A look at the Coloradans supporting Donald Trump and why they adore the president – The Colorado Sun

Posted on by

COLORADO SPRINGS President Donald Trump and his reelection campaign see Colorado as a top 2020 target, dismissing polls suggesting he has a big hill to climb if he wants to reverse his 2016 fortunes in the state.

Trump lost Colorado to Democrat Hillary Clinton four years ago by 5 percentage points.

We think Colorado will go red, Kayleigh McEnany, national press secretary for the Trump campaign, said Thursday as the president held a rally in Colorado Springs. We dont believe the president is under water.

To win in Colorado, however, the Trump campaign will need all the support it can get.

The Colorado Sun spoke with Republican voters at Thursdays rally, which drew thousands to the Broadmoor World Arena in Colorado Springs, to learn about why they support the president. Heres what they said:

MORE: Cory Gardner goes all-in with Donald Trump, says the results for Colorado are simply astounding

Morgan didnt support Trump in 2016. He didnt even vote that year.

I didnt know about Trump and how I felt about him then, he said. Hes definitely grown on me.

Among the things he likes about the president? His aggressive stance toward China on trade.

Morgan showed up at the Broadmoor World Arena at 3:30 a.m. on Wednesday, more than 12 hours ahead of Trumps speech, because he was so eager to see the president. He and his friend Paul Overstreet ran into Brad Parscale, Trumps campaign manager, in the stadium as they were buying some food.

They posed for a photo with Parscale, who paid for their meal.

Lewis, who was at his first Trump rally, said he supported the president when he first ran in 2016. He thinks Trump is doing a fantastic job.

We want to show him good energy, Lewis said.

Whats his favorite thing about Trump? Its hard to say, Lewis said.

Hes done everything he said he was going to do. He takes on the deep state and keeps on fighting. Its very exciting. You can name off about 10 of them. Its not a single issue. How he does everything, he said.

Paulson wasnt going to let a broken foot stop her from attending her first Trump rally. She and her husband rented a wheelchair so that they could see the president on Thursday.

Ive always wanted to go, she said of Trumps rallies.

Paulson supported Trump in 2016 bid and plans to back him this year as well. She said initially liked him because of his business background, but her support has broadened.

I think hes done so much for the country, she said. One of the things Im surprised about is hes done more for Christians than anyone has done in a long, long time. Its really been impressive to me.

The Parks are from California and flew in for the rally. They are independents, or not affiliated with the Democratic or Republican party.

Their daughter, a U.S. Air Force Academy graduate, serves in the military.

His biggest accomplishment is continuing to produce what a good president does, despite all of the (for the) lack of a better word horse manure thats been shoveled his way, George Park said.

Geralyn Park says she appreciates Trumps commitment to the military.

Nobody wants war. Nobody wants killing, she said. But you have to be strong. And I think he understands that, thats why I like him.

Want exclusive political news and insights first? Subscribe to The Unaffiliated, the political newsletter from The Colorado Sun. Join now or upgrade your membership.

Cogburn said he likes Trump because the president does what he says hes going to do.

Unlike the last eight years, Cogburn said. Thats what were witnessing right now.

His biggest takeaway from the rally Thursday night was the enthusiasm. Cogburn said he doesnt think the GOP has seen so much excitement in years, if ever.

Cogburn was at the rally with his girlfriend, Darcy Alexander, 48, a schoolteacher and registered Democrat. She said Trump was highly entertaining and keeps your attention.

She also thinks hes been great for the economy.

Isabel Hicks and Sam Seymour are journalism students at Colorado College.

This reporting is made possible by our members. You can directly support independent watchdog journalism in Colorado for as little as $5 a month. Start here: coloradosun.com/join

View original post here:

A look at the Coloradans supporting Donald Trump and why they adore the president - The Colorado Sun

‘Namaste Trump’: US president delights India with praise and tough talk on terror and trade – Sky News

Posted on by

Donald Trump has delighted his hosts on his visit to India by praising the country and promising to boost trade and curb terrorism.

Addressing a crowd of more than 100,000, the biggest political rally of his career, in Ahmedabad, the US president reaffirmed his commitment to India and lavished compliments on his host, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi.

Mr Trump's speech at the rally, named 'Namaste Trump' (Welcome Trump), largely consisted of a rundown of their greatest hits, as he listed Mr Modi's economic achievements and called him a "very tough" negotiator.

He was full of praise for India's spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship and won applause when he promised to help curb terrorism on the Pakistan border.

Basking in the adoration of the huge crowd at a new cricket stadium in the city, Mr Trump said: "America loves India, America respects India and America will always be faithful and loyal friends to the Indian people."

The two men are friends and Mr Trump had clearly prepared, throwing in plenty of Indian references, although his pronunciation left a little to be desired.

He called the Indian cricket great Sachin Tendulkar "soo-chin" and told the crowd Mr Modi started life as a tea-seller, or "chee-wallah", when the word is chai-wallah.

Mr Modi was similarly complimentary and said India and the US have a "far greater and closer relationship than ever before".

Hundreds of thousands of people, many wearing 'Namaste Trump' hats, lined the streets of the city to catch a glimpse of Mr Trump's motorcade as it left the airport.

The president is very popular in India, but sometimes faces demonstrations when he travels abroad, so the positive optics of being greeted like a returning hero overseas in an election year will not have been lost on him.

Earlier, Mr Modi greeted his guest with his trademark warm hug ahead of a visit aimed at cementing ties between the long-time political allies that have been damaged by arguments over trade.

At issue is Washington's demand for greater access to India's poultry and dairy markets and a loosening of India's pharmaceutical price controls.

Mr Modi's government, in turn, wants to restore the trade concessions that Mr Trump withdrew last year and greater access to US markets for its pharmaceutical and farm products.

:: Listen to Divided States on Apple podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and Spreaker

The conflict led to retaliatory tariffs being placed on each other's goods and officials from both countries have said talks are unlikely to make progress until after November's US presidential election.

His first stop was the former home of Mahatma Gandhi, where Mr Trump and his host placed garlands on a picture of the architect of Indian independence.

Before Air Force One landed, Mr Trump tweeted in Hindi: "We are ready to come to India, we are on our way, we will be meeting everyone in a few hours", while Mr Modi responded: "The guest is God".

From Ahmedabad, the US president heads to Agra for a sunset visit to the Taj Mahal, before a summit with Indian officials and business leaders in Delhi.

View original post here:

'Namaste Trump': US president delights India with praise and tough talk on terror and trade - Sky News

Donald Trump Jr granted permit to hunt Alaska grizzly bear – The Guardian

Posted on by

Donald Trump Jr has been granted the right to hunt a grizzly bear in north-western Alaska near the Bering Sea town of Nome, a state official says.

The son of US president Donald Trump was one of three people who applied for 27 spots for non-resident hunters targeting grizzlies in a designated region of north-western Alaskas Seward Peninsula, said Eddie Grasser, the wildlife conservation director for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

The state conducts periodic drawings for permits to hunt bears, caribou, moose and other animals in various regions. Winners are chosen by a lottery, and there are typically many more applications than hunting tags awarded.

We get thousands of applications, Grasser said on Friday. Whether anyone won came down to pure chance, luck of the draw.

But in the case of the bear-hunt permit the presidents son won, there was little competition. Twenty-four tags for hunting bears in that region went unclaimed, Grasser said.

Winners of the states latest hunting-permit drawings were announced on Friday.

To follow through with the Nome-area bear hunt, Trump had to pay a $1,000 non-resident tag fee and buy a $160 non-resident hunting license, Grasser said.

The presidents eldest son is an avid hunter and has made several trips to hunt in Alaska and Canada. He is scheduled to go to Alaska later this year to hunt deer and ducks.

The Safari Club this month raffled off a $150,000 seven-day dream hunt expedition with Trump Jr. The raffle winner got the right to accompany the presidents son on a yacht traveling in November along coastal areas of the Tongass National Forest.

View original post here:

Donald Trump Jr granted permit to hunt Alaska grizzly bear - The Guardian

Here are 5 reasons you have Donald Trump to thank if you get the coronavirus – Raw Story

Posted on by

The notorious coronavirus, or covid-19, is edging closer to a global pandemic, according to the Washington Post.

There are outbreaks. There are epidemics. And there arepandemics, where epidemics become rampant in multiple countries and continents simultaneously. The novelcoronavirusthat causes the disease named covid-19 is on the verge of reaching that third, globe-shaking stage.

President Donald Trump is only making it worse for Americans as the deadly diseases increase across the world. Even his campaign recognizes hes bungling the response, and theyre now recognizing that if Trump doesnt start serving as a real president, lives will be lost.

Here are the five reasons that things are going to get far worse than they needed to, all thanks to Trumps foolish decisions.

1. Bringing infected people into the U.S. against the Center for Disease Controls objections.

This week, the world learned that the Trump administration forced a plane full of healthy people to sit with 14 infected people with the coronavirus, and didnt even tell them.

It was like the worst nightmare, said one senior U.S. official who was involved with the decision. Quite frankly, the alternative could have been pulling grandma out in the pouring rain, and that would have been bad, too.

Its unknown why the U.S. didnt arrange for a private plane to transport the Americans. They have many available, including through the State Department. They could be decontaminated after the fact. The Trump administration didnt use any of the alternatives that would have made Americans safer.

2. Trump refuses to listen to science over his buddy, Xi Jinping.

Reporter Helen Branswell wrote for STAT that U.S. health officials have been signaling for weeks that a pandemic was approaching.

While stressing that the virus presents only a low risk to Americans right now, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci, acknowledged Tuesday that that might not remain the case for long, she wrote.

But the Washington Post revealed Trumps own advisers were concerned that hes putting too much faith in Chinese President Xi Jinping, who has diminished the seriousness of the virus.

Trump has repeatedly told advisers that pushing for a harder line against China could backfire because Xi controls the government totally and will not work with the United States if it says anything negative about the country, said one of these senior administration officials, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private talks, reported the Post.

3. Trump lies about the facts of the coronavirus.

President Donald Trump told the world that by April, the coronavirus would be gone. Its unknown who told him that or where he got the information, but its absolutely false.

Now, the virus that were talking about having to do you know, a lot of people think that goes away in April with the heat as the heat comes in. Typically, that will go away in April. Were in great shape, though. We have 12 cases 11 cases, and many of them are in good shape now, Trump said Feb. 10.

It makes no sense because, in the southern hemisphere, it is already summer while the northern hemisphere is dealing with a mild winter. Australia is in its summer, for example, and there are more cases than in the United States, where its winter.

The CDC director, Dr. Robert Redfield, disagreed with the presidents assessment, saying we dont know a lot about this virus. This virus is probably with us beyond this season, beyond this year, and I think eventually the virus will find a foothold, and we will get community-based transmission.

4. Trump and the GOP seriously cut public health funding.

One of the greatest allies in a disease outbreak can be public health funding. However, the budget passed in 2018 killed over $1 billion from the Prevention and Public Health Fund (PPHF).

When the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was signed into law on December 22, 2018, it cut $750 million from the PPHF, diverting the money to cover costs of CHIP, the Childrens Health Insurance Program, The Scientist reported. CDC relies on PPHF for 12 percent of its budget, with much of that money going toward state and community programs.

The PPHF acts as the core of public health programs in the U.S., according to former director Tom Frieden. When Obamacare was passed in 2010, it financed the PPHF, but Republicans have worked to undermine the law.

It was established in 2010 and financed by the Affordable Care Act (ACA), The goal was to improve health outcomes and enhance the quality of care. The first initial investment form Obamacare was $500 million, and it grew to over $2 billion by 2015. It was supposed to be protected from Republicans eager to cut funding to anything affiliated with the Democrats healthcare law.

During the 2017-2018 government shutdown, sequestration took $69 million from the fund, PPHF was left with $931 million annually to support public health, wellness, and prevention activities, in the entire country.

In the same fiscal year, the CDC received more than $891 million from PPHF to support vaccine coverage, respond to outbreaks of foodborne infections and waterborne diseases, develop programs to counter the leading causes of death and disability, such as cancer, heart disease, stroke, and diabetes, and eliminate childhood lead poisoning, among other initiatives, the report said.

5. Trump slashed resources form the Center for Disease Control.

While the reduction in funding to the PPHF has been drastic, it doesnt mean the CDC has gone without its own budget cuts.

The Trump administration in 2018 further diverted millions of dollars from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said the Scientist.

CDCs mission is to keep Americans safe, said Frieden. But without funding, the CDC wont be able to protect us.

As the president presents his new budget for 2020, the cuts to public health and the CDC are even more drastic. Thankfully, that budget isnt likely to pass either chamber of congress.

Ultimately, as the coronavirus begins to take over the world, its not surprising that Trumps campaign is worried that the presidents bumbling response could cost him votes in November.

Trumps budget to the World Health Organization that hes proposed would leave everyone at risk. While he complains that other countries arent paying their fair share into NATO, when it comes to the WHO, Trump wants to gut the U.S. contribution. Diseases arent like wars; they dont stay contained in borders; everyone is at risk. Trumps budget proves that the president doesnt understand this important fact.

Read the original post:

Here are 5 reasons you have Donald Trump to thank if you get the coronavirus - Raw Story

Donald Trump is ending endless war | TheHill – The Hill

Posted on by

President TrumpDonald John TrumpSchiff blasts Trump for making 'false claims' about Russia intel: 'You've betrayed America. Again.' Poll: Sanders leads 2020 Democratic field with 28 percent, followed by Warren and Biden More than 6 in 10 expect Trump to be reelected: poll MORE promised to end the reckless foreign intervention of the United States over the past two decades, and he is keeping that promise. Reports indicate that he is closer than ever to fulfilling this by bringing a satisfactory end to the longest war in American history. After years of negotiations, the Taliban appears on the verge of signing an accord that would pave the way for a reduction of hostilities, a settlement on the future of Afghanistan, and a withdrawal of American troops.

If and when the deal is signed, about 5,000 troops will leave Afghanistan. If conditions continue to improve after that, the remaining 8,000 soldiers could eventually be brought home as well, ending an military presence of 18 years that has long since fallen off the radar of most Americans who do not have friends or loved ones in danger. As I wrote a decade ago in Operation Dark Heart, a negotiated settlement would be a necessary solution to end the Afghanistan conflict. Trump has taken the path to victory and is bringing an effective conclusion to the war.

After our country was attacked on 9/11, the United States had to retaliate against the monsters who killed more than 3,000 innocent civilians. Our superb military proved its valor and worth, enduring deployment after deployment and years of bloody conflict around the world to deliver that righteous retribution. Osama Bin Laden and his successor as the most prominent leader of Islamist terror, Abu Bakr Baghdadi, are both dead, brought to justice by the powerful might of American arms.

Nevertheless, on the campaign trail, Trump struck a chord with Americans by promising to avoid endless wars, which is exactly what our involvement in Afghanistan had become over the years. By the 2016 election, however, Americans finally came to recognize an ugly truth that the global war on terror had long since transformed into an open commitment of American troops to hostile war zones with no obvious conditions for victory.

Nowhere has this been more clear than in Afghanistan. Our presence there is now officially older than some of the American soldiers fighting there. Our troops were originally tasked with rooting out those people responsible for 9/11 and establishing a legitimate government in Kabul, but today their mission and the definition of victory are unclear.

For far too many years, Americans have fought and died to create the conditions for peace to flourish and for the democratic government in Kabul to establish its own legitimate authority. Just last week, two more American families joined the roughly 2,400 others who have received the tragic news that their loved one will never leave Afghanistan.

But the war in Afghanistan is no longer crucial to the core of our national security, leaving our troops with no obvious mission. Our Afghan partners need our support, but the exact conditions that would constitute a victory are unclear. Even if we had clear victory conditions, we do not even have accurate metrics to judge whether we have achieved them.

Given these realities, Trump and his advisers have now charted the best possible path forward. We have to set a clear and easily verified condition of a reduction in violence and aggression from the Taliban. American troops and negotiators meeting with Taliban and Afghan government representatives in Qatar appear to be on the cusp of achieving that.

Trump gave a lot of American families a great deal of renewed hope when he promised to stop the endless wars that have taken so many American lives over the past two decades. By fulfilling that promise, he is finally turning that hope into gratitude and relief across the country.

Tony Shaffer is a retired senior intelligence operations officer who served with the United States Army. He is now the president of the London Center for Policy Research and an adviser to the 2020 campaign of Donald Trump.

See original here:

Donald Trump is ending endless war | TheHill - The Hill

Ex-Fox News Reporter Nails What Donald Trump Is Really Doing To The Swamp – HuffPost

Posted on by

Donald Trumps recent clemency blitzcame under fire Wednesday from former Fox News reporterCarl Cameron, who said it proved the president wasnt fulfilling his promise to drain the swamp of corruption in Washington.

Cameron, in an interview with CNNs Brianna Keilar, noted how hollow Trumps 2016 campaign vow now sounded, following his pardons and sentence commutations this week for individuals who have done damage to the American public.

So, theyre swamp monsters, right? asked Keilar, of some of the people that Trump granted clemency to, including former New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik and former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

Yeah, replied Cameron Hes not draining it, hes deepening it.

Elsewhere in the segment, Cameron analyzed the link between those who had been pardoned and how their appeals to Trump were previously reported by Fox News, the widely watched conservative network he left in 2017.

It could be a two-way street, he explained. These may be people that Trump had seen on the list and decided he wanted them publicized on Fox News, and it may have been people who went to Fox News in order to use the venue in order to get to the president.

As you saw, the president himself said, I saw it on the news, I saw it on television, and it was, of course, a Fox News interview that that happened, Cameron added.

Calling all HuffPost superfans!

Sign up for membership to become a founding member and help shape HuffPost's next chapter

See the original post:

Ex-Fox News Reporter Nails What Donald Trump Is Really Doing To The Swamp - HuffPost

Will Donald Trump Serve Wendy’s, McDonald’s, and Burger King to the Super Bowl Winners, the Kansas City Chiefs? – Showbiz Cheat Sheet

Posted on by

Love it or hate it, fast food is an American tradition and custom. When Clemson won the national championship in football, thats exactly what they were served at the White House and it has some football fans wondering will President Donald Trump serve Wendys, McDonalds, and Burger King to the Super Bowl winners, the Kansas City Chiefs?

Heres what we know about this football team and their impending trip to the White House.

It was a meal of champions, to say to least. When the Clemson football team arrived at the White House to celebrate their 2018 victory, they were greeted by piles of Wendys, McDonalds, and Burger King. White House press secretary, Sarah Sanders, said Trump was personally paying for the event to be catered.

I think we are going to serve McDonalds, Wendys and Burger Kings with some pizza. I really mean it, Trump had said earlier in the day. It will be interesting. I would think thats their favorite food. So well see what happens.

This wasnt entirely a choice made by President Trump. The team visited the White House during the partial government shutdown, meaning that most of the staff that handed catering were on furlough.

We have Big Macs, we have Quarter Pounders with cheese. We have everything that I like, that you like, Trump continued, according to an article from The Washington Post. And I know no matter what we did, theres nothing you could have thats better than that, right?

As the winners of the most recent Super Bowl Championship, some football fans are wondering whether or not the Kansas City Chiefs got the invitation to the White House. Despite a tweet with an error from President Trump, the team has been invited and is expected to give a reply within the coming weeks.

By the way, your Super Bowl champions are coming, I think next week, Trump said, according to Chiefs Wire. Soon. Very soon. And every one of them wants to be here. And the coach loves us. The coach is great. Andy Reid.

Andy Reid responded to the invitation at the postgame press conference, saying, I mean, Ill be there. Ill be there. If theyre inviting us, Ill be there. Its quite an honor, I think.

President Donald Trump served fast food as a result of the partial government shutdown. Its pretty safe to say he wouldnt repeat this with the Kansas City Chiefs if they were to make an appearance.

However, President Trump has since canceled some teams visit to the White House, in lieu of controversy and comments from players. That includes the 2018 Super Bowl winners, the Philadelphia Eagles. The 2017 NBA championship winners, the Golden State Warriors, declined their invitation from the President.

The Kansas City Chiefs have yet to make an official statement regarding if, or when, they will visit the White House.

Read more:

Will Donald Trump Serve Wendy's, McDonald's, and Burger King to the Super Bowl Winners, the Kansas City Chiefs? - Showbiz Cheat Sheet

Chris Pratt Shares the ‘Crazy’ Story of a Couple Found Completely Preserved in Ice – Pajiba

Posted on by

While Chris Pratt will always be the least best Chris in Hollywood, he did recently have quite the story to tell. While in Iceland shooting his latest film, The Tomorrow War, Pratt heard the story of a long-dead couple who were found completely preserved in ice. How fascinating, but also kind of creepy.

We shot on a glacier that has never before been shot on, he said during his appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. Heres the full story, as Pratt tells it:

The story is admittedly tragic and heartbreaking, but also strangely cool. Sci-fi/fantasy films have often toyed with the idea of cryonics, the act of freezing someone at extremely low temperatures in hopes to preserve their remains and resurrect them. And yes, this story does indeed sound like the plot of Pratts movie Passengers, which also starred Jennifer Lawrence. It wasnt exactly well-received, though, but alas.

Pratt is currently on a press tour to promote Disney and Pixars animated film, Onward, which Ive heard good things about, though its arguably no Coco. As for The Tomorrow War, the film, which is set in the future and involves the military fighting an alien invasion, wont arrive in theaters until December 25, 2020. Hopefully, Pratt wont have anymore frozen people stories to tell in the meantime.

Watch Pratt tell the whole story to Ellen DeGeneres below!

Header Image Source: Getty Images

Next Article

See more here:

Chris Pratt Shares the 'Crazy' Story of a Couple Found Completely Preserved in Ice - Pajiba

A Play About Slavery in a New York Prison – The Intercept

Posted on by

A group of families and New York state officials gathered on a workday morning last month for a theatrical performance of a historical drama about slavery and human freedom. But it was an unusual setting for a play, especially for one pondering the question of liberation, because the stage was deep inside a maximum-security prison, and the actors were a group of incarcerated men, many of whom still face decades behind bars.

At the end of the play, the two-dozen cast members lined up at the front of the stage as one actor after the other removed their costumes: a simple, white T-shirt with the word slave or the characters slave name written across the chest. Below the stage, in the first row, a group of suited senior corrections officials looked on uncomfortably.

Then the audience, officials included, broke into a standing ovation. The cast, someone announced, would be allowed offstage for a few minutes to greet their families, and for a brief, chaotic moment, the actors rushed into the auditorium to tearfully hug their mothers, wives, and children as a group of guards stood close by watching. Then the men grouped back on stage to be counted, searched, and escorted back to their cells.

The performance was the second and last staging of a play Father Comes Home From the Wars by Suzan-Lori Parks by a group of men incarcerated at the Green Haven prison in Stormville, New York. The production was the culmination of a monthslong program with Rehabilitation Through the Arts, or RTA, an initiative that for more than two decades has offered arts programs to hundreds of people incarcerated in prisons across the state. A day earlier, the cast had performed before an enthusiastic audience of 350 fellow incarcerated men. Now, for the first time ever, officials at Green Haven had opened the prisons gates to families and outside visitors.

For the duration of the two-hour play, a tragic if at times absurdist drama set in a slave cabin and on a Civil War battlefield, cast and audience seemed to forget they were deep inside several perimeters of walls and heavily secured gates. I felt like I was at home, watching a TV show, the sister of one of the actors told me.

Scenes from Father Comes Home From the Wars at Green Haven prison in Stormville, N.Y.

Photos: Miranda Barnes for The Intercept

There were reminders, of course: The radios of a handful of guards standing along the auditoriums walls crackled in the background as the play unfolded on stage. And Anthony Annucci, the acting commissioner of the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, introduced the performance by joking to the audience to silence their cellphones a reminder that visitors had left all belongings behind and gone through a meticulous security screening before being allowed into the auditorium. The play started late because some family members had been held up at security. Other obstacles to doing theater in prison were playfully incorporated into the performance itself: Instead of a prop gun, an actor brandished a cardboard cutout spelling out the word gun. And because gray and navywere not only the colors of the Confederate and Union armies, but also those of New York corrections staff uniforms, actors playing soldiers on both sides of the conflict instead wore tan jackets, with Confederate Gray Army Coat and Union Blue Army Coat written on them.

But if staging a theatrical production in a maximum-security prison poses countless logistical challenges, doing so with a cutting play about slavery set in the midst of the Civil War, butdeeply echoing the present reality of mass incarceration, pushes boundaries in untested ways. We ask for a lot of out-of-the-box thinking for a production inside a maximum-security prison, Katherine Vockins, RTAs founder and executive director, told the audience before the play.

I cannot underscore how difficult it is to do a show like this in this kind of environment, echoed Paul Fitzgerald, the plays director. [This play] brings up a lot of issues about the American story.

Prison officials had reviewed and approved the script before production started; some of the plays most controversial scenes had been cut preemptively by RTA staff because of fears they might have riled up the population in a certain way, said Quanel Miller, one of the actors. Were limited here.

You kind of have to imagine what might be inflammatory or complicated in a way thats just too much to take on and anticipate, and make those cuts accordingly, Fitzgerald told me. You just try to feel how uncomfortable can this get, how much can you push the envelope to create meaningful art, to create dialogue, to bring up issues without going too far given the environment.

Despite the cuts, the performance was provocative and often uncomfortable. And while every line had been cleared ahead of time, there is a difference between reading stage directions in a script and watching two-dozen men, many imprisoned for decades, remove their slave uniforms and stomp on a stage declaring themselves free.

Father Comes Home From the Wars is a difficult play under any circumstances. The drama traces the story of Hero, an enslaved man whose master promises him freedom in exchange for his service in the Civil War on the wrong side of the war, as Heros close friend Homer reminds him early on. The play opens with Hero debating his choice, and Homer arguing that it is in fact no choice at all, that both options are two sides of the same coin and the coin aint even in your pocket.

Youre waiting for him to give you freedom, Homer tells Hero, when you should take it.

Homer himself tried that by running away. When he was caught, the master forced Hero at gunpoint to cut off his friends foot as punishment. But as the play progresses, the audience learns that Hero had actually snitched on Homer to the master, in exchange for yet another promise of freedom that was never fulfilled.

Take your freedom is a line that resonates with me, Lenox Ramsay, who played Homer, told me when I visited the cast during rehearsals. Ramsay, who is 30 years old and 11 years into a 17-year sentence, moved from prison to prison as he struggled to come to terms with his sentence, until four years ago when he landed at Green Havenandstarted taking college classes and discovered a passion for acting through RTA. Things changed for me here, he told me. You have to make your freedom, you cant let the time build up on you. We have this saying in prison, Do the time, dont let the time do you.

The play, which the cast members themselves selected, resonated with a lot of us, Ramsay added. In many ways, the parallels were obvious, and every line seemed to carry a double meaning when spoken in the prison context. When Im on that stage, Im not acting. I really want to get away from there because I really want to get away from here, said Melvin Davis, a 29-year-old who plays a runaway slave and is serving a 20-year sentence. When youre incarcerated, its like youre back on the plantation.

But the parallels are far more complex, and if the connection between slavery and incarceration was never explicit in the performance, it was nonetheless an unspoken theme throughout.

Mass incarceration started soon after slavery ended, with vagrancy laws, said Malcolm Baptiste, adding that he kept in his cell a copy of Michelle Alexanders groundbreaking book The New Jim Crow, which traces a direct line from slaveryto the contemporary prison system. In the 80s and 90s, when I was a child, people in our community spoke about how mass incarceration was all part of the plan of those that control society.

There is also a parallel between slavery and prison labor, Baptiste added. We dont get a fair wage, he said. No sick days, no vacation days.

At age 42, and 24 years into a 50-to-life prison sentence, Baptiste works 30 hours a week as an assistant teacher and clerk at the prison. He makes 25 cents an hour or $7.50 per week. At the prisons commissary, he said, a box of Tide laundry detergent costs $5.50, almost a weeks pay. Email messages to family cost 33 cents per message and additional 33 cents for each attachment. Its capitalism, he added. Colonizers went to Africa, captured people, brought them to America and other countries, and sold them. Today we have police targeting communities that are underserved, that are undereducated, underfunded, where there are no jobs.

Other prisoners saw a connection between the plays only white character a Confederate colonel and the mostly white guards at the prison. One of the plays most excruciating scenes, the reenactment of a slave auction, was painfully reminiscent of the searches that incarcerated men regularly face. This is a complicated play, it brings back feelings, said Lamel Fabers, who played a runaway slave. You cant think just because Im in prison, Im an animal.

They still oppress us, said Ernest Iverson, the plays narrator.

When I asked him whether he thought prison staff watching the play may see a similar connection, he replied, Theyre not stupid. Theyll see the connection.

If any of the corrections officials felt called out by the performance, it didnt show. Everyone I have spoken to thought it was a very good performance, said Marlyn Kopp, the deputy superintendent for programs at Green Haven. It was a hard topic, and they handled it fantastically, honestly.

There are very talented people here, theres no doubt about it, a guard assigned to monitor one of the rehearsals told me. It was amazing. I asked him if the play resonated in a particular way, given the prison context. They have a connection to it, he replied, referring to the cast. Did guards feel a similar connection? I dont look at things this way, he replied. Then, speaking of his job, Nobody aspires to do this.

But not all the guards were interested in the talent of the performers. One told me that he thought it was preposterous that inmates would be offered this kind of opportunity. We dont like them very much, theyre friends with the guys that assault my friends, the guard said of the volunteers coming in to teach arts workshops. In a way, theyre the enemy.

Ive heard negative feedback like, Why would anyone offer these people anything and why arent you out working with the families of the victims? said Margaret Ables, who produced the play and has worked with RTA for five years. I understand that criticism, but the positive outcomes that weve seen from our membership just really convince me that this program is doing the right thing.

Kopp, the deputy superintendent, said negative views among the prison staff were rare. Am I going to have one or two staff members not feel the same as the rest, as you have heard? The majority are the opposite, she said. I dont have a lot of backlash. If the majority felt that way, I wouldnt be able to get this kind of production off the ground.

In fact, the production was a massive effort, logistically, for the cast and prison staff alike. Rehearsals had to be scheduled around periodic counts for which the cast had to be back in their cells. Because of restrictions on the movement of those incarcerated, someone was always missing. Every prop and costume had to be preapproved, inspected, and accounted for at all times. And when outside volunteers could not be at the prison, a committee of incarcerated men ran their own rehearsals.

On the day of the performance, guards escorted families deep into the bowel of the prison, as someone put it, beyond the visitation room relatives normally see, down seemingly endless, cold corridors along the prisons yards, and past metal doors leading to housing blocks where three rows of cells sit one on top of the other. It was the closest look at life inside that most outsiders had ever had.

I got a little feel of what its like, and honestly, that part was horrible for me, said Gina Davis, Melvin Daviss younger sister, after the performance. Its horrible; I dont want him to be there.

I just want all of these men to come home, she added. Hopefully this time that they spent in there, they learned their lesson, and hopefully they come home and be better people, because honestly everyone deserves a second chance and people shouldnt spend their entire lives behind bars. No one really deserves to be in there.

The performance, rehearsals, and weekly classes RTA runs inside the prison offer a rare moment of escape for the programs participants. Volunteers and staff with the program run dance, writing, visual arts, public speaking, and improvisation workshops, among other offerings. And while Green Haven also offers more traditional educational and vocational programming, RTA allows for the inmates to grow in a totally different way than a sit-down type of program, said Kopp, the deputy superintendent.

Most importantly, the program offers participants an opportunity to build deep relationships that the daily reality of life in prison often precludes. Being in prison teaches you to close yourself off from trusting people, said Melvin Davis. Theater demands the opposite. For the six months leading up to the performance, Davis rehearsed the part of Penny, the only female character in the play, as a professional actress was only allowed to join the crew for the last two weeks of rehearsals. That was a real challenge for me, playing a female in a maximum-security prison, said Davis, noting that he couldnt have done it without the support of the rest of the cast. Youre not in prison when youre with RTA; its like family.

Kevin Cocozello, the only white actor in the cast, had an equally challenging role: that of the ruthless, manic master and Confederate colonel. The character was so racist and violent that the actor originally assigned to play the part refused to do it. Its a really tough and ugly role for anybody, because the words and the actions of that character are so upsetting, said Ables, the producer. But even more so in an incarcerated space, where theyre very resonant.

Cocozello said the roles complexity should be every actors dream. But as an incarcerated man, 10 years into a 23-year sentence, he identified more with Hero. Like him, I feel like theres a part of my soul that is cut in two.

After the play, cast members were allowed off stage to briefly greet relatives and friends.

Photo: Miranda Barnes for The Intercept

That was a sentiment many expressed and they credited the exposure to theater for helping them come to terms with it.

RTA helped me bring down the mask I had put up in prison, said Hector Rodriguez, who has spent 25 of his 45 years in prison and is a veteran of the program. In prison, you have to be this stoic character so you can survive. This helped me find myself. I still wear a mask, but now I know its not me, and sometimes theres no need to wear it.

Portraits by Miranda Barnes for The Intercept

Read the rest here:

A Play About Slavery in a New York Prison - The Intercept

OPINION: The crisis in student loan debt offers a chance for reparations – The Hechinger Report

Posted on by

The Hechinger Report is a national nonprofit newsroom that reports on one topic: education. Sign up for our weekly newsletters to get stories like this delivered directly to your inbox.

Editors note: Black students are more likely than their peers to borrow money for college, struggle with repayment and default on student loans. With the debt problem for black students in particular reaching urgent levels, The Education Trust and The Hechinger Report have partnered on a series of op-eds to amplify the voices of people studying solutions to the black student debt crisis.

Here are some examples of why, after more than a decade of research into their involvement with slavery and the transatlantic slave trade, a handful of universities are beginning to consider reparations:

The first slave recorded in Massachusetts was owned by Harvards school master.

The first nine presidents of Princeton University owned slaves.

The personal physician of Dartmouth Colleges president boiled the body of a Black man named Cato to furnish a skeleton for anatomical study, and his skin was turned to leather at the campus tannery and fashioned into a medical instrument case.

One can still stroll upon sidewalks and past buildings built with bricks made by enslaved laborers at the University of Virginia.

It is well past time that colleges and universities begin to heal wounds, both old and new, and the black student loan-debt crisis may be one of the most efficient uses of their reparatory funds.

African Americans heavily rely upon higher education as the gateway to upward mobility. The combination of the wealth gap, rising tuition costs and reliance upon student loans, however, is now saddling black students with disproportionate amounts of debt.

Meanwhile, the black student loan-debt crisis needs urgent remedies.

For many, attempting to climb the economic ladder means trading one form of economic distress for another. For colleges interested in giving financial weight to their declarations of forgiveness and justice, reparations should not be restricted to direct descendants of those enslaved by universities because universities profited from countless slaves owned by others as well.

Like other institutions, dozens of U.S. colleges and universities have uncovered an overabundance of records documenting their culpability in slavery, Americas gravest sin.

Reparations offer a solution because simply providing preferential admissions to the direct descendants of the enslaved workers who built and maintained these institutions ignores the historical context in which universities benefited from chattel slavery. Universities benefited from what I refer to as an Atlantic plantation complex, where they profited from an intercontinental trade centered around slaves, the products they produced and the bequests bestowed by their owners who dotted that complex.

Many of the nations oldest and most prestigious colleges are coming to grips with the fact that enslavement generated the capital that led to their creation.

To fully grasp the extent of institutions liabilities, though, we must look beyond slavery because universities participation in racial injustice extended well beyond abolition.

Related: To pay for college, more students are offering a piece of their future to investors

For instance, universities in the Jim Crow era both in the North and the South excluded black students while taking in their tax dollars. College students and staff undoubtedly were participants in lynch law. The esteemed faculty of these institutions pumped out the bunk scientific racism that buttressed Jim Crow, cemented Social Darwinism and unleashed the scourge of eugenics. The consumption of, and participation in, blackface minstrelsy on and around campuses was almost a rite of passage for decades, and it lives on today through social media and frat parties.

Neither the abolition of slavery nor the end of segregation nor the election of President Barack Obama has stopped these institutions from engaging in, or tolerating, acts of racial aggression. Despite continued resistance by student activists, universities across the nation too often seem unable or unwilling to doggedly police acts of psychological or physical violence against minority students.

While colleges obviously have little control over the private actions of their students, they could do more to rein in university police officers who engage in racially biased behavior similar to that of non-university police forces. Officers working for some universities disproportionately stop and arrest black people, both students and non-students alike. Some university police officers are not averse to deploying unnecessary violent force against people of color, as demonstrated by filmed encounters involving police from Yale University, Barnard College, the University of Chicagoand Rice University. Worst of all, however, are the actions of Portland State and University of Cincinnati police officers, who have used lethal force against non-student black men.

The all-too-frequent interactions between university police forces and non-student African Americans are one symptom of the continued practice of urban campuses devouring working-class minority neighborhoods. With the help of university police and municipal tax breaks, colleges continue to gentrify these spaces in their attempts to attract and comfort wealthier (white) students, and in the process displace black residents through rising rents.

Universities should devote their reparation funds toward making higher education more affordable for black students.

Programs must consider past and future students alike.

For black former students, universities could refinance outstanding loan balances at zero percent interest. For future students, a combination of grants and reduced tuition would help to reduce the racial wealth gap and could eliminate the black-white student loan-debt gap as it stands approximately $4,000-$7,000.

The universities with the largest endowments often the same institutions with the longest legacies of racial exploitation should form partnerships with HBCUs to strengthen their financial footing and establish programs aimed at eliminating hiring and wage discrimination in the workplace.

Related:Debt without degree: The human cost of college debt that becomes purgatory

Institutions should not rely upon financial reserves alone to fund these initiatives. Universities should consider adopting a system similar to the one devised and approved by Georgetown student-activists and slave descendants: adding a small fee to students annual bills to defray a portion of the reparatory spending. Such measures would go a lot further in uplifting black students and achieving social justice than more spending on studies and conferences.

Removing racist imagery and changing the names of buildings are welcome gestures, but they do little to even the balance. Someone must take the lead in addressing the black student loan-debt crisis head on, and universities should use their financial and social capital to attempt to make amends through reparations.

This story about reparations and student loans was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education, in partnership with The Education Trust. Sign up here for Hechingers newsletter.

Luke Frederick is a doctoral student at Georgetown University, where his research focuses on the policing and incarceration of free blacks and enslaved workers in antebellum America, and research director for the Ohio Student Association.

Join us today.

Read more:

OPINION: The crisis in student loan debt offers a chance for reparations - The Hechinger Report

Spot signs of slavery and do something about it – Construction News

Posted on by

The construction sector employs a huge variety of people, from expert engineers to low-skilled labourers.

Tough competition and tight margins put extreme pressure on costs, tempting some to cut corners and ignore checks on who is actually doing the work. This is exploited by human traffickers, who profit from controlling the movements and wages of their victims.

Slavery is a growing worldwide epidemic with more than 40 million victims, including an estimated 136,000 in Britain.

Human trafficking gangs target vulnerable individuals suffering from homelessness, addictions or family break-up, making empty promises about the fresh start these victims crave and assuring them of work, shelter and an income. Victims are usually trafficked to a different location, often overseas, isolating them from everything they know. Initial promises become a distant memory as they are put to work and paid nothing, or a tiny sliver of what they deserve, with traffickers controlling their finances. Identity theft and benefit fraud is common, with gangs profiting still further from such abuse.

Victims are usually grouped together in atrocious conditions, crammed into squalid houses infested with rats, and fed the minimum required for survival. Traffickers use threats and violence to control their victims, who may be sold on to other gangs if they fail to yield enough profit.

We all have a responsibility to stop this suffering, but rooting it out remains a challenge. Victims are often too frightened to come forward, while the short-term nature of construction labour makes it hard to establish the relationships needed to spot warning signs. There are, however, universal indicators that should ring alarm bells.

There are universal indicators that should ring alarm bells

Labouring jobs are regularly filled by people with limited education or little command of English. This can make it difficult to articulate their needs. As a result, one warning sign of potential slavery is an unofficial, unqualified interpreter, especially one who speaks for a large group of individuals. Where possible, it is best to source an independent interpreter.

Another indicator of slavery is restricted freedom of movement. This may be apparent if an individual, or group of individuals, is always escorted to and from the site. Behaviour and appearance can also be very telling. Forced labourers will often be skittish, paranoid and introverted, avoiding eye contact or interaction while remaining incredibly productive. They may look dishevelled, in worn-out, dirty clothing, and show visible signs of abuse, such as bruising. These signs should never be ignored.

One further indicator, offering absolute certainty of exploitation, is a negotiated rate below the National Minimum Wage. At its very lowest this should be 4.35 an hour for those aged 16 to 18, increasing incrementally to reach 8.21 at 25. No worker can be legally employed at rates below these statutory minimums.

To guard against abuse, every business should implement a robust anti-slavery policy tailored to its own circumstances while reflecting wider industry practices. Compliance should cascade down through all subcontractors, with stringent due diligence when selecting third-party services. This requires a shift in industry thinking, placing ethics above economics. If a price seems too good to be true, it probably is. To wilfully ignore this is to become complicit.

Copies of identity documents should be checked, bearing in mind that legitimate documents can often be held by gangmasters. Knowledge should be tested to verify sector-specific documents, such as CSCS cards. Blindly trusting a supposedly reputable supplier is no guarantee in one of the largest modern slavery cases in the UK, a recruitment agency had been infiltrated by a gang member.

A vital first step is to carry out a gap analysis, to highlight vulnerable areas needing immediate improvement. Experts such as Slave-Free Alliance can offer guidance to ensure the exercise is both thorough and attuned to the psyche of traffickers, who are adapt at exploiting weak points of entry.

Adopting responsible processes will require investment, but the outlay will be cheap compared to the potential consequences of inaction. Irreparable reputational damage can result from the discovery of forced labour, potentially leading to loss of contracts and insolvency.

By taking proactive action, firms can protect not just the victims of forced labour but their own future as well.

Marc Stanton is director of Slave-Free Alliance, which passes all its profit to founding charity Hope for Justice

Go here to see the original:

Spot signs of slavery and do something about it - Construction News

1619 Project leader calls for UVa to take real action to amend for slavery’s legacy – The Daily Progress

Posted on by

New York Times Magazine reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones spent Monday taking a tour of Charlottesvilles Confederate monuments and visiting Monticello before speaking to two crowds about a major project she leads.

Speaking first at the University of Virginia Rotunda, and later downtown at The Haven, Hannah-Jones discussed the 1619 Project and answered questions from UVa President Jim Ryan, New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie and community members.

The 1619 Project is an ongoing initiative of The New York Times Magazine that began as a special issue that was published last August, around the time of the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first Africans in Virginia.

I wanted to force an acknowledgement of this day, as much as I could, to not allow it to be erased or diminished, but also not just acknowledgement of the day, because a lot of organizations did commemorations, Hannah-Jones said. I wanted to force that acknowledgement of what slavery brought, and the centrality of slavery and that this was not going to be a history. We were going to look at the ongoing, everyday legacy that we all live with.

This project is not about making white people feel guilty for something that you did not personally do, but you have to acknowledge that you are beneficiaries of the system, she said. If there is guilt to be felt, it should be about the ways that you continue to uphold these systems and actively partake in these systems.

Hannah-Jones said it was fitting to have the conversation in Charlottesville and at UVa, specifically in the Rotunda.

In some ways, its the perfect place to have this conversation because I feel like all of the hypocrisies and ideas that the project tries to lay bare, much of that begins right here, she said.

When Ryan asked what her recommendations are for universities grappling with their own history, Hannah-Jones said that the least UVa should do is give free tuition to descendants of the enslaved people who built the university.

If youre really uncomfortable with that notion, you really have to ask yourself why, she said. You really have to ask why you think it is a problem that the people who were forced to build this, their ancestors, because just as wealth is passed down, so is this legacy.

Ryan did not respond on the matter.

When asked about those who have criticized the project, Hannah-Jones said their criticism was not legitimate, and she did not sit down one day and decide to make things up, and has sources to back up the questions from historians.

It has also been said that the project is too pessimistic.

Thats a different perspective that you can have when all of this wasnt built on the back of the oppression of your people, she said. I cant have that view.

During a question and answer period, Myra Anderson asked how she can get her voice heard as a descendant of an enslaved laborer at UVa.

I often feel like I dont even have a seat at the table, or my voice doesnt count, she said.

Hannah-Jones said she was not an activist or community organizer, but that Anderson speaking out, like she was doing at the discussion, was a way to get things accomplished.

I also believe that being publicly shamed is the only way that powerful people are motivated to do the right thing, she said.

UVa student and local activist Zyahna Bryant asked how people can stop universities from exploiting black students, such as asking them to appear in photographs, while not supporting them.

Im going to have her hand the mic back to you, and you tell the university what to do, Hannah-Jones said.

Bryant said the university needs to fund the Office of African-American Affairs, have a real conversation about race, support black faculty and support UVas low-wage workers.

If were not going to really do things fully and to the standard of excellence that we like to claim about being the good and great university, then we can just stop it altogether, because in my opinion it does not help to do things halfway, she said.

Read more here:

1619 Project leader calls for UVa to take real action to amend for slavery's legacy - The Daily Progress

American Women Won the Right to Vote After the Suffrage Movement Became More Diverse. Thats No Coincidence – TIME

Posted on by

When the woman suffrage movement first began in the mid-19th century, its champions had all become human-rights activists in the searing fires of the abolitionist movement. In 1838, Angelina Grimk, renegade daughter of South Carolina slave owners, laid down the basics of womens rights, in her book, Letters to Catherine Beecher: Whatever it is morally right for a man to do, it is morally right for a woman to do. I recognize no rights but human rights.

In the aftermath of Civil War, emancipation and the constitutional enfranchisement of African American men, this expansive alliance on behalf of human rights tragically faltered. Enraged at the exclusion of women from enfranchisement in the 15th Amendment, Elizabeth Cady Stanton insisted that, if political rights were not to be accorded to all citizens, then educated women, descendants of the Founding Fathers, should take precedence. Betraying her underlying elitism, she wrote in the womens rights periodical The Revolution, in December 1868, If woman find it hard to bear the oppressive laws of a few Saxon Fathers, of the best orders of manhood, what may she not be called to endure when all the lower orders, native and foreigners, Dutch, Irish, Chinese and African, legislate for her and her daughters?

From that point on, for the next 50 years, the major suffrage organizations and their most prominent leaders were white, middle-class women and their arguments rested on the allegedly lofty characteristics of women-as-women rather than on universal human rights. Yet by the turn of the century, national woman suffrage had still not been secured, and political realities were making the constitutional enfranchisement of women a distant dream.

The demand for woman suffrage could not succeed unless it came from a mass movement, reflecting the voices of a diverse and large portion of the nations women. Luckily for the generations of American women who followed, even during the frustrating decades when the previous, exclusionary formulation ruled, American suffragism had grown far beyond its origins.

Get your history fix in one place: sign up for the weekly TIME History newsletter

Certainly, once one looks past the top tiers of national suffrage leadership, the suffrage movement was not uniformly white. The determined, eager suffragism of African American women is impressive. The battle that had been fought to win and increasingly to protect the voting rights of African American men had affected them deeply. As early as 1874, African American activist Mary Ann Shadd Cary presented her case, as recorded in the official record of the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee: The colored women of this country though heretofore silent, in great measure upon the question of the right to vote have neither been indifferent to their own just claims nor to their demand for political representation.

By the late 19th century, just two generations out of slavery, and despite Jim Crow-era racist violence and segregation, many more African American women were realizing that political rights were crucial to their ability to protect their communities and to advance themselves as women. If white American women, with all their natural and acquired advantages, need the ballot, explained, Adele Hunt Logan of Alabama, in the pages of the Colored American Magazine in 1905, how much more do Black Americans, male and female need the strong defense of the vote to help secure them their right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? At the national level, the southern-controlled Democratic Party was totally closed to African Americans. However, at the state level in the North and West, wherever African Americans had standing in local Republican parties, black women were well organized and politically sophisticated participants in the battle for the vote.

Nor was the movement solely the realm of wealthy, educated women. In the early 20th century, white immigrant working-class women also turned to the suffrage movement in great numbers. Working in factories, joining trade unions, moving freely through major cities, they helped to turn 20th century woman suffragism into a mass movement. First and second-generation Italian, Irish and Eastern European Jewish women were especially prominent in the ranks of the great suffrage parades of the 1910s in New York City; Chicago; San Francisco; Washington, D.C. and elsewhere.

Inspired by the spirit of Progressive Era social change, aware of new protective labor and housing laws, these working-class women recognized the importance of making their own political presence felt and influencing how these laws would be shaped and enforced. In researching my new book, Suffrage: Womens Long Battle for the Vote, I discovered this forceful 1907 statement by a British-born garment worker speaking before the New York legislature: Gentlemen, we need every help in the battle of life . To be left out by the State just sets up a prejudice against us. Bosses think and women come to think themselves that they dont count for so much as men.

The most famous womens labor event of these years, the Triangle Shirtwaist Strike of 1910-1911, highlighted the importance of working-class womens suffrage activism. New York City garment workers wore suffrage pins when they picketed their factories and noted that, if they had the right to vote, police would not be so quick to harass and arrest them. The famous heroine of the strike, garment worker Clara Lemlich, issued this challenge to New York legislatures: We are here Senators. We are 800,000 strong in New York State alone. The name of the organization behind the pamphlet that circulated her words is telling: the Wage Earners Suffrage League.

In the final years of the suffrage movement, this power of this unprecedented mass movement was clear. Though sometimes separated in their own organizations, black and white, rich and poor women were unified by their common exclusion from the political affairs of the nation. When the U.S. Constitution was finally amended to prohibit states from political discrimination on the grounds of sex, all celebrated their victory. Speaking before the final convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association in 1920, its leader, Carrie Chapman Catt, declared that the suffragists of this country in the last half century, more than any other group of people in this land, have kept the flying flag of the principles of the Declaration of Independence, the principles of the constitution, and have held them before the people of this country.

However, looking back at the victory of the suffrage movement in her 1933 book, Women in the Twentieth Century, sociologist Sophonsiba Breckenridge insightfully observed that, much like at the end of the World War, the demobilization that began after 1920 was followed by the development of a diversification of aims and interest among and between those who had been united in the attack upon a common enemy.

As women of different politics, races and classes sought to make use of their new voting power, their differences reemerged. Many of those divisions are still an important factor in American politics a century later but they have been overcome before, and may be again. After all, the history of woman suffrage is not yet over.

Ellen Carol DuBois is the author of Suffrage: Womens Long Battle for the Vote, available Feb. 25 from Simon & Schuster.

Thank you! For your security, we've sent a confirmation email to the address you entered. Click the link to confirm your subscription and begin receiving our newsletters. If you don't get the confirmation within 10 minutes, please check your spam folder.

Contact us at editors@time.com.

Excerpt from:

American Women Won the Right to Vote After the Suffrage Movement Became More Diverse. Thats No Coincidence - TIME

The UN set 17 sustainability goals. It needs fashion’s help meeting them – Vogue Business

Posted on by

Key takeaways:

The United Nations is calling on the fashion industry to help it achieve its Sustainable Development Goals, which include relevant topics like ending poverty and climate action.

In addition to lessening its impact, fashion is positioned to serve as an awareness platform for the public, the UN says.

At the core of fashions connection to the SDGs is the promotion of sustainable consumption, which involves moving away from selling more to consumers.

The evening before New York Fashion Week kicked off in February, guests gathered at an art space in Manhattan for an event unrelated to the runway shows. The art exhibition Arcadia Earth and the UN Office for Partnerships hosted representatives from Gucci, Theory and Mara Hoffman, along with influencers like Sierra Quitiquit and Marina Testino to discuss the connections between fashion and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

The UNs main message: Fashion has a responsibility and the creative leadership to help it achieve its sustainability goals, which were laid out in 2015 to benefit the planet and its inhabitants. Also known as the Global Goals or SDGs, they cover areas like ocean health, gender equality and sustainable consumption. While nonprofits and developmental agencies are closely tied to these goals, achieving what the UN has laid out will be impossible without participation from the private sector. Fashion ranks high among the industries that need to take action given its size and impact.

To Arcadia Earth founder Valentino Vettori, who spent two decades in fashion, the many touch points between fashion and the UNs goals are loud and clear. Should we talk about womens rights? Its obviously connected to that. Should we talk about slavery? Its obviously connected to that, he says. The industrys consumption and pollution of water might be the most conspicuous of all. It will become the most precious thing ever and we use 2,000 gallons of it to make a pair of jeans? I dont think so.

Fashion can improve its practices in all these areas, the UN believes, and it can also be a platform to reach more people regarding the substance of these challenges.

The UN is offering resources as it calls on fashion to do its part, through a combination of brand-specific efforts, cross-industry alliances and public service, to transform production habits while also putting the onus on consumers to make informed and responsible choices.

The fashion industry has incredible potential for us for advocacy, education, creativity. We need to better tell the UNs story on sustainability, and fashion is a great platform, says Lucie Brigham, chief of office, the UN Office for Partnerships. We need to engage the creative industry to help us educate customers.

Established to steer progress toward the UNs 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and designed to build on, and fill in gaps left by, the Millennium Development Goals, the SDGs are made up of calls for action like ending poverty, ocean conservation, climate change mitigation and ensuring quality education and clean water for all. Fashion is arguably most directly related to the no poverty; gender equality; decent work and economic growth; sustainable development and consumption; climate action; and partnerships goals.

The goals have helped some fashion and related companies set their priorities. A Kering spokesperson says the company used the SDGs when developing its 2025 strategy to ensure it was addressing the full suite of global challenges, from climate change to employees wellbeing. Textile Exchange, a nonprofit that works with brands and suppliers to shift to more sustainable fibres, has used the Global Goals as a framework for promoting organic and lower-impact fibres since 2016, saying they can serve not only as a risk management tool but also to drive innovation, and that investors and businesses are increasingly incorporating them into their risk and materiality assessments.

Attendees at Arcadia Earth's New York Fashion Week event in February 2020.

Arcadia Earth

Guidance from the UN can also help brands to set more ambitious goals, rather than simply meet the bare minimum. For brands already focused on issues covered by the goals, looking to the SDGs can help them solidify their priorities or shed light on areas they havent prioritised before.

UK bag and accessories brand Bottletop, founded in 2002, started exploring natural rubber as a material, says co-founder Cameron Saul, in pursuit of meeting Sustainable Development Goal 15: preserve life on land. The brand was chosen last year by the UN to produce bracelets to represent a larger public awareness campaign.

The UN came to us and said, Listen, were not going to achieve these goals unless people on the street are aware and empowered to deliver them, he recalls. According to Saul, the campaign has sold 55,000 bracelets, which are made out of upcycled illegal firearms and ocean plastic, and resulted in 900 million social impressions.

Saul argues that while awareness doesnt necessarily translate into action, it does represent the first step. The industry has enormous impacts on the planet. If you can transform that, were talking about a seismic impact on people and planet, but also fashion can be the cheerleader. It can carry people and voice in a way that nothing else can. We all relate to fashion.

#TOGETHERBAND (the bracelet that works with the UN to further advancing towards the global goals).

Bottletop

The Global Goals are also prompting companies to form partnerships to work collaboratively on an issue. The UN launched its Alliance for Sustainable Fashion last year to promote and coordinate such efforts from within the UN. The UN Office for Partnerships is trying to work with other organisations and sectors of the industry to increase these efforts, recognising that they wont necessarily happen on their own.

One initiative the UN has backed is One X One, led by Swarovski and the Slow Factory Foundation with support from the UN Office for Partnerships, which matches designers with scientists or advocates to explore solutions for various challenges; New York designer Mara Hoffman, for example, is working with workforce development programme Custom Collaborative to build a training programme for renewing garments.

The goals also raise areas to attention where the least progress is getting done. For Ayesha Barenblat, founder of the California nonprofit Remake, gender equality and opportunities for safe and inclusive employment with fair wages for all is where the fashion industry falls most short. Whether youre looking at aspiring designers or garment workers, its very unusual for an industry to be made up predominantly of women but run by men, she says. Were talking about a $3 trillion industry, but for the most part its built on degradation and poverty wages.

These issues have been documented. But Barenblat says large companies typically address them with little more than training sessions, which she calls window dressing rather than substantial change. Its more claiming the empowerment of women rather than getting to the structural issues, says Barenblat.

Some brands, though, are exploring ways to effectively address these issues, which are covered in the UN goals of gender equality, no poverty, and decent work and economic growth. US apparel and footwear brands Able and Nisolo have partnered on a campaign, the Lowest Wage Challenge, to encourage brands to share their lowest wages to boost transparency. Nudie Jeans has committed to paying workers a living wage, while apparel brand Alta Gracia runs a factory in the Dominican Republic certified by the Worker Rights Consortium to pay a living wage.

Ultimately, changing customer behaviour is necessary for many of the other efforts to succeed. Kevin Moss, global director of the nonprofit World Resources Institutes Business Center, says the goal of sustainable consumption sits at the intersection of nearly all the others. That to me is at the nexus of what people do, what people buy and the environment.

The UN describes sustainable consumption as filling peoples basic needs and improving quality of life while minimising emissions, waste, toxic materials and the use of natural resources in order to protect future generations. Its an issue that has been left out of many sustainability and development initiatives in the past. According to the international agency, worldwide material consumption reached 92.1 billion tons in 2017 a 254 per cent jump from 27 billion tons in 1970.

Jode Rodrigo de Araujo aka The Rubber Doctor in #TOGETHERBAND Voices, created by Andrew Morgan.

Andrew Morgan

The solution, he says, lies in finding models of growth that provide jobs and economic wellbeing that dont depend on selling more stuff to more people. That may include sales of more services rather than material goods; and more brands getting into resale and abandoning the model of selling only new items. Such steps will also require behaviour change on the part of consumers, but he thinks thats not unreasonable to expect, with some effort.

I don't think its innate human behaviour to want to possess more and more and more stuff. I think its been brands and industry [pushing] to make us want more, he says. Companies can play a role in shifting consumer behaviour to reverse that mentality while figuring out the business models to accommodate. If you change the model but not the behaviour, it can fail. If you change behaviour but not the business model, youll drive customers elsewhere. The trick for businesses is to be doing both at the same time. Not waiting though theyve got to do it now.

Correction: This article has been updated to reflect that Arcadia Earth is for-profit art exhibition, rather than a non-profit.

To receive the Vogue Business Sustainability Edit, sign up here.

Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com.

More from this author:

The shopping platforms that want to standardise sustainability

Amid climate crisis, fashion rethinks the runway show

How fashion can avoid blowing up the Paris Agreement

Read the original here:

The UN set 17 sustainability goals. It needs fashion's help meeting them - Vogue Business

Wage theft turns to truth theft – MacroBusiness

Posted on by

At Domain comes a freshly uploaded press release from some lobby or other:

The chief executives of two of the nations largest retail employers have blamed incorrectly configured software as a key cause of staff underpayments, arguing this issue also often leads to businesses overpaying workers.

Rob Scott, who heads up Bunnings, Kmart and Target owner Wesfarmers, and Anthony Heraghty, the managing director of Rebel Sports parent, Super Retail Group, both pinpointed software bought from offshore vendors and not configured for Australias relatively complex labour environment as a key factor in staff being underpaid.

Theres more from businomics moraliser, Jennifrer Hewitt, at the AFR:

the furore over what the ACTU likes to call wage theft is a bizarre example of the contradictions in Australias workplace culture and absurdly complicated industrial relations system of awards and entitlements. Now those contradictions are pushing employees and employers way back into last century instead of what was supposed to be a modern era of sensible, flexible work arrangements.

Theres plenty of blame to go around. Unlike New Zealand, Australias peculiar national skill has been to maintain and build on its arcane labyrinth of award classifications, minimum rates, overtime and penalty conditions. Its enough to confuse the sharpest mathematician, let alone a small business owner or even a corporate HR department.

Investment in payroll systems and technology and the human brain cant always keep up. Underpayment in corporate Australia is more often inadvertent than deliberate, insufficiently attentive about detail rather than overly greedy about profit.

Why do the errors always favour the employer? Hmmm

It seems everybody is using the same software, too, given Fair Work has identified one in five businesses are doing it.

This is all rubbish. Wage theft is not even a glitch in the system any more. It is the system.

Academic research finally caught up to this reality late last year. Below are key excepts fromChapter 13entitledTemporary migrant workers (TMWs), underpayment and predatory business models, written by Iain Campbell:

This chapter argues that the expansion of temporary labour migration is a significant development in Australia and that it has implications for wage stagnation

Three main facts about their presence in Australia are relevant to the discussion of wage stagnation. First, there are large numbers of TMWs in Australia, currently around 1.2 million persons. Second, those numbers have increased strongly over the past 15 years. Third, when employed, many TMWs are subject to exploitation, including wage payments that fall below sometimes well below the minimum levels specified in employment regulation

One link to slow wages growth, as highlighted by orthodox economics, stems from the simple fact of increased numbers, which add to labour supply and thereby help to moderate wages growth. This chapter argues, however, that the more salient point concerns the way many TMWs are mistreated within the workplace in industry sectors such as food services, horticulture, construction, personal services and cleaning. TMW underpayments, which appear both widespread in these sectors and systemic, offer insights into labour market dynamics that are also relevant to the general problem of slow wages growth

Official stock data indicate that the visa programmes for international students, temporary skilled workers and working holiday makers have tripled in numbers since the late 1990s In all, the total number of TMWs in Australia is around 1.2 million persons. If we include New Zealand citizens and permanent residents, who can enter Australia under a special subclass 444 visa, without time limits on their stay and with unrestricted work rights (though without access to most social security payments), then the total is close to 2 million persons TMWs now make up around 6% of the total Australian workforce

Decisions by the federal Coalition government under John Howard to introduce easier pathways to permanent residency for temporary visa holders, especially international students and temporary skilled workers, gave a major impetus to TMW visa programmes.

Most international students and temporary skilled workers, together with many working holiday makers, see themselves as involved in a project of staggered or multi-step migration, whereby they hope to leap from their present status into a more long-term visa status, ideally permanent residency. One result, as temporary migration expands while the permanent stream remains effectively capped, is a lengthening queue of onshore applicants for permanent residency

Though standard accounts describe Australian immigration as oriented to skilled labour, this characterisation stands at odds with the abundant evidence on expanding temporary migration and the character of TMW jobs. It is true that many TMWs, like their counterparts in the permanent stream, are highly qualified and in this sense skilled. However, the fact that their work is primarily in lower-skilled jobs suggests that it is more accurate, as several scholars point out, to speak of a shift in Australia towards ade facto low-skilled migration programme

A focus on raw numbers of TMWs may miss the main link to slow wages growth. It is the third point concerning underpayments and predatory business models that seems richest in implications. This point suggests, first and most obviously, added drag on wages growth in sectors where such underpayments and predatory business models have become embedded. If they become more widely practised, underpayments pull down average hourly wages. If a substantial number of firms in a specific labour market intensify strategies of labour cost minimisation by pushing wage rates below the legal floor, it can unleash a dynamic of competition around wage rates that foreshadows wage decline rather than wage growth for employees

Increases in labour supply allow employers in sectors already oriented to flexible and low-wage employment, such as horticulture and food services, to sustain and extend strategies of labour cost minimisation The arguments and evidence cited above suggest a spread of predatory business models within low-wage industries.37 They suggest an unfolding process of degradation in these labour markets

And below are extracts fromChapter 14, entitledIs there a wages crisis facing skilled temporary migrants?, byJoanna Howe:

Scarcely a day goes by without another headline of wage theft involving temporary migrant workers

In this chapter we explore a largely untold story in relation to temporary migrant workersit exposes a very real wages crisis facing workers on the Temporary Skill Shortage (TSS) visa (formerly the 457 visa) in Australia. This crisis has been precipitated by the federal governments decision to freeze the salary floor for temporary skilled migrant workers since 2013the government has chosen to put downward pressure on real wages for temporary skilled migrants, thereby surreptitiously allowing the TSS visa to be used in lower-paid jobs

In Australia, these workers are employed via the TSS visa and they must be paid no less than a salary floor. This salary floor is called the Temporary Skilled Migration Income Threshold (TSMIT). TSMIT was introduced in 2009 in response to widespread concerns during the Howard Government years of migrant worker exploitation. This protection was considered important because an independent review found that many 457 visa workers were not receiving wages equivalent to those received by Australian workers

In effect, TSMIT is intended to act as a proxy for the skill level of a particular occupation. It prevents unscrupulous employers misclassifying an occupation at a higher skill level in order to employ a TSS visa holder at a lower level

TSMITs protective ability is only as strong as the level at which it is set. In its original iteration back in 2009, it was set at A$45 220. This level was determined by reference to average weekly earnings for Australians, with the intention that TSMIT would be pegged to this because the Australian government considered it important that TSMIT keep pace with wage growth across the Australian labour market. This indexation occurred like clockwork for five years. But since 1 July 2013, TSMIT has been frozen at a level of A$53 900. ..

There is now a gap of more than A$26 000 between the salary floor for temporary skilled migrant workers and annual average salaries for Australian workers. This means that the TSS visa can increasingly be used to employ temporary migrant workers in occupations that attract a far lower salary than that earned by the average Australian worker. This begs the question is the erosion of TSMIT allowing the TSS visa to morph into a general labour supply visa rather than a visa restricted to filling labour market gaps in skilled, high-wage occupations?..

But why would employers go to all the effort of hiring a temporary migrant worker on a TSS visa over an Australian worker?

Renowned Australian demographer Graeme Hugo observed that employers will always have a demand for foreign workers if it results in a lowering of their costs. The simplistic notion that employers will only go to the trouble and expense of making a TSS visa application when they want to meet a skill shortage skims over a range of motives an employer may have for using the TSS visa. These could be a reluctance to invest in training for existing or prospective staff, or a desire to move towards a deunionised workforce. Additionally, for some employers, there could be a belief that, despite the requirement that TSS visa workers be employed on equivalent terms to locals, it is easier to avoid paying market salary rates and conditions for temporary migrant workers who have been recognised as being in a vulnerable labour market position. A recent example of this is the massive underpayments of chefs and cooks employed by Australias largest high-end restaurant business, Rockpool Dining Group, which found that visa holders were being paid at levels just above TSMIT but well below the award when taking into account the amount of overtime being done

Put simply,temporarydemand for migrant workers often creates apermanentneed for them in the labour market. Research shows that in industries whereemployers have turned to temporary migrants en masse, it erodes wages and conditions in these industries over time, making them less attractive to locals

A national survey of temporary migrant workers found that 24% of 457 visa holders who responded to the survey were paid less than A$18 an hour. Not only are these workers not being paid in according with TSMIT, but they are also receiving less than the minimum wage. A number of cases also expose creative attempts by employers to subvert TSMIT. Given the challenges many temporary migrants face in accessing legal remedies, these cases are likely only scratching the surface in terms of employer non-compliance with TSMIT

Combined, then, with the problems with enforcement and compliance, it is not hard to conclude that the failure to index TSMIT is contributing to a wages crisis for skilled temporary migrant workers So the failure to index the salary floor for skilled migrant workers is likely to affect wages growth for these workers, as well as to have broader implications for all workers in the Australian labour market.

The micro-economic evidence has been overwhelming for years:

I gave up listing is all eventually.

What we are seeing is the systemic rorting of Australian workers thanks to an out of control immigration system that has rendered industrial relations ungovernable.

It is loved by the Right because it delivers fat rentiers easier profits. It is loved by the Left because its not racist. It is loved by the media because it drives property listings. It is loved by Treasury because more warm bodies boost tax receipts. It is loved by the RBA because it doesnt have to account for its housing bubble.

Australias migrant slavery economy is the core of broader weak wages growth but that doesnt matter either. The macro-economic enabler is running mass immigration into material economic slack for the first time ever:

Its not just temporary visas. It is the entire mass immigration model:

These problems have been documented by MB for years (e.g.here,hereandhere).

The first best solution to Australias wage stagnation and theft is simple: cut-off the supply to cheap foreign labour by halving immigration.

He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.

Here is the original post:

Wage theft turns to truth theft - MacroBusiness

Class Domination, Social Hierarchy And The Fight For Equality – Scoop.co.nz

Posted on by

Tuesday, 18 February 2020, 9:25 amOpinion: Dr Nayvin Gordon

Class domination has not alwaysexisted in human society, but once established, socialhierarchy has deeply penetrated and permeated culture tocreate both implicit and explicit biases for social status,for hierarchy. Returning to an egalitarian society requiresboth systemic-institutional change and change in ourconscious and unconscious minds.

As long as classsociety has existed, it has been a social dominancehierarchy. Hierarchy is a social construct, used to justifydomination and exploitation. Myths have always been used tojustify the rule of the few over the many. Kings and Lordsmaintained that God gave them the authority to rule overpeasants. Slave-owners declared that non Christians could beenslaved. Today capitalists say that they are smarter andworked harder and thus have the right to privately ownproduction and pay workers wages. They made themselvesrulers, and then they sought to divide those whom theyruled.

The brutal economic system of slavery inAmerica required social control to prevent the unity ofblack and white labor. The slave-owners created the lies andlaws of racism. Frederick Douglas, the famous abolitionist,wrote: The hostility between the Whites and the Blacks ofthe South is easily explained. It has its root and sap inthe relation of slavery, and was incited on both sides bythe cunning of the slave masters. Those masters securedtheir ascendancy over both the poor White and the Blacks byputting enmity between them. They divided both to conquereach. The demonizing myths of racism created aculture of race hierarchy in the general population. Whenindustrial capitalism began to expand it used the racistideology to divide black and white to exploit and profitfrom the wage worker.

Today we live in a capitalisteconomy where the 1% owns controlling interest incorporations, industry, finance and land, while the 99% areexploited. A few thousand years of social hierarchy hascreated a cultural environment where it is largely acceptedas natural. It is in the air, consciously andunconsciously embedded in our culture. We generally acceptthe oppressive system of social dominance. Children as youngas six are implicitly (unconsciously) awareof status.

Social status is widely acceptedimplicitly even among those whohold egalitarian world views. Studies have shownthat status is more important thanmoney.

Significantly, social status isstrongly linked to fear in our brains emotional center.The 1% use their power to deflect and divide the 99% bypromoting stereotypes and mass propaganda to dehumanizecertain groups which impact the limbic system, theprimitive brain, with the powerful emotions of fear andhate When status is threatened the emotion offear is generated leading to hatred and violence.History reveals that when the 99% begin to organize forprogressive social change that could create more socialequality, the ruling class feels threatened.Confrontation is inevitablesince it is invariablyinitiated by the forces of reaction whosee their power threatened. A famous economist oncewrote: the most violent, mean and malignant passionsof the human breast, the Furiesof private interest.

The top down dominance ofcorporate capitalism continue to divide and subdivide the99% into those who are considered worthy and those who areless worthy --race, nation, religion, sex, immigrant, tribeand more, ad infinitum. The power systems of dominancehierarchy are built into the major institutions andorganizations of society- corporations, the state, thepolice and the military for example. It is not a few badapples, but the rotten barrel of the barrelmakers .

There are those who maintain that itis in human nature to dominate and exploitthey sayit has always been so. Nothing could be further fromthe truth. Anthropologists have repeatedlydemonstrated that humans have lived for thousands of yearsin egalitarian societies. In fact many have practicedreverse hierarchythose who sought to dominate asdespots were punished,banished or killed.

Social hierarchy is acreated oppressive social construct as isracism. It can be abolished. Socialdominance hierarchy and the fear of losing status are notinevitable. We have the potential to unite the worlds 99%and create a society of equals. It is crucial that thoseseeking to transform the political and economic systemacknowledge not only must they build a movement foreconomic, social and political equality but also struggle toovercome their own implicit hierarchical biases. If not,social hierarchy will be carried into the futurewhere leaders will become rulers whoundermine and corrupt the egalitarian world view. Historyhas clearly shown that only eternal vigilance of the rankand file mobilized against social hierarchy has thepotential to win and maintain the solidarity of anegalitarian society. We must change ourselveswhile also seeking to changesociety.

Scoop Media

Scoop Citizen Membership ScoopPro for Organisations

Continue reading here:

Class Domination, Social Hierarchy And The Fight For Equality - Scoop.co.nz

NYU Professor Involved With Anti-Police Protests That Caused $100K In Damage – Blue Lives Matter

Posted on by

New York, NY The instigators behind the massive anti-cop subway fare protest in New York City on Jan. 31 are professors at New York University and the University of Buffalo.

The antifa group Decolonize This Place launched a social media campaign encouraging disruptive demonstrations in the New York City transit system on Jan. 31 as a reaction to the swearing in of 500 new subway cops who were sworn into the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) earlier in the month.

The streets are ours. The trains our ours. The walls are ours. This moment is ours. How will you and your crew build and f--k shit up for #FTP3 on #J31 (THIS FRIDAY)? Issa mothaf--kin' movement, @decolonize_this tweeted on Jan. 28.

At the urging of Decolonize This Place, the protesters vandalized subway turnstiles and bus windows, causing more than $100,000 in damage to city property, according to the New York Post.

Campus Reform recently reported that Decolonize This Place, the group behind the violent protests, was founded in 2016 by New York University (NYU) Professor Amin Husain and University of Buffalo Professor Nitasha Dhillon.

NYUs website said that Husain teaches a class on militant activism at the university, the New York Post reported.

Husain and Dhillon were both actively involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement.

In 2012, Husain spoke at an Al-Quds Day celebration in New York City and said he was from Palestine and had fought to free Gaza.

He talked about throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails at Israeli settlers and said that hed moved to the United States for an American Dream that didnt exist.

Husain talked about the same sort of violent uprisings in 2016 at a Pro-Palestinian rally in Times Square, the New York Post reported.

The Decolonize This Place website features revolutionary manuals and a diagram that explains how to How to Shut Down the City.

The guides discuss how to overpower an opponent and have thought bubbles with the words nails, glass bottles, and masks, the New York Post reported.

"For us, decolonization necessitates abolition, the Decolonize This Place website explained. But what does abolition demand? Not only does it demand the abolition of prisons and police, bosses and borders, but as Fred Moten and Stefano Harney write, its the abolition of a society that could have prisons, that could have slavery, that could have the wage, and therefore not abolition as the elimination of anything but abolition as the founding of a new society.

Husain led a protest in 2018 and 2019 that forced the resignation of a board member of the Whitney Museum of American Art after it was revealed that a company he owned manufactured the tear gas being used at the U.S.-Mexico border, the New York Post reported.

The NYU professor uses movements such as Occupy Wall Street and the Direct Action Front for Palestine as case studies for the course he teaches at NYU.

NYU appeared not to want a close association with Husain, the New York Post reported.

Our records reflect that he is one of the thousands of part-time faculty that are hired each year by schools and academic departments, NYU Spokesman John Beckman said when asked about the militant instructor.

Husains contact information was removed from the NYU website shortly after the New York Post contacted the university for comment.

The New York Post also reported that Husain had recently scrubbed his Twitter account and removed any references to his role in the incident on Jan. 31.

Read the rest here:

NYU Professor Involved With Anti-Police Protests That Caused $100K In Damage - Blue Lives Matter

A revolutionary view of the Sanders campaign – Workers World

Posted on by

The competition for the Democratic presidential nomination has become a focus of political life in the United States. For revolutionaries debating how to view this campaign, we must answer the following questions: What is the class character of the Sanders movement? What is the potential impact of the Sanders movement on the worldwide interests of the working class and the oppressed? How can this development lead to a broader revolutionary upsurge in the heart of the U.S. empire? From there we must chart a plan of action.

Character and context of Sanders movement

The rejuvenation of social democracy and liberal reformism, most notably in the rise of the left in the Democratic Party, comes as a response to the decline of the U.S. empire and the inability of the U.S. capitalist economy to provide decent, well-paying jobs to a majority of the working class.

On one hand, the Peoples Republic of China has risen as a clear economic and geopolitical challenge to U.S. imperialist world domination. On the other, the U.S. remains plagued by endless imperialist war, mass incarceration, low wages, enormous debt, underemployment, sexual and gender-based violence, and outbursts of racist, fascist terror. A major financial collapse looms, threatening to finally reveal the weaknesses of the real economy and then unleash a deeper ruling-class assault on workers quality of life.

In struggle against neoliberal economic terrorism by U.S. banks and corporations and their client states, our class has taken to the streets across the world. Tens of millions have fought against austerity and the capitalist ruling class in Chile, Ecuador, Haiti, France, Colombia and elsewhere; hundreds of millions if India is included. The desperate attempts of the U.S. empire to maintain its stranglehold on the world economy have caused anti-imperialist reactions in Iraq, Iran, Venezuela and Palestine.

The unifying issue of this global struggle is the declining prospects for working-class youth who live in capitalist societies. A multinational youth movement has identified neoliberal capitalism as its primary enemy. In some ways, the second presidential campaign of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders gets its popular energy from and provides a voice for part of the U.S. wing of this working-class youth movement.

The viability of any reformist movement like the Sanders campaign, in the face of a weakening global capitalist system, can be debated. Can social democracy and progressive reformism be revived? Insecure about maintaining its profits in a capitalist economy that is declining relative to other world powers, the U.S. ruling class has increased its exploitation of the working class, taking an ever larger proportion of the wealth the workers produce.

Without the material basis provided by the expansion of U.S. imperialism and its reaping of superprofits, any rebirth of social democracy would find it difficult to deliver meaningful benefits to the workers, even should it win an election. What is needed instead is a movement that seeks nothing short of the end of capitalism.

Ruling class attacks Sanders

Earlier this month, Sanders said: In many respects, we are a socialist society today. Donald Trump, before he was president, as a private businessperson, he received $800 million in tax breaks and subsidies to build luxury housing in New York. The difference between my socialism and Trumps socialism is I believe the government should help working families, not billionaires. (Axios, Feb. 9)

As communists, we are well aware that Sanders holds political positions we cant support: his lack of solidarity with international anti-imperialist struggles, his lack of support for reparations for slavery along with Black Lives Matter, his vitriolic attack on pro-socialist leaders like Hugo Chvez and Nicols Maduro in Venezuela, his support for laws criminalizing sex workers and much more.

Sanders program is more like Lyndon Johnsons War on Poverty in the mid-1960s or Franklin Roosevelts New Deal in the 1930s. Sanders social democracy is only seen as a radical socialist project because the U.S. ruling class has imposed such right-wing, pro-capitalist ideology and programs on the population.

The U.S. ruling class may own finance capital, oil, pharmaceutical giants and the health profit industry, be landlords or real estate investors, own big data, agriculture and/or other sectors. Their slightly different specific interests are reflected by the two parties, the Democrats and the Republicans.

Most big capitalists, however, are overjoyed with Trumps transfer of wealth to their pockets. Others may see Trump as a loose cannon and consider Joe Biden, Michael Bloomberg or another politician as more competent to protect and expand their interests. Yet they all unite against Sanders, not just because of the potential impact on their profits, but because they fear a greater social movement could develop that will call into question the elites plunder and profit.

Thus, we can expect anti-communist attacks against Sanders to continue to escalate if his campaign continues to gain steam. This red-baiting must be met with an active campaign to popularize real socialism, one that goes beyond Sanders deflective statement (in the Axios quote) about how socialism already exists for the rich.

Our movement must unequivocally defend the necessity of socialism and the obvious, documented superiority of workers ownership of the means of production, paired with planning that prioritizes human needs and the life of the Earth over profits.

Internationalism is a necessity, not an inconvenience

Along with the red-baiting, the attacks on Sanders from pro-Israeli forces similar to the outrageous attacks on former Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn by the British media will continue. This is even though Sanders limits his statements on Palestine to support for basic human rights.

Sanders himself is Jewish. Yet this will not stop the attacks on him for alleged anti-Semitism simply because he doesnt give full backing to Israels murderous campaign to annihilate the Palestinian people. These attacks must be met by a strong, anti-racist movement in defense of the Palestinian peoples right to exist, from the river to the sea.

Sanders claims to be against U.S. wars in Iraq and beyond, yet his voting record doesnt reflect that. Sanders support for U.S. imperialism must be fought by those who wish to see his domestic program be successful. The domestic and foreign policies of the empire are directly connected. Both policies are about the balance of power between the oppressed and the oppressor.

While liberal politicians may fear taking anti-war positions, socialists must expose the foreign policy of the empire as directed by the needs of capitalism. Ruthless sanctions and murder must be contested in the name of international solidarity and the survival of the more than 7.5 billion people in the world threatened by the most violent ruling elite ever, based in Wall Street and Washington.

Our struggle, that of the working class in the U.S., is primarily against the U.S. billionaires, not against other countries. The strategy of revolutionary defeatism to defeat our own ruling class as expressed by V.I. Lenin during World War I, should be elementary for revolutionaries and must be learned by a resurgent left that, for too long, has been infected by bourgeois pro-war propaganda.

We must also learn how to resist the imperialist attacks on China, Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea and beyond. Working-class internationalism and solidarity with the oppressed are central to our long-term goal of socialist revolution.

Allies of the U.S. working class abroad may view the election of Sanders as a victory against the empire. A Sanders victory could open serious struggles over the need to dismantle the U.S. empire in order to save the planet, to rebuild the global economy and to pay reparations to those dispossessed by the U.S.

To the extent, however, that Sanders gives public support for closed borders, sanctions, U.S. air strikes and other measures, this would alienate his popular base a base he would have to rely upon to beat back the inevitable attacks from the right. This contradiction could give rise to a greater level of struggle.

Elections: A barometer or an organizing tool?

As revolutionaries, we know that socialist transformation is necessary for humanity and to sustain life on Earth, and we know this transformation cannot come about by using the masters tools described in the U.S. Constitution. Rather, we view capitalist elections as a limited survey of the attitudes of the multinational working class and the other classes in U.S. society. Every four years, about 55 percent of the voting-age population with a greater proportion of voters from the less oppressed and older sectors of the working class choose a president from either of the two major parties, both of which are owned and operated by the capitalists.

Sanders campaign has attempted to use the Democratic Party to raise issues in the interests of the working class. Many Democratic Socialists of America members view the Sanders campaign, and electoral politics more generally, as the primary channel to engage and radicalize the working class. This is unlike the period from the 1930s to the 1970s when the left looked toward the labor movement or other social movements as the centers of politicization and class identity development.

The argument of DSA and other left groups that have worked alongside the Sanders campaign is that the campaign a shortcut to building mass consciousness. Many young activists have hit the streets in the name of the Sanders campaign to promote classwide solidarity against the billionaire ruling class and to try to win supporters to their socialist organization.

Ruling-class ideology insists that the primary arena of politics is bourgeois elections, particularly national elections for president. Thus, when the left plans a political strategy, the question of whether to run in elections is a question of what is the most effective type of mass organizing that can build revolutionary socialist consciousness.

The Sanders campaign has prioritized the central tenet of the Occupy movement from the last decade: the struggle of the 99% versus the 1%. Sanders has put forth stronger positions on racial justice, migrant rights and many other policies that reflect the hard work of organizers in peoples movements.

Sanders 2016 primary campaign took on the right-wing establishment Democratic Party and had a major impact in winning thousands of new people to socialist organizations. The DSA and others have joined this years campaign with the goal of recruiting new members and pushing the campaign to the left, riding the wave and seeing where they will end up.

What happens when or if the DNC steals the nomination from Sanders? Will organizations to the left of the Democratic Party still insist on voting Blue no matter who? Will there be a political fracture in which the Sanders movement, even despite the refusal of Sanders himself, decides to make a dirty break from the Democratic Party and form a new socialist electoral third party?

What if Sanders were to get the nomination and then win the election against Trump? Who will defend him from the wrath of the capitalists and a stock market that could be in free fall? Will a mass movement emerge and move in a more radical direction, emboldened by the results?

Will the mirage of capitalist democracy be revealed as a fraud? Will that demoralize the masses or radicalize them?

While the fate of the Sanders movement is yet to unfold, the most pressing question for revolutionary socialists may be: What is the most effective way to agitate, educate and organize this Sanders movement into an anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, revolutionary movement?

Which road to socialism?

Workers World Party believes that the goal of revolutionary parties when entering capitalist electoral politics should be to advance a revolutionary program in order to shatter illusions of capitalist democracy and win broad working-class support. The Democratic Party in the past has been the graveyard of social movements. Still, bourgeois political campaigns can reflect and show the significance of peoples movements.

The question of critical support for or independence from the Sanders movement is one we plan to answer through action. We will attend Sanders campaign rallies in order to meet this movement and push for revolutionary socialism. We will be in the streets with this movement, raising demands that speak to young people looking for revolutionary change. We look at this development with revolutionary optimism and we will study it closely.

WWP is still considering how to intervene in the 2020 presidential campaign. We will definitely run a major ideological campaign, entitled Which road to socialism? With this effort, we will put forth our revolutionary socialist perspective in a wide variety of ways. We will organize regular discussion groups in our branches across the country to engage these questions, all the while reaching out to the Sanders movement and those to its left to discuss the contradictions of social democracy and attempt to win people to fight for revolutionary socialism.

We will challenge the weaknesses of Sanders movement and push it in a revolutionary direction, not by being sectarian or opportunist, but by waging an honest ideological and mass struggle that speaks to the needs of the working class and the oppressed to go further.

Even moderate social reforms can take place only under the pressure of mass movements in the streets and in our workplaces. Real revolutionary socialism, including the seizure and liberation of private property in the means of production, cannot occur by amending the U.S. Constitution. It must be the result of a worldwide mass movement that uses various tactics and strategies to defeat capitalist rule.

With this in mind, we will launch a series of mobilizations to fight the racist, anti-worker policies of the Trump administration. That the Democratic Party has enabled these policies for example, the U.S. sanctions that have terrorized hundreds of millions of people on the planet will expose the imperialist character of both parties.

Currently we are working with hundreds of organizations to launch an international campaign against U.S. sanctions, entitled Sanctions Kill. Campaigns like this allow us to connect with those directly impacted by U.S. sanctions passed by Democrats and Republicans. We will mobilize on May Day to unite the movements against capitalism, imperialism, racism and all the crimes of this system with a show of solidarity on this socialist-inspired, international day of struggle.

We will continue to mobilize against U.S. imperialism in all its manifestations, as part of our devotion to our worldwide class. We will continue to organize for the most oppressed of our class for incarcerated workers, for political prisoners, for low-wage workers, for people with disabilities, for the homeless, for those oppressed because of gender or gender expression or national origin, and for migrants and refugees all with the goal of building a broadly popular communist party steeled in combat and the day-to-day struggles of our class.

Finally, we will use this election to push for real democracy. While this election may be seen as a referendum on Trumps social and economic policies, we will push to make this election a referendum on the crimes of capitalism. Imagine, a peoples referendum in which we vote with our feet, by withholding our labor and by fighting for a real future, a socialist society.

More here:

A revolutionary view of the Sanders campaign - Workers World

Democratic presidential candidate Tom Steyer speaks one-on-one with News 2 – WCBD News 2

Posted on by

MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C. (WCBD) Democratic presidentialcandidate Tom Steyer spoke one-on-one with News 2s Brad Franko to discuss hiscampaign and performance in the Palmetto State.

Recent polls from Real Clear Politics shows Steyer is now among the top three democratic candidates for president in South Carolina.

But is South Carolina the end-all-be-all for his campaign? Steyer says diversity is key and feels his campaign is appealing to everybody across the spectrum.

Nevada and South Carolina are the first two states that arediverse, he said. There are a lot of black people and there are a lot of Latinos,a lot of Asian Americans, Native Americans as well as white people. I know thatanybody, who wants to put together a coalition of democrats needs to appeal to everybodyacross the spectrum and if anybody wants to beat Donald Trump in November of2020, then they have got to be able to relate to those people and have everyoneshow up to the polls in November.

Steyer admitted that South Carolina has special importance. Itabsolutely does, and Ive said that for a long time.

Running for president is a cutthroat process. Recently in South Carolina, a newspaper talked about Steyers financial investment in the state and a former party chairman said what he is doing isnt investing but paying people off.

What were doing in South Carolina, we have the most peopleon the ground of anybody in South Carolina. If you call hiring people andpaying them for doing work, paying people off I think thats what they callthe American way in fact, we have a diverse group of people, take a lookwhose working for us, who is endorsing me, if youre asking people to do workfor you, to do community organizing Im a community organizer, I know thebest way to do community organizing the only really effective way is havepeople go into those communities that they are a part of and that they know.So, the idea of paying people off; people are doing work and so they getpaid. Thats entirely appropriate andthats the way community organizing works.

He went on to say, My wife moved to South Carolina for goodness sakes. My being on the ground more than any other candidate, our having a bigger group of people working on the ground than anyone else, the fact that Im the only candidate that will say he or she is for reparations for slavery, the fact that Im talking honestly about race, willing to take on Mr. Trump on the economy, saying I think his economic policies stink for working people and I can show it. Im talking about a completely different kind of economy with a much higher minimum wage; a tax cut of 10% for everybody who makes less than $250K and the creation of over four and a half million good-paying union jobs across the county to rebuild it in a climate-smart way I think what Im doing in South Carolina is resonating because in fact people can get a chance to see me, see who I am, see who my family is, they can listen to me and know that what I am talking about is a real-world and its much better than this kind of Mar-a-Lago economy that Mr. Trump has been promoting.

The South Carolina Democratic Primary will be held on Saturday,February 29th.

Read more:

Democratic presidential candidate Tom Steyer speaks one-on-one with News 2 - WCBD News 2

If Progressives Want to Win, They’ll Have to Talk About White Supremacy – The Nation

Posted on by

Donald Trump addresses supporters at a rally in central Pennsylvania in May 2019. (Drew Angerer / Getty Images)

Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month!

The Democratic nomination contest is at a pivotal point, especially for the left. Progressive issues are ascendant, moderate candidates are vote-splitting, Bernie Sanders tops the polls, and Elizabeth Warren just had a very strong debate performance in Nevada. And yet despite the tantalizing proximity of progressive victory, there remains a glaring hole at the heart of the lefts strategy: the failure to prioritize the fight against white nationalism and racial resentmentthe sources of this presidents power, and the cornerstones of capitalisms structural inequality.Ad Policy

If the structural change that Warren espouses and the political revolution that Sanders champions dont explicitly address the racial realities that lie at the heart of this country, then their movements could fail to inspire the kind of transformation the candidates say they want. My research has found thatnearly half of Democratic voters are people of color, and a dramatic drop-off in African American turnout in 2016 was a principal factor in Hillary Clintons defeat. Conveying the urgency of the fight against white supremacy could be critical to propelling the kind of turnout that will help Democrats win in November.

Donald Trump is obviously unlike any president we have seen in a long time. Trump, who famously said he could shoot somebody on New Yorks Fifth Avenue and not lose any voters, seems to defy the laws of political gravity. But many fail to appreciate what has kept him afloat.

White identity politics are at the foundation of the United Statesenshrined in slavery starting in 1619 and codified at the nations conception, with the passage of the 1790 Naturalization Act restricting citizenship to free white persons. Typically, political appeals to white racial resentment have come in more implicit and coded dog whistles, such as Ronald Reagans demonization of black welfare queens. It has been a long time since someone with Trumps stature openly and unapologetically embraced the racist right wing; many might have assumed it would be political suicide to brand Mexican immigrants rapists, enact bans on Muslim immigration, or whip up a xenophobic mob chanting, Build the wall! Trumps speech and policies have unleashed deep wells of racial resentment, and myriad academic studiesmost of them ignored by Democratic consultants and leadershave shown that this is a motivating factor for many of his supporters. (I have started a list of these studies here.) The engine driving the Trump machine is white supremacy.Related Article

Despite this, the most progressive candidates in this race have spent far more time critiquing other, more moderate candidates and supposedly race-neutral aspects of Trumps time in office, such as his tax cuts for the rich, than they have fighting white nationalism. (Ironically, moderate Joe Biden may be the only one who has directly refuted Trump on this point: One of his early campaign ads challenged the presidents 2017 defense of the white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia.) Warren and Sanders are correct to decry the rise of corporate interests within the Democratic Party. Its admirable to fight for a higher minimum wage, universal health care, and aggressive action to save the planet from climate catastrophe. But in doing so, both progressive voting groups and candidates like Warren and Sanders are missing the strategic and moral imperative of reframing this election.

With upcoming primaries in the more diverse states of the South and Southwest, candidates are starting to bump up issues pertaining to voters of color. Yet none of the remaining candidates have made Trumps drive to make America white again a centerpiece of their campaign. This would go beyond talking about issues that resonate with communities of color. It would require ably and enthusiastically countering Trumps vision of a white America with what it really is: a proudly multiracial country. When progressive candidates fail to call out Trumps appeals to white racial resentmentor to match the force with which he makes themtheyre allowing him to reap the benefits, without paying the price.

The default playbook for too many Democrats is to talk around white supremacy, usually for fear of turning off white voters. But there is compelling evidence that the best way to blunt racist dog-whistling is to call it out. In her 2001 book The Race Card, Princeton political scientist Tali Mendelberg revealed how Republicans use of coded racial messages, and their impact on voters, lost power when the implicit was made explicit. In studying voluminous survey data on the 1988 presidential elections when George H. W. Bush used ads about Willie Hortonan African American who committed a crime after being released from prisonMendelberg noted that Democrats feared that if they [spoke] explicitly about race they [would] lose crucial white votes. But her research found the opposite to be true: when campaign discourse is clearly about racewhen it is explicitly racialit has the fewest racial consequences for white opinion. Even Trump usually prefers to talk about a border wall than about the pro-white immigration agenda advanced by Stephen Miller, one the White Houses most enthusiastic white supremacists.Current Issue

Subscribe today and Save up to $129.

The through line between this Novembers election and the long-term goal of transforming this unequal nation should be an agenda that speaks to the pain so many Americans feel: the pain rooted in the racial wealth gap. The average white family now has more than 10 times the wealth of the average black family, and 7.5 times that of the average Latino family. That is a direct consequence of centuries of public policies that have sanctioned white wealth creation by seizing land from indigenous people, importing Africans to do backbreaking unpaid labor, and exploiting Mexican and Central American farm workerstopped off by government-sanctioned racial discrimination in housing and hiring.

Although its not widely discussed, Republicans are, in fact, experiencing some blowback from Trumps actionsespecially from white-collar suburban voters who gave Trump a chance in 2016 but defected to the Democrats in 2018, contributing to the Democratic takeover of the House and seven previously Republican-held governors offices. Groups and leaders on the left have an opportunity, and an obligation, to push their preferred candidates to lead on the fight over Americas racial identity. Warrens and Sanderss speeches are replete with references to Wall Street, big corporations, and corruption in Washington, DC. Although both have been critical of Trumps deportation policies and ICE, they have not distinguished themselves in a field of candidates who tiptoe around the issue of immigrationeven though children are still in cages at our nations borderand dance away from reparations, ignoring the gargantuan racial wealth gap that cleaves the fabric of our society. None of the candidates onstage in Las Vegas on Wednesday even mentioned immigration until late in the evening. It was clearly not top of mind, even in a state as Latino as Nevada.

It is still not too late for these candidates to course-correct. There are at least three concrete steps that progressives could take to make a meaningful difference:

Forge a united front to demand that the Democratic nominee choose a person of color as their vice presidential pick. For all the appeal of hoping Sanders and Warren would team up, an all-white ticket is not what will inspire and mobilize the most racially diverse electorate in the history of this country. None of the current candidates have been willing to make this commitment, and a chorus of voices from the left on this issue could push them do so.

If you like this article, please give today to help fund The Nations work.

Create a common war room to drive the narrative about this administration and its enablers white-supremacist priorities. Progressive and left groups could each dedicate staffers to this joint effort, which could provide tools, information, and coordination for activists. This could lead to creative, attention-getting actions in cities across the country, exposing both the presidential reelection campaign and key Senate elections as the referendums on whiteness that they are.

Launch a joint petition to demand a Democratic campaign budget and plan that reflect the actual demographics of the voters they need to reach. The default focus of much Democratic spending remains on running television or digital ads targeting white swing voters. The organizations and committees in the Democratic ecosystem typically spend significantly more than $1 billion in a presidential election year; a coalition of progressive groups could demand that half of those funds go toward organizing and turning out the vote in communities of color.

The black Marxist author Manning Marable wrote in 1985 that at the heart of the American experience is a series of crimes: the violent theft of the land itself, the violent theft of millions of people from Africa and their subsequent bondage as chattel, the bloody conquest of the Southwest from Mexico, and the government-sponsored war on Native Americans. That series of crimes has created the conditions which the left is now working to transform. But during this campaign, they have done it wearing racial blinders. That could lead them to failure. The resurgent progressive movement could both win this electionand lay the foundations for a better societyby tackling the existential threat that white supremacy poses to this countrys social contract and democratic institutions. It is not too late, but the clock is ticking.

Visit link:

If Progressives Want to Win, They'll Have to Talk About White Supremacy - The Nation