Category Archives: Black Lives Matter

For several weeks, students at Westfield High School have called on their school district to return pride flags, Black Lives Matter signs and more to classrooms after they were removed earlier this school year.

The removal of flags and signs is one more example of how diversity, equity and inclusion efforts have been in the spotlight and criticized by some for months in schools around Central Indiana.

On Tuesday afternoon,students and their supporters will participate in a Walk for Equity to support having pride and BLM flags as well as other symbols of inclusion in the classrooms. The walk includes attending theWestfield Washington school board meeting that starts at 7 p.m. at Westfield Middle School.

Heres what you need to know:

Westfield Washington Superintendent Paul Kaiser has had several meetings with a group of Westfield High School students.

During one meeting over the summer, several students told Kaiser that things like pride flags, BLM flags and other items that are symbols of inclusion were important to them and something they wanted to see more of in classrooms.

Then, at a later meeting after the school year started, Kaiser told the students that anything deemed political or as having an agenda would be removed from classrooms. He said this list includedpride, BLM and Red for Ed.

Students said they told Kaiser that having a symbol of inclusion, such as a flag, sign or sticker that supports their identities whether that's supporting LGBTQ students or students of color, helps them feel valued and comfortable in school.

Those symbols of inclusion are a way to know that teachers affirm students' identities and are someone who will support them and be understanding, students said.

The changes were made on an individual basis with teachers after concerns were expressed to the district, Joshua Andrews, Westfield Washington spokesperson, previously told IndyStar. There is no policy banning the flags and signs currently and one is not in the works, he said.

Andrews said that the superintendent'sapproach was"let'sremove it, and then we can talk about it."

Additionally, the district has stressed that it wants to make sure classrooms are welcoming to all students, noting that it's the same for every student, and said there are ongoing discussions about that topic.Part of thatisdefining what is political and what isn't, Andrews said.

Kaiser told students that if pride flags or BLM flags/stickers were allowed, I would have to allow other forms of expression in the classroom, the superintendent wrote in a Sept. 3 email to staff that was obtained by IndyStar.

I used the extremeexamples of a Nazi flag or a Klan flag with the students. I did not intend to compare the flags of hate with flags that our students and staff support," Kaiser wrote in the email, apologizing for what he said and adding that he apologized to the students too.

Yes.The district is no longer using the terms diversity, equity and inclusion or social-emotional learning.

However, Andrews stressed thatnothing has changed with those efforts in the district, just the terminology. He added that diversity, equity and inclusion and social-emotional learning are thingsKaiser wants to see "embedded in everything we do."

This change was not announced to familiesbut is something that the district hopes families and students will notice the work is embedded in the schools.

The students were surprised with the changes and skeptical about what it means for diversity, equity and inclusion efforts going forward.

They created aChange.org petition toadvocate for keeping symbols of inclusion in classrooms, and in roughly two weeks, there were nearly 1,500 signatures.

Last week, students asked those who supported symbols of inclusion in the classroom to wear red to school on Sept. 8 and they also organized the walk for equity, which starts at 3:50 p.m. Tuesday in Asa Bales Park and includesspeakers, delivering a letter to the administration office and a sit-in at the board meeting.

Additionally,Westfield Parents for Change, an advocacy group that aims to end racism and bigotry in Westfield schools, has supported the students and having symbols of inclusion in classrooms.

Soon-to-be board members of GLSEN Central Indiana organized a "Raise Your Flags" event on Sept. 3 where more than 50 people lined West Hoover Street with BLM and pride flags.

GLSEN is an organization that aims to end harassment and bullying based on sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression in K-12 schools. It also works to promote inclusion of LGBTQ students.

Andrews, the district spokesperson, said that at least some of the concerns came from parents, but he didn't have further details.

Unify Westfield, a group that aims to "bring academic excellence back" to Westfield schools and has opposed books that address gender identity in the schools, said the focus in schools shouldn't be on "divisive political and social issues."

In an email to supporters sent Aug. 29, Unifyacknowledged the petition, saying itwas "opposing Dr. Kaisers philosophy that teachers should not display political propaganda in their classrooms (e.g. gay pride flag, BLM flag, etc.).We need to make sure your voices supporting neutrality and academic focus in the classroom are heard."

It's another example of efforts to be inclusive to theLGBTQ community as well as larger diversity, equity and inclusion work being under scrutiny.

In the spring, it was books addressing gender identity in elementary schools that prompted hours of debate about access to the books as well as diversity, equity and inclusion in general during public comments at Westfield school board meetings.

Themarathon public comment sessions were onlypaused when school board president Jimmy Cox said there would be no more comments related to the books and any decisions would wait for the new superintendent.

However, Kaiser has not made an announcement to the community at large about the books. Andrews said there have been no policy changes, however he did say that some books arebehind the counter," but that it's notan entire category of books.

In addition to wearing red to support symbols of inclusion in the classroom, students brought flags to school. That included students with pride and BLM flags as well as other students with Trump flags, causing tensions.

In a message posted to the Westfield High School website, principal Alicia Denniston wrote that the school is supporting the students having "symbols,"except for full-body flags which are a potential safety hazard and are distracting in the classroom.

Students are allotted more freedoms than school personnel when it comes to displaying political and religious symbols of allegiance," she wrote.

She said the only time symbols will be taken from students is when they cause disruptions or are used to harass, ridicule or undermine another.

While there have been a few situations we have addressed, the majority of students have worn these symbols peacefully and without incident," Denniston wrote.

Both Kaiser and Denniston have stressed that they are trying to balance different viewpoints in the community.

The tough part is how tomake sure everyone has a voice and is comfortable in their skin at the school, Denniston wrote in her online message.

At the high school, the principal said she is working with teachers on a sign of support that saysEvery Student Welcome to be displayed in classrooms. The letters in the word "student" will represent the different identities and cultures.

At the district level, Andrews said Monday that the district is still having ongoing conversations on this topic. He added that whenever possible, Kaiser will work with administrators at each school to take a building-level approach as a response.

This topic is not on the agenda for Tuesday's school board meeting and not expected to be discussed by Kaiser or board members. Public comment is allowed only on agenda items.

Call IndyStar education reporter MJ Slaby at 317-447-1586 or email her at mslaby@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter: @mjslaby.

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What to know about pride flags and BLM flags being removed in Westfield schools - IndyStar

In a lesser-known part of his March on Washington speech, Martin Luther King Jr. proclaimed, We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality.

Many people, upon hearing this, might assume that King was simply referring to the violence wreaked by the police department in Birmingham, Alabama, and its commissioner, Bull Connor, during the Southern Christian Leadership Conferences desegregation campaign that spring. But King understood that police brutalitylike segregationwasnt just a southern problem.

Earlier that year, shortly after getting out of jail in Birmingham, King traveled to Los Angeles and delivered a speech to 35,000 people at Wrigley Field. The city was in the midst of a growing effort, led by groups including the NAACP and the Nation of Islam, challenging the pattern of police brutality in the city and calling for Police Chief William Parkers resignation. L.A.s civil-rights leaders drew parallels between Birmingham and L.A.particularly regarding police brutality. So did King. He thanked Angelenos for their support of the Birmingham campaign but made clear that what was even more important was challenging L.A.s system of racial injustice. You asked me what Los Angeles can do to help us in Birmingham, King told the audience. The most important thing that you can do is to set Los Angeles free because you have segregation and discrimination here, and police brutality.

In recent years, scholars have broadened the publics understanding of Kings political concerns to go beyond segregation to include poverty, labor, global human rights, and war. But even in this more expansive context, his attention to police brutality and the structural discrimination of the North has largely been missed. (King and most Black activists of the period used the terms North and northern to encompass all regions of the U.S. outside the Southin part to highlight the shared investment white city leaders and residents from the Northeast to the Midwest to the West all had in not being the South. I follow their terminology throughout this piece and in my academic work.) At the same time, commentators across the political spectrum have tended to pit King against contemporary youth movements such as Black Lives Matter, framing King as a kind of respectability-politics-upholding southern minister who kept a distance from northern Black communities.

Read: Martin Luther King Jr.s Letter From Birmingham Jail

But from the beginnings of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957, King was clear that segregation and injustice were national, not regional, problems, and he relentlessly highlighted the need for a liberalism in the North that is truly liberal, that believes in integration in [the northerners] own community as well as in the deep South. King had observed pride among many northern white liberals for supporting the southern movement, only to see their sharp refusal to confront segregation and police brutality at home and their dismissal and demonization of local activists who did. Framing northern racism as structural and institutional, not simply a matter of individual racist cops or private discrimination, King called out the pattern of police brutality and segregation in northern cities before the uprisings of the 1960s as well as afterand he was roundly criticized for it by political leaders and citizens, as were other activists of the time. He described the total pattern of economic exploitation under which Negroes suffer in northern cities as a system of internal colonialism where police and the courts acted as enforcers.

King had been calling attention to the issue of police brutality for years. In the September 1958 issue of Fellowship, King published an article titled My Pilgrimage to Nonviolence, where he wrote, I had seen police brutality with my own eyes, and watched Negroes receive the most tragic injustice in the courts. King himself had been at the mercy of police many times, and knew well the vulnerability and dangerous power dynamics a person under arrest can experience. In his 1964 book, Why We Cant Wait, King characterized police injustice as a nationwide problem: Armies of officials are clothed in uniform, invested with authority, armed with the instruments of violence and death and conditioned to believe that they can intimidate, maim or kill Negroes with the same recklessness that once motivated the slaveowner.

Throughout the 1960s, King supported disruptive direct-action movements including school boycotts, rent strikes, and street protests that challenged school and housing segregation, job discrimination, and police brutality in the North as well as in the South. It is purposeless to tell Negroes they should not be enraged when they should be, King observed. In 1964, he refused calls from Black and white moderates to condemn the Brooklyn Congress of Racial Equalitys plan to highlight the structural discrimination rife within the city by stalling cars on the highway leading to the 1964 Worlds Fair in Flushing Meadows: We do not need allies who are more devoted to order than to justice ... If our direct action programs alienate so-called friends they never were really our friends.

In July 1964, the police killing of a 15-year-old Black student, James Powell, sparked a six-day uprising in Harlem. New York Citys mayor, Robert Wagner, invited King to come to town, hoping he would ease tensions between residents and city leaders. But King didnt play by the mayors script. He first went to Harlem to meet with local leaders whod been decrying issues of police brutality, housing, and school segregation in the city for years, and then had four unsuccessful meetings over three days with Wagner. King made clear that profound and basic changes related to jobs, housing, schools, and police would be essential to avoid further uprisings. He criticized the police commissioner, Michael Murphy, for having little understanding of the urgency of the situation and for being unresponsive to either the demands or the aspirations of Black people, and called for the suspension of the officer whod shot Powell. King was nearly run out of town by Wagner and Murphy when he dared to suggest that the police needed oversight and the city would benefit from a civilian board dedicated to that task.

Then, two weeks later, after Black people rose up in Rochester following another incident of police abuse, King spoke out about the conditions that had produced these two uprisings. Criticizing the nations shallow rhetoric condemning lawlessness, he called for an honest soul-searching analysis and evaluation of the environmental causes which have spawned the riots. Over and over, King echoed local activists in calling on public officials to tackle housing and school segregation, job discrimination, and police brutalitythe tinder that led to these uprisings.

The following year, on August 11, 1965, police in South L.A. pulled over Marquette Frye, a 21-year-old Black man, for drunk driving. The arrest became violentand Watts erupted in six days of rebellion. By the end, 34 people were dead and more than 1,000 were injured. White Americans were shocked at Black anger, but King and many L.A. activists argued that this was a willful surprise. Black Angelenos had been highlighting the patterns of police brutality, housing and school segregation, and job exclusion in the city for years, and, as King saw it, political leaders kept brushing them off. He decried the violence, and laid its cause at the governments feet, noting the lack of racial progress in cities like L.A. He wrote that at a time when the Negros aspirations were at a peak, his actual conditions of employment, education, and housing were worsening.

Ibram X. Kendi: Compliance will not save me

As the uprising subsided, he traveled to L.A. to assess the situation. In a contentious three-hour session with the mayor and the police chief, King highlighted the need for oversight of the police and called for a civilian complaint-review board, as he had in New York a year earlier. And like in New York, the suggestion was angrily shot down by the police chief, William Parker. King also reiterated Black Angelenos long-standing demands for Parkers resignation. Mayor Sam Yorty complained of unfounded charges of police brutality and accused King of advocating Black lawlessness. He said (white) Los Angeles would not stand for Parkers resignation.

Growing angry, King criticized the mayor for being insensitive to social revolution and made clear that overlooking police abuses or scapegoating an isolated criminal element was a dangerous fantasy. Parker and Yorty refused to let King meet with jailed rioters, and Yorty later told reporters that Kings visit was a great disservice to the people of Los Angeles and to the nation and said that King shouldnt have come here. King received many letters from white people angry at him about the rebellion and telling him he was playing into Communists tactics in crying Police Brutalities.

Three months later, King addressed white shock over the Watts uprising in an article in the Saturday Review, zeroing in on the acceptance of police brutality in the North: As the nation, Negro and white, trembled with outrage at police brutality in the South, police misconduct in the North was rationalized, tolerated, and usually denied. King was clear that this pattern of police brutality had been evident long before the uprisingand the movements that had grown out of itbut public attention, in particular the medias attention, focused on the South. Black northerners, in contrast with Black southerners, were blamed for their unruly behaviors, which then necessitated strong-arm policing while patterns of police brutality were repeatedly denied or swept under the rug. Indeed, a year and a half earlier, in The Nation, King had described the most tragic and widespread violations of police brutality: For many white Americans in the North there is little comprehension of the grossness of police behavior and its wide practice.

In contextualizing the uprisings of the mid-1960s, King was clear: The policymakers of the white society have caused the darkness. King reframed the issue of criminality, moving the focus from Black behavior to white illegality and state action, which had produced northern ghettos: When we ask Negroes to abide by the law, let us also demand that the white man abide by law in the ghettos. Day-in and day-out he flagrantly violates building codes and regulations; his police make a mockery of law; and he violates laws on equal employment and education and the provisions for civic services. His police. King made clear that the police were not there to protect or serve Black residents but functioned as a mechanism of control and inequality.

Read: Kings message of nonviolence has been distorted

Looking at this aspect of Kings politics provides an urgent antidote to the ways he has been positioned against contemporary movements such as Black Lives Matter. Be more like Dr. King, commentators including former Governor Mike Huckabee and the Reverend Barbara Reynolds have instructed young activists. Dr. King would never take a freeway, thenAtlanta Mayor Kasim Reed scolded Atlanta demonstrators during nationwide Black Lives Matter protests in 2016. To see Kings attention to police brutality and belief in the utility of disruptive protest is to refuse to accept this false distinction.

Maybe the reason this side of King remains unfamiliar is that it forces us to reckon with a King speaking directly to our time on the structures of American racism. We prefer the story of buses and lunch counters because they place the civil-rights leaderand the inequity he was addressingsafely in the past, rather than reckoning with the ways King called out the repeated attempts to rationalize, tolerate and deny police abuse and the systems of injustice at play in American cities. Imagine where we would be today if Kings attention to police brutality, ghettoization, and northern segregation 60 years ago had been taken seriously and addressed.

Originally posted here:

Martin Luther King's Long-Standing Critique of Police Brutality - The Atlantic

The Kansas Reflector welcomes opinion pieces from writers who share our goal of widening the conversation about how public policies affect the day-to-day lives of people throughout our state. Mark McCormick is the former executive director of The Kansas African American Museum and a member of the Kansas African American Affairs Commission.

For decades, people have used the phrase playing the race card to shut down conversations about our nations racial caste system.

What they likely didnt realize was that the phrase offered a tacit admission that racial grievance, in many cases, had virtually no equal and virtually no response. Theres no trumping that card.

But in a testament to the resolve of those committed to protecting dominant-caste privilege, the what about my right to oppress you? crowd is trying. Upper-caste people with strangleholds on federal courts, the U.S. Supreme Court, and most state legislatures, are simply claiming what theyve coveted grievance. Lets call it grievance envy.

Specifically, grievance envy involves upper-caste non-victims or at least non-victims in the ways America has victimized Black people asserting victim status for transgressions that, at best, qualify as annoyances or inconveniences.

Why attempt this? Simple. Political strategists have long advocated attacking your adversarys perceived greatest strength.

Chase Billingham, associate professor of Sociology at Wichita State University, said its not unlike a cynical debate strategy, an all lives matter response to Black Lives Matter.

Seeing the success of the civil rights movement and thinking, How can I emulate that, Billingham said. If I can adopt that posture, I could be successful.

So, from the throngs descending on school board meetings decrying the need for emergency public safety measures during a pandemic, to the hysteria surrounding the possibility of students learning about the ugliest details of our racial past, absurd claims continue to surface.

At a recent Wichita discussion of a proposed non-discrimination ordinance, faith-based organizations intimated that provisions for protected classes might somehow diminish religious rights as though rights were pizza. If you get more, I somehow, get less.

Conservative Christians remain one of this nations most powerful lobbies. These folks arent oppressed, and this behavior isnt exactly Christian, either. James 3:16 says, For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work.

Imagine a life so comfortable, secure, and privileged that a request to wear a mask, or take a vaccine, or learn more about American history registers as an outrage.

Imagine also the emptiness of such protestations from the perspective of lower-caste Americans whove watched people like them killed for selling CDs, for selling loose cigarettes, or for passing a counterfeit bill.

After a bomb killed four little Black girls in their Birmingham, Alabama, church in 1963, for example, the mother of one of the girls arrived to identify her childs body. The mother recalled in Spike Lees documentary, Four Little Girls, that the white woman checking her in called her gal.

In her worst moment any parents nightmare the mother of a dead child couldnt be extended any kindness outside caste system norms. Most Black Americans, thankfully, have not had to endure that same tragedy, but we are reminded often, as that mother was, of our lower-caste status.

Thats grievance.

Losing a well-run election, however, isnt. That likely didnt occur to those who defecated in the Capital on Jan. 6.

Do people abuse grievance? Yes.

Is this the only kind of grievance? Of course not.

This behavior, by the way, isnt limited to upper-caste conservatives, either. Upper-caste progressives do this, too.

The so-called woke also declare standing where they have none, insinuating themselves into the culture war as advocates claiming grievance on behalf of others. Some even have the audacity to lecture Black people about racism.

Whats the answer? Justice. Theres no grievance without injustice. If we dont start addressing our deep, daunting social issues, we will continue comparing atrocities and reducing real and painful grievances to a mere commodity. All this does is expand a culture of victimhood.

Consider this the next time you hear about the war on Christmas, or see someone in a $60,000 pickup sporting a Gadsen dont tread on me flag, or when someone brings up the horrors of a previous presidential administration trying to extend health care to more Americans.

Remind them that grievance envy is having its moment, but it isnt cute, or chic, or moral.

It is lying, it is appropriation, and while it is not a card game, were all certainly losing because of it.

Through its opinion section, the Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary,here.

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Grievance envy discounts the oppressed while denying them justice - Kansas Reflector

A Sheriffs deputy in Florida has been fired on Aug.26 after his insensitive remarks about George Floyd and an inmates appearance were reported to the Sheriffs Office for alleged misconduct.

Former Deputy First Class Rodney Payne has officially been sacked after two claims of improper conduct were put forward regarding his behavior while working in the Florida Core Facility Community Programs Unit in corrections in July 2021, USA Today said.

Payne remarked that an inmate he was jailing looked like George Floyd, and attempted to get him to say I cant breathe, in reference to the sentence that George Floyd repeated as he was choked by Derek Chauvin.

His supervisor immediately disciplined the man, but a fellow inmate reported the behavior to the system, the New York Daily News said.

Payne claimed that this was just his type of humor when interacting with the inmates, but admitted that in retrospect, the remarks were insensitive. A supervisor for the Sheriffs Office believes that a riot could have started if those remarks remained unpunished.

This comes as the four officers responsible for George Floyds death plead not guilty to violating George Floyds civil rights when Derek Chauvin kneeled on Floyds neck for more than nine minutes, with the officers doing nothing to intervene on the situation, according to al-Jazeera.

Chauvin, Thomas Lane, J. Alexander Kueng, and Tou Thao were indicted for violating George Floyds civil rights, with Lane, Kueng, and Thao requesting a separate civil trial from Chauvin on the grounds that they will be unfairly prejudiced when paired with him.

The Department of Justice is also investigating police conduct to see if there is a pattern or practice of unlawful or unconstitutional conduct among the police of the country so that they can create preventive policies against that culture.

This also comes as local police across the country are revising their approach to small crimes in an attempt to dissuade another scandal of unlawful use of force from happening, with U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland promising better federal oversight among local police units.

A mural of George Floyd remembers the man who was choked by police officer Derek Chauvin for nine minutes, as a Sheriff's deputy was fired for joking about the incident. This is a representational image. munshots/Unsplash.

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Deputy Sacked For Mocking 'Black Lives Matter' Movement After Taunting Inmate That 'Looked Like George Floyd' - Latin Times

Protesters march in the Brooklyn borough of New York City on Aug. 28, 2020. (Erik McGregor/LightRocket via Getty Images)

As racial justice protests have intensified following the shooting of Jacob Blake, public support for the Black Lives Matter movement has declined, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. A majority of U.S. adults (55%) now express at least some support for the movement, down from 67% in June amid nationwide demonstrations sparked by the death of George Floyd. The share who say they strongly support the movement stands at 29%, down from 38% three months ago.

See also: Americans have heard more about clashes between police and protesters than other recent news stories

Pew Research Center conducted this study to understand how Americans attitudes toward the Black Lives Matter movement have changed since George Floyds death. The data was collected as part of larger surveys conducted June 4-10 among 9,654 U.S. adults and Sept. 8-13 among 10,093 adults. Everyone who took part is a member of the Centers American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the ATPs methodology.

Here are the questions used for this analysis, along with responses, and its methodology.

The Black Lives Matter movement has been back in the spotlight due to this summers protests. The new survey findings come as confrontations between protesters and police have escalated in some cities and as President Donald Trump has stepped up his criticism of the movement.

The recent decline in support for the Black Lives Matter movement is particularly notable among White and Hispanic adults. In June, a majority of White adults (60%) said they supported the movement at least somewhat; now, fewer than half (45%) express at least some support. The share of Hispanic adults who support the movement has decreased 11 percentage points, from 77% in June to 66% today. By comparison, support for the Black Lives Matter movement has remained virtually unchanged among Black and Asian adults.

Support for the Black Lives Matter movement remains particularly widespread among Black adults. Some 87% of Black Americans say they support the movement, similar to the share who said this in June. However, the share of Black adults expressing strong support for the movement has decreased 9 points, from 71% to 62%.

The partisan divide in support for the Black Lives Matter movement which was already striking in June has widened even more. Among Republicans and those who lean to the Republican Party, about two-in-ten (19%) now say they support the movement at least somewhat, down from four-in-ten in June. The share of Democrats and Democratic leaners who support the movement (88%) has not changed considerably.

The partisan gap is similar among White adults. About nine-in-ten White Democrats (88%) express at least some support for the Black Lives Matter movement, compared with 16% of White Republicans. And while about half of White Democrats (51%) say they strongly support the movement, just 2% of White Republicans say the same.

Note: Here are the questions used for this analysis, along with responses, and its methodology.

CORRECTION (October 2020): The methodology section has been updated to reflect the correct cumulative response rate. None of the study findings or conclusions were affected.

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Black Lives Matter support down since June, still strong ...

As protesters clash in occasionally violent street confrontations that spread via online video, provoking emotional conversations that could touch almost anyone on Facebook or Twitter, millions of Americans feel pressure to pick a side, to support or denounce a faction, knowing that whatever they say about white supremacists, antifa, or Black Lives Matter, they risk being criticized for failing to condemn violence on their side, or for suggesting a false equivalence between groups.

How can a conflicted observer find clarity?

One way forward is to distinguish between a groups ends and its means. Diligently doing so can help anyone to formulate a defensible position, to better understand those who disagree, and to emphasize common ground that too often goes unrecognized.

Take some uncontroversial examples.

Against Malaria Foundation is one of my favorite charities. Its stated goal is protecting people from a devastating disease, malaria. There is no reason to doubt that claim. And the means that its chosen, providing people at risk of malaria with bed nets, is morally unobjectionable and practically effective. The organization is praiseworthy across the board.

ISIS is at the other extreme. Its stated end is the creation of a repressive theocracy. There is no reason to doubt that claim. And the means that its chosen, terrorism, rape, slavery, plunder, and pillaging, is abhorrent, regardless of whether or not it proves to be practically effective. All should condemn its means and end.

Now consider Lance Armstrong. His stated and actual end was winning the Tour de France. Nothing wrong with that! His chosen means included cheating. That was objectionable, despite being highly effective. And how about the Berlin Olympics of 1936? The ultimate, highly objectionable end was elevating the stature of Nazi Germany. An unobjectionable means to that end was hosting a successful sporting competition.

We neednt go through all the permutations to illustrate the overarching point: It often makes sense to condemn a means that a group uses without objecting to its stated end, or to forcefully reject a groups ends while granting that its means are unobjectionable.

Apply that mode of analysis to factions that have recently taken to the streets. Some of these groups have initiated extralegal violence. For example, police say that James Alex Fields Jr., who appears to have Nazi sympathies, drove his car into a crowd of anti-racist protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia; and antifa members reportedly beat up alt-right protesters and journalists in scuffles in Berkeley, California.

One can condemn the means of extralegal violence, and observe that the alt-right, antifa, and the far-left have all engaged in it on different occasions, without asserting that all extralegal violence is equivalentmurdering someone with a car or shooting a representative is more objectionable than punching with the intent to mildly injure. Whats more, different groups can choose equally objectionable means without becoming equivalent, because assessing any group requires analyzing its ends, not just its means.

For neo-Nazis and Klansmen in Charlottesville, one means, a torch-lit parade meant to intimidate by evoking bygone days of racial terrorism, was deeply objectionable; more importantly, their end, spreading white-supremacist ideology in service of a future where racists can lord power over Jews and people of color, is abhorrent.

Antifa is more complicated.

Some of its members employ the objectionable means of initiating extralegal street violence, but antifas stated end of resisting fascism is laudable, while its actual end is contested. Is it really just about resisting fascists or does it have a greater, less-defensible agenda? Many debates about antifa that play out on social media would prove less divisive if the parties understood themselves to be agreeing that opposing fascism is laudable while disagreeing about antifas means, or whether its end is really that limited.

Then there is Black Lives Matter. After spending a lot of time reading and reporting about the movement, I understand its primary end to be stopping unjust killings by police officers; some of its members have broader agendas, such as economic redistribution, but reforming police is the movements main goal and the one that is universally shared.

And its primary means are twofold: Its members engage in street protests in lots of cities, and its leaders push for 10 specific reforms set forth in Campaign Zero, which calls for an end to broken windows policing, more community oversight of police departments, stricter limits on the use of force, independent investigations of police misconduct, community representation in municipal governments, body cameras, better training, an end to policing for profit, demilitarization, and union contracts that dont protect misbehaving police officers from being held accountable.

If you disagree with any of my characterizations about the means and ends of those groups, we are at odds over facts, not values, and I am open to seeing evidence that challenges my assessment of a complicated matter. Bearing that in mind can make hashing out the truth less fraught and more likely to proceed constructively and profitably.

Given my understanding of the facts, where do I stand?

Black Lives Matter

For starters, I dont think Black Lives Matter belongs in the online conversation about whether Americans should be denouncing violence on all sides. The movements end of stopping unjust police killings is laudable, and its leaders and the vast majority of its members openly favor nonviolent means. Plus, unlike Nazis, nothing about the future it desires is inseparable from initiating violence. That doesnt mean it is beyond criticism. It is a large, freewheeling movement without clear leaders, and individual participants have no doubt acted badly on many occasions, as is true of groups as varied as the Sons of Liberty in 1775, antiVietnam War protesters, and the Tea Party. I have criticized Black Lives Matter activists in the past for disrupting a Bernie Sanders event and for the tactic of blocking freeways.

But I draw a distinction between objectionable acts of civil disobedience and engaging in violence. Some Black Lives Matter critics blame the group for the killing of five Dallas police officers. But the gunman acted alone, using tactics that the protest movement never urged or used, and group leaders denounced the killings. The group has the same relationship to the Dallas killer as nonviolent anti-abortion-rights groups have to the extremist who perpetrated a mass killing at a Planned Parenthood.

Antifa

Note that I am speaking of self-described members of the group, not anyone who shows up in the streets to protest against fascists. Antifa and anti-fascism are no more synonymous than being a member of Black Lives Matter and believing that black lives matter.

The initiation of extralegal street violence by self-appointed judges in masks is ethically wrong, legally wrong, and in the case of antifa, tactically idiotic. (I can think of nothing more likely to contribute to Donald Trumps reelection than roving bands of masked, violent leftists attacking not only Nazis carrying swastikas in the streets but journalists covering protests, or crowds at Ann Coulter or Milo Yiannopolous speeches.) It is an easy call for me to denounce antifa members who participate in or endorse extralegal violence. That does not contradict my simultaneous judgment that antifas stated end of resisting fascism is laudable. If they showed up in force to protest Nazi rallies but refrained from initiating the use of force, using it only lawfully in self-defense, I would have nothing but praise for them.

I am unsure about how credible their stated ends really are. On one hand, its claim to be focused on opposing fascism squares with the groups origins and the testimony of group members in interviews with its chroniclers. On the other hand, its current members have targeted and injured people who are not fascists, including people capturing newsworthy video of public gatherings. This raises understandable suspicion that its agenda is actually broader than opposing fascists, but it could be that its means are so inherently flawed as to guarantee excesses.

Nazis, the KKK, and Other White Supremacists

Denouncing antifa violence does not require regarding the group as equivalent to the Nazis or the KKK. They are distinguishable, most importantly in these two respects:

Distinctions Help Fight Polarization and Extremism

If the guiding framework in public discourse is a binaryAre you for or against antifa?lots of people will feel themselves to be deeply at odds despite the fact that a nuanced airing of their views would reveal broad areas of agreement and shared values. It is much easier to discern that common ground if a conversation about antifa distinguishes between its means and its ends, or its stated means and its actual means, or the project of anti-fascism and the group antifa, or any number of other nuances.

A dearth of distinctions has a lot of complicated consequences, but in aggregate, it helps to empower the worst elements in a society, because those elements are unable to attract broad support except by muddying distinctions between themselves and others whose means or ends are defensible to a broader swath of the public. So come to whatever conclusions accord with your reason and conscience. But when expressing them, consider drawing as many distinctions as possible.

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Distinguishing Between Antifa, the KKK, and Black Lives ...

The International Women of Power Awards celebrated the strength of women involved in various careers, from activists to politics.

This is the fourth year of the award, which was heldin Marina del Rey, California.This year the theme was Bloom, an appropriate title according to Ghanaian-American media executive Koshie Mills, founder and executive producer of Heirs of Afrika, who put on the event to bring Black women from around the world together to spotlight excellence.

Were coming out of a dark place. Were showing that we are powerful. Were showing that our voice matters and were showing that we need to be seen, said Mills.

At the ceremony, several Black women were honored, including Congresswoman Maxine Waters, who was recognized for her tireless work that she does as a politician, and as an advocate since the 1970s for women and people of color.

To have been chosen to be here to be honored is a special time and a special day for me and I respect the work that has been done to support women, Congresswoman Waters said.

Waters also took the opportunity to share what helped her succeed and continue to march on as a Black female politician.

Well, I tell all of the young people, in particular, build the confidence in your children so that they know that theyre somebody and that they have power and they have influence and they dont have to take a back step to anybody. And with that kind of confidence, you can use that energy to do things, to change things. I believe in that and it has worked for me, she said.

Co-founder of Black Lives Matter Opal Tometi was also an honored and called for people of color to band together.

We gotta link arms, Tometi said. We gotta join groups, organizations and just link up with one another and build the society of our future and of our dreams you know, spaces that we deserve. If we get together with one another, we have more power. Theres strength in numbers and theres creativity that can be actualized in order to create the reality that we deserve, she said.

Other honorees included:

Congresswoman Maxine Waters Warrior Adinkrahene Award (Congresswoman 43rd District/U.S. House of Representatives)

Ilwad Elman Heirs of Afrika Sankofa Award (Nobel Peace Prize nominee 2019 philanthropist),

Ivy Mcgregor Heirs of Afrika Sankofa Award (CEO of Ivy Inc./Director of Social Responsibility for BeyGOOD),

Opal Tometi Social Justice Nyansapo Award (Human Rights Activist/Co-Founder of Black Lives Matter)

Nandi Madida Goddess Beauty Duafe Award (South African Singer/Actress),

Halima Aden Fashion Queen Nsaa Award (Sports Illustrated & Vogue Somali American Fashion Top Model)

Alexis Kerr Lionheart Business Akofena Award (VP Hallmark Mahogany)

Ledisi Entertainment Roar Nya Gyidi Award (Grammy Winning American R&B and Jazz Artist)

Excerpt from:

Maxine Waters, Opal Tometi Of Black Lives Matter And More Honored at the Heirs Of Afrika 4th Annual Internatio - Black Enterprise

Any large social movement is shaped by the technology available to it and tailors its goals, tactics, and rhetoric to the media of its time. On the afternoon of Sunday, March 7, 1965, when voting-rights marchers in Selma, Alabama, were run down by policemen at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the WATS lines were in heavy use. (Here come the white hoodlums, an activist said from a corner pay phone at 3:25 pm.) But the technology that was most important to the movements larger aims was not in activists hands at all: It was in a set of film canisters being ferried past police blockades on Highway 80 by an ABC News TV crew, racing for the Montgomery airport and heading to New York for an evening broadcast. That night, 48 million Americans would watch the scene in their living rooms, and a few days later Martin Luther King Jr. would lay bare the movements core media strategy. We will no longer let them use their clubs on us in the dark corners, he said. Were going to make them do it in the glaring light of television.

The tools that we have to organize and to resist are fundamentally different than anything thats existed before in black struggle.

It was a rare admission, writes media historian Aniko Bodroghkozy. King and other civil rights organizers seldom acknowledged their own self-conscious use of the mass media. Todays African-American civil rights organizers, by contrast, talk about the tools of mass communication all the timebecause their media strategy sessions are largely open to everyone on the Internet.

If youre a civil rights activist in 2015 and you need to get some news out, your first move is to choose a platform. If you want to post a video of a protest or a violent arrest, you put it up on Vine, Instagram, or Periscope. If you want to avoid trolls or snooping authorities and you need to coordinate some kind of action, you might chat privately with other activists on GroupMe. If you want to rapidly mobilize a bunch of people you know and you dont want the whole world clued in, you use SMS or WhatsApp. If you want to mobilize a ton of people you might not know and you do want the whole world to talk about it: Twitter.

And if, God forbid, you find yourself standing in front of the next Michael Brown or Walter Scott, and you know the nations attention needs to swerve hard to your town, your best bet might be to send a direct message to someone like DeRay Mckesson, one of a handful of activists who sit at the apex of social networks that now run hundreds of thousands strong. The thing about King or Ella Baker is that they could not just wake up and sit at the breakfast table and talk to a million people, says Mckesson, a former school district administrator who has become one of the most visible faces of the movement. The tools that we have to organize and to resist are fundamentally different than anything thats existed before in black struggle.

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How Black Lives Matter Uses Social Media to Fight the ...

Austin, TX, August 27, 2021 A Keller Independent School District (ISD) teacher, Dan Grunewald, was asked to leave school on Tuesday for the day after parents and students raised concerns about a Black Lives Matter (BLM) poster that he has hanging in his room.

According to a report by WBAP, Grunewald refused to remove the poster saying, There are rules. It was a directive to take the sign down, and by not, Im going against that directive. But its wrong. Its wrong of my schools administration, my principal, and my district to side with racism.

He also pointed out that he has a poster supporting LGBTQ in his classroom but said that no one has asked him to remove it.

Grunewald teaches animation, audio/video production, and arts of communication at Timber Creek High School.

In response to the situation with Grunewald, Keller ISD released the following statement: Keller ISD does not discuss individual personnel matters. District Board Policy EMB Local states that teachers shall not use the classroom to transmit personal beliefs regarding political or sectarian issues, and the District has routinely asked employees to remove items posted on classroom walls that are considered expressions of personal beliefs. Keller ISD and Timber Creek High School encourage our teachers to create a classroom culture that respects diversity of our school community through a culture of understanding, and it is our expectation that they do so without visual representations of their own personal beliefs on classroom walls.

Kellers student handbook indicates that it has adopted a standard complaint policy, which generally requires complaints to be filed with the principal, then escalated to the superintendent, and finally the school board as necessary.

Some critics of those who oppose the BLM poster in Grunewalds classroom assert that another teacher at Timber Creek High School has a Thin Blue Line flag hanging in her classroom.

Keller ISD parent Christine Molloy has two students at Timber Creek. She supports the poster being removed. I would like to see us keep politics and personal beliefs out of the classroom, I just want my kids just want to go to school, learn, and be with their friends, she told The Texan.

Timber Creek student body president Zoe Mukendi started a petition on Change.org to support Grunewalds display of the BLM poster. Help me help the teacher that needs tremendous support right now and share everywhere you can, it says. So far the petition has over 2500 signatures. The petition also features the Timber Creek logo.

Additionally, some students are planning a blackout in support of Grunewald and Black Lives Matter. A graphic is being circulated on social media among students at Timber Creek that asks them to wear ALL BLACK on Friday, 8/27, in support of the teacher who[se] job was put on the line for my equality.

No group or names are listed on the graphic as the organizers of the protest.

According to the student handbook, if a student wishes to distribute more than 10 copies of non-school materials, he is supposed to get prior approval from the principal or designee. This includes petitions and handbills not developed under the oversight of the school. Further, the materials must include the name of the sponsoring person or organization.

This section of the student handbook does not directly address social media posts that are the electronic equivalent of handbills, but Molloy believes that digital distribution should be handled similarly to physical distribution and following the same guidelines. Her children received information about the blackout on SnapChat.

Instead of participating in the blackout, Molloy has encouraged her kids to show unity with everyone at Timber Creek by wearing their school colors. She would like to see a Falcon Friday where the students at Timber Creek can focus on what they have in common.

See the article here:

Keller ISD Teacher Asked to Remove BLM Poster from Classroom Refuses - The Texan

DAYTON There is a new campaign in Dayton that is working to raise vaccination awareness in the local Black community.

According to the non-profit Kaiser Family Foundation less than half of the Black population in 33 states have been vaccinated. The Shot for Life campaign, started by the Black Lives Matter Dayton Organization, hopes to raise the vaccination numbers the Dayton area.

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I am frustrated because this is a preventable infection, Dr. Andre Harris, who is partnered with Shot for Life, said.

Dayton-Montgomery County Public Health provided WHIO vaccination rate numbers, which showed that 38 percent of the Black community are fully vaccinated. 48 percent of the White community were fully vaccinated.

Dr. Harris, Chief Medical Officer of Atrium Medical Center, told News Center 7s Michael Gordon that he wanted to use his 20 years of medical experience to support BLM Dayton, raise awareness and fight back against online vaccine disinformation.

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People are teetering. By getting more information and hearing from physicians it will put them in a place where they can make a solid decision to move forward with vaccination, Dr. Harris said.

While Dr. Harris knows some minds cannot be changed, he said encouraging some to get the shot can make a big difference.

The first Shot for Life event will be next Sunday, Sept. 5, at Mcintosh Park. Vaccinations and testing will be available, as well as a bookbag giveaway.

2021 Cox Media Group

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Dayton Gets Real: Dayton Black Lives Matter start Shot for Life vaccination campaign - WHIO Radio