Category Archives: Black Lives Matter

ELLSWORTH A nonprofit that helps inmates recover from substance abuse could be allowed back in the Hancock County Jail starting Friday, seven months after the agency lost access over its support for Black Lives Matter.

County Commissioner Bill Clark, Healthy Acadia Executive Director Elsie Flemings and Sheriff Scott Kane met Monday morning.

Clark said Monday afternoon that as a result of Monday mornings meeting, a memorandum agreement is being drafted and should be finalized by Friday.

Sheriff Kane canceled the contract after Healthy Acadia issued a June 10, 2020, statement in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. Kane disagreed with allowing an organization in the jail that supports a movement that he says wants to harm law enforcement.

The Hancock County Commissioners met Saturday evening via Zoom, an online meeting platform.

Fleming reached out to me and weve set a date 9 oclock on Monday morning, that if we can get an agreement, she can start recovery coaching immediately, Clark said Saturday. Im confident we will have recovery coaching by the end of the day [Monday].

Commissioner Paul Paradis said he had talked to the sheriff earlier Saturday. He was a perfect gentleman, Paradis said.

Kane will be making a public statement at beginning of the commissioners meeting, on Tuesday [Feb. 2], said Paradis.Iview this as very positive and I want to thank the sheriff, Elsie Flemings and Chairman Clark for the work in re-establishing recovery coaching.

Recovery coaches, according to Flemings, provide an opportunity for inmates to develop an action plan for their release as well as work on their recovery.

The organization posted statements last summer supporting Black Lives Matter and the racial justice movement and criticizing racism and police brutality. Kane characterized the movement as seeking to harm police.

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Nonprofit barred for supporting Black Lives Matter may be allowed back in Maine jail - Press Herald

Vanessa Newman can remember exactly where they were when they first saw Emory Douglass work. They remember the sound of '60s jazz vinyls playing before heading to the grocery store with their dadan embodiment of their love for Black people as a Black queer kid navigating the world. Douglas's work was integral to the music and, really, every day of their childhood.

A revolutionary artist and the former minister of culture for the Black Panther Party, Emory Douglas was a formerly incarcerated youth who fell in love with graphic design in trade school and after attending San Francisco City College connected with the likes of party cofounder Bobby Seale. Together, they created The Black Panther in 1967, the newspaper reaching its peak with a 200,000+ weekly circulation. Also a living vessel of Black radical history and visioning, Douglas used printmaking and graphic design to best articulate the Black liberatory politics of the Black Panther Party via comics, illustrations, and visual propaganda.

Its fitting that Newman was so drawn to Douglas's work. This current iteration of young Black queer people building a new visual statement through the Movement for Black Lives looks to the Black Panther Party as a starting point. Designers like Newman and Fresco Steez, the former minister of culture at BYP100, uses the poetics of adornment, a clarity of political values, and a hunger for a new world that many deem impossible. These designers are melding together past, future, and current realities to make revolution irresistible. Douglas and his work have provided the blueprint for that liberatory design.

Joe AmonGetty Images

Anyone dedicated to a future that requires Black liberation must use all the tools available to make the fight visually, linguistically, and spiritually appealing to those invested in their own freedom. As Douglas stated in 1967 of his mission in helping to create the Panthers' newspaper, also with Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver, "We were creating a culture, a culture of resistance, a culture of defiance and self-determination."

Like Newman, Steez is a designer dedicated to creating the visual language of this social moment. Born in Chicago, the community organizer is deeply involved with BYP100, a chapter-based organization founded in 2013 in response to George Zimmermans acquittal. Dedicated to advancing the Black communitys economic, social, political, and educational freedoms, BYP100 sees the future through a Black queer feminist lens. Throughout her time there, she designed all the merchandise for the organization, from hockey jerseys donning Lucille Clifton quotes to "Unapologetically Black" T-shirts inspired by Kanye Wests GOOD Friday music drops.

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Steez is also the former lead digital strategist at the Movement for Black Lives (or M4BL), where she recently designed bomber jackets, sweatsuits, and full regalia for fellows that speak to the continued defunding of the police campaign work. Further, she is currently working with Levis for its Black History Month capsule due out this month.

Steez began her design work at BYP100 as a reflection of two vital aspects of her life: community organizing and hip-hop. She thinks critically about what hip-hop culture means for organizing internally and externally. As a teenager doing organizing work, I was required to study the five elements of hip-hop (tagging, beatboxing, break dancing, emceeing, deejaying) and streetwear culture. And while we know that streetwear culture is Black culture, it has been commodified by all different identities of folks in order to build profit. This exploitation is compounded by luxury brands at the expense of Black and third-world people.

Steezs mother, Sheila Rollins, was a teacher by trade and matriarch of design by craft in Chicago. Steez follows a legacy of Black feminist ingenuity that keeps her rooted in the liberatory needs of Black people. My early understanding of how Black folks use visuals, fashion, aesthetics as a culture to resist poverty; to say, 'Despite the conditions we live in in this country, were gonna adorn ourselves in ways that glorify our experiences,'" Steez says. "We know that our clothes can be a vision for what our lives can be around beauty and around the full and expansive life that we deserve.

She continues, The thing that has inspired me in all the work that I do are the political histories and movements. What were the visuals? What was the culture behind them that was intentional? What gave them a visual identity to the community that they were working within?

The type of intentionality and care that Steez puts into her work is a deep nod to Douglas's work in developing a visual culture for the Black Panthers. As the party grew in notoriety and political acclaim in the late '60s, so did the surveillance of its leadership, namely the creation of COINTELPRO, a counterintelligence program focused on monitoring and dismantling the radical organizing work of the Black Panther Party by the federal government. These acts of intentional upheaval through COINTELPRO included everything from disrupting newspaper distribution to destroying the childrens breakfast program. These tactics of destruction are still ever present in the FBI's more recent creation of the Black Identity Extremists designation and the policing of Black activists across the country amid protests against police violence. The legacy of the suppression of Black liberatory struggle continues to this day.

We know that our clothes can be a vision for what our lives can be around beauty and around the full and expansive life that we deserve.

There is a cold eye of intimidation being used now to quell the fight for Black liberationa similar intimidation that killed and nearly wiped out the Black Panther Partybecause of the radicalization power that can happen with visual art. At the height of the uprisings this summer, there was a need for personal protective equipment, or PPE, which many didnt know how to fill. Steez and the digital team at M4BL knew that they could show up and keep people safe with masks, while also getting their bold statement across. These are new conditions to be organizing under, so we really thought about what piece actually supports their organizing work and clearly articulates their values, and the most relevant canvas in this moment was the face mask.

M4BL began sending out needed PPE to activists on the ground in seven major cities during the peak of the George Floyd uprisings, in early June. Masks with the phrases, Stop Killing Black People and Defund Police, were sent out nationwide. However, after shipping the masks, Steez was told that they allegedly had been seized by the federal government and were delayed until further notice. It wasnt until Steez and M4BL took to social media to spread awareness of the supposed PPE steal that the masks were returned to them.

If you have the grounds to seize these masks, then what grounds do you have to seize me? Right, in all seriousness.

The bold black-and-yellow masks were everywhere during the protests. Representative Ilhan Omar was seen wearing one, and former president Barack Obama even reposted an image of the masks on social media. But Steez is remaining focused on her core values of creating political timepieces that have clear principles.

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Like Steez, Newman is dedicated to tracing the connection between the history and principles of design to organized movements. As head of product at Somewhere Good, a digital platform from the same team behind Ethels Club, they are dedicated to creating a social media app that prioritizes a new way of being online.

Newman credits their precision in graphic design and the ability to gain access to resources to the strength of community organizing. I began to see that space making and community organizing are all design systems. Most of the Internet is not meant to build community; it was built to monetize people, they say. "The past two years of building brands, dreaming of flyers, and getting into the nerdiest details of typography always come back to finding what's been lost. I feel like Im always trying to reclaim a history that already exists.

The biggest lesson in a year of isolation has been that the vision for liberation is a collective work. In the midst of the months-long protests over the summer, Newman along with other Black designers began Design to Divest, "a Black-led collective of designers, artists, technologists, and strategists designing equitable futures by divesting from inequitable institutions," as stated on its website.

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However, Newman has no illusions about the visceral labor of dreaming. When youre Black and queer, you have to always be imagining. Explaining further, Newman says, I protect my brain at all costs. How do you do that in this world where you are supposed to stay disconnected from yourself, from your body, and from this world. All of these things are designed to distract us from our imagination.

Radical graphic design, whether it be through merchandise or visual aesthetics, has always been about writing a love letter to marginalized peopleto say without words or dialogue who you are, what you stand for, and how you are showing up for the next fight. It is a call to action after a year of grief and surface-level platitudes. Because of this struggle, Black queer designers like Steez and Newman are dreaming of what our movements must look like for a better world that many refuse to see.

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How the Radical Graphic Design of the Black Panthers Influences the Movement for Black Lives - HarpersBAZAAR.com

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Caroline Kitchener

Washington - Gymnastics routines don't have official titles. But UCLA gymnast Nia Dennis likes to name hers anyway.

Her latest creation is called "The Culture," a tribute to the Black artists and musicians whose music she samples in the routine. "The whole thing, literally everything, is Black culture," she says. Dennis selected snippets of songs from Missy Elliot, Kendrick Lamar and Tupac, stringing them into an almost two-minute tribute to "Black Excellence."

The routine immediately went viral.

"I wanted it to be a celebration of everything [Black people] can do, everything we can overcome," said Dennis, a 21-year-old college senior. "Amid all the adversity and oppression we've been through, here we are."

In a sport dominated by White women, Dennis has gained a reputation for elevating the Black experience. Last year, it was a Beyonc-inspired routine that captivated the Internet and landed her on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show."

While Dennis aspires to be an Olympic gymnast, she says, she won't compromise on her commitment to "push boundaries." Her routines will always reflect who she is, she says - the daily joys and struggles of being a Black woman in America.

I spoke to Dennis about her latest routine and her plans for the future.

She has many.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: What inspired this routine?

A: The Black Lives Matter protests were pretty much the foundation. This summer, I had shoulder surgery so I wasn't going out. I was trying to heal, trying to prepare for the season. But I was definitely out there in spirit.

Q: How did you channel Black Lives Matter into gymnastics?

A: The subject of Black Likes Matter is so heavy. It is difficult for people to talk about - and sometimes you have to meet people where they're at, with a celebration. Every single song is a major Black artist, musician, from different time periods. They had a huge impact on Black culture, which has also had a huge impact on me. So I'm just literally celebrating what they've done and having the time of my life.

Q: What is it like to be a Black gymnast in a very White sport?

A: When I lived in Ohio, it was me and maybe two or three other Black gymnasts out of the whole gym. I was surrounded by White gymnasts all the time, and a lot of the things we do are not the same. Hair was always a thing. People would ask, "Can I touch your hair? How does it stand up like that?" I had to deal with things like that my entire life.

Q: What else have you had to deal with as a Black gymnast?

A: Literally, body image. Body image is already huge in gymnastics - looking fit, looking lean, looking skinny. And I was always considered fat because I'm a more powerful, explosive gymnast. There is a certain style, a certain look, that people are looking for and I never fit the look. I got told my lines weren't pretty.

Q: Your lines "weren't pretty"? What does that mean?

A: So for example, on bars, you do a handstand and you're in a perfect line. Your ribs are tucked in, you're squeezed super tight, toes are pointed, everything down to a T. Clean lines. People were always telling me my lines were not clean because my legs were strong.

It's been a struggle trying to find myself as a Black woman in America, for real. I was constantly told I wasn't good enough, and I'd be trying to change to fit into the ideal image of what everybody else wanted me to be. Then I came to UCLA, a place where I can celebrate Black Excellence, celebrate me. I can't imagine any other place where I could be me, the way I am here.

Q: You've used the term Black Excellence to describe this routine. What does that term mean to you?

A: It's a highlight and a celebration literally of Black greatness, things that have had an impact on Black culture and the Black community. Every musician in my floor routine has had an impact, whether it was dance, whether it was activism, whether it was stepping, whether it was Greek things. That was just great. That was just excellent.

Q: What comes next for you? Are the Olympics in your future?

A: I tried out for the Olympics in 2016, and tore my Achilles just three months before. I was devastated. I really wanted to quit gymnastics. That being said, my Olympic dreams have not died. I have been training some elite routines to kind of prepare for the Olympics this year, just in case.

Q: Are Olympic gymnastics different from the routines that you do?

A: [Olympic gymnastics] have been so cookie-cutter, very ballet, very classical. I'm really pushing boundaries by doing things that are modern, new, urban. In college, you have the opportunity to show your personality through your dance and through your music.

There's already been a push of boundaries with Simone [Biles]. She uses music that changes a lot. It's really upbeat, high tempo. That's already a huge push of boundaries, and I just want to push it even further. I want to bring that to the even bigger stage.

Q: Why do you think Olympic gymnastics are so cookie cutter? Obviously people really respond to the kind of routines that you do.

A: That's just the culture of elite gymnastics. That's always how it's been. When I was doing elite gymnastics back in the day, it was like, "Don't smile, don't laugh, don't talk." It's so intense, so strict. When we're out there and it looks like we're robots, it's literally just because there's no emotion behind it. There's no feeling.

Q: Do you think Olympic gymnastics could change?

A: I hope so. I want it to. I want it to be an enjoyable place for literally every gymnast.

I want to inspire young Black gymnasts because it's really rare to see us doing this sport. I want to let them all know: You can do anything you set your mind to. No matter what people tell you, go after it, and get it.

Q: After gymnastics, what do you want to do?

A: I love dancing. In my free time, I'm always dancing. Honestly, in the middle of practice, I'm dancing.

Q: In the middle of your routine, you're dancing.

A: Exactly. One day I want to be somebody's backup dancer - maybe for Janet Jackson or Missy Elliott. I've felt like gymnastics has always defined me. But over the years I've learned that there are so many things I can contribute to this world.

I don't have it all figured out, but I'm getting there.

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WATCH: This Black Lives Matter-inspired gymnastics routine is going viral - IOL

In retrospect, the zany-keen ideas behind productions spawned by indie opera company Heartbeat Opera appear to be no-brainers. Celebrate the 250th birthday of a classical music composer who lost his ability to hear (yes, Beethoven) with the sound of revoked-by-incarceration and often-silenced voices of singers and volunteers from six prison choirs? Simple concept!

But the concept goes deeper than that. Engage professional vocalists and dancers to join the choirs and an exceptional eight-member band (with instrumentalists from the prisons featured in given selections) to create nine interconnected music videos? Yeah, sure thing! Add a contemporary slant by curating the cast and crew with an ear to young talent and eyes aiming to rectify historical imbalances when it comes to presenting people of color in classical music? For repertory, choose excerpts from Beethovens Fidelio, Negro spirituals, and musical works or words by Harry T. Burleigh,Florence Price, Langston Hughes,and Anthony Davis andThulani Davis?

Certainly, we could have thought of all of that ... except we didnt, and Heartbeat Opera not only thought of it all, they made the visual album project titled Breathing Free happen during a pandemic that had the artists rehearsing remotely on Zoom. The cast recorded individual audio tracks and videos that were filmed in separate locations. A music team compiled the recordings and a team of cinematographers led by filmmaker Anaiis Cisco collaborated on the videos that complete and connect the nine episodes forming the 45-minute work.

Presented with support from Santa Monicas The Broad Stage in a series of West Coast virtual premieres during Black History Month, Breathing Free is directed by Heartbeat Opera co-founder Ethan Heard. The song cycles Black voices arrive unfiltered and emerge without pretense from the rubble of events in 2020. Speaking raw truth to power, the lyrics and texts echo most unforgettably with the pain of George Floyds murder or arrive textured with the reverberations of a contentious political environment. In other sections, powerful unity demonstrates a people equipped to counter the forces of systemic bias perhaps these voices strengthened by the Black Lives Matter movement and how it spread around the world yet the music is rarely without grief-stricken tones lamenting twin pandemics COVID-19 and racial injustice that continue to disproportionately devastate the lives of black, brown and indigenous bodies. From the guest artists, the singers inside these six prisons and the voices of protest and resilience heard in traditional spirituals and newer compositions, the song cycles themes include strength, pain, dignity, honor, protest, betrayal, grace, and most hopefully, future dreams of justice and equity.

The program is presented Feb. 10 and 13 by The Broad Stage, and Feb. 2027 by the Mondavi Center. Follow the venue links for more details.

Each screening of Breathing Free is followed by a live panel discussion with the artists and advocates speaking on themes introduced by the film. Prison choirs participating in the project include Oakdale Community Choir, KUJI Mens Chorus, UBUNTU Mens Chorus, HOPE Thru Harmony Womens Choir, East Hill Singers and Voices of Hope.

Repertory presented in Breathing Free includes:

Balm in Gilead traditional,arr. Sean Mayes

Lovely Dark and Lonely music by Harry T. Burleigh, words by Langston Hughes

Malcolms Aria from X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X music by Anthony Davis,libretto by Thulani Davis, story by Christopher Davis,arr. Sean Mayes

Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child traditional

Songs to the Dark Virgin music by Florence Price, words by Langston Hughes

Four excerpts fromFidelio music by Ludwig van Beethoven, libretto by Joseph Sonnleithner and Georg Friedrich Sonnleithner,arr. Daniel Schlosberg

Abscheulicher! (Abominable one! Leonores aria)

O welche Lust (Oh what a joy prisoners chorus)

Gott! Welch Dunkel hier! (God! what darkness here Florestans aria)

Euch werde Lohn (You shall be rewarded Act II trio)

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Beethoven Meets Black Lives Matter in Heartbeat Opera's Breathing Free - San Francisco Classical Voice

Black Lives Matter (BLM), international social movement, formed in the United States in 2013, dedicated to fighting racism and anti-Black violence, especially in the form of police brutality. The name Black Lives Matter signals condemnation of the unjust killings of Black people by police (Black people are far more likely to be killed by police in the United States than white people) and the demand that society value the lives and humanity of Black people as much as it values the lives and humanity of white people.

Protesters carrying Black Lives Matter signs at a demonstration against police brutality in Boston, Massachusetts, May 2020.

BLM activists have held large and influential protests in cities across the United States as well as internationally. A decentralized grassroots movement, Black Lives Matter is led by activists in local chapters who organize their own campaigns and programs. The chapters are affiliated with the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, a nonprofit civil rights organization that is active in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

BLM was cofounded as an online movement (using the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter on social media) by three Black community organizersPatrisse Khan-Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi. They formed BLM after George Zimmerman, a man of German and Peruvian descent, was acquitted on charges stemming from his fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed Black teenager, in Sanford, Florida, in February 2012. Zimmerman, a neighbourhood-watch volunteer, had seen Martin walking in his neighbourhood and called the police because he thought Martin looked suspicious. Although police told Zimmerman not to do anything, he followed Martin, got into an argument with him, and shot and killed him. Zimmerman remained free for weeks after the shooting but was finally charged with second-degree murder and arrested in April, after demonstrations demanding his prosecution were held in cities across the United States. At his trial more than a year later, Zimmerman claimed that he had acted in self-defense. His acquittal in July 2013 was widely perceived as a miscarriage of justice and led to further nationwide protests.

The BLM movement expanded in 2014 after the police killings of two unarmed Black men, Eric Garner and Michael Brown. Garner died in Staten Island, New York, after a white police officer held him in a prolonged illegal choke hold, which was captured in a video taken by a bystander. Brown, a teenager, was shot and killed by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. Large protests of these deaths in the name of Black Lives Matter captured national and international attention. The BLM movement thereafter continued to play a prominent role in demonstrations against police brutality and racism. Notably, BLM activists protested the deaths at the hands of police or while in police custody of several other Black people, including Sandra Bland, Philando Castile, Freddie Gray, Laquan McDonald, Tamir Rice, Walter Scott, Alton Sterling, and Breonna Taylor.

National march against police brutality, Washington, D.C., December 2014.

In 2020 George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, was pronounced dead after a white Minneapolis police officer knelt on Floyds neck for several minutes, despite Floyds repeated protests that he could not breathe. Wide circulation of a bystanders video of Floyds last minutes triggered massive demonstrations in cities throughout the United States and across the globe. The tragedy swayed U.S. public opinion in favour of the Black Lives Matter movement while drawing wide attention to the problem of entrenched racism in American society.

The Black Lives Matter movement has many goals. BLM activists seek to draw attention to the many ways in which Black people are treated unfairly in society and the ways in which institutions, laws, and policies help to perpetuate that unfairness. The movement has fought racism through such means as political action, letter writing campaigns, and nonviolent protests. BLM seeks to combat police brutality, the over-policing of minority neighbourhoods, and the abuses committed by for-profit jails. Its efforts have included calls for better training for police and greater accountability for police misconduct. BLM activists have also called for defunding the policethat is, reducing police department budgets and investing the freed-up funds in community social services, such as mental health and conflict-resolution programs. BLM activists have also worked on voter registration and get-out-the-vote campaigns in Black communities. In addition, BLM programs have celebrated Black artists and writers.

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Black Lives Matter | Definition, Goals, History ...

Its agenda is plain for all to see: cop-killing.

With another two police officers shot at the Black Lives Matter riot in Louisville on Wednesday, its time to lift the veil on the whole movement: Its a haven for unrepentant cop-killers.

These arent isolated incidents. It has been fewer than two weeks since supposedly peaceful BLM radicals chanted, We hope they die, while blocking the entrance to a hospital where two Los Angeles County sheriffs deputies were undergoing life-saving surgery. An assailant had walked up to their patrol vehicle and opened fire from point-blank range without provocation.

Those chilling words echo the rhetoric we hear from BLM founders and members, who make clear that a prime objective of BLM is to Kill Cops. Up until now, this has been kept well enough under wraps to deceive major corporations, professional sports leagues and countless well-meaning Americans.

Joe Biden has made propagating this movements lies a centerpiece of his presidential campaign, waiting months before condemning the wanton violence perpetrated by BLM. Staff members on the Biden campaign contributed money to secure the release of rioters charged with crimes. Meanwhile, progressive Democratic prosecutors refused to even charge some of the worst rioters.

Some people try to separate BLM the organization from the movement that goes by the same name, but at most they are two sides of the same coin. From the start, both the organization and the movement BLM writ large have been about hatred and violence that extends beyond police and includes all white people, all blacks who are conservative and the United States of America.

We saw this in 2014, when BLM first attained national prominence. After months of anti-police rioting, a man pledging revenge for Michael Brown and Eric Garner traveled to New York City, stuck a pistol through the window of a squad car and opened fire. Detectives Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu died on the scene.

I mourned the officers like the rest of New York did. And when I met with the Ramos and Liu families, I was aghast. I reiterated my call for politicians to abandon their reckless anti-police rhetoric. Maybe, I suggested, they should spend the next four months not talking about police hatred, but talking about what they are going to do about bringing down crime in the community.

Nineteen months later, a man opened fire at a BLM protest in Dallas, murdering five officers. BLM disavowed responsibility, but the killer had deep links to the movements radical ideology, stating that he wanted to kill white people, especially white officers. BLM supporters certainly didnt stop chanting Pigs in a blanket, fry em like bacon in the aftermath, either.

BLM counts on a legion of journalists who believe BLM will help advance a progressive agenda. They will never admit that violence against police isnt an unfortunate outgrowth of the BLM movement but the central point.

Black Lives Matter isnt about black lives. It ignores the 8,000 to 9,000 black lives taken by other blacks every year in minority communities across the nation. Those black lives, and the lives of African American police officers, dont matter.

Black Lives Matter isnt about holding police accountable, and it isnt a good-faith call for reasonable reform.

If we had a functioning mainstream media, this would be common knowledge by now. Instead, people are learning the real nature of BLM by watching protesters scream We hope they die outside a hospital where two cops are fighting for their lives.

The time has come to face the facts. If you ever supported Black Lives Matter, then you are either a left-wing radical or you got duped. There is no shame in the latter. By design, the relentlessly repeated cry of Black lives matter is an unassailable moral truism, calculated to bully people into supporting a radical, revolutionary, anti-order movement.

The good news is that it isnt too late to make the right decision. You can be a good person who decries racism and condemns police misconduct yet still reject violent left-wing radicalism unequivocally. You can stand for the safety and human dignity of black people and of all people and simultaneously stand with the police officers who maintain law and order.

It starts with rejecting BLM and every politician who has been cynical enough to enable the radical forces intent on tearing this country apart. When you see Black Lives Matter, realize they are dedicated to killing cops. Too much blood has been spilled already. It has to stop.

Rudolph Giuliani is the former mayor of New York City.

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Face facts: Black Lives Matter is all about hate

In the wake of police violence against George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Jacob Blake and countless other Black men and women, the Black Lives Matter movement once again has the national spotlight. But with so much confusion and disinformation plaguing the conversation, not everyone understands what BLM is or how it works.

At best, myths about Black Lives Matter prevent people from giving their support. At worst, these myths actively detract from the movement and the anti-racism work its members have been doing.

What some people might call myths, I dont see them as myths I see them as tools by other groups used to do harm, stop change and maintain the status quo, said Richard M. Cooper, a clinical assistant professor at Widener University whose work centers on race and social justice issues.

In other words, myths dont just fall from the sky. Theyre created. They are a tool to provide misinformation, to incite fear, to get people to misunderstand an issue so that ...we dont have to promote structural change, Cooper said.

With that said, heres a look at the most harmful untruths surrounding the Black Lives Matter movement that need to end.

1. Its new.

The phrase Black lives matter wasnt really part of the modern conversation until the killing of Trayvon Martin, when writer and activist Alicia Garza included the phrase in a Facebook post and it was amplified by others. But the idea has been fought for over the past several hundred years.

Its really a continuation of the legacy of fighting for civil rights and social justice by people of color, particularly Black people.... It just happens to be called Black Lives Matter now, Cooper said.

He added that the only thing thats really changed is the access activists have to platforms, particularly online, and the speed with which people can get that information. But we are still talking about an ethnic group of people who have had to constantly and consistently fight for social agency and human rights in a society that continues to find ways to deny them of such, Cooper said.

2. Its disorganized.

There are three well-known founders of the Black Lives Matter organization, including Garza, but the general movement by that same name is a decentralized, grassroots effort that spans regions, demographics and mediums. For that reason, some critics say that it lacks leadership or a clear agenda. However, Cooper said this is largely a generational misunderstanding.

When it comes to the fight for civil rights, older generations were accustomed to seeing it unfold a certain way: A national or regional leader would serve as the spokesperson, organizing protests, sit-ins and other methods of demonstration, and lead the charge for change.

Black Lives Matter, on the other hand, exists in pockets across the country (and the globe). Theres no right way to get the message across, and members from hyperlocal chapters and other organizations rely on a variety of methods, including sustained protesting, social media campaigns, art and poetry.

SETH HERALD via Getty Images

According to Cooper, the criticism shows a lack of understanding about the particular features of the organizers and their strategies. They have been very smart and organic, Cooper said.

For an outsider, it might seem disorganized. But like demonstrations of the past, such as the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott in the 1950s, many strategic choices have been made that people of color dont get enough credit for, Cooper said. It shows a level of sophistication, actually, and an understanding of nuances and regional differences that this group has organized far better than past movements.

3. Its pro-violence.

About 93% of the 10,600-plus racial justice protests in the U.S. this summer have been peaceful. Those that did become violent involved aggression by police or by counterprotesters from extremist groups, researchers noted. But one-off instances of violence, looting and aggressive demonstrators have been conflated to suggest the Black Lives Matter movement employs and condones violence.

Its absurd because its the thing were protesting against, said Michelle Saahene, co-founder of the activist group From Privilege to Progress. People need to be able to differentiate between protesters and rioters, or protesters and opportunists.

The unfortunate truth is that there will always be outliers who look for opportunities to cause chaos or harm during tense times. Looting and riots also occur because of hurricanes, sporting events and for many other terrible reasons. That doesnt excuse the violence surrounding Black Lives Matter protests, by any means. But it is important to understand that the actions of these individuals are not aligned with the mission of the movement.

And sometimes the violence is strategic. The riots that took place in Minneapolis following the police killing of George Floyd, for example, were stoked by a white supremacist. Two people were killed and a medic was wounded by a white teenager with a semiautomatic rifle at a Black Lives Matter protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, last month.

Because theres so much anti-Blackness, and white supremacy wants to be protected at all costs, people go out of their way to make it look like this movement is a violent movement, Saahene said. People really need to just think a little bit deeper... about what Black Lives Matter actually stands for and what theyre fighting against. Violence just doesnt make any sense.

4. Its anti-police.

Law enforcements track record with Black Americans is troubling, to say the least. Not only are Black men and women disproportionately stopped, arrested and killed by police, many of these instances of violence occur following 911 calls for fairly routine issues.

But the Black Lives Matter movement is not about retaliation or eliminating police. Rather, its about examining the structure of law enforcement and how it can better serve communities, especially Black and brown ones.

Defunding the police is a big part of that goal. And that idea is scary to a lot of people, often because they dont understand what it means. Defunding isnt about abolishing law enforcement. Its to look at how police departments have been funded to do things that they shouldnt necessarily have to do anyway and dont necessarily do well, that would be better met by other groups whove been trained differently and provided better resources, Cooper said.

For example, domestic disturbances or mental health crises could be responded to by social workers or medical professionals rather than armed police officers. If you come to a situation with a weapon, there is a possibility, even with a particular police officer who may be well-intentioned, for something to escalate if for no other reason than youre coming with a gun, Cooper said. The goal would be to deescalate these types of situations without the need for force and hopefully save lives in the process.

5. Its racist.

The phrase Black lives matter is not meant to be divisive. And yet it ruffles some (white) peoples feathers. Some even go so far as to claim that prioritizing Black lives is a form of reverse racism (which, by the way, is not a thing).

Because our lives are treated as if they dont matter, we have to specifically say that they do, Saahene said. Its just a phrase to get people to understand that because you have black skin does not mean that you should be treated any differently and certainly doesnt mean that your life should be cut short.

Were not saying Black lives matter more, were saying they matter too, added Melissa DePino, who co-founded From Privilege to Progress alongside Saahene. Its not about giving someone more and someone else less. Its about creating a situation in which everybody has the same privileges.

6. Its a front for Democratic funding.

Saahene said that there is a misconception that the Black Lives Matter movement arose for the purpose of gaining political control.

One of the biggest contributors to this idea is likely a now-deleted Facebook post that claimed donations to Black Lives Matter were being funneled to a Democrat Super PAC.

The claims were based on a video circulated on social media that showed that attempts to make donations on the Black Lives Matter website redirected users to a website called ActBlue. The video then showed a page on OpenSecrets.org that tracked how ActBlue spends its money, highlighting several multimillion-dollar contributions to campaigns for Democratic presidential candidates such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and former Vice President Joe Biden.

What is misunderstood in this video and the subsequent Facebook post is that ActBlue is simply a donation processing platform. Though it is popular among Democratic politicians and progressive nonprofits, it acts similarly to PayPal or other online payment systems. ActBlue doesnt actually pocket any of the donations or decide how theyre allocated. A donation to Black Lives Matter goes to Black Lives Matter.

Though members of the movement do seek to change many of the laws and policies that harm Black people, Saahene said, its not a political group. Theyre activists like me.

7. Its on Black BLM supporters to fix racism.

Though it can be tempting for white people to lean on Black friends and colleagues to educate them about racism and point out where its happening, the truth is that its not their job to fix racism. Theres enough emotional labor to dealing with racism in everyday life; the last thing white allies need to do is add to that burden.

When youre doing anti-racism work, you cant always have the victims doing the work, Cooper said. Its those who have the advantages, structurally and historically, who need to be rolling up their sleeves.

DePino agreed that racism is not a Black problem and its up to white people to learn history, acknowledge and understand their biases, and figure out how to stop causing harm, even if its unintentional. Thats the work that we have to do. And we cant just pay attention when someone gets murdered. We have to pay attention all the time and integrate it into our everyday life.

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7 Myths About Black Lives Matter That People Need To Stop ...

On June 23, local filmmaker and photographer Sekou Keita proposed a Black Lives Matter mural at a Carrboro Town Council meeting. Seven months later, Carrboro has two murals supporting the Black Lives Matter movement.

After months of Black Lives Matter protests, residents and Town Council members hope the mural will keep the momentum of the movement going and bring the community together. Keita said at the June 23 meeting that he saw art bringing communities together in Greensboro and other cities in North Carolina, and wanted to unify the Town by creating a mural that would speak for all residents.

To see the murals, visit the Carrboro Century Center at 125 W. Main St. or CommunityWorx 100 N. Greensboro St.

Besides the ongoing pandemic, the mural creation process overcame logistical challenges such as determining location, position and design. Town Council member Barbara Foushee said the amount of respect and reverence the murals would receive depended on the presentation of the Black Lives Matter message.

She said she approves of the newly-installed murals on the side of the Carrboro Century Center and the CommunityWorx Thrift Shop, both prominent locations, after voting against the originally proposed mural placement in an Oct. 6 Town Council meeting.

Up high on the Century Center? That's a place of reverence and respect, you know?" Foushee said. "Reverence and respect to the message behind the mural, which is supporting the Black lives within the community and across the nation."

Both murals were painted by Black artists. Erbriyon Barrett, an Atlanta-based muralist, painted the Black Lives Matter mural on the Carrboro Century Center, home to the Carrboro Police Department. Barrett said painting the Black Lives Matter message on that building in particular made him realize how serious the Carrboro Town Council was about bringing representation to the community.

"That was very interesting to me in a good way, not a bad way," he said. "It was just like, 'Oh wow. They're really serious about this.' So I really appreciate that.

He said he appreciated the dedication the Council showed toward the mural creation process and how the community welcomed him with open arms.

It's important because I know we couldn't do this 40, 50 years ago out of fear, out of not knowing what's gonna happen next," Barrett said. "We have a bigger voice than we had back then.

Barrett completed the "Black Lives Matter" mural on Jan. 15.

The community came together to create the mural on the CommunityWorx building. Tyrone Small, a local artist and mural coordinator, led a team of four student artists from surrounding high schools, who created all of the design and renderings for the building.

The team completed the mural on Dec. 18. It was Smalls first time leading a team, and he said the students drove the project with their dedication to bringing people together and making their voices heard.

They wanted to have a voice in a time where they felt like they weren't heard," Small said. "For them to say that, and then come up with the brand-new piece that they did, you can take away something from everything in this particular piece. That's what I love about it. It just speaks in so many different ways in all languages."

Foushee shared similar sentiments and said the murals show Carrboros dedication to bringing equal representation to their community.

We're very proud of the murals and the message that it sends as far as the Town and the Council's continuing commitment to the Black community, as well as to dismantling racism and balancing the scale, Foushee said.

@sarahgraybarr

@DTHCityState | city@dailytarheel.com

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'Reverence and respect': Carrboro honors Black Lives Matter with two murals - The Daily Tar Heel

Falling midwaybetween Donald Trump's second impeachment and Joe Biden's inauguration, Jan.16 markeda less-noticed but arguably more important commemoration, the 235thanniversary of the passage of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. That is nowcommonly recognized as the first law to establish religious freedom, and was one of three achievements that its author, Thomas Jefferson, had inscribed on his tombstone. That datehas been officially recognized as Religious Freedom Daysince 1993, and amidso much political tumult, it went almost overlooked this year. But it goesto the core of what America is all about, what Trump's supporters are trying to destroy, and what Black Lives Matter demonstrators so emphatically affirmed this past year.

Jefferson's statute provided unlimited freedom of conscience for all a pluralistic paradise.But ever since Barack Obama's election in 2008, the religious right has seized on Religious Freedom Day as a key part of itsOrwellian propaganda campaign to redefine religious freedom as a license to discriminate, an exclusionary license forreligious bigotry and sectarian dominance the exact opposite of what Jefferson fundamentally believed in. Soit's only natural that both Jefferson and the Virginia Statute are almost entirely absent from any of the right's gaslighting celebrations of religious freedom.

Since 2016 (as I've reported),a growing chorus of religious and secular progressives organized in part by people like Frederick Clarkson, senior research analyst at Political Research Associates have pushed back, seekingreclaim Jefferson's original intent, which he later made explicit, writingthat the Statute contained "within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohametan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination."Recovering the original meaning also entails pushing back against the right's anti-choice and anti-LGBTQ politics, which they've sought to protect under the mantle of their own beliefs, while forcing those beliefs on others.

Of course, Jefferson hascome in for increasing criticism from the left as well, due to his slaveholder status, which looms larger than ever after lastyear's historic Black Lives Matters protests. But rather than argue over Jefferson's undeniable individual flaws, there's a growing movement in the Black religious community to adopt a much broader and deeper critical view of the discourse of religious freedom, even if it was initially promulgated by a slave-owning empire. These new voices are more in synch than at odds with those previously engaged in the battle to reclaim religious freedom, as seen in a roundtable forum produced by Political Research Associates, "Religious Freedom and the Machinations of the Christian Right," held on Jan.14.

Two days earlier, the shared perspective among Black Christians and non-Christians was richly explored in Freedom Forum's book launch and webinar, "African Americans & Religious Freedom: New Perspectives for Congregations & Communities." Black people in the Americas, enslaved with a set of Christian justifications "and displaced from their lands, culture, religions and ancestors, have a unique and fierce historical commitment to the ideals of freedom," Baptist theologian Faith B. Harris writes in the first chapter of the book (pdf here). "With their very presence, New World Africans have a unique claim to religious freedom, despite the rhetoric embedded in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence."

As the New York Times' 1619 Project reminds us, this presence predates Jefferson's statute by more than a century and a half. Harris continues: "Indeed, Black religion is best expressed by an enduring relationship to a freedom-loving/giving God. Theologian Kelly Brown Douglas argues that in the Black theological imagination, God is free and to be in a relationship with God is to be free."

The Rev. William H. Lamar IV, pastor of the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C., raises provocative questions about the very language involved. "The concept of religious freedom strikes me as another rhetorical arrow in the quiver of nationalistic propaganda," he writes. "I am not moved by a nation that trumpets liberty while exterminating First Nations people, brutally enslaving and extracting labor from Africans and crushing the poor masses by hocking the universal benefits of capitalism."

From the beginning of European colonization in North America, Vanderbilt theologian Teresa L. Smallwood notes, "It was the twin discourses of race and religion which shaped the discourse of religious freedom. The organizing principle of British colonial societies followed a religious logic and privileged landholding white men. These religious men acted brutally and used the labor of enslaved Africans to generate considerable wealth." In contrast, she notes, "Whatever the convention Protestant, Catholic, Muslim, Jewish, non-denominational, Indigenous African Americans exercised religious freedom largely as a means of resistance and in the face of prolonged tyranny."

This larger perspective grounded in the basic material experience of slavery, resistanceand continued struggled puts the focus on deeds more than words, and on practices, institutionsand history more than disembodied arguments, be they theological, philosophical, judicial or political. A key text cited by several contributors was Tisa Wenger's 2017 book "Religious Freedom: The Contested History of an American Ideal." Wenger explained:

Rather than asking how adequately Americans have achieved this freedom or how rapidly it advanced,I wanted to know who appealed to religious freedom, for what purposes, and what it meant to them. Somewhat unexpectedly, race and empire quickly emerged as key themes in my analysis. I found that some of the most frequent and visible articulations of American religious freedom were exclusive, even coercive. The dominant voices in the culture linked racial whiteness, Protestant Christianity, and American national identity not only to freedom in general but often to this freedom in particular.The most audible varieties of religious freedom talk ...helped define American whiteness and make the case for U.S.imperial rule.

But in response, the racialized and colonialized subjects of U.S. empire also rearticulated thisfreedom to defend themselves and their traditions. For them, religious freedom became a way to redefine communal identities, to carve out space for themselves and their traditions within the confines of a racialized empire, and even to resist its mandates.

Her book focuses on the period from the Spanish-American War of 1898 to World War II, "a pivotal period in our histories of race and empire but one that most scholarship on religious freedom has neglected," she explains. Muchthe same sorts of observations can be applied all the wayfrom the colonial era to the present. And her perspective frames both the embrace of and skepticism toward the idea of religious freedom.

"There has always been just enough religious freedom in America for Black folk to nourish dreams of freedom, but hardly ever enough religious freedom for those dreams to be fully realized," writes Lamar. "This conundrum is, in essence, the foundation upon which my reluctant identification with the ideal of religious freedom rests who has unimpeachable, unassailable religious freedom in America? Wenger reminds us that for Native Americans and Black nationalists it was curtailed. Who then can take this American ideal and use it to craft theological visions unmolested by imperial power? Can Black churches ever fully enjoy this ideal?"

On the other hand, Rahmah A. Abdulaleem,executive director ofKARAMAH: Muslim Women Lawyers for Human Rights, sees a stronger underlying foundation in the lived reality of African-American life the religious diversity and pluralism she traces back to colonial times in her book chapter, "Race, Religious Pluralism and Religious Freedom," which she brought up to date in her forum presentation.

"I think it's important to focus on the fact that after 9/11 so many Americans were asked, 'Do you know any Muslims?' and most African-Americans could say, 'Yeah, I know Muslims. I grew up with them. They're in in my family.' We weren't others," she said. "So African Americans really need to focus on the fact that we always welcome others. It's always been important to us because we know what's like to be in the minority. We know what it's like to be otherized."

She continued with a moving and important family example:

My grandmother was blessed with 11 children and she considers herself a Universalist but not as a Universalist for the Universalist Church. She's like, "I'm universalist because my oldest daughter was a Buddhist, I have a daughter who is a deaconess in the Baptist Church, I have a son who's an imam, I have two sons that are Catholic." It's so important that for her they're all her children and they all are having some kind of connection to something bigger than them.

These important Black voices have not yet been woven into the heart of religious freedom debates. But the promise of their imminent inclusion is a cause for renewed hope. While the religious right feeds constantly on victimhood fantasies, the African-American experience grounded in four centuries of actual victimhood has produced a rich diversity of humane and sober religious responses, along with its own freethinking and atheist traditions as well.

Indeed, a fair amount of the discussion held by Political Research Associates intersected with perspectives and concerns raised in the Freedom Forum book and webinar. As Frederick Clarkson put it:

This profoundly liberatory thing we call religious freedom came out of this morass of racism and genocide and extraordinary criminality, that the very people who were opposing Empire colonialism effectively replaceddomestically. Sowhat they did do was to giveus this extraordinary idea of religious freedom: "OK,we still have an empire of sorts, but you are free to think differently than the people who hold power." You can therefore speak differently andyou can have an oppositional press and you can organize politically differently. That was the opening, and they recognized that. But they realized their time as rulers might end, and should end. That is the extraordinary paradox of American culture and democracy that we actually still live through in many respects today.

"When you talk about urgently needing to address religious freedom and decolonization," ex-evangelical writer Chrissy Stroop said, "one thing that I think it's important to point out is how intertwined white supremacy is with white Christianity and particularly the white evangelical tradition. S, the same people who are trying to argue that religious freedom means their freedom to discriminate against other people in a Christian nation are the primary people who are fighting to maintain white supremacism, though many of them would not admit to that."

Stroop went on to cite the example of six seminaries within the Southern Baptist Convention, which "recently issued a statement condemning critical race theory and intersectionality as incompatible with Baptist theology, incompatible with the Bible as the Southern Baptists understand it." Stroop noted that Southern Baptists formed in the 1840s, in a schism from Baptists in the North over whether a slaveholder could be a Christian missionary.

"The Southern Baptist Convention has apologized for that legacy, and yetfails to fully reckon with it," Stroop said. "This explicit rejection by the official Southern Baptist structures of antiracist scholarship and antiracist analytical tools is quite striking," particularly given what has recently transpired.

"For someone like Albert Mohler who is the head of the flagship Southern Baptist seminary to come along and say after last Wednesday's insurrection that he's shocked that Christians would do this, that they would form a mob and storm the capital in support of the racist president, is really quite rich," Stroop remarked. "He just basically made this very racist move, and now he's saying,'I can't believe that people would actually take that to the streets [and]try to overturn an election."

Another participant, the Rev. Dr. Cari Jackson, director of spiritual care and activism at the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, has co-authored an article at Religion Dispatches with Clarkson, "We Can't Have Religious Freedom Without Reproductive Freedom." She brought that connection into the discussion as well, with specific reference to the recent Senate election in Georgia election.

"One of the issues that was raised by some regarding the Rev. Raphael Warnock [who took office this past week] was that he could not be a Christian minister and a supporter of reproductive freedom," Jacksonsaid. To Warnock's opponents, it was as if "he didn't have a right to have a conscience of his own that would embrace both of those, that in many ways he didn't have the right to be a whole person and bring his theology and his politics in this intersectional way that came out with a different result from what people thoughthe should have."

Individual conscience is supposed to be primary in the Baptist tradition a fact that hassomehow been utterly disappeared overthe last 40 years. But Jackson reminded us that Baptists weren't alone in this regard:

Some of you may knowthere is a doctrine within Catholic teaching that says the primacy of conscience hasgreater weight than teachings of the church, and I love that. Martin Luther, who was one of the shapers of the Reformation, also talked about the importance of conscience, and that followingbehind the church hierarchy was not as critical in his own spiritual and religious understanding as following his conscience.So we're in this era now where people are being villainized if their understanding of their conscience does not align with someone else's. That is a supremacist orientation that really not only flies in the face of what it means to be a human living in dignity, it also flies in the face of what it means to be a democratic republic.

She went on to say that while some people are psychopaths or sociopaths, "For most of us conscience leads us to a deep morality that is rooted in compassion and love. Conscience, I believe for most of us, guides us to a higher nature that opens our hearts and our minds and our politics to way of being in society with one another that I think is really critical."

Another facet of the fight to reclaim religious freedom was highlighted in a virtual briefing on the recently-heard Supreme Court case, Fulton v. City of Philadelphia. As the ACLU succinctly explainsit,"On November 4, the Supreme Court heard a case that could allow private agencies that receive taxpayer-funding to provide government services such as foster care providers, food banks, homeless shelters, and more to deny services to people who are LGBTQ, Jewish, Muslim, or Mormon." Thisbriefing was closed to the press, but the moderator, Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons, from the Faith & Progressive Policy Initiative at the Center for American Progress, spoke with Salon afterwards.

"It's a common purpose across many faith groups we work with that we cherish religious freedom and want to celebrate Religious Freedom Day, and reject the false use of religious freedom to discriminate," Graves-Fitzsimmons said. "We want to do both at the same time." He was admittedly one of the few people who woke up the day after the November election to listen to the oral arguments in the Fulton case. But millions of people stand to be affected. "We are facing a challenge of raising awareness around this case, because there's so much going onand the Fulton case could have far-reaching implications beyond the particular circumstances in the case involving the City of Philadelphia and Catholic Social Services," he said. He explaind:

It is part of a larger trend we're seeing, which isconservative legal advocacy groups taking something that is a real core value, like religious freedom, and using it in a deceptive way to attack LGBTQ people and create alicense to discriminate that extends beyond LGBTQ people you have this foster care agency in South Carolina that's saying, "We won't work with Catholics or Jews." So the license to discriminate is broader than LGBTQ people,although that's the issue in this case. Itthen extends to reproductive health and abortion rights, andwe've seen recently at the Supreme Court the use of distorted religious freedom arguments as an excuse to spread the coronavirus. We saw a switch in the Supreme Court's views since Amy Coney Barrett joined the Supreme Court. They went in a different direction than what Justice Roberts and the more liberal justices had done earlier in the pandemic.

But if the Fulton case, and others like it, have gotten too little attention, that's even more true of religious freedom issues in the military, where long-standing Supreme Court doctrine subordinates religious expression to the military mission, which is to preserve freedom for all Americans. That in turn depends on maintaining unit cohesion, good order, moraleand discipline which religious proselytizing necessarily undermine. The Military Religious Freedom Foundation has been fighting Christian nationalism as a destructive force in the military for more than 15 years, warning that it is fundamentally incompatible with the military's mission.

Some branches of the military are better, some worse, at restraining this corrosive force. The Air Force Academy, where MRFF founder and president Mikey Weinstein graduated, is arguably the worst. One of its graduates, Larry Brock, was one of two insurrectionists wearing combat gear arrested in the wake of the Jan.6 Capitol invasion.

"The Air Force Academy is an unconstitutional train wreck of fundamentalist Christians, disgrace and shame," Weinstein told Salon. "Everybody at the Air Force Academy, the cadet wing, the staff and the faculty, all swear an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, not the gospel of Jesus Christ." The failure to live up to that oath can be seen in the fact that MRFF still has "hundreds of clients there, the vast majority of whom are Christians being persecuted by other Christians," Weinstein explained. "For years we've had we still have cadets at the Academy pretending to be fundamentalist Christians," purely because"they hope they'll be left alone."

in an open letter to the Air Force Academy, posted at Daily Kos, the MRFF wrote:"We warned you that this radical, right-wing influence found not only at USAFA, but tolerated or even endorsed by senior officers throughout the Air Force, caused a toxic leadership environment anderoded unit cohesion, good order, morale, and discipline.We constantly worried and warned that these seemingly (to some) innocuous events would lead to embarrassment for our Air Force Academy or worse and that's exactly what's happened."The letter goes on:

The MRFF now calls on the Air Force Academy to not only clearly and publicly condemn the actions of its graduate, Mr. Brock, in the harshest possible manner, but also to call on all other USAFA graduates who attended the insurrection to identify themselves and either turn themselves in to police if they broke the law or disavow the violence and storming of the Capitol if they, themselves, behaved in an otherwise peaceful manner.

To further clarify, Weinstein told Salon, "When you retire and accept a paycheck, you are still under the [Uniform] Military Code of Justice." Brock, like other ex-military insurrectionists, he argued,"should be brought back into the Air Forceand should face a general court martial. He should be visibly and aggressively punished for what he did, as should anyone else that is getting a retirement check."

This is only a small andselective slice of activities related to Religious Freedom Day. In PRA's roundtable, for example, author and journalist Kathryn Joyce discussed her 2019 New Republic article, "The Man Behind the State Department's New 'Natural Law' Focus," illuminating how premodern Catholic teaching about natural law wasused by Trump's State Department to delegitimize modern concepts of human rights concepts that the U.S. governmenthas played a crucial role in developing and promoting. Another roundtable participant, Minnesota State Sen.John Marty, has introduced a resolution honoring the true meaning of Religious Freedom Day.

In the Freedom Forum webinar, Charles Watson Jr., director of education at the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, gave a spirited articulation of the centrality of freedom, in a sense that takes nothing away from anybody else:

I always tell people, I don't want a Biblical noose around my neck, and I don't want God shackles around my feet. I have to be free to change my mind, if I get better information, and my faith has to be free. And the only way for me to have that freedom is to be free to change my mind, think about God how I see fit to think about God, without government interference, and especially without somebody else that doesn't even care enough about me and my body to take up the mantel and fight for me.

This sense of freedom has Baptist roots that long predate Thomas Jefferson and, as Jackson noted, has Catholic and Lutheran roots as well. But Jefferson's contribution was to enshrine that sensibility in law, protecting it as neverbefore. Because Jefferson's vision is so central to the American project and its entire history, there are inevitableramifications everywhere throughout our public life. And because the religious righthas mounted such a sustained attack on his vision, seeking to turn it into a vampiric, soulless caricature of itself, there are countless battlefronts large and small on which Jefferson's vision must be defended and, of absolute necessity,enlarged.

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The struggle for religious freedom from Thomas Jefferson to Black Lives Matter - Salon

Black Lives Matter Protest, Antrell Williams

On January 6th, as a Trumpist mob threatened to shut down Congress and the democratic process, a well-known picture of law enforcement bias was made evident once more. As white men and women broke police barriers, smashed windows, and stormed the Capitol, they were often treated with kid gloves by police who seemed surprised these people could turn violent. The contrast with how Black Lives Matter protesters were treated in the same city just months before could hardly have been sharper.

Research by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) provides further documentation of this divide. Over the course of the last several years, ACLED and the Bridging Divides Initiative (BDI) at Princeton University have been gathering data about political violence, protest, and police response.

Based on ongoing data collection, in their analysis, Demonstrations & Political Violence in America: New Data for Summer 2020, Dr. Roudabeh Kishi and Sam Jones found that 93 percent of all demonstrations associated with the Black Lives Matter movement were nonviolent. Yet, according to ACLED, the use of force against mostly peaceful BLM protesters escalated quickly in over 170 events, or nearly one in 10 demonstrations. This level of police intervention is three times that faced by demonstrators in protests unassociated with BLM.

When police mobilize, the use of force is common. As Kishi and Jones detail, Authorities have used forcesuch as firing less-lethal weapons like tear gas, rubber bullets, and pepper spray or beating demonstrators with batonsin over 54 percent of the demonstrations in which they have engaged.

Writing in the Guardian, Lois Beckett reports on broader data that show that law enforcement was about three times more likely to use force against leftwing versus rightwing protests.

The disparity in police response only grew when comparing peaceful leftwing versus rightwing protests. Looking at the subset of protests in which demonstrators did not engage in any violence, vandalism, or looting, law enforcement officers were about 3.5 times more likely to use force against leftwing protests than rightwing protests, with about 1.8 percent of peaceful leftwing protests and only half a percent of peaceful rightwing protests met with teargas, rubber bullets, or other force from law enforcement.

These findings would not surprise Letitia James, attorney general for the state of New York. Her offices review of New York Citys response to protests earlier this year found, as reported by Marty Johnson in The Hill, a pattern of deeply concerning and unlawful practices that the NYPD [New York Police Department] utilized in response to these largely peaceful protests.The NYPD arrested or detained hundreds of protesters, legal observers, medics and others without legal justificationin total, we found over 155 incidents of officers using excessive and unreasonable force against protesters.

Chidozie Obasi, writing for Harpers Bazaar, puts it more plainly:

The differing treatment of the police, which we saw so plainly at the Capitol, says a lot about white supremacy. It exemplifies how much racial disparity is engrained in the nations system and how white privilege sits at the heart of racial injustice. In times of political strife and social angst, to see the scary reality of racial inequality taken to extreme proportions, look to the US: if Black people were the ones climbing up walls and causing havoc, the consequences would have been far more devastating. More guns would have been fired and the death toll would have been much higher, all at the hands of white power. To put it simply: if you are white and angry you get away with untold crimes, but if you are Black and show a sentiment of anxiety, if you protest for basic human rights, you are demonized.

ACLEDs researchers warned back in December 2020 that the trajectory of right-wing mobilizations were on the increase, albeit met with very limited government intervention (low levels of force, rare arrests, minimal legal consequences), while the total number of demonstrations involving militias increased dramatically after the election.

The question of how to reform our approaches to law enforcement and policing is being hotly debated. We may breathe more easily provided Inauguration Day passes calmly, but would do well to not lose sight of the underlying fragility of our nation.Martin Levine and Sofia Jarrin

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A Tale of Two Systems: Police Response to Black Lives Matter and Proud Boys - Non Profit News - Nonprofit Quarterly