Monthly Archives: June 2020

Two photographs have come to define Saturdays demonstrations in London: one of a Black man, Patrick Hutchinson, rescuing a white far-right protester, apparently from death; the other of a far-right protester, Andrew Banks, caught with his pants down, urinating next to the memorial for PC Keith Palmer, who was stabbed to death in the Westminster terror attack of 2017.

Both photographs, and the ways they have been framed by politicians and the media, invite a moral (and nominally apolitical) judgment, asking us to draw conclusions about the two mens contrasting characters. Hutchinsons actions and his impressive strength and stature are an expression of a heroic, cool and noble masculinity. Banks, on the other hand, is at once an anti-patriot and an ugly embodiment of Little England: boorish, vulgar and, in the words of Keir Starmer, beneath contempt.

Lets be clear: what makes Banks beneath contempt, on this view, is not his attending a far-right protest, but his violation of public standards of propriety in urinating next to a memorial. Its true that his actions neatly expose the contradiction in sacralising the bronze sculptures of Westminster while desecrating the memorial of a man who died defending Westminster from an Islamist terrorist. But it is also true that loutishness appears a greater sin than racism. Despite footage circulating of far-right protesters singing burn the black cunt before setting effigies alight, and a war veteran calling for the execution of Sadiq Khan, I have seen no evidence of efforts to trace or investigate these people for hate crimes.

In an interview with ITV News on Sunday, Hutchinson said: It definitely gives me a positive feeling that together we can change the way things are at the moment. And what we did just embodies that, just to show other people that its not black or white, were a human race. Admirable sentiments. But the appropriation of them by the right-wing media is a disgrace. The front page of the Sun yesterday featured the famous photograph of Hutchinson, with the headline: Its not black versus white, its everyone versus racists.

The words are not only a sentimental bromide intended to delegitimise and deradicalise the current movements of Black Lives Matter activism. They are also a cynical attempt to dissociate the Sun and related media from the violent cycle of racism and anti-blackness. In 2016, the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance, in unequivocal terms, correlated the reporting of the Sun and the Daily Mail with escalating racist violence and hate speech in the UK. If its everyone versus racists, the Sun cannot claim to be on the side of everyone.

It is just as urgent to reject the idea that its not black versus white. As abolitionism surfaces as the central organising principle of the second wave of Black Lives Matter activism, we need to recognise that one of the things that needs to be abolished is the category of whiteness itself. The existence of whiteness is dependent on the subjugation of a racialised other. As such there is no way to extract or preserve whiteness from white supremacy. Without the subjugation of Blacks through a project of racial essentialism, whiteness as a category ceases to exist. Whiteness is not a biological reality, but a description of social relations defined by class, ownership and property rights. Hutchinsons aim to redeem white individuals of racism is fine, but we cannot redeem whiteness itself.

The Guardians interview yesterday with Hutchinson and the four men who helped him is further fuel for this depoliticisation. Maybe it will change the view of racists, one of them, Lee Russell, said. I hope it shows that whatever they think of us, were cool, were good we just saved your life. I wonder where that leaves Black people, or other people of colour, who have no interest in or capacity or opportunity for similar acts of heroism; who are not cool and good, but feel righteous hostility towards whiteness and are not interested in diplomacy. Interpersonal acts of sacrifice, forgiveness or kindness cannot be the panacea for racism. And Black activists cannot be required to follow an established code of behavioural and moral conduct. The promotion of respectable Blackness is a gift to white supremacy: it obscures the social relations that define white power by identifying racial aggression as the preserve of a non-respectable, insurgent minority, apparently unrepresentative of a more gentle and tolerant majority of Blacks. I would urge everyone who centres kindness and diplomacy to consider this carefully.

While Hutchinson enjoys a media circus, Banks has been sentenced to 14 days in prison for the crime of outraging public decency. His actions are an embarrassment for the far right, and evidence that Saturdays events had less to do with a sense of patriotic duty than with treating racist chauvinism as an opportunity for a brawl and piss up. But leftists shouldnt rush to celebrate Bankss sentence. Urinating in public usually carries a fine (if its punished at all). What Banks did is repugnant, but does it really merit two weeks in jail? We shouldnt be too eager to embrace the carceral logic of the state, or accept public revulsion (in the words of the sentencing magistrate) as grounds for punishment. British standards of public decency could easily work against us, particularly in light of the home secretarys plans for a 24-hour arrest-to-jail pipeline for those who vandalise statues.

Far-right protesters should be condemned not for individual acts of outraging public decency, but en masse as an expression of the apparatus of white supremacy. And we should resist, too, any narrative that tries to defuse Black Lives Matter activism as non-threatening and essentially about equality rather than liberation and abolition.

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Jason Okundaye | Abolish Whiteness LRB 16 June 2020 - London Review of Books

Benaras was a keystone of India-Nepal ties for centuries. B.P. Koirala, the doyen of democratic politics in Nepal, was a resident of the city; so too was Pushpalal Shrestha, one of the founders of the Communist Party of Nepal. Many in bureaucracy and politics had studied at Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, and Nepals intellectual software was largely coded there. Till the 1980s, an easy and affordable way to reach Kathmandu was to fly from Benaras.

Also read: Nepal move on map is unilateral, makes talks difficult now, say sources

Then the flights stopped as takers became insufficient. Today, one of the most profitable sectors for Nepal Airlines is Kathmandu-Bengaluru. Here, a burgeoning colony of Nepali programmers work for storied Indian tech companies, creating software for the world.

The changed equation symbolises both a changing India and a changing Nepal.

The obvious change in Nepal is that it is now a democratic republic after nearly 250 years of being a monarchy. The Nepali Congress and Maoist leader, Prachanda, claim democracy (1990) and the abolition of monarchy (2008) as their legacies.

More pervasive is the societal change from Nepals exposure to globalisation. Geography, too, stands to change, with the Chinese now having the potential to bore through the Himalayas and exhibiting their presence in Kathmandu in economics and politics.

The constant in Nepal is a nationalism which is really a mask for anti-India sentiment. Politicians use it for personal gain, and it is deeply ingrained in the bureaucracy, academia and the media.

Today, Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli is cementing his legacy as a nationalist by extending Nepals map into Indian territory. The cartographic aggression and the embedding of the new map in the countrys national emblem and Constitution are untenable and should have been avoided under all circumstances.

But this is not the first time Nepal has thumbed its nose at India, even at the cost of its peoples well-being. In 2015, the Nepali Congress government adopted the new Constitution, ignoring Indias concerns.

This instinct to cut off the nose to spite the face is visible in the lack of progress on the game-changing 5,000 MW Pancheshwar hydroelectric project. Nepals viable hydro-electricity potential is 40,000 MW; the country generates only 1,000 MW and must import 600 MW from India.

Identity politics with India is also visible within the country where Nepali citizens from the Terai (Madhesis) feel discriminated as being Indian.

To Nepal, their attitudes reflect the angst of a small state. To India, Nepal appears incorrigible.

After democracy was restored in 1990, passports were more liberally issued, and Nepalis began looking for work opportunities globally, beyond just India. West Asia and South-East Asia specifically became major destinations for labour migration.

Security uncertainties with the Maoist insurgency at home also propelled the trend of migration. Students and skilled personnel began moving to Europe, the United States, Australia, Thailand and even to Japan and South Korea.

As of 2019, nearly a fifth of Nepals population, from all parts of the country, were reportedly overseas. At an estimated $8 billion, global remittances account for nearly 30% of Nepals nominal GDP, making it one of the most remittance-dependent countries in the world.

Leftist ideology and the prominent presence of international non-governmental organisations ostensibly there to resolve conflict and alleviate poverty have added to Nepals exposure to the world.

Underreported is the presence of Christian missionaries who entered Nepal during and in the aftermath of the Maoist insurgency. Faith Houses, as churches are euphemistically called in Nepal, can be found in villages and towns across the country, including the Terai, and represent not only European and American organisations but Korean too.

Moreover, posters advertising education opportunities in Australia, the United States, Canada and South-East Asia adorn Nepal.

Nepals 2011 Census shows that over 80% of its 28 million-strong population were Hindus, and since 1962, it had formally been a Hindu kingdom. The new Constitution in 2015 makes Nepal a secular country.

The proliferation of communication technology has also spread a certain cosmopolitanism but without the accompanying metropolitanism.

Kathmandu has continued its long-standing efforts to spread Nepals options beyond India. Multilateral development banks are by far the biggest lenders and players in the countrys development efforts. And in fact, one of Nepals largest aid donors is the European Union.

India and China are not the only players for big projects either. A long-delayed project to pipe water into Kathmandu was with an Italian company, major investments in the telecom sector are coming from Malaysia, and the largest international carrier in Nepal is Qatar Airways.

The outward movement of students, along with with the growth of institutions of higher learning at home, has meant that most young people in Nepal, including emerging contemporary leaders in politics, business or academics, have not studied in India. This lack of common collegiate roots removes a natural bond of previous generations that had provided for better understanding and even empathy.

Today, while most Nepalis understand Hindi, because of the popularity of Bollywood, articulation is quite another matter.

But despite Nepals efforts to diversify its options globally, its linkages with India remain robust. Nepals trade with India has grown in absolute terms and continues to account for more than two-thirds of Nepals external trade of around $12 billion annually. This clearly reflects the advantages of geography, both physical and societal.

India continues to be the largest aggregate investor in Nepal. The massive under-construction Arun-III 900 MW hydro-electric project is slated to singly produce as much power, when completed in five years, as Nepal produces today. Moreover, the peg with the Indian Rupee provides unique stability to the Nepali Rupee.

Nepals per-capita income is just above $1,000. While the huge remittance economy has brought a semblance of well-being, the country has a long way to go in reaching prosperity.

The relationship with India, with open borders and Nepalis being allowed to live and work freely, provides Nepal a unique advantage and an economic cushion. The latter is particularly important today with COVID-19-caused global contraction positioned to pop the remittance bubble. Neither the Chinese nor any others are likely to write blank cheques.

India for its part should also focus on developing its border areas with Nepal, with better roads and amenities of interest (such as shopping malls) to the burgeoning Nepali middle class. This would have economic plusses for both sides and keep ties strong at the peoples level. It would also be an image makeover.

Given the cultural and ethnic commonalities, it befuddles and draws anger in India when things go wrong in ties with Nepal. Those responsible for bringing things to such an impasse must be held to account, but it is important that we update the prism through which we view our relationship with our Himalayan neighbour. We must not forget the past nor turn away from it but, instead, must be mindful of the realities of a changing India and a changing Nepal. Benaras will always be a keystone, but contemporary reality makes it imperative to look at Bengaluru.

Manjeev S. Puri is a former Ambassador of India to Nepal. The views expressed are personal

More here:

Nepal ties and the Benaras to Bengaluru spectrum - The Hindu

I first started hating the Olympics as a student in Montreal, a city filled with the carcasses of stadiums, pavilions, and decaying detritus of mega-events held there in the 60s and 70s. The year before I moved there marked the 30thanniversary of the 1976 Montreal Summer Olympics, as well as the year that the City finally repaid the $1.5 billion (CAD) of debt they were left with after the Games.

For cities hosting the Olympics, debt is a matter of course, and the legacy of the Games is palpable: entire neighborhoods are ripped from the urban fabric so that hotels, empty stadiums, and Olympic villages may sit in their place. The social, cultural, and financial weight of these white elephants is shouldered by long-term residents. Two weeks of fame for starry-eyed local politicians and Olympic boosters amount to a pressure-cooker of exploitation and state violence for those whose lives, labour, and culture make city life possible.

But a counterpart to this history of destruction is a lineage of struggle, survival, and solidarity. While the fight against the Olympics has historically taken place at an immediate, local scale, todays anti-Olympics organizing is beginning to coalesce into an internationalist movement for the right to urban self-determination.

Bigger than the Olympics

In Los Angeles, a group of organizers working together under the banner ofNOlympics LAare fighting for the cancelation of the 2028 LA Olympics and the abolition of all future Games. And thats only their short-term goal.

InNOlympians: Inside the Fight Against Capitalist Mega-Sports in Los Angeles, Tokyo, and Beyond, Jules Boykoff follows the work of NOlympics LA, contextualizing their fight against the 2028 Games in LA within a global movement to expose and combat the effects that transnational capital has on the daily lives of poor people living in cities.

As an active member of the LA Tenants Union (a supporting partner of NOlympics) and a hater of the Olympics myself, Ive observed first-hand the groups constant churn of actions, teach-ins, and community canvasses since their founding in 2017. But the larger significance of groups like NOlympics can be hard to see up close, and is often obscured by the fervour of organizing around immediate crises at the local scale. As I explore later, the NOlympics activists have developed an arsenal of popular education tactics that create a gateway to local organizing. Boykoffs snappy yet poetic prose captures their spirit and teases out the long-term promise of mounting a campaign against specific, local issues. Ultimately, the books greatest contributions are the lessons it offers on the relationship between international solidarity and local action.

Himself a former Olympic soccer player, Boykoff has spent the past decade building critical analysis about the Games. This shows: the text weaves seamlessly in between interviews with the activists and the lessons that inform their politics. To underline the deep socioeconomic inequalities facing Angelenos, the book throws into stark relief the disparity between the priorities of the oligarchs behind the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the demands of the communities that are displaced and criminalized by the Olympics.

The book is written in four parts, moving from the history of the Games and the destruction they bring; to the origins of NOlympics and the significance of the rise of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA); to the way their local strategies fit into an internationalist movement; and finally to some conclusions for what is to be done about the Olympics.

Throughout, Boykoff situates their organizing within the long-time work of adjacent grassroots organizations in LA and within the praxis of past and present social movements globally. Boykoffs account of the NOlympians trip to Tokyo demonstrates that its only through building international connections that the activists are able to connect the local to the global.

Seizing the means of the production of urban space

To understand why the Olympics are bad for LA, you have to understand why capitalism is bad for cities. As David Harvey explains in his bookRebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution, urbanization the visible arm of endless economic growth was never anything other than a project of power. Cities develop as economic hubs, where what looks like an abundance of financial opportunities to politicians and investors, signals an ever-worsening quality of life for poor and middle-class residents. Each time the economy sees a boom, poor communities see an intensification of urban stress. As neoliberalism has dug in its heels over the past few decades,the gap between the rich and the poor has become most pronounced in cities.

Perhaps more than any other city, Los Angeles embodies the economic order that has come to define what it means for a place to be urban. The process of urban growth goes in lockstep with the growing burden of rent; the planned obliteration of public housing; the demise of labour unions; the stagnant wages; the proliferation of ever-new forms of segregation; and booms in the most precarious and informal branches of the economy. The lived experiences of millions of Angelenos are proof that the very machinations that spur economic expansion and urban development are the ones that make it increasingly impossible to live in cities.

Land speculators and real estate developers have been particularly pervasive throughout the citys history. When theyre not at the helm of the citys economy, theyre in the ears and pockets of politicians, laundering their projects through green-washing and transit-oriented gentrification policies.

The history of urban uprisings in LA has kept pace with this history of injustice. The citys growth has been enabled by its entrenched culture of white supremacy, which has incensed urban movements from the 1943 Zoot Suit Riots; to the Watts Rebellion in 1965; the 1966 high school boycotts; the Chicano Moratorium in the 70s; the 1992 uprisings in the wake of the brutal police beating of Rodney King; and todays Black-led demonstrations against police violence.The economic crisis faced by low-income residents is growing steadily, and with it, more and more people are starting to organize to take back the cities theyve built and made their lives in. Whether that fight coalesces in an alliance against the Olympics or manifests in the daily work of tenant organizing, its a fight for the right to the city.

Cyclists demand bike lanes for the unhoused residents of Skid Row during the Ride For Justice, jointly organized by NOlympics and the LA Community Action Network in 2018.

The movement for theright to the citywas first given its name by Henri Lefebvre, on the 100thanniversary of the publication of Capital and on the eve of the urban social movements of May 1968. Lefebvres writing presaged what would take place in the last decades of the 20thcentury: the global rise of urbanization and the concentration of capital in the worlds cities. Since his time, urban centers like LA have increasingly become the places where the effects of a profit-driven housing system are most deeply felt: urban planning policies are written with the intention of displacing the poor and replacing them with higher-income, whiter residents all so that the economy can continue to grow and attract ever-wealthier tourists, investors, and residents to the city. This process has irreversibly changed the look, feel, and spirit of cities to embody the sterile, generic luxury that caters to the global elite.

With this dark horizon in sight, Lefebvre wrote about the urgent need to fight for an urban life that centers poor communities, promotes a sense of belonging, and imbues the everyday with meaning and noveltyhe called this the right to the city.

One of the most important takeaways of Henri Lefebvres Right to the City is the proposition that already in 1968, Marxisms focus on the worker as the agent of social change no longer held the same ground as it did in the 19thcentury. In response, Lefebvre suggested that the task at hand is to seize the means of the production of space, updating the Marxist focus on seizing the means of industrial production. To claim their right to the city, tenants, street vendors, immigrants, service workers, artists, and those who care about and enliven public space would take back what theyve created and nourished.

Human rights, as theyre understood by most, are underwritten by the notion of private property, and this makes the proposition that the city, or even housing, is a human right, for instance, a difficult pitch. The right to the city complicates that understanding: its not just about a right to resources its about a collective right to self-determination through the built environment and the urban social realm.

For Lefebvre, the right to the city was the assertion of the right of low-/no-income residents to shape the city so that it might both fulfill their basic needs and better reflect their culture and desires. Without this right, anyone who isnt identified as part of the white middle and upper class is targeted by social cleansing campaigns through evictions, rent gouging, policing, and surveillance. The right to the city is a fight for safe, affordable, and decent housing; for public amenities; for bountiful, accessible, unsurveilled and unrestricted use of public space; and ultimately, for avenues towards community control over the built environment.

A renewed interest in what Lefebvre articulated in 1968 has taken two paths. While its been embodied in the daily struggles of autonomous grassroots movements; it has also been opportunistically adopted by nonprofits as a brand. The nonprofit approach amounts to asking for a seat at the table by promoting community engagement and public meetings that in theory, offer an avenue for poor people to participate in urban planning. But even when long-time residents of gentrifying communities are invited to conversations between developers and city agencies, their presence is tokenized and their participation is superficial by design.

A grassroots right-to-the-city approach like that of NOlympics, on the other hand, offers an avenue for organizing against the abstract forces of neoliberalism by making clear demands for material changes that can improve the lives of poor people.

For an in-depth look at the renewed relevance of the right to the city in todays anticapitalist movements, we can turn to David Harvey. He suggests that a primary obstacle to finding our version of the [Paris] Commune, might be the Lefts failure to collectively trace the connections between seemingly separate struggles, within our towns and cities and around the world. For him, its only through an internationalist movement that understands racial, environmental, economic, and spatial justice as facets of the same struggle, that we can begin to reclaim our cities. The promise of the global anti-Olympics movement is just that: an international, intersectional coalition rooted in local struggles for cities where the well-being of residents holds more weight than a two-week mega-event for the ultra-rich.

The long road to Olympic abolition

The Olympics produce a state of exception that allows municipal politicians around the world to usher in the version of the city they want but cant get through a democratic process. Local police forces take advantage of this moment to acquire otherwise-unattainable funding, weapons, and legal protections. Host cities bend over backwards to accommodate a two-week mega-event, permanently altering their urban fabric and pricing out longtime residents. In Boykoffs words, Its not just that poor people are not given a seat at the Olympic table its that theyre the meal. The same pattern plays out again and again, fromRio, toSochi,Beijing, andLA.In the years leading up to the return of the Olympics to Los Angeles in 2028, we can expect nothing less than the exacerbation of the very demonstrations of white supremacy and aspirations for cosmopolitanism that have pushed communities of colour out of the neighbourhoods theyve called home for generations. Already, were seeing theexpansion of the LAPD; moretransit-oriented displacement;hotel development; andrising rents.The 2028 Olympics represent the most recent incarnation of racist and anti-poor planning, and their arrival fans the flames of LAs urban crises.

In 2017, NOlympics was born in the Housing and Homelessness committee of DSAs Los Angeles chapter, which was unique in that it actively pursued coalitions with existing organizations led by long-term residents organizing with tenants and unhoused communities. This origin story is an important piece of the book, and Boykoffs description of NOlympics relationship to DSA-LA further illustrates NOlympics commitment to long-time local struggles and international coalition-building. Since their founding, NOlympics has gained a relative autonomy from DSA, and gathered together a coalition ofover 30 local grassroots organizations.The day-to-day organizing of NOlympics LA is handled by a handful of dedicated, core activists, many of whom have been with the group since the beginning. But much of their base draws from the members of their coalition partners, which themselves benefit from having a shared forum for building solidarity, and a long-term goal to mobilize against. By strengthening those alliances, the group has planted roots in LAs ongoing and wide-ranging struggles, from racial justice, to anti-imperialism, housing justice, and many more.

In effect, the group has embedded itself into grassroots organizations outside of DSA, learning from them, supporting them, and funneling new DSA members into these movementsresponding to a common critique that DSA lacks those kinds of connections. As Ive seen for myself, NOlympics organizers consistently show up to support protests at the homes of slumlords organized by the LA Tenants Union. They help to monitor encampment sweeps and empower unhoused residents with Streetwatch LA (another DSA-LA working group with relative autonomy), and turn up for direct actions organized by Black Lives Matter against the citys record-high rate of police murder.

NOlympics hosts a community canvass in LAs Highland Park neighbourhood to raise awareness about the white-washing of community murals.

Similarly, NOlympics maintains a level of porosity and agility that welcomes new members on a regular basis and draws activists from different backgrounds to partake in their actions, which largely revolve around tactics of popular education: canvassing, polling, and teach-ins. By pulling together the already-existing expertise and analysis of local organizations, and setting out on a decade-long mission, NOlympics stands a chance of winning the cancelation of the LA2028 Games. More importantly, theyre ensuring that the citys activist groups have a constant platform where they can come together, and that new members of DSA have an avenue for involvement in ongoing anticapitalist work in the city.

Yet, for NOlympics, coalition-building is not just a tactic for mounting a localized intersectional critique of the effect of the Games on LA. It is also a project of international solidarity to end the Games for good: No Olympics Anywhere. The activists recognize that without lasting solidarity between host cities, all the work done in each host city is lost when the IOC moves on to its next victim. In response to the IOCs globetrotting caravan of destruction, anti-Olympics activists around the world are beginning to strategically organize on a transnational scale. Fostering this coalition of global anti-Olympics groups has become a central initiative of NOlympics, responding to another shortfall of DSA, which is its lack of an anti-imperialist analysis.

Last summer, Boykoff traveled to Tokyo with NOlympics forthe first major international anti-Olympics summit, where the activists from different cities around the worldconvened and marched with the local anti-Olympics organizersofHanGorin No Kaiahead of the Tokyo 2020 (now 2021) Summer Games. There, NOlympics organizers shared the particular ways that transnational capital manifests in LA. Boykoff, when narrating this trip, also observes the hurdles to this scale of organizing: if language barriers werent enough, different cultures of organizing can make collaboration difficult. But there were important lessons learned as well. Back in LA, the Nolympics organizers constantly remind local activists that their enemy is not just the LA City Council, but a transnational regime of neoliberalism.

As David Harvey notes, The right to the city is far more than the individual liberty to access urban resources: it is a right to change ourselves by changing the city. NOlympics answer to this is building a coalition that unites antiracist, anticapitalist, anticarceral, and anti-displacement organizers in the fight for their right to continue to live in and to shape the city from LA to Tokyo and beyond. It offers lessons about the importance of local, intersectional solidarity to activists abroad; and informs the work of local activists with an internationalist analysis.NOlympiansdepicts a coalition of organizations that prefigures a version of Los Angeles where none of us are free until all of us are free; where the citys racist history is top of mind as we steer the ship towards racial justice; and where solidarity plays out in everyday acts of mutual aid.

A gateway to organizing

Like DSA, NOlympics takes an inside-outside approach, agitating politicians in the city hall chambers while building power by organizing with their coalition partners. However, NOlympics unabashedly abolitionist mandate sets it apart from what Boykoff identifies as the socialism by evolution not revolution mandate embraced by much of DSA instead of reform, they want an obliteration of the capitalist mega-event. Their positioning creates a bridge for new members of DSA to get involved with community organizing beyond electoralism.

One way NOlympics has done this has been by perfecting the art of transfiguring cynical criticism into demands for positive change. They do this by exposing the failures of local government through gripping online satire, and pairing it with rambunctious, theatrical direct actions. Boykoff describes the ways in which NOlympics responds to the specific cruelties and political failures of contemporary Los Angeles. LAs municipal government puts much of the citys political power in the hands of the city council, while, as the NOlympiansrelentlessly point out, Mayor Eric Garcetti is often nowhere to be found. Before devoting much of his time in office in 2018 to courting a long-shot presidential bid, he signed the host-city contract for the 2028 Olympics without any input from the publica clear tell that the 2028 Games were never intended to benefit the average resident of LA, but that theyre meant to serve the private interests of hotel developers, real estate speculators and international corporations that thrive on the tourist class.

NOlympics LA activists give Mayor Eric Garcetti a wake-up call at his mansion after his refusal to make LA a sanctuary city in 2018.

Garcetti and LA City Council have consistently upheld racist and anti-poor policies. White supremacy is deeply ingrained in the citys planning history, and wealthy, white residents look to the city council for leadership. The summer of 2019 saw anuptick in anti-homeless white vigilante violenceafter the city council reinstated a ban on vehicle dwelling. Backed by the most murderous police force in the nation, politicians and vigilantes alike are already on a campaign tosanitizeandpacifyneighborhoods across Los Angeles. The decaying local media landscape only makes matters worse, with Pulitzer-prize nominated journalists writing poverty porn, and the chairperson of the 2028 Olympic bid holding a major stake in one of the few local outlets.

In response, the NOlympians have produced their own media. Whether members are writing about thehistory of stadium-driven displacement in LA, makinga guide for how to report on the Olympics, or making explicit thelinks between 1984 LA Olympics and the militarization of the LAPD, one of the central tenets of their work, according to activist Anne Orchier, is to chip away at the Olympic movement as a whole.

Boykoff describes NOlympics as a perpetual praxis machine, and their organizing takes many forms, ranging from performatively canceling the Olympics on the steps of LAs City Hall; toholding auditions for actors to fill Garcettis shoesin his frequent absence; to doing outreach in public spaces and areas most impacted by hotel development ahead of the Olympics. Threading together all of these tactics is the activists trademark humour, which makes their cutting political criticism more approachable. While people may not know exactly how to critique something as abstract as global capital, NOlympics shows them how and empowers them to do so. Their propaganda pairs criticism of the profit-driven political economy with people-centered alternatives, all in plain language grounded in the specific issues facing Angelenos.

Popular education is at the root of their approach to organizing, and as Boykoff observes, their regular meetings have become more about training people to organize, and less about report-backs and updates. Their organizing mandate seems to be not base-building, but creating an environment for organizers to grow and learn from one another, and connecting new DSA members with existing organizations working on specific issues in Los Angeles.

No Olympics are Good Olympics

If you ask any of the NOlympics LA organizers whether the Olympics could be reformed to better serve local communities, they would be quick to say that no Games are good Games. They would tell you that what powers the Olympic machine is the IOCs determination to trample on poor communities in cities across the world, just to turn a profit, get back in their private jets, and do it all over again somewhere else.

Yet, after chronicling the work of these organizers, and explicitly reiterating their abolitionist platform, Boykoff lays out some suggestions for Olympic reform. For one, he suggests an independent panel to review bids, and proposes higher environmental oversight. He imagines an Olympic machine turned on its head, so that funds that circulate up through the Games into the hands of oligarchs may be redirected into marginalized communities instead. He also proposes that the IOC follow the lead of FIFA, making votes for the Games public.

Its perplexing that after following the NOlympics organizers analysis so closely to their unapologetic, no-compromise demands for the eradication of the Olympic Games, Boykoff suggests reform. He implies that the IOC would be open to positive change; and furthermore that these reforms would not later be corrupted. Its difficult, knowing what weve learned from his book, to imagine that a reorganized IOC would stage anything that truly benefits the no- and low-income communities of host cities. Boykoffs propositions prompt an important question for the anti-Olympics movement and for the fight for the right to the city:How far can reform really go?

The NOlympians have rejected the premise of this question altogether. NOlympics is about ending much more than the Olympics, and spending energy on fighting for reforms to a system premised on the disenfranchisement of communities of colour and the banishment of the poor, might be something better left to the nonprofits. Instead, NOlympics has highlighted moments in sporting history when athletes got together to organize ethical, people-first events. For example, their videoA Brief History of Swolecialismgives an overview of the Workers Sports Movement. The 1932 International Workers Olympiad famously drew more visitors and competitors than the concurrent 1932 LA Olympics. That legacy lives on today in CSIT (Confdration Sportive Internationale Travailliste et Amateur, or International Workers and Amateurs in Sports Confederation), which offers an alternative to the IOC that goes unmentioned inNOlympians. Boykoff writes about these alternativeselsewhere, but misses an opportunity to connect the dots between NOlympics LAs fight to abolish the Games and their enthusiasm for the potential of a democratic sports culture led by poor people.

Ultimately, the more important question at the end of this book remains unasked:what kind of city would it take to put people before profit, and to democratize sporting culture?What kind of city would it take to invest in and preserve bountiful public recreation space, provide clean water to swim in, and safe streets where kids can play all without displacing long-time residents?Its the kind of city that the partners of the NOlympics LA coalition are already fighting for and beginning to enact.

What the NOlympians are doing, and what Boykoff chronicles so well, is building a coalition of organizations in LA that are collectively fighting for their right the right of regular people to the city. In a global city like LA, this fight is up against the influence of transnational real estate investment, the tourism industry, and sportswashing. Though its difficult to measure the progress theyve made towards getting the 2028 Games canceled, theyve become a vital voice of dissent in our city hall chambers; a constant well of research and analysis while local media sleeps at the wheel; and an important common ground for groups fighting for environmental justice, tenants rights, Black liberation, and demilitarization. Boykoff illustrates not only the contemporary relevance of a right-to-the-city campaign; but the importance of far-reaching, collaborative, and coalition-based organizing that pairs single-issue struggles to general ones and local fights to the global fight against capitalism. The NOlympians are flipping the script, taking what engineer William Mulholland once said to the mayor at the opening of the Los Angeles aqueduct, and broadcasting it to the city instead: There it is! Take it!

All photos courtesy of NOlympics LA.

NOlympians: Inside the Fight Against Capitalist Mega-Sports in Los Angeles, Tokyo and Beyondby Jules Boykoff is available from Columbia University Press.

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NOlympics, Everywhere - Resilience

INTRODUCTION

India has always been the melting pot of various cultures and religion; with a continuous influx of people from across the globe the society has remained in a constant change and progress. The advent of British in India in the 15thcentury marked a fundamental change in life and behaviour of people. This change also brought in major changes in the legal system of India.

Indian society, which had undergone a drastic change since the vedic ages,[1] had curtailed several rights of women and had limited the participation of women in public life. The East India Company, though a blot on the glorious past of India, introduced several changes in the society, the major one being in the legal system of India and in unifying India as one nation with one law. This process of introducing progressive laws in British India dates back to 1829 when the then Governor General of India William Bentick abolished the evil practise of Sati.[2] Since then India has gradually marched towards the goal of achieving inclusivity of women in all sectors and in pursuance to the same, has introduced several laws to achieve this goal. The Constitution of India acknowledges this intention of progressive India, therefore the forefathers, realising the fundamental need of this, ensured to incorporate the same as a fundamental right in the Constitution under Article 15.[3]

Despite the enactment of stringent laws in India the status of women has not changed much in the rural region. The concept of equality is still at nascent stage in these areas, with women being considered as the possession of family and their honour. This mind set has led to killing of several women in the name of family honour and has razed several families at length. Gender based crime and discrimination is prevalent not just in the hamlets of India but across the length and breadth of India.[4]

HISTORICAL ASPECT

The patriarchal mind set of the medieval Indian society can be understood from the couplet of the famous hindi poet Tulsidas whodescribed the status of women, in his writings, in following manner dhor, ganwar, shudra aur nari, ye sab taadan ke adhikari which in its literal translation means that animals, illiterate, untouchables and female deserve to be punished.[5]The situation, since then has changed to a great extent and the Indian law makers and the Indian courts have played a very significant role in this change.

During the Vedic era, male child was given preference over female child because people had a notion that sons would contribute more to the family. Sons were preferred because of their physical strength, their ability to fight and because they remained with the family even after they are married. This preference for boys is reflected in sacred literature, including the Atharva-veda, which contains rituals to guarantee the birth of a son.[6] However, though daughters were preferred less than sons, they were still valued by their families. One of the Upanishads contains rituals which is for the birth of an intelligent daughter. Additionally, the Rig-Veda contains hymns that were divinely revealed to female;[7]widows were viewed as unclean, but the Rig-Veda reaffirmed their value.

The medieval period in India began with the advent of Muslim rule, this period which lasted for nearly 500 years saw a grave change and curtailment of women rights in India. Although, there were a few leading ladies of this era such as Razia Sultan, Nur Jahan and Jahan Ara who took active part in the affairs of the state, the status of women didnt change much. The situation improved after the Britishers arrived in India and made several changes to the social structure of India.

ROLE OF JUDICIARY IN RECOGNIZING WOMEN RIGHTS

Gender equalityhas always been an elusive concept in history, trodden with impediments of narrow mindedness of societywhich tookfiendish delightin supressing womens right.Even the judiciary remained oblivious to the rights of women. In Bradwell v. State of Illinois[8]Justice Bradley of the US Supreme Court said, The natural and proper timidity and delicacy which belongs to the female sex evidently unfits it for many of the occupations of civil life. The permanent destiny of and mission of a women are to fulfil the noble and benign office of wife and mother. This is the law of the creator.

As early as in the year 1908, the U.S. Supreme Court had,in Muller v. Oregon,[9]realised the importance of role of women in social life and it stated That womens physical structure and the performance of maternal functions places her at a disadvantage for subsistence is obvious. History discloses the fact that woman has always dependent upon man. He established her control in various forms, with diminishing intensity, has continued to the present.But the situation of women didnt have any substantive change until the latter half of the 20th Century.

Equality for women was recognised in India as early as in 1925, The Commonwealth of India Bill, 1925, in clause 7[10] demanded for equality before the law and provided that there be no disqualification or disability on the ground of only sex, along with the provision that all persons were to have equal right to the use of roads, courts of justice, and all other places of business or resort dedicated to the public.

The earliest case in India pertaining to women right was Air India v. Nargesh Meerza[11] where the Supreme Court held that the regulation of Air India pertaining to termination of an air hostess if she were to get pregnant within 4 years of service was held to be arbitrary and unconstitutional. This judgment is etched in history of women rights as an apostle for organisations to regulate the working condition of women on par with their male counterparts.

Article 15(3) of the Constitution empowers state to make special laws for protection of women and children rights. The reason for such law is that womens physical structure and the performance of maternal functions place her at a disadvantage in the struggle for subsistence and her physical well-being becomes an object of public interest and care in order to preserve the strength and vigour of the race.[12]

In Dattatraya v. State,[13] it was held that educational institutions established by the State exclusively for women, or the reservation of seats for women in a college- does not offend Article 15(1).

In Rajesh Gupta v. State of U.P,[14]the Court held that reservation of 50% of posts in favour of female candidates is not arbitrary.

The above judgments are a clear example of how judiciary has recognised and has safeguarded the rights of women in India in public life and at work place. The case of Vishaka and Ors. v. Sate of Rajesthan and Ors.[15]where the court laid down guidelines to regulate the conditions of working women and directed that guidelines and norms would be strictly observed in all work places for preservation and enforcement of right to gender equality of working women.

Equal rights and dignity of women in religious aspects has, recently, garnered great importance in social life and in legal sphere. Two of the most prominent judgments of Supreme court Sabarimala case[16]and Triple Talaq case[17]has brought an end to century old practise of curtailing of women rights, the court recognized customs within the definition of law as per Article 13(3)(a) of the Constitution but declared the practices void as per Article 13(1), which were found in derogation of Fundamental Rights.Justice Nariman and Justice U.U. Lalit in Triple Talaq case applied the test for laws in force to recognize the custom of Triple Talaq as falling within Article 13(3)(a), they held it unconstitutional on the narrower ground of it being manifestly arbitrary as against Article 14.

CONCLUSION

The depleting condition of women rights in India, regardless of their religion, has a great linkage to the medieval age and the British rule, who in their attempt to make a secular society with secular laws, made a direct attack on the diversity and heterogeneity and religious beliefs of Indian society. Modern India is a direct result of this contradiction in the colonial mission in which Hindu,[18] Muslim,[19] Christian[20] women of other religion experienced profound differences in legal rights and political agency.

History has always posed the importance of gender neutral laws which has led to several changes in the social structure of the society. The relation between laws and religion, in this country, are interlinked for they are dependent upon each other with former deriving its legislative backing from the latter. This article recognizes gender as one form of reference and difference which intersects with different forms of experiences, such as religion, caste, status etc., and delved into the role of various interlopers, from historical to contemporary period, who have played a vital role in shaping the current legal system of this nation.

The Author is practicing Advocate Supreme Court of India and is Executive Member of Supreme Court Bar Association.

[1]https://epgp.inflibnet.ac.in/epgpdata/uploads/epgp_content/S000829IC/P001497/M015107/ET/14600120574ET.pdf

[2]Priya Soman, Raja Ram Mohan Roy and The Abolition of Sati System in India, International Journal of Humanities, Art and Social Studies (IJHAS), Vol. 1, No.2.

[3]Narender Nagarwal, Gender Justice Ideology and the Indian Constitution: Analysing Equality Rights, 4 Indian J.L. & Just. 111 (2013).

[4]J P Attray, Crime against Women, Vikas Pub. House, New Delhi, 1988.

[5]Sukhdeo Thorat, Hindu Social System and Human Rights of Dalits Critical QuestPub.2004

[6]Tripta Desai, Women in India: A Brief Historical Survey, 4 (1992).

[7]Radha Kumud Mookerji, Women in Ancient India in Women of India, 2 (1958).

[8]83 US 130 (1973)

[9]208 U.S. 412

[10]https://www.constitutionofindia.net/historical_constitutions/the_commonwealth_of_india_bill__national_convention__india__1925__1st%20January%201925

[11](1981) 4 SCC 335

[12]Muller v. Oregon, 52 L.Ed.551

[13]AIR 1953 Bom 311

[14]AIR 2005 SC 2540

[15](1997)6SCC241

[16](2019) 11 SCC 1

[17]Shayaro Bano v. Union of India & Ors., (2017) 9 SCC 1

[18]Supra

[19]Supra

[20] 1986 AIR 1011

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Evolution Of Women Rights In India - India Legal

Black women are often left out of the conversation when it comes to the topic of racism and police brutality, and that is a problem Fifth Street Baptist Church addressed recently in its A Conversation with Sisters.

The Facebook Live event featured Dr. Ashley Bennett, director of college counseling at KIPP Sunnyside High School, and Chelle Luper Wilson, community activist, as the main speakers. They talked about the plight of Black women who have been left on the sidelines throughout history and how, even now, Black women are left out of the conversation about police brutality.

We are oftentimes double, triple, quadruple minorities, Bennett said. Were asked to be submissive and quiet down and pump our men up and be the backbone. Meanwhile, were the ones doing the work often times. Look at all those marches. Look at the black women in front.

The 40-minute event started with Dr. Sharri Coleman, a podiatrist and adjunct professor at the University of Oklahoma who hosted the conversation, reading the names of 10 Black women who were victims of police killings, including Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency room technician who was killed on March 13 in her home in Louisville, Kentucky. The women discussed why those names are not as famous as George Floyds or Ahmaud Arberys, and Bennett said its because Black women are not invited into the discussions.

We very rarely have had spaces offered to us, Bennett said. Weve had to create our own.

Bennett also reminded listeners that this is nothing new. Even the feminist movement of the 70s focused on the plight of white women, and Black women were left out of the narrative.

Wilson, daughter of the late civil rights activist Clara Luper, used Solitude of Guadeloupe as an example of Black women being left out of history. Solitude helped fight for the abolition of slavery in the French colonies in the early 1800s, but people are more familiar with Louis Delgrs involvement with the movement. She is just one of many women, Wilson said, who has been forgotten by history despite her contributions.

In order to rectify the problem and bring Black women into the conversation, Bennett said people need to amplify the voices of Black women and encourage others to use their privilege to raise the voices of Black women.

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Conversation focuses on 'unmuting' Black women - Oklahoman.com