Guest Commentary: Denver schools shouldnt be pitted against each other, but parents still need school performance information – The Denver Post

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Later this month, the Denver Public Schools Board of Education is scheduled to decide the future of Denvers school quality measurement tool. The School Performance Framework was launched in 2008 using a color-coded system that rates schools from distinguished or blue, to accredited on probation or red. Critics, myself included, argue that this framework is not reflective of what is really happening in schools and has become weaponized. It became the currency by which DPS determined which schools would be shuttered, and the framework dis-incentivized collaboration and sharing of resources.

A committee met this past year to reimagine the framework for measuring school quality. I served on the committee and we came to an agreement on three recommendations.

First, replace the existing School Performance Framework (SPF) and cede to an already existing school rating framework run by the state to fulfill the state and federal requirements regarding school accountability.

Second, create an online dashboard to inform the public about whole child measures, including school climate, culture and additional academic measures not captured in the states framework.

And third, launch a continuous improvement cycle to support schools.

In May I was alarmed to see a small but vocal faction urge the board to vote against recommendations two and three.

While I understand that there is a lack of trust with DPS, I felt this group grossly misrepresented this truly community-led, district supported effort. Those same voices have perhaps not yet comprehended that passing only the first recommendation would tragically put the district back where it started: having a color-coded system of rankings based on test scores. Beyond that, it would derail the communitys call for equity by depriving Denver families of the types of information and empowerment they have demanded for years.

A recent study led by University of Colorado professor and researchers Antwan Jefferson and Plashan McCune found that Denver families of color rely upon a range of sources when seeking the best educational fit for their children, including information from the district and schools, but also from personal experience and their community. The research concluded families of color find the information DPS provides is insufficient they want to know more. What is the school like? And how does it reflect our community context?

Over the course of the next school year, the Denver community will be invited to engage in designing the dashboard and the improvement process for schools, an endeavor that will naturally be informed by the work done on the next Denver Plan. Examples of measures the committee suggested for the dashboard include: the amount of teacher and parent voice in school-based decision making, district support regarding mental health staffing, ICAP completion rates, and staff diversity and experience.

The dashboard will shed light on institutionalized racism by providing the community access to data showing the rate of suspensions for Black and Latinx students, schools successes and failures at supporting teachers of color, and data from students of color on how safe and supported they feel in their school environment.

The recommendations for a dashboard and improvement cycle are intended to paint a more robust picture of each school. These are not intended to be punitive or add parameters for triggering state and local accountability requirements. Rather than fuel competition, our hope is that it will promote collaboration and mutual responsibility between schools, the district, the superintendent and board. The dashboard will repudiate the rankings of schools that fed the mindset that we are better and they are less.

To ensure this, the Board of Education can put guardrails into their board resolution by creating stipulations that this new information shall not be weaponized. One of the most powerful pieces of the new dashboard would be the school narrative which would provide schools the unprecedented opportunity to provide context for their data.

Its clear that Denver doesnt want its school quality measures to be mechanisms of shame. Its also clear Denver parents dont want to return to an era where it was impossible to know how well schools were serving all kids. We can create something all of Denver can endorse. Lets get to work.

Karen Mortimer is a Denver Public School parent who served on the Reimagine the SPF committee. She is also a parent leader with Together Colorado.

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Guest Commentary: Denver schools shouldnt be pitted against each other, but parents still need school performance information - The Denver Post

Personal trainer shares images of her body to show why ‘transformation’ pictures AREN’T real – Brinkwire

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An Australian personal trainer has shunned the use of transformation pictures to show bodily changes because they can be taken seconds apart, as evidenced by her latest upload to Instagram.

Madalin Giorgetta, who lives in PerthinWestern Australia, gained 865,000 Instagram followers by posting her own transformation images to social media, but now recognises this is not a show of empowerment.

She has also noticed thinner people trying normalise body rolls and cellulite in their photos, saying that its not fair on those who carry more weight and cant just pose away their stomach.

Plenty of influencers use these images to relate to their audience by insisting they have normal flaws like everyone else.

Ive been seeing these types of photos everywhere recently and I always engage with them. Its addictive to see what most people try to hide, the 31-year-old captioned her photo.

What effect does this have on our body image? Am I learning to accept my body through these images or am I merely being entertained? I dont feel worse or better about my body after viewing this type of content.

After spending four years taking mirror selfies to flaunt her famous curves Madalin is keenly aware of how easy it is to distort an image with angles, clothing placement and body organisation.

In the left image she showcased, the owner of Work It with MG has placed her underwear on her hips, showing how the folds of her skin spill over the top.

The second picture has her underwear up much higher to thin out her waist, her legs placed in a more elongated position, and in the final shot she has pushed her thighs forward so they appear larger than they actually are.

Im wondering how other people feel when they see these images, do you feel empowered or frustrated? Empowered because you can accept your slim but flawed body or frustrated because you cant love your larger body out of oppression? Madalin wrote.

Do transformation photos motivate you or frustrate you?

Do transformation photos motivate you or frustrate you?

Now share your opinion

Those in marginalised bodies cant pose and change how their body is perceived but do we disregard the experience and feelings of slim but normalised and accepted bodies? Are they not important too?

Madalin acknowledged there was more acceptance of slim bodies that fit the typical standards of beauty and health, like her own.

I always eye roll when its an extremely thin or fit woman doing this because for larger people, even when posing the correct way, their bodies will still not look that way, one of her followers remarked.

The thin woman is basically saying see, were all the same! When in reality she benefits from thin privilege and wont experience body image the same way larger people do.

Actual fat women will always have rolls and cellulite and love handles, and sometimes these posed versus unposed photos drive a deeper wedge between us, said another.

A third added: The instagram vs reality have always been frustrating to me because almost always its from thin cis women.

Madalin lost 130,000 social media followers after she stopped posting fat burning workouts and weight loss tips, and instead focused on moderation.

Its possible to be part of the fitness industry and not do that, though it will be tougher to build your following and grow your business, I wont lie, she said in April.

But Im doing it while being true to myself and that means the world to me.

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Personal trainer shares images of her body to show why 'transformation' pictures AREN'T real - Brinkwire

How to get started if you’ve never had a bank account – Las Vegas Sun

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Managing your money without a bank account is doable. But it can pose challenges and the COVID-19 pandemic has only added more.

Your economic impact payment mightve arrived weeks or months after others did, in the form of a check or prepaid debit card, because you couldnt choose the faster delivery option of direct deposit into a bank account. And if youve gone to the store lately, you may have been asked to pay with a debit or credit card or in exact change due to a nationwide shortage of coins and concerns over germ transmission.

A bank account can make life easier in these situations, among others. To avoid future issues, consider opening one or try again if youve been rejected in the past. Heres a guide to getting started.

ASSESS YOUR MONEY NEEDS

If youre one of the 14 million adults without a bank account in the U.S., you might have a system that works for you. Maybe that includes using alternative products such as prepaid debit cards and check cashing services. Financial counselor Brandy Baxter has worked with clients who used check cashing services for practical reasons.

They preferred to walk in, walk out with cash in hand, says Baxter, an accredited financial counselor and financial coach who runs the firm Living Abundantly in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

Check cashing stores like Check n Go and ACE Cash Express may operate for longer hours than banks and have easy approval processes to get cash quickly. But this comes with a steep fee, which can range from 1% to 6%, or more, of the check amount.

Bank accounts can fulfill money needs beyond what prepaid cards and check cashing services can. For example, their fraud protections can limit what you pay if youre victimized, and many accounts let you lock debit cards remotely when stolen.

And once youve begun a relationship with a bank, other doors open: Credit cards, auto or small business loans and cheaper alternatives to payday loans may eventually be within reach.

Checking accounts dont just help you save costs; theyre the stepping stones to use other financial products, says David Rothstein, principal at Cities for Financial Empowerment Fund, who manages BankOn, a national platform that promotes financial inclusion.

FIND A BANK THAT FITS YOU

If you find banks intimidating or have had issues getting an account before, community banks and credit unions tend to be more accommodating than national banks and are often mission-driven for example, focusing on the financial health of their surrounding communities.

Were very lenient at giving someone a second chance, says Pedro Murillo, area branch manager in the San Francisco Bay Area for Self-Help Federal Credit Union. If an employee comes in to apply for a loan and doesnt have pay stubs, what else (can they) show us? A letter from (their) employer? We dont want to give up.

Like other credit unions, Self-Help requires a person to open a savings account to become a member; the minimum to open an account is typically a few bucks. Then members can apply for other products, like a credit builder loan.

You can search online for the term CDFI which stands for community development financial institution to find credit unions like Self-Help near you. Many require those who join to be in the same area or state where the credit union or bank has branches.

WHAT TO KNOW ABOUT APPLYING

To open an account, youll generally need your Social Security number, one or two forms of identification and money for the first deposit.

Its common to apply for two bank accounts at the same time: a checking and a savings account. The checking account grants access to a debit card, bill payment system and other services, while the savings account lets you set money aside and, ideally, grow by earning interest.

Banks usually screen applicants on ChexSystems, a national reporting agency that keeps records of accounts closed against a persons will. If you have lost access to a bank account in the past, you might be rejected by other banks until you settle your ChexSystems record. This can mean paying off debt to a bank or disputing errors on the record.

Once youre cleared, consider what banks often call a second chance checking account or a BankOn-approved checking account. Many of these dont charge overdraft fees, which kick in if you try paying for something that would put your balance in the negative.

Finding and opening the right bank account involves some effort. But once youre approved, having a safe place for your money and a better chance to get affordable loans can make it worthwhile.

To have a checking account is the cornerstone of any financial empowerment effort, Rothstein says.

This article originally appeared on the personal finance website NerdWallet. Spencer Tierney is a writer atNerdWallet.

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How to get started if you've never had a bank account - Las Vegas Sun

Soul Love Now And the Legacy of Black Fire Records’ Jazz – bandcamp.com

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FEATURES Soul Love Now And the Legacy of Black Fire Records Jazz By Daniel White August 10, 2020

On the night of October 28th, 1975, Howard Universitys Cramton Auditorium was packed. Oneness of Juju had made the drive from Richmond to play this show, which was no ordinary gig: this was Howard University in the 70s, the Mecca of Black culture and thought. Oneness of Jujus bandleader, James Plunky Branch, was going to give the crowd a show to remember.

The most spiritual music in the ancient African days was the music that made you move. Plunky tells the audience before the band launches into African Rhythms, the lead track from their newest album of the same name. We created this piece so we would have a piece of music that was spiritual, informative, and at the same time, something you could get off to.

A recording of that concert, released for the first time, is included on Soul Love Now: The Black Fire Records Story 1975-1993, a 10-song compilation out this September via Strut Records that celebrates the foundational black-owned record label founded by Plunky and local DJ and record promoter Jimmy Gray. Much of the Black Fire catalogue was birthed during the mid 70s, when Black America was living with the results of the Civil Rights movement. This makes Soul Love Now all the more poignant in the presentthe compilation is an unearthed gem of long-forgotten affirmations of Blackness.

Its one thing to practice four hours a day and do it at home; its another thing when you have the tribe, that audience, Plunky says, calling from his home in Richmond. As he tells the story, he first met Jimmy in late 1974, after discovering a copy of Black Fire, a magazine that featured a Juju album on its cover. Plunky called his record label at the time, New York Citys Strata-East, to inquire about Black Fire. It turned out Jimmy was Strata-Easts third-party promotions person for much of the Mid-Atlantic and Black Fire, the magazine, was his project. After assisting Strata-East with distribution for Gil Scott-Herons Winter In America, along with its hit single The Bottle, Jimmy got the idea to start a label of his own, using the Black Fire moniker hed employed on other projects.

The two became fast friends and, eventually, business partners, as Jimmys knack for distribution and personal philosophy meshed well with Plunkys musical inclination towards Black empowerment, and his desire to learn more about the record business. Black Fire adopted the Strata-East cooperative model; the artist would press the first 1000 copies of the album, and the label assumed distribution costsprovided the record performed well. Artists on Black Fire also enjoyed an extremely favorable royalty rate.

The whole idea was to empower [the artists on the label] to do their own thing, says Strut Records founder Quinton Scott. Its an amazing thing they did with those labels back then because, you know, you forget thatback in the 70s, it was very very hard to get that music on the radio. So it was always a fight economicallyit was very hard to run these things.

By the late 70s, like some of their Black-owned independent Jazz contemporaries, Black Fire wasnt doing well financially. Jimmy and Plunky were pooling together as much money as possible to fund the recordings, but after releasing just five full-lengths and a few singles, the label went dormant for 13 years beginning in 1980. The reality was that, apart from Plunky, most of the roster never made enough noise to fund their first 1000 albums.

I think the shame about Black Fire is that it only ran really for sort-of two or three years before it became a financially difficult thing to run, says Scott. Given that, I think the quality of the music and the bands they had there were phenomenal. Its just a small catalogue, but its dynamite, its brilliant.

For Scott, Black Fire represents an important piece of the jigsaw puzzle in decoding Black indie-labels history. While Strata-East and Tribe were more about serious jazz, Black Firein part thanks to Plunkys inputreleased more R&B-oriented jazz and soul, often the kind of music you could get off to.

One standout from the catalog is the first release from Experience Unlimited, 1977s Free Yourself. The band would eventually develop into a more funk-oriented group, later introducing the world to the Washington D.C. funk offshoot Go-Go with their song Da Butt, which appeared in Spike Lees 1988 film School Daze. You can hear by the way they play it, that its the blueprint for whats coming, says Scott. I love that. Literally, a few years later, everyone is on that same rhythm, and go-go has cemented itself as a sound.

That willingness to cross genres is present all over Soul Love Now, from upbeat songs like Wayne Davis Look At The People! to more Afrocentric numbers like Nia by Juju and Byard Lancasters Drummers From Ibadan. Inspired by his time spent in San Francisco in the late 1960s playing with a South African ex-pat, Plunky instilled a fluidity to the label that prioritized a performances energy and the beauty of the artists intention over more strict genre restrictions. I love dancing in that nuance, where [the genre] is not definitive. And in that place, as a musician and as an audience, we revel in thatthats freedom. That we can float, we can feel this together, without the rigidity of rules, concludes Plunky.

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Soul Love Now And the Legacy of Black Fire Records' Jazz - bandcamp.com

In defence of self-help – Cherwell Online

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Self-help is a maligned genre. And, for a long time, I was one of its detractors.

I convinced myself that self-help was a guilty pleasure: such books deserved to be buried deep inside my bedside drawers, rather than proudly displayed on my shelves. Whenever I picked up a self-help book Id find myself thinking, Pull yourself together and read somereal literature! If you need insight into the human conditionthatbadly then for the love of God woman, just read Dostoevsky!

Training myself out of the shame associated with self-help is an ongoing process. Im not exaggerating when I say that Id sooner be caught on the bus readingFifty Shades of Greythan a volume entitled,Get your Shit together and Stop Being Insecure(FYI this is not a real book, but if you fancy writing it, then Ill be the first to buy a copy). Both genres erotica and self-help feel uncomfortably personal, as well as inextricably linked to self-gratification. God forbid that some rampant narcissist might combine the two and read a self-help bookaboutsex! (of which there are, incidentally, many good ones).

In my mind, self-help had become synonymous with self-indulgence, and this belief was making it harder for me to benefit from the help these books had to offer. I decided that it was time to unpack my relationship with the genre.

Beyond the fact that reading them involves confronting personal problems, Ive worked out that my discomfort with self-help books boils down to two things: the elitist assumption that they are lowbrow and the sexist idea that self-help which focuses on any subject beyond material success is for women.

First, elitism. To understand the snobbery directed at self-help, its worth considering where the modern self-help movement originated. Forms of self-help literature have been around for millennia, from ancient Greece to Tang Dynasty China. However, it was in 1859 that Scotsman Samuel Smiles publishedSelf-Help: the book to which the commercial genre of today owes its title.

Comprised of lectures that Smiles had delivered to working men in Leeds,Self-Helpwas a primer for the poor in self-education and upward mobility. Smiles certainly believed that he was empowering the working classes; but the book spun a pernicious narrative. Its emphasis on the individual responsibility of the poor to transcend their circumstances, minimised the duty of the state and fuelled a harmful distinction between the deserving versus undeserving poor. No wonder that, over a century later, Margaret Thatcher wanted to give a copy ofSelf-Helpto every schoolchild in the country

It makes sense that self-help is deemed lowbrow. The genres very name comes from a manual for the lower classes: literature designed for theaspirers rather than for theaspired towards. It was inevitable that those who could afford to lounge around reading Ovid in their private libraries would look down upon self-help. The genre was notfor them, and I think that this downward-looking perception of self-help has been absorbed into our cultural milieu, which has always been defined by the tastes of the elite.

In an ideal world, self-help would not be necessary. Some even argue that its existence perpetuates a system whereby the government offloads its welfare responsibilities onto individual citizens a phenomenon that has become more apparent than ever in the time of Covid-19. But we should not ridicule something that has served not only as a means of therapy, but of survival for people when the state fails to uphold their interests for them.

This is what the self-care movement of the late 20thcentury was all about: survival. In her 1988 essay,A Burst of Life, Audre Lorde penned the now famous phrase: Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation and that is an act of political warfare. As a self-described black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet, Lorde recognised that she could not rely on a white patriarchal society to promote her basic health and wellbeing, let alone her prosperity. Self-care was adopted by various black civil rights, queer and feminist groups who made the same realisation and sought to rally against their systematic disempowerment.

Given the influence of feminist activists like Lorde on the self-help and self-care literature of today, it is all the more disconcerting that the genre is often mocked and belittled as a womens thing. Though, of course, its not for all women: only thedesperate women, thesadwomen, and worst of all, theunstablewomen the ones who are somehow failing to thrive in todays society.

Was I just imagining the pitying expression of the bookseller when I picked up a copy of Chidera EggeruesWhat a Time to be Alonethe other week? Its for a friend, I wanted to lie. Bad breakup. Shes feeling very *whispers*unstable. Ah yes, the bookseller would grimace back at me, we get a lot of those inthissection.

Something that occurred to me while reading another self-help book (Florence GivensWomen Dont Owe You Pretty) is that people often attack self-help because its something that others use to empower themselves, to proactively tackle the challenges that they face. The best way to stop this process of empowerment in its tracks and preserve the status quo is to ridicule and invalidate the tools that people use to care for and better themselves.

As long as self-help is portrayed as an inherently feminine and superfluous genre, there will be no winners not even men! Laughing at guys who use self-help as a means of exploring their emotions, dismissing their attempts as girly, simply fuels the stigma surrounding mens mental health. Men are likely to restrict themselves to the self-help stereotype that isThe 7 Habits of Highly Efficient People rather than considering self-help books that could help them to look inwards. Meanwhile, women who read self-help books about material success are at worst, shamed, and, at best, shoehorned into the one-dimensional trope of the strong, independent woman.

I should have prefaced this article by pointing out that there is a lot of self-help out there that is complete and utter bullshit, and that there are certainly exploitative patterns within what has become a huge money-making industry. Self-help is not a replacement for therapy or for the care owed to us by the state, and we should be wary of anyone who tries to tell us otherwise. The purpose of this article has been, quite simply, to decode the mockery of self-help books, to considerwhywe are laughing andwhowe are laughing at.

It took my own experience of trauma to recognise that maligning self-help can contribute to disempowerment, and to think non-judgmentally about the traumas which might have led other people to seek self-help and self-care. For now, my self-help books are still stowaways in the bedside drawer and you certainly wont find me reading them brazenly on the bus. However, I can say that Ive learnt to admire individuals who, for whatever reason, choose to take their wellbeing into their own hands. So, think twice before judging someone who uses self-help, because there may come a time when you, too, could benefit from it.

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In defence of self-help - Cherwell Online

Receipt of psychological counseling and integrative medicine services among breast cancer survivors with anxiety – DocWire News

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This article was originally published here

Breast Cancer Res Treat. 2020 Aug 9. doi: 10.1007/s10549-020-05859-0. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE: To define the prevalence and risk factors of anxiety and examine rates and predictors of psychotherapy and integrative medicine service use in breast cancer survivors on aromatase inhibitors (AIs).

METHODS: Observational study of patients with histologically confirmed stage 0-III hormone receptor-positive breast cancer taking a third-generation AI at the time of enrollment. Patients completed self-report measures of anxiety and utilization of psychotherapy and integrative medicine services at a single time-point. We used multivariate logistic regression analyses to identify factors associated with anxiety and receipt of anxiety treatment services.

RESULTS: Among the 1085 participants, the majority were younger than 65 years of age (n = 673, 62.0%) and white (n = 899, 82.9%). Approximately one-third (30.8%) reported elevated anxiety ( 8 on the anxiety subscale of the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale). Of patients with elevated anxiety, only 24.6% reported receiving psychological counseling, 25.3% used integrative medicine services, and 39.8% received either type of treatment since their diagnosis. Patients with an education level of high school or less were less likely to receive psychological counseling (AOR, 0.43, 95% CI 0.19-0.95) and integrative medicine services (OR 0.30, 95% CI 0.12-0.72) than patients with higher levels of education.

CONCLUSIONS: Anxiety is common in breast cancer patients treated with AIs yet the majority of anxious patients do not receive evidence-based treatment, even when these treatments are available. Better systematic anxiety screening and treatment initiation are needed to reduce disparities in care by education level.

PMID:32772224 | DOI:10.1007/s10549-020-05859-0

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Receipt of psychological counseling and integrative medicine services among breast cancer survivors with anxiety - DocWire News

Bitcoin Still the Favorite Currency on the Darknet – ihodl.com

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According to a study conducted by The Block, Bitcoin is still the users' favorite crypto for making payments and withdrawing money on the darknet.

As per the results of the study, 98% of the 49 darknet markets analyzed support the largest cryptocurrency on the market.

However, it is not the only one. Monero, a popular privacy-centered crypto, is the second most widely used cryptocurrency, as it is used in 45% of the darknet markets studied.

The third and fourth place are occupied by Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash, which are used in 29% and 12% of the markets, respectively.

iHodl reported in mid-July the use of BTC's mixing services, which allow users to hide their trace on the network, surged during the first quarter of the year.

In May it was known the total dollar value of Bitcoins transferred on the dark web had increased by 65%.

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Bitcoin Still the Favorite Currency on the Darknet - ihodl.com

OPINION EXCHANGE | Admit it: The two-state solution for Palestine is dead – Minneapolis Star Tribune

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Support for the two-state solution is the pious cover invoked by senators and members of Congress whenever they are asked to support Palestinian rights. Our politicians talk about two states even though Israels Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long spoken of less than a state to describe his vision of a future for Palestinians who demand equal rights in their ancestral land.

Now, with Netanyahu promising to annex a third of the West Bank Palestinian territory, illegally occupied by Israel since 1967, we are at the end of the zombie two-state myth. The choice for Israel and for its U.S. supporters is now clear: an apartheid Jewish-supremacist nation with millions of Indigenous people denied self-determination, freedom of movement, equal justice and other basic human rights or the alternative, two peoples with equal rights living together in one state.

Many Jews will regard the latter as failure of the utopian Zionist dream of creating an exclusively Jewish nation state in a land inhabited by others.

The Jewish writer Peter Beinart, once a loyal two-state liberal Zionist, recently horrified supporters of Israel with his articles in the New York Times and Jewish Currents confessing that he no longer believes in a Jewish state. For that, some Jews are calling him a traitor.

Beinarts sin seems to be letting his humanity override his liberal Zionist instincts. He has now declared his belief in a single, binational state with equal rights for all, explaining in the New York Times: I knew Israel was wrong to deny Palestinians in the West Bank citizenship, due process, free movement and the right to vote in the country in which they lived. But the dream of a two-state solution that would give Palestinians a country of their own let me hope that I could remain a liberal and a supporter of Jewish statehood at the same time.

Beinart and many others have seen that hope extinguished by Israels relentless building of Jewish-only settler colonies on Palestinian lands throughout the West Bank territory that Israel has occupied for 53 years, in violation of existing international law. Israels formal annexation that is planned would leave only noncontiguous enclaves for Palestinians to inhabit in their ancestral lands, erasing all hope for a viable, independent state of their own.

Its time, Beinart concluded, to abandon the traditional two-state solution and embrace the goal of equal rights for Jews and Palestinians. Its time to imagine a Jewish home that is not a Jewish state.

Palestinians have been imagining such a state for a long time.

In his latest book, The Hundred Years War on Palestine, Columbia University historian Rashid Khalidi reframes the long struggle for control of Palestine as a colonial war on the Indigenous population that has rationally resisted displacement by Zionist settlers for more than a century.

With the establishment of Israel Khalidi writes, Zionism did succeed in fashioning a potent national movement and a thriving new people in Palestine. But, despite a campaign of Zionist terror and the ethnic cleansing of 750,000 Palestinians, the Zionist movement could not fully supplant the countrys original population, which is what would have been necessary for the ultimate triumph of Zionism.

The fundamental colonial nature of Israel in Palestine must be acknowledged, Khalidi writes, but there are now two peoples in Palestine, irrespective of how they came into being, and the conflict between them cannot be resolved as long as the national existence of each is denied by the other. Their mutual acceptance can only be based on complete equality of rights, including national rights, notwithstanding the crucial historical difficulties between the two. There is no other possible sustainable solution, barring the unthinkable notion of one peoples extermination or expulsion by the other.

In general, Americans have not viewed Israel as a domineering colonial power. And considering our own colonial history, some Americans think we have no right to criticize Israel. No matter that U.S. taxpayers provide at least $4 billion a year to support Israel, a prosperous country that is the largest recipient of our foreign aid.

Our representatives in Congress refuse to put conditions on this aid for Israels behavior, be it annexing occupied land or imprisoning Palestinian children. They justify unqualified support for Israel by saying it is the only democracy in the Middle East. It is, however, a country that does not provide equality to all its people. Israel grants full rights only to a specific ethno-religious group, and it denies all rights to millions of other people under its control. That is not the kind of democracy embedded in the U.S. Constitution. That is apartheid.

As Israel prepares to formally annex the most fertile, most water-rich third of the Palestinian West Bank, will America continue to enable Israeli apartheid and the Hundred Years War on Palestine? Or will we help birth a true democracy based on equal rights? That is our choice.

Mary Christine Bader is a writer in Wayzata.

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OPINION EXCHANGE | Admit it: The two-state solution for Palestine is dead - Minneapolis Star Tribune

Question of independent redistricting in Oklahoma could land on 2022 ballot – Oklahoman.com

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Treat accused People Not Politicians of spreading false information about the legislative redistricting process by saying the Legislature conducts redistricting "behind closed doors." The Senate is committed to an open and transparent redistricting process that allows for citizen involvement, he said.

"It may be a new proposal, but its the same old, misdirected idea: a redistricting coup to rearrange Oklahoma to make it easier for liberal politicians to get elected," Treat said. "This is a poor solution in search of a nonexistent problem and hopefully will be rejected by Oklahomans.

People Not Politicians withdrew and tweaked its initiative petition so, if passed, the independent redistricting commission can get started as soon as possible instead of having to wait until Oklahoma's next redistricting cycle in 2030.

The group initially filed its initiative petition in October 2019, but was held up by two court challenges seeking to have the measure bounced from the ballot. When the time came to collect the 177,958 signatures necessary to qualify for the ballot, Oklahoma's Secretary of State had halted signature collection due to the pandemic.

The redistricting petition details the selection process for choosing commissioners, their qualifications, redistricting criteria and what happens if commissioners cannot agree on new maps.

The Legislature would be forbidden from altering the commission or trying to usurp its redistricting powers.

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Question of independent redistricting in Oklahoma could land on 2022 ballot - Oklahoman.com

Import bans cant be a throwback to the licence raj – Livemint

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The defence ministry on Sunday announced a ban on import of 101 defence items to create domestic manufacturing of 4 trillion in six to seven years to protect local industries. The move is in line with the Centres push for self-reliance. Mint explores the issue in detail.

How exactly do the import bans work?

There are two kinds of policy instruments that are used by governments to regulate international trade, one being import tariffs like custom duties and the other being quantitative restrictions or quotas. Import tariffs allow for import of certain items after paying a tax, while quantitative restrictions limit the amount of goods that can be imported into a country. A ban on import is a type of a quantitative restriction that prohibits import of an item in the country. With a ban on imports of defence equipment, our defence forces will now have to meet their requirements through domestic manufacturers.

How are they different from licenses, quotas?

They key difference between the import bans that have now been imposed and the licences and quotas that existed before 1991 is that there are only a few items under the negative list that require permission or licences from the government. Unlike earlier, for all goods outside the negative list, people can set up businesses and produce goods and services without having to procure a government licence before manufacturing an item. The same is true for imports where only specific items require prior government permission or can only be imported up to a certain quantity.

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Will import bans help lift the domestic industry?

India has tried various forms of protectionism in the past to assist domestic manufacturers, from import tariffs to quotas, but these did not have the desired impact. The key issues are land laws, labour laws, availability of affordable electricity for industries, high cost of taxes and capital along with issues related to enforcement of contract.

Why are we still opting for import bans, then?

Most advanced economies provided protection to their local industries during the early periods of industrialization. Many South Asian countries combined protectionism with domestic reforms, which led to the creation of an incentive structure for firms to look at export-oriented markets. A key element of the self-reliance move includes a strong push for reforms across sectors. This, combined with the proposed land and labour law changes, suggest a push towards making domestic manufacturing competitive.

Is there a chance for clock turning back?

Many people have cautioned against the possibility of Atmanirbhar Bharat turning the clock back to a period of licence-quota raj because of the increase in tariffs and import bans. However, it is noteworthy that India allows liberal foreign investment inflows, as against the situation before 1991. We are inviting foreign firms to invest for catering to our domestic market. However, we must be careful as India has the chance to integrate with global value chains.

Karan Bhasin is a Delhi-based policy researcher.

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Import bans cant be a throwback to the licence raj - Livemint

Jabotinsky in the mirror of reality – The Jerusalem Post

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Eighty years ago, the stormy heart of Zeev Jabotinsky, Zionist leader, founder of the Revisionist movement and Betar Youth Organization, fell silent.

After decades of his teachings being pushed to the margins of public discourse, today Jabotinsky finally receives a proper place in history. His ideology has slowly but surely seeped into the public consciousness and is appreciated for its merits.

This significant step comes with clear support and recognition from the worlds greatest democratic superpower the US. Once and for all, the uncertainty is being cleared away regarding the future of the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria and solidifies the main tenets of modern-day Zionism.

Back in the 1930s, Jabotinsky shared his dream of an Arab-Jewish agreement regarding the Land of Israel. His respectful attitude toward the Arabs is expressed in these remarks:

But perhaps no war is necessary. Perhaps you, the children of Ishmael son of Abraham, our patriarch, will support the claim of the people of Israel... that a homeless nation may be allowed to return and settle in its ancient kingdom.

Knowing the power of the stubbornness of the Arab nations, as well as the genuine desire to fulfill the aspirations of the Jewish people for the establishment of a Jewish state in the Land of Israel, he opened a door to a liberal approach of compensation while providing a well-known measure of independence.

Now here we are in the year 2020 and countless proposals for bridging the gaps between the Arabs and the Israelis have been discussed, proposed, attempted and force-fed.

Attempts to bring peace and creative solutions for both sides were offered as early as the last century.

There was the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which was met by a complete refusal from the Arab world, who used severe violence and rioting against Jews in the years that followed. The UN Partition Plan of November 29, 1947 was also completely rejected by the Arab world, and following the vote, and hostile actions were launched against Jews both in Arab lands and in the Land of Israel.

From the Six Day War of 1967 until today, countless plans and initiatives were launched and failed. Amid international headlines and great fanfare, agreements was tried and tested. They include: the Madrid Conference, the Oslo Accords, the Hebron Protocol, the Wye River Memorandum, the Sharm El Sheikh Memorandum, the Camp David Summit, the Taba Summit, the Arab Peace Initiative, the Road Map for Peace, the French Peace Initiative and the Kerry Initiative.

IN BETWEEN those initiatives, plans such as the Disengagement and the Convergence Plan have been tried, and unfortunately, have simply not worked, resulting in fierce debates, societal rifts, terrorism and military operations.

Our generation was privileged to be born into an independent country, with language, culture, a strong military, robust economy, educational excellence and hi-tech expertise. We did not experience what our parents and grandparents did in exile. We did not struggle to hold on to our Jewish heritage or feel the longing to return to our home the Land of Israel.

The USs Deal of the Century is now under consideration and has been debated from different angles. But 80 years after the passing of Jabotinsky, it is time to stop sitting back.

The principles of the Zionist movement include the unity of the Jewish people, its bond to its historic homeland Eretz Yisrael, and the centrality of the State of Israel and Jerusalem, its capital, in the life of the nation. Zionism calls for aliyah to Israel from all countries and the effective integration of all immigrants into Israel as a Jewish-Zionist and democratic state. Settling the land is an expression of Zionist fulfillment.

In my opinion, the Deal of the Century, yet another of the innumerable plans for trying to live a normalized life here, may be a rare window of opportunity to unite our ranks. For the first time since Israels founding, our borders could be solidified and Jerusalem recognized as our eternal and historic capital, while fulfilling Zionism by implementing our sovereignty in the heartland of our nation, Judea and Samaria.

For a moment, Jabotinsky seems to be somewhat involved in these current proceedings.

If we sit back, Jabotinsky wrote, and look at how others are clamoring and we do not intervene the nations of the world will not consider us, our neighbors will lift their heads against us, and any piece of goodness that we may have and any future goodness we would have in our world will fall in the hands of others, and only we will be disappointed.

And us? Our job today, 80 years since his passing, is to act for the fulfillment of Zionist values. It is to settle, build, flourish, educate and sustain the exemplary society which the forefathers of our country and the pioneers of Zionism dreamed

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Jabotinsky in the mirror of reality - The Jerusalem Post

TS Elida strengthens off coast of Mexico; to avoid land – 95.7 News

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by The Associated Press

Posted Aug 9, 2020 6:33 pm ADT

Last Updated Aug 9, 2020 at 6:40 pm ADT

MEXICO CITY Tropical Storm Elida has formed off Mexicos Pacific coast and is expected to become a hurricane on Monday as it moves away from land.

There are no coastal watches or warnings in effect but the U.S. National Hurricane Center warns that swells generated by Elida could affect portions of the coast of west-central Mexico and the southern Baja California peninsula over the next couple of days.

Elida had maximum sustained winds of 50 mph (85 kph) late Sunday afternoon and was located about 195 miles (315 kilometres) southwest of Manzanillo, Mexico. It was moving west-northwest at 15 mph (24 kph).

The hurricane centre said Elida should become a hurricane Monday then begin to weaken late Tuesday or Wednesday as it moves out to sea.

The Associated Press

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TS Elida strengthens off coast of Mexico; to avoid land - 95.7 News

If the Liberal party truly cared about racial injustice it would pay its fair share to Close the Gap – The Guardian

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Throughout our countrys modern history, the treatment of our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander brothers and sisters has been appalling. It has also been inconsistent with the original instructions from the British Admiralty to treat the Indigenous peoples of this land with proper care and respect. From first encounter to the frontier wars, the stolen generations and ongoing institutionalised racism, First Nations people have been handed a raw deal. The gaps between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians outcomes in areas of education, employment, health, housing and justice are a product of historical, intergenerational maltreatment.

In 2008, I apologised to the stolen generations and Indigenous Australians for the racist laws and policies of successive Australian governments. The apology may have been 200 years late, but it was an important part of the reconciliation process.

But the apology meant nothing if it wasnt backed by action. For this reason, my government acted on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social justice commissioner Tom Calmas call to Close the Gap. We worked hard to push this framework through the Council of Australian governments so that all states and territories were on board with the strategy. We also funded it, with $4.6bn committed to achieve each of the six targets we set. While the targets and funding were critical to any improvements in the lives of Indigenous Australians, we suspected the Coalition would scrap our programs once they returned to government. After all, only a few years earlier, John Howards Indigenous affairs minister was denying the very existence of the stolen generations. Howard himself had refused to deliver an apology for a decade. And then both he and Peter Dutton decided to boycott the official apology in 2008.

To ensure that the Closing the Gap strategy would not be abandoned, we made it mandatory for the prime minister to stand before the House of Representatives each year and account for the success and failures in reaching the targets that were set.

Had we not adopted the Closing the Gap framework, would we now be on target to have 95% of Indigenous four year-olds enrolled in early childhood education? I think not. Would we have halved the gap for young Indigenous adults to have completed year 12 by 2020? I think not. And would we see progress on closing the gap in child mortality, and literacy and numeracy skills? No, I think not.

Target 1: Close the Gap in life expectancy within a generation, by 2031.

Target 2: By 2031, increase the proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander babies with a healthy birthweight to 91%.

Target 3: By 2025, increase the proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children enrolled in Year Before Full-time Schooling early childhood education to 95%.

Target 4: By 2031, increase the proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children assessed as developmentally on track in all five domains of the Australian Early Development Census to 55%.

Target 5: By 2031, increase the proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people (age 20-24) attaining year 12 or equivalent to 96%.

Target 6: By 2031, increase the proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people aged 25-34 years who have completed a tertiary qualification to 70%.

Target 7: By 2031, increase the proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth (15-24 years) who are in employment, education or training to 67%.

Target 8: By 2031, increase the proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people aged 25-64 who are employed to 62%.

Target 9: By 2031, increase the proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people living in appropriately sized (not overcrowded) housing to 88%.

Target 10: By 2031, reduce the rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults held in incarceration by at least 15%.

Target 11: By 2031, reduce the rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people (10-17 years) in detention by at least 30%.

Target 12: By 2031, reduce the rate of over-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in out-of-home care by 45%.

Target 13: A significant and sustained reduction in violence and abuse against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and children towards zero.

Target 14: Significant and sustained reduction in suicide of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people towards zero.

Target 15: a) By 2030, a 15% increase in Australia's landmass subject to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people's legal rights or interests; b) By 2030, a 15% increase in areas covered by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people's legal rights or interests in the sea.

Target 16: By 2031, there is a sustained increase Torres Strait Islander languages being spoken.

Despite these achievements, the most recent Closing the Gap report nonetheless showed Australia was not on track to meet four of the deadlines wed originally set. A major reason for this is that federal funding for the closing the gap strategy collapsed under Tony Abbott, the great wrecking-ball of Australian politics, whose government cut $534.4m from programs dedicated to improving the lives of Indigenous Australians. And its never been restored by Abbotts successors. Its all there in the budget papers.

Whatever targets are put in place, governments must commit to physical resourcing of Closing the Gap. They are not going to be delivered by magic.

On Thursday last week, the new national agreement on Closing the Gap was announced. I applaud Pat Turner and other Indigenous leaders who will now sit with the leaders of the commonwealth, states, territories and local government to devise plans to achieve the new targets they have negotiated.

Scott Morrison, however, sought to discredit our governments targets, rather than coming clean about the half-billion-dollar funding cuts that had made it impossible to achieve these targets under any circumstances. His argument that the original targets were conjured out of thin air by my government is demonstrably untrue. The truth is, Jenny Macklin, the responsible minister, spoke widely with Indigenous leaders to prioritise the areas that needed to be urgently addressed in the original Closing the Gap targets. Furthermore, if Morrison is now truly awakened to the intrinsic value of listening to Indigenous Australians, I look forward to him enshrining an Indigenous voice to parliament in the Constitution, given this is the universal position of all Indigenous groups.

Yet amid the welter of news coverage of the new closing the gap agreement, the central question remains: who will be paying the bill? While shared responsibility to close the gap between all levels of government and Indigenous organisations might sound like good news, this will quickly unravel into a political blame game if the commonwealth continues to shirk its financial duty.

The announcement this week that the commonwealth would allocate $45m over four years is just a very bad joke. This is barely 10% of what the Liberals cut from our national Closing the Gap strategy. And barely 1% of our total $4.5bn national program to meet our targets agreed to with the states and territories in 2009.

The Liberals want you to believe they care about racial injustice. But they dont believe there are any votes in it. This is well understood by Scotty From Marketing, a former state director of the Liberal party, who lives and breathes polling and focus groups. Thats why they are not even pretending to fund the realisation of the new more realistic targets they have so loudly proclaimed.

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If the Liberal party truly cared about racial injustice it would pay its fair share to Close the Gap - The Guardian

BLM admits its focus is to abolish the US ‘as we know it’ – Leader & Times

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GUEST COLUMN, Larry Phillips, Kismet

Within the hysteria generated by the death of George Floyd, the fawning acceptance of the terrorist group Black Lives Matter and its Marxist agenda by so many is a sign of systemic socialism being taught throughout Americas institutions of higher learning.

That indoctrination is seen in the major professional sports leagues where players are mostly under 35 and have been dumbed down by universities. They were never taught the countrys founding and history, thus anti-America is rampant among pro and college athletes.

But BLMs agenda is also accepted without question by all those millions of young liberals that control the social media companies like Facebook, Google and Twitter. And you have too many huge corporations to mention that fall into that kind of thinking as well.

I believe this misguided and unquestioned support of an entity BLM that was founded on Marxism will go down in history as one of the biggest scams ever unleashed on America. And the most fools in an era.

In Portland, Ore., July 17, BLMorganizer Lilith Sinclair made a remarkable statement. At a resistance protest, Sinclair, who identifies as an Afro-Indigenous non-binary local organizer said what they were organizing for: Not just for the abolition of the militarized police state but also the United States as we know it, according to a July 18 report posted at http://www.redstate.com.

She then also said theyre standing on stolen land and she wants to do a land acknowledgment, the report added.

Redstate then posted what Sinclair said previously in June and posted by Willamette Week.

For me, I cannot look at and will not look at these moments and these movements that are happening right now were living through history as riots,Sinclair said. Instead, what they actually are, are the uprisings that the U.S. and every other imperialist and capitalist, racist and oppressive system has seen across history. There only comes a certain level to which you can ask large and vast numbers of people to sacrifice their literal health, lives and sanity for the capitalist system that will not provide for them and will also exploit their labor for the protection of the continual padding of the pockets of the 1 percent.

So, as Redstate noted, BLMis not really peacefully advocating for police reform or against police brutality: Its about eliminating capitalism and taking over the U.S.A.

But how many average citizens realize this? How many professional sports players? How many board members of huge corporations?

Its not ever reported in the sympathetic Lame Stream Media, which has the same agenda. In fact, as Redstate reported in the same story about Sinclair, CNNs Chris Fredo Cuomo praised BLMmarchers, comparing them to WWII military who stormed the beaches at Normandy.

He said that when asked about the marchers who were chanting No KKK, no fascist USA, claiming to be fighting fascism.

According to BLMs leaders, they seek not reform but transformation; they envision a fundamentally different world, a world emerging in the wake of a complete transformation of the current systems, according to a lengthy report by Peter C. Myer and posted in the Summer of 2017 at http://www.nationalaffairs.com titled The Mind of Black Lives Matter.

BLM is a veritable symphony of revolutionary rhetoric,Myer noted.

Yet we see leftist mayor in cities controlled by socialist-loving city councils allowing an entire block of roadway in their downtowns to be painted with huge Black Lives Matter murals. Yes, they call them murals, while most folks call it vandalism.

This is over the top to many people, and the consequences of such illegality is coming home to roost.

In Redwood City, Calif., city leaders allowed resident Dan Pease to paint a Black Lives Matter mural on one of the citys main downtown streets on July 4. The city even supplied the yellow paint Pease used to create the mural.

Then a real estate attorney in the area made a mural request of her own to local officials: She wanted to paint MAGA 2020 nearby, according to a July 22 report posted by Sister Toldjah at http://www.redstate.com.

The attorney, Maria Rutenberg, in a statement (to the city) noted that it would only be fair to allow such a mural seeing as the city has open(ed) up asphalts as public forums, the report noted.

Smelling a justifiable legal suit they couldnt win, the goofy city council quietly had the mural removed (spray-washed) during the dark of night, and rightfully tucked their tails between their legs and dropped approval of all street murals.

Of course, everybody knows the absolute love affair New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has with BLM, and his hatred of police is legendary (even before George Floyd). Weve all seen him with roller brush in hand helping BLM activists painting BLM in street-filling letters in front of Trump Towers in downtown NYC.

Voila. Guess who has decided that was a stupid idea?

Yes, Hizzoner himself.

Its been revealed that the city ignored its own rules for the process of public art projects like the BLM lettering because de Blasio never got the required permits for painting the lettering,according to a http://www.redstate.com report.

That (the lettering) is something that again transcends all normal realities because we are at a moment of history when that had to be said and done, thats a decision I made, de Blasio said. But the normal process continues for anyone who wants to apply.

Hizzoner has blocked other groups (Pro-Trump or pro-cops) from painting streets, and says hell have to approve future permits at the citys public arts department, too.

If there were any conservatives living in NYC, Ipray one will step forward and sue de Blasio for breaking the law.

He should be arrested, where he can post bail oh, right, there is no bail in NYC. Crooks are released immediately.

Well, fine him. He broke the law.

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BLM admits its focus is to abolish the US 'as we know it' - Leader & Times

Letter to the Editor: People who want change hate America – Fairfield Daily Republic

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Some corporations, including major league sports franchises, have caved to groups trashing our nations culture and heritage. Theyre intimidated by a tiny fringe of malcontents. Theyre losing the respect of the great majority of Americans.

On the individual level, taking a knee during our national anthem, or not standing for the Pledge of Allegiance, are within the bounds of the First Amendment; but the perpetrators are merely taking advantage of a right protected by the Constitution and defended by millions of men and women far better than they.

Blocking streets or sidewalks, splashing vile graffiti, destroying statues of historic figures, or in any way harming citizens or their property are not protected by the First Amendment. We expect our police to enforce laws against such action. Thats why some groups want police departments reformed or even gone. Then they can do violence with impunity.

They hate America. They dont accept that this nation has given them freedom to strive after personal goals. Theyve come to think that socialism or anarchy is better. Theyve not been taught or learned how such ideas have destroyed other countries and enslaved their people. If they get their way if they change America they will not be in charge.

The reality is that, if politicians cave and defund or restrict law enforcement, only those of us who are armed will stand in the way. Thats why gun sales are booming across the land.

Most Americans dont want this confrontation of ideas to go any further. We all need to stop and think about the consequences if the destruction of recent months continues. Its pitting one person against another. We need to put America first.

Our nations enemies are rooting for the rioters and malcontents.

John Takeuchi

Fairfield

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Letter to the Editor: People who want change hate America - Fairfield Daily Republic

Monday Morning Thoughts: We Resemble This Politico Article the Clash of Suburbs, Housing and Race – The Peoples Vanguard of Davis

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A provocative Politico article that came out this week, entitled Trump Doesnt Understand Todays SuburbsAnd Neither Do You. But this isnt about Trumpits about us.

As the article notes, Suburbs are getting more diverse, but that doesnt mean theyre woke. Thomas Sugrue says if you want to understand where American politics is going, look how suburban whites are sorting themselves out.

While Thomas Sugrue, director of metro studies at NYU points out, Trump has misread the reality of todays suburbs, he argues most of the rest of us have, too.

What he argues is, Its not simply that suburban America is increasingly diverse, nor that a majority of Black Americans live in the suburbs, nor even that a majority of new immigrants settle in suburbs, not cities. Instead, its that Americas suburbs are ground zero for a major schism among white suburbanites one remaking the electoral map before our eyes, and revealing why that old suburban playbook just doesnt work anymore.

Were seeing a suburban political divide quite different from the one that played out after World War II, when well-to-do, middle-class and even some working-class whites living in suburbia found common ground by looking through their rearview mirrors with horror at the cities they were fleeing, says Sugrue.

Another time, we will talk about the national implications of this. But I want to discuss Davisbecause it remains a curious study. Fifteen years ago when I started getting active, Davis was an upper class white community. It was nominally liberal.

But the history of Davis has been contentious, in part because of the battle between different forcesuniversity versus town. Progressive in the form of environmentalism, but also slow growth and exclusive.

The Vanguard in July 2006 emerged because of this duality. This is a city that, two years after it shut down its Human Relations Commission (temporarily) due to advocacy for police oversight, turned around and by overwhelming numbers supported Barack Obama in his bid to become the first Black president in America.

Davis has progressed a lot in 15 years. We have seen the installation of that same civilian police oversight body in 2018 that caused the HRC to be shut down in 2006. We saw over 1000 people marching for Black Lives in June. We saw 2000 people sign a petition to put the school boards appointment on the ballot because they appointed another white person to the board.

On the other hand, Blacks in Davis are four times more likely to be stopped by police than whites, continuing the trend from 15 years earlier and the common complaint among Black people especially of being pulled over for DWB (Driving while Black or Brown). Meanwhile, as cities across the country have placed Black Lives Matter on their streets, Davis had to recently remove theirs when others wanted to put contrary messages.

But, as the Politico article notes, perhaps the big issues are on the land use front.

It turns out Davis is not alone in this regard.

White liberal suburbanites have played a critical role in the process of housing segregation and the resistance to low-income housing, says Sugrue. We cant just think about it as torch-bearing angry white supremacists. If they were the only obstacles to equality in suburban housing, we would have come a lot farther than we have.

Here Sugrue notes, In modern American history, race and class have been fundamentally intertwined. Its impossible to understand economic inequality and how it plays out without understanding its racial dimensions.

He continues: Race became, for many Americans, an easy marker for class, and class often became a way to obscure the racial dynamics at play in shaping housing markets. And along with that goes a rhetoric of colorblindness shared by many white Americans, regardless of their political orientation: I dont see people by the color of their skin, or I would have anybody be my neighbor red, white, black, yellow or purple. I cant tell you how many times Ive heard that as a way of professing supposed indifference to race.

But this point is critical: White liberal suburbanites have played a critical role in the process of housing segregation and the resistance to low-income housing.

This is the original critique of the Vanguardthe dark underbelly of Davis, if you will. We think of racism and white supremacists, but what we dont think about is obstacles to equality in suburban housing and the upper middle class white liberal communities. As Mayor Gloria Partida has pointed out, some of the most progressive communities are the most racially segregated.

Sugrue points out that one area of really important bipartisan convergence is the politics of homeownership the notion that property values need to be protected and, in particular, the politics of NIMBY, or not in my backyard.

He argues that there are liberals who profess to be progressive on matters of race who profess and support the idea of a racially diverse society, who say that they would like their children to go to racially mixed schools but when it comes to the questions of changing the landscape of their neighborhoods or changing the color of their neighbors or their kids school classmates, these folks start to sound a lot like conservatives, even if theyre ostensibly liberals.

This, he argues, manifests itself in significant opposition to the construction of multifamily housing.

He argues that its not even couched in the rhetoric of class.

Its not, I dont want multifamily housing in my neighborhood because I dont want lower-class people living here.

Instead, its, This is going to change the character of the neighborhood, or Its going to jeopardize my property values, or Its going to bring congestion.

Sound familiar?

David M. Greenwald reporting

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Monday Morning Thoughts: We Resemble This Politico Article the Clash of Suburbs, Housing and Race - The Peoples Vanguard of Davis

The implications of Australia’s strategic update for Cambodia – The Strategist

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On 1 July, Australia unveiled its 2020 defence strategic update, which redefines the countrys strategic priorities and its response to the rapidly evolving regional security landscape. From Cambodias point of view, two key components in the revised defence policy warrant mentioning.

The first is Australias plan to direct greater attention and resources to its immediate region, ranging from the north-eastern Indian Ocean, through maritime and mainland Southeast Asia to Papua New Guinea and the South West Pacific. The update aims to shape Australias strategic environment, to deter actions against its interests, and to respond to threats with credible force.

To attain this goal, Canberra has committed $270 billion over the next decade to boost the capabilities of the Australian Defence Force. The update has a strong focus on offensive capabilities in the land, maritime, air, space and cyber domains. That will include acquisitions of long-range combat systems, such as Lockheed Martins AGM-158C long-range anti-ship missile, or LRASM, and hypersonic weapon programs, which will increase the costs for adversaries planning to attack Australia and deter those threatening its interests.

Viewed from Cambodia, the updates second key aspect is its grim assessment of the deteriorating security landscape in the Indo-Pacific. As the United States and the Peoples Republic of China ramp up their strategic competition, Australia sees stability declining more rapidly than anticipated and considers the prospect of a high-intensity interstate conflict unlikely but less remote than four years ago.

This disturbing assessment provides a signal to Cambodian leaders about the risks and challenges lying ahead of them.

Cambodia may well entertain the notion that the US and China are engaging in a Cold Warstyle strategic contest in Asia. Rhetoric between leaders in Washington and Beijing, inflamed by the Covid-19 pandemic, a shift in the USs position in the South China Sea maritime disputes, and Chinas increasingly aggressive foreign policy and military postures around the world, seems to have pushed the trajectory of their bilateral relationship towards more hostile territory. Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has warned that Southeast Asia may need to choose between Washington and Beijing. Given what has occurred so far in 2020, that may happen sooner than expected.

The most viable foreign policy option for Cambodia is to continue to promote a rules-based regional order that embraces not only the US and China but also middle powers such as Australia to keep the Indo-Pacific free of great-power competition and open to free trade, cooperation and peace. This can be done bilaterally with foreign partners and multilaterally through regional platforms led by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The ASEAN Defence Ministers Meeting is one forum in which Cambodia can act collectively with fellow member states to engage in regional security dialogues, promote practical partnerships in military and non-military areas, and build confidence and lessen the risk of miscalculations.

The update recognises the erratic, if not declining, nature of the US presence in the Indo-Pacific, especially under President Donald Trump. Even though its a US ally, Australia realises the need to be able to deter threats against its interests.

Cambodia should view the update as a sign of Australias determination to uphold a rules-based regional order, from which the region can benefit diplomatically and economically. Phnom Penh should step up its political, economic and military engagement with Canberra to ensure that this middle power remains a robust contributor to a liberal international order in Asia.

This does not necessarily mean that Cambodia should side with Australia and its US ally against China. As a small state, Cambodia should continue to hedge by concurrently engaging multiple external partners through pragmatic cooperation on issues of shared interest, candid assessment of policy differences, people-to-people exchanges, partnerships between academic and policy communities, and governmental dialogues.

In the update, Australia has indicated a bold and long-term interest in maintaining a stable, peaceful and prosperous Indo-Pacific in which big, middle and small powers can co-exist peacefully. Cambodia should view the revised policy as an opportunity to invigorate its bilateral ties with Australia and, through ASEAN, engage this middle power deeper into regional security structures. A militarily capable and regionally involved Australia is critical for Cambodias foreign policy and for the future of stability and peace in the Indo-Pacific.

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The implications of Australia's strategic update for Cambodia - The Strategist

Comfort food and books for comfort – Roswell Daily Record

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Teriyaki Chicken stir fry and author J. Courtney Whites mystery book, The Sun

The summer heat is upon us and with it, we long for light and easy meals that keep the kitchen cool. One of my favorite summer dishes I have made since moving to Roswell in 1999 is teriyaki chicken stir fry. My late husband David looked forward to it and would eat the entire pan in one sitting.

The first time I made the dish was on our shopping tour to Cannon Air Force Base, which happened every three months or so. My husband was a 100% disabled retired Marine Corps Veteran and enjoyed the international section on base that had German, Thai and Japanese food. We usually stayed overnight there the first day we would shop for dried goods, like German dumplings and spices. The next day, I shopped for fresh produce and meat.

I always loved to try out something new and on one of those first shopping tours, I found a bottle of ready-made teriyaki marinade. When we got home, I followed the recipe and was addicted. It was 2000 and Roswells grocery stores didnt yet have the variety of products that we have today. The internet was there, of course, but it was not as easy to find people who posted recipes. So, when I ran out of the teriyaki marinade, I walked down to our Roswell Public Library to see if they had a cookbook on how to make teriyaki sauce. Long story short, I found several books and started experimenting.

You might find it interesting that teriyaki sauce is a typical American sauce that was created by Japanese immigrants in the 1960s in Hawaii. There are many varieties and I experimented quite a bit myself. Here is my favorite:

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Teriyaki chicken stir fry

Serves 4 (or one very hungry Marine)

Ingredients

For the sauce:

1/2 cup water

1/2 cup pineapple juice

1 Tbsp brown sugar

2 Tbsp honey

1 Tbsp rice vinegar

1 Tbsp minced garlic

1 Tbsp minced ginger

1/2 Tbsp hot red chile flakes

1 Tbsp cornstarch

For the stir fry:

1 Tbsp cold-pressed olive oil

1 pound boneless, skinless chicken breast, cut into pieces (you can also use fajita-cut chicken)

5 cups chopped mixed vegetables that are in season (at the moment squash, bell peppers, broccoli, snap peas, mushrooms and onions)

1 8 oz can sliced water chestnuts, drained; and if they are thick, chopped

Preparation:

Either the night before, or early in the morning, prepare the sauce by adding all ingredientsexcept the cornstarch in a sauce pot and bring to a boil. Mix the cornstarch with 2 Tbsp of cold water until there are no lumps. While stirring, pour the cornstarch water into the sauce. Cook, while constantly stirring, for 15 minutes or until the sauce is reduced and appears syrupy. Take 1/2 cup from the sauce and keep in a separate covered jar and refrigerate.

Let the rest of sauce cool for 10 minutes before pouring it over the raw chicken cubes in a covered bowl. Refrigerate overnight or at least 4 hours.

Heat the oil in a deep frying pan until it glistens, but doesnt smoke. Add the chicken and fry until it is light brown. Remove the chicken and keep warm on a separate plate.

Add a little more oil and add vegetables, stir-frying them for 5 minutes on high. Return the chicken to the pan and add the 1/2 cup of sauce. Simmer for 15 minutes.

Serve by itself, with rice or rice noodles. You can easily double the portion and freeze part of it for later.

You can also decorate the plates with toasted sesame seeds or sliced green onions.

Books for comfort

The Sun

Today, I have quite a treat for fans of mystery stories. Santa Fe native J. Courtney Whites 365-page book, The Sun, has everything a good mystery book needs: Murder, quirky characters and the vast openness of New Mexicos ranch lands. Though White was born in Philadelphia, he headed West to Phoenix at the age of six and his love for the American West kept him in the region. His work brought him to the Sierra Club in 1994 when he became an activist wanting to conserve Americas West. He worked on the front lines of collaborative conservation and regenerative agriculture, exploring on-the-ground solutions to global issues, including land restoration. In 2014, he was inspired by his distant cousin, William Faulkner, and started his path into writing fiction. The Sun is the first in a mystery series set on a historic ranch in northern New Mexico during the tumultuous years of 2008-09.

I laughed out loud reading the reaction of the hero of the book, Bostonian pediatric oncologist Bryce Miller, when she arrives at the ranch The Sun, somewhere in the middle of nowhere New Mexico. She had inherited 140,000 acres from her estranged uncle, who had dropped dead in France, leaving her the ranch and cattle. Though she doesnt even know the front end of a cow from its back, she talks to her uncles foreman to expect her arrival, only he is not there when she drives up to the ranch house; his truck has the key in the ignition and his tuna fish-eating cow dog is waiting in the back of the truck bed, almost giving her a heart attack when he barks at her. Her inner monologueand thoughts of how New Mexicans are is hilarious.

The book is a well-written, fast-paced murder-mystery that pulls the reader in from the start, when Miller meets neighbor Earl Holcombe, the only one who is helpful and on herside. He is a Republican who was friends with her uncle, despite him being a liberal Democrat. He extends this friendship to Miller, though she admits being a urban-dwelling New York Times-reading latte-drinking, East Coast liberal.

The mystery about the vanished foreman, a stolen rodeo horse and very unsavory characters who want to buy the ranch, show that author White knows what he is talking about. After all, for 20 years, White helped create a radical center among ranchers, conservationists, agencies and others to build economic and ecological health in Western working landscapes. Theres no doubt that one or another of the characters are based on real-life encounters. There is a country club developer, an oil and gas man, a naturalist with a fierce hate of fish-stomping cows, and a mysterious stranger, and they all try to convince Miller to sell out to them. Throw in a mysterious black helicopter and a Sasquatch hunter on the loose, and you have a wild ride ahead, trying to find out what, or rather who, actually caused the demise of spoiler alert the dead foreman.

Even if people dont particularly care for a mystery, Whites astute insight into New Mexicos ecological, economic and social challenges that he packs into this fiction are thoroughly entertaining. Through the chapters, love for a rural way of life shines through, and despite the differences at the end, love for New Mexicos New West triumphs. I did not see the ending coming, quite like Miller who is so far out of her comfort zone.

For me, it was a page-turner until the last chapter, which is rare, and I cant wait for Volume 2.

The book The Sun is available as aneBook and paperback at all online book stores.

For more information, visit jcourtneywhite.com.

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Comfort food and books for comfort - Roswell Daily Record

Today’s coronavirus news: NHL reports no positive tests in first two weeks in Edmonton, Toronto; Global COVID-19 cases expected to hit 20 million this…

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KEY FACTS

2:36 p.m. The NHL says it has had no positive COVID-19 test results in its first two weeks in secure zones in Edmonton and Toronto.

10:13 a.m. The head of the World Health Organization predicted that the number of people infected by the coronavirus will hit 20 million this week.

9:10 a.m. Windsor-Essex will move into Stage 3 of reopening on Wednesday

The latest coronavirus news from Canada and around the world Monday. This file will be updated throughout the day. Web links to longer stories if available.

3:42 p.m. The Hockey Hall of Fame has postponed its 2020 induction ceremony due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The ceremony was originally scheduled to take place Nov. 16 in Toronto.

The 2020 class of forward Jarome Iginla, winger Marian Hossa, defencemen Kevin Lowe and Doug Wilson, Canadian womens goaltender Kim St. Pierre and longtime general manager Ken Holland was announced by the Hockey Hall of Fame in June.

In a release Monday, the hall said rescheduling plans for the induction celebration will be addressed at its board of directors meeting on Oct. 29.

Hockey Hall of Fame chair Lanny McDonald said the most likely scenario is to postpone the ceremony to November 2021, either by waiving the 2021 election or combining the 2020 and 2021 classes.

McDonald said the hall has ruled out a virtual induction ceremony.

3:28 p.m. Maple Leaf Foods says 23 employees at its meat processing plant in Brandon, Man. have tested positive for COVID-19.

But neither the company nor Manitoba public health officials believe transmission is happening within the workplace.

Manitoba chief public health officer Dr. Brent Roussin says there is a cluster of 64 cases in Brandon, east of Winnipeg, and that there is evidence of some community transmission.

He says imposing stricter regional restrictions is on the table, but theres nothing specific in the works right now.

United Food and Commercial Workers Local 832, which represents 2,000 Maple Leaf workers in Brandon, has called for the plant to be shut down until the spread is under control.

Maple Leaf vice-president Janet Riley says the workplace is safe and theres no reason to suspend operations.

Simply put, based on all the evidence, COVID-19 is not being spread at our plant, she said in an emailed statement.

It is important to note that 144 members of our Brandon plant team have tested negative for COVID-19.

Manitoba reported 16 new cases on Monday, bringing the provincial total to 558.

3:08 p.m. Antonio Banderas says he has tested positive for COVID-19 and is celebrating his 60th birthday in quarantine.

The Spanish actor announced his positive test in an Instagram post on Monday. Banderas said he would spend his time in isolation reading, writing and making plans to begin to give meaning to my 60th year to which I arrive full of enthusiasm.

I would like to add that I am relatively well, just a little more tired than usual and hoping to recover as soon as possible following medical instructions that I hope will allow me to overcome the infection that I and so many people in the world are suffering from, wrote Banderas.

Earlier this year, Banderas was nominated for the Academy Award for best actor for his performance in Pedro Almodvars Pain & Glory.

3:08 p.m . Mississippi legislators have returned to the state capitol for the first time since a coronavirus outbreak in early July hospitalized several legislators and killed one person.

Mississippis state health officer, Dr. Thomas Dobbs, said Monday that 49 total legislators tested positive in the outbreak more than one-fourth of the entire body.

Lawmakers left the building July 1 after working there throughout the month of June, many without wearing masks or following social distancing regulations. The first cases in the group were confirmed in the early days of July.

The health officer said at least four legislators were hospitalized and three required intensive care. Dobbs said that at least 12 others, including lobbyists and staff, were infected, including one non-legislator who died.

Among those who tested positive in the heavily Republican body are the GOP presiding officers, House Speaker Philip Gunn and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann.

2:36 p.m. The NHL says it has had no positive COVID-19 test results in its first two weeks in secure zones in Edmonton and Toronto.

The league says it administered 7,245 tests in its second week, from Aug. 2-8, with no positive results.

In the first week, from July 27 to Aug. 1, the league says it had no positive results in 7,013 tests.

Testing is done daily on all 52 members of each teams travelling party.

Eight of 24 teams have now been eliminated and have exited the secure zones.

Players and staff in the secure zones are separated from the general public and no fans are in attendance at games.

2 p.m. Mayor John Tory, at todays COVID-19 news conference from City Hall, says the total number of cases in Toronto is now 15,532, an increase of 18 new cases.

1:52 p.m. Quebecs updated back-to-school plan requires students in Grade 5 and up to wear masks in all common areas of school buildings, except classrooms.

Education Minister Jean-Francois Roberge said today the governments new strategy aims to make communication between teachers and students as easy as possible.

Roberge says each classroom will be its own bubble, and students will not be required to maintain a two-metre distance with their classmates.

And while all elementary and high school students will be expected to return to school at the end of the month, children with significant health problems will be offered a remote learning option.

Roberge says in order to protect children from harm, schools need to fully reopen in order to offer students the ability to properly socialize and learn.

Quebec reported one new death in the past 24 hours attributed to COVID-19 and 98 new cases of the virus the lowest daily number of cases since July.

1:42 p.m. The British government is laying off 6,000 coronavirus contact tracers and deploying the rest to work in local teams, in an acknowledgment that the centralized track-and-trace system is not working well enough.

The U.K. has been criticized for failing to keep track of infected peoples contacts early in the pandemic, a factor that contributed to the countrys high death toll of more than 46,500, the most in Europe.

Since May the country has rapidly set up a test-and-trace system to try to contain the outbreak, recruiting thousands of staff in a matter of weeks. But the system, which relies on telephone call centres, has failed to reach more than a quarter of contacts of people who have tested positive for the virus.

Some frustrated local authorities have set up their own contact-tracing networks, which have proved more effective because they know communities better and can go door-to-door if needed.

The national test-and-trace program said Monday it was officially adopting that localized approach. Some 6,000 contact tracers will be laid off this month, and the remaining 12,000 will work with local public health authorities around the country.

The government also abandoned plans to create a contact-tracing phone app, but says it will be reintroduced in some form in the near future.

1:42 p.m. Greeces culture ministry is closing down the Museum of the Ancient Agora, a major archaeological site in central Athens, for two weeks after a cleaner there was diagnosed with COVID-19.

A ministry statement Monday said the museum would be comprehensively disinfected, while the actual site of the Ancient Agora, which was the administrative, political and social centre of the ancient city, will remain open.

Greek sites and museums are open to visitors, with the wearing of masks obligatory in museums.

The closure also comes as Greece has announced 126 new confirmed coronavirus cases in the last day, bringing the countrys total to 5,749, and one more death for a total death toll of 213 amid a spike in daily infections.

Of the new cases, 17 were migrants who arrived on the eastern Aegean island of Lesbos who arrived from the nearby Turkish coast.

The government announced new measures Monday to curb the spread, including orderings bars, restaurants and cafes in several regions to shut between midnight and 7 a.m. Other measures include requiring those arriving in the country from land borders, as well as those flying in from several European countries, to have proof of a negative coronavirus test.

12:20 p.m. Ontario reported 115 new cases of COVID-19 on Monday, ending a seven-day stretch with fewer than 100 new infections a day.

It was a sharp increase from 79 new cases Sunday and 70 on Saturday as health officials keep a close watch on daily tallies with most of the province in Stage 3, where the risk of spread is higher if people do not take proper precautions such as physical distancing and wearing face coverings.

Health Minister Christine Elliott cautioned against reading too much into a one-day jump in the case count.

While a slight uptick and an end to our steak, we shouldnt lose sight of the fact that thanks to your efforts the trend in the province remains downward, she said on Twitter as Premier Doug Fords government allowed Windsor-Essex to move to Stage 3.

Over the weekend, the active number of cases across the province dropped below 1,000 for the first time since the virus peaked and now sits at 994, the Ministry of Health said in its daily status report based on figures reported by health units at 4 p.m. the previous day.

Eighteen of Ontarios 34 public health units had no new cases and 10 regions had fewer than five new infections. The highest numbers were 20 in Ottawa, 19 in Peel and 16 in Toronto.

Read more from the Stars Rob Ferguson: Ontario ends weeklong streak of COVID-19 cases below 100

12:18 p.m. The federal Liberals are defending their decision to have the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. oversee a rent-relief program for small businesses struggling during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The opposition Conservatives have questioned why the CMHC, rather than the Canada Revenue Agency, was asked to run the Canada Emergency Commercial Rent Assistance program, given the revenue agency manages several other pandemic-related support programs.

Finance Minister Bill Morneaus spokeswoman Maeva Proteau says the CMHC was considered the best fit because it deals with mortgages and understands Canadas real estate market.

She says going with the Crown corporation was seen to be fastest because it could make payments to businesses without requiring new legislation, which would have further delayed the rent program.

The CMHC later contracted mortgage firm MCAP to administer the rent program another choice the Tories have questioned, since an executive vice-president at the company is married to Katie Telford, chief of staff to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

The Prime Ministers Office says Telford followed proper ethical procedures when it came to the governments dealings with MCAP, while the Liberals and CMHC say the $84-million contract was awarded independent of any political involvement.

12 p.m. From the most romantic spots along the Seine to popular shopping streets, residents and visitors in Paris were required to wear face masks in some outdoor areas of the French capital starting Monday amid an uptick in reported coronavirus cases.

Police are authorized to issue a 135-euro ($159) fine to people who do not follow the new public health requirement.

One location covered by the measure is the banks of the Canal Saint-Martin, among the citys most popular outdoor spots for lunch or an aperitif with friends.

In the morning when there is nobody on the canal, I think it is a bit of a drastic measure, lawyer Helene Rames said after the face mask rule took effect.

But it is true that at night and on the weekends, you can see many young people here close to each other, which is scary, she added. If its for the health of our elders then lets wear it.

11:56 a.m. Thailand is making plans to allow at least 3,000 foreign teachers to enter the country, even as it continues to keep out tourists and tightly restricts other arrivals to guard against new coronavirus infections.

Attapon Truektrong, secretary-general of the Private Education Commission, said Monday that those who have registered include teachers returning to their jobs after leaving during the pandemic, as well as newly employed teachers.

The teachers, who come from countries including the Philippines, New Zealand, the United States and Britain, will have to be quarantined for 14 days after arrival. Thailand barred scheduled passenger flights from abroad in early April

Thailand hosts many international schools and there is a general shortage of qualified teachers of English and other non-Thai languages.

11:56 a.m. Students have begun returning to some Florida university campuses as the state reports its lowest number of new daily cases in more than a month.

Classes for new students started Monday at Stetson University. Students moved into dormitories over the weekend at the DeLand campus as well as at the University of Central Florida in Orlando.

In Orange County, public school students started the school year with two-weeks of online learning. At the end of the month, they will get to choose between continuing with virtual learning or going to in-person classes.

Meanwhile, Florida reported 4,155 new coronavirus cases on Monday, the smallest daily caseload increase since the end of June.

11:56 a.m. The number of day-to-day increases in new COVID-19 infections in Italy dropped significantly on Monday. But frequently numbers provided by the Health Ministry on Mondays tend to be on the low side, reflecting often incomplete reports from regional public health offices during the weekend.

Still, the 259 cases nationwide registered in the 24-hour period ending on Monday evening was a steep decrease from the 463 infections registered on Sunday.

Outstripping northern Lombardy, the region which had by far suffered the brunt of the pandemic, were Emilia-Romagna, also in the north, and Lazio, the south-central region which includes Rome.

Lazio health authorities said at least nine of its latest 38 cases were confirmed in tourists who returned from vacations on the Mediterranean islands of Malta and Spains Ibiza. Sicily and Puglia, two southern Italian regions popular for its beaches, also registered more cases than in Lombardy.

11:56 a.m. The incoming president of the United Nations General Assembly has praised Pakistan for quickly containing the coronavirus, saying the South Asian nations handling of the pandemic is a good example for the world.

The Turkish diplomat Volkan Bozkir made his comment Monday at a news conference in the capital, Islamabad.

Bozkir was recently elected as the president of the 75th session of the U.N. General Assembly.

Upon his arrival in Islamabad, he met with the countrys prime minister, Imran Khan, who wants international financial institutions and rich nations to give a debt relief to poor countries whose economies have badly been affected by the new virus.

Bozkirs visit comes amid a steady decline in COVID-19 deaths and infections in Pakistan.

Pakistan reported its first confirmed case of coronavirus in February and in March it imposed a nationwide lockdown, which has gradually been lifted in recent weeks. Pakistan on Monday reported 15 fatalities from coronavirus in the past 24 hours, raising its total COVID-19-related fatalities to 6,097.

11:56 a.m. Veterans who werent given military funeral rights when they were buried during the coronavirus pandemic have been given a final salute at the Fargo National Cemetery.

United Patriotic Bodies and Fargo Honor Guard volunteers were at the cemetery Saturday when three rifle volleys were fired and taps were played individually for 14 different families of veterans.

United Patriotic Bodies Cmdr. Jason Hicks says the salute is an honour and a duty to those who sacrificed for their country.

Gary Varberg came to the cemetery to honour his brother, Roger Nelson. KVLY-TV reported that the two served in Iraq together and decades in the National Guard.

Nelson was just one of the many veterans who wasnt given military rights and honours when he was buried during the global pandemic.

This means we get to say our final goodbye to our brothers and sisters, Fargo Honor Guard Chaplain Russel Stabler said.

11:56 a.m. The family of a fourth worker who died from the coronavirus during an outbreak at Tyson Foods largest pork processing plant is suing the company over his death.

The lawsuit says that Isidro Fernandez, of Waterloo, Iowa, died April 26 from complications of COVID-19, leaving behind a wife and children.

The lawsuit is similar to one filed in June by the same lawyers on behalf of the estates of three other deceased Waterloo employees.

The lawsuits allege Tyson put employees at risk by downplaying concerns and covering up the outbreak to keep them on the job. They allege the company failed to implement safety measures, allowed some sick and exposed employees to keep working, and falsely assured the public that the plant was safe.

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Today's coronavirus news: NHL reports no positive tests in first two weeks in Edmonton, Toronto; Global COVID-19 cases expected to hit 20 million this...

Julian Bonds Life in Protest and Politics – The Nation

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Julian Bond and Bayard Rustin at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. (Getty / Bettmann)

In May of 1969, Ebony magazine ran a profile of Julian Bond, the activist and civil rights leader who had recently been reelected to the Georgia House of Representatives. With the United States mere weeks away from putting a man on the moon and the war in Vietnam still raging, the magazine wanted to take stock of where Black America found itself at the end of the decade. It was a moment of both retrospection about the civil rights movement and excitement about what the future held for African American politics. Yet Bond had been fighting for freedom and justice for more than a decade, and it showed. Ebonys David Llorens wrote, Attractive cat that he is, Julian Bond looks tired.1Ad Policy Books in Review

The profile sought to examine what it meant for a radical stalwart, struggling against a broken system from the outside, to become a politician struggling to effect change from within it. Bonds shift from protest to politics, as Bayard Rustin put it in an article earlier in the decade, was a measure of how far the movement had changed Southern society. That Bond was one of the first Black people to serve in the Georgia legislature generations after Reconstruction was also a measure of how much further the nation as a whole had to go.2

After describing Bonds work as a state representative, his speaking tours at colleges, and his deepening involvement in the Democratic Party as its New Deal coalition started to unravel, Llorens moved on to discuss the twin pillars of pride and ambivalence that supported Bonds new role. These were the same pillars that held up the aspirations and fears of so many African Americans in the immediate aftermath of the civil rights movement. As Llorens wrote, Julian Bond, as a politician, represents hope for the freedom of black people, but it was a hope entirely dependent upon the possibility that white people are capable of a humane and non-racist America. For Llorens, this hope was real and somewhat tangible. But as he noted at the end of the passage, it depended on a radical change in the thought and action of white Americanssomething that in 1969 still appeared far off because of a continuation of the backlash politics that had defined American political, social, cultural, and intellectual discourse ever since Reconstruction.3

That mix of felt urgency and anxious uncertainty about how much change could be made in American society would define Bonds efforts for much of his career. His time in office, like his time as an activist, would be characterized by both his hopes for greater social equality and the continuing need to fight for such change when these hopes were too often thwarted. This tension was central to nearly all of his writing, much of which is now collected in a new book, Race Man, edited by the historian Michael G. Long.4

Race Man captures the full output of Bonds long and distinguished career, first as an activist with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, then as a member of the Georgia legislature (in the House and later in the Senate), then as a traveling academic who taught about his experiences in the social upheavals of the 60s, and finally as a writer and aging lion of the civil rights movement still fighting to hold on to the ideals of his youth. Along the way, the book also makes clear a set of themes and quandaries that have troubled so much of the history of the American left: What is lost in the movement from protest to politics? How can lasting change be achieved in the face of unsatisfying compromise? How can radicals and activists carry the torch of emancipation and equality in an age in which both major parties and many voters appear, at best, apathetic to meaningful change and, at worst, downright hostile to it?5

Bonds years as an activist also offer a guide through the intellectual and political history of the left in the second half of the 20th century. As Long argues in his introduction, Bonds importance to the history of the United States and the American left in particular is nearly impossible to overestimate today. Very few Americans, he writes, had sought more consistently and doggedly to establish solid connections between the black civil rights movement and the many progressive movements it sometimes unpredictably inspired.6

Julian Bond was born in 1940 in Nashville. His father, Horace Mann Bond, was the first president of Fort Valley State University in Georgia and later became the first Black president of Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, both historically Black institutions. While serving as a college president, Horace Bond participated in the intellectual ferment of the World War II and early Cold War years. He did considerable research to support the NAACPs arguments in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case of 1954 and served as a prominent civil rights advocate during the period. The elder Bonds participation in the rarefied world of African American educators and intellectuals meant that his son was exposed to many of the leaders of Black America from an early age. A famous image of Julian Bond as a young boy, for example, shows him side by side with the actor, singer, and activist Paul Robeson. The photograph itself is a testament to the intergenerational links between the different civil rights cohorts.7Current Issue

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Yet Bonds early exposure to the intellectual creativity and political activism of Black America would hardly shield him from the racism and violence spawned by white supremacy. In the Jim Crow South, Bond saw racism and discrimination all around hima radicalizing experience that never left him, even after he and his family moved to Pennsylvania when his father became the head of Lincoln University. Bonds growing politicization throughout the 50s was only deepened by his years at the George School, a prep school founded by Quakers, where he began to develop his long-term fascination with pacifism.8

In 1957, Bond returned to Georgia to attend Morehouse College. Long a hotbed of Black struggle and uplift, the school helped launch his career in civil rights activism. He met Martin Luther King Jr. in 1960 while at Morehouse, and that year he cofounded, with fellow student Lonnie King, the Committee on the Appeal for Human Rights, which eventually led to his involvement in the creation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Bond immediately understood the significance of SNCC and the role that students could play in expanding the civil rights movement. The younger generation of Black Americans was ready to use new tactics to fight for the kind of social change their parents and grandparents sought in previous eras. Reflecting on the rise of these new organizations, Bond wrote, The struggle for human rights is a constant fight, and one which the students do not plan to relinquish until full equality is won for all men.9

Against the backdrop of African nations declaring their independence abroad and civil rights agitation growing at home, 1960 saw a wave of sit-ins, starting in Greensboro, N.C. Four students at North Carolina A&T, a Black college, decided to stage a sit-in, adopting the tactics of nonviolent direct action already being used by various civil rights organizations. Word of the sit-ins spread across the South, spurring even more sit-ins as well as Bonds participation in Atlanta. Why dont we make it happen here? Lonnie King said to Bond in February 1960. That brief conversation, between two young men who yearned to be part of the great moral and political issue of their age, sparked Bonds lifelong service to the movement.10

Bond participated in the sit-ins in Atlanta that year and in a whirlwind series of campaigns across the South as the communications director of SNCC. Leaving Morehouse to dedicate himself to this work full-time, Bond, like many other young Black Americans, accepted that he would have to relinquish the comforts of the college campus and risk life and limb in the fire of activism. At this time, he began to think in broader terms about the idea of human rights, looking beyond Americas shores to recognize the violence and oppression that the country inflicted on various peoples of color elsewherean internationalism that he would soon marry to his domestic egalitarianism.11Related Article

By the mid-60s, after five years of working with SNCC, Bond began to grow frustrated. While he recognized the changing nature of struggle, he had always imagined SNCC as an organization that would embrace everyone, and he became worried about its increasingly separatist politics. I didnt like the direction it seemed to be taking, he recalled, especially as SNCC embraced the idea of becoming an exclusively Black organization.12

Despite Bonds ambivalence about SNCCs separatist turn, the organization continued to exert a major influence on his life, especially with its anti-imperialist politics in the middle of the decade. SNCC denounced the Vietnam War, and Bond grew increasingly active in anti-war efforts. He also began to consider running for office. In early 1965, Rustin made his appeal to civil rights activists to turn from protest to politics, arguing that the problems they would continue to face, even after the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts, required more than demonstrations. By then, Bond was preparing a run for the Georgia House of Representatives, and he was joined by the many different strands of the Black freedom strugglethe mainstream civil rights movement, Black nationalists, and the growing number of African Americans active in the Democratic Partythat were also making the move.13

After his election, Bond found himself at a curious intersection of local, national, and international politics when the state House refused to seat him because he had endorsed SNCCs anti-war stance. SNCC, Martin Luther King Jr., and other activists rallied to defend Bonds right to represent his constituency in Atlanta. Eventually the Supreme Court ruled, 90, in Bond v. Floyd that his right to free speech had been violated by the state Houses vote to deny him a seat.14

After Bond became a legislator, he found that more of his peers were following in his footsteps. People like John Lewis, Marion Barry, and Jim Clyburn, after years in the streets demanding change, were now running for office as they sought to secure and extend the gains they had helped win. It seemed the logical next step, even if the change that could be achieved in state legislatures sometimes appeared small compared with what could be done at the federal level. And yet, as Llorens wrote in Ebony, that kind of work mattered as well: Basic services like streetlights, garbage removal, sewage, repairing roads, and draining water from flooded basements were some of the things we need as Julian sees it, and he takes pride in being able to use his political weight to deliver them. Those are things my constituents werent always able to get in the past, he says. Nor are most of his constituents, whoare victims of poverty, apt to forget the water removed or the street repaired.15

The essays in Race Man nicely illustrate this trajectory from college activist to elected official (and beyond). Broken into 10 sections, the book traces Bonds political formation throughout these periods of his life. The problems of white supremacy, capitalism, imperialism, and misogyny were his fights throughout, even if they all changed shape. From the struggle against Jim Crow to the battle for LGBTQ rights, he remained convinced that it was necessary to agitate on behalf of the powerless outside the halls of power, but as he got older, he became convinced one had to do it from inside them as well. Whether as an activist struggling for voting rights or as a politician in the Georgia legislature redrawing district boundaries, Bond insisted that only through a combination of movements and policy could social change be achieved.16

Bonds essays capture the intellectual world that inspired him and that he helped inspire in turn. Though dedicated to egalitarian politics, he often found himself in heated debate with other elements of the left. This was especially true in the late 60s, as the hope of nonviolent civil disobedience peacefully changing American society began to buckle under the strain of Vietnam, the half-hearted War on Poverty, and the ever-present specter of white backlash. The rise of the Black power movement offered Bond and other civil rights activists a unique challenge: They embraced many key components of this more radical turn but also struggled to find their way among its constituency, one that increasingly seemed to view the gains they had won as limited and incomplete.17

Of course, in many ways those gains were incomplete, and reading Bonds response to his more radical contemporaries, one can see that he might have missed how their militant spiritnot to mention their ability to continue to find common cause with social movements all over the worldhelped, in the long run, to solidify the reforms he and his colleagues had won. An example of this is seen in his writings about South Africa and the growing movement to divest from the apartheid state, in which Bond sounded far more like his more radical peers. There is an inseparable connection between black Africa and black America, he argued in 1978 while participating in a protest against a Davis Cup match between the United States and South Africa in Nashville. This was not a coincidence: After all, Bond was also in pursuit of an equality far greater than the federal government was willing to offer, and the civil rights liberalism that their protest spawned was, in their view, only the beginning, not the end point. Likewise, Bond, who hewed steadfastly to pacifism early in his public life, also began to doubt, with his more radical colleagues, its efficacy in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and while he lauded the achievements of the sit-ins, he came to recognize the clear limits of early civil rights activism. Indeed, that was one of the reasons he turned to electoral politics.18

Bonds ambivalence about the growing radicalism of SNCC was also rooted in his desire for more concrete action. Intimately aware of the organizations internal discord, he concluded that it had become mired at times in what he called too much democracy and a lack of decision-making by its leaders. He did not appear to question SNCCs democratic goals, but he felt that by 1967 its leadership was no longer taking responsibility for the groups decisions, in terms of both immediate tactics and long-term strategies.19

One policy change in particular frustrated him: the separatism that no longer sought to build a multiracial membership in SNCC. Bond opposed this separatism on principle as well as for practical reasons, writing in 1967 that it would lead to near unanimous condemnation and cause SNCC activists to narrow the scope of their activities, effectively contained by their own unwillingness to trust the outside world. For Bond, part of the lesson of the 60s was that activism alone was not enough; one had to have a programmatic plan of action for both grassroots organizing and building political power in the face of rampant white backlash.20 MORE FROM Robert Greene II

Once in office, that was exactly what Bond attempted to do. He wanted to find a way around the dead end that movement politics appeared to face in the late 60s and the political weaknesses of white liberal complacency in the early 70s. While serving in the Georgia legislature, he amassed a national reputation, and by 1972, he began contributing serious ideas to the political ferment of that era.21

Bond participated in the discussions across the South that led to the 1972 National Black Political Convention in Gary, Ind. His criticism of both the American left and mainstream liberalism grew more pointed as the decade progressed, when he repeatedly expressed his deep ambivalenceif not outright hostilitytoward the presidential campaign and then presidency of former Georgia governor Jimmy Carter. Southern Baptists are fond of saying that prayer changes things, Bond wrote. Jimmy Carters religiosity has certainly had that effect on him, in fact has changed him from left to right to center so many times that converts to the Carter cause ought to take a cue from an earlier apostle, Thomas, who doubted. In the end, Bond was one of the few mainstream Black civil rights activists turned politicians who refused to back Carter during his 1976 run.22

For Bond, Carters candidacyas well as his backing by so many prominent African Americanswas less a betrayal than a reminder of how weak the Black vote was as a bloc within or, if need be, outside the Democratic Party. American politics has always been group politics, Bond wrote in 1977, during the first year of Carters administration, and Black movements and politicians needed to embrace this fact and form a cohesive electoral faction.23

Bonds arguments mirrored those put forth a decade earlier in the book Black Power by Charles V. Hamilton and the future Kwame Ture about the necessity for independent political action, now applied to electoral politics. And he was not wrong, either. During Reconstruction, Southern Black men formed the backbone of the Republican Party below the Mason-Dixon Line and thus wielded considerable power. During the New Deal era, both major parties sought Black voters while carefully trying to not antagonize pro-segregation white Southerners. In the 70s, with the New Right on the rise and liberalismas well as the broader ideas of social democracyunder threat across the Western world, Bond believed it was more urgent than ever for Black Americans to acquire sustained political power. The sooner we realize the difference between elections and governing, the better able well be to form ourselves into a political bloc, he wrote.24

This came, ironically, after Bond argued in 1972 that coalition politics always weakens at least one partner in the coalition rather than strengthens both partners (a fear Hamilton and Ture also voiced). Such questions, of course, are still with us, especially concerning the direction of the Democratic Party and whether it has taken generations of Black voters for granted.25

One of the advantages of Race Man is that instead of shuffling Bonds writings together by theme, Long presents them in chronological order so we can chart Bonds evolution as well as his consistency. We can see his thinking change over time on a wide variety of topicssometimes dramaticallyand while we can see the shifts in his tactics and strategies, we also see just how consistent his principles remained. However, the books chronological structure slightly overdetermines Bonds changes: We lose sight of the complicated nature of the broader civil rights and Black power movements, and at times it can be difficult to situate his arguments in the context of national politics and international tumult. From almost the outset of his career, Bond was writing from within the milieu of a Black freedom movement that inspired and was inspired by other movements in pursuit of freedom, justice, and equality elsewhere in the world.26

This is why Bonds seamless movement from domestic campaigns to international policy mirrored a broader awareness among Black Americans of the need to get more involved in global affairs. It was also why there were sometimes moments of fierce friction, as displayed in the arguments Bond had in the 70s with the growing environmental movement. Pleading with its champions to look past a narrow politics of conservation and local resistance, he insisted, much like climate change activists today, that environmental pollution is only a symptom of the moral and political pollution at its core. Long before industrial filth fouled the rivers, lakes, and air of this continent, the bitter salt of slaves sweat and tears soured the [once] fertile soil and the blood of noble red men soaked the fields and plains.27

Bonds insistence that the environmental movements rhetoric about a ticking population bomb was equally misguided anticipated the birth of a more diverse and robust movement that sought to think more systemically about environmental problems. The growth of the environmental justice movement in the 70s and 80sa Blacker, poorer relative of the better-known movement that spawned Earth Day in 1970ameliorated Bonds fears by tapping into long-held concerns by Black Americans and others about the relationships between racism, land ownership, and environmental waste. This more sophisticated environmentalism also drew Bond into its movement, and he got arrested in 2013 at the White House while protesting the Keystone XL pipeline alongside members of the Sierra Club and in defiance of the nations first Black president.28

Bond was likewise concerned about a growing disconnect between activists and ordinary people in the 1970s. As Black power gave way to a Black liberalism safely ensconced in the Democratic Party, he continued to wonder if activists had lost their way. It suggests that the supposed and alleged security of the college campus is not the proper place from which to engage in social criticism of people who seldom see any book but the Bible from year to year, he warned, critiquing what he saw as an activism that had become too comfortable in the ivory tower, far removed from the everyday needs of working people.29

By the late 70s and early 80s, Bond had become, for many Americans, an avatar of the civil rights movement and its legacy. He lent his voice to the groundbreaking miniseries Eyes on the Prize, serving as a one-man Greek chorus for the now-iconic struggle. He hosted an early episode of Saturday Night Live, cementing his status as a national public figure. But there was an increasing sense that Bond had failed to live up to his early promise on the political stage and that as his celebrity grew, so did his distance from his constituents in Georgia. In a bruising 1986 race for the US House of Representatives that pitted him against his friend and colleague from the civil rights movement John Lewis, Bond was criticized for having lost his way. Rumors that he used drugs were whispered about in Atlanta and were blown wide open when Lewis challenged him to a drug test. I love Julian like a brother, Lewis said in a 1990 profile of the two men in Atlanta magazine. But he fumbled the ball. He had unbelievable opportunities. He just didnt take advantage.30

Part of what hurt Bonds campaign, as The New York Times pointed out after his defeat, was the concern that his thousands of speaking engagements and television appearances elsewhere hampered his ability to be an effective voice in the Georgia Senate. That lost him the trust and goodwill he needed to win what turned out to be his toughestand finalpolitical campaign. After the election, Bond accepted teaching positions at several distinguished institutions, including Harvard and American University, and he reflected on the charge that he had failed to live up to his potential as the man who could have been the nations first Black vice president, perhaps even its first Black president. I cant do what other people want me to do, he said. Im absolutely content and fulfilled right now [teaching and lecturing]. Its enough for me. Im confused as to why its not enough for anyone else.31

Bond remained active in left political circles for the rest of his life, and he continued to consider how one could be radical and yet work within the system, sounding the alarm during George W. Bushs and Barack Obamas presidencies on a range of issues, especially the erosion of voting rights and the need to fight for LGBTQ rights.32

It is difficult to imagine a thorough history of the American left after 1960 that doesnt include Bond and the many roles he played: as a communications director for SNCC, as a state legislator for 20 years, as the first president of the Southern Poverty Law Center (a position he assumed in 1971), as the voice that millions of people associated with the civil rights movement thanks to Eyes on the Prize, and as an elder statesman of the movement before his death in 2015. His balancing act between radicalism and reform, between movements and party politics, still speaks to the divides and the cohesiveness of the left. Fighting for freedom in the streets, in the classrooms, and in the halls of power was all part of Bonds tool kit. Reading his essays, we are reminded that the challenges of forging a principled yet practical path forward are nothing newand that Bond is someone who might serve as a guide in our own uncertain times. We cannot be afraid of difficult debates or of changing tactics when necessary. Julian Bond proved that, time and time again.33

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Julian Bonds Life in Protest and Politics - The Nation