Daily Archives: March 12, 2024

Trump’s Super Tuesday victories could mean the return of Antifa – Fox News

Posted: March 12, 2024 at 1:58 am

Trump's Super Tuesday victories could mean the return of Antifa  Fox News

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This Is America #194: Jeremy White on San Diego ‘Antifa’ Case, Smash by Smash West, Franklin Lopez on New … – ItsGoingDown.org

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Welcome, to This Is America, March 8th, 2024.

On todays episode, we feature an interview first with Jeremy White, a long-time community organizer in Southern California who is currently facing felony charges stemming from a counter-protest against violent far-Right gangs in San Diego in 2017. We talk about how Jeremy and other activists were selectively targeted by the State and law enforcement, while fascist groups like the Proud Boys and American Guard were allowed to run wild and openly attack members of the public.

We then talk to folks in Austin, Texas about the upcoming Smash By Smash West counter-summit. Finally, we speak with long-time anarchist media maker Franklin Lopez, who has now completed a new book for kids. We speak about anarchist media and the need for more engaging content geared at young people and parents alike.

All this and more, but first, lets get to the news.

Photos from vigils in memory of Aaron Bushnell across the US. SOURCE: Facebook / Various

Across the world, people held vigils in memory of anarchist Aaron Bushnell, the 25 year-old active duty member of the Air Force who in late February, set himself on fire in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington DC in what he called an extreme protest against the USs continued support of the war and ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestine. In Portland, as Alissa Azar reported, in a moving act of solidarityVeterans [burned] their uniforms at a vigil for Aaron Bushnell, hosted by Veterans Against War.

Protests, mass marches, and blockades against the US backed war in Gaza continue. In New York, a militant marches took the streets, in San Francisco, thousands marched on the Israeli consulate and were attacked by police, in Chicago, street blockades shut down intersections, several defense contractors in New Hampshire were recently hit with vandalism, in Ontario, over 400 pro-Palestinian protesters mobilized to shut down a speaking event featuring prime minister Justin Trudeau in honor of [the] Italian prime minister, a protest encampment sprang up outside of the home of US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, and in Oakland, middle school students organized a walkout.

In Berkeley, California, hundreds shut down a speaking event featuring the deputy director of a far-Right Israeli think-tank, heavily involved in the states current trajectory. Protesters rallied outside of the event, windows were broken, and the speaker was evacuated out of the building.

Blockades of weapons manufactures also continued. In Plymouth, Minnesota, demonstrators blockaded Northrop Grumman, which manufactures weapons that Israel uses against Palestinians. Meanwhile, pickets and blockades also took place outside of Lockheed Martin offices in Vancouver, Quebec City, Calgary and Toronto.

A call in the Pacific Northwest has also been made for a mobilization against the upcoming Aerospace and Defense Supplier Summit at the Seattle Convention Center. According to the call posted to Puget Sound Anarchists:

On March 12th to 14th Seattle will host the 2024 Aerospace and Defense Supplier Summit at the Seattle Convention Center. This conference will bring together suppliers and subcontractors from around the world, including Boeing, to network and show off products that will be used to build weapons that will murder people in wars of colonial expansion in Palestine and around the world.

Read the full call here.

Vigils were also held across the US in memory of Nex Benedict, an Indigenous non-binary student who died after being attacked in a bathroom at a school in a district that had been targeted by gender fascists. In Los Angeles, California, people took to the streets to mourn the violent murder of Nex and also call for an end to attacks on the LGBTQ+ community.

Crowd rallies outside of St. Cloud prison in Springvalle, Alabama. SOURCE: Instagram

As we reported on in our recent In Contempt column, various groups have been rallying in solidarity with the call from the Free Alabama Movement for strike and protest action. One person wrote on Instagram, stating:

Today, we protested again for the fourth week in a row in solidarity with the Free Alabama Movements 90-day prison shutdown. In honor of the international day of action for Rafah, the Young Palestinians of Birmingham (@yp.bham) joined us in solidarity where we united in chants about Palestine, Alabama, Congo, and more.

Incarcerated people in America are forced to produce a wide range of products and services, including the bombs and weapons that are killing Palestinians and other innocent people all over the world. When incarcerated people refuse the forced labor, they are subjected to beatings and solitary confinement.

Currently, incarcerated people in the U.S. do all the work to maintain the jails and are forced to work to make profits for the state and for companies like Raytheon. The same companies profiting from the occupation and genocide in Palestine are the same companies profiting from the exploitation and genocide of incarcerated people here.

As long as the ADOC and companies like Raytheon can use prison labor they will and as long as they can profit from genocide they will. Prison work stoppages shut down the entire economic system and get directly into companies pockets.

Cargill Tenants Union rallies in support of rent strike in Putnam, CT. SOURCE: Cargill Tenants Union Instagram

A rent strike organized by the Cargill Tenants Union in Putnam, Connecticut has continued into February and March, as tenants face threats of eviction as they continue to demand that landlord address health and safety concerns over lead, mold and beyond. Most recently, the rent strike has pushed the attorney general of Connecticut to launch an official inquiry. From a recent statement from the CTU:

Our rent strike and tenant union organizing has been building pressure to remediate this mill for our members. This is a major development directly resulting from attention on our rent strike. We still face retaliatory evictions, but the tide is turning in our favor. Organizing gets the goods.

Resistance to Cop City in so-called Atlanta and beyond continued across the so-called US. According to communiques recently posted to Scenes from the Atlanta Forest, an office in Santa Cruz, California of a subsidiary of Nationwide, an insurance provider to the Cop City project, was vandalized with graffiti slogans and had their locks glued. In Brooklyn, New York, police cars and buses had their tires punctured and the slogan, For Tort, was left behind. On Lenapehoking territory, three Nationwide offices were covered in anti-Cop City slogans and posters. A video of the communique was released:

Supporters of Jack, who was recently arrested in raids against the movement in Atlanta, rallied at a recent court hearing, complete with a hardcore band who played outside of the court house. A rally was also recently organized outside of the home of the Atlanta Mayor in protest of the Cop City project.

Rally with hardcore band playing in support of Jack in so-called Atlanta, Georgia. SOURCE: Unicorn Riot

In the Pacific Northwest, action continued against a proposed Cop City in Lacey, WA. A communique posted to Puget Sound Anarchists wrote:

In the earliest hours of Saturday morning, a small crew spiked various trees in the woods that are currently being logged, a well-known eco-defense practice to prevent or at least delay the logging of these precious trees. We need forests, not cops. Hours later, a separate crew dropped a banner that read Stop Lacey Cop Complex #stopallcopcities at the Olympia/Lacey pedestrian bridge over Pacific Avenue that will hopefully bring more awareness to the project

In Houston, Texas, a judge has ruled that police must temporarily stop the ticketing of the local Food Not Bombs chapter. According to one report:

Food Not Bombs have been operating in Houston, Texas since 1994 and after nearly three decades in 2023, they started getting tickets for serving free meals outside of the citys Central Library. So far theyve received 96 tickets which made them file a lawsuit against the city authorities who claim that their meal service was a constitutionally protected protest.

Graffiti and broken windows at Army recruiting station in Chicago, IL. SOURCE: Chicago Anti-Report.

In Chicago, a communique posted to Chicago Anti-Report claimed credit for breaking out windows and covering an army recruitment center in paint and anti-war graffiti slogans. According to the communique:

One week ago, Aaron Bushnell self-immolated outside the zionist embassy in so-called Washington DC. He follows an unnamed self-immolation outside the zionist embassy in so-called Atlanta. In addition, in 2023, a man self-immolated in Kinshasa, DRC in protest of the genocide in Congo over capitalist green and resource extraction of cobalt and copper for the worlds technology.

As such, comrades took the following actions against the recruitment center for the 33,000+ Palestinian martyrs since October 7, for Aaron Bushnell, and for all those struggling against the US imperialist machine:

Finally, following a successful week of action against the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), direct actions and protests continue in Appalachia, with various lock-downs and disruptions of pipeline construction shutting down work sites for hours. Be sure to check out Appalachians Against Pipelines for updates on ongoing resistance.

Forest defenders shut down construction for the Mountain Valley Pipeline. SOURCE: Appalachians Against Pipelines

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This Is America #194: Jeremy White on San Diego 'Antifa' Case, Smash by Smash West, Franklin Lopez on New ... - ItsGoingDown.org

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Have the Liberal Arts Gone Conservative? – The New Yorker

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The first thing you notice when walking into the middle-school classrooms at Brilla, a charter-school network in the South Bronx, is the sense of calm. No phones are out. The students are quietnot in the beaten-down way of those under authoritarian rule but in the way of those who seem genuinely interested in their work. Sixth graders participate in a multiday art project after studying great painters such as Matisse. Seventh graders prepare to debate whether parents should be punished for the crimes of their minor children. Another group of sixth graders, each holding a violin or a cello, read out notes from sheet music. A teacher cues them to play the lines pizzicato, and they pluck their strings in unison.

Brilla is part of the classical-education movement, a fast-growing effort to fundamentally reorient schooling in America. Classical schools offer a traditional liberal-arts education, often focussing on the Western canon and the study of citizenship. The classical approach, which prioritizes some ways of teaching that have been around for more than two thousand years, is radically different from that of public schools, where what kids learnand how they learn itvaries wildly by district, school, and even classroom.

In many public schools, kids learn to read by guessing words using context clues, rather than by decoding the sounds of letters. In most classical schools, phonics reign, and students learn grammar by diagramming sentences. Some public schools have moved away from techniques like memorization, which education scholars knock as rote learning or drill and killthe thing thats killed being a childs desire to learn. In contrast, classical schools prize memory work, asking students to internalize math formulas and recite poems. And then theres literature: one New York City public-high-school reading list includes graphic novels, Michelle Obamas memoir, and a coming-of-age book about identity featuring characters named Aristotle and Dante. In classical schools, high-school students read Aristotle and Dante.

Classical education has historically been promoted by religious institutions and expensive prep schools. (Many classical schools have adopted the Harkness method, pioneered by Phillips Exeter Academy, in which students and teachers collectively work through material via open discussion.) More recently, powerful investors have seen its potential for cultivating academic excellence in underserved populations: the Charter School Growth Fund, a nonprofit whose investors include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Bloomberg Philanthropies, has put millions of dollars into classical schools and networks.

Republican politicians have also smelled opportunity in the movement, billing its traditionalism as an antidote to public-school wokeism. Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, has railed against a concerted effort to inject this gender ideology into public-school classrooms, and has celebrated the influx of classical schools in his state. Tennessees governor, Bill Lee, proposed launching up to a hundred classical charter schools statewide, touting their mission to preserve American liberty. As more conservatives have flocked to classical education, progressive academics have issued warnings about the movement, characterizing it as a fundamentally Christian project that doesnt include or reflect the many kids in America who arent white, or who have roots outside this country. The education scholar and activist Diane Ravitch recently wrote that classical charters have become weapons of the Right as they seek to destroy democratically governed public schools while turning back the clock of education and social progress by a century.

Stephanie Saroki de Garcia, who co-founded Brilla, acknowledged that classical education is often seen as a white childs education. This is partly because of the curriculum: Youre talking about teaching the canon and mainly white, male authors, she said. Its also because these schools have been embraced by white Republicans who have the resources to keep their children out of the local school system. And yet Brilla is not rich, or white, or discernibly right-wing. Many students are English-language learners and immigrants, from Central America and West Africa. According to Brillas leaders, nearly ninety per cent of their students meet the federal requirements for free or reduced-price lunches. Saroki de Garcia purposefully opened the first Brilla school in the poorest neighborhood of the Bronx, which has a large population of Latino Catholics. (Brilla is secular, but it offers a free Catholic after-school program.) The students I met were nerdy and earnest, and far from young reactionaries. Angelina and Fatumata, two eighth graders, told me that they started a book club to read about racism in America; one recent pick was Passing, the 1929 novel by Nella Larsen, set in the Harlem Renaissance. Brillas leaders intentionally take a wide view of the canon, and of which texts are valuable to study. We try to make that connection for our students, who are mostly Black and Hispanic, with faces they can see themselves in, Will Scott, the principal of one of Brillas middle schools, said.

Brillas administrators were careful to note that the network isnt classical but, rather, classically inspired. This distinction is partly practical. Although teachers invoke Latin root words when theyre teaching kids English, for example, students dont take Latin as a subject. But it also seemed like the schools leaders wanted to put some distance between themselves and the broader classical-education movement. If we say classical school, that has a connotation, Scott said. Still, its telling that the schools have found traction by marketing themselves as classically inspired in the South Bronx, where voters overwhelmingly prefer Democrats and the college-graduation rate is among the lowest in New York City. During the lead-up to Brillas launch, in 2013, volunteers posted up outside a local McDonalds to pitch families on enrolling. We billed it as, This is what the lite get, Saroki de Garcia told me.

Everyone I met at Brilla seemed aware that their school is an implicit rejection of traditional public schools, but not in the way one might expect. Although Americas public-school wars are often depicted as fights over race and gender ideology, there are also a lot of parents who think their local schools just arent very good. Brillas two middle schools are in New York Citys School District 7, where, last year, less than a third of sixth graders were proficient in math or in reading and writing. Angelina, a recent immigrant from St. Croix, said that most of her friends go to a public school, and they talk really poorly about their school. Fatumata added that they dont have what we have, such as Algebra I classes for middle schoolers. The schools around us are, frankly, failing, Scott, the principal, told me.

There are many charter schools that aim to address the problem of low achievement, often through an obsessive focus on test scores and discipline. Brilla cares about both of these things, but what sets it apart is its mission. Classical education is premised on the idea that there is objective truth, and that the purpose of school is to set kids on a path toward understanding it. This principle is often framed in philosophical shorthandclassical educators love talking about truth, beauty, and goodness, which can sound like a woo-woo catchphrase to the uninitiatedand its paired with an emphasis on morality and ethics. Brilla students attend a character-education class every morning, where they talk about how to live out the different virtues reflected in the texts they read. As Alexandra Apfel, an assistant superintendent for Brillas middle schools, said, Were building students that are not just going to be academic robots but moms and dads someday.

In 1947, Dorothy Sayers, a motorcycle-riding Anglican crime writer, delivered a paper at Oxford titled The Lost Tools of Learning, in which she bemoaned the state of education. Do you ever find that young people, when they have left school, not only forget most of what they have learnt (that is only to be expected) but forget also, or betray that they have never really known, how to tackle a new subject for themselves? Young people do not know how to think, she argued, because theyve never been taught. They may have been introduced to subjects, but not to what it means to learn.

In the face of this contemporary problem, Sayers proposed an ancient solution: the revival of a medieval teaching format called the trivium, which divided learning into three stagesgrammar, dialectic, and rhetoric. The first stage is about mastering basic skills and facts; the second teaches students to argue and to think critically about those facts. By the third stage, theyre ready to express themselves in essays and oration. This model of education, cultivated by Renaissance thinkers and the Catholic Church alike, was common among European lites for centuries.

Cartoon by Roz Chast

Sayerss essay built on a long-standing debate about whether this kind of education made sense in a rapidly changing, industrialized world. Classical-education advocates often point to John Dewey, the early-twentieth-century progressive reformer, as the bte noire who marginalized their preferred form of schooling: There was a war going on between the progressive and the classical educators, and the progressives won in a rout, Andrew Kern, the founder of the Center for Independent Research on Classical Education, told me. Although this story is perhaps overly simplistic, Johann Neem, a historian at Western Washington University, said, its true that Dewey and other progressives thought that the old ways of education were inadequate for modern students. These progressive reformers planted the seeds of two trends. The first was shifting the focus of school toward appealing to the interests of the child, rather than transmitting ancient knowledge and wisdom, which these reformers considered litist. (Academic and scholastic, instead of being titles of honor, are becoming terms of reproach, Dewey wrote.) The second was a utilitarian impulsesome scholars thought that the purpose of education was to train workers. They did not believe that every student needed to read Plato.

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Have the Liberal Arts Gone Conservative? - The New Yorker

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Letters to the Editor: ‘I see myself in Katie Britt’ what liberal critics missed in the senator’s response – Los Angeles Times

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Letters to the Editor: 'I see myself in Katie Britt' what liberal critics missed in the senator's response  Los Angeles Times

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Even when it criticizes Israel, the liberal world is not against us – opinion – The Jerusalem Post

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Too many of my friends are having a hard time correctly interpreting the criticism leveled by liberals in countries throughout the world against our governments policies.

We demonstrated together against the current governments efforts to undermine our judicial system and against the policies of a coalition formed by Benjamin Netanyahu with messianic zealots, draft evaders, and corrupt politicians.

Yet, particularly in the aftermath of the barbaric massacre carried out against us by Hamas on October 7, it is difficult for many of them to come to terms with the fact that the world is seeing very difficult pictures from Gaza, while we, completely understandably, are still dealing with our trauma, mourning our dead, and living in denial with respect to the terrible suffering of the Gazans.

Too many of my colleagues in the liberal camp in Israel still relate to every international statement that is critical of the governments policies as anti-Israel. They are searching for the hasbara (public diplomacy) wizards who will show the world our good side, while it is actually much more important for us to invest our energy in improving the soul of our nation rather than its image.

Too many Israeli centrists are delighted to see the Israeli flags waving at demonstrations in Brazil in support of the populist Bolsonaro, or that the racist Viktor Orban of Hungary is preventing the European Union from imposing sanctions against violent settlers. They are enthusiastic about the speeches against Muslims made by the Dutch Geert Wilders and the bizarre visit by Milei, Argentinas Elvis Presley, to the Western Wall. They even supported the cruel and cynical dictator Vladimir Putin, simply because of his image as a friend of the Israeli prime minister, an image that turned out to be nothing but a smoke screen. At the same time, they relate to all criticism regarding the humanitarian crisis in Gaza as deriving from anti-Israel sentiment, or even antisemitism.

This is not a new phenomenon; for years I have been hearing many of my liberal friends relating to every decision of any UN institution against the settlements as if it is an anti-Israel decision, to all criticism of the infringement of human rights by our government as if it is antisemitic. They relate to the requirement to mark products from the settlements as such as if this is a boycott of Israel, while in fact it is not a boycott and it is not against Israel. These are decisions that strive to extricate us from the one-way ticket to a binational state drowning in blood that we are led to by our governments.

I still remember how, in my childhood on the kibbutz, Scandinavian volunteers would come who admired Israel as a model of tikkun olam (improving the world). However, they no longer see the same Israel, because Israel has changed. They see the right-wing governments that aspire to turn Israel into an ethnocracy and a theocracy. They see an occupation with no end in sight and boundless expansion of settlements intended to perpetuate it. And when they voice their criticism, our way to avoid dealing with it on the merits is to call them antisemites.

This approach also characterizes many of the establishment Jewish organizations. These are the organizations that think that the Evangelicals are our best friends, simply because they actively support the occupation and the expansion of the settlements, in spite of the fact that their vision is that we will die while helping to bring about Armageddon which will lead to the Second Coming. These Jewish organizations supported the narcissistic, misogynistic Trump and his loyal election results deniers followers, who spread the antisemitic replacement theory, because he gave legitimacy to Israels policies in the occupied territories.

This same line led these organizations to refrain from expressing support for the democratic protest movement in Israel against the attempt to overthrow the legal system, and at present they are not taking a stand against Netanyahus policy to continue the war without any political vision, while hardening their hearts in their willingness to sacrifice the hostages.

At this dangerous time for the future of Israel, our good friends are actually those who are critical of our government and who are trying to effect a change in its policies. They expect us to act in a manner consistent with the values we share with liberal democracies and against the policies that impair the chance to arrive at a reasonable agreement that will safeguard the states security and will ensure its democratic values, for our own good and for the stability of the region and of the world.

The policies of the right-wing governments continue to drag Israel down to the status reserved for pariah nations, such as Iran and Syria. Therefore, just as we expect that the world act against the infringement of human rights by such countries, we should not be surprised that it is considered legitimate at this juncture to oppose the policies of our government.

When the government acts against the interest of the State of Israel and continues with its agenda to reduce it to an occupying ethnocracy, the criticism of such policies must not be viewed as harmful to Israel, but, rather, as an act that might just save it from itself and return it to the path of a liberal democracy.

The writer is J Street Israels executive director. He has served as an Israeli diplomat in Washington and Boston and as a political adviser to the president of Israel.

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Even when it criticizes Israel, the liberal world is not against us - opinion - The Jerusalem Post

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Former Trump Aide Alyssa Farah Griffin Becomes a Liberal Favorite – The New York Times

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Now and then during an election cycle, a Republican pundit becomes something of a hero to Democrats.

Peggy Noonan, a conservative Wall Street Journal columnist and former speechwriter for Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, filled that role in the months leading up the 2008 election, after she had pilloried the second Bush administration over its invasion of Iraq and criticized Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee.

Nicolle Wallace and Steve Schmidt, veterans of John McCains failed 2008 presidential campaign, reached pundit primacy on MSNBC excoriating the tea party activists then in ascendance.

A rising star of the current season is Alyssa Farah Griffin, a former communications director for President Trump who is now a co-host of ABCs The View and a regular commentator on CNN.

Ms. Farah Griffin, who resigned from the Trump administration in December 2020, garnered wide attention with a tweet she posted on Jan. 6, 2021: Dear MAGA I am one of you. Before I worked for @realDonaldTrump, I worked for @MarkMeadows & @Jim_Jordan & the @freedomcaucus. I marched in the 2010 Tea Party rallies. I campaigned w/ Trump & voted for him. But I need you to hear me: the Election was NOT stolen. We lost.

Three years later, Ms. Farah Griffin, 34, spends many of her nights at the CNN headquarters in the Hudson Yards district of Manhattan, bantering with Van Jones, David Axelrod and other liberal commentators.

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Renowned author, liberal arts proponent to deliver annual Lester Lectures – Mercer University

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Renowned author, liberal arts proponent to deliver annual Lester Lectures  Mercer University

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NYU to Host Zaheer Ali at the Annual Liberal Studies Student Research ColloquiumApril 5 – NYU

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New York University will host Zaheer Ali as the keynote speaker at the annual Liberal Studies Student Research Colloquium, on Friday, April 5, 11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. at the Eisner & Lubin Auditorium at the NYU Helen & Martin Kimmel Center for University Life (60 Washington Square South).

Zaheer Ali is the inaugural executive director of the Hutchins Institute for Social Justice at the Lawrenceville School and an executive producer of American Muslims: A History Revealed,a film series for PBS Digital Studios launching this fall.

For Ali, oral history is key to cultural preservation. Storytelling, he says, serves as a powerful medium for marginalized voices and challenges notions dictated by the mainstream discourse. His keynote address, Listening as Creative Act: Story-Listening for Social Change, will discuss the role of storytelling in advancing social justice and explore the importance of listening to everyones stories and its pivotal role towards nurturing inclusive communities.

Alis scholarship explores the use of oral history to preserve voices from the past and to change the mainstream narrative. One of his works is Flatbush + Main, an award-winning monthly podcast that covered Brooklyns past through historical archives and oral history. His work on Malcolm X was featured in CNNs documentary Witnessed: The Assassination of Malcolm X (2015) and Netflixs documentaries Who Killed Malcolm X? (2020) and Blood Brothers: Malcolm X & Muhammad Ali (2021).

Ali, a former adjunct professor at NYUs School of Professional Studies, has received a Soros Equality Fellowship from the Open Society Foundations for his work to leverage the power of storytelling and listening for social change.His work was recognized with the 2021 Special Jury Social Justice prize from the GLAMi Awards and the 2021 MUSE Award from the American Alliance of Museums.

The keynote address is free and open virtually to the public. Registration for the webinar is required on the Zoom registration page. For more information or to request accessibility accommodations, please email lsdeansoffice@nyu.edu or call 212.998.7120.

About NYU Liberal Studies Liberal Studies at NYU is recognized for its interdisciplinary, global liberal arts curriculum, experiential learning and small, seminar-style classes. It offers the best of both worlds: a small college experience nestled within a large urban research university. Liberal Studies has the second largest entering first year undergraduate class each year at NYU. Its classes are small; its presence is large and far-reaching.

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NYU to Host Zaheer Ali at the Annual Liberal Studies Student Research ColloquiumApril 5 - NYU

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Power to the Neighborhoods!: New York City Growth Politics, Neighborhood Liberalism, and the Origins of the … – Joint Center for Housing Studies

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Around 1970, an unprecedented movement emerged across major American cities calling for returning control of urban government to the neighborhood level. Although conservatives had long embraced neighborhoodism, a distinguishing feature of this political trend was its newfound appeal to Democrats who were disillusioned by the turbulent urban transformations of the first postwar decades. Using New York City as a case study, this white paper shows how this new neighborhood liberalism reordered the priorities that urban liberals expected of their elected officials and, in so doing, remade American cities to a degree that scholars are only beginning to understand. On no issue was this influence clearer than that of urban growth. Whereas large-scale pro-growth projects had been at the heart of the mid-century liberal vision, the new generation of neighborhood liberals saw growth as an outdated obsession that had wreaked self-evident harms on vulnerable urban communities. Subsequently, New Yorkers enacted laws and implemented processes that slowed the pace of growth by requiring neighborhood input in the real estate development process. By the eighties, anti-growth politics and neighborhood protection had become the common dialects through which New York liberals tried to make sense of, and stake claims within, their citys shifting political environment. Yet neighborhood liberalisms achievements were not necessarily those that its initial proponents anticipated or desired. Although the devolution of land-use policy brought stability to city life for a fortunate few, the restrictions on urban development that marked the era of neighborhood liberalism set the stage for the severe housing shortages that New York and similar cities would experience in the twenty-first century.

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Power to the Neighborhoods!: New York City Growth Politics, Neighborhood Liberalism, and the Origins of the ... - Joint Center for Housing Studies

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Canada’s Conservatives back NDP-Liberal anti-scab legislation that undermines the right to strike – WSWS

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Defying prevailing opinion among a substantial section of Canadian big business, the Opposition Conservative Party, led by the far-right MP Pierre Poilievre, joined in giving unanimous consent to a union-backed, Liberal-NDP sponsored anti-scab bill on its second reading in Parliament on Feb. 27.

Now in committee before a final vote after which it will head to the Senate, Bill C-58 would amend the Canadian Labour Code to limit the ability of federally regulated employers to use replacement workers during a labour dispute, while further limiting workers ability to strike. The limit on scabs would not apply to workers in the federal public service, under the argument that these workers are not replaceable.

Tabled by Liberal Labour Minister Seamus ORegan and universally touted by the New Democratic Party (NDP), the bill has been boosted by the union bureaucracy as historic and a major advance for working people in Canada. It is possible that the Conservatives will change their stance on the final vote on the bill, but this would not block its passage in the House of Commons, where the minority Liberal Trudeau government enjoys a majority thanks to the backing of the NDP through their confidence and supply agreement.

The bill is seen by both parties and the union tops as a key component to patching up the Liberal governments progressive credentials ahead of an impending election. It was part of the joint measures that the two parties agreed to when they forged their governmental alliance to provide, to use words of NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, stability following the outbreak of the NATO-instigated Ukraine war.

Beyond electoral considerations, the bill reflects the close corporatist relations between the state, union bureaucracy, and big business that prevail in Canada.Since coming to power in 2015, the Trudeau Liberals have developed unprecedentedly close ties with the union bureaucracy, whose cooperation in suppressing the class struggle is highly valued and sought by key sections of the ruling elite.

The unions have embraced the Liberals pro-war, pro-austerity agenda, and have been rewarded with strong representation in some of the governments most important policy areas. For example, when the Liberals renegotiated the North American Free Trade Agreement with the fascist-minded US President Donald Trump to prepare the economic basis for the continents twin imperialist powers to wage war against their rivals, top union officials acted as semi-official government advisers. In return for the services he had rendered to the bourgeoisie, Canadian Labour Congress President Hassan Yussuff was appointed to the Senate by Trudeau upon his 2021 retirement from the leadership of Canadas largest union federation.

Today is a great day for workers and a bad day for big bosses who want to exploit those workers, NDP leader Singh declared following the Feb. 27 vote. This is a bill that gives workers the ability to negotiate for fair wages.

The United Steel Workers (USW) leadership called last months unanimous consent vote a significant step forward for workers rights in Canada. And USW National Director for Canada Marty Warren explicitly welcomed the support of Poilievres Tories, declaring in a statement, The vote on the anti-scab bill is an important victory for federally regulated workers. The all-party support is a recognition of the importance of this legislation

In his statement, Warren admitted that the bill contains provisions which would hinder and even outright block the ability of a significant section of workers to strike through their designation as essential employees, and that it will not come into effect until 18 months after it receives royal assent.

Ultimately the architects of the Liberal-NDP alliance see Bill C-58 as another tool in the hands of the state to regulate and limit the class struggle, as they strive to subordinate the working class to their policies of austerity at home and aggression and war abroad.

With the support of the unions, the NDP intends to tout this as a victory for workers. One that results from its backing for a reactionary government that is assisting Israels genocide in Gaza and plays a key role in NATOs war against Russia in Ukraine. At home, the Trudeau government has urged the maintenance of high interest rates to impose the cost of rearmament and enriching the wealthy on working people through real wage cuts.

The Canadian Chamber of Commerce (CCC), Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters, and the Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses have all actively opposed the anti-scab legislation. The Globe and Mails editorial board, the mouthpiece of the Bay Street financial elite, stood up for the right of management to use scabs to ruthlessly break strikes and declared the bill a terrible idea.

After the February 27 vote, the CEO of the CCC, Perrin Beatty, bitterly complained, bad news for Canada, for Canadian families, and for Canadian workers. This will exacerbate our productivity problem, further erode our global reputation, and keep us from simply getting things done.

Poilievre, for his part, deliberately played coy, refusing to state clearly his partys position on the bill. As polls underscore the widespread popular revulsion with the Trudeau government and the likelihood of a Conservative sweep if an early election were called, the leader of the Opposition has been making phony appeals to workers and reaching out a hand to the union apparatus, posturing as a man of the people.

Speaking last week before the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade, Poilievre, mimicking the lies of other far-right would-be autocrats like ex-British Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Donald Trump, declared, When Im prime minister, my obsessionmy daily obsessionwill be about what is good for the working class people of this country.

In so far as Poilievre has gained traction for such reactionary phony appeals, it is above all due to the unions and NDPs systematic suppression of the class struggle. They have isolated strikes, when they have been unable to prevent their breaking out, and imposed one sell-out contract after another, while politically subordinating the working class to the big business Liberal government and its agenda of austerity and war.

The lurch of official politics to the right, the promotion of identity politics by the Liberals and NDP, and the Trudeau governments spearheading of savage attacks on workers to pay for war abroad are fueling growing hostility to the so-called progressive parties and trade unions. Their anti-worker record has created a political opening for Poilievre, long notorious for serving as former Prime Minister Stephen Harpers attack dog, to preposterously present himself as an advocate of working Joes. No matter that Poilievre has a long record of supporting the use of emergency back-to-work laws to break strikes, vows to increase military funding by $20 billion per year to meet NATOs 2 percent of GDP target, is promising to get tough on crime and is whipping up backwards anti-LGBT sentiment.

The Conservatives are making demagogic social appeals on the question of continued high inflation and the housing crisis, while promising to axe the Liberals carbon tax, which Poilievre falsely presents as a main driver of inflation. The ability of the far-right Poilievre, who came to lead the party in the aftermath of the fascistic Freedom Convoys occupation of Ottawa which he stridently supported, to seek support from broad sections of the population underscores the real danger present in the current political situation. To the extent that the Liberal/NDP/union alliance retains its political stranglehold over the working class, the only beneficiaries from the deepening capitalist crisis and Canadian imperialisms turn to imperialist war will be Poilievre and the political far right.

Poilievres open hand to the union bureaucracy makes clear that he is ready to continue their ever closer integration with the state. A model for this is seen at the provincial level in Ontario where Tory Premier Doug Ford has made inroads with the union bureaucracy, in particular among the construction trades. The unions in turn have worked to prop up Fords government, scuttling a developing general strike movement in late 2022 after the premier pre-emptively illegalized a strike and imposed a concessions contract on education support workers.

However, Poilievre would combine any outreach to the bureaucracy with the adoption of openly authoritarian forms of rule and brutal state repression. The Conservatives have repeatedly attacked the Trudeau government for not cracking down more harshly against the anti-Gaza genocide protests and are eager to put paid once and for all to any political taboo on the use of the notwithstanding clause to trample on democratic rights.

Since becoming leader, he has assiduously courted the most openly far-right forces, including the supporters of Maxime Berniers Peoples Party, and made a point of championing Rebel News. It should not be forgotten that his political allies in the leadership of the Freedom Convoy advocated the creation of a military-style junta to eliminate all remaining COVID public health measures. Poilievre would have no hesitation in mobilizing such forces to use violence against a growing working class movement, including in opposition to Ottawas involvement in a rapidly developing third world war.

The debate over the anti-scab law makes clear that the workers confront an across-the-board conspiracy to suppress the class struggle from the far-right Poilievre to the social democratic NDP and their backers in the trade unions in the interest of capital. The passage of the anti-scab billrife with measures which further bind workers within the pro-business collective bargaining systemwill not advance workers interests one step forward.

The working class must assert its own independent interests by fighting for a political break with the Liberal/union/NDP alliance, the chief obstacle to the mobilization of the working class against capitalist austerity and war. This requires the struggle to form rank-and-file committees in every workplace and neighborhood to break free from the nationalist union bureaucracies, which tie workers to the Canadian capitalist political establishment.

Workers must fight to develop ties with their class brothers and sisters across provincial and international borders. Above all, the advancement of workers interests requires the adoption of a socialist and internationalist perspective to guide the fight for the transformation of society to meet the needs of humanity and not private profit. This is the perspective which the Socialist Equality Party (Canada) is fighting for, and we strongly urge all workers to contact us today to join and help build it.

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Canada's Conservatives back NDP-Liberal anti-scab legislation that undermines the right to strike - WSWS

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