Category Archives: Black Lives Matter

On April 14, World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus rebuked the world for treating crises differently depending on race. I need to be blunt and honest that the world is not treating the human race the same way, he said. Some are more equal than others. And when I say this, it pains me.

Tedross heartfelt plea embodied deep unease with inadequate responses to health and social crises beyond Russias brutal and illegal invasion of Ukraine. The UN, for instance, is struggling to get aid into the conflict-hit Tigray region of Ethiopia a crisis the WHO chief previously described as a forgotten one that is plainly out of sight and out of mind.

That said, Tedros should not have claimed the world is perpetrating systemic racism and ignoring ongoing emergencies in Ethiopia, Yemen, Afghanistan and Syria. It is the West that is in fact so unapologetically indifferent to the many urgent crises engulfing Black and brown people.

Tedros had a front-row seat to the Wests unapologetic spectacle of medical colonialism during the COVID-19 pandemic. The US, for example, acquired enough vaccines for three times its 250 million adult populationat a time 130 countries had not administered a single dose. To be precise, the West collectively treated millions of desperate high-risk people, including Africans, as undeserving and ostensibly dispensable second-rate world citizens. Besides, Tedros is a former foreign minister of Ethiopia and should understand the absolute futility of merely appealing to the Wests moral sentimentalities.

Indeed, Western leaders rarely arrive at and implement decisions affecting Africa or the African diaspora on just humanitarian grounds. Many decisions, such as British Prime Minister Boris Johnsons controversial plan to process possibly tens of thousands of asylum seekers, more than 6,000km (4,000 miles) away in Rwanda, are immoral and clearly lack compassion and common sense. They are designed to pander to racist predispositions and please voters at any cost.

This explains why the WHOs chief, no less, has to beg world leaders to demonstrate strong and inclusive leadership as Tigray endures a catastrophic disaster. As this third-world crisis is sidelined and millions suffer unfathomable hardships, unendingly, only an organised and comprehensive Pan-African response can help to fight endemic racism and whiteness.

The globalanti-colonialand anti-apartheidmovementsof the past fought hard to get Western leaders to act against colonialism and apartheid in Africa. They did so in a hostile climate. America, for example, maintained deep economic ties to apartheid SouthAfrica.

Yet, the mostly British and American pressure groups persevered because they demonstrated a steadfast commitment to promoting progressive ideals and Pan-Africanism. In America, for instance, the Council on African Affairs,the American Committee on AfricaandTransAfricawere established to promote independence for African and Caribbean countries and all African diaspora groups.

Today, however, Pan-Africanism is in the doldrums. In June 2020, George Floyds death at the hands of a police officer triggered a renaissance of classic Pan-Africanist actions around the world. Demonstrations against the police murder of Floyd were held in Ghana, Kenya, Brazil, France, Jamaica and South Africa, amid complaints that a Black man is hated everywhere. Crucially, Americas Black Lives Matter movement inspired protest groups, such as #EndSARSin Nigeria and #ZimbabweanLivesMatter, across Africa.

Nevertheless, the global solidarity did not last or lead to the establishment of permanent support mechanisms or organisations similar to the traditional Pan-African movements of yesteryear.

Back in the 1950s and 60s, for example, American civil rights leader Dr Martin Luther King Jr had cultivated a constructive relationship with Ghanas founding president Kwame Nkrumah.

In March 1957, King and his wife Coretta Scott King travelled to West Africa to attend Ghanas independence ceremony. On returning home, King lamented the devastating effect of slavery and the 1884 Berlin Conference that established European colonies in Africa. He described Africa as the continent that had suffered all of the pain and the affliction that could be mustered up by other nations.

King was inspired by Nkrumahs arduous journey to emancipation and drew parallels between resistance against European colonialism in Africa and the struggle against racism in the United States. And he hoped to expand Americas civil rights movement to Africa. And so did Malcolm X, the widely lauded African American Muslim minister and human rights activist. During the 1960s, Malcolm visited several African countries to meet African leaders and givespeeches.

Today, however, African-Americans do not exhibit the Pan-African spirit that Malcolm and King espoused. An explosive 2021 report by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights detailed systemic violations of international human rights law against Africans and people of African descent. Yet, African-Americans reportedly believe that Africans the world over do not share common struggles.

According to Alden Young, assistant professor of African American studies at UCLA, contemporary Afro-pessimist intellectuals see no shared identity that can serve as the basis for solidarity between Africans and African-Americans. This, he argues, is because Afro-pessimists insist on the particularity of enslavement in the Americas and reject the equation of the struggles of a permanent minority with anti-colonial nationalism in Africa and Asia.

The Biden administration (and others) can deliberately ignore crises in Africa, partly because African American lobby groups are mostly silent on and impervious to our struggles with white supremacy. They are not, unfortunately, sufficiently empathetic towards Africas challenges and pretty much toe the official line.

US foreign policy experts relegate African affairs to a position of secondary importance, only significant as it relates to the US-China competition or the spectra of terrorism, asserts Young. Likewise, US domestic policy has long consigned African American affairs to a position of lesser importance, only significant as it relates to city, congressional or presidential elections.

The same dubious modus operandi that protects white privilege in America is being deployed abroad. Nevertheless, Africans have not forgotten about the African American struggle for equality and social justice. In September 2021, President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa suggested the UN should discuss reparations for the African diaspora.

He said: Millions of the descendants of Africans who were sold into slavery remain trapped in lives of underdevelopment, disadvantage, discrimination and poverty. South Africa calls on the United Nations to put the issue of reparations for victims of the slave trade on its agenda.

And conscious that a protracted and highly regrettable preponderance of whiteness is nurturing overtly exclusionary practices, just as Tedros so painstakingly bemoaned, Ramaphosa added, Let us all allow humanism to be our guide and solidarity be our strongest force.

King would definitely condemn the lopsided global responses to human crises and lobby for change, because he believed in equality for everyone, regardless of race. And he would not exclude Africans from the African American agenda. The struggle is clearly not over, and Africas star is rising.

Going forward, Africa can contribute much to the African American agenda and vice-versa. It is time for African-Americans to rekindle their passion for Africa and direct it towards establishing a fair and inclusive world. African-Americans should strive to ensure that Americas foreign policy truly demonstrates that Black and brown lives matter, too.

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Pan-Africanism is the panacea to the Wests systemic racism - Al Jazeera English

Photo: Andrew Harnik (AP)

Sadly, as Black folks know, what happened last weekend in Syracuse is not an anomaly by any means. Yesterday, a video of an 8-year-old Black boy being detained by police officers in Syracuse over allegedly stealing a bag of chips went viral. By design, American police forces are working exactly the way theyre supposed to: safeguarding white supremacy by dehumanizing and vilifying Black people. This is why an 8-year-old Black boy is handled with such ferocity by police when accused of stealing a bag of chips while a 21-year old mass murderer is treated to fast food after killing a group of Black churchgoers. Black people know they can never rely on an institution that was literally established to capture and torment slaves to protect us.

The incident was recorded and shared by bystander Kenneth Jackson. Quite frankly, its unbearable to watch. In the 4-minute footage, a white officer is seen forcing the sobbing childwith his arms pinned behind his backinto the back of a patrol unit. What is yall doing? Jackson asked the group of officers. He looks like a baby to me. About three minutes into the video, one cop asks Jackson if he was going to follow the boy daily and pay for everything he steals. I will! Its a kid! Jackson replied. In an attempt to diffuse outrage, Syracuse Police Department eventually released a statement that said:

We (SPD) are aware of a video being shared on social media involving several of our Officers and juveniles accused of stealing from a store on the citys northside. The incident, including the Officers actions and body worn cameras, are being reviewed. There is some misinformation involving this case. The juvenile suspected of larceny was not placed in handcuffs. He was placed in the rear of a patrol unit where he was directly brought home. Officers met with the childs father and no charges were filed.

As if that information could erase the trauma inflicted on this child. The actions of the officers were so disturbing that both the Mayor and Governor of Syracuse separately expressed their disdain. Mayor Ben Walsh said in a statement that this episode demonstrates the continuing need for the City to provide support to our children and families and to invest in alternative response options to assist our officers.

Governor Kathy Hochul also shared her aversion to the events that took place. As a mother, that was a heartbreaking video to watch. A crying child, pulled by the police officers, put in the back of a police car, over a bag of chips, at least thats what the evidence says now, she said at press conference Wednesday morning.

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Like weve seen time and time again, police continually go out of their way to harm Black kids. It happened last month in Washington at Lincoln Middle School when an off-duty white police officer put his knee of the neck of a 12-year old Black girl while trying to break up a fight. It happened last year in Florida where a white resource officer body slammed a 16-year-old Black girl. It happened in 2020 in Honolulu where a 10-year-old Black girl was handcuffed with extensive force by a white officer for drawing a offensive picture of a school bully.

It happened in 2019 in California where a white officer arrested a 12-year-old Black boy for trespassing. The Root has previously reported the adultification of Black children, but with what happened in Syracuse it bears repeating. According to research published by the American Psychological Association, Black children as young as 10 are perceived as older than they actually are, considered less innocent than their white peers and are more likely to face police violence if accused of a crime.

When the #BlackLivesMatter movement gained momentum in 2013 , racists devised the retort of Blue Lives Matter one year later. Occupation, they insisted, can be just as as detrimental to a persons likelihood of experiencing a hate crime as race can. What this countermovement fails to realize is that Black people have beenand continue to beunder attack since this countrys inception.

Police are still disproportionately arresting, assaulting and killing Black folks with little to no repercussions. Despite initiatives aimed at defunding police as a whole, those pleas have appeared to have fallen on deaf ears as Joe Biden plans on giving them more money in his proposed 2023 budget plan. What happened to that Black child in Syracuse serves a cruel reminder of how anti-Black Blue lives really are. The only difference now is that their violence toward us is going viral.

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Syracuse Police Handling of 8-Year-Old Black Boy Reminds Us How Anti-Black Blue Lives Can Be - The Root

By being consistent with our message. Here is my question that I put out to the city: I thought Black lives mattered. Where are all those who stated Black lives matter? he asked in response. Then go do an analysis of who was killed or shot last night. I was up all night speaking to my commanders in the Bronx and Brooklyn. The victims were Black. Many of the shooters were Black.

Why are 16, 17, 18-year-olds out on our streets armed with guns at 12:00 or 1:00 a.m.?

Adams has made crime the signature issue of both his campaign and administration, but is grappling with a dramatic rise in violent incidents since the start of his mayoralty. Major crimes are up 44 percent compared to last year, according to NYPD statistics from earlier this month. And shootings, which had already doubled over 2019, rose another 14 percent over the last year. To make his focus clear, the mayor has traveled to crime scenes across the five boroughs to talk with victims and hold press conferences. However, during the subway attack thats been the most serious incident of his tenure, he was quarantining in Gracie Mansion after coming down with Covid-19.

It was very difficult for me not to be at 36th Street and at some of our command centers, he said during a separate interview Wednesday morning, referring to the station where shooting victims fled a smoke-filled subway car. But I have to listen to the orders from our healthcare professionals.

Since winning the general election last year, Adams has clashed with Black Lives Matter of Greater New York and its co-founder, Hawk Newsome, over policing policies. Newsome said in an interview with POLITICO Wednesday that the mayor was attempting to deflect blame after not being able to control violent crime through the police department.

He wants us to have a fight in the newspapers to distract people from the real issues, Newsome said. The mayor is great at press conferences and he is really good at making statements, but he lacks efficiency and the ability to lead our city in a safer direction.

Newsome said that critics of the Black Lives Matter movement, which rose to global prominence in the wake of George Floyds murder at the hands of Minneapolis police, often point to crime committed within the Black community as a larger problem than police misconduct. He said a new organization called Black Opportunities is launching a number of community programs including de-escalation training and neighborhood patrols designed to reduce shootings and violence without having to rely on City Hall or the NYPD.

He called on us to do the job of the elected officials and the police department, who have a collective budget of billions, Newsome said. He wants to do this from a grassroots perspective. And on behalf of Black Opportunities: We accept his challenge.

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'I thought Black lives mattered?' Mayor Eric Adams slams the activist movement over New York City crime - POLITICO

In the letter E of the street mural in front of Palo Alto City Hall, Oakland artist Cece Carpio painted the likeness of Assata Shakur, a convicted cop killer from New Jersey who escaped from prison and is believed to be in Cuba. Post photo by Dave Price.

BY BRADEN CARTWRIGHTDaily Post Staff Writer

In an updated lawsuit, six Palo Alto police officers are claiming that a city-commissioned Black Lives Matter mural created a hostile workplace that caused them to lose sleep, not eat and forced them to go to the doctor.

The officers claim parts of the mural were harassment against all non-African Americans, and the painting put a target on their back in the latest version of their lawsuit.

The officers lawsuit against the city of Palo Alto was updated on March 14 after a Santa Clara County judge sided with the city and ruled the officers did not experience a hostile workplace. To win a lawsuit, the officers must show the city took action against them besides simply annoying them, the judge said.

So, the officers included more claims in their third complaint. They said they didnt have an issue with the mural itself, but rather the painting of Assata Shakur in the letter E. Shakur is a civil rights activist turned fugitive after she was convicted of killing a New Jersey state trooper in 1973.

The purpose of the 245-foot mural on Hamilton Avenue in front of City Hall was to appease African Americans at the expense of all others, the lawsuit says. The officers say the painting of Shakur specifically was harassing, and they had to look at it every day they went to work between July and November 2020, when the city removed the mural.

Depression, anxiety and fear

The painting caused the officers to have depression, anxiety and fear, the lawsuit says.

Plaintiffs feared daily that they would be target- ed, attacked or threatened at work because they are non-African-American police officers, the lawsuit says.

The painting placed a target on their back and forced plaintiffs to work under the pressure of a heightened sense of vigilance.

The officers said they brought their concerns to City Manager Ed Shikada, and he acknowledged that the mural was insulting to some people.

Some have called (the mural) brilliant and beautiful, while others called it idiocy and an insult, Shikada allegedly said, according to the revised lawsuit. Ive also wondered what the reaction would have been if it were an image of Vladimir Putin or another character would we be expected to paint it over? In any case, I find myself needing to choose where to draw a line on free speech and enabled expression. As someone that has sworn an oath to protect our Constitution, this is a line Im not willing to cross.

The officers say this shows Shikada knew the mural was harassing but did nothing about their complaints.

Early retirement possible

The officers say they continue to suffer humiliation, embarrassment and anxiety by working for the city. They say they may be forced to retire early.

The officers are asking for the city to pay them back for health care, loss of wages and attorney fees in an amount that hasnt been determined.

Six officers filed the lawsuit: Eric Figueroa, Michael Foley, Robert Parham, Julie Tannock, David Ferreira and Chris Moore.

Moore retired last year, and in a retirement letter criticizing department leadership he called out the rest of the union for not joining in the mural lawsuit.

The reasons I was given when I reached out to every member in the union about joining the lawsuit fell into three main categories: cowardice, apathy or fear of department retribution. All three are concerning, Moore wrote.

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Cops say portion of Black Lives Matter street mural made them sick - The Daily Post

Florida Legislature: How are teachers supposed to teach history with 'anti-woke' laws?

In this excerpt from Florida Pulse, reporters talk about the challenges schools and teachers will face with passage of "anti-woke" legislation.

Rob Landers, Florida Today

Are you woke? Have you been accused of being woke? Are you anti-woke? Just what is wokeness, anyway?

Black Americansand allies fightingto bring attention to racial injustice and police brutality urge others to get and stay woke. Some companies and politicians try to embody the concept, others hope to capitalize on the perception of it. Some conservatives fight against wokeness because they see it as performative and liberal indoctrination.

The Stop the Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees (Stop WOKE) Act proposed by Gov. Ron DeSantis this year empowers citizensto go after woke indoctrination. The bill blunts what he has warned isliberal ideology influencing the teaching of history in schools and coursing through corporate diversity training. Stop WOKEprohibits any teaching that could make students feel they bear personal responsibility for historic wrongs because of their race, color, sex or national origin, and blocks businesses from using diversity practices or training that could make employees feel guilty for similar reasons.

Were going to teach honest history, said Sen. Kelli Stargel, R-Lakeland. But were not going to influence it with personal opinion.

Democratic critics called it a way to whitewash history and diminish the abuse and inequities faced by minorities in the country, as well as away for Republicans to satisfy their voting base.

This is the red meat they want, Sen. Annette Taddeo, D-Miami said. But this is not what our state needs.

Stop WOKE Act: New limits on talk of race in schools and work sent to Florida Gov. DeSantis

More: COVID-19 crusader Gov. DeSantis gets new title: Chief of woke police

Recently, after Bob Chapek, the CEO of Disney World criticized Gov. DeSantis over the "Parental Rights in Education" legislation critics dubbed the "Don't Say Gay" bill, the governor lashed out against the company'swokenesswhileaccusing Disney of interfering with parents' rights and taking money from China.

"In Florida our policy's going to be based on the best interest of Florida citizens, not on the musing of woke corporations," DeSantis said.

Are we all talking about the same thing?

For a long time "woke" just meant "not sleeping."But recognizing its changing common usage, Meriam-Webster added a new meaning in 2017:

U.S. slang meaning "aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice)."

They took their time. "Woke" has been around for much, muchlonger than that in Black communities.

"It can be hard to trace slang back to its origins since slangs origins are usually spoken," Merriam-Webster's update says, "and it can be particularly difficult to trace a slang word that has its origins in a dialect."

The earliest recordedusage of wokenessthat can be interpreted to mean stay aware, rather than wake up, is in a collection by Jamaican philosopher and Harlem activist leader Marcus Garvey in 1923 which included the call, "Wake up Ethiopia! Wake up Africa" in a plea for Black people across the world to open their eyes to racial subjugation and get involved in politics.

'Fight for your own liberation': From Jamaica's Marcus Garvey came an African vision of freedom

A few years later, in a recorded spoken afterword to the1938 song "Scottsboro Boys" by blues musician Lead Belly (Huddie Ledbetter) about nine Black teenagers accused of raping two white women, he says,"I advise everybody, be a little careful when they go along through there best stay woke, keep their eyes open."

In Black communities in the early tomid-20th Century as the Ku Klux Klan re-emerged, mob justice and lynchingswere not uncommon, and segregation and Jim Crowlaws were often harshly or fatally enforced, "stay woke" came to mean to stay vigilant in a world stacked against you.

The word eventually spreadoutside the Black community along with other African-American Vernacular English(AAVE) slang. In 1962 Black novelist William Melon Kelley wrote about white beatniks appropriating African American slang in an article for theNew YorkTimes Magazine titled, "If You're Woke You Dig It."

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. touched on the feelingin 1965 during acommencement address at Oberlin College:There is nothing more tragic than to sleep through a revolution. … The great challenge facing every individual graduating today is to remain awake.

In a 1972 play "Garvey Lives!" playwrightBarry Beckhamwrote: I been sleeping all my life. And now that Mr. Garvey done woke me up, Im gon stay woke.

The word reached a wider audience in 2008 when Grammy-award-winning singer Erykah Badu covered Georgia Anne Muldrow's song "Master Teacher" for her albumNew Amerykah Part One(4th World War), changing the chorus from "I stay awake" to "I'd stay woke." In 2012 Badu used "stay woke" in a tweet supporting the imprisoned Russian feminist rock group Pussy Riot.

Black social media users began using "stay woke" more often to point out racial issues,but it also was stillused to mean "watch out for a cheating partner," to not fall asleepor to jump on a rising hashtag bandwagon to get attention.

Also in 2012, neighborhood watch coordinator George Zimmerman shot and killed an unarmed 17-year-old student, Trayvon Martin. The hashtag #staywoke was used to spread awareness of the shooting, and of the outrage of Zimmerman'sacquittal the next year. With the public outcry, #blacklivesmatter became a hashtag and a movement that only increased as more reports and videos of the shootings of unarmedBlack people spread rapidly across social media. #staywoke once again became an urgentwarning.

Then, a police shooting brought wokenessinto the mainstream.

Less diversity: DeSantis' 'Stop WOKE' Act could force Florida businesses to rethink diversity training

Two years later when police officers shot and killed Michael Brownin Ferguson, Missouri, Black Lives Matter (BLM) activists used #staywoke as a rallying cry to raise awareness about police shootings of Black Americans, along with hashtags for each new incidence of an unarmed Black person killed by law enforcement.

Protests and marches grew nationwide, rising up again with every new name:Eric Garner (who died after being put in an illegal chokehold by police),12-year-old Tamir Rice (shot immediately and killed by police after officers mistook his toy gun for a real weapon), George Floyd(died in custody after a police officer kneeled on his neck for more than eightminutes), Sandra Bland (found dead in a Texas jailhouse after a confrontational jail stop),Daunte Wright (killed during a traffic stop). Breonna Taylor (shot while sleeping during a no-knock raid) and many more.

#SayHerName: Breonna Taylor and hundreds of Black women have died at the hands of police. The movement to say their names is growing.

Adam Toledo, Daunte Wright and George Floyd: Would more de-escalation training stop police from killing people?

"The word woke became entwined with theBlack Lives Mattermovement; instead of just being a word that signaled awareness of injustice or racial tension, it became a word of action," according to Merriam-Webster. "Activists were woke and called on others to stay woke." The 2016 BET documentary on the BLM movement was called "Stay Woke."

60 years of activism: From the Freedom Rides to BLM, generations discuss work, parallels

As BLM protests rose up across America "stay woke" rapidly became extremely popular on Twitter and became an internet meme. In May 2016, MTV News included it in 10 words teenagers should know. In 2017, it was added to Merriam-Webster and the Oxford English Dictionary.Essence magazine named its Woke 100 in 2020 and Hulu premiered the TV series "Woke"with Lamorne Harris as a cartoonist who always avoided heavy issues awakening to racial inequality (and getting talks from inanimate objects) after getting slammedto the ground by aggressive police officers.

'That's not bringing about change': Obama advises 'woke' young people not to be so judgmental

"Woke" continued to evolve.White allies of the BLM movement also used the term to signal their support but manygradually began using it to call attention to other progressive issues as well as race such as the #MeToo and #NoBanNoWall movements, which brought accusations from Black commentators of co-opting the term or using it merely to gain activistcredibility.

Most people who are woke aint calling themselves woke. Most people who are woke are agonizing inside, Muldrow told Okayplayer news and culture editor Elijah Watson. Theyre too busy being depressed to call themselves woke.

Conservative commentators who saw the rising BLM protests as violent or anti-police and opposedthe movements "woke"was being associated with began using it sarcastically, the newest replacement for previous derogatory terms about what they called hypersensitive identity politics like"social justice warriors," "snowflake," "race card," "virtue signaling" or the earlier "political correctness."

Progressive arguments or legislation were dismissed as woke and therefore defined and dismissed by conservatives as either insincere plays for attention or overzealous efforts to undermine American values with liberal indoctrination. Many complained of "woke mobs," "woke culture," the "woke police," the "woke brigade," and referred to people with conservative views as "anti-woke."

Sen. Rick Scott warned Woke Corporate America that a backlash was coming. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said there would be serious consequences if businesses kept acting likea woke parallel government.Former President Donald Trump mocked "woke" military generals for being weak and ineffective.Rep. Matt Gaetz kicked off his re-election campaign promising to fight against woke-ism.

"Woke" also was tied in conservative media to the phrase "cancel culture," as public figures who said insensitive or racial things (not woke, in other words) faced a backlash and occasionally loss of income or influence because of it, something conservative commentators considered a violation of First Amendment rights and an infringement of their personal freedoms.

"So in addition to meaning aware and progressive, many people now interpret woke to be a way to describe people who would rather silence their critics than listen to them," according to Michael Ruiz of Fox News.

'You will be happier elsewhere, as will we': Palm Beach Police investigating letters warning 'woke' New Yorkers to leave Florida

'Your woke sky': Dictionary.com jabs Republican lawmaker's tweet criticizing 'millennial leftists'

Both terms refer to companies that showcase theirpublic support for progressive causes but fail to actually do any genuine reform.

That really depends on who's saying it. By 2021 woke seemed to mostly come from conservative commentators and as part of Republican Party campaign talking points, along with "cancel culture" and "critical race theory."

CNN called "wokeness" the biggest threat to Democrats in the 2022election.

It didn't help that "woke" was quickly pulled into pop culture to be further watered down and sanitized. SaturdayNight Live presented "Levi's Wokes" in 2017. There were How Woke Are You? quizzes on Facebook. The New Yorker asked, "What's in a Woke McRib?" BuzzFeed named Hasan Piker the "woke bae on your Facebook Feed."

Some Black thought leaders consider "woke" to be problematic, weaponized against them, and largely meaningless now.

"As is disturbingly often the case, White people (or any racial group outside the terms origin) will sometimes begin using a term that originated in a community of color often as a term of pride, endearment, or self-empowerment years or decades later," saidDana Brownlee in an article for Forbes, "while either willfully or inadvertently distorting the original meaning of the term."

"It is extremely convenient from a culture-war perspective, to be able to use a word likewoketo signal at approximately seven different things," said Slate's Rachelle Hampton. "When you say that wokeness is a political ideology, youre not talking about anything. Youre talking about people who talk about race. And that just immediately brands them as a member of the wokerati."

Many still use "woke" in its original meaning, though, despite the changes.

Contributor: John Kennedy, Capitol Bureau, USA TODAY - FLORIDA NETWORK

C. A. Bridges is a Digital Producer for the USA TODAY Network, working with multiplenewsrooms across Florida. Local journalists work hard to keep you informed about the things you care about, and you can support them by subscribing to yourlocal news organization.Read more articles by Chris here and follow him on Twitter at @cabridges

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What does it mean to be 'woke,' and why does Florida Governor Ron DeSantis want to stop it? - Palm Beach Post

Sir Winston Churchill's "apparent racist views" put his statue at risk during Black Lives Matter protests, according to a Westminster Council dossier.

Officials drew up a list of more than 50 monuments over fears they could be targeted following the toppling of Edward Colston, with some deemed at high risk due to alleged links to slavery and colonialism.

A statue of Churchill in central London was deemed "vulnerable" in the Westminster Council dossier, due to what the document termed Churchill's "apparent racist views".

The wartime leaders reputation has been publicly reappraised in recent years, with his Chartwell home drawn into a colonialism review by the National Trust, and his monument on Parliament Square daubed with the words "racist" during Black Lives Matter demonstrations in 2020.

Documents reveal that during this period Westminster Council was concerned about which statues could be attacked, and carried out a risk-assessment which included a separate "Allies statue" of Franklin D Roosevelt and Winston Churchill sitting together on a bench.

The colour-coded risk-assessment flagged the statue on New Bond Street as having an "amber" or intermediate risk, and the document stated that the monument was "vulnerable due to Churchill's apparent racist views".

Westminster Council has said that this appraisal of Churchill - in a document seen by the Telegraph - is not the view of the local authority but a reflection of protesters' attitudes.

Raj Mistry, Westminster City Councils executive director of environment, said: "This document was compiled in the summer of 2020 during national debate on public statues.

"As responsible custodians of our city it is right that the council prepares for a variety of circumstances.

"The list assesses the likelihood of public monuments maintained by the council potentially being targeted. No action was taken as a result."

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Winston Churchill had 'apparent racist views', according to Westminster Council statue review - The Telegraph

In Cedric Robinson: The Time of the Black Radical Tradition, Joshua Myers explores the practices of organising black resistance and unpacking the complex forces that shape black life through an examination of the life, works and legacies of Cedric Robinson. The book offers invaluable insight into understanding the man behind the concept of racial capitalism and expresses hope at re-igniting how we view black resistance in the contemporary, writes Nyrema Baptiste.

Cedric Robinson: The Time of the Black Radical Tradition. Joshua Myers. Polity. 2021.

Black liberation in the United States is taught in snapshot segments, forcing the current activist-scholar to gaze upon movements like the civil rights movement or the black power movement as figments that existed at that moment for popular culture. This makes liberation look hollowed out, flattened and violent in its subjugation to the narrow lens of what anti-blackness imagines resistance to its existence means in its cultural fabric. Therefore, as we move forward in what black liberation looks like for our current social equality movements like Black Lives Matter, we must also understand the clear ideological framework of the past that is romanticised almost to the point of erasure. As we fictionalise slain leaders and those who managed to escape from racial, colonial violence, we are left with fragments of their memories. Memories that they have engraved into the ground and, if we look deep enough past the current fictitious identity of blackness in the US, into us as well.

Everything black activists, scholars, organisers are navigating today has been navigated before by brilliant thinkers who dug into their personal black lives for remembrance, inspiration and strength to understand and move forward in shaping black liberation in the US. Dr Cedric Robinson was one of those thinkers. Learning from various African leaders, brushing shoulders with minds like Walter Rodney and advocating for Malcolm X to talk on his university campus, Robinson embraced the history of black life, critiqued it and formed his understanding by unravelling what is perceived as the whole picture of black history in the US. From Robinsons understanding, to be in resistance means to dig deeper than surface-level history and to imagine the incompleteness of black life as our histories are gathered to become myths. So, if Robinson worked on strategically decentring the colonial push to make black liberation and black life mythological, then Joshua Myerss new book sees Robinson as a visionary whose work is rooted in the expression of what makes black resistance possible.

In Black Marxism: The Making of the Radical Black Tradition (1983), one of Robinsons most famous works, he stresses that as a scholar it was never my purpose to exhaust the subject, only to suggest that it was there. This subject is the origins of resistance to Western modernity and its shaping of black genealogy. So why are we taken on a historical genealogy of black life when the conversation of this book is wrapped around black resistance? In Cedric Robinson: The Time of the Black Radical Tradition, Myers, Professor of Africana Studies at Howard University and author of a recent history of the Howard University protests of 1989, tells us that it is to demystify our snapshot view of resistance. Theoretically resistance is like a language in the way blackness is. How we view black American history makes our current political language and culture of resistance incomplete.

Image Credit: Crop of np_rally_34.JPG by Doc Searls licensed under CC BY SA 2.0

Producing a concise book that acts as a foundation for demystifying Robinson and challenging how we view historical liberation organisations and movements, Myers introduces how black resistance is rooted in black life and the performance of active community participation in and out of academia. Furthermore, we are introduced to Robinsons other works and the conditions of black life that shaped his commitment to community and formed what made and makes the black radical tradition.

Myerss move to demystify Robinson and his work proves to be an insightful challenge as he familiarises the reader with Robinsons familial upbringing and draws out how it shaped the crafting of the black radical tradition. In the first chapter, Robinson is introduced to us by an antidotal retelling of his familys ancestral migration from Mobile, Alabama, to California. It is the story of many black families leaving, if possible, towns and areas so anti-black that even having a large black population did nothing to negate the racial violence enforced in everyday life. From this story, we begin to understand Robinson and his attachments to resistance and community, which Myers also engages through Robinsons early work, Black Movements in America. Myers analyses this text at the beginning of the first chapter, putting into motion the lineage of mass black political action through the migration of black folks from the South and midwestern states, also documented in Isabel Wilkersons The Warmth of Other Suns.

What is conceptualised here is that we do not truly understand how the lives of our families shape our political consciousness. The way Robinson details his familys resistance in leaving Alabama is often the reality of how anti-blackness structures our society and provides a response to the threat of death imposed by anti-blackness. That is how many have shaped their way of addressing the situation of oppression and resistance: the way they remember and speak on it highlights how meaningful these conversations are in understanding the roots of their conditions and how they organised around it. All around him were these people, his people. They know life, Black being, had required struggle (16). Myers analysis of Robinson is not surprising, considering the mapping Robinson undertook in Black Marxism to help us imagine a radical future rooted in understanding our history. In many ways, the first chapter of Myerss book sets up the theme of unlearning everything we know about resistance, about the figures and icons we are allowed to acknowledge, moving beyond the capitalist selling of it and reconfiguring what animates the spirit of the movement.

Making sense of these conditions is essential to understanding Robinsons work as an organiser because black liberation cannot simply be theorised: the answers that are sought will not be readily found in texts that may alienate those they aim to engage. Myers touches on this as another theme throughout the book, centring Robinsons focus on the practices of existence and liberation outside of Eurocentric political traditions, rather than just the concept of racial capitalism, which Robinson spent a chapter on in Black Marxism.

Myers connects Robinsons experiences and desires to the traditions within black popular culture as strategic tactics envisioning and challenging misconceptions. In Chapter Six, Culture and War, Myers briefly utilises Robinsons Forgeries of Memory and Meaning and outlines its impact on black film studies, connecting it to todays black resistance movements. Robinsons book broadens the conversation on what is gained and lost in the shaping and reshaping of black political aesthetics, especially in the media, as patterns form in understanding racial violence, resistance and the maintenance of black contentment. Black film exists only in the underground, its creation a subversive act. Whiteness as the grounds for reproduction of the American film industry has survived the contemporary cries for Black visibility and diversity (Robinson quoted on page 228). What, then, if the power maintained is anti-black? How do we understand how the past has been shaped by modernisation, even through the popular content that is digested by the masses?

A number of questions remain to be engaged in Robinsons work; however, more clarity on black life generates a framework that can display the limitations of past movements and our romanticisation of them. Anti-blackness is a systemic condition in the world; it is rooted in the past few centuries, and alongside it is a legacy of resistance shadowing it and being redefined. The end of Cedric Robinson: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition unearths a changing of the foundations of resistance organisation and how we frame our understanding of moving forward towards black liberation and the quality of black life in the United States. Still, for me, this book positions itself as a guide through Robinsons life and through the struggles of active resistance, which are not as clear-cut as special episodes on television, films or black-and-white images suggest, given the lived reality of black folks around the world.

Cedric Robinson: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition ultimately seeks to inspire faith in black liberation, through a black historical genealogy of a black leader whose work dealt with resistance to oppression. It assembles a mix of familiarity, individuality and togetherness woven into the lived experience of being black in Western society. Myerss book grieves the man and his work but it is also uplifting, taking into account how much Cedric Robinson has helped to shape the political landscape of black American life while also bringing into consciousness how little things have changed.

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Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of USAPP American Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics.

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Nyrema Baptiste University of EdinburghNyrema Baptiste is a PhD student at the University of Edinburgh. She completed an MA in International Affairs concentrating on Media and Culture at the New School. Her doctoral research centres around anti-blackness as a colonial structure within black popular culture. In particular, she focuses on how anti-black classism has reshaped black resistance in black pop-cultural spaces.

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Book Review: Cedric Robinson: The Time of the Black Radical Tradition by Joshua Myers - London School of Economics

October 6, 2016Why Black lives matter.

Black lives matter.

They matter because they are children, brothers, sisters, mothers, and fathers.

They matter because the injustices they face steal from all of us white people and people of color alike. They steal our very humanity.

Systemic and institutionalized racismare the defining civil rights and social justice issues of our time. Weve come to understand that to be silent about the violence and threats to the lives and well-being of Black people is to be complicit in that violence and those threats.

There is good news: the first step in overcoming systemic racism and injustice is to simply understand and admit that there is a problem. Its trying to understand the perspective of others whose experiences are different from our own. To not just listen, but to truly understand those whose struggle for justice is real, and not yet complete.

Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II, President of the North Carolina NAACP, said it best when reacting to the recent police shooting in Charlotte, NC. He said, Our objective is simple: to ensure justice-loving people act toward justice, with all evidence, and that we stand together and act from a place of power and love, rather than out of fear and anger.

Its been hard to watch the list of unarmed Black Americans killed by law enforcement officers grow longer and longer.We understand that numerous Black Americans and white Americans have profoundly different experiences and outcomes with law enforcement and the criminal justice system. Thats why its become clear to usat Ben & Jerrysthat we have a moral obligation to take a stand now for justice and for Black lives.

We want to be clear: we believe that saying Black lives matteris not to say that the lives of those who serve in the law enforcement community dont. We respect and value the commitment to our communities that those in law enforcement make, and we respect the value of every one of their lives.

But we do believe that whether Black, brown, white, or blue our nation and our very way of life is dependent on the principle of all people being served equal justice under the law. And its clear, the effects of the criminal justice system are not color blind.

We do not place the blame for this on individual officers. Rather, we believe it is due to the systemic racism built into the fabric of our institutions at every level, disadvantaging and discriminating against people of color in ways that go beyond individual intent to discriminate. For this reason, we are not pointing fingers at individuals; we are instead urging us to come together to better our society and institutions so that we may finally fulfill the founding promise of this country: to be a country with dignity and justicefor all.

All lives do matter. But all lives will not matter until Black lives matter.

We ask people to be open to understanding these issues, and not to reflexively retreat to our current beliefs. Change happens when people are willing to listen and hear the struggles of their neighbor, putting aside preconceived notions and truly seeking to understand and grow. Well be working hard on that, and ask you to as well.

- Your friends at Ben & Jerrys

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Why Black Lives Matter | Ben & Jerrys

News releases | Research | Social science

March 7, 2022

After Black Lives Matter formed in 2013, in response to the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, new ways of talking about race gained traction.

A new study co-led by the University of Washington shows how Black Lives Matter protests have changed the way people talk about race.Clay Banks/Unsplash

And with protests sparked by subsequent police killings, such as those of Eric Garner, Philando Castile and George Floyd, the use of and online search for anti-racist terms skyrocketed, indicating a growing common anti-racist lexicon and generating renewed attention to racial justice that continues today.

The growing use of these terms, according to new research, shows how Black Lives Matter has shifted the conversation around racism, raising awareness of issues and laying the foundation for social change. The research, led by Indiana University and the University of Washington, published March 3 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

When protest happens, it changes the way people talk, said lead author Zackary Dunivin, a doctoral student in sociology and complex systems at Indiana University. Black Lives Matter got people to pay attention when people werent paying attention. The protests got people to care, and that has changed the way people are talking and thinking about race.

In the paper, Dunivin and co-author Jelani Ince, an assistant professor of sociology at the UW, show that how people talk about an issue and how often they talk about it can create momentum and bring attention to a cause. They point to civil rights marches, which led to changes in voting and housing rights, and to anti-Vietnam War protests, which helped shift public opinion and led to Congressional hearings.

To evaluate the impact of Black Lives Matter protest, the researchers turned to social media, news coverage and online search engines. They set out to determine how these protests shifted public interest and conversation by examining attention to and use of related terms and topics.

The researchers chose four different publicly available data sources: Google search, Twitter mentions, national news mentions and Wikipedia page visits. They created a list of more than three dozen terms to search for, such as systemic racism, prison abolition and others that are associated with Black Lives Matters themes and the concept of anti-racism.

The study found that during Black Lives Matter protests, people search for these terms up to 100 times more than they did in the weeks prior to the protests. Over time, these spikes in searches for terms related to Black Lives Matter have expanded to include other ideas: In the early years of the study period, searches for police shootings and the names of victims of police homicide were common; in 2020, searches included topics like prison abolition and redlining.

In addition, the study noted the staying power of ideas: Six months after the George Floyd protests in 2020, social media attention to anti-racist ideas was significantly higher than it was before the protests. Daily visits to Wikipedia pages for Black Lives Matter, for example, were around 10 times greater; for systemic racism, 5.5 times greater; and for prison abolition, 1.6 times greater, from August through December 2020, compared to the same period the year before.

As social scientists, we know that change is not an inevitability, but requires persistence from actors over time. This shift in discourse is a reflection of change in the political terrain, Ince said. It shows that the movement is evolving. Its not just a moment, its an accumulation.

Of course, not every search or use of the designated terms indicates support, the researchers said. Data measuring page visits, for example, doesnt capture why someone visited a page it just tracks the visit. Along the same lines, use of a hashtag doesnt necessarily prove a users intent to support a movement. Further data-driven research could pursue those questions, the study points out, and specifically the role of countermovements and rhetoric in association with the use of anti-racist terms.

But what online searches, media coverage and tweets do show, Ince and Dunivin said, is how the issues and terms raised by Black Lives Matter have grown in public awareness over time. And the terms themselves have expanded beyond their connection to specific incidents of police homicide to broader issues of inequality.

While the study didnt link these terms to social change such as votes or policies, it does show how a current movement is building toward that change, the authors said.

Black Lives Matter is providing an alternative route to the social problems society has created, Ince said. These protests arent just trying to make noise, but to reimagine what community can do. This is an attempt to do what should have been done decades ago.

Other co-authors on the study were Harry Yaojun Yan and Fabio Rojas at Indiana University. The study was funded by the Racial Justice Research Fund at Indiana University and the National Science Foundation.

For more information, contact Ince at jince@uw.edu or Dunivin at zdunivin@iu.edu.

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How Black Lives Matter protests sparked interest, can lead ...

Photo: John Minchillo (AP)

Amazons charity platform AmazonSmile has suspended Black Lives Matter Tuesday for failing to meet eligibility requirements because of their financial disputes with some states, per a Washington Examiner investigation. BLM reported by the end of summer 2020 that they had raised $60 million. However, states have threatened to take legal action against the organization because they didnt indicatewhere their donations went to by the end of summer 2020.

An Amazon representative told the Washington Examiner that in order for an organization to be eligible to participate with AmazonSmile, they must be in good standing in their state of incorporation and in the states and territories where they are authorized to do business.

From Washington Examiner:

BLM voluntarily shut down its online fundraising on Feb. 2 after California and Washington issued legal threats to the group for its failure to report what it did with the millions it received during the second half of 2020. BLM published a report in February 2021 claiming to have ended 2020 with $60 million in its coffers.

As of Wednesday afternoon, BLM remains out of compliance in those states, as well as in New Jersey, North Carolina, Connecticut, Colorado, Maryland, Maine, and Virginia.

BLM said when it shut down its fundraising that it had engaged compliance counsel to get back in good standing with the states.

In addition the Washington Examiner found the organization changed its accounting cycle, allowing them to delay their reports on donations from summer 2020 to May of this year.

BLM co-founder Patrisse Cullors said the donations that went unaccounted for came from white corporation guilt, via the Washington Examiner. People have to know we didnt go out and solicit the money. This is money that came from white guilt, white corporation guilt, and they just poured money in, said Cullors.

According to the Washington Examiners investigation, other companies have also decided not to follow through on their BLM contributions including Intel and Cisco.

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Black Lives Matter Kicked Off Amazon Charity Platform