Monthly Archives: June 2022

President Hakainde Hichilema announced the development on Tuesday in a speech on the eve of Africa Day, according to media reports.

We warmly welcome the Zambian Presidents pledge on 24 May to abolish the death penalty in the country and work with Parliament to end this cruel, inhuman, and degrading punishment, said OHCHR Spokesperson Seif Magango.

Use of the death penalty is incompatible with fundamental human rights and dignity, he added.

While Zambia has maintained a moratorium on capital punishment since 1997, when executions last took place, Mr. Magango said that formal abolition in law would be a major step forward for human rights in the country.

Zambia would also join the growing consensus worldwide for universal abolition of the death penalty. Some 170 countries have abolished it, or introduced a moratorium, either in law or in practice.

OHCHR called on the Government and Parliament to bolster the Presidents pledge with tangible legal reforms, including amending the Penal Code Act and the Criminal Procedure Code Act.

Additionally, the authorities should re-launch the Constitutional Reform process to expand the Bill of Rights, including with explicit prohibition of the death penalty.

The Government was also urged to demonstrate further international leadership on the issue by ratifying the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, on abolition of the death penalty.

Mr. Magagno said OHCHR stands ready to provide technical assistance and cooperation to the Zambian authorities to make this promise a reality.

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Rights office welcomes Zambia's pledge to abolish the death penalty - UN News

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FIRST ON FOX: Stacey Abrams serves as a board member of a UPS family foundation that awards millions of dollars to professors and scholars who advocate anti-capitalist and prison abolitionist views, Fox News Digital has learned.

Abrams, who is taking another shot at running for Georgia governor, is currently listed as a board member at the Seattle-based Marguerite Casey Foundation, a private grant-making foundation named after Marguerite Casey, the sister of UPS founder Jim Casey.

The far-left foundation has repeatedly voiced support for defunding and abolishing the police.

Abrams, who has tried to distance herself from thehardline rhetoric of the #DefundThePolice movement in the past, has received at least $52,500 in income from the foundation, according to her financial disclosures.

STACEY ABRAMS SERVES AS BOARD MEMBER, GOVERNOR OF FOUNDATION THAT SUPPORTS #ABOLISHTHEPOLICE

Stacey Abrams, Democratic gubernatorial candidate for Georgia, speaks during a news conference in Atlanta, on Tuesday, May 24, 2022. (Elijah Nouvelage/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Abrams' campaign told Fox News Digital last week that Abrams, who joined the foundation's board in May 2021, does not hold the same views as the foundation.

In December, the Marguerite Casey Foundation and Group Health Foundation announced the recipients of the 2021 Freedom Scholars Awards, which gave $250,000 to each of six professors who are "leading research in critical fields including abolitionist, Black, feminist, queer, radical, and anti-colonialist studies."

The $1.5 million annual award, established in 2020, "counters the limited financial resources and research constraints frequently faced by scholars whose work supports social movements,"the foundation said.

One of the professors who received an award wasRobin D. G. Kelley, who teaches African American history at theUniversity of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and has argued that capitalism is inherently racist.

In aFebruary NPR segment, Kelley said, "The secret to capitalism's survival is racism."

"So any true liberation has to be anti-capitalist," he said. "There's no way capitalism can save us. And even if you could create a capitalism that's somehow non-racial, which of course, is impossible - but let's say in theory you can do that. We still have deep exploitation and inequality produced by it."

During the same NPR interview, Kelley said his "goal" growing up was to be a "communist for life."

"I was involved in a study group organized by the All-African People's Revolutionary Party, AAPRP, and we'd study Walter Rodney, Frantz Fanon, C.L.R. James, Angela Davis, I mean, Kwame Nkrumah. So this was outside the classroom. This is where I got the real education," Kelley said.

"I wanted to be a communist for life. I wanted to make revolution," he continued. "And it's like, of course, you've got to be a historian to be a real good communist, not the other way around."

During another segment of the NPR interview titled, "There are no utopias," Kelley argued that a truly communist country has never existed throughout history.

"I'm the first to say that what we think of as state socialism or communism has been a disaster," he said. "I'm the last one to defend what actually becomes, in the case of Soviet Union, for example, not socialism at all, but state capitalism that's redistributive. That's what the Soviet Union became. And China's the same thing. China did amazing things in terms of being able to raise the basic standard of living. But China is a state capitalist neoliberal society. We don't have a communist country anywhere in the world. We've never actually had one. It has never happened."

GEORGE SOROS THROWS $1M BEHIND STACEY ABRAMS' SECOND GUBERNATORIAL RUN

Stacey Abramw sits on the board of a foundation that has repeatedly voiced support for defunding and abolishing the police. (Elijah Nouvelage/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Another professor awarded $250,000 by the Marguerite Casey Foundation wasLorgia Garca Pea, a formerLatinx-studies professor at Harvard University whose tenure was rejected in 2019, sparking weeks of protests at the Ivy League school. According to the New Yorker,some members had complained that Garca Peas work amounted to activism rather than scholarship.

Garca Pea, who is now a professor in Tufts Universitys Department of Studies in Race, Colonialism, and Diaspora, argued in June 2020 that ethnic studies is an "urgent" area of study "from elementary schools up to college," because it is "charged with filling in the immense gap left by our Eurocentric education systems."

"What we teach at every school right nowwhat we consider to be the standard humanities and social science curriculumis actually grounded in white supremacy, but is masked as objectivity,"she told Boston Review at the time.

During the same interview, Garca Pea said she "was part of a program" called "Freedom University" at the University of Georgia, which supported "undocumented students when the governor banned their enrollment."

"I was part of a program, Freedom Universitywhich created a parallel university system to support University of Georgias undocumented students when the governor banned their enrollmentand because we had students and we had teachers we had a school," Garca Pea said. "Literally, that is all you need, and then everything else is extra. So its critical to support students and support their demands."

Other recipients of the 2021 Freedom Scholars Awards includedAnglica Chzaro, a Critical Race Theory (CRT) professor at the University of Washington School of Law who advocates for prison abolition, and Amna Akbar, an Ohio State University professor and proponent of "movement law," which she describes as the "approach to legal scholarship grounded in solidarity, accountability, and engagement with grassroots organizing and left social movements."

In 2020, the Marguerite Casey Foundation awarded $3 million to its Freedom Scholars. Those recipients includedAlisa Bierria, a gender studies professor at UCLA who recently argued that the possible overturning of Roe v. Wade signaled "a broader attitude by this government that treats womens lives as disposable and trans peoples lives as disposable."

Stacey Abrams and Gov. Brian Kemp (Drew Angerer, Getty Images | Nathan Posner, Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

The foundation also awarded $250,000 to Ananya Roy, an urban studies professor at UCLA who has argued in support of abolishing private property, which she says is rooted in whiteness. She also supports the government using eminent domain to turn hotels into housing for the homeless.

The foundation also awarded $250,000 to Charlene Carruthers, founder of the Black Youth Project 100, which she described in 2019 as "a political home for anti-capitalists, radical Black feminists, abolitionists, artists, educators and many more types of freedom fighters."

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Abrams, theGeorgia gubernatorial Democratic nominee, will face Republican Gov. Brian Kemp for a second time in November. If elected, she will be in charge of appointing members to seven-year terms on the Board of Regents, which overseesthe public colleges and universities that comprise the University System of Georgia.

Abrams' campaign did not immediately respond to Fox News Digitals separate inquiry about whether she supports the Marguerite Casey Foundation's efforts to fund the aforementioned academics.

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Stacey Abrams on board of foundation awarding millions to woke professors pushing prison abolition, CRT - Fox News

The UK post-study work visa remains an important pull factor for incoming international students. A recent survey suggests that international students would be more likely to consider studying in the UK if they were allowed to stay and work for three years instead of two.

According to The Guardian, a survey of 100,000 international students by the education analysts QS showed that two-thirds would be more likely to consider studying in the UK if the post-study work visa was extended.

The survey suggested fewer than a fifth of students would plan to stay beyond the three years.

Currently, the Graduate visa gives foreign students permission to stay in the UK for at least two years after successfully completing a course in the UK. Students must be in the UK when applying.

Universities UK International director Vivienne Stern was quoted saying by The Guardian that vice-chancellors wanted the government to review whether the two-year visa forms were a barrier to employing international graduates, and ensure the UK had a competitive post-study work offer.

Former UK home secretary Theresa May had previously revoked the two-year visa to curb immigration.

UK universities, however, warned that removing the post-study work visa in 2012 had harmed international student recruitment. Since its reinstatement, institutions say they have been able to reach a target of recruiting 600,000 international students a year a decade early.

Apart from serving as essential revenue streams for universities, a recent survey estimated international students benefited the UK economy by 26 billion pounds every year.

The report urges the government to review policy and restrictions to help stimulate further growth in the sector after the pandemic and position post-Brexit Britain as an equally welcoming destination for international students as its key competitors.

The number of Indian students choosing to study in the UK plunged after the abolition of the two-year post-study work visa in 2012 and quadrupled when it was reinstated, reported The Guardian. Source: Manpreet Romana/AFP

An extension would be especially appealing to Indian students 73% said three years would make them a lot more likely to consider the UK.

The number of Indian students choosing to study in the UK plunged after the abolition of the two-year post-study work visa in 2012 and quadrupled when it was reinstated, said the report.

A Home Office spokesperson told The Guardian that post-study work offers across countries were not directly comparable and we think ours strikes the right balance.

She said: Those on the graduate route can stay in the UK and look for work at any skill level for a period of two years, or three years for those with a PhD, and switch into skilled work routes if they find a suitable job.

Numerous countries offer international students post-study work visas to continue living and working in the country.

Australias Temporary Graduate visa (subclass 485), for instance, allows international graduates to work for up to four years, depending on their course and level of study.

New Zealands post-study work visa would allow international graduates to work for any employer for between one and three years and do almost any work, depending on their qualifications and where they studied.

The UK recently launched the High Potential Individual (HPI) route, which aims to attract high skilled overseas talent who have graduated from some of the worlds top universities.

It allows graduates to come to the UK without a job offer. Individuals can apply for the HPI route if they have graduated from an eligible international university in the five years immediately before their application.

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Longer UK post-study work visa could woo more int'l students to the UK: survey - Study International News

In 2001, University of Pennsylvania law professor Dorothy Roberts released a groundbreaking book, "Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare," laying out the case that most children in the U.S. foster care system are there not because of abuse, but for reasons that boil down to poverty. At the time Roberts was writing, one in 10 children in central Harlem was placed in foster care. Today, Roberts writes in her new book, "Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families And How Abolition Can Build a Safer World," more than one in 10 Black children across the nation can expect to land in the system by age 18.

Just as the U.S. is a global outlier when it comes to mass incarceration, Roberts writes, "The United States extinguishes the legal rights of more parents than any other nation on Earth." And as with so many other state systems, the brunt falls disproportionately on nonwhite communities.

As a reproductive justice advocate Roberts' 1998 book "Killing the Black Body" is another classic of its field Roberts has written about the child welfare system within that Black feminist framework, arguing that true reproductive autonomy must include the right to parent the children one has and to keep those children safe. That's a timely issue as we face the likely reversal of Roe v. Wade, with numerous conservatives, including Supreme Court justices, citing a dwindling "domestic supply of infants" relinquished for adoption as a partial justification for re-criminalizing abortion.

RELATED:Adoption means abortion just isn't necessary, SCOTUS claims: That's even worse than it sounds

As Roberts argues below, many of the children born of unwanted pregnancies if Roe is overturned are likely to find their way into the child welfare system. That makes it vital to understand, as Roberts argues more forcefully than ever before in "Torn Apart," how the system is fundamentally designed not to promote child welfare but to police and punish the most marginalized communities in the nation.

Under that system, parents who come under scrutiny because, say, a teacher reports that their kids wore dirty clothes to school, are regularly sent on months- or years-long missions to complete an impossible array of tasks including classes on parenting, anger management and substance abuse, as well as mandatory counseling appointments, court dates and meetings with case workers rather than receiving support that addresses their core problem: poverty. Mothers who suffer domestic violence have often been re-victimized by CPS agencies that charge them with child abuse for allowing their children to witness the abuse. Legal scholars who seek to expedite adoptions argue that entire city neighborhoods should be declared unfit for children. And meanwhile, the children placed in foster care often emerge traumatized, so isolated and unprepared for adulthood that many end up in prison, homeless or entangled in sex work.

But Roberts' book also comes amid a new movement calling not for reforming broken system but abolishing it altogether, arguing that "The only way to stop the destruction caused by family policing is to stop policing families." Roberts spoke with Salon this May.

I want to start by asking about your argument at the end of the book: that you can't fix a system that isn't broken. Few people know much about the problems in child welfare to begin with, let alone the argument that the system is functioning as it was designed.

I think you're right that people aren't aware of how the system operates. Many know there are flaws because of headlines: stories that refer to children killed in the home who were known to the system. But the way people usually respond is, "That means we need the system to take more children away from their families." So to the extent they are aware of problems, the response is often to shore up the system.

What I'm trying to get across is that this isn't a system designed to protect children at all. It's designed to police the most politically marginalized families in the nation. It's always been designed that way, from its origins centuries ago. And when you have a system that is fundamentally designed to oppress people, you should expect that its outcomes will be oppressive.

You've worked on this issue for decades. Is there one case that encapsulates so much of what can go wrong?

I tell the story of a Chicago woman named Jornell, who was instrumental to my understanding how the family policing system operates, especially in the lives of Black mothers. I met her in the late 1990s. She had a baby who was under investigation from the day he was born because she had participated in a hospital program for recovering substance users. So they were already paying close attention to her. One day when she brought the baby to the hospital for care, the staff felt she was overmedicating him and took custody. She fought for years and never recovered custody of her son.

This isn't a system designed to protect children at all. It's designed to police the most politically marginalized families in the nation, and it's always been that way.

She gave me access to her case records and I could see that no matter what she did to get her son back, it was never good enough. She went through two drug treatment programs, even though she'd already recovered from using drugs when her son was born and he didn't test positive. But they said she might relapse, so they made her go through a relapse program too. There were constant comments in her therapists' records, as if they were looking for some reason to keep her son in foster care.

Even when they found that she was a loving mother, they would find some little quirk in her personality to claim that she should be kept under evaluation longer. One time she went into a therapist's office and noted that the rug had been kicked up and she put it down. The therapist wrote that this showed she believed these little gestures could convince him she was a good mother, and that therefore she didn't really understand what it took to be a good parent.

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Another case is the one that I tell in the introduction of "Torn Apart," of Vanessa Peoples, a young nursing student who was undergoing a number of health challenges. She was at a family picnic when her youngest son strayed away after a cousin who had left, and a passerby called 911. Vanessa noticed right away that her son had strayed away and went after him, even saw the woman talking on the cell phone. And this woman refused to give her son back until the police arrived. The police eventually let her have her son back, but ticketed her for child abuse. That led to caseworkers coming to her home to investigate. They called the police for backup and Vanessa ended up being hogtied by seven police officers who arrived at her home, terrorizing her, her children and her mother.

She was able to keep her children out of foster care, but the whole encounter shows how Black mothers are dehumanized and how this system harms families in ways that can ruin lives. Vanessa now has trouble getting a job because she's on the child abuse registry in Colorado. She cannot practice the profession she trained for. She's finding it hard to get an apartment. And she and her children have been traumatized with lasting effects.

Vanessa stands out to me because she was punished not only for a lapse which, in a white middle-class family, would never have led to that kind of state violence but also for standing up for herself, because she protested when the caseworkers and police arrived at her home. It shows how, fundamentally, family policing and criminal law enforcement work hand in hand.

Both cases reflect the fundamental ways the system polices Black mothers in particular and harms Black children. They're not aberrational.

What do people who have never come under that sort of scrutiny need to understand about how it works?

There are children in America who have unmet needs, and we should be concerned about that. But the answer isn't to take them from their families. All that does is paper over the true changes we need to make. But it's also important to note that there are many cases where impoverished Black parents lose their children for the exact same behaviors that wealthy white parents engage in and are not only not punished for, but are sometimes praised for.

A clear example is drug use. There are many Black children who have been taken from their parents because of evidence, or just suspicion, that their parents use drugs. At the same time, we see wealthy white people boasting about using drugs at home and nothing happens to them. A lighthearted New York Times article during the pandemic covered a forum where middle-class white parents talked about drinking in order to handle the stress of having their children at home. That would be unimaginable in poor Black communities, where drug use is frequently seen as a reason to take children away.

It's important to reject this myth that children are in foster care because their parents abused them. Most of them are there because their parents simply could not afford the resources they need.

In the book I mention a Minnesota study that showed caseworkers an image of a bedroom and switched out a Black baby with a white baby; it found the race of the baby made a difference to their judgments about whether it was a "messy home" something used frequently in caseworkers' judgments about whether or not a child is being maltreated. Or examples like Vanessa Peoples, where Black mothers are blamed for allowing their children to stray away, while in more privileged communities, finding a lost child would be cause for celebration, not grounds to remove the child from the home. I also cite multiple studies showing that clinicians are more likely to suspect injuries to a child as resulting from child abuse in the case of Black families compared to white families.

It's really important for people to reject this myth that children in foster care are there because their parents abused them. Most of them are there because their parents either could not afford the resources they need or simply because of discrimination against poor families, especially if they are Black or Native. The propaganda machine around saving Black children from their families has been very effective, and I think there are a lot of white liberals who want to believe this story: We have a child welfare system that's saving Black children from dysfunctional homes. That is just simply false.

Can you talk about why you use the language of "family policing" instead of "child welfare"?

The names used to describe this system foster care, child protection and child welfare are all a kind of propaganda to cover up how the system actually functions. It isn't designed to care for children. It's designed to accuse family caregivers of harming children and then investigate and punish the family for harms to children that are actually caused by systemic inequities. When it accuses a parent of neglect which is the main reason children are taken from their families in the U.S. not only do child welfare agencies not provide what families need to meet children's needs, they also divert attention from what it would really take to provide for children's welfare. It blames parents for not having money for the material resources children need, instead of interrogating why we have a society where families are unable to afford basic needs.

You trace many aspects of these systems back to the worst atrocities in U.S. history: slavery and the genocide of Native Americans. You discuss some programs I was familiar with, such as the 19th-century Orphan Train project and the forced removal of Native American children, but also things I was not, like the role of "apprenticeship" programs in the post-Reconstruction South.

The enslavement of Black people and the genocide of Native people are both intimately, and I think inextricably, tied to the origins of our child welfare system. The ease with which Black children are removed from their homes and the power of the narrative that the child welfare system is saving Black children stem from the routine separation of Black families during the slavery era and the way in which enslavers had authority over Black families, including over their children.

The enslavement of Black people and the genocide of Native people are inextricably tied to the origins of our child welfare system.

What was more of a revelation to me was how the apprenticeship system was used after the Civil War to virtually re-enslave Black children. In that court-based system, there were judicial orders based on petitions accusing Black parents of child neglect that sent Black children to former white enslavers as "apprentices," to work for them. It was part of the same white supremacist effort to take back the South, dominate Black people and exploit their labor that we hear more about with the convict leasing system and the "Black Codes" that allowed for the arrest of Black people for everyday activities.

But less attention has been paid to how the apprentice system stole child labor from Black families to be exploited again by the very people, in many cases, who had enslaved them prior to the Civil War. We're talking about tens of thousands of Black children who were returned to former white enslavers through this system. It's eerie how closely it parallels the contemporary child welfare system.

I don't see how you could argue that the roots of today's family policing system are in charitable organizations saving children from abusive homes, when this history of Black child apprenticeship is much closer to what's happening today. Not to mention that the narrative about charitable organizations saving white immigrant children from abusive parents is also false, because impoverished white children were also being exploited for their labor by the system.

You've written about this issue so authoritatively for so long. What made you want to revisit this at book length? Is it the potential today for talking about abolition?

Since I wrote "Shattered Bonds," a few developments made me want to write a new book. One was that my own thinking changed over the last 20 years. I got very involved in various reform efforts, including working on the settlement of a big class action lawsuit in Washington state that lasted for nine years, but lots of other projects aimed at reforming the child welfare system. I became completely disenchanted because I could see that none of them were really getting at the design of the system. As long as this system relies on threatening to take children away, and is aimed at policing families, not supporting them, the reforms are not going to make a difference.

Another development has to do with this moment. I learned a lot more about abolitionist thinking and organizing over those 20 years, and came to see how it applies to family policing. There has been a huge increase in organizing among people, especially Black mothers, who want to end the family policing system. We are at a moment, largely because of Black Lives Matter and organizing by prison abolitionists, where more people are open to understanding how principles of abolition can lead to transformative change and to a world that is more caring, humane and just. All of that made me believe that it was time for another book that was more geared toward an abolitionist vision.

When people talk about abolition, or even just more family preservation, there's an automatic response that it will lead to more abuse, more child deaths. You have argued that, paradoxically, the opposite is true: that overzealous CPS policing can make some cases of extreme abuse more likely, since CPS agencies overwhelmed by too many cases lack the ability to spot truly dangerous situations.

The fear people often raise when you make the argument for abolishing this harmful and oppressive system is that, despite all the evidence of the harms it inflicts, it would be dangerous to end it because we still need it for the extreme cases. People point to the cases that make it into the headlines, where a child known to the system is killed in their home. Instead of recognizing that this means the system failed to protect that child, the response is that we should invest more in this failing system.

Part of the problem is the difficulty people have in imagining another system, either because they are invested in this system or they can't imagine something better. For some people, it's a financial investment; this is a $30 billion industry that many people have a stake in. Then there are people who have an ideological stake in this system, because they want to believe that there are so many Black children in foster care because their parents aren't fit. Then there are many people who simply have not imagined another way of caring for children and supporting families, because all they know is the system we have.

One way to address that is to point out that we already have examples of other ways of supporting families and keeping children safe that don't rely on family separation and blaming family caregivers for what are actually social inequalities. When the formal child welfare system excluded Black families, we had a history of taking care of children through other means: extended kin networks; Black clubwomen providing daycare for struggling Black mothers; the Black Panther Party giving out free breakfast and health care; and mutual aid networks that sprung up during the COVID lockdown in New York City and provided groceries, diapers and health care to people when the child protection agencies were virtually shut down.

We have to be willing to let go of this oppressive system that has caused so much suffering, and work on building other ways of truly meeting children's needs.

Anna Aron's article about the "unintended abolition" in New York during the lockdown shows that, despite dire predictions that there would be a huge spike in child abuse because children were not being investigated, instead, children were kept safe at home because of the outpouring of material resources for families by mutual aid networks and because of the concrete supplemental income that they got from the federal government.

There's lots of evidence that we don't have to rely on a system that is hurting people. We have to be willing to let go of this oppressive system that has caused so much suffering, and work on building up other ways of truly meeting children's needs.

How should we think about these issues while facing the likely end of Roe v. Wade and how Supreme Court Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Samuel Alito have seemed to argue that the existence of adoption precludes the need for a right to abortion.

The idea that we don't need a right to abortion because women can give up their babies for adoption, first of all, ignores the oppression of forcing anyone to go through a pregnancy and give birth. But it also ignores the way in which the entire system of adoption is based on unequal social hierarchies and usually has a coercive aspect. If the state is compelling women to go through pregnancies and give up their children, that is a form of compulsion. It also reflects the coercive aspects of the adoption industry in general, in that it's usually less privileged people putting their children up for adoption to more privileged people. Even in his footnote, Alito's reference to the "supply" of infants for people who want to adopt them indicates that view of children as commodities for the benefit of more privileged people who seek to adopt.

I'm also not sure we can separate private adoption from public adoption of children through foster care. Because if Justices Alito and Barrett are actually envisioning that millions of women who seek abortion will turn to adoption instead, some of those children are going to be put in the foster care system. And if we look at what goes on in the foster-industrial complex, there are tens of thousands of children who are neither adopted nor returned to their families. Many of them age out of foster care without any legal family ties whatsoever, and the system boots them out without the support they need. Many of them become homeless. They have no income and no college degree. Some of them don't even have a high school diploma.

We have to take into account how the family policing system treats children whose family ties have been terminated, and to recognize that children in foster care who are "available for adoption" are only available because a judge has permanently severed their relationships with their families. This vision that Alito and Barrett have of adoption coming in to save the day after the right to abortion is ended ignores the violence that makes children available for adoption in the first place.

Read more on racism as a public health crisis:

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Is our child welfare system "broken"? Or is it ripping apart Black families by design? - Salon

We make sense of our lives through the stories we tell ourselves and each other. The dominant ideology functions through the way it occupies or frames those stories. Since we live in an unequal society driven by a system of capitalist exploitation causing class struggle, this occupation and framing are never watertight, never 100 per cent effective. As Leonard Cohen says, there is a crack, a crack in everything, thats where the light gets in. We may despair at the mass immersion in the Jubilee events but there is a growing minority, particularly of young people, who understand the toxic nature of this institution. Wall to wall promotion and coverage of the Jubilee gives no voice to the significant minority who are against the monarchy.

The British monarchy is a national story that is an important cog in the current ideological system. Elizabeth Windsors 70th Jubilee, which has been promoted for some time by the mass media and is celebrated this week in a series of local and national events, is the latest instalment in this story.

Many people really do place their personal life stories within the royal narrative. Just today on BBC breakfast TV the Indian heritage organizers of the Bollywood section of the Pall Mall pageant got quite emotive about the fact that their families were close up to the Queen during the previous jubilee. So we heard that as nine-year-olds they were waving flags at some event the Queen visited in Birmingham and that their Mum had been presented to the Royal entourage. People remember where they were and what they were doing at previous royal events such as weddings or deaths. Rather than measuring out our lives in coffee spoons as T.S. Eliot would have it, people measure out their lives in the royal souvenir mugs and other junk they buy.

Royalist ideology is effective to a degree because it is able to play to a number of social realities that people have an emotional investment in community, national identity and some positive values like service or charity. The state gives some material support for this by graciously granting an extra bank holiday to facilitate all those street parties and organized events. The local government association has estimated that there will be 16,000 street parties this weekend. Millions of people will be going to these parties without being particularly pro-royalist but to have a good time.

A billion-pound Jubilee industry producing endless pre-landfill tat has developed. Such commerce expresses the wastefulness and tastelessness of the consumer spectacle. At the same time, people are having to decide whether to heat or eat and food banks are overwhelmed by demand.

The Royal family makes a big deal of a patrician notion of service so it presides over a vast number of charities. It also takes care to draw certain lines in the sand when it comes to the commercialisation of its brand hence the tensions with Prince Harry and Meghan. One or two commentators have made the point that the utter amorality and lack of ethics of Prime Minister Boris Johnson reinforces a reverence for the Queens seventy years of service. In this way, the royalist ideological system is a very useful compensatory backup for our rulers when politicians are increasingly reviled for their venality and dishonesty. People believe Johnson might make rules that he does not follow but at least the monarchy is clean and is even possibly seen as something to be defended because it is not like Johnson and his cronies. Socialists should not underestimate how this separation from the dirty end of politics means that if there were a very serious crisis for the British state then the monarchy could (would) be used to intervene in a way to defend the capitalist order.

Notions of royalist service to the nation are of course totally exaggerated. Ross Kemp (Grant from the long-running TV soap EastEnders) went so far as to proclaim the Queen our greatest volunteer. Ross is not too clear on the way monarchy works you do not volunteer but are born to it and there is even an element of divine selection in it all. None of the good works supported by the Royalty challenge the way the system makes people poor or disables people through the way it is socially organized. Whilst they may make pious remarks about helping disadvantaged people they are one of the richest capitalist families. They may make noises about the problems of housing for example but the Prince of Wales sits on a land portfolio that if taken into common ownership could provide the basis for a huge expansion of affordable housing for working people. There is a general lack of transparency too about the many tax loopholes that the Royal family benefit from.

The Royals have astutely modernized their brand and opened up more to the TV cameras. So Princes Harry and William talk about their personal traumas and endorse a slightly different profile of masculinity than male royals in the past. However, they know that the mystique of the monarchy with its internal rules and secrecy has to be maintained too. Carrying out the firms day to day work opening things, doing charity or representing the military cannot be sullied by scandalous behaviour that crosses a certain line hence the freezing out of Prince Andrew because of his connection with the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. While there can be tension from time to time there now exists a parasitic symbiosis between the Royal Family and the mainstream mass media. The media is exploited as much as possible to keep the Firm looking modern and up to date. Ultimately, even mildly critical TV dramas like the Crown are recuperated to their advantage.

Two other arguments are always rolled out to justify the monarchy. Calculations are made about how much tourism income is generated by the Crown. An increase in numbers visiting London this weekend has been heralded in the press. This argument assumes that all the buildings and artefacts associated with the monarchy would suddenly disappear if it was abolished. Countries which have abolished the monarchy like France or Italy do very well, if not better, with their tourism. The other argument is the supposedly positive attention the monarchy gets in the USA, Europe or elsewhere. But it is hard to distinguish this attention from the organized spectacle of celebrities in films, TV, sports or other walks of life such as entrepreneurs. In any case, the ending of royaltys constitutional role in other countries does not inhibit their place in the spectacle.

Should socialists and republicans despair at working peoples continued love affair with the Monarchy? Certainly only 27% support abolition but this is an increase historically:

According to a recent YouGov poll conducted for the anti-monarchy group Republic, 27% of the population supports the abolition of the monarchy, with considerably higher dissatisfaction among the young (a report, Jubilee Britain, produced by the thinktank British Future shows similar results). Thats a notable jump on the 15% that has been the norm for most of this century. [1]

You have to distinguish the popularity of the Queen and the reverence for the monarchy. Prince Charles is seen three times more negatively than she is. It is a distinct possibility that the reign of King Charles would be less popular and republican opinion may increase. Rising support for Welsh and Scottish independence in recent decades is certainly something that can erode Royalist sentiment. The enthusiastic promotion of the more popular Prince William by the media and the family firm itself is perhaps related to the fears of a post-Elizabethan period.

The old distinctions between short term and long term demands or tactics and strategy are relevant here. In the difficult conditions of today with working people still suffering the long term effects of a series of defeats including the demise of the Corbyn project it would be pretty silly to make republicanism a demand to take up in mass campaigns or struggles. Even at the height of Corbynism, this issue was never really posed. It would have been quite possible to have a left reformist government alongside the monarchy.

In the long term, a socialist strategy is a different question. As outlined above, the Royals ideological role and constitutional responsibilities are obstacles to any radical break with capitalist rule. The Royal Familys role in reproducing a sense of one nation that obliterates any real notion of class exploitation and struggle has to be fundamentally weakened if a socialist alternative can be really built.

On the other hand, Labours social liberal conception of the nation fully aligns itself with the Royals. Labour Party leader Keir Starmer writing this week in the Telegraph has stated it is your patriotic duty to celebrate the Queens Platinum Jubilee. For Labour, the institution and the state fundamentally remain the same but with their policies, they are infused miraculously with some better values of responsibility, progress and respect or whichever other banalities the leaderships advisors come up with.

No real anti-capitalist rupture of the system can be achieved without a solid core of internationalist activists and mass leaders who understand the class nature of the state. You cannot postpone the task of developing that core to some more favourable future, even if today the number of people the left can win to such a perspective is still a minority.

It is often asked what is the point of small radical left groups? In fact, the Jubilee is an occasion when they actually have a clear relevance. The Anti-Capitalist Resistance current, like other groups, will openly talk today about the need to abolish the monarchy and explain its negative impact on working-class consciousness. We will not just write articles on our sites but will produce badges for people to wear and create conversations. Social media memes can also spread the message. In some places, there might even be anti-Jubilee social events. The arc of unanimity can be broken. Very few from even the Socialist Campaign Group of MPs will be putting forward this message. So wear your Stuff the Jubilee or Abolish the Monarchy badges with pride this weekend and enjoy the extra day off unlike the royal family you have earnt it.

Source Anti*Capitalist Resistance.

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Stuff the Jubilee - International Viewpoint

The term social justice has had a fair amount of scrutiny over the past couple of years, and it became a broader local topic in the past few weeks in this county and across the state. This is not a foreign concept for another place or another time.

Image courtesy of Unsplash.

The city of Salida is beginning an overdue move to add an Assistant City Administrator, functioning also as a human resources (HR) manager. The suggestion made by City Council Member Dominique Naccarato in a recent city council meeting to include skills in diversity, equity, and social justice in the position description was supported by the rest of the city council. But there are those who appear to have taken exception to this idea.

Those who would confuse the concepts of democratic equity and social justice reveal that if they have to, theyll obey the law, but perhaps not the spirit of those laws.

Critics of this proposed adjustment to the citys new HR role have brought up the time-worn skill sets most of us understand to be part of the HR role; personnel management, familiarity with labor laws and budgets, and being a team player. Well, of course. But to stop there may remove the very social, human concept of justice that is critical to our multi-ethnic society.

Wikipedia defines social justice as fairness as it manifests in society. That includes fairness in healthcare, employment, housing, and more. Discrimination and social justice are not compatible.

What social justice means in a diverse society is critical to the times in which we live; in a globally-connected world, in changing times, in a politically-polarizing society, faced with growing violence, the impacts of climate change, and a dependence on finite resources.

The difference between equity and social justice

Equity is concerned with fairness; it tends to guarantee fair access to opportunities for everyone to participate effectively in the context of a free market. Social justice focuses on a concern for peoples needs; based on individual or group action.

It would seem that social justice relates to HR. But times have always been changing; the end of the 19th century was rift with robber baron inequities; consider the inequities of the industrial revolution as the country approached 1900; where even children worked 12-hour days, six days a week for pennies a day. Or the mines or sweat shops where our own ancestors toiled without sunlight or hope of improvement to their lives.

Just because that was how it was then doesnt mean it had to stay that way. Perhaps this is where the phrase give the kid a chance, derives from.

Social justice is an increasingly important topic. In fact, Ark Valley Voice has participated for the past several months, as members of the Colorado News Collaborative, in training that expands equity in journalism, that seeks to add to our coverage the voices of minorities and the stories of those for whom justice has been denied.

Contrary to what has been written about them (Social Justice Hiring?) by a competitor editor, diversity, equity and inclusion are not just political talking points. They are the measurements by which the rest of us who are not white, male, rich, privileged, and of a certain age and mindset, have worked together to achieve. They are the three words that represent the melting pot of immigration that has made this country the rich, successful nation it is.

The fact that another editor chooses to make fun of the words social justice shows that he may not understand the concept of justice. In fact words that equate Black Lives Matter marches to smash and grab thieves could be considered both discriminatory and racist. It amounts to written redlining of a race, equating it with a white mans idea of equity.

The question I got from a rich, white, male store owner, as a college graduate fresh back from living in Europe was how long are you going to work before you get pregnant and quit? I told him it was none of his business.

History holds social justice lessons

What social justice is, and why it is important, has apparently been debated since the origin of the term. Social justice is not a recent term cooked up in the bar at The Willard Hotel in D.C., across from the White House.

According to Studymode, during the time period between 1825-1850, ideals of equality, liberty and the pursuit of happiness defined democracy and were inoculated into the masses of America through a series of reform movements that emerged in the antebellum era. These reforms were based on the desire to make America a civilized, utopian society.

In the period around 1825, following the Revolutionary War and War of 1812, the concepts of social justice were raised in relation to slavery. Britain abolished it with the Slavery Abolition Act 1833, but it took until 1863 and a Civil War in the U.S. to abolish it. Since that time, white supremacists have continually tried to recreate it in other ways.

But this social justice movement also included the first efforts at womens rights in this new representative republic, as well as the 1826 beginning of the temperance movement, as alcohol abuse was become increasingly widespread, affecting the efficiency of the labor and causing societal problems.

Social equity was the integration of the schools in Little Rock Arkansas, and the 1965 Civil Rights bill. Social justice is going beyond the law to what some call real Christian charity to understand and accept other human beings no matter their race, creed, color, sex, or sexual orientation.

Thesarus.com defines social justice as a noun and describes it as the fair treatment of all people in a society, including respect for the rights of minorities and equitable distribution of resources (which also means a chance at advancement) among members of a community.

It goes on to provide examples of the words social justice in sentences, and revealingly, they include some of the bigger names in the corporate world:

The first set relates to increased awareness of how their activities impact external events happening in the world such as climate change and social justice.

The Ford Foundation and Mozilla led a fellowship program to connect technologists, activists, journalists and scientists, and strengthen organizations working at the convergence of technology and social justice.

The rise of the activist developer|Walter Thompson|February 9, 2021|TechCrunch

Repealing the protections might seem relatively easy in Maryland, a state where both legislative chambers have supermajorities of Democrats, who have tended to be sympathetic to calls for police accountability and social justice.

The first state to pass a law protecting police accused of misconduct may also be the first to repeal it.|Ovetta Wiggins|February 9, 2021|Washington Post

A few weeks after the inauguration of a new president, the nation continues to struggle for its footing amid deep polarization, a pandemic, questions about economic and social justice, and declining faith in its institutions. Its not hyperbolic to say that the American experiment as a diverse, multiethnic democratic republic is facing one of its most difficult tests since that distant Philadelphia summer. (1776)

Want Unity For Real? Then America Needs to Get Back to Facts|Samar Ali, Bill Haslam and Jon Meacham|February 8, 2021|Time

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Social Equity Isn't a New Term, Neither is Social Justice - by Jan Wondra - The Ark Valley Voice