Stanley A. Ransom Jr. has written and published Americas First Black Poet; Jupiter Hammon of Long Island. Ransom grew up in Winsted and is a graduate of The Gilbert School.

Stanley A. Ransom Jr. has written and published Americas First Black Poet; Jupiter Hammon of Long Island. Ransom grew up in Winsted and is a graduate of The Gilbert School.

Photo: Stanley A. Ransom Jr. / Contributed Photo

Stanley A. Ransom Jr. has written and published Americas First Black Poet; Jupiter Hammon of Long Island. Ransom grew up in Winsted and is a graduate of The Gilbert School.

Stanley A. Ransom Jr. has written and published Americas First Black Poet; Jupiter Hammon of Long Island. Ransom grew up in Winsted and is a graduate of The Gilbert School.

Winsted native writes book on Black poet Jupiter Hammon

With the publication of the 88-line broadside poem An Evening Thought in 1760, Jupiter Hammon became the first published African-American contributor to American poetry.

The book, Americas First Black Poet; Jupiter Hammon of Long Island, written by Stanley A. Ransom Jr., is a reflection of the authors fascination with the history of Long Island and its past, including the lives of slaves who were brought to that part of New York in the 1700s.

Ransom, 92, now retired, has made a mission of educating people everywhere of the great contributions of Black poets to society, and annually organizes Black Poetry Day in Plattsburgh, N.Y., where he has lived for many years.

He is past president of the Long Island Chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution, and is a descendant of Solomon Stoddard, a 17th-century minister quoted by Jupiter Hammon. Ransom first became interested in Hammon through the work of author Oscar Wegelin. In 1970, he proposed that Oct. 17, Jupiter Hammons birthday in 1711, be celebrated as Black Poetry Day, to recognize the contributions of African-American poets to American life and culture and to honor Jupiter Hammon, the first Black man in America to publish his own verse, according to the book.

Ransom was born in Winsted in 1928, and moved to West Hartland in 1935, to be closer to his fathers family. His father, Stanley Ransom Sr., worked as sales manager for the Gilbert Clock Co.; his mother, Charlotte Grace Adele Sheldon, was the soloist at the Winsted Methodist Church. The family resided on Walnut Street, and Ransom attended the Greenwood School.

After graduating from high school, Ransom worked for three years for the Connecticut Parks and Forest Commission, where he planted trees and fought forest fires. He graduated from Yale University in 1951 and from Columbia University Graduate Library Service School in 1953, then worked for the New York Public Library on 42nd Street for five years.

I realized Id gone as far as I could go there, and I took a job at the Huntingon, Long Island, public library out on the north shore, Ransom said. I learned a lot about being a librarian there from the director, and when he left, I became the director.

Ransom fed his interest in local history by exploring Huntington, and heard about Jupiter Hammon. His name popped up, Ransom said. A lot of people had heard of him; he was a neighbor, and lived in the area. Theres a peninsula thats now a state park, but in 1711, that whole area was the manor of a place called Queens Village, where members of the British hierarchy settled.

There, Henry Lloyd was a 24-year-old from Boston who came to what was known as Lloyds Neck, which was owned by his wife, he said. She received it from a man she was formerly engaged to, and he willed the land to her; when he died, she received the whole neck. When she married Henry Lloyd, it became theirs.

The Lloyds had eight slaves that they brought from Boston, who were from Barbados. In the early 1600s, the whole of Barbados was dedicated to developing sugar on plantations. (On Long Island at that time) there were 56,000 slaves on a plantation who were working on sugar, cutting the cane and pressing it.

Jupiter Hammon was among those slaves. The Lloyds settled on what is now known as Shelter Island, N.Y., bringing eight slaves, including Hammon, to their home. They owned all of Shelter Island, Ransom said. I went there when I was library director, and at that time the house was owned by a Mr. Fisk.

Finding out more about Jupiter Hammon wasnt easy.

We dont know what he looked like, or anything about him, Ransom said. I hunted everywhere, and there were no diaries, no newspapers that covered the time that he died, in 1805. I asked if he was buried in the African-American cemetery in Huntington, but he wasnt. Its probable that he was placed in the African-American burial ground, thats full of unmarked graves.

Jupiter Hammon wasnt the first Black poet, and I learned he was the first to publish his own verse, Ransom explained. Apparently the first Black poem was written by a woman named Lucy Terry, in a little town in Massachusetts, about an attack by Native Americans that killed settlers in a place called Bars Field, somewhere near Great Barrington.

Lucy wrote a long poem about it, and the poem wasnt printed until 1866, I think, Ransom said. But Jupiter, and Phyllis Wheatley, were the first Black persons to publish their own poems Jupiter in 1760, and Phyllis about 10 years later. She got a lot of publicity, but Jupiter was somewhat of a mystery. But he was the first Black poet to publish his own verse.

Eventually, Ransom learned about that the Lloyd Harbor Historical Society building, a 1711 saltbox house near Huntington, was the closest to a resting place for Jupiter Hammon.

Its become kind of a shrine for him, he said. Groups of people who are interested in African-American history have put decorations on the house, and awarded plaques to the house. So that seems to be a substitute for a cemetery marker.

A natural intelligence and a deep religious fervor led Hammon to publish his poetry and prose, and his Address to the Negroes of the State of New York, which first appeared in 1787, was later reprinted and distributed by the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, according to Ransoms book. Some of Hammons most productive years were spent in Hartford during the American Revolution, he said. With newly found genealogical information on Jupiter, this present volume with newfound poems has become the most complete and authoritative work on this early American black poet, according to the books publisher, Outskirts Press.

Hammons poetry reveals his joyous intoxication with religion, and in this vein he precedes the composers of those Black spirituals which are today an integral part of American culture, Ransom wrote. This collection of his poems and writings now includes two newly discovered poems found in New York Historical Society Library and in the Sterling Memorial Library of Yale University. Ransom noted that Hammon used several codes and indirect ways to let his fellow slaves know his real feelings about slavery. He used his Biblical knowledge as a cover.

Ransom has observed Black Poetry Day at Plattsburgh since 1970. Id like to see a national observance of Black Poetry Day, having people read the poems of Black poets, he said. Up here in Plattsburgh, theyve had nationally known Black poets come to Plattsburgh University. Im trying to get all the states to do it.

On Oct. 17, its all about Jupiter Hammon and Black Poetry Day, he said. I have a poetry day committee, and we feel that it is important to have some ways to promote racial harmony. This book, I think, is timely. Its a way to accept and appreciate Black poetry as a major expression of the Black experience. Im trying to enable the use of Black poems to celebrate person of color.

Ransom said he doesnt benefit personally from the celebration. But it seems to me that with all the terrible problems weve experienced lately, that this might help, he said. There are so many Black poets who have written such good poems for people to read. They write about life and family, and their experiences. ... Their poems should be read for the benefit of hearing what they have to say.

Since founding the annual event, Ransom has had readers including former Connecticut Poet Laureate Marilyn Nelson, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Tracy Smith; Gwendolyn Brooks; and Derek Wolcott, who in 1992 was the days reader a week after winning a Nobel Prize. These poets have a lot to say, Ransom said. And for schoolchildren and college kids poetry is still a good way of expressing your feelings. Thats my aim to get people to experience and appreciate poetry.

Ransom writes poetry, too, but is more inclined to short story writing, and has become a professional storyteller and a member of the National Storytellers Institute, sharing his skills with libraries, childrens programs and schools. Hes also a singer and musician, and goes by the name Connecticut Peddler.

I also play hammer dulcimer, guitar, mandolin, auto harp and ukulele, he said. With my wife, Christina, we have volunteered every morning at our hospitals skilled nursing facility. We go up and talk to the patients, and sing to them. But with COVID-19, there are no more volunteers allowed at the hospital.

In September, Ransom is performing four songs during a yearly event on the Battle of Plattsburgh, honoring the date in 1814 with the U.S. Navy defeated an army of British soldiers trying to invade the area. Ransom has recorded 10 CDs of historic music. He has also written two musical compositions, the Jupiter Hammons Jig and the Address to Miss Phillis Wheatley, based on Jupiter Hammons second poem, a four-part arrangement for Gospel Choir by Shirley Baird, Canadian musician and educator.

I like to do creative things, he said.

Ransom is an Army veteran of WWII. He and his wife, Christina, have four children, including a step-daughter, and eight grandchildren.

For more information or to contact the author, visit http://www.outskirtspress.com/JupiterHammon. The book is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

See original here:

Winsted native writes book on Black poet Jupiter Hammon - Torrington Register Citizen

Remember Hiroshima by Abolishing Nuclear Weapons

For the last 17 years, my friends and I have organized a peaceful vigil for nuclear disarmament on Hiroshima Day, August 6th, in Los Alamos, New Mexico at Ashley Pond Park, the actual spot where the Hiroshima bomb was built.

There, sometimes with as many as 400 others, weve been calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons; the closing of the Los Alamos National labs; the cleaning up of the environment and making reparations to the downwinders and indigenous people whose land was stolen.

This year, the pandemic has forced us to host an online commemoration instead (on August 6th, 8 p.m. EST, at http://www.campaignnonviolence.org/hiroshimaday2020) with speakers including Dr. Ira Helfand of the Nobel Peace Prize group, the Intl Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons and Archbishop John Wester of New Mexico, who will speak of his recent visit to Hiroshima and Pope Francis urgent call to abolish nuclear weapons.

We remember what the United States did 75 years ago when we killed 200,000 people at Hiroshima and another 40,000 people in Nagasaki. We repent of this evil by recommitting ourselves to the long hard work of building a global grassroots movement for the abolition of nuclear weapons and war, starting with the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.

Our message over the years has been simple, moral and urgent: Nuclear weapons have totally failed us

Our message over the years has been simple, moral and urgent: Nuclear weapons have totally failed us. They dont make us safer; they dont provide jobs; they dont make us more securethose are age-old lies. Instead they bankrupt us, economically and spiritually.

According to the Doomsday Clock, we are in greater danger now than ever. A limited nuclear war between India and Pakistan is very possible; an all-out nuclear war would end life as we know it. We cannot continue down this path. If we spent billions instead on teaching and building nonviolent civilian-based defense systems and nonviolent conflict resolution programs around the world, we could move the planet closer toward true peaceand have the resources to cut the roots of war, such as injustice, poverty, and racismand start safeguarding creation.

To the employees of the Los Alamos National Labs and the nuclear weapons industry, we have been pleading: dont waste your one precious life building weapons to vaporize millions of sisters and brothers. Quit your jobs and find pro-human, nonviolent work.

To the Christians who work at the Los Alamos Labs and the nuclear weapons industry, weve been saying: take up the command of the nonviolent Jesus who say love your enemies, dont nuke them. Quit your jobs, join his campaign of nonviolence, and work for a more just, more nonviolent nation and world.

To our politicians, we say, stop funding nuclear weapons development. This message is integral to the Black Lives Matter movement, the environmental movement, the anti-corruption movement, and all the grassroots movements for justice and peace. Instead, fund the needs of the people for better schools, jobs, healthcare, food, housing and environmental cleanup.

These weapons and our violence blind us to the truth of our common humanity, our oneness with creation. We can no longer even imagine a world without war or nuclear weapons. Today, we demand leaders with vision of a new North America, free of nuclear weapons, a new land of nonviolence that fulfills Dr. Kings visionary dream, who will work to make that vision come true.

This 75th anniversary of Hiroshima should not just be an interesting historical marker; it should be a turning point, when the U.S. renounces its nuclear legacy, and charts a new course for itself and humanity, so that together in a nuclear-free future, we can get on with the task for justice, environmental cleanup and learning to live at peace with one another.

John DearPeaceVoice

Excerpt from:

Remember Hiroshima by Abolishing Nuclear Weapons - LA Progressive

In thinking specifically about the abolition of prisons using the approach of abolition democracy, we would propose the creation of an array of social institutions that would begin to solve the social problems that set people on the track to prison, thereby helping to render the prison obsolete. There is a direct connection with slavery: when slavery was abolished black people were set free, but they lacked access to the material resources that would enable them to fashion new, free lives. Prisons have thrived over the last century precisely because of the absence of those resources and the persistence of some of the deep structures of slavery. They cannot, therefore, be eliminated unless new institutions and resources are made available to those communities that provide, in large part, the human beings that make up the prison population.

Angela Davis

Our infantile President needs to be taught some lessons. Its not just the lessons that the liberal meritocracy wants him to learn. Trumps opposition in the majority of the Democratic Party and the corporate media who backs them up wants Trump to start listening to the expertswho are often in their position of power through many of the same tactics as Trump: ability to bullshit, lack of empathy, being boring enough to have ambition. Our country may be full of idiots but they are mostly at the top.

The larger problem with our society is a lack of education of citizenship a la Ralph Nader. Nader hits another home run in his latest radio hour with educator Barbara Lewis. Speaking of home runs, couldnt the Marlins use Ralph more than ever right now with most of their team sidelined with COVID? Lord knows the blue team could use a person who can catch some bases being stolen in Florida. Which is exactly what Nader does on the second half of his show with Greg Palast.

When cases inevitably pile up in the schools wouldnt Trump be just like the baseball commissioner who said the players need to be better. Trumps only governing strategy is deflection. Without at least some checks and balances of power the virus would be far worse. With the country structured as it is he can blame local officials who are cleaning up his mess because these officials do have some power. However, the dictator-in-Chief will do anything he can to get rid of all checks until we are the hoarded toilet paper in his bleached shithole of a country.

Just as Trumps fascist state has abandoned public health, public democracy and public lands it has abandoned public schools. The disinvestment from poor and minority schools can only be met with a reparations policy that considers all aspects of oppression in an intersectional and dynamic way. But why put the cart before the horse here? If the neoliberal state continues to present itself as incapable of funding public programs why should the public have to take on the health risk of partaking in them?

Mandatory schooling prevents another dynamic of criminalization of people with health conditions who can not afford to let their children take the risk. The dangerous rhetoric of children being immune from COVID obscures how the disease spreads between even mild cases and prevents a false security to children who could suffer permanent damage to their body even if they dont die.

One of the unique risks of children specifically being infected is paradoxically that they often dont show symptoms meaning they are more likely to spread to others at school because we cant tell that they are sick. According to Harvard Health, children exposed to COVID have developed multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C) which results in life-threatening organ failure.

Trump is criminally threatening to remove funding for schools that dont reopen. While this blackmail may be the only kind of black or mail Trump supports, lets remember too that he is cutting the budget by tremendous amounts regardless. The fiscal year 2021 proposes cuts to education by 6.1 billion according to the National Education Association. They point to cuts to English Language Learners, Title I (low income students), Title II (disability) and rural. Our taxes are also being funneled to private schools through 5 billion in Freedom Scholarships. Public service loan forgiveness would meet its death like many of the American people and work-study funding would fall by 55%.

Schools in free fall are being abandoned by the federal government. Those who can stay afloat amidst budget crises are the schools funded by property taxesnamely where the rich kids live. The other truth is that safely reopening simply isnt realistic unless the budget radically changes. The estimated cost of safely reopening is 245 billion dollars according to The Council of State Chief School Officers. Compare that to Republican Senator Lamar Alexanders estimation of 50 billion. The aid is also being disproportionately allocated to private schools already as Betsy DeVos changes the formula of distribution to one based on distribution of total number of schools in a district rather than total number of low income students in a school.

The coronavirus is forcing us to consider space in a new way. In what ways is space utilized to reenforce inequality? How have closed spaces such as prisons and immigrant detainment centers left communities vulnerable to the virus? In what ways has the home been a similar trap for women, who now experience an alarming rise in domestic violence thanks to the enclosed space of the home? In what ways would the closed space of the school be a similar entrapment for children without access to health care and already suffering health consequences of a polluted environment? In what ways do the rich create their own spaces to be free of the dangers of being poor and dark skinned, whether that be policing, environment deregulation or austerity defunding through the logic of neoliberalism?

However to avoid cynicism we should also be asking what type of schools we want for our children. If we can determine a safe way for return then we should be looking at it. However, the numbers simply dont add up between what is needed for a safe reopening and what is being proposed to be given. While a district by district approach has some appeal we also should be problematizing this segregation of policy because it is obvious that for the richer schools with more funding there is less safety risk. Accepting a district by district approach does accept this inequality and leaves poor children further behind.

Who even needs school when you have Black Lives Matter? Why continue to send children to American Exceptionalism history classes when they could be attending statue removals? Now thats a bit of hyperbole but the basic point is this: if we cannot even properly educate the public on the dangers of the virus why are we sending people to risk their lives for an alternative story?

The silver lining of this virus is that it has forced us to imagine new possibilities. Rather than working all day for capital people have turned to protest to make demands for justice. On a parallel, the false guarantee of work is exposed under the virus as people have to turn to the government to survive. Hopefully, this will be the propaganda for socialism we need. But then again the American public may already be there. Bernie Sanders mentions winning the ideological battle on socialist programs. The deeper problem is that there is no democracy to give voice to these issues because of the very inequality that makes the policies obvious. While we wait for corporate duopoly racketeers to catch up hundreds of thousands die from austerity politics that have completely lost track of the poor who have the virus or are at risk of it. Even if the virus brings the revolution it will be at a tremendous cost.

For now, we simply dont have the revolution necessary to transform social relations and the idea of living to see another day politically and physically seems like an idea that will have to do. Meanwhile, children will have to deal with a multitude of problems especially from poor and working families reliant on the childcare and food from the school system. But while boycotting school may have many downsides, it also can amount to the same leverage as a strike, which teachers are already organizing. Go back to school and a certain cut will die and Trump and co. will say thats the cost and that for those of us not dead, America is back. Thats always been his political gambit. Some of you are disposable but the country benefits from it. Cowardly.

However if we boycott school now the government is forced to respond to more civil unrest. This is the sort of exposure of the state that will be necessary to transform it. Just as protest across the country has made the authoritarian state show its brutal hand, so too a boycott of the schools will expose the inability of neoliberal relations to deal with a public health crisis.

Trump defines himself by his wealth and fame. A true public education system can teach our children to be so much more than that. But under a corporate neoliberal model the only public we have is public death. Until we revolutionize our society into one that takes care of the least of us and not just the corporate class we will continue to have cyclical but continual crisis and unnecessary death. In the absence of this society the most responsible thing to do is prevent as many deaths as possible.

When the coronavirus first started I was sadly one of those who bought into the false choice presented by the right: work and die or dont work and die. I wanted people to be able to go back to work because I could only imagine a society where work could provide for the poor. However, the left must always fight against the reactionary politics of the right that aim to hold idealism captive. There are other ways for society to provide beyond dependent slavery to capital. It is our job to create these possibilities for alternative structures.

Examples of the false choices meant to smother idealism include: reopen the economy amidst a deadly pandemic so poor people can have enough to eat. Counter with a solution that gives people enough to eat without having to risk their lives. The worst-case scenario is the right reactionary one that only emerges because they neglected common sense and decency in their original question.

Another example: the right says invade and sanction Venezuela because their government has failed. The left could respond by pointing out that the economics are sabotaged by Empire and that by negotiating with terrorists like John Bolton we only increase the downward spiral. Resistance to the hegemony of United States must be supported in Venezuela especially when they represent almost a last stand against neoliberal free-market dominance in the entire region of Latin America.

The same logic goes on in the transition to green energy. The right says well lose jobs. Well how about we stop choosing between livelihoods and the very existence of life on earth being threatened from climate change. Here is where an emphasis on intersectionality is so key so that the right cant make disingenuous left arguments (rights of workers) to stop real left projects (transition to green economy which includes workers rights naturally).

It is that time of year again and I know it is a special election with a special shade of fascism but the same false choice argument is used for opportunistic Democrats. If you want something more than their corporate neoliberal agenda, you support Republicans is the argument. Lets give one up for Barack Obama, not just because he didnt use his eulogy time for a Civil Rights leader to take shots at black radicals as Bill Clinton did but also because he brought up the necessary fight for voting rights that are under severe attack by this authoritarian administration.

We can tell Obama really has the right amount of respect for his doofus successor Joe Biden. That is, zero respect. Obama would never have campaigned for himself to have a Democrat Congress because it would mean he would have to do something for progressives. Good for him for trying to fuck over Biden with a Democrat congress that he will eagerly ignore. Biden will be busy lost in his literal and political basement trying to juggle replacing what Biden called the first racist President with all the politically expedient racist policies that Biden built his career on.

Opening schools would be more of an argument if we had an administration that took the virus seriously. We know that this administration will not respond to the plight of children or workers and as a result, the question of catastrophe for school populations is not if, but when. The same disregard for human life can be found in the way this administration deals with public schools generally. In fact, both corporate parties have been gutting public health and public school resources. Under neoliberalism the public doesnt even exist, only the individual does. President Trump is the embodiment of this mentality as he will kill the entire public as long as it benefits himself. It is said that reading is the best way to create empathy because it gives you access to the world of another person. So Mr. Trump, shut up and read a book. It wont kill you.

Read the original post:

Donald Trump Is The Only One Who Should Be Going To School This Fall - CounterPunch

Something has come unstuck. The common sense about policing has abruptly changed.

This shift was a long time coming: Prison abolitionists a movement of scholars and activists, notably spearheaded by Black women such as Angela Davis and Ruth Wilson Gilmore have spent decades organizing toward a goal of abolishing the prison system. The Black Lives Matter movement and a new generation of Black-led organizing have kindled a new moment in which a world without police feels truly possible.

After decades of expanding police power bolstered by a hegemonic law and order discourse and a bipartisan tough on crime agenda something snapped when Minneapolis police were filmed callously suffocating George Floyd, an unarmed Black man. Suddenly once-staunch defenders of the police even their own unions are calling for reform, and moderates advocate defunding specific programs or entire departments. The police have come to be seen as a threat to public safety rather than its instrument, and the ideological framing of Black criminality has given way, at least for the moment, to that of institutional racism. More than two-thirds of Americans (69 percent) believe that Floyds death is a sign of broader problems in [the] treatment of black Americans by police, and 81 percent believe police in America need to continue making changes to treat blacks equally to whites. As recently as 2014, it was a minority (43 percent) who saw similar incidents as a sign of broader problems.

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As cities burned and crowds fought with cops, surveys showed that three-quarters of Americans (78 percent) saw the anger driving the uprisings as at least partially justified, and a majority (54 percent) felt similarly about the protesters militant tactics, including the burning of Minneapoliss Third Precinct station house. Twice as many people including a majority of whites report being concerned about police violence as express concern over protester violence. A large majority (74 percent) express support for the protests (47 percent strongly support them).

Riots get results. The cops who killed George Floyd are being prosecuted; many departments are banning chokeholds; and police chiefs, district attorneys and other law enforcement leaders have resigned, one after another, across the country. Police budgets are being slashed, with the funds reallocated to social spending reversing the trajectory of the last half-century. The Minneapolis City Council voted to disband its police force altogether and try something else instead.

Some of the concessions responded to long-standing complaints, and others represent changes that no one had even demanded: Lego is de-emphasizing police-themed toys. Babynames.com featured a stark black banner on its front page listing dozens of victims of racist violence, beginning with Emmett Till, and reminding us that, Each one of these names was somebodys baby. The long-running television program Cops was abruptly cancelled. Corporations started pouring money into civil rights organizations, and celebrities publicly challenged each other to bail out arrested protesters.

Twenty years ago, I began work on a history of policing in the United States, which appeared in 2004 under the title Our Enemies in Blue. (It is now in its third edition.) The main argument of the book is that the core function of the police is not to fight crime, to protect life and property, or even to enforce the law, but instead to preserve existing social inequalities, especially those based on race and class. In making that case, I looked at the origins and development of the institution, the centrality of violence in police work, and the persistent bias in the law and its enforcement. I also forwarded a number of contentious (and at the time, almost heretical) claims: that modern policing originated not in the New England town watch, but in the Southern slave patrols militia groups responsible for enforcing pass laws and preventing uprisings; that cops are not workers and police unions are not labor unions; that community policing is not a program for progress but a counterinsurgency strategy; and that the institution of policing must be abolished rather than reformed. At the time, none of those were accepted positions, even among many strident critics of the police. They remain today minority views, but it has become a substantial minority. These points have entered the mainstream discourse: Historians increasingly acknowledge the significance of slave patrols. Unions are calling into question the legitimacy of police unions, and even breaking ties with them. The military literature has become increasingly explicit in comparing community policing with counterinsurgency. And even mainstream politicians find themselves debating the question, not merely of reforming the police department, but of defunding or disbanding it.

Meanwhile, the agenda of activists has quickly expanded beyond policing: Around the world, crowds pulled down statues of Confederate generals and slave owners. Popular Mechanics ran articles offering practical advice on avoiding police surveillance at protests, and a how-to guide to pulling down racist statues. NASCAR barred displays of the Confederate battle flag, and Mississippi decided to remove the Stars and Bars from its state flag. A street adjacent to the White House has been renamed Black Lives Matter Plaza. Employers adopted Juneteenth as a paid holiday. And Johnson and Johnson announced a new line of darker Band-Aids.

Many of these gestures are purely symbolic. But while some changes may not do much, that is not to say that symbolic gestures are meaningless: the symbolism itself demonstrates something of the emerging consensus.

In addition to being a pivotal moment for organizers, this shift in public consciousness would seem to recommend an expanded agenda for researchers. Most crucially, we should find ways to put our work in the service of social movements, always remembering that it is the movement, and not the scholarship, that propels change.

We should, of course, continue to document the prevalence of police violence, analyze its causes and evaluate proposed reforms. But in the present crisis, provisional answers are already available and widely circulating. What is more urgently needed is further work documenting and evaluating alternatives to policing, identifying best practices and organizational features that correlate with good outcomes.

Furthermore, we must work to situate abolition as part of a revolutionary program, to make clear the limits of defunding (or even disbanding) the police, and to make the argument that abolition cannot end with policing, but must extend to the entire criminal legal apparatus the machinery of prosecutions and punishment, even probation and community-based corrections. We must not be afraid to embrace the radicalism of such proposals. Just as we highlight the structural role the police play in economic exploitation and racial oppression, we must articulate the importance of abolition in the broader revolutionary project of overthrowing white supremacy and capitalism.

Read more:

Abolishing Police Is a Step Toward Larger Goals -- Overthrowing White Supremacy and Capitalism - Truthout

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Srinagar: The Jammu and Kashmir Peoples Movement announced Monday that its founding president, IAS officer-turned-politician Shah Faesal, has stepped down, and that Feroze Peerzada would be its new president.

The announcement comes a day after ThePrint reported that Faesal had removed President JKPM from his official Twitter handle, raising speculation that the IAS topper who resigned from the service last year would either rejoin it or leave the country for higher studies. Now his Twitter account shows no tweets of his own, with the last like registered on 4 August 2019.

Peerzada confirmed to ThePrint after his appointment that Faesal will either rejoin the IAS or go to the US for further education, though Faesal, who claims to be under house arrest, was not available for a comment when ThePrint contacted him through phone calls. His resignation from the IAS was never accepted.

We have had month-long deliberations with Dr Shah Faesal, trying to convince him to stay in the party and continue politics for the good of people. However, he was firm on his decision to leave politics, said Peerzada, 52, a businessman-turned-politician who was earlier the vice-president of the JKPM.

Dr Shah Faesal was the main reason behind me joining politics. I truly believed that he is the person to usher in great social changes, but unfortunately, what has happened in the last year has left no space for politics. Dr Faesal realised this, but I am sure whatever he does, be it civil services or getting higher education, he will continue to work for the people of Jammu and Kashmir, Peerzada said.

Also read: Shah Faesal sparked an IAS craze in J&Ks Lolab, his arrest has now dampened enthusiasm

In a statement, the JKPM said: State Executive Committee of JKPM in an online meeting today discussed the ongoing political developments in the state. In the said meeting, the request of Dr Shah Faesal to spare him from the organisational responsibilities was discussed.

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Dr Shah Faesal had informed State Executive Members that he is not in a position to continue with political activities and wants to be freed from the responsibilities of the organisation. Keeping in view this request, it was decided to accept his request so that he can better continue with his life and contribute whichever way he chooses, the statement added.

The committee also accepted the resignation of chairman Javed Mustafa Mir and accorded farewell to him. Javed Mustafa Mir a veteran political figure of the J&K has been under house arrest since 5 August 2019.

Faesal had formed the JKPM last year, and then entered into an alliance with the Awami Ittehad Party headed by Sheikh Abdul Rashid, more commonly known as Engineer Rashid.

However, Faesal was detained days after the scrapping of Article 370, when several other politicians were also being held. Just before his detention, Faesal, the 2009 UPSC exam topper, had taken to Twitter to express his displeasure against the Narendra Modi governments decision to revoke J&Ks special status.

Kashmir will need a long, sustained, non-violent political mass movement for restoration of political rights. Abolition of Article 370 has finished the mainstream. Constitutionalists are gone. So you can either be a stooge or a separatist now. No shades of grey, Faesal had tweeted.

Faesal was detained by immigration authorities at the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi last year in August and handed over to the Delhi Police, which put him on a flight back to Srinagar. Officials said Faesal was on his way to Istanbul at the time.

He was charged under the stringent Public Safety Act (PSA) in February 2020, before being released in June, when the PSA was revoked.

In his PSA dossier, the J&K administration had alleged that Faesal advanced the separatist ideology and challenged the decision of the central government to scrap the special status of J&K.

According to an official source, Faesal had expressed his wish to leave India for higher studies, but the idea was not acceptable to the Centre, which was more interested in his return to the IAS.

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Shah Faesal will either rejoin IAS or go to US to study, says new chief of his JKPM party - ThePrint

The nations historic Voting Rights Act was signed into law on Aug. 6, 1965, formalizing key provisions to allow Black voters across the country to participate in local and national elections without obstruction, discrimination, violence or intimidation.

Effects of the legislation were immediate and transformative. Black voter registration increased by 14% to 19%, and overall turnout grew by nearly a fifth. Tens of thousands of Black people across the United States have been elected to public office, including six U.S. senators and the countrys first Black president.

Yet structural barriers persist that disproportionately keep Black residents from casting ballots, from voter ID laws to long lines and limited hours at polling places.

Just before his recent death, U.S. Representative John Lewis wrote of the ways in which the current Black Lives Matter movement against police brutality and systemic racism recalls his work as a leader in the U.S. civil rights movement.

Emmet Till was my George Floyd, he wrote, remembering the lynching of the 14-year-old boy who was just one year his junior at the time.

When President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law, Lewis was there, along with two other instrumental leaders of the U.S. civil rights movement, Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Many others also loomed large in the room.

People like Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Carol Denise McNair, the young girls murdered in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in 1963, were there in spirit.

People like Jimmie Lee Jackson, who was brutally murdered by police during a peaceful protest in 1965 as he was protecting his mother. His death inspired the Selma to Montgomery marches, where 25,000 people joined arms to demand revolutionary change, giving rise to the passage of the Voting Rights Act. He was there too.

People like Herbert Lee, who fought against literacy tests, poll taxes and other discriminatory practices that barred Black citizens from voting across the South, and who was targeted, shot, and killed by a Mississippi State Representative in 1961 for his advocacy.

And people like Philadelphias Octavius Catto, who was born free and spent his lifetime fighting tirelessly for the abolition of slavery, for the desegregation of public space, for Black suffrage, and for quality Black education. Catto was shot and killed in 1871 for exercising his right to vote in his native city, where a monument in his honor became Phillys first public statue commemorating a person of African American descent when it was erected in 2017.

Today, on the 55th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, we stand on the shoulders of our ancestors, our movement leaders, our fallen martyrs. We celebrate this landmark civil rights victory and commit ourselves to the unfinished work of fully-realized Black citizenship.

Voting is just one important part of citizenship, but as we reckon with the legacies of centuries of violence, oppression and racism, it is critical to protect what Lewis called the most powerful non-violent tool we have in a democracy.

While the tasks ahead of us are many, there are concrete steps we can take to protect Black peoples right to vote now and in the future.

At the local level, we must ensure ample polling places are available and safe for Novembers elections, particularly in Black neighborhoods. We must support covering the cost of stamps for mail-in ballots and efforts to make sure everyone is aware voting by mail is easy and secure. We must also work to ensure Pennsylvania U.S. Senators Bob Casey Jr. and Pat Toomey understand how important it is to pass the pending John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.

We can also work with neighborhood leaders, community-based organizations and political leadership to empower all citizens of voting age to register and to cast their ballot in the pivotal election on Tuesday, Nov. 3.

Lastly, we can continue to honor the legacy of John Lewis and those that came before him by pursuing new state legislation that makes voting accessible, convenient and safe for all citizens.

Automatic voter registration, same-day voter registration, restoring voting rights to people who have been incarcerated, streamlining vote by mail, and making Election Day a national holiday would dramatically increase voter participation.

The fight for the Black vote has never been more important. The road to justice has been paved with blood and with heartache. But the lives of those who have been lost in the fight against white supremacy, police violence, and voter suppression are not in vain. They galvanize us into action.

Continue reading here:

Opinion: 55 years after the Voting Rights Act, there's still work to do - Billy Penn

THIS years SQA debacle clearly demonstrates that the end of schooling examination and certification process in Scotland is divisive and dysfunctional. Without question, it is not fit for purpose. It compounds then consolidates, in formal qualifications, the disadvantage of those already most disadvantaged. There is an urgent need for the most radical root and branch reform. But, since this cannot be done without challenging the interests of those who benefit from the current system, radical change will not be easy.

Reactions to the debacle demonstrate the gulf between those who design and administer the system and those who "experience" it. Parents, students and teachers highlight the failure of the system to recognise the hard work of learners, their application and commitment to task, together with their personal and academic problem-solving abilities all skills and qualities that modern employers tell us they value most. On the other hand, politicians and examination body spokespersons emphasise their statistical processes and historical comparisons.

A quarter of candidates this year have been told: Sorry, but you are not as good as you (and your teachers) think you are. We the "system" know better because we have a model weve used before. These are the same young people and their parents that, if Scotland is to compete successfully in the 21st century world, we need to convince of the value of a lifelong commitment to education and training. How exactly does this contribute to reducing the attainment gap and promoting a "can do" culture?

This debacle was not an accident, the consequence of an aberrant computer glitch or systems/personnel malfunctions. The process of assessment and grading worked this year exactly as intended and designed by the examination body and politicians. Every year candidate results are manipulated, by the same process, to fit the demands of the normal curve of distribution a statistical process increasingly regarded as spurious, as a mechanism for producing valid assessments of anything but the simplest of human capabilities.

For those prepared to look critically at the evidence there is an irrefutable case for the abolition of current models of assessment and certification in Scotland.

Students were demonstrating in Saturday in George Square and Dalkeith to protest about their treatment. They have been failed by the system. They deserve our strongest possible support.

Jim Rand, Blanefield.

WHATEVER the rights and wrongs of the recent SQA marking furore and the consequences that may fall from it, I think that a degree of naivety and/or benign ignorance may be present in the approach and beliefs of some of those seemingly disadvantaged by apparently poorer exam results than expected.

Put simply, and using mathematics as an example of a subject discipline whose "answers" in a test must surely be as objectively "correct" as is possible, it is not the case that a person's test score of, say, 65 per cent on the day will be the mark/grade that ends up as that person's final mark/grade. For a variety of reasons, that "raw" score is then subject to an equal variety of "adjustments" based on all sorts of indicators.

The Bell Curve, for example, the rationale of which argues that human intelligence is substantially influenced by both inherited and environmental factors and that, ipso facto, is therefore a better predictor of many outcomes, is a common type of distribution for a variable on which the highest point represents the most probable event in a series of data while all other possible occurrences are systematically distributed around the mean. This has the consequence of forcing groups of people to be categorised as poor, average, good. Also, for smaller groups, having to categorise a set number of individuals in each category to "fit" a Bell curve will do a disservice to those individuals.

Of course, none of the above in any way, diminishes the sense of anger and frustration felt by those most affected. There are many people, too, who hold that such social engineering, for whatever reason, is simply not on. However, the point is that these types of assessments/ re-adjustments, and many more, are taken into account when final grades are being awarded.

Consequently, those who believe, like the head of Clifton Hall school in Edinburgh, that the professional standards of teaching staff are being called into question are aiming at the wrong target. It's not the teacher marking that's in any way imperfect; rather it's the myriad statistical contortions gone through by those who have rarely seen the inside of a classroom or struggled face-to-face with the learning difficulties of many of our youngsters that are the issue.

Finally, as an anecdotal pointer to the invariable cries of marking inconsistencies that arise every year, as a teacher and SQA marker of many years, many's the time when I and other colleagues have smiled wryly at the idea of appealing for some students' grades to be downgraded, such is our surprise when they "over-achieve". But we don't. Nor have I ever come across a student who, having done better than expected, has appealed their grade.

But then, as Mark Twain reportedly said: "I've never let my schooling get in the way of my education."

Gerard McCulloch, Saltcoats.

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Letters: Surely now we ought to bring to an end the school examination and certification process - HeraldScotland

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Good evening. Heres the latest.

1. Another disappointing monthly job report is looming over lawmakers locked in stimulus talks.

The Labor Department will report Friday on how many jobs the economy created in July as America climbs back from the depths of the pandemic recession. New claims for unemployment benefits have exceeded 1 million a week for 20 straight weeks, though the latest figure was not as dire as in some weeks early in the pandemic. Above, a job center in Helena, Ark.

There is a good chance that senators will not reach a deal on an economic rescue package before they leave Washington on Friday for a one-month recess. President Trump threatened to act unilaterally by issuing a series of executive orders, which may have helped lift the S&P 500 near a record high.

Separately, Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio tested positive for the virus as he was screened to greet Mr. Trump in Cleveland. He did not meet with the president.

2. Americas failure to control the virus has set it apart among wealthy nations. We investigated to try to understand why, and two themes emerged.

First, the U.S. faced longstanding challenges in confronting a major pandemic, including the prioritizing of individuals over government restrictions and an unequal health care system. The second is the Trump administrations defiance of expert advice.

Meanwhile, schools continue to open on shaky ground. Photos of a packed school in Dallas, Ga., above, have quickly come to symbolize a chaotic first week back in U.S. classrooms.

And experts are revising their views on the best methods to detect infections, saying quicker but less accurate testing may be the best chance to rein in the sprawling outbreaks.

3. Europe is a facing a viral resurgences.

The scale is nowhere near that in the U.S., but France reported 1,695 new cases on Wednesday, and Germany reported more than 1,000 on Thursday higher numbers than either had seen in months. Other Western European countries, like Spain and Belgium, are also experiencing surges.

Some health experts said Germans were becoming lax about upholding social-distancing and mask-wearing requirements. Above, Berlin this week.

And a French scientific panel warned that a second wave of infections by the fall was highly possible, urging cities to prepare for new lockdowns.

4. International rescue teams arrived in Beirut as Lebanon entered a period of official mourning over the huge explosion that brought the capital to its knees.

Heres what video footage tells us about the blast.

Public anger is growing over evidence that government negligence allowed more than 2,000 tons of highly explosive ammonium nitrate seized from a ship to be stored in the port for years. The port, a crucial economic hub, has been destroyed, and with it the nations grain supply, raising concerns about food security in a country of 6.8 million people.

President Emmanuel Macron of France visited the area, but no major Lebanese politicians did so.

In an essay in Times Opinion, Lina Mounzer, a Lebanese writer and translator, connects the disaster to the warlords who have warped Lebanon for decades. Yet I couldnt imagine how spectacular and lethal the incompetence of the Lebanese state could be, she says.

5. New Yorks attorney general, Letitia James, filed a civil suit seeking to dissolve the National Rifle Association over claims of corruption. The battle may take years.

Ms. James charged that years of improper action and misspending that enriched officials and their friends, families and allies had irreparably undermined the N.R.A.s ability to operate as a nonprofit and cost the organization $64 million over three years.

Ms. James, who has regulatory authority over the group because it is chartered in New York, also sued four current or former top N.R.A. leaders, seeking tens of millions of dollars in restitution and the ouster of the groups chief executive, Wayne LaPierre.

The lawsuit will leave the 148-year-old N.R.A. long the nations most influential gun-rights lobby fighting for survival. The group has recently been hobbled by financial woes and infighting.

6. This year is shaping up to be one of the most active hurricane seasons on record.

Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said there could be 19 to 25 named storms (those with sustained winds above 38 miles an hour) by the time the season ends on Nov. 30. Seven to 11 could be hurricanes.

Forecasters originally predicted 12 to 19 named storms, but the season has already brought nine the most on record for the first two months of a season including Hurricane Isaias, above, which dealt a powerful blow to the Bahamas and much of the East Coast of the U.S. this week.

7. Aug. 6, 1945.

Setsuko Thurlow was 13 years old and in Hiroshima when the U.S. dropped the first of two atomic bombs on Japan. Ever since, she has been fighting for the abolition of nuclear weapons, sharing a Nobel Peace Prize for the work in 2017.

Our Tokyo bureau chiefs profile of Ms. Thurlow, now 88, comes on the 75th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing and serves as a reminder of the urgency of hearing the stories of a dwindling number of survivors.

A new book documents the human impact of the bombings, which ended World War II, with photographs that the U.S. once banned both at home and in Japan.

8. Professional athletes voicing exasperation in the heat of the moment is nothing new. Doing so without the sound buffer of a live crowd is entirely different.

As Major League Baseball stages an untraditional 60-game campaign amid the pandemic, players and coaches are trying to be more mindful of their colorful language. Theyre doing so with varying levels of success.

The league also tightened its safety protocols in an effort to slow virus outbreaks among teams. Players and staff members must restrict their travel and, in the ballpark, wear face coverings when they arent on the field, such as in the dugout and the bullpen.

9. A slice of summer by the (national) seashore.

From California to Cape Cod, federally protected coastlines offer a different kind of outdoor experience: The primary attraction is water and uncrowded stretches of sand. Today, the National Park Service protects 809,000 acres of shorelines abutting thousands of miles of oceans and lakes. Here are eight of the most scenic ones, like Cumberland Island National Seashore in Georgia, above.

Public pools have been more subdued than usual. We visited a popular pool complex in the East Bay area of California that lacked the normal flap of flip-flops and splashy entrances. Still, a small group of kids had enough time during family swim hour to pretend to be mermaids.

10. And finally, a different kind of back to school.

Giuseppe Patern graduated with honors last week from the University of Palermo, with a degree in history and philosophy. Mr. Patern is 96.

That he reached his lifelong goal despite an impoverished childhood, World War II and family demands drew attention across Italy, resonating as millions of schoolchildren faced extraordinary uncertainty amid the pandemic.

Dont get lost because you find obstacles because there will always be obstacles, Mr. Patern said after donning the traditional red-ribboned laurel wreath. You have to be strong.

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Stimulus, Beirut, National Seashores: Your Thursday Evening Briefing - The New York Times

Leela M Ramdeen

Last Saturday, 1st August, we commemorate the 182nd Anniversary of Emancipation in Trinidad and Tobago. Although The Abolition of Slavery Act was passed in August 1833 and came into effect on August 1, 1834, slavery was not really abolished in the British Caribbean until 1838.

After 1834 a "new raft of law-and-order measures" came into effect. "Under the new 'apprenticeships', newly 'freed' people were still expected to remain on the plantations and put in 10-hour days. Absenteeism would result in imprisonment in one of the many new jails (equipped with treadmills) that were being built to contain recalcitrant workers. Additional tiers of 'special officers' and stipendiary magistrates were created to police the changes. 'Apprentices' could still be flogged without redress; females includedThe effects of emancipation in the British West Indies varied from island to island. The apprenticeship scheme would come to an end only in 1838".

As someone who has African blood running through my veins, it is with a deep sense of pride that I continue to educate myself about the struggles of those persons of African origin whose indomitable spirit and relentless quest for freedom have led us eventually to this juncture. Do our educators find time in the curriculum to share information about resistance/uprisings/rebellions by slaves in various parts of the world e.g. Nanny of the Maroons in Jamaica, Toussaint Louverture and Jean-Jacques Dessalines in Haiti, Bussa in Barbados; Nat Turner in the USA? How many of you have told your children the story of people like abolitionist and political activist, Harriet Tubman, who fearlessly risked her life to rescue more than 70 enslaved persons, including family and friends in the USA? Or do we only tell students/children about action to end slavery by people such as William Wilberforce?

Too often the history of people of African origin starts with the transatlantic slave trade, when it should commence with the rich history of Africa from which millions were enslaved and taken to various parts of the world. Let us not forget to highlight the devastating negative effects of colonialism and imperialism, not only on persons of African origin, but on many other ethnic groups. Sadly, it is estimated that about 40.3 million individuals are victims of modern day slavery, with 71% of those being female, and one in four being children.

What does Emancipation mean to people of African origin in TT today? Is our democracy working for everyone today? TT has gained Independence and Republican status; we are paddling our own canoe. We have made progress in many spheres of life, but we still have some way to go to create conditions that will enable everyone to live with a modicum of dignity. Many still dream of equality and equity.

The Vatican II document: Gaudium et Spes, reminds us that: "A just society can become a reality only when it is based on the respect of the transcendent dignity of the human personHence, the social order and its development must invariably work to the benefit of the human person, since the order of things is to be subordinate to the order of persons, and not the other way around."

While it is important to celebrate our rich African heritage, and acknowledge the many accomplishments of people of African origin, let us also reflect on the areas that we need to address. NJAC chairman, Aiyegoro Ome, rightly stated in Newsday on 22 July: "Africans should use Emancipation Day as a family commemoration so that they can become more knowledgeable about their several African achievements. Remember, Africans are now halfway through the UN-declared International Decade of Persons of African Descent (2014-2025).

"We should use Emancipation Day at home to pay attention to our health, covid19 notwithstanding". He mentions issues such as non-communicable diseases, especially diabetes and hypertension, prostate cancer, sickle cell trait and sickle cell disease. "At the social level, African families, in certain marginalised communities where people are stigmatised, must take action against the decline of their living, trapped as they are within dysfunctional families, subjected to inferior schooling and abused by criminal elements...Emancipation Day at home 2020 must become yet another stepping stone toward an African Renaissance..."

As we prepare to go to the polls on 10 August, let us not forget that we will only truly achieve our goals as a nation when we view our diversity as a source of strength. I believe that it is possible to have unity and harmony in diversity.

Leela Ramdeen is Chair of the Catholic Commission for Social Justice in the Archdiocese of Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago, (CCSJ) and Director of CREDI

Tags: Leela Ramdeen, Trinidad and Tobago, Emancipation, Toussaint Louverture, Haiti, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Slavery, BLM, Black Lives Matter

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Trinidad & Tobago: Emancipation and the challenges of freedom | ICN - Independent Catholic News

Prisoners Justice Day is every day of the year to all of us who have been incarcerated. But we come together annually on August 10 to raise awareness of injustices, to remember those who have lost their lives behind prison walls, and to educate communities about the reality of the justice system.

This year has been a particularly difficult one to advocate for people who have been criminalized, who continue to be criminalized, and who currently remain behind bars. With COVID-19, access to prisoners for the community-based organizations and agencies that fight to protect their rights and hold correctional systems accountable has been stripped away.

This has allowed prisons to further dehumanize, discriminate against, violate and profit off those they house, without fear of being held accountable. According to Global Prison Trends 2020, the worldwide prison population rose from 8 million in 2002 to 11 million in 2018an increase of over 20 percent.

Within this, the prison population of women continues to grow, by an estimated 50 percent during that time period, even though it has been 10 years since the United Nations adopted the Bangkok rules that were meant to protect the rights of women prisoners. Among other jurisdictions, women are the fastest-growing segment of the United States prison population, which is the worlds largest.

How did Prisoners Justice Day begin and evolve? It all started in Canada on August 10, 1974, when Edward Nalon bled to death in the segregation unit of Millhaven Maximum Security Prison in Bath, Ontario.

Many of the alleged leaders in this one-day, peaceful protest would still be in segregation a year later.

In 1975, on the first anniversary of Eddie Nalons suicide, incarcerated people at Millhaven held a day of action. They refused to work, went on a one-day hunger strike and held a memorial service, even though these actions would mean a stint in solitary confinement.

Many of the alleged leaders in this one-day, peaceful protest would still be in segregation a year later, still fighting for the rights of prisoners. Although refusing to eat or work are among the only options for peaceful protest available to prisoners, both are viewed as disciplinary offences by prison administrations.

On May 21, 1976 another prisoner, Robert Landers, died in the segregation unit of Millhaven. Bobby, as he was known, had been a leader in the struggle for prisoners rights.

According to the Prison Justice website: Called to testify at the inquest, the warden of the institution said in effect that the punishment (solitary) had been intended to stop the victim from getting prisoners rights respected.

Landers had tried to summon medical help, but the cells panic buttons werent working, and his and other prisoners shouts were ignored by nurses and guards, recounts the John Howard Society. He died of a heart attack; a heart specialist said at the inquest that he should have been in intensive care, not solitary.

From its Canadian origins, Prisoners Justice Day has increasingly been recognized and marked by incarcerated people and their allies all around the world. But no history of the prisoners rights movement in Canada would be complete without a section on Claire Culhane.

Culhane spent over two decades of her life single-handedly taking on the system. She was many things to many people, but to prisoners all across this country she was the voice that would speak on their behalf, fighting for the rights of people who historically had no voice.

In 1974, she volunteered to teach a Womens Studies class at the Lakeside Regional Correctional Centre for Women in British Columbia. But the event that would draw her into the struggle for prisoners rights began on June 9, 1975.

Three prisoners who were about to be returned to solitary confinement at British Columbia Penitentiary took 15 hostages. The standoff with prison officials lasted 41 hours, and ended with the emergency response team storming the hostage-takers. In the process, the guards shot and killed one of the hostages, Mary Steinhauser, a young correctional officer who had gained the respect of prisoners by implementing educational courses in solitary.

Over the next month, Claire Culhane would join demonstrations in support of prisoners who were staging sit-ins and work strikes over the conditions inside. Her participation with the Prisoners Union Committee would result in the cancellation of her Womens Studies class, but that was not about to keep her out of prisons. A group of Vancouver area activists soon set up the Prisoners Rights Group (PRG), and she was one of its founding members.

I was deeply thankful for the legacy of her activism as I sat in a correctional facility in 2015.

The mandate of the PRG was to help prisoners to help themselvesespecially in matters of involuntary transfers, finding competent lawyers, filing and following up grievances, qualifying for parole hearings, getting access to healthcare, educating the public and finally, advancing the philosophy of prison abolition.

Culhane staged many sit-ins at wardens offices, picketed outside prison gates and on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, hosted a cable TV show called Instead of Prisons, responded to every press article about prison, wrote articles of her own, and spoke extensively on the subject of prisons as a form of social control.

Although Claire Culhane died in 1996, I was deeply thankful for the legacy of her activism as I sat in a correctional facility in 2015.

I was incarcerated in a Federal Womens Prison in Canada. Inspired by activists like Culhane and Landers, I, too, became an advocate for prisoners rights, spending each day fighting the injustices within the walls.

I worked with the Elizabeth Fry Society, the Citizens Advisory Committee, Members of the Canadian Parliament and Senate, social justice advocates, and many other wonderful people from the community to facilitate change.

It didnt come without its cost! I was constantly being targeted by staff and management, urged to stay quiet, and threatened with being reprimanded for speaking out. This, of course, only hardened my resolve to fight. My advocacy would not be silenced.

Ask yourself, today and every day: What am I doing to make a difference?

When I was finally released on day parole earlier this year, I took my fight with me into the community. I currently work for a prison outreach initiative to house people being released back into the community. I am a peer support worker for those who have faced, or are facing, criminalization, marginalization, discrimination and racism, with an emphasis on the 2SLGBTQI2+ community.

To further the principle of nothing about us without us, I sit on numerous policy committees, providing lived experience and advice in getting much-needed resources and support to people both inside and in the community. I am also a law school candidate for fall 2021, and I engage in public speaking, panels, education and social activism.

I may have joined the fight for social justice while incarcerated, but coming out into the community has not dampened my determination. I fight as an individual who has seen the injustices unfold first-hand, and as a collective with all those who stand up for change.

I hope that people reading this, including incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people around the world, will see that it isnt only the people that come from privilege who have the power to enact change; it takes individuals from all walks of life.

So ask yourself, today and every day: What am I doing to make a difference?

Photo via uihere/Public Domain

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Prisoners Justice Day Is Every Day for Those of Us Who Have Lived Inside - Filter

(MENAFN - Caribbean News Global) Denys Springer is an educator and freelance writer trained in social sciences, labour studies and industrial relations, education, conflict, resolution, and mediation. Denys Springer lectures part-time at the Open Campus UWI in Saint Lucia on supervisory management the psychology of management.

By Denys Springer

'It is a defect in language that words suggest permanent realities and people do not see through this deception. But mere words cannot create reality. Thus, people speak of a final goal and believe it is real, but it is a form of words and the goal, and as such is without substance. The one who realizes the emptiness of objects and concepts does not depend on words. Perfect wisdom is beyond definition, and pathless is the way to it.' (Prajnaparamita).

I ponder on these words aware that the prime minister of Saint Lucia seems invariably to use words he does not understand and make unfounded statements commonplace with a flawed mindset.

As an academic, I am at times truly lost why such utterances come from the mind of a country's leader. Is it to lead people astray part of the European experts unable to understand the culture of the country and therefore uses phrases to pacify and appease?

I, therefore, put forward a statement that was made by the prime minister in terms that 'colonialism had a conscience'. I am of the view that any West Indian leader with such an ethos his followers should immediately differentiate themselves from such. Here we are celebrating Emancipation Day when according to those words only the chains have been removed from hands and feet but the majority of minds are still suffering from mental and economic slavery while persons of such echelon perpetrate servile and submissive practice.

Guided by the examples that Saint Lucia has a wonderful destination called Rodney Bay named after the English Lord Sir Walter Rodney. Yet how many have gone into his background in the era of 'Black Lives Matter'?

Sir Rodney was a vicious, pernicious slave owner. A proponent that slavery should not be abolished. Yet, we hear that 'colonialism had a conscience'. Where are the historians, the academics or learned people among us to refute such a statement? This must not be allowed to be washed over lightly as if it was a passing phrase.

Yes, it was not too long ago I heard a historian making it clear that African leaders were against the abolition of the slave trade. Yes, that is true because in their wars they took slaves but what she failed to tell the world is that many so-called slaves rose to be chief of that tribe (she studied African Civilization) but took out what suited her xenophobic mind. Not only that, but until the Portuguese arrived with their guns, tribal wars were fought with bows and arrows. The guns were given to a certain tribe to go into the interior of the west coast of Africa to bring out captured blacks to become slaves for export. Facts are facts if we are prepared to look and to learn from it.

So if 'colonialism had a conscience' here we have a United Workers Party (UWP) government in Saint Lucia who made that statement, and is it not ironic that it is now a country where public opinion does not influence government policy whatsoever.

Saint Lucia has a prime minister who is intent on pursuing his ambitions and interests and does not have to care or worry for five years. Public opinion supposedly part of the democratic system, in effect only counts superficially close to an election as we are witnessing at present. The public has been reduced to becoming a reason for justifying the use of resources and a target of media manipulation instead of a nation reflecting the fundamental values and goals of a democratic system.

This government leads by suppressing public opinion, by instilling fear of external pressures rather than listening to learned public opinion

I have said time and time again that the UWP government is a source of democratic dictatorship. Saint Lucia's democracy has degenerated into a means to obtain power and the dictatorship is expressed in the rush (unnatural high) the government gets from its arbitrary use of power.

The recent 'Fresh Start' incentives are a classic case for blatant illegality and presumptive corruption, however, the Cabinet Secretary who is purportedly an astute professional in the public service and should have advised the Cabinet is himself left wanting, on the wrong side of the Fiscal Incentives Act. Wilful blindness to laws and regulations has become a staple of Saint Lucia's democracy. A lot of work is needed to put things back on track.

Moreover, I say to all Saint Lucians 'if you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor'. Here we have a government hell-bent on borrowing and have even made fun of the former prime minister for his fear of borrowing.

How do they have the nerve when the nation's economic outlook is so gloomy? Is borrowing the answer to our plight and suffering and in latter years accumulate debt for generations? Can we not feed ourselves when we have such excellent volcanic land?

By most indication, employment prospects remain unfavourable post-COVID-19 and this government does not have a clue how to tackle the nation's economic woes. The issue of natural resource (talent shortages) in Saint Lucia has become a hot topic for many years however this government is not interested in developing the skill sets of the future. This government should be nurturing a higher quality workforce by removing regulatory barriers to technology and innovation and assist SMEs scale-up production.

There are no quick fixes to decades of mental anguish and false doctrines; but there are many increment steps to solve Saint Lucia's economic woes such as investment in education, innovation, and infrastructure.

I, therefore, refer this government to Carl Jung writings many years ago, that 'study your theory; practice your techniques inside out, and when in the presence of a living soul, respond to the soul'. This current dialogue, in my mind, reflects an effort to address the second challenge.

When a government uses an election to secure control of the legislative and by a weird constitution control a senate that was not elected and uses this majority to implement policies that run counter to public opinion, while the system lacks the tools to counterbalance these actions, then there is something wrong with this democracy. That is why the prime minister 'colonialism has a conscience' becomes his colonial world in a convoluted mind.

And when society abandons logic, reductionism, history, and science; and becomes mired in mysticism that sinks into sentimentality and naivete' and lose the parts of resolution which rely on reason, science, strategy, technique and planning. It is from thinking that we develop that critical political virtue, common sense. It is a faculty we need if we are to be able to live with others and with ourselves in this real pristine land of ours.

I hope and pray that this article will be a lesson to the powers that be coming from the heart and not one that is colonized. Many years ago; I was released from mental slavery and colonial masters; therefore, let a thousand flowers bloom and turned into thousands of those released from mental slavery.

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Let thousand flowers bloom - MENAFN.COM

In recent weeks, the House of Lords has been a subject of heated debate after Prime Minister Boris Johnson handed out 36 peerages to Conservative Party loyalists, Brexit supporters and even his own brother. The list of peerages, granted by the Queen last week also included Evgeny Lebedev, Russian proprietor of the London Evening Standard newspaper and son of a former KGB agent, former cricketer Ian Botham and Ruth Davidson, former head of the Scottish Conservative Party. Ken Clarke and Philip Hammond who fell out with Mr Johnson over Brexit and subsequently had the Tory whip withdrawn were also given peerages. Seats in the upper chamber were also awarded to Claire Fox who represented the Brexit Party in Brussels as well as Labour rebels who had campaigned to leave the EU Kate Hoey, Frank Field and Gisela Stuart. This has led many to question the role of the Lords but diversity has also been a key criticism levelled at the upper chamber.

In March 2020, 48 or 6.1 percent of Members of the House of Lords were from ethnic minority groups, according to research by Operation Black Vote.

In February this year, it emerged that minority ethnic staff were asked to show their security passes more often than white counterparts.

This was found in a report which also outlined accounts from BAME staff who said they were not allowed to eat or drink in the same rooms or even use the same toilets as the mostly white members of the House of Lords.

The research carried out by workplace equality network ParliREACH listed examples of times when they felt that the lack of diversity and understanding of race had resulted in racist (inadvertent or otherwise) behaviours.

In response, a Lords spokesperson said: The House of Lords administration is determined to ensure that all who work for the house are treated equally and with respect and creating an inclusive working environment.

As part of this work, the board decided to remove access restrictions to catering facilities based on grade of staff, and remove misleading historic signage suggesting some toilets were restricted to members of the house.

All signs have now been removed and replaced. This was part of our wider inclusion and diversity strategy.

A petition calling for the abolition of the Lords gained over 100,000 signatures in 2018.

It took aim at the upper chamber as an undemocratic yet powerful overly influential fixture of British politics.

READ MORE:Jeremy Corbyn admitted NOT including state pension in tax return

The petition said: The House of Lords is a place of patronage where unelected and unaccountable individuals hold a disproportionate amount of influence and power which can be used to frustrate the elected representatives of the people."

The Electoral Reform Society chief executive David Hughes also hit out at the Lords after it was revealed in 2017 that more than 100 peers, who made no spoken contributions for a year, claimed 1.3million in expenses.

The ERS says: The House of Lords totally fails to represent the diverse skills and experience of UK citizens.

It is out of control with over 800 members the second largest legislative chamber in the world after China.

"And it costs far too much for an institution that fails to reflect the British public.

The House of Lords also played a crucial role in the Brexit process, frustrating eurosceptics with its decisions.

DON'T MISSCorbyn humiliated as Labour peers chosen for 'contribution' to Boris[INSIGHT]Petition to SCRAP unelected House of Lords exceeds 340k signatures[ANALYSIS]'300-a-day undemocratic Brexit-blockers' but Boris wants MORE Lords[INSIGHT]

In September last year peers supported a bill which prevented a no deal Brexit.

The Benn Bill mandated Boris Johnson to seek an extension to Brexit until at least January 31 if he could not secure a deal or gain MPs' consent for no deal.

A spokesman for Number 10 said at the time: The PM will not do this. It is clear the only action is to go back to the people and give them the opportunity to decide what they want: Boris to go to Brussels and get a deal, or leave without one on October 31.

When the Lords passed a bill in 2018 which threatened to give Parliament the power to set the terms on Brexit, a Tory Leaver called for it to be abolished.

Daniel Kawczynski said: This is rapidly moving towards a constitutional crisis of unprecedented magnitude.

In my lifetime I cannot think of anything like it.

The House of Lords is an elitist chamber which is trying to block the will of the people.

The time has come for us to start talking about the abolition of the House of Lords and I will start agitating for this.

The 90 Liberal Democrat peers are completely determined this is a highly undemocratic effort to neuter Brexit."

Defending the upper chamber, Lord Fowler pointed out: "[Abolishing the Lords] would do little to improve levels of scrutiny when a government is returned with a big majority.

"In those circumstances, having a second chamber to ensure legislation does not slip through without proper debate and analysis is absolutely essential."

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Westminster at war: House of Lords diversity row laid bare as abolition calls mount - Express

This story was originallypublished in The Chicago Maroon.Click hereto view the original story.

The carceral state isnt color-blind, and neither is COVID-19. Since the pandemic broke out earlier this year, it has taken a disproportionate toll on people of color, reflecting glaring racial disparities in public health in the United States.

Prisons, with their overcrowding and unsanitary conditions, have exacerbated the spread of the virus as COVID-19 hotspots. Because of this, mass incarceration has severely endangered the lives of those in prison, whogiven the inequality in the criminal justice systemare predominantly people of color. Given the extent to which prisons have contributed to the coronavirus pandemic and compounded the existing racial inequalities in the criminal justice system, the pandemic has made one thing clear: Tackling coronavirus will require us to radically rethink our systems of justice.

The racial health disparities associated with COVID-19 are undeniable. African Americans bothcontractthe disease at higher rates than their white counterparts anddiefrom it at over 2.5 times the rate of whites, according to data from the COVID Tracking Project. Indeed, despitecomprisingonly 13.4 percent of the US population, Blacksaccountfor 23 percent of COVID-19 victims where race is known. COVID-19 has disproportionately affected Latino communities as well: In Iowa, for instance, Latinos are only 6 percent of the population butaccountfor over a fifth of the states coronavirus cases.

And its not biology that discriminates. The virus has not simply chosen to undertake a vehement rampage against Black andbrowncommunities. Its humansand the systems weve builtthat discriminate. Health disparities reflect that. To naturalize the racial health disparities of COVID-19 as nothing more than an immutable biological reality is to deny the effect of racism on health outcomes.

Nowhere is the disproportionate toll of COVID-19 on people of color more evident than in American prisons, which have become hotbeds for the virus. Given that Blacks areincarceratedat over five times the rate of whites in the United States, COVID-19s toll on incarcerated populations means that African Americans are severely affected. While prisons across the country havebecomecoronavirus hotspots, Chicagos Cook County Jail has been hit particularly hard. By over-incarcerating to such an extent and maintaining overcrowded, unsanitary conditions, the jail has enabled the rapid spread of the virus,makingCook County Jail the nations largest source of COVID-19 as of April. And according to research conducted by Eric Reinhart of the UChicago Pritzker School of Medicine, justcyclingthrough Cook County Jail is associated with 15.9 percent of COVID-19 cases in Chicago and 15.7 percent of cases throughout Illinois.

As the situation in Cook County shows, COVID-19 and mass incarceration are inextricably connected. Both perpetuate racial disparity and have combined during the pandemic to wreak deadly havoc as the virus sweeps through American prisons. Indeed, we are fighting twopandemics, one coronavirus, the other the racism that undermines the integrity of criminal justice systems worldwide. Unless we recognize this connection and begin to interrogate the systems that allow for rampant racism to persist, we wont solve either pandemic.

Importantly, COVID-19 has exposed the fractures in the American prison system, revealing it as a racist institution that compromises public health. It has reminded us that we cannot continue to attempt to build better prisonsdoing so wont address the police misconduct, wrongful conviction, racist attitudes, and plethora of other factors that cause African Americans to be disproportionately incarcerated in the first place, and moreover, wont address the fact that prisons arent working to effectively deter crime. Indeed, recidivism ratesshowthat nearly one-fourth of those released from prison return for a new crime within three years of release, demonstrating the failure of prisons to successfully deter crime. Importantly, prisons also fail to provide access to adequate mental health resources, which is particularly problematic given that incarcerationexacerbatesmental health whereas investing in mental health resources can actuallyreducecrime.

Political activist Angela Davis reminds us why attempting to reform prisons instead of reimagining justice entirely wont work. In her bookAre Prisons Obsolete?she writes, Frameworks that rely exclusively on reforms help to produce the stultifying idea that nothing lies beyond the prison, limiting our ability to reimagine justice and focus on decarceration. Moreover, prison abolitionist Ruth Gilmoreremindsus that in a world with different attitudes towards punishment, well actually see less crime: In Spain for instance, which takes a less punitive approach towards violence offensesthe average time a person spends in jail for murder in Spain is seven yearsmurder is actuallylesscommon.

COVID-19s disproportionate toll on incarcerated populations throughout the United States has made it clear that in order to combat both coronavirus and racism in this country, we need to reimagine justice and rethink systems of punishment entirely. And Im not just talking about the tearing down of prison walls. As Georgetown law professor and political theorist Allegra McLeodexplains, abolition is less about the physical tearing down of prisons and more about abolishing both the culture of racialized punishment in the United States and the conditions that caused the carceral state to come about. The recent deluge of Instagram activismboth in response to COVID-19 and to the death of George Floydis inspiring. However, being liberal is not enough. We cannot use our progressivism as political armor or as an excuse for complacency. Its time we realized that to fight COVID-19 we need to dismantle the carceral state.

Meera Santhanam is a fourth-year in the College and a Viewpoints editor.

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COVID-19 and the Case for Prison Abolition - Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting

When an argument escalated earlier this summer, one person in the house called Milwaukee police, Leonard said, and someone else called 414LIFE a team of community violence interrupters who are trained to intervene. With her adrenaline pumping, Leonard said she was already in fight mode when the officers arrived, and their response only antagonized those involved in the dispute, adding to the stress.

We didnt need someone to come say that we could all be arrested, she said.They talked to everyone individually. They were just making sure that everyone in the space was good.

The violence interrupters quickly dissolved that tension once they arrived, Leonard said, and it helped that some people in the house knew one team member.

It was just a completely different approach to domestic violence that a lot of people arent usually privileged to see, said Leonard, who aims to uplift Milwaukees Black residents in her own organizing work holding healing events and calling for the abolition of police. It just made it clear, this is why we dont need police officers in our communities.

Calls to defund the police have grown louder in Milwaukee and other cities after the May 25 police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis fueled nationwide protests against police brutality and systemic racism.

Floyds death came as Milwaukee grieved the loss of Joel Acevedo, who died days after Michael Mattioli, an off-duty Milwaukee police officer, acknowledged putting him in a 10-minute chokehold during an April fight, according to media reports. Mattioli was charged with first-degree reckless homicide, and the department suspended him with pay.

Some say the goal of defunding the police is to shift funds away from police and towards public health, housing and other programs to alleviate conditions that lead to crime. But many local and national advocates eye a more ambitious goal: to abolish police over time. Abolitionists see reallocation as the first step toward dismantling policing and prison institutions, replacing them with neighborhood-based public safety models.

Milwaukees defunding movement comes as city officials set next years budget, and the police department wants to grow its slice of the pie. Meanwhile, a coronavirus pandemic is wreaking havoc on the economy, promising to slash city revenue and leave less money for a host of government services.

Even if the tragic death of George Floyd and nationwide protests had not occurred, there was very good reason for citizens and policymakers to take a look at the Milwaukee Police Department budget, and that has nothing to do with any kind of opinion or bias with putting municipal budgets into police departments, said Rob Henken, president of the Wisconsin Policy Forum, who noted that Milwaukee faced tremendous economic stress even before the pandemic.

The conditions and debate transcend Milwaukee. During calls to divest from police, the Madison School Board in June voted to terminate its Madison Police Department contract for resource officers at high schools. Critics of the officers presence highlighted disproportionate arrest rates for Black students and said the school should handle discipline outside of the criminal justice system.

We didnt get here overnight

Law enforcement in 2018 accounted for nearly 22% of Milwaukees $1.4 billion in total expenditures the largest category in the budget, according to Wisconsin Department of Revenue data. That hovers above law enforcements 20% share of municipal spending statewide, according to a Wisconsin Policy Forum analysis of state data.

The Milwaukee Police Department consumes an even bigger share of the citys general purpose budget the portion controlled by the mayor and Common Council. MPD accounted for about 47% of that spending in 2020, up from 40% in 2012, according to the Wisconsin Policy Forum. The police budget in each of the last five years has eclipsed the citys entire property tax levy, one of three main revenue sources. Nearly 95% of the police budget funds salaries, wages and benefits.

MPD is requesting nearly $316 million for next year as Milwaukee wades into the countrys worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. That proposed $18.5 million increase from last year is 20 times the Milwaukee Health Departments $15.7 million request.

The health department houses the $2.1 million Office of Violence Prevention, which encompasses the 414LIFE team, a small-scale example of policing alternatives.

The team is trusted in the neighborhoods it engages, said Derrick Rogers, program director for 414LIFE. It is among groups globally that practice an evidence-based Cure Violence model that sees violence as a treatable epidemic. The 414LIFE team aims to stabilize people deemed at high risk of committing violence, helping them secure housing, jobs, therapy and relationship support. The interrupters check in with people involved in disputes even months after they defuse them.

When Rogers responded to the dispute at Leonards grandmothers house, he helped one person pull weeds in a garden while talking through the frustrations that fueled the conflict. They constructed a plan to avoid future conflict and discussed how to file a restraining order. Rogers later called the persons friends and offered connections to mental health providers.

But Milwaukee is spending roughly $504 per resident on policing compared to less than $4 per resident on such direct violence prevention.

We didnt get here overnight, Reggie Moore, director of the Office of Violence Prevention, said this month during an online Wisconsin Police Forum event. These were generations of decisions and policymaking and investment where unfortunately a lot of cities and counties responded to situations of community crisis with greater investment in law enforcement, versus looking at public health and taking more innovative approaches.

Grassroots organizers have spent years helping Milwaukee residents envision such an approach in a city that last year declared racism a public health crisis and saw annual eviction rates of up to 15% of households in some neighborhoods even before the pandemic left thousands jobless and waiting on rent assistance.

How do we address the root causes of the trauma and pain that were seeing as opposed to trying to manage it with punishment and the criminal justice industry? added Moore added.

Calls to shift funding grow

Common Council members last month reported a flood of constituent requests to defund the police. The council on June 16 approved a resolution to study a 10% cut to the MPD budget about $30 million. The Milwaukee School Board two days later unanimously resolved to remove police officers from public school grounds.

Thats not enough for advocates such as Markasa Tucker, director of the African-American Roundtable, a coalition serving Milwaukees Black residents. The coalition and other groups are calling for a $75 million cut to MPDs budget that would shift $50 million to public health and $25 million to housing cooperatives in a campaign called LiberateMKE.

These are our tax dollars. This is our money, and we get to say where we want it to go, Tucker said at a June Facebook event.

The campaign is one step toward a longer-term goal of upending the citys approach to public safety, said Devin Anderson, lead organizer for the LiberateMKE campaign.

We believe a world without police is possible, he said. Defund is the goal, and divestment is the process.

Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett will begin holding budget hearings in August and plans to present his budget to the Common Council in September.

The funding of our police department is one aspect of the review, but a funding cut, alone, does not address a multitude of other issues we must consider, Barrett said in a June statement. Our upcoming budget process is an opportunity to take a comprehensive look at how city government views public safety.

Crime surges following decline

The conversation unfolds as homicides in Milwaukee are surging to levels not seen since the 1990s following a four-year decline a trend playing out nationwide during the pandemic. Violent crime does not necessarily correlate with a need for police officers, the Wisconsin Policy Forum noted in a 2019 report showing how Milwaukee and some other Wisconsin cities are boosting police spending even as they lose officers.

Defund advocates say many factors outside of law enforcement affect crime rates and create safety, and Milwaukee has never invested to scale in community-based strategies to keep people safe without police.

Monique Liston, chief strategist at Ubuntu Research and Evaluation, a Black women-led consulting firm for education, policy and advocacy, underscored that societies havent always relied on police, and that many of Americas police systems were created to control Black people and protect the interests of the wealthy.

Policing was built around protecting stolen property and protecting stolen people, she said. One of the big disservices weve done in history is to act like police are a natural part of organizations. Its so ingrained in people that police have to be there.

Distrust of Milwaukee police not new

Distrust of police runs deep in some of Milwaukees Black and brown-majority neighborhoods, and some residents are tired of waiting on piecemeal reforms to change policing tactics that have disproportionately harmed people of color.

Reforms like banning chokeholds, adding body cameras and that we need more trainings in many ways those are not enough, said Anderson of LiberateMKE. By investing so much in a system that was never meant to keep us safe, thats leaving no space and no room for the other investments, and its hurting us. In some cases, its literally killing us.

Milwaukee police officers have for years been the subject of reform debates and criminal and civil proceedings, including after the police killings of Dontre Hamilton in 2014, Sylville Smith in 2016 and Acevedo.

Recommendations have followed from the U.S. Department of Justice in 2017 and the city-convened Collaborative Community Committee in 2019. But the city has yet to implement many such proposals. Barrett in June announced yet another reform commission, which some activists viewed as dj vu.

Milwaukees Fire and Police Commission, a civilian oversight board with the power to change policy and investigate complaints, this week issued a set of directives to Morales demanding changes. The commission itself faces allegations that it acts slowly and lacks transparency.

Were constantly being put where were in the position for these tough conversations needing to hold cops accountable, Leonard said. Im not trying to demand reform from them anymore. The whole system needs to be abolished.

Stop-and-frisk persists

In 2018, Milwaukees Common Council approved a $3.4 million settlement of a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union. The group alleged Milwaukees stop-and-frisk program led to unjustified stops, racial profiling and harassment of residents without cause for suspicion.

In a June report monitoring the departments progress on the settlement, the Boston-based Crime and Justice Institute found that officers undercounted frisks and failed to properly justify 81% of documented frisks during the second half of 2019, showing no improvement on those measures from earlier in the year.

The report also showed that officers stopped and searched Black people at disproportionately high rates. Black residents make up roughly 39% of Milwaukees population but faced nearly 60% of police encounters and 80% of frisks.

Theyre not really living up to their end of the bargain, said Molly Collins, associate director of the ACLU of Wisconsin. It can be the police firing tear gas or rubber bullets at protesters, but also it just looks like continued patterns of police interactions with Black and brown folks that continue to break the relationship between the police department and the community.

Said Grant, the MPD spokeswoman: Our members continue to receive training, and MPD continues to make progress in our compliance efforts.

The community knows what keeps them safe

Fueled by frustration with Milwaukees status quo, neighborhood leaders have long brainstormed ways to reinvest funds flowing to police. One tiny example: When Anderson would wrap up LiberateMKEs meetings last year at city public libraries, he noticed the buildings would stay full until closing time, with staff asking people to leave.

What if we took money from the police for that? he said, suggesting staffing the libraries for longer hours.

LiberateMKE encourages residents to envision new uses for their tax dollars. The coalition surveyed more than 1,100 residents in that process. Last years participants recommended rerouting $25 million from MPD to community-based violence prevention programs such as 414LIFE. They also called for bigger investments in employment opportunities for young people and affordable, quality housing.

Many of those recommendations referenced the Office of Violence Preventions 2017 Blueprint for Peace, a set of community-driven goals and recommendations.

That involved hundreds of community members who sought to identify the root causes of Milwaukees violence. Among those flagged: lack of quality, affordable housing, neighborhood disinvestment, limited economic opportunities and persistent trauma. Participants determined what Milwaukee should leverage to make neighborhoods more resilient, including already strong community-building groups, schools, arts and cultural expression and welcoming public spaces.

The blueprint spurred the creation of 414LIFE and other investments in youth programming, mental health and domestic violence prevention.

We understand that when we look at the production of public safety in our city, it really takes beyond policing and the criminal justice industry, and I think thats really what this movement and moment is challenging us to think about, said Moore, the Office of Violence Prevention director. When we look at neighborhoods throughout the city and throughout the country where large police presences arent required, those communities tend to have thriving businesses. They have thriving families who are gainfully employed.

Moore said Wisconsin leaders should help Milwaukee and other cash-strapped cities invest in violence prevention.

State Representative David Bowen and State Senator Lena Taylor, both of Milwaukee, and other Democratic lawmakers in March proposed funneling tax revenue from vaping products into a statewide violence prevention fund. The bill failed to draw a hearing. Other Milwaukee groups have helped lay the groundwork for this moment.

Black Leaders Organizing for Communities, which aims to invest in and empower Milwaukees Black residents, released a 2019 Platform for Prosperity. It incorporates voices from thousands of who responded to the question: What would it look like for your community to thrive?

The group is now surveying residents online and via text about their vision for policing. Rick Banks, the groups political director, said support is growing to defund MPD.

Police brutality and things have been an issue for generations, but right now the energy around it, coupled with the budget cycle, is a huge opportunity for people to explore that idea, he said. It doesnt feel like a far-fetched idea.

The pandemic has added momentum to the push for change, said Liston of Ubuntu Research and Evaluation.

I dont think a lot of people knew how badly these systems were failing people, and it took a pandemic for people to realize how bad things are, she said.

The virus is disproportionately infecting and killing Milwaukees people of color, and it is worsening economic hardship and flooding courts with eviction cases. Even before the pandemic, about half of Milwaukee renters paid more than 30% of their income in rent, according to a 2018 report from the Wisconsin Policy Forum. The same report showed 42% of the citys renter households earned less than $25,000 a year, while only 9% of rental units charged rents considered affordable to those households.

The pandemic is also spurring more grassroots efforts to provide food, financial help, child care and other services proving that residents can take care of each other, Anderson said.

Mutual aid, that is community care. That is community safety, he said. Those are people on the ground making sure that peoples needs are met by offering support to their neighbors. The community knows what keeps them safe.

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COVID-19, Protests, and a Budget Crunch: How shifting funds can improve the quality of life in Milwaukee - Milwaukee Independent

The new United States Mexico Canada Agreement (USMCA), which replaced the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), became effective on July 1, 2020. Historically, free trade agreements like the NAFTA have been criticized for their lack of strong labor provisions to address low wages and inadequate labor standards that advocates argue support worker rights and improve economic growth in developing countries. The USMCA seeks to address those concerns. In fact, as a precondition to the passage of the USMCA, the U.S. Congress reopened the negotiations at the end of 2019 and amended the agreement to bolster Mexican workers rights and to include stronger enforcement provisions like the Rapid Response Mechanism to hold companies in Mexico accountable for violating the rights of free association and collective bargaining.

The Rapid Response Mechanism is perhaps the most novel aspect of the labor provisions of the USMCA. It applies between the U.S. and Mexico, and between Canada and Mexico, but not between the U.S. and Canada. Within the U.S., the Rapid Response Mechanism can be triggered when any person in the U.S. files a petition claiming the denial of rights at a covered facility in a priority sector in Mexico to the Interagency Labor Committee for Monitoring and Enforcement (Interagency Labor Committee), co-chaired by the U.S. Trade Representative and the Secretary of Labor. The Interagency Labor Committee can request that Mexico conduct a review to determine whether there is indeed a denial of rights, or. If Mexico does not agree to conduct a review, the Interagency Labor Committee may request a panel to be convened to conduct its own verification under the USMCA.

Denial of rights is defined as the denial of the right of free association and collective bargaining under Mexican legislation that complies with the USMCA. A covered facility is defined as a facility in a priority sector that (i) products a good, or supplies a service, traded between the parties; or (2) produces a good, or supplies a service, that competes in the territory of a party with a good or service of the other party. Priority sectors are those that manufacture goods, supply services, or involve mining. Manufactured goods include, but are not limited to, aerospace products and components, auto and auto parts, cosmetic products, industrial baked goods, steel and aluminum, glass, pottery, plastics, forgings, and cement.

While the Rapid Response Mechanism is ongoing, the U.S. may suspend liquidation of imports from the covered facility. If a denial of rights has been found at a Mexican covered facility after the Rapid Response Mechanism has concluded, the U.S. may suspend the preferential treatment of goods manufactured at the covered facility, impose penalties on the covered facility, or deny entry of the goods from the covered facility if the covered facility had two prior denial of rights determinations.

Mexicos labor law reform, passed in May 2019 in response to the negotiations under the USMCA, drastically modified labor matters in Mexico, notably through the implementation of a new labor justice system and the creation of the Federal Conciliation & Labor Registry Center (CFCRL), whose main tasks will be to: (i) supervise the proper conduct of collective affairs; and (ii) act as a conciliation authority before any judicial proceeding.

The CFCRL, once it is created and operating, will also be in charge of carrying out the internal investigation process that constitutes the first step of the Rapid Response Mechanism in Mexico. In the meantime, the Mexican Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare and the Federal Conciliation and Arbitration Board will carry out the internal investigation process.

Accordingly, even though the CFCRL does not yet exist, the Rapid Response Mechanism could still be triggered to enforce existing obligations in collective affairs, as the USMCA and its dispute mechanisms or proceedings are not contingent on the creation of government bodies or other domestic issues pursuant to the implementation of the Labor Law Reform by Mexico.

The USMCA contains an entire chapter on labor within its main agreement. The labor chapter, Chapter 23, requires that parties adopt and maintain laws consistent with the rights as stated in the International Labor Organization Declaration of Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, which includes the freedom of association and recognition of the right to collective bargaining, the elimination of forced labor, the effective abolition of child labor, and the elimination of discrimination with respect to employment and occupation.

Specifically, each party shall prohibit importation of goods produced in whole or in part by forced or compulsory labor, including forced or compulsory child labor. The USMCA states that each party must prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex (including sexual harassment), pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity and caregiving responsibilities, although the U.S. is deemed to have fulfilled its obligations with respect to discrimination by virtue of Title VII of the U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Mexico, however, is required under the USMCA to implement specific labor reforms to ensure the right of workers to engage in collective bargaining and to organize. As mentioned above, many of these reforms have already been enacted with the new Mexican legislation that went into force in May 2019. As for other notable modifications, all existing collective bargaining agreements in Mexico also must be revised at least once during the four years after the legislation went into effect (by 2023), and unions will need to follow new requirements to negotiate collective bargaining agreements within work centers to ensure employees accurate representation.

With respect to automobile production, the USMCA introduces the concept of Labor Value Content (LVC), which, along with a higher Regional Value Content threshold (75%, up from 62.5%), determines whether an automobile import qualifies for tariff-free treatment. The LVC rules require that at least 40% of a passenger car be made by workers earning at least $16 an hour, with at least 25% of those high-wage workers be involved in materials and manufacturing. These new LVC rules will be fully phased in over three years.

One major goal of the USMCA is to effect changes in Mexicos labor rules. While a major reform of Mexicos labor legislation was implemented in May 2019 in anticipation of the USMCA becoming effective, many of the rules ensuring workers freedom of association and collective bargaining are still being discussed in the Mexican legislation process. In addition, the Mexican labor law reform is still in its early implementation stage, meaning that years could pass before the new legislation be effectively and fully enforced. Multinationals that relocated parts of their operations or manufacturing to Mexico to take advantage of NAFTA or otherwise have operations in Mexico are facing a changing landscape in terms of labor relations, and likely increased costs, over the next few years as Mexico updates its laws to comply with the labor provisions of the USMCA.

Multinationals should also keep an eye on the activities of the Interagency Labor Committee, which has been created as part of the U.S. Department of Labor. While the Interagency Labor Committee is tasked to receive petitions from private companies as part of the Rapid Response Mechanism discussed above, the legislation implementing the USMCA in the U.S. also grants the Interagency Labor Committee the power to monitor Mexicos compliance with the USMCAs labor requirements, including by creating a hotline for workers in any of the USMCA countries to report labor violations in Mexico. The enforcement actions triggered by these petitions and reports may lead to factory inspections, the loss of preferential tariff treatment or denial of imports of products.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has announced that, through the first six months of implementation, it will show restraint in its enforcement and will instead focus on supporting companies efforts to comply. Despite this announcement, the above labor provisions described above, became fully enforceable immediately on day one.

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Labor Provisions of the USMCA: What Multinational Employers Should Know - Retail & Consumer Products Law Observer

What can be gained from reading art for its politics? We stand now in a political moment in the U.S. as in other parts of the world, where fascism is rising along with political attempts to frame certain people as other and therefore worthy of mistreatment, disdain and death.

Simultaneously, history and intellectuality are being derided as defective somehoweven in an era when we have more information about history, writing and art at our fingertips via the internet, along with all manner of nonsense produced there as well.

This precarious political moment makes art all the more important. Much can be gained from cultural shiftschanging hearts and minds, even when political access is diminishing for some (via voter suppression, most immediately, in the United States). Few would question the important cultural shifts emboldened by the work of writers like Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Margaret Atwood and Oscar Wilde.

The latter is the topic of Kristian Williamss new book, Resist Everything Except Temptation. He offers deep scholarship on the anarchist philosophies of Oscar Wilde while also delivering a pleasurable read.

The title derives, of course, from the witticisms and strong writing for which Wilde was known. He was equally known for his selfishness, excess, incarceration, exile, and yes, homosexuality. (A term, Williams does well to point out, that he would not have used in the 1800s.)

Wilde did not often proclaim himself an anarchistwhich might make the focus of this book odd, were it not for how the trope of anarchism places Williamss scholarship in the context of social change in the late 1800s. He cleverly puts Wilde in dialogue with the practical ideas of self-proclaimed anarchists such as Kropotkin and Goldman.

This book is also timely, as anarchists and anti-fascists are being targeted as terrorists by President Donald Trump, who shows no understanding of what anarchists might profess. (Might being the operative word, for such a diverse group of people.)

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As a person who creates art for the express purpose of positive cultural change, I believe Resist Everything but Temptation offers a way of framing creative work that can lead us to its more conscious political use and allow us to enjoy and explore it more deeply.

As Williams says:

By putting the politics first, it is possible to find a kind of unifying outline for Wildes thoughts as a whole. His politics connect to his aestheticism, to his sexuality and nationality, to his humor and irony and to his deeply tragic view of life. Wildes political commitments were subtly but centrally present in even his purely aesthetic works; and conversely, his aesthetics, his critical perspective, and even his keen wit and sense of irony had their role in shaping his politics.

He was clearly interested in a depth of individual freedomand not just for menthat I believe should interest us today.

Though Wilde is often depicted in contemporary times as a gay dandy, interested mainly in beauty and selfishness, there is scant evidence that he carries the pursuit as far as contemporary upper-class white gay men often do, into the realm of apolitical living and even misogyny. One might err historically to call Wilde a feminist in the same way that homosexual is a misnomer. Still, the overall direction of his thoughtand, as importantly, his desireswas toward an ideal of freedom, toward a humane society, and in sympathy with those who fight to free themselves from oppression.

In his actual dealings with women, Wilde promoted expression in an unusual way for the time period. For two years (1887-9) Wilde edited the publication Womens World.

Before he took charge, the Ladys World was a failing fashion and gossip magazine. Changing the name and recruiting an impressive collection of contributors, Wilde set out to make it the recognized organ for the expression of womens opinions on all subjects of literature, art and modern life and to deal not merely with what women wear, but with what they think, and what they feel. Contributors included feminists, suffragists, and trade unionists, the anti-racist and anti-imperialist agitator Olive Schreiner, and the anarchist poet Louise S. Bevington.

Similarly, in his own marriage, while he could not liberate his wife from the effects of his behavior and its persecution, this did not mean he lacked love for his family. Evidence suggests that he participated and cared for his wife and children: He was eager that his wife Constance have and pursue her own ideas, her own interests, her own projects and commitments.

Indeed, she was often more politically active than he, advocating for womens suffrage, non-oppressive fashion standards for women and home rule in Ireland. Perhaps most notably, Constance believed that marriage should exist as a contract of limited duration, renewable if desired.

As Wilde argued in The Soul of Man under Socialism, With the abolition of private property, marriage in its present form must disappear. He was concerned for the individuality of all whom it constrained.

Analysis of Wildes writings form the bulk of Williams book and its a pleasure touring back through his canon with anarchism and liberation as the frame. In so many ways, his plays in particular helped audiences to consider the conventions of gendered interactions and capitalist notions of conformity. There is much to inspire our current work in this regardand to prompt us to remember that not all positive social change happens in the realm of law and politics. Much of it comes from art and creativity.

As Williams reminds us, Where Nietzsches strategy was a frontal attack, Wildes was one of infiltration and subversion. By provoking but not antagonizing, he disarmed the audience with his wit and made them complicit with their laughter.

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"Resist Everything Except Temptation": Anarchism in Art - Ms. Magazine

At an event held in honour of Malcolm X in 1982, Audre Lorde delivered an address titled Learning from the 60s, during which she proclaimed, Revolution is not a one-time event. By this, Lorde meant that revolution belongs to everyone and no one simultaneously; if it is to proceed, it must cease to be the sole and particular province of anyone particular race, or sex, or age, or religion, or sexuality, or class. Revolutions reoccur: they follow each other, making circles of time and all the political demands that push them forward.Lordes statement makes clear the purview of the black feminist tradition; nothing must be allowed to remain. We must be prepared for the multi-purpose, multi-layered revolution, in which political ideologies and mantras will, and must, collide.

The word abolition, most commonly understood to describe efforts that sought a legal end to chattel slavery, has a complex history. Many white advocates who deployed the term in the height of the abolitionist movements of the 18th and 19th century were not actually interested in the material emancipation of black life. Aphra Behns 1688 novel Oroonoko, for example, intended to awaken the English middle-class to the horrors of slavery, while employing a number of deeply racist and dehumanising tropes to do so.

But abolition as we know it now, developed through the black feminist tradition, owes everything to imaginative potential. It is a belief in emancipatory forms of social organisation and an end to all forms of violence, expropriation and exploitation. As prison abolitionist Ruth Wilson Gilmore writes, abolition is about presence, not absence; prison abolition, as one example, is about abolishing the conditions under which prison became the solution to problems. Prison abolitionists argue that carceral systems like prison, policing and detention are dangerous and wholly inadequate responses to crime that merely perpetuate the harm they claim to end. They are critical of ways of thinking that root wrongdoing in the individual, arguing instead that the social causes of crime require social solutions, beginning with an improvement of the conditions of life for all - free education, housing provision, healthcare and investing in community self-governance. Abolitionists believe that racist systems of police and prison do not keep us safe and that they should not simply be reformed in an attempt to improve them, but abolished altogether.

The desire to abolish police and prisons can be traced in grassroots black feminist traditions across the world. In the 1970s and 80s in the UK, organisations such as the Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent (OWAAD) and the Brixton Black Womens Group, home to coalitions between black women and women of colour, campaigned against flagrant police violence and abuses of stop and search powers. Nicknamed SUS laws, these clauses enabled police officers to justify arrest solely on the basis of suspected intent to commit a crime. It is near impossible to ignore the legacy of such a law in the disproportionate searching, brutality and imprisonment of black people in the UK. In Heart of the Race, Black Womens Lives in Britain, authors Beverly Bryan, Stella Dadzie and Suzanne Scafe write: Even when our children were at school, we could expect the police to be called into the playground to break up fights it was as a result of these experiences of racist police force that black women began to organise against specific incidents of abuse and against legislation.

Kinship and community is how we keep each other safe when the state and racist institutions fail us

The actions of these feminist groups were prototypes for networks of mutual aid, like those that have emerged since the onset of the pandemic; they modelled what community power that sought to render the police irrelevant could look like. These women knew, as Stuart Hall writes, that race is the modality through which class is lived and their experiences as members of the working class were constituted and compounded by the systemic racism that locked them out of state protection and limited their access to resources.

The killing of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police propelled abolition into the mainstream. Those of us who remember the eruption of protests, demonstrations, and organising around Black Lives Matter that took place in the UK in 2015, and who know the names of Joy Gardener, Cynthia Jarrett, Rashan Charles, Christopher Alder and so many more victims of racist police violence, feel the need to challenge the reductive view that this is only a US problem. SoRevolution is not a one-time event, a programme convened by Che Gossett, Sarah Shin and myself in collaboration with Arika and hosted by Silver Press, will attempt to understand and amplify abolitionist demands in this moment by bringing artists, organisers and academics together, and provide a space for reflection and political animus.

Our event The Masters Tools Can Never Dismantle the Masters House: Abolitionist Feminist Futures, to be chaired by academic and organiser Akwugo Emejulu and featuring academic Gail Lewis, critic Hortense Spillers, writer Zoe Samudzi and trans activist Miss Major, will explore abolitionist futures. In her work analysing black womens presence and absence in public discourse, Lewis calls to Sarah Reed, a black woman with complex mental health issues who died in Holloway Prison in 2015 after being failed by mental health professionals and prison staff. But if she is present, how is she here? / Only as: brutalised black woman... / Only as: a mentally unwell black woman? Understanding Lordes idea that the masters tools will never dismantle the masters house means recognising that the system that locked Reed away will never set others like her free. This is the first step in dismantling ideas that a broken system can be fixed via law, police and prison reform.

The intimate realm is an extension of the social world so to create other networks of love and affiliation is to be involved in the work of challenging and remaking the terms of sociality writes Saidiya Hartman, a participant of the second panel, Poetry is not a Luxury: The Poetics of Abolition. In 1985, Lorde wrote, Poetry coins the language to express and charter this revolutionary awareness and demand, the implementation of that freedom. If poetics is the study of the creation, production and art of making meaning, then we must understand its role in revolution. Hartmans work directs the readers eye to the anarchic posture of black life and community, to the power of revolution lived at the register of the everyday. Her fellow panelist Christina Sharpe continues this tradition in her book In The Wake, in which she refuses to treat images as static archival memorabilia. She analyses black persistence and survival in the face of the processes that render black people outside subjects.

What does abolition mean in the age of the internet? Using coding, hacking and other means of online sabotage to make it harder for the police to target vulnerable people. Glitch is a necessary erratum, a site of positive departure, writes Legacy Russell, author of Glitch Feminism and chair of the panel System Errors: Abolitionist Technologies and Aesthetics. Through cyberfeminism, we can make ourselves unknowable in order to outsmart the logics of surveillance capital. Currently, law enforcement is using all manner of digital practice including photography and Instagram posts to track down and charge protesters. Technology must be harnessed to both liberate and obscure blackness; to strip the digital image of its power. British artist and panellist Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley does this in their work, building a video game-like space online that visitors must navigate to evade the threats that black trans people face everyday. This panel will explore how the current matrix of violent governance takes place through physical and digital forms of dispossession and must be fought on both grounds.

The last panel in this programme, Happy Birthday, Marsha! held on the birthday of black trans campaigner Marsha P Johnson centres on care. Abolitionist modes of thinking encourage us to discover new forms of intimacy, speculation and kinship by encouraging community building with those outside our immediate family. That is how we keep each other safe when the state and racist institutions fail us. Despite its complexity, at its most basic, abolition is about enacting the future we want now and refusing to let anyone tell us it is impossible.

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'We can enact the future we want now': a black feminist history of abolition - The Guardian

On August 1, Anglophone Caribbean nations commemorateEmancipation Day, marking the 1834 abolition of slavery in the British Empire and the 1838 abolition ofapprenticeship, a system which forced formerly enslaved people to continue to work uncompensated for their former masters. Emancipation wasnot a gift. The Slavery Abolition Act, which banned slavery in the British colonies, followed a shift in the British Empires economic interests and sustained resistance by enslaved people through massive slave revolts, likeBussas Rebellionin Barbados, andguerilla warfare, as in the case ofJamaicas Maroons.

While resistance helped pave the way for emancipation in the 1800s, the Caribbean was not free from British colonial rulefor another century. For centuries, Caribbean people fought for liberation from slavery and colonization. Today, amid new calls for the UK to tackle systemic racism and reckon with the crimes of the British Empire, Caribbean people are still fighting for justice and repair.

On July 6, the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Reparations Commissionreignited calls for reparationsfor slavery and colonization, emphasizing the impact of the legacy of British colonialism on life and legislation in the Caribbean today. The Commission, established in 2013 to prepare the legal and ethical case for reparations payments for CARICOM member states, lays out a 10 point plan for European former colonial powers to provide reparatory justice for slavery and colonization. The first step in the Commissions plan is a formal apology for slavery. To date, the UK has expressed deep regret for its role in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, but has never formally apologized. A full apology is an important step, not only for atonement, but also because it is an opportunity to acknowledge and examine the contemporary effects of the British Empires abusive practices in the Caribbean.

British slave traders kidnapped an estimated3.1 million peoplealong the west coast of Africa,trafficked them across the Atlantic Ocean, and subjected them toforced labor and tortureon the colonialplantationsthatenriched the British crown. British colonial legislation codified racial difference between the white planter class and enslaved Africans, and regulated slaves behavior through harsh slave codes. Slaves were denied access to land, education, or any means of social and economic advancement. CARICOM Reparations Committee chair Professor Hilary Beckles has noted how severe neglect by British colonial authorities of the human development of Black populations in the Caribbean led to rampant illiteracy and serious health issues across the region, which continued after emancipation.

Black populations in the Caribbean were also denied political and economic autonomy. Under British colonial law (as in the United Kingdom until the early twentieth century), the right to vote was predicated on a mans wealth and land ownership. In the Caribbean this effectively excluded the poorer, landless Black majority from voting for more than a century after emancipation. Without the right to vote in elections, Black populations were subjected to the legislative whims of the white upper classes and denied representation in government without the ability to hold political authorities accountable. Universal Adult Suffrage in the Caribbean was not achieved until 1944, first in Jamaica, and then spreading to other Caribbean islands between then and 1962.

Colonial legislation safeguarding the wealth of the white British planter class, through the control and violent exploitation of Black African labor, cemented the deep racial and economic inequality that persists across the Caribbean today. In Barbados, for example, formerly enslaved people and their descendants were excluded from purchasing land under the colonial Contract Law. The effects of the law continued after independence and by 1970, an estimated 77% of land in Barbados rested in the hands of the wealthiest 10% of the countrys landowners.

Some British firms that were enriched by the Trans-Atlantic slave trade have apologized, and some, like insurance company Lloyds of London, have agreed to make financial contributions to organizations supporting Black and ethnic minority communities. The British government, however, has previously dismissed and derailed calls for reparations for slavery and colonization. In 2001, the British delegation to the Durban Conference on Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance blocked an outright apology for slavery by the European Union, despite support for the apology from some other European delegates.

During a 2015 visit to Jamaica, former UK Prime Minister David Cameron rebuffedcalls by the Jamaica National Commission on Reparationsfor the UK to pay Jamaica reparations, stating the country should move on. Instead of reparations, Cameron announced that the UK would spend25million pounds to build Jamaica a new prison. Camerons offer was particularly pernicious considering the history ofunlawful detentionandexcessive use of force by the Jamaica Constabulary Force, which isheavily influencedby colonial lawsdesigned to enforcea racist and exploitative colonial social order.

The British empires brutal trafficking and abuse of enslaved Africans throughout the Caribbean, and the continued exploitation of their descendants during colonialism, helped form thebasis for the mercantile wealth that built modern British society. Despite this, Caribbean people have been routinely denied remedy for past injustices, and continue to feel the effects of colonization as well assuffer abuses at the hands of the British government in the United Kingdom today.

As we commemorate the end of slavery in the Caribbean, we must not forget that the region is still in need of justice and repair. If we are truly to move on, the British government should acknowledge the extent of abuses committed during slavery and colonization and begin the conversation on the contemporary ramifications of past harms by the British Empire.

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Emancipation Day A Reminder That Caribbean Still Needs Justice, Repair - Human Rights Watch

FFI staff & volunteers with friends from J.M. Kaplan Fund.

While finance to many might conjure a boring system of transactions or a dangerous game of capitalist exploitation to financial activists, investment vehicles are fair game for creative and exciting innovations toward liberation. One area of continuous advocacy is the abolition of bail, which forces countless individuals to remain in jail simply because they cannot afford their own release. Often, the over-incarcerated and their loved ones have to turn to bail bonds companies that exploit the vulnerability of their financial situations, charge exorbitant interest, and require collateral in exchange for the funds needed for bail. According to the Prison Policy Institute, over 465,000 people are held in local jails every day without being convicted of a crime, simply because they cant afford their bail.

Bail isnt just part of the criminal justice system you might be surprised to hear that it exists in the immigrant detention system, too. Except that in this context, its referred to as immigration bond. Thats right, take a second to wrap your head around this: despite committing what should be a civil, not criminal, infraction, immigrants who cross the border seeking a better life are asked to pay bond. Tens of thousands of children and adults are in this position on any given day, stuck in immigrant prisons and jails for years. With the costs of bonds ranging from $1,500 to $250,000, immigrants and their families often cannot afford to pay bond.

Numerous bail funds like the Bail Project, New Yorks Free Them All for Public Health, and LAs Peoples City Council Freedom Fund have historically helped address the criminalization of poverty in the U.S. and advocates have been working to end cash bail entirely. In the wake of mass arrests of protestors around the country in support of the Movement for Black Lives, many bail funds have experienced an unprecedented surge in financial support. But there has been less attention on immigrant detention. Thats where Freedom for Immigrants has stepped in. Since 2010, they have supported both bond funding and critical post-release wraparound services for immigrants nationwide. Their National Hotline, the nations largest for immigrants in detention, receives between 600 and 14,500 calls per month. They are part of a growing network of bail and immigration bond funds across the country, hosted by Community Justice Exchange.

Freedom for Immigrants is a national nonprofit that has grown from monitoring the human rights abuses faced by immigrants detained by ICE through their national hotline and network of volunteer detention visitors to also include actionable approaches for dignity, not detention. These approaches call for divestment from for-profit incarceration and investment in community-based organizations and tools like bond funds to welcome immigrants into the social fabric of the United States. The organization is now partnering with Mission Driven Finance an impact investment firm and certified B Corporation dedicated to using finance as a tool for change, expanding access to capital, and closing opportunity gaps to launch the Freedom100 Fund. This new pilot fund aims to release 100 individuals from immigration prison, support them with their cases and prove that its time for the bail and bond system to go.

I talked with Lauren Grattan, Co-Founder and Chief Community Officer of Mission Driven Finance, and Christina Mansfield, Co-Founder and Co-Executive Director of Freedom for Immigrants, to learn more about this bond fund, how it works, and why its an important development for investors and activists committed to immigrant freedom.

For those who may be new to this world, whats the current problem with immigration bonds and the criminalization of poverty in the United States that you're trying to address? How has COVID-19 added another layer to this?

Gretta Soto Moreno, member of FFI Leadership Council.

CM: On any given day, thousands of immigrants are locked up in prisons and jails as part of the U.S. immigration detention system. The system is composed largely of people who are either newly arrived, such as asylum seekers, or those individuals who have longstanding ties to their communities here in the U.S.

Individuals who flee their home countries to seek refuge in the U.S. and claim asylum at a port of entry have been subject to mandatory immigration detention since at least 1996 as a result of harsh policies signed into law by President Clinton. Those same laws expanded the list of aggravated felonies for which people like Legal Permanent Residents and others could be detained and made subject to deportation, including many non-violent offenses. Around that same time period, a series of tough on crime laws were passed that further criminalized communities of color. As a result, since 1996, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of people who have been sent to ICE detention.

Its also important to recognize that throughout this period of time the federal government has increased its use of criminal prosecutions for people migrating. The federal government considers illegal entry a misdemeanor while illegal re-entry is considered a felony. The family separation crisis grew out of these policies, forcing families to be split up needlessly and inhumanely.

COVID-19 has added another layer of complexity and urgency to the situation. Freedom for Immigrants and other partners are focused on helping to bond out people who are immunocompromised and medically vulnerable. We are also submitting parole requests for the release of people without paying cash bonds, but the federal government is only granting a small number of these requests. In addition, Freedom for Immigrants is tracking abuses related to the pandemic and the organized responses of people inside on this real-time map.

How did Freedom for Immigrants and Mission Driven Finance decide to collaborate on this new initiative, using money as a tool for social change rather than a weapon for exploitation?

LG: When we met Freedom for Immigrants and grasped the size and severity of the issue of immigrant detention, we knew we wanted to support their incredible work rehumanizing a cruel system. Immigration is part of our daily lives in our hometown of San Diego, where we have the most active land border crossing in the country and one in four San Diegans are born outside the U.S.

CM: At Freedom for Immigrants, we know human rights and immigration policy really well, but innovative finance is not our strength. It was critical to find our partners at Mission Driven Finance as they fully believe in our vision and worked within our ethical framework to co-create this fund expanding our national detention bond program.

LG: We partnered with Freedom for Immigrants to develop the Freedom100 Fund a first-of-its-kind opportunity to finance bonds and release 100 people from immigration detention across California and Louisiana at no cost to the individual. Once bonded out, individuals are eight times more likely to win their immigration cases. But without the ability to pay a bond, many individuals are forced to languish in immigration detention and away from their loved ones and communities and forced to navigate complex legal proceedings on their ownoften in a language that is not their first.

As more people have been detained and the costs of immigration bonds have skyrocketed (the median bond in California and Louisiana is $8,500), families and community groups that previously donated money to bond out their loved ones are now strapped for cash. This is a perfect space for impact investing: Amplifying limited philanthropic dollars.

CM: We chose California and Louisiana because they represent some of the best and worst jurisdictions for immigrants to win their cases, respectively. In Louisiana, 87.8% of all immigration detention cases are denied, whereas only 52.2% of cases in California are denied. By bonding out individuals in these two states, connecting them to supportive resources, and helping them make all their court appearances, we can demonstrate that the practice of detention isnt just inhumane and wildly subject to political bias its unnecessary.

So how does this fund actually work and what is the ultimate goal?

LG: The Freedom100 Fund is designed to extend the impact of donated dollars. In a nutshell, instead of making donations directly to post bonds, donors make grants into a reserve account that absorbs some of the risk to make the opportunity more attractive for private investors who might not have financed immigration bonds otherwise. The fund is structured to leverage $500,000 in the philanthropic reserve account at least four times, unlocking $2M of investor capital and ultimately expand the availability of rapid, free immigration bond financing.

The fund lends to Freedom for Immigrants to have the money to post bond directly at ICE field offices on behalf of 100 individuals. As individuals go to their immigration court appearances and get their cases resolved (positively or negatively), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) repays Freedom for Immigrants which would then repay the fund.

We need every tool in the toolbox, including finance, to make a more just world. Our hope is that the Freedom100 Fund can provide dignity and care for 100 individuals immediately and hopefully scale to serve thousands. We also want the fund to serve as a model for how innovative finance can move the needle on some of our most difficult social and environmental challenges and quickly. The first capital from the fund flowed to Freedom For Immigrants earlier in July and theyve already bonded out eight individuals.

Why is this bond fund an impact investing fund instead of just a philanthropic effort?

LG: As an investment firm, we like to right-size the tool to the problem. Philanthropy makes a lot of sense for proving early on that a program can work, for subsidizing programs that dont have a functional market, and for taking on riskier financial positions to unlock other capital. But to fully address problems of this size, we have to mobilize more than just philanthropy.

Thanks to their donors, Freedom for Immigrants has built a successful detention bond program and critical case management support. And now donors are committing to that third scenario of unlocking other capital because they need more money in this fight than donations alone.

We always look for repayment pathways to see if impact investing is possible. As strange as it is, the fact that DHS repays bonds at the conclusion of immigration trials gave us the opportunity to explore an investment strategy with Freedom for Immigrants. Because of this fact, we were able to build this structure without burdening immigrants or their families, unlike most other bond financing. Its a highly unusual revenue source, but it is a revenue source!

If this system is so wrong how do we end it, as opposed to financing it? Clearly the Freedom100 Fund can help get people out of detention centers now a critical outcome but is it also enabling the system?

CM: This is a critical question we must continually ask ourselves as abolitionists. Freedom for Immigrants combines direct services to people in immigrant prisons and jails with policy and advocacy to end the system completely. When we decide on the scope of our work, we always ask ourselves whether what we are doing could lead to the perpetuation of the system. The Freedom100 Fund is a great example of this calculus.

Our goal of the fund is twofold:

1) Secure the freedom of 100 individuals currently incarcerated only because they cannot afford to pay a bond; and

2) Leverage the model to advocate that the incarceration of immigrants in our detention system is entirely unnecessary and should be abolished.

Paying the federal government bond is working within an unjust system to alleviate the suffering of people now. But our goal is to prevent anyone from ever having to suffer incarceration. The government justifies the system by assuming that if immigrants are not imprisoned, they will abscond and risk becoming a public charge. The truth is, the immigration detention system itself is the biggest charge on the American public.

Our taxpayer dollars fund this profit-driven system, enriching local governments and private prison corporations at the expense of us all. This fund will demonstrate that people are imprisoned solely because they cannot afford to pay an immigration bond, but when we are able to finance their freedom they are able to concentrate on winning their immigration cases and comply with what the government is asking of them. We are advocating for divestment from inhumane systems of incarceration and investment in community organizations that support and welcome immigrants.

Finally, how can people get involved? Who can be an investor?

LG: Anyone can donate to Freedom for Immigrants, or consult with your financial advisor about whether it's appropriate for you to invest in the fund through a charitable vehicle like a donor advised fund at your favorite community foundation. While only accredited investors are eligible to consider a direct investment in the Freedom100 Fund, we encourage everyone to learn more about collectively ending immigration detention by visiting Freedom for Immigrants site.

Thanks to Jasmine Rashid for her contributions to this piece. Full disclosures related to my work available here. This post does not constitute investment, tax, or legal advice, and the author is not responsible for any actions taken based on the information provided herein.

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Blended Capital For Immigration Bonds: Introducing The Freedom100 Fund - Forbes

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BSc (Econ) UWI: the sixth former in Kingston had scribbled this on the inside cover of his economics textbook, Intermediate Economics by J Harvey, in about 1977. This was an aspirational note. In the UWI system, after three years of post-sixth form studies, the degree could be his.

Naipaul's Primer

The aspiration was perhaps more practical and reachable than that scribbled by VS Naipaul at Queen's Royal College on his fourth form Latin primer to leave Trinidad in five years. Naipaul fell short by a year on his ambition, but he eventually assumed his cosmopolitan mantle. From under this mantle he elaborated on his schizophrenic relationship with his homelands, starting with the comic atmosphere of Miguel Street and The Mystic Masseur, but graduating to bitter ridicule and scorn in later years.

BSc (Econ) UWI circa 1978 was to be a passport not to lucre, but to learning, knowledge and, with good luck, probably to wisdom. And so, those embarking on the Mona experience did so armed with the view that studies in economics would be an avenue for both personal and professional advancement.

First year (1978)

In the first year of BSc (Econ) UWI, with classes frequently held in N1 of the Arts block (now the Neville Hall Lecture Theatre), the economics neophytes shared ideas with management students (in superior numbers), future sociologists, and budding political scientists.

The lecturers included the highly rated Ramjeesingh, in economics and in statistics, Dr Roach in mathematics, the thoughtful Rupert Lewis for politics, the perceptive Bernard Marshall for history on Mondays and Fridays at 5:00 pm, and two leading sociologists, Barry Chevannes and Don Robotham.

The first-year lecturers exposed students to dialectical materialism, The Labour Theory of Value, The State in theory and practice, Durkheim , The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Schumpeter and other ways of seeing. These other ways of seeing were, almost literally, new methods of understanding social and economic phenomena; for, at the high school level, neoclassical demand and supply curves, Keynesian macroeconomic principles and production possibility frontiers had been predominant on the Cambridge A' Level syllabus. Now, the student was challenged to put other instruments in the toolbox of socio-economic analysis.

Eurocentric?

Was the new toolbox too Eurocentric? In the first year there was steady exposure to Marx and other (mainly) 19th century writers in economics, politics and sociology; but there was also significant exposure to Caribbean scholarship of quality. Question 1 on the tutorial sheet for Introduction to Politics in 1978 was about Marcus Garvey: Garvey preached racial pride but the main point of his work was anti-imperialism. Discuss.

This was promptly followed by a question which required students to consider the role of the media in the Commonwealth Caribbean, with readings from Caribbean Quarterly and other regional sources. In addition to Caribbean Quarterly, the book Essays on Power and Change in Jamaica (edited by the illustrious pair of Carl Stone and Aggrey Brown) proved to be particularly stimulating. Especially stimulating too were politics tutorials under the experienced hand of Ann Spackman, who challenged all shortcuts European or otherwise and was said to be doctrinally opposed to giving 'A' grades, a characteristic rumoured to be shared with some senior denizens of the UWI History Department of the time.

It may have been in the Introduction to Politics final examination for 1978-79 that students were called upon to assess how, and to what extent, poor countries owe their underdevelopment to developed countries. This question, of course, was built on a premise constructed in part by Walter Rodney, the highly rated Mona historian who had been declared persona non grata by the Hugh Shearer Administration a decade earlier. The question, too, could have been connected to Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere who, on a celebrated, rain-bearing, visit to Jamaica in 1974 eloquently maintained that in international relations the poor remain poor because they are poor.

IMF bank?

For the following year, Question 1 on the Introduction to Politics final examination was, I think: Is the IMF a bank? The background to this question may have been a statement by Andrew Young, then the US ambassador to the United Nations. Ambassador Young, on a visit to Jamaica in 1977, argued that the International Monetary Fund, as a bank, had the right to impose conditionalities on Jamaica in return for their loans to the country in the same way that a bank would do to its debtors. Against a background in which BSc (Econ) students were reading Cheryl Payer's The Debt Trap: The IMF and the Third World, Young's analysis was the subject of much contention on the campus and presumably on the examination paper.

Eric Williams

Our history exposure in the first year was fundamentally and unapologetically Caribbean. Eric Williams' From Columbus to Castro and Capitalism and Slavery were on the top bookshelf. The former was rated for its broad view of developments in Caribbean history, readable style and its unexpected witticisms (Columbus fell on his knees and then on the Aborigines). And the latter, based in large part on Williams' doctoral thesis at Oxford, brought home to the sceptical, postcolonial reader the fact that humanitarianism and the work of the Saints were not the only factors in the abolition of the British Caribbean slave system.

Other history items on the top shelf were photocopied essays that included Roy Augier's path-breaking Before and After 1865, Elsa Goveia's New Shibboleths for Old, and Douglas Hall's presentation on the apprenticeship system in Jamaica (with planters 'squeezing the last ounce of juice' from the enslaved).

From the first year it was clear that the Caribbean authorities would not always agree with each other: New Shibboleths, for example, was a surgical critique of some aspects of Williams' work that must, at very least, have put the original prince of Port of Spain on the back foot for a few weeks. These and other offerings were consumed with pleasure, with students engaging in long arguments about how history should inform praxis.

Mathematics

BSc (Econ) in the second year took on a specialist tone and mathematics sat upon its throne. The student grapevine spoke unequivocally: Basic Mathematics for Economists was a misnomer. To begin with, basic maths involved differentiation and integration in calculus at a considerably more complex level than was required for mathematics and statistics.

So, in much the same way that the Jamaican Supreme Court is not really supreme, basic maths was not really basic. When the lecturer, Dr Roach, informed the class that the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test would not be appearing on our final examination paper, there was a loud chorus of relief throughout the lecture room (SR 4, Social Sciences).

Dr Roach was a methodical and quiet mathematician who never seemed perturbed by challenging questions. He was based full-time at the then College of Arts, Science and Technology (CAST) but offered his considerable skills to Mona students; in a small, developing society, sensible people are prepared to share knowledge and to acknowledge needs.

Statistical method

The realm of king mathematics also extended to Economic Statistics, Statistical Method, and Elementary Econometrics. Economic Statistics was taught by John Gafar from Guyana. Gafar lived for cricket, pointing out in his first class of the year that if Test cricket was being played at Sabina Park, students would not see him at Mona. This hypothesis was not tested. In the statistics courses, however, several economic hypotheses were subject to testing, at given degrees of freedom.

Students were also asked whether certain estimators were sufficient, unbiased or consistent; invited to reach precise, technical conclusions about variance, normal distribution and to evaluate probability using Chebychev's inequality, and other methods. A part question on the Statistical Method final examination for June 1981, in the pre-COVID-19 era, captures the flavour of the lecturers' expectations. Question 4 (a) read:

The probability that a person who is exposed to a certain contagious disease will catch it is 0.20. Find the probability that the 20th person exposed to this disease is the fifth one to catch it.

This was in all probability a question from the pen of the aforementioned Dr Roach.

In the book

For years before and after 1981, Professor Al Francis was responsible for guiding students through the pleasures and pains of Elementary Econometrics. As was the case with Basic Mathematics, there may have been a structural error in the naming of the course, for while econometrics was much in evidence, the adjective elementary was distinctly misleading. Prof was, however, a born teacher who gave us the intellectual tools to take on concepts such as ordinary least squares estimators, multicollinearity, dummy variables, and the Koyck transformation with confidence.

Prof Francis also gave students the will and the skill to guide themselves through difficult, technical material. If a student asked a question about an item not covered in lectures, Prof's first line of response with a smile was apt to be, But it is in Johnston read it and let me know how you get along, withJohnson being Econometric Methods, the assigned textbook. Prof, who had taken his doctorate at MIT, ensured that his econometric students were prepared to match the best in the world.

Al Francis

On top of Prof's expertise and pedagogical skills were layers of determination and modesty. It is reported that the young Al Francis opened the batting for Kingston College in his time playing Sunlight Cup cricket. His opening partner was Easton Bull McMorris who went on to captain Jamaica and open for the West Indies (as highlighted in recent editions of the Sunday Observer). And at one down on the KC side was Collie Smith, the legendary West Indian star batsman who left us early.

At very least, then, Prof batted with the stars and could make his own claim to cricketing greatness. He also represented the school at football, and his academic achievements took him to some of the most renowned institutions in the world.

And yet, Prof studiously avoided autobiographical comment to those within his charge. He was more inclined to talk about a book he had just finished reading, to discuss the mathematical principles behind autocorrelation, or to reflect on the need for better basic schools in Jamaica, than to elaborate on his life achievements.

The early 1980s saw Prof Francis leave the Department of Economics to go, for a time, to a senior position at the International Bauxite Association. There, he noted, the view from his office in New Kingston directed to the hills of St Andrew and further north was more impressive than that from his ground floor office on the corridor at Mona. But his heart was at Mona, and so, he returned home.

Coming next: Other lecturers and the times.

Ambassador Stephen Vasciannie is Professor of International Law, UWI, Mona.

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UWI economics from the 1970s (Part 1) - Jamaica Observer