless conversations about what to do with such monuments, conversations that are predetermined by the grammar these monuments themselves impose. Once they come tumbling down, displaying a tiny portion of them for, lets say, educational purposes would require the difficult work of justifying the presentation of such a physical slur in a public space. Such a decision would also necessitate a display that revokes the power of the monument to insult its spectators. What these toppled monuments do, however, is to highlight one urgent question that BLM grammar poses: what are the less visible monuments of the white supremacy that these sculptures celebrate? This is a question Ill return to at the end of this essay.

There is another urgent matter that needs raising. The truth claims and anti-imperial temporality that have become possible once again through BLM grammar and the current general strike are not available everywhere. They are especially hard to pronounce and to hear in countries whose democratic regime is of the apartheid variety. Id like to talk about one such place, Palestine, crushed on a daily basis by the state of Israel. (And, yes, I do insist on referring to Israel as a democratic regime, since our current democracies are nothing to boast about, and are all in some way based on a differential body politic. But this is a topic for another conversation.) A few days after George Floyds execution by police, as large-scale protests started to spread around the world, an Israeli policeman murdered Eyad al-Halaq, a 32-year-old Palestinian man from Wadi al-Joz, Jerusalem. For the Israeli regime, the murder of al-Halaq was a litmus test: would it provoke a response similar in scale to that of the murder of George Floyd? Well, no, it didnt. So it was that Israel obtained yet further confirmation, both local and international, that it could go on brutalizing and extinguishing Palestinian lives as it has done incessantly since 1948, when its regime made disaster was installed. Those small protests that did take place were not seen as arising within the context of 72 years of unceasing struggle, but instead dismissed as a sign that only a few cranks could be bothered to say his name. The conclusion? Another Palestinians life could be taken. And so it was that, just a few weeks later, Ahmed Mustafa Erekat was assassinated at a checkpoint near Jerusalem. Like al-Halaq before him, he was forced to stop at the checkpoint whenever he moved from one point to another. However, on that particular day, he didnt stop properly, according to the apartheid grammar inherent in the Israeli checkpoint system. He was shot several times and then left to die, bleeding out on the road for more than an hour. Israeli hasbara (propaganda) denies the world the chance to hear the names of the Palestinians its soldiers and policemen execute.

In 2015, after the police murder of Michael Brown and the assassination of 2,252 Palestinians in Gaza by Israeli soldiers the previous year, Noura Erakat, a professor of human rights law at Rutgers University, joined with journalist Dena Takruri in an attempt to say their names in solidarity in the video from Ferguson to Gaza and vice versa.

Palestinians and Black Americans shared a common abolitionist grammar and could speak to each other in the same language. As Noura Erakat put it at the time, the point is not to compare oppression [] But the point here is that solidarity is a political decision on how to resist and how to survive in our respective fights for freedom. This week, on Democracy Now!, Noura Erakat spoke as loudly as possible the name of her cousin, Ahmed Mustafa Erekat, whose life was taken by the Israeli regime for its own self-preservation (between the sea and the river), in opposition to the body politic of those it governs half of whom are Palestinians. But even when Erekats name is heard, it is barely associated with the demands to abolish the regime that took his life in one of its routine operations. Unsurprisingly, though, these demands are heard by radical Black leaders who, from the very beginning, made Palestine part of the Black Lives Matter agenda. To understand why BLM grammar is rendered impossible in Israel, it is essential to remember that, under the Israeli regime, Palestinians are murdered not only as individual Palestinians like al-Halaq and Erekat were but also en masse, during countless raids and military campaigns, because they provide the enemy that justifies the Israeli armys very existence.

Consider, too, the inflated police and army budgets, much of which is spent on international propaganda, intimidating and silencing cultural actors and institutions with allegations of antisemitism, and interfering in different countries to promote the introduction of legislation that would make it illegal to say Palestinians names using BLM grammar: in other words, to publicly state that Israels apartheid regime is predicated on the principle that Palestinian lives do not matter. A propaganda that also includes the use of state-funded education that, over the course of 12 years, turns children into soldiers for whom Palestinian lives will not matter. A propaganda that likewise encompasses the hasbara fellowships awarded to students around the world to further the Israeli cause on university campuses internationally, in an attempt to police the discourse there on Israel/Palestine and abort any effort to issue truth claims about Palestine. The recent attack you mentioned on Achille Mbembe in Germany is one of the latest examples of these Israeli-orchestrated attacks on anyone who dares say that Palestinian Lives Matter.

So it is that going on strike requires those who embrace BLM grammar to also find ways to amplify truth claims about Palestine. Outrageously, grotesquely, or tragically, AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee) has issued a statement of solidarity with BLM, as if it were not one of the primary pillars of support for the state that is a monument to white Jewish supremacy and that blocks the way to a BLM grammar to establish the picket line that should not be crossed. For abolition to be achieved, people will continue to improvise different forms of going on strike as part of the general abolitionist strike and will continue to find ways to put pressure on institutions not to make an exception of Palestine, to say that All Black Lives Matter. If BLM provides the grammar, then keeping the general strike alive requires the uncompromising use of this grammar in all the professions and trades that people carry on, especially once productive activities resume.

With millions on the streets undistracted by the categorical command to produce and consume, those who usually produce photos or ideas which also exist as commodities hold the power to refrain from or refuse to deliver certain goods. And they should, whenever doing so would mean crossing the picket line of All Black Lives Matter grammar. There are many different ways for people to join the strike and render legible the complicity between the white institutions charged with the production of knowledge and culture and the law enforcement regime that has been shaped to protect private property. After all, these institutions are built on the foundations of centuries of primitive accumulation of Black and indigenous land, wealth and stolen labor.

Works of art are the ultimate incarnation of this centuries-old pillaging. To conclude our conversation, lets fire up our imaginations by recalling some recent landmark cases of drawing this picket line, all of which are related to art museums. Firstly, theres the letter written by 100 Whitney Museum workers, who discovered the connection between Warren Kanders, owner of Safariland, a firm whose teargas is instrumental in the violent repression of people across the globe, and their Museum, of which Kanders was a board member (to this day, he remains a funder for and advisor on arts and environmental initiatives at Brown University, where I teach, something that students continue to protest). Then there are the protests and sit-in strikes led by Decolonize This Place, which persisted for months and would not stop until the Whitney respected the picket line. And the work that Forensic Architecture, in collaboration with Praxis Films, pursued with photography in Triple Chaser. Photographs of Safariland teargas canisters were taught to go on strike and to refute the assumption that they represent a decisive moment, and that what they record is only discrete moments, fragments of discrete truths limited to what is captured within their frames. Here they were taught to speak in concert with other photos, to underscore the sense of anti-imperial truth claims. Triple Chaser took part in Kanders toppling, and is also participating in the as-yet unfinished campaign to bring down another white institution the sacred status of secret documents, produced and archived as part of violence and still regarded as a primary source for scholarship seeking to expose imperial violence. In collaboration with with many activists who shared hundreds of photographs from the United States, Turkey, Peru, Iraq, Israel-Palestine, Yemen, Bahrain, Tunisia, Venezuela, Egypt, and Canada, the project assembles a choir of voices to sing out loud a truth claim about the role of museums in reproducing anti-Blackness and anti-Palestinianness.

An earlier version of this text was published in the form of a letter to Carles Guerra at correspondencias.fotocolectania.org.

Ariella Asha AzoulayAriella Asha Azoulay, teaches abolition, political thinking and imperial technologies at Brown University. Her latest book is Potential History Unlearning Imperialism (Verso, 2019).

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On Black Lives Matter's abolitionist grammar, Palestine, and the general strike - Mondoweiss

Published 23 July 2020

Construction trade bodies have applauded the decision of HS2 Ltd to implement the use of project bank accounts (PBAs) for payments across existing and future contracts.

Currently the biggest infrastructure project in Europe, HS2 will engage an estimated 10,000 companies in total, with more than 2,000 companies having already delivered work the project. Around 95% of HS2 contracts have gone to UK-based businesses 60% of those are SMEs.

PBAs enable payments to be made directly to firms in the supply chain without them having to cascade through the different layers of contracting. Payments can be discharged within 15 days and a measure of protection is provided against insolvencies upstream of the supply chain. 20 billion worth of work from Highways England will have been paid through PBAs by the end of this year and the Environment Agency has currently almost 120 projects which are using PBAs.

Following a trial of PBAs on two enabling works contracts, HS2 Ltd is now working with its construction contractors to implement these across other contracts.

The Specialist Engineering Contractors Group (SEC Group), which represents the largest sector by value in UK construction, said that with thousands of contract opportunities generated on HS2, the assurance of prompt and secure payment will have a significant impact across the sector not least for SMEs.

SEC Group chairman, Trevor Hursthouse, said: For over 10 years SEC Group has been campaigning to encourage public bodies to use PBAs.Im delighted with HS2s stance. The HS2 team is passionate about driving a collaborative and transparent approach to procurement and delivery across the whole supply chain.

Using project bank accounts will safeguard prompt payment and furthermore guarantee security of payment across the supply chain which is particularly important during these times.

Rudi Klein, CEO of SEC Group, added: As the lead campaigner for using PBAs, SEC Group applauds the decision of HS2 to use them (alongside other measures such as the abolition of retentions). In recent years we have having a dialogue with HS2 on promoting improved payment security for HS2 supply chains.

Implementing PBAs now will be a massive boost to construction SMEs struggling to make ends meet as we emerge from the current crisis. HS2 will also benefit since PBAs will encourage more collaborative working and help reduce construction costs. Given HS2s decision theres no longer any excuse for contracting authorities not to use PBAs.

Andy Cross, rail systems procurement director, added: I am thrilled that we have taken this crucial step to further strengthen our fair payment policies and in so doing, support companies at all levels of the supply chain through the use of PBAs. HS2 will play a critical role in the recovery of the UKs economy as we emerge from the pandemic, supporting and creating jobs across the construction industry.

This announcement means that companies, big or small, working with us will feel confident and supported as we work together to build Britains new low carbon high speed railway.

The decision has also been welcomed by the Scotland and Northern Irelands Plumbing Employers Federation (SNIPEF).

Fiona Hodgson, chief executive of SNIPEF, said: This is excellent news and something that the construction industry in Scotland has been calling for over many years. It is especially welcome since the HS2 project will generate an estimated 400,000 contracts across its supply chain and that two thirds of these will be with SMEs.

It is our hope that the acceptance of PBAs by such a flagship project will act as an exemplar for all construction projects, major and minor, in future.

The announcement is also, I believe, an acknowledgement of the hard work done by the Specialist Engineering Contractors Group, of which SNIPEF is a member, which has been lobbying for PBAs over recent years.

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Project bank accounts adopted on HS2 - Scottish Construction Now

"The Abolition of Work" is an essay written by Bob Black in 1985. It was part of Black's first book, an anthology of essays entitled The Abolition of Work and Other Essays published by Loompanics Unlimited.[1] It is an exposition of Black's "type 3 anarchism" a blend of post-Situationist theory and individualist anarchism focusing on a critique of the work ethic.[2] Black draws upon certain ideas of Marshall Sahlins, Richard Borshay Lee, Charles Fourier, William Morris, and Paul Goodman.

Although "The Abolition of Work" has most often been reprinted by anarchist publishers and Black is well known as an anarchist, the essay's argument is not explicitly anarchist. Black argues that the abolition of work is as important as the abolition of the state. The essay, which is based on a 1981 speech at the Gorilla Grotto in San Francisco, is informal and without academic references, but Black mentions some sources such as the utopian socialist Charles Fourier, the unconventional Marxists Paul Lafargue and William Morris, anarchists such as Peter Kropotkin and Paul Goodman, and anthropologists such as Marshall Sahlins and Richard Borshay Lee.

In the essay Black argues for the abolition of the producer- and consumer-based society, where, Black contends, all of life is devoted to the production and consumption of commodities. Attacking Marxist state socialism as much as liberal capitalism, Black argues that the only way for humans to be free is to reclaim their time from jobs and employment, instead turning necessary subsistence tasks into free play done voluntarily an approach referred to as "ludic". The essay argues that "no-one should ever work", because work - defined as compulsory productive activity enforced by economic or political means is the source of most of the misery in the world. Black denounces work for its compulsion, and for the forms it takes as subordination to a boss, as a "job" which turns a potentially enjoyable task into a meaningless chore, for the degradation imposed by systems of work-discipline, and for the large number of work-related deaths and injuries which Black characterizes as homicide.

He views the subordination enacted in workplaces as "a mockery of freedom", and denounces as hypocrites the various theorists who support freedom while supporting work. Subordination in work, Black alleges, makes people stupid and creates fear of freedom. Because of work, people become accustomed to rigidity and regularity, and do not have the time for friendship or meaningful activity. Many workers, he contends, are dissatisfied with work (as evidenced by absenteeism, goldbricking, embezzlement and sabotage), so that what he says should be uncontroversial; however, it is controversial only because people are too close to the work-system to see its flaws.

Play, in contrast, is not necessarily rule-governed, and, more important, it is performed voluntarily, in complete freedom, for the satisfaction of engaging in the activity itself. But since intrinsically satisfying activity is not necessarily unproductive, "productive play" is possible, and, if generalized, might give rise to a gift economy. Black points out that hunter-gatherer societies are typified by play (in the sense of "productive play"), a view he backs up with the work of anthropologist Marshall Sahlins in his essay "The Original Affluent Society," reprinted in his book "Stone Age Economics" (1971). Black has reiterated this interpretation of the ethnographic record, this time with citations and references, in "Primitive Affluence," reprinted in his book "Friendly Fire" (Autonomedia 1994), and in "Nightmares of Reason" (a critique of Murray Bookchin posted at TheAnarchistLibrary.org).

Black responds to the criticism (argued, for instance, by libertarian David Ramsey-Steele) that "work," if not simply effort or energy, is necessary to get important but unpleasant tasks done, by contending that much work now currently done is unnecessary, because it only serves the purposes of social control and economic exploitation. Black has responded that most important tasks can be rendered ludic or "salvaged" by being turned into game-like and craft-like activities, and secondly that the vast majority of work does not need doing at all. The latter tasks are unnecessary because they only serve functions of commerce and social control that exist only to maintain the work-system as a whole. As for what is left, he advocates Charles Fourier's approach of arranging activities so that people will want to do them. He is also sceptical but open-minded about the possibility of eliminating work through labor-saving technologies, which, in his opinion, have so far never reduced work, and often deskilled and debased workers. As he sees it, the political left has, for the most part, failed to acknowledge as revolutionary the critique of work, limiting itself to the critique of wage-labor. The left, he contends, by glorifying the dignity of labor, has endorsed work itself, and also the work ethic.

Black has often criticized leftism, especially Marxism, but he does not consider anarchism, which he espouses, as always advocating an understanding of work which is consistent with his critique of work. Black looks favorably, if critically, on a text such as "The Right to Be Greedy", by the Situationist-influenced collective For Ourselves (he wrote a Preface for the Loompanics Unlimited reprint edition), which attempts to synthesize the post-moral individualism of Max Stirner ("The Ego and Its Own") with what appears to be an egalitarian anarcho-communism. What has been called "zero-work" remains controversial on the left and among anarchists.

"The Abolition of Work" has been reprinted, as the first essay of "Instead of Work," published by LBC Books in 2015. Eight more essays follow, including an otherwise unpublished, lengthy essay, "Afterthoughts on the Abolition of Work." The introduction is by Bruce Sterling.

"The Abolition of Work" was a significant influence on futurist and design critic Bruce Sterling, who at the time was a leading cyberpunk science fiction author and called it "one of the seminal underground documents of the 1980s".[3] The essay's critique of work formed the basis for the antilabour faction in Sterling's 1988 novel Islands in the Net.[3] "The Abolition of Work" has been widely reprinted. It has been translated into French, German, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese (both continental Portuguese and Luso-Brazilian), Swedish, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovenian, Esperanto, Catalan, Azari (the language of Azerbaijan), and probably other languages.

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The Abolition of Work - Wikipedia

Rather than creating safety, our punishment system is an active source of harm for many. And the systems violence extends far beyond what makes the news. Black, disabled, and sex-working women and trans people are especially vulnerable to police violence and often face sexual assault at the hands of the police. Disabled people are estimated to make up as many as half of those murdered by police. Between 70 and 100 million Americans have a criminal record, and one year in prison takes two years off ones life expectancy. Further, there are more than 10 million arrests per year, and a misdemeanor arrestthe standard encounter between police and civilianscan upend a life, leading to lasting exclusions from employment and other opportunities.

So while some ask how we will be safe without police and prisons, abolitionists point out that most people cannot be safe so long as they exist. For this reason, abolitionists are, at heart, buildersbuilders of community safety, well-being, accountability, and harm prevention. As abolitionist Ruth Wilson Gilmore has said, abolition is about presencethe presence of life-giving systems that allow people to thrive and be well, that prevent harm and better equip communities to address harm when it occurs.

To be clear, building toward a world without prisons is different than believing in a world without harm. As one contributor to the prisoner-run publication In the Belly writes, abolitionists are not promising a world without harm. People hurt each other, and that wont change. But why do we all just accept that the appropriate response to harm is more harm, administered by the state?

Instead, when presented with harm, abolitionists reject the false choice of putting someone in a cage or doing nothing. In fact, abolitionists are actively building various models of preventing and responding to harm, focusing in particular on community accountability processes that, as our #8ToAbolition cocreators recently explained, seek safety for those harmed, changed behaviors for those who caused harm, and a transformation of the conditions that allowed the harm to occur.

Countless groups across the country are doing the work of safety building. In Washington D.C., the Collective Action for Safe Spaces (CASS) trains community members to intervene in gendered public harassment and, through the Rethink Masculinity program, helps men to identify harmful behaviors and build relationships of accountability and care. Likewise, the Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective holds regular labs to help community members build skills around transformative justice and ending child sexual abuse. Across the country, violence interrupters work to halt lethal violence before it happens by resolving conflicts and building healthy relationships between community members. And beyond programming centered on ending violence, groups focusing on mutual aid are doing the work of abolition by meeting community members needs and building local models of self-sufficiency. This is a small sliver of the work being done by abolitionists.

Ultimately, abolitionists do not have all the answersbut we are committed to finding them together. Prison is a one-size-fits-all solution, sending people to cages for violating a criminal law. Abolition requires just the opposite, recognizing the complexity of harm and the indispensability of humanity.

Ultimately, abolition is a verb, a practice. It consists of the actions we take to build safety and to tear down harmful institutions. People do abolition every day when they connect to their community, learn how to take accountability, and foster communal responsibility for preventing and responding to harm.

Abolition is within our reach; its up to us to build it.

Reiana Sultan and Micah Herskind are 2 of the 10 cocreators of the #8ToAbolition campaign.

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What Is Abolition, And Why Do We Need It? | Vogue

As millions of people ponder a future without police and prisons, and as authorities try to dream up ways of derailing the momentum of popular insurrection, Maya Schenwar and Victoria Laws new book, Prison By Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms, provides a guide to staying on the path to transformation. In the book, Schenwar (Truthouts editor-in-chief) and Law (an investigative reporter who has been covering prison issues for Truthout and other outlets for years) balance two critical needs. First, they alert us to reformist policy tricks and rebranding that authorities will use to keep reproducing oppression on a mass scale. Second, they help us shape our imagining of a different society to view abolition not like a monumental goal we have no hope of ever reaching, but something we practice every day. In this interview, Schenwar and Law discuss how they came to write the book, why reform movements can often co-opt the push for abolition, and why working toward abolition is not simply a distant vision but something we must practice every day.

James Kilgore: How did you come to write this book and why do you think it is relevant at this moment?

Victoria Law: We started writing this book in 2015. We could never have predicted this moment of demands to defund the police, increasing calls for abolition and people wanting to know what a world without police (and prisons) might look like. But here we are and our book examines the pitfalls of popularly proposed reforms that come up repeatedly as alternatives to mass incarceration. These alternatives fail to recognize that policing and imprisonment are built on bedrocks of white supremacy, colonialism and patriarchy. They also ignore the underlying causes of why people commit harm (or engage in acts that are criminalized). Instead, these alternatives pose seemingly more humane measures than locking people in physical buildings, called jails, prisons or immigrant detention centers. But theyre still forms of coercive control. One wrong step like going to the store without permission could mean incarceration. We challenge these reforms and highlight how people are creating new ways to address and prevent violence and harm. Like everyone, I have engaged in and been personally impacted by violence and harm. Punitive policies do nothing to prevent or address harm, nor help people heal from harm.

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Maya Schenwar: Yes Vikki and I were both wary of how sinister new forms of confinement and policing and surveillance were gaining traction in the name of reform.

Part of this wariness emerged from witnessing my sister go back and forth between jails, prisons and other forms of confinement for 15 years, mainly due to her addiction to heroin. When she wasnt in jail or prison when she was free she wasnt actually free. She was bound to an electronic monitor, under harsh probation restrictions, or confined in a mandated drug treatment facility she couldnt leave. This took a toll on her. She would always say her main desire was to be entirely free from institutions, but it felt impossible. None of these alternatives did anything to help her move beyond addiction; study after study has shown us that in general, you cannot mandate people into lasting recovery.

Meanwhile, Id been researching incarceration and editing stories about prisons for many years for Truthout. When I started writing about prisons in 2005, few people wanted to read about that issue. By 2015, there was so much energy fueling the prison reform train. And there was a massive and long-overdue national focus on police violence, anti-Blackness and racial injustice, in the midst of the Black Lives Matter movement and related struggles.

Although there was momentum behind shrinking the system among grassroots activists and powerful organizing happening, politicians were putting energy into reforms that would not change the carceral system at all. We saw a need for a book that would address the limits of and the harm caused by many popular reforms that were being accepted as improvements.

What do you mean by your title: Prison By Any Other Name?

Schenwar: Our title shows how the common reforms we describe are often new forms of imprisonment. Electronic monitoring is a good example; its basically a form of house arrest, as you note in your work, James, terming it e-carceration. We also write a lot about the use of psychiatric hospitals and locked-down drug treatment centers as places to put people as alternatives to prison. These reforms are popular, including among many liberals, because they seem kinder and gentler but they still involve keeping people whove been criminalized out of the larger society. They dont challenge the process of deeming people criminal, a label which is overwhelmingly applied to Black and Indigenous people and other people of color, trans people, disabled people, drug users and other marginalized groups.

These things are not the same as prison: Most people would rather be confined and surveilled in their home than behind bars. But the only options should not be a bad cage or a worse cage. We need to imagine a society with no cages at all.

Can you talk about one or two of the most memorable or surprising encounters you had with people you interviewed in researching this work?

Law: One of my early and most memorable interviews was with Elliott Fukui. Starting from the age of 12, Elliott had been placed in involuntary psychiatric confinement 20 times in seven years. He described how psychiatric confinement, which is often seen as something helpful or protective for those who are experiencing suicidal ideation or mental health crises, actually mimic the punitive structures of imprisonment including solitary confinement, physical violence, lack of human contact, and failures to acknowledge the role of systemic racism and oppressions or underlying traumas leading to mental health issues.

By the time I interviewed Elliott, he was in his thirties, had built a strong support system and developed a safety plan among his friends and community to support him when he was verging on crisis. Hes now an organizer who gives trainings about disability justice training which includes both examining the political history behind the ideas of madness and confinement and building a wellness and safety support system so that a person (and their loved ones) can avoid being entangled in a system that might end with involuntarily confinement, under medication or other controls. His experience challenges the idea that people who are most impacted must look to outside experts to determine what is best for them and instead can create their own paths to safety and wellness.

Schenwar: Patricia, a mother of five, wrote me about being confined to an electronic monitor. Shed been charged with burglary for entering the home of a friend, with whom she had an open-door policy, to retrieve her own medicine. When she got in touch, she had been on house arrest with a monitor for two years. Shed expected to be done in six months. Her sentence dragged on and on largely because she could not pay the weekly fees of $115 to be on the monitor. She cut corners. Her family went a winter without heat, their car was repossessed, they stopped going to the doctor, but still fell behind. Meanwhile, the restrictions of house arrest meant she couldnt even take her children to the park. Her case worker told her that her sentence would continue until she caught up on fees. Meanwhile, she was charged for every week that her sentence was extended.

Here she was, trapped in her home due to poverty. In our first conversation she had told me, If I had just done time, I wouldve been done by now. My whole family is on house arrest and my kids cant understand why.

Stories like Patricias made us want to show how these alternatives that are assumed to be better than prison are still harsh, punitive, oppressive, harmful, and that if we support them, were supporting deep harm inflicted upon human beings, families and communities.

Many actors in these new forms of incarceration pose as guardians of social welfare and protectors of the poor. Can you talk a little about who these people are, how they function and why they pose a danger to an agenda of transformation?

Schenwar: So many people are being deputized as police. Teachers are enlisted to call in the police about a whole range of discipline problems, fueling the school-to-prison pipeline. Doctors, nurses, social workers, child care providers and many others are mandated reporters to Child Protective Services. In 18 states, everyone is a mandated reporter, meaning were all being called upon to police our neighbors parenting. Psychiatrists perpetuate institutions of coercive control in the name of mental health. Case workers serve as gatekeepers to social services and ultimately police their clients. Some policing practices involve recruiting community members to serve as the eyes and ears of the police, surveilling their neighbors and calling the police whenever they sense danger a determination often grounded in racism, classism, transphobia and ableism.

People didnt get into these professions to be police, but its what theyve become. Its not just people with badges and guns. What makes it so insidious is the way in which its supposed to be enforced by all of us. Thats why Vikki and I and other abolitionists are calling for an end to policing, not just the official police.

Obviously, you both think deeply about how racial oppression is intertwined both historically and in these processes of reform. Many people are familiar with the disproportionate incarceration of Black people, but have you found new dimensions to racial oppression in these reforms that you write about?

Law: Racism, colonialism and white supremacy show up in all the popularly proposed alternatives. For instance, we examine the child welfare system, which some have dubbed the New Jane Crow because of how it targets Black women and women of color. People often think this is designed to help parents and children. In reality, the system surveils, controls and punishes. Mariame Kaba calls it the child kidnapping system. A parent doesnt have to be accused of abuse or violence to become entangled in the child welfare system; child welfare intervenes because a family is living in poverty and someone calls in a complaint not having heat in their building or letting their children go to the nearby playground while theyre at work. Many of these types of complaints and the systems reaction draw on cultural assumptions about Black women as mothers vestiges from the times of slavery when slave owners justified breaking apart families and selling children by telling themselves that Black women did not love and care for their children. When we were writing this book, a series of events occurred where people called child welfare on Black mothers because their children were left asleep in a car. At the same time, white parents were writing about raising free-range children, where they allowed their 7-year-old children to roam the city, including taking the subway, without any parental or adult supervision. Public reaction to free-range parenting was mixed, but the child welfare system did not become involved. In the cases of Black mothers who could not afford daycare, children were taken away and placed in foster care.

Schenwar: By the time theyre 18, the majority of Black children have experienced a child protective services investigation. As the child welfare system increasingly targeted Black and Indigenous families in the 1960s and 1970s, it became more punitive. And punitive meant tearing children from their families.

Racial oppression is pervasive in the helping institutions we discuss in our book. Many people love the idea of mandating mental health treatment instead of prison, but these treatments are coercive and inherently oppressive if theyre mandated by a court. Black people are three to five times as likely as white people to be handed a schizophrenia diagnosis one of the serious categories is most likely to result in court-mandated treatment. In the 1960s and 70s, some doctors called schizophrenia protest psychosis and insisted on strong sedatives to address it: trying to literally suppress peoples drive to participate in Black liberation movements. In the late 19th century, some Southern towns labeled Black residents insane by census-takers. Throughout history weve seen how these labels increase peoples vulnerability to measures like sterilization and institutionalization.

We cant separate this countrys systems of care from its explicitly punitive institutions, pretending the former are free of racial oppression.

You obviously place a heavy emphasis on gender analysis. In what ways do you think the gender dynamics of reform are different than what happens when mass incarceration is done with steel and concrete cages?

Law: There are both similarities and differences. For instance, when a father goes to prison, he often has a female partner or family member to take care of his children. Women, on the other hand, are more likely to be primary or sole caregivers to their children. Incarceration removes a mother from that role, making it more likely that her children will land in foster care and be legally terminated from her custody. In 1997, Congress passed (and Clinton signed into law) the Adoption and Safe Families ACT (ASFA), which mandates that, if a child has been in foster care for 15 of the past 22 months, the state needs to begin proceedings to terminate parental rights.

Popular alternatives to incarceration, such as mandatory drug treatment or involuntary psychiatric confinement, might have the same effect. If a mother (or other caregiver) has no one to care for her children while she is confined Somewhere Else, she risks having her children placed in the foster care system. In response, in New York State, advocates, including formerly incarcerated women, fought for the ASFA Expanded Discretion Act to allow judges to pause ASFAs timeline for parents in prison and those whose children are in foster care while they are in residential drug treatment.

Can you describe how you became abolitionists and why it is particularly useful today during the mass uprising?

Law: We live in a society [obsessed with] punishment and punitive policies. This hasnt stopped violence and harm from happening. If it did, we should be living in one of the safest eras in human history.

We need to recognize that, everyone in this world (who is older than a baby or toddler) has both engaged in harm and been impacted by harm. Mass incarceration and the popular alternatives to mass incarceration do not address the underlying reasons behind why harm and violence happen. They dont challenge or change structural conditions (such as racism, misogyny or poverty) or individual reasoning and behavior.

Were in a momentous time when increasing numbers of people are recognizing police do not keep us safe and are often purveyors of violence. Locking up people (mostly Black, Brown and other marginalized people) has not kept us safe, either. We need to put more resources into structures that have proven to meet peoples basic needs and to keep us safe. These include affordable housing, access to medical and mental health care, food, living-waged employment (if not a universal basic income).

When we interviewed Ruth Wilson Gilmore, she encouraged us to think about abolition not as an aspirational adventure but as already-accumulated encounters, awarenesses and activities. She pointed out that organizing for workers rights is a step toward abolition; organizing for environmental justice is a step toward abolition; anything that gets us closer toward meeting peoples actual needs and transforming conditions that are likely to produce harm is a step toward abolition. This helps us view abolition not like a monumental goal we have no hope of ever reaching, but something we practice every day.

Schenwar: Getting to abolition was a journey. My first real, deep personal interactions with the system involved a friend who was incarcerated prior to his deportation, my sisters incarceration in juvenile jail and friends who were incarcerated for acts of civil disobedience. In all of these cases, I could tell myself, Ok, we could get rid of juvenile jail and stop incarcerating people for immigration and end the drug war and free political prisoners, but wed still need prisons to address real problems. Of course, incarceration doesnt solve problems, it entrenches and deepens problems, but this is the mindset thats pervasive in our society, that we somehow need prisons.

Several things pushed me fully toward abolition. One was reading and re-reading Angela Davis, Ruth Wilson Gilmore and Beth Richies work, as well as my mentor Kathy Kellys writings from prison. They encourage us to think beyond incarceration. My friend and pen pal, Lacino Hamilton, who remains in prison in Michigan after more than 20 years inside, has also been one of my primary mentors. Lacino has a deep analysis of how the systems groundings in anti-Blackness and capitalism translate to how everyday life unfolds in prison that you cant just take those things away from prison; but must uproot those groundings. And witnessing the brutality of my sisters repeated incarcerations, and how they never addressed any of her issues but made them worse, caused me to question the entire system more deeply.

It is very significant that calls to abolish police and prisons are now infusing mainstream public discourse. This call to uproot the entire system is being emphasized again and again. Even if some people do not immediately agree, the fact they are even hearing abolition is a thing, that policing is a manifestation of white supremacy and capitalism and should be vanquished is significant. It plants a seed.

Police, prisons and the alternative prisons we describe in our book grew out of a foundation of oppression, and they continue to reproduce oppression on a mass scale. Once someone fully comprehends that, its hard to argue that these institutions have any place in the life-affirming and liberatory society we want to live in.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

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We Must Not Exchange One Cage for Another -- Let's Abolish ...