Daily Archives: May 3, 2021

Over the past year, we have experienced unprecedented conditions and needs for organizing work: a restriction on in-person gathering and increased reliance on digital mediums, a historic uprising for Black lives that swept across the continent all summer long and the widespread expansion of abolitionist thought and practice. This convergence and preceding oppressive conditions led to the formal creation of the Cops Off Campus Coalition in fall 2020. Drawing on long histories of liberatory movements, this coalition brings together over 60 abolitionist organizations and campaigns on university campuses across the United States and Canada. We are students, alumni and workers at institutions miles apart, united around three central demands:

We are rising up to demand all cops off of all campuses be they public or private, K-12, university or college; we demand the land back into Indigenous hands; and we demand a campus and community that are truly free and safe for all.

At Stanford University specifically, we demand the following:

Colleges and universities spend millions of dollars on their police forces; Stanford University spends roughly $25 million on its Department of Public Safety alone, or roughly one-third of the entire budget for the Office of Student Affairs (and its 29 offices combined). To our knowledge, this is one of the most expensive campus police departments in the country: UC Berkeley spends $3 million less for a campus population over twice our size. This spending occurs while states cut appropriations for higher education and schools impose layoffs, furlough workers, slash wages and more amid the pandemic.

Yet none of this increased spending, militarization and policing leaves us any more safe. In 2015, Sam DuBose, an unarmed Black man, was shot and killed by a University of Cincinnati police officer during a traffic stop. In 2017, campus police killed Georgia Tech student Scout Schultz during a period of distress due to mental illness. In 2018, the University of Chicago Police Department shot Charles Thomas, a fourth-year Black student, during a mental health crisis. Also in 2018, Portland State University fired at Jason Washington 17 times and killed him as he was trying to break up a fight. A Yale campus officer was one of two officers who shot Stephanie Washington, an unarmed Black woman, in New Haven in 2019. In the past decade, California State University police officers have killed two unarmed people of color and maintained a jail on the CSU Northridge campus. The University of California police system has a history of using its police departments to brutalize students and to surveil and assault activists. And in 2002, an SUDPS deputy was involved in the fatal shooting of Pedro Calderon at the base of the Stanford foothills.

These countless incidents of repression, racial profiling, brutality and violence fundamentalcharacteristics of policing, inherent to its design are why we choose to join the national Cops off Campus Coalitions May 3 Day of Refusal.

On Monday, May 3, we join the countless students, faculty and staff who are absenting themselves from work, class, teaching and all forms of university labor. We cannot be complicit in the violence of our institutions. Students, faculty, staff, alumni, any group affiliated with the University we must use our respective positionalities to pressure our institutions to take care of us and our communities. At profit-hungry universities, this wont happen on its own. We have to mobilize our people power and demand change. So, we encourage all members of all campus communities, whether or not classes are in session at their institution, to withhold their labor on May 3 in solidarity with the movement to abolish campus police and all police in general.

On May 3, we will gather at White Plaza to hear and see a chorus of campaigns joined in this struggle, which will be streamed across multiple platforms at 11 a.m. PT. We will continue to hold this space for folks interested in abolition and our work, until and through the nation-wide dance party event at 1 p.m. PT. This Day of Refusal across Turtle Island is only the beginning of Abolition May, a series of direct actions taken up by member campuses throughout the month, beginning with all campuses on May 3 and community events on May 25 in honor of the life of George Floyd, who was murdered by Minneapolis police on May 25, 2020. Each campaign has its own individual targets, demands and tactics, but all unite under one principled demand: an end to campus policing.

Read the full Day of Refusal pledge, signed by over 170 members and organizations of our campus community, here.

Abolish Stanford

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Op-Ed | Join the May 3 Day of Refusal - The Stanford Daily

During the trial of now-convicted former police officer Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd, Americans waited to see if the criminal justice system valued Black life. While the wake of the verdict was a cause for celebration for many, it was the opposite for the families of Daunte Wright and Ma'Khia Bryant. Wright was killed at the age of 20 during Chauvins trial. Bryant was killed at the age of 16 the day the verdict was announced.

Clearly, neither the national attention around the trial nor the guilty verdict of one officer prevented the police state from continuing to take Black lives. Yet, only 18% of Americans believe the criminal justice system needs a complete overhaul because guilty verdicts of crooked cops are paraded, like bandaids on bullet holes, as proof that this system works. The problem is that murderers being held accountable after the fact will not prevent the execution of Black people by our institutions.

That is why we need to abolish the police state.

The idea of abolition has been stigmatized and made to seem radical, but freedom from policing is not unfamiliar to those living in White suburbia, who do not see police patrolling their streets in the same way that diverse, urban communities do. Dr. Sandibel Borges, a women and gender studies professor, explained to me that this is because of the police states role in upholding white supremacy. The way that law enforcement works now in the US is rooted in slave patrols, she explained, During times of slavery, people would actually volunteer to catch people who had been enslaved and who had ran away. And so that's sort of like the infrastructure of how law enforcement works today.

Police officers are trained to kill when feeling threatened. This, in conjunction with officers implicit bias and systematic targeting of Black people through Americas criminal law, is what results in the tragedies we see on the news far too often. Dr. Deanna Cooke, the director of engaged learning for LMU's Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts, explained, There's an overall context where Black and Brown people in particular are impacted disproportionately at every stage of the injustice system, right? So stopped more, arrested more disproportionately. Consider that Black people are nearly four times more likely than white people to get arrested for marijuana possession, despite having roughly the same rate of usage.

Elaborating on that systematic targeting, many of our laws seem to be less oriented in preventing harm than they are about finding ways to feed the prison industrial complex. Those laws tend to impact minority groups most, because they prey on circumstances exacerbated by poverty. In America, poverty and race are intertwined through a long tapestry of economic injustice.

Dr. Borges highlighted that problem, asking, How is it possible that, in many cases, drug use is criminalized, but no support is provided for people who have drug addictions? ... How is it possible that sex work is criminalized when a lot of people engage in sex work because that's the only way that they have to make enough money to survive in such a capitalist, oppressive system? People are criminalized for migrating for searching for livable homes.

Despite the consensus among well-intentioned people that the criminal justice system is broken, abolition is still hard for many to imagine since the police state has always existed in this country. However, Dr. Cooke described ways to create opportunities for minority communities that could help obviate the need for policing in the first place. Incentivizing the development of entrepreneurship in small businesses that employ a majority of people, thinking about what a minimum wage should look like so that it's a living wage, reducing the barriers for people who do have [criminal] records to getting jobs, making sure that our educational system is really responding to the needs of our young people making sure that folks have access to mental health services and social services. she explained.

Finding solutions to societal problems is more effective than shoving people affected by those problems behind metal bars, or murdering them in cold blood. Its time to address these issues head on, from economic inequality to social justice, to make policing unnecessary to begin with.

Unprecedented societal changes like abolition may sound radical and absurd, but nothing is more absurd that our institutions blatant and systemic disregard for Black lives.

This is the opinion of Anish Mohanty, a sophomore applied information management systems major from Union City, California. Tweet comments @LALoyolan or email editor@theloyolan.com.

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Making the case for abolition of the police state - Los Angeles Loyolan

When I first started going to protests against police brutality in 2019, I was in a grey area politically. Increased exposure to different perspectives and disturbing facts was rapidly pushing me left of my liberal comfort zone. I had always considered myself somewhat irreverent towards institutions like the police, and I was committed to the concept of justice. What changed for me at those protests, through conversations with my friends and back on the streets last summer, was my idea of what real justice should look like.

By January 2020, I was all for defunding the NYPD. Id seen cops brutalizing protestors, argued with officers who refused to tell me where my arrested friends were being held and gradually lost any illusions that the police were actually serving and protecting anyone. But the first time I heard it chanted by the massive crowd surrounding me, marching down the Brooklyn sidewalk at night, one phrase made me inexplicably uncomfortable: Abolish the Police. For most of my life, I couldnt visualize a safe, structured society without police. Now, I cant visualize a genuinely safe society with them.

Police unnecessarily arrest people and actively intimidate them. They occupy Black and Brown communities, and break the law with impunity. And they consistently protect each other from accountability and retribution. I could eulogize a countless number of people who died at the hands of police. There are those who are fresh in our memories, like Daunte Wright, Adam Toledo and MaKhia Bryant. And there are the people whose deaths sparked a global outcry, and rallied the Black Lives Matter movement: Sandra Bland, Eric Garner, George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. There are the losses that are equally impossible to forget, like Tamir Rice, Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin, because of how they devastated half the nation.

This list of names feels too long for a column, but its only a fragment of the full version. It will get longer; it wont stop growing until abolition has been achieved. I want to note that none of these people died for police reform or abolition, or for a cause of any kind. They lived their lives for as long as they could, and were murdered without warning. The overwhelming, drawn-out wave of violence, and the fact that it clearly targets marginalized communities, should be enough to warrant the abolition of the single, wildly destructive institution behind it. But out of nervousness, or greed, or both, many Americans have refused to consider abolition as a serious, practical response.

Instead of abolition, one popular response to the laundry list of tragedies is police reform. The issue with the reform rhetoric is that its vague. How do you reform unfiltered violence? Who gets justice when assailants are allowed to continue operating, with only a few surface-level changes? Reform isnt necessarily the enemy, but it also isnt a serious solution. American police officers kill people on sidewalks, in their cars, in their homes and in their backyards. They shoot innocent people in their sleep; they shoot people in the back, repeatedly. The level of brutality and the systematic nature of it is impossible to reform.

Its become fairly common among the pro-reform crowd to call for more training for police officers. That sounds like something that should work. But the training itself is the problem. Officers are taught to literally shoot first and ask questions later. Their training revolves around a simple concept: Hesitation kills. With that in mind, its not difficult to imagine why so many Black and Brown Americans are murdered by cops each year. Structural racism seeps into every persons brain, and unless we actively fight against it, it begins to define feelings and behavior. Police are taught to shoot the second they feel intimidated and, consciously or subconsciously, Black people intimidate them even when they are unarmed, or underage. Racial bias training has been implemented, but clearly racism and violence from cops hasnt slowed as a result.

The rot goes deeper still. Targeting Black and Brown communities is generally understood to be part of American policing. Cops have even been explicitly told to arrest members of these demographics by their superiors. Well never know how many times this has actually happened. New Yorkers know that defunding the police, while better than reforming them, isnt a meaningful solution either. Last summer, Mayor De Blasio committed to redirect $1 billion of the NYPDs $6 billion operating budget. The main impact was to transfer authority over the school safety program from the NYPD to the Department of Education, which had already been funding the program. Critics have since asserted that the move was highly performative, and the actual financial toll on the police department was negligible. This month, the NYPD is spending a fraction of their budget on robot dogs, which cost about $74,000 each to make, cementing the impression that they arent particularly pressed for funding.

One more phrase that sometimes pops up in direct response to demands for abolition, is the call to reimagine police. That shares the frustratingly vague, light-handed character of reform. But depending on how you interpret it, reimagining might actually be the right idea. Because if we start to imagine a world where communities are strong, where no one is handed a gun and trained to shoot first, and where implicit bias doesnt translate to murder with impunity, well be left with a world where police abolition has already taken place.

Grace Goldstein 24 is a columnist at the Collegian. She is an undeclared major, from New York, N.Y. You can contact her at goldstein4@kenyon.edu.

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Police reform is not enough. We need to abolish the institution. The Kenyon Collegian - Kenyon Collegian

The Minister of Labour Janez Cigler Kralj recalled that on 28 April we marked World Safety and Health at Work Day and that on Saturday we celebrate 1 May, Labour Day, so he thanked all citizens for following all measures and stated that by acting responsibly we will build a better tomorrow together. Today, perhaps more than ever, health and safety at work are extremely important, the minister stressed and, during the corona period in particular, the ministry is closely monitoring the situation on the labour market and trying to respond to current events as quickly as possible.

According to the Slovenian Employment Service, on 26 April 79,462 people were registered as looking for work, which is 4% less than at the end of March 2021, when 86,638 people were registered as unemployed. After three months of growth, i.e. November and December 2020 and January 2021, the number of unemployed started to fall in February. In March, the number of jobseekers continued to decline and the number of people in work increased. In additional to seasonal factors, this is associated with the gradual easing of restrictions. At the end of March, the number of registered unemployed stood at 82,638, 6.1% less than in February and 6.1% more than in March 2020. The figures certainly fill us with optimism that the measures are the right ones, the Minister added.

Regarding the situation with infections in homes for the elderly, the Minister pointed out that the situation has calmed down significantly since vaccinations began.

In the last week, 28 residents (a total of 11,396 in the second wave) and 14 employees a total of 4,637 in the second wave) were newly infected in homes for the elderly. The number of deaths also remains low. The vast majority of infected residents feel well and have only mild symptoms or none at all.

Minister Cigler Kralj went on to say that upon the 30th anniversary of Slovenias independence he wanted the government to appropriately compensate the victims of military aggression in the Republic of Slovenia in 1991, so at its regular session this week, it approved amendments to three laws and proposed that the National Assembly consider them by summary procedure, namely:

The proposal of an Act amending the War Invalids Act, the purpose of which is to enable the exercise of status and rights based on impairment of health due to illness or exacerbation of an illness acquired during military aggression against the Republic of Slovenia in 1991. The amendment to the law sets a deadline for submitting a request for recognition of the status and rights of a military invalid or civilian war invalid on the basis of health damage due to illness or exacerbation of illness acquired due to military aggression against the Republic of Slovenia in 1991, and requests for the recognition of the rights of family members of those who died as a result of illness acquired in these circumstances. The deadline is 31 December 2021.

The proposal for an Act amending the Victims of War Violence Act, the purpose and aim of which is to ensure legal protection for persons who lost a parent, spouse, or descendant in 1991 due to military aggression against the Republic of Slovenia. Legal protection will also be provided to family members of civilians who lost their lives due to military aggression. The amendment recognises the status of a victim of war violence to family members of a person who died, was killed or went missing as a result of acts of violence or coercive measures of the Yugoslav Peoples Army or internal affairs bodies of the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia between 25 May and 18 October 1991. The period also includes the Pekre Events in Maribor, and other examples of violent acts that resulted in the loss of life.

The proposal for an Act amending the Act on the Special Rights of Victims of the War for Slovenia in 1991, the purpose and aim of which is to enable children as newly appointed beneficiaries and spouses or common-law partners of victims and parents to exercise their right to compensation. The law defines special rights, such as a lifetime monthly annuity, compensation under a special law governing war reparations, a scholarship, priority in admission to a student dormitory and the right to have the costs of school lunches covered. Following the proposed amendment, the right to compensation is extended to children and additionally recognised to spouses and common-law partners of the victims and parents. The State has already paid compensation to some beneficiaries due to the death of a father, spouse or common-law partner, but not children who lost their lives due to the events related to the military aggression against the Republic of Slovenia in 1991.

Almost 30 years since the events related to the war for Slovenia in 1991, it is high time that all children who suffered damage due to the loss of a parent be granted flat-rate compensation. It is therefore proposed to amend the law by adding a new right to flat-rate compensation which will be granted to all children regardless of their age at the time the parent died. The bill takes into account the fact that, due to the distance of some events, some relatives of those who lost their lives in the war for Slovenia in 1991 have already died, so it gives the new right to flat-rate compensation under this law to their descendants of the first order, in accordance with the regulations governing inheritance. In accordance with the Act on the Special Rights of the Victims in the War for Slovenia of 1991 (ZPPZV91), the spouses and common-law partners of victims and the parents were entitled to compensation under a special law.

Dr Beovi pointed out that so far in Slovenia, 1823% of people have been vaccinated with their first dose in the regions or 20% in Slovenia as a whole. International comparisons show that vaccination in Slovenia is very similar to that in the European Union. If we look at the proportions by country, we are somewhere around the middle.

She stressed that although complete vaccination is important for full protection, the first dose is important for limiting the circulation of the virus and protecting people as protection against infection is a good 70% after vaccination with the AstraZeneca vaccine and 80% after the mRNA vaccines. In addition, the first dose protects against severe illness; for example, the Pfizer vaccine by 74% and the AstraZeneca vaccine as much as 100%.

The priority groups for vaccination as considered in Slovenia have proved to be very sensible as we have almost completely stopped the disease among residents of homes for the elderly, individual outbreaks are due to the fact that the vaccine does not give 100% protection, which can be a problem for herd immunity as unvaccinated persons coming into contact with residents. In all cases of infection in residents, the course of the illness was very mild.

COVID-19 mortality has been significantly reduced, and excess mortality for this disease is no longer evident.

She drew attention to the sad fact that people in their 60s and 70s who should be vaccinated against COVID-19 are dying every day in Slovenia. The death of people due to COVID-19 cannot be understood and is not necessary nowadays, pointed out Dr Beovi, because everyone could protect themselves in time by getting vaccinated if they wanted to. The side effects of COVID-19 vaccines can be unpleasant as well as dangerous. And even if they are really dangerous, they are particularly rare in the age groups most at risk from the disease. For people over the age of 50, there is no dilemma about getting vaccinated against COVID: vaccination should be arranged as soon as possible and the question of choosing which vaccine to have is completely unnecessary.

Referring to a report on inspections carried out in the last week, Deana Potza pointed out that a total of 3,608 inspections had been carried out, with the issuing of 20 misdemeanour sanctions, 312 warnings under the Misdemeanours Act and 212 administrative measures.

The highest number of non-compliant facilities or locations were in hospitality, namely 122, which represents a 26% non-compliance rate, and shops, where there were 116 non-compliant facilities, or 19%. The most measures were also imposed in these two areas, i.e. hospitality and retail. The reasons for the measures were mostly non-maintenance of social distancing measures, non-use of protective masks in indoor and outdoor premises, non-compliance with the conditions for conducting catering activities and the failure to provide disinfectants.

In the past week, there were 175 vaccination centre inspections, of which 163 were regular and 12 were extraordinary inspections on the basis of received notifications. This time, only one case of non-compliance was found, namely at the concessionaire within the Zdravstveni dom Izola (Izola Healthcare Centre) vaccination centre. The non-compliance was rectified immediately.

The inspectorate notes that the situation on the ground is improving. The organisation and implementation of vaccination is largely in accordance with the National Strategy; furthermore, additional vaccination centres are moving to actively inviting people for vaccination.

Toma Pejak pointed out that, in addition to their usual work and tasks, the Police are also supervising the implementation of the provision of ordinances governing individual measures to prevent the spread of the virus. In most cases, these are controls on measures to restrict public gathering and travel.

He stressed that the purpose of the police monitoring of compliance with the measures is to achieve the legally pursued goal of preventing the spread of the virus using the mildest means and measures and is always based on the principle of proportionality. Last but not least, the argument that police officers really are trying to apply the most lenient measures is reflected in the fact that the vast majority of proceedings and established violations almost 83% resulted in only a warning being issued, Mr Pejak pointed out.

Regarding the amendment to the Decree on determining the conditions for entry into the Republic of Slovenia due to the containment and control of the infectious disease COVID-19, which entered into force on Wednesday, 28 April 2021 and abolished checkpoints on the borders with Austria and Italy, he explained that, despite the abolition of checkpoints, the Police will continue to carry out periodic checks at road crossings at internal borders (where we have had checkpoints so far and also at other road crossings where only local people have been permitted to cross) and thus continue to check whether persons meet the condition for entry into the country without referral to quarantine at home under said decree and mitigation measures.

The Police still advise travellers to check for conditions for entry into the destination country and also the conditions for return before travelling abroad.

On the occasion of the upcoming Labour Day holiday, there is also advice for all cultural organisations, wind bands and others that perform vigilante parades to comply with the current provisions of the Decree temporarily banning the gathering of people to limit the spreading of COVID-19 that restrict the organisation of parades to 10 persons with social distancing. This does not apply in the case of close family members or members of the same household, subject to the restrictions and provisions of this decree.

The same restrictions on the number of participants apply at bonfires. As numerous smaller privately organised bonfires are expected to due to the impossibility of organising public bonfires, the Police politely recommend and advise people to pay attention to fire safety and ensure adequate space around fires to prevent them spreading to buildings and causing injury.

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Health and safety at work is extremely important in the corona period | GOV.SI - Gov.si

On Friday afternoon, civil rights activist and author DeRay Mckesson spoke on the future of policing as part of the Klau Center for Civil and Human Rights Building an Anti-Racist Vocabulary lecture series.

Mckesson, a 2007 graduate of Bowdoin College, worked as a sixth-grade teacher and school administrator before quitting his job in March 2015 to begin a career of political activism. Five months later, he and fellow activists launched Campaign Zero, a 10-point policy plan for ending police violence in the United States.Mckesson is also the host of the political podcast Pod Save the People and the author of On the Other Side of Freedom, a memoir detailing his experience as an organizer in Ferguson during the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Mckesson preceded the discussion with a simple clarification while many consider the fight for police reform to be a multi-generational struggle, he expects shorter-term success.

We believe that we can win in this lifetime, he said. I dont think Im working on a 700-year solution or a 500-year solution. We really do believe that with good organizing, we can win in this lifetime.

And Mckessons definition of win is a simple one. To him, in a country where police have killed more than 1,000 people a year since 2013, winning means no police killings, any and every year hence the Zero of Campaign Zero.

Although Mckesson and his fellow organizers are interested in broad, structural policy changes, they abide by a small-scale mantra: One is the biggest number.

When one is your sister, or one is your brother, or one is your mother or one is your cousin, you dont need 1000 One is enough, Mckesson said. There are some [aspects of our work] that will impact hundreds of people, there are some things that will impact thousands of people, there are some things that will impact 10 or 20 people and all of them matter.

Mckesson then went on to detail his approach to the reimagination of policing: a deconstruction of the logic of policing itself.

The logic of policing says there are people with power who set rules, policies and practices, and the enforcement is the logic of policing, he said. That enforcement is often violent and disproportionate toward people of color, poor people and it is harsh.

And although many organizers believe in only the complete eradication of this logic, Mckesson argued that efforts toward abolition can and should exist in conversation with efforts to change existing systems in small ways, using the topic of solitary confinement as an example.

The end of solitary confinement is not the end of incarceration. Does that mean that these two strategies are against each other? It doesnt, Mckesson said. One is an acknowledgement that we have a responsibility to real peoples lives today That does not take away from the demand, the urgency of undoing the carceral state.

In response to a question from Klau Center associate director Dory Mitros Durham about effective strategies for engendering policy changes, Mckesson noted the simple power of accessible information when 8 Cant Wait, an initiative of Campaign Zero, launched following the killing of George Floyd, the programs dissemination of public data resulted in surprising amounts of mobilization at the local level.

When we released 8 Cant Wait we did not fight police departments, we just made the data public and citizens fought police departments, Mckesson said. And thats why we keep everything public.

Mckesson also discussed how the mechanisms of change differ at local and federal levels. While policy proposals such as the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act would result in some positive change, such as greatly reducing the legal use of neck restraints, the federal governments only means of impacting the policies of police departments is to threaten the withholding of funds, he explained.

The hard thing is that the federal government has never followed through on that threat to police departments, Mckesson said. So while Im interested in that aspect of the law, we just havent seen it enforced.

But one change the federal government President Biden in particular could make at any time, Mckesson noted, is the release of people detained in private facilities by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Federal agencies under the Department of Homeland Security are exempt from many acts targeting police reform, and Bidens recent executive order only aims to end the use of private prisons under the Department of Justice leaving private ICE facilities largely immune to both reform and abolition.

And Biden has the power tomorrow to stop that, with no trouble, Mckesson said. So those are the things we should be demanding of the federal government.Additionally, while Bidens aforementioned executive order is a step in the right direction, that order and others like it only solve a portion of the problem, Mckesson argued only about 8% of incarcerated people are held in private prisons.

In conclusion, Mckesson addressed a question on many Americans minds today: Now that citizens are armed with a wealth of information on systemic racism and corrupt policing, what are the next steps?

I think the moment you know your question, youll do your best work, he answered. I wake up every day saying How do we get to zero? And because I am chasing that question every day, it guides my work.

And that guiding question will look different for everyone, Mckesson noted.

For some people, that question will be about policing, or the carceral state or the climate, he said. When you know your question, the rest will just fall into place.

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'We believe that we can win in this lifetime:' Activist discusses 'reimagining policing' in lecture series - Observer Online

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by JM Wong

On this years May Day, as we grieve and witness the calamity of state-sponsored or state- manufactured violence; the premature (because utterly preventable) COVID epidemic deaths raging from India to Brazil due to fascist governments more invested in power than people; and the unceasing state lynchings from Columbus, Ohio to North Carolina and Seattle, Washington we need the memories that Lucy Parsons bequeathed our struggles for which this day, International Workers Day, was created.

Lucy Parsons should be a household name at any May Day celebration. She had a vision of freedom for the working classes who had been made by histories of colonialism, slavery, settler violence, and migration. Her vision challenged the internationalism of capitalists who professed a right to universal exploitation while creating borders and racial systems to divide those they exploited or killed. Today, Parsons erasure is part of the whitewashing of labor history in the United States that abets American empire. Remembering her is a reminder that she and so many others, even in the belly of the beast, left us the foundation and resources for a workers internationalism that revokes capitalist claims to exploitation and reconstructs our global connections for the purposes of shared freedom.

Parsons (18511942) was a deeply respected Black anarchist in the radical labor movement in the turn of the 20th century. A descendant of slaves and a founding member of the radical labor union the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), Parsons was outspoken against lynching and slavery in the South and organized in defense of the Scottsboro Boys in the early 1930s. I am an anarchist, Parsons proclaimed in an early speech, characterizing her politics as defiant of oppressive political rule. Her legacy unearths a vision of labor history that is intertwined with resistance against white supremacy, that had not yet succumbed to the white nationalism and xenophobia of other labor formations of her time, most notably the Knights of Labor.

The Haymarket Massacre, the precursor to International Workers Day, was an important event in Parsons life. The massacre erupted a few days after the May Day general strike in 1886 in Chicago, where the demand for eight hours of work, eight hours for rest, and eight hours for what you will, was met with police violence. The protest broke out into violent confrontation between police and labor organizers. Seven police officers and eight civilians died. Eight more anarchist labor leaders were then executed by the state, including Lucy Parsons husband, Albert Parsons.

Reclaiming the history of May Day requires us to understand the initial confrontations against the police that birthed this significant day, when it was clear that the police were the primary instrument of state and class violence. It also requires us knowing about some of the organizations, especially the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), that were visionary for the workers multiracial, anti-racist organizing. From lumber workers in the Northwest to Black workers in longshore to Chinese workers building the transcontinental railroad and Mexican workers in California and the Southwest, the IWW, better known as the Wobblies, believed in organizing as a working class, defined as lack of access to property and capital, regardless of employment or work in specific industries, guilds, and crafts. The IWWs largest contribution to modern labor movements was putting into practice the belief that the working class, employed or not, needed to be united across race and industry to defeat the monopoly of capitalist power and its means of violent reinforcement: the police.

Fast forward almost a hundred years later, Lucy Parsons vision of class struggle for freedom is still a goal and one that we continue to fight for globally, including here in the belly of the beast. Because uniting the international working class (rather than guilds, crafts, or sects divided by national identities and xenophobia) may be our only path to liberation, as challenging as it may be. As Dr Charisse Burden-Stelly, a Black intellectual, said in a recent discussion on abolition and communism, the ruling class is internationalist, by which she meant that the powers that be from police departments in Seattle trained by the Israeli Defense Force brutally targeting predominantly Black and Indigenous communities here; to the global headquarters of corporations such as Amazon, Uber, Apple creating gig economies and precarious work across the world; and the governing bodies of economic forums such as the World Trade Organization and APEC connect across borders to enforce fierce discipline on the working class globally. To fight back against the forces of oppression, our resistance has to be international and truly liberatory for all people to address the ways in which imperialism, settler colonialism, white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, and class oppression intertwine.

The original May Day general strike fought for the eight hour work day. Eight hours of work, eight hours of rest, and eight hours to do what you will.

But the promise remains unfulfilled, as this pandemic reveals more starkly than ever.

The ruling class has never kept its promise of the eight-hour workday, even when it is purported to be enshrined in labor law.

Our incarcerated loved ones and families, who are predominantly Black and Brown, do not know the eight-hour workday. Entangled in the suffocating tentacles of the criminal legal system, they are thrown behind walls ruled by arbitrary laws. The Thirteenth Amendment legalizes their enslavement, and the courts enforce their subjugation. Today in the Department of Corrections, even throughout the COVID pandemic, our incarcerated loved ones have not stopped working at their jobs, whether it is the reproductive labor to sustain the prison through janitorial, laundry, cleaning work or profit generating labor in Correctional Industries.

Meanwhile, they are subject to arbitrary violence meted out by guards whose unionized status obscure and protect their violent roles. Our incarcerated loved ones are forced to work to maintain the institution that subjugates them. To add salt to injury, the pittance of wages they receive are garnished by the Department of Corrections.

There is no rest for the weary. There is no rest in the stress of the assembly line in factories across the world rushing to release the newest Apple gadgets. Neither is there rest in the stress of the clock that times how quickly one picks items for same-day deliveries in Amazon warehouses. In desperation, sometimes rest is found only in a premature death.

In On my Deathbed, Xu Lizhi, the Foxconn worker in Shenzhen, China who took his own life in 2014 following a series of worker suicides at the same factory plant, laments the longing to rest:

On My Deathbed

I want to take another look at the ocean, behold the vastness of tears from half a lifetime

I want to climb another mountain, try to call back the soul that Ive lost

I want to touch the sky, feel that blueness so light

But I cant do any of this, so Im leaving this world

Everyone whos heard of me

Shouldnt be surprised at my leaving

Even less should you sigh or grieve

I was fine when I came, and fine when I left.

A joyful militancy, adrienne marie brown reminds us, makes room for vulnerability, connection, and love, even and especially in the midst of struggle and resistance. Trust, the fabric of relationships, is tested in moments of upheaval. It is the weaving of conflict resolution strategies, a healing journey of our intergenerational traumas living in the belly of the beast, that can strengthen our ability to withstand the pressures of counterinsurgency tactics. Tactics that manufacture interpersonal and movement conflicts, finessed by the state at worst or by a culture of individualism at best.

Spaciousness to learn ourselves and each other, to explore our emotional and spiritual depth, to cultivate our resilience, is something worth fighting for. The best fighters have waged love as ammunition for the protracted struggles we are engaged in. True revolutionaries are guided by feelings of love, said Che Guevara, before he lost his life to CIA-backed forces. As movements go through their ebb and flow and string our emotions along with tumultuous cycles, as the politricks from the status quo aim to further divide and conquer, the need for space, leisure, connection becomes even more important and harder to achieve.

The struggle for breath and spaciousness is inextricable from the class struggle, the kind that Lucy Parsons and generations of workers have fought and died for.

It is, historically, the class contempt of official Labor History, whitewashed in academia, seeking a place in the imperialist, white supremacist status quo, torn away from the real struggles and sufferings of the working class as a whole, regardless of employment status, nationality, gender, or race, that has erased or minimized the contributions of everyday workers to our collective human history.

It is on the shoulders and the legacies of unnamed, forgotten, silenced workers whose daily resistance creates the conditions for a different world, that we continue the fight to pursue freedom dreams, here and across the globe. All power to the international working class.

Happy May Day!

Feature image by Susan Fried.

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OPINION: Reclaiming the History of May Day - southseattleemerald.com

Federal Sydney MP and Australia Labor Party's Tanya Plibersek has accused Capricornia MP Michelle Landry of "cheering on" Australian Government cuts that affect women, calling her a "phony".

Ms Plibersek, the Shadow Minister for Education and Shadow Minister for Women, along with Keppel MP Brittany Lauga, met with Central Queensland women's group Enough is Enough on Saturday at Kershaw Gardens to hear their concerns and talk about issues that affected them.

Ms Plibersek said the women in the group had a "gutful" of the Australian Government cutting the supports and services they needed, as well as wages and work conditions.

"They are very disappointed with Michelle Landry who is happy to talk a big game up here but is just a pussycat when she is in Canberra," she said.

"She doesn't just allow these cuts to happen, she cheers them on.

"This isn't personal, she is not a bad person, she supports bad policies when she is in Canberra.

"Policies that hurt like the penalty rate cuts, and policies that have delivered historic low wages growth like the cuts to emergency accommodation, cuts to legal services, the abolition of the Family Court, cuts to health and education.

"All these things have really hurt ordinary women and they are tired of being represented by someone who doesn't stand up for them. They want a fighter, not a phony."

Ms Landry said it was "ironic" Ms Plibersek should come into Central Queensland "spreading untruths" about the Family Court issue the week she opened a brand new $2.3 million Federal Circuit Court in Rockhampton.

"This new state of the art facility along with the Rockhampton based Circuit Court judge, who has been here for over three years now, will keep families safe while saving them the extra stress and expense associated with travelling to Brisbane to have their family issues settled," she said.

Federal Member for Capricornia Michelle Landry. Picture: Gary Ramage

"The Family Court reforms do not abolish the Family Court, this is a Labor lie.

"It creates a single new structure of two divisions, one being the Family Court of Australia and the other being the Federal Circuit Court which deals with 90 per cent of parenting applications.

"Division 1 of the Family Court cannot be abolished and cannot fall beneath 25 judges.

"One single point of entry to the system means families will no longer be bounced around between different courts, an issue that contributed to lengthy delays

"As far as the work I do for the electorate of Capricornia and the work I do in Canberra on behalf of the people of Central Queensland, I will stand on my record.

"Next time the Member for Sydney comes to my electorate I would urge her to take a little extra time to drive around and see the roads, the infrastructure and the prosperity here in Capricornia which has created many jobs.

"There is always more work to be done and the people of Capricornia can be assured that while the opposition snipe from the sidelines I am getting on with the job."

Ms Plibersek said issues brought up by women in Central Queensland included domestic and family violence, sexual harassment, and sexual assault.

"They want to see better supports for women who experienced sexual harassment at work, so the perpetrators are held to account," she said.

"Too many women lose their jobs if they are the victim of sexual harassment.

"There was also a number of people who raised sexual assault.

"We know that too many women who experience sexual assault don't go to the police and don't go through the court processes because they are too traumatic.

"We need to make sure our legal system better responds to the needs of victims of sexual assault.

READ: Lauga to march alongside students against domestic violence

READ: 'It's gone far too far': Landry takes on misogynist trolls

READ: Outrage over Capricornia MP's reaction to latest sex scandal

"We also talked about the fact that there is not nearly enough emergency accommodation for women and children escaping domestic violence.

"Too many get turned away and many have to leave Rockhampton if they are the victim of domestic violence because they can't find an affordable place to stay with their children.

"There were calls for legal changes, greater supports, and culture change."

She said the Australian Labor Party had policies that would make a difference, including cheaper childcare, better wages growth, an eventual superannuation growth of 12 per cent and 10 days paid domestic violence leave.

"We will have more policies between now and the next election," she said.

Ms Lauga said it was the first meeting since the first Enough is Enough rally in early April.

She said it was great to continue conversations about issues that included equality of life for women in Central Queensland, domestic and family violence, sexual harassment, and sexual assault.

Co-ordinator of Enough is Enough, Ashleigh Saunders, said the women of the group appreciated having Ms Plibersek in Rockhampton to hear their concerns.

"It's not often that regional Queensland women get together like this and have our voices heard about important issues affecting us," Ms Saunders said.

The Yeppoon woman said the group continued to grow every day.

"We are close to 500 members now," she said.

"Every single day there is more and more people joining our Facebook group and more and more people getting involved in the issues that are affecting Central Queensland.

"We have been talking to Tanya today about those issues that mainly affect women in Central Queensland, and we will be looking at taking those further to our Federal Member."

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Landry accused of 'cheering on' cuts that affect women - Morning Bulletin

IVE PREVIOUSLY WRITTEN on Post-Trump Latinx literature as a nascent body of literature that critiques Trump and the ideology he represents, a counter-archive to the white supremacy that dominates the news. I want to consider how Adam Silveras Infinity Cycle represents a fascinating entry into this burgeoning genre of literature whose legacy will extend well past Trumps presidency. The books that so far make up this distinct series are Infinity Son (2020) and Infinity Reaper (2021). A politically engaged series, Silveras Infinity Cycle incorporates aspects of the Black Lives Matter movement and features a Trumpian villain, Senator Iron, who sows hatred and discord toward powered people, called celestials, and runs for president on this platform. As I demonstrate in my discussion of the Infinity Cycle, the novels focus on themes of police reform versus abolition and offer a thoughtful examination of what it means to engage in policing over community forms of care.

Central to the Infinity Cycles depiction of policing and what it means to be a powered person is the divide between celestials, people who are born with powers, and specters, people who acquire their powers from alchemists who transform the powers of magical creatures like phoenixes and basilisks. Although the celestial vigilante group, the Spell Walkers, are generally viewed positively, just before the series begins an event called the Blackout occurs, in which it appears that the Spell Walkers killed 613 people, including Senator Irons son, Eduardo. As the Spell Walkers extrajudicial acts make clear, the divide between good celestials and bad specters quickly becomes less clear even as specters continue to be viewed negatively because taking powers from magical creatures results in the creatures death.

Yet, even the lines dividing specters and celestials becomes murky. The brothers at the center of the series, Emil and Brighton Rey, hope to manifest their grandmothers powers of sight. While these powers ultimately do not manifest, during an altercation with one of the alchemist Luna Marnettes gang of specters called the Blood Casters, Emil learns that he has powers, only his powers are those of a gray sun phoenix, a power thats only possible if Emil is a specter. Eventually, Emil learns that he is the reincarnation of the Spell Walker founder, Bautista de Len, who was himself a reincarnation of the first alchemist to turn into a specter, Keon Mximo, thus illuminating alternate ways that specters can come into their powers. In learning his history, Emil also learns that he is not in fact Brightons brother; rather, their father found Emil a couple blocks away from where Luna killed Bautista. Emil and Brighton link up with the remaining Spell Walkers and work to stop Lunas plan of taking Reapers Blood, a combination of hydra, phoenix, and ghost blood. Indeed, Luna has been killing ghosts and using their blood to give specters the ability to phase. By the end of Infinity Son, Emil, Brighton, and the Spell Walkers have been unable to stop Luna from concocting her potion, but in the fight that ensues to prevent her from drinking it, Brighton consumes the Reapers Blood instead.

While the beginning of Infinity Reaper is focused on whether or not the Reapers Blood will kill Brighton (it doesnt), the larger concern of the novel is how to ethically be a powered person, which Emil takes to mean not having powers at all. He spends the majority of the novel following in the footsteps of Bautista and Sera Crdova (Bautistas partner) to create a power-binding potion. This aspect of the novel feeds into the issue of what defunding the police looks like as the series tries to imagine what justice looks like in a world where people have vastly different powers and ways to access power. The Infinity Cycle seems to tend toward a reformist stance, at least until we get to the end of Infinity Reaper. At the end of the first chapter of Infinity Son, Emil reflects on the Spell Walkers,

I dont always agree with their violent, vigilante methods, but the Spell Walkers seem to be the only handful of heroes brave enough to admit that specters need to be stopped before they drive creatures to extinction and ruin the world. I hope every last specter gets locked up. Stealing blood from creatures to hook yourself up with powers, just because you werent born a celestial, is a heartbreaking crime.

Infinity Reaper promotes a more reformist stance through the presidential candidate Congresswoman Sunstar and her vice presidential candidate Senator Shine Lu, both of whom seem to be generally modeled on the Squad (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib), though not necessarily their specific political positions. Sunstar and Lu want to abolish the Enforcer Program, the current police force tasked with dealing with celestials. Largely made up of non-celestials using celestial-powered weapons like wands and gem-grenades, the problems with the Enforcers are akin to the real-world police and their constant targeting of people of color, especially Black people. To replace the Enforcer Program, Sunstar and Lu want to bring together all the celestial vigilante groups under what Sunstar has called the Luminary Union. Condoning the vigilante groups leads to the larger issue of who watches the watchmen.

As Alan Moore controversially argued,

I would also remark that save for a smattering of non-white characters (and non-white creators) these books and these iconic characters are still very much white supremacist dreams of the master race. [] In fact, I think that a good argument can be made forD. W. GriffithsBirth of a Nation as the first American superhero movie, and the point of origin for all those capes and masks.

Although the text is ambivalent about its position on the police, the stance on prisons is quite clear, particularly when Emil and friends decide to break Emils former love interest, Ness (who is actually Senator Irons son Eduardo), out of prison. Once in the prison, Ness is no sooner placed in his jail cell than Barrett Bishop, the prison architect who is also Senator Irons vice presidential candidate, decides to unlock all the cells and pit the celestials and specters against him by promising them time on the roof, closer to the sky, which amplifies their powers. During the mayhem of this scene, Brighton uses his powers against one of the worst Blood Casters, Stanton. Brighton wins the fight by ripping out Stantons heart, which causes him to think, Saviors defend lives. Reapers take them. Emil is horrified by Brightons actions and describes them as follows,

My brothers face is lit up by the sapphire and silver flames burning our enemys heart. Brightons smile may as well be a promise to his powers that hell never bind them. Hes not throwing out human vibes. Its like the phoenix, hydra, and ghost essences are fully converting him into someone something else.

While its difficult to foresee how the Infinity Cycle will end, I am drawn to the moment in Infinity Son in which Emil considers how to tell his mother hes a specter. He aligns this moment with his coming out, which wasnt a coming out at all since his parents knew all along he was gay and accepted him, [b]ut the word specter doesnt feel good in my heart, and building the nerve to tell Ma I somehow am one is far scarier. Will she ever talk to me again? Kick me out? [] I hope I dont lose her love. Emils shame stems from his status as a specter, not a powered person in general. Yet, Im still curious as to this parallel between Emils queerness and his status as a specter. Ive thought about this in relation to Emils desire to see specters locked up and his search for the power-binding potion that Bautista and Sera created just before their deaths. Both novels ask us to sympathize with Emil, but this moment gives me pause about the power-binding potion and whether powers should be stifled at all. The Spell Walkers, despite their status as a vigilante group, offer an alternative to both power-binding and the extrajudicial form of justice they deploy through their network of havens, which offer refuge and care to celestials who arent Spell Walkers. This aspect of their work resembles a mutual aid network based on systems of care rather than vengeance that people like Brighton mistake for justice. Such a system suggests that eradicating powers isnt the solution; rather, creating a more just society based on collectivities and coalitions to address the real power imbalances of unequal pay and access to social services offers a viable way forward for the postSenator Iron (and post-Trump) future the series imagines. Ultimately, Silvera offers a vision of a world that has its problems, but one where people of color have agency and power and work toward a collective future rather than relying on individual transformation.

Renee Hudson is an assistant professor of English at Chapman University, where she specializes in Latinx and Multiethnic American literature.

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Conversion Narratives, and Beyond, Part II: Adam Silvera's Infinity Cycle and the Superhero Quandary - lareviewofbooks

ROME Last week, a well-known center at one of Romes pontifical universities aimed at protecting children from clerical sexual abuse, and beyond, was upgraded to an institute of anthropology, giving the Churchs most respected academic outfit devoted to child protection room to grow.

As of Sept. 1, the Center for Child Protection at the Gregorian University in Rome will become the Institute of Anthropology, Interdisciplinary Studies on Human Dignity and Care. According to German Jesuit Father Hans Zollner, the possibility of making it an Institute on Safeguarding was discussed, but theres no such discipline in the academic world thus far.

The change, which goes deeper than a new name, was ratified April 15 by the Vaticans Congregation for Catholic Education. The Institute will take over the work of the CCP, continuing to carry out pioneering research and formation in the field of child protection as a faculty within the Gregorian, with its own academic staff, with the ability to award degrees and doctorates.

Zollner, one of the most respected experts in the field, is both a psychologist and theologian. He spoke with Crux at length April 29, in an office at the Gregorian. With him was Mexican Father Daniel del Portillo, founder of Mexicos center for child protection, hosted by the local pontifical university.

The two men discussed the Churchs poor response to protection of children during the pandemic, and the false dichotomy of evangelization efforts vs. child protection. What follows are excerpts of that conversation, and, unless otherwise indicated, the respondent is Zollner.

Crux: Why the upgrade to an Institute of Anthropology?

Zollner: Because an institute can have and develop its own faculty membership, which for a center is not possible within the structure of our university. If you want to have more teaching personnel and researchers you need to be an institute.

Why an anthropology institute, and not one that refers to protecting minors?

We considered the possibility of creating an institute of Safeguarding, but the considerations and deliberations showed that, as of yet, theres no academic discipline called Safeguarding. Whereas anthropology is as broad a discipline as you can imagine, which offers the possibility to have experts from different disciplines working under one academic heading with regard to the specific goals of this Institute, which are expressed in the subtitle: human dignity and care of vulnerable people.

Are you afraid that the next administration, either of the Gregorian or the Institute, will exploit that ambiguity and move away from safeguarding?

To the contrary, over the last three to four years, this was our evolving reasoning which the university leadership also shared: the situation has changed over the last four years with #MeToo, with [former cardinal Theodore] McCarrick, the reports on religious sisters and seminarians as victims of abuse, with the growing awareness of abuse of power and spiritual abuse.

The whole consideration that we have of the double crises (!) abuse itself and its cover up by Church authorities and others we were confronted with the fact that this is something connected to many areas in life and in the Church. Therefore, we need different instruments and approaches to really tackle it because its not a phenomenon you can deal with, for example, only using psychology and psychiatry. Yes, these will have its importance, but it will also be necessary to ask about the institutional side, the organizational aspects, the juridical facts. For the Church context we need also to take into account the spiritual wounds that are inflicted in victims of abuse, and those spiritualities and theologies that have brought about an institutional and theological response that was in favor of the perpetrators and not of the victims.

Whats the role of Father Daniel del Portillo?

Daniel has worked for many years in this field, he holds two doctorates. He established the CEPROME, and from its beginning we were in collaboration. His presence here has to do first of all with the first diploma course in Spanish that we ran this semester students coming mostly from Latin America -, and of course, Spanish is still the most important language for the Catholic. This is obviously, an important reason for him to be here.

Why not do this in Latin America?

Del Portillo: We recognize that the largest population for the Catholic Church is in Latin America, and the Church in the region has to offer a response to the population. We do it from here and not from Latin America because, with humility, we recognize that the people who can be consulted in different approaches to find that response can be found in the same place, Rome. From here we can coordinate different actions, teachers, experts, involving students to work on this issue.

This isnt your first move, since the center originally relocated from Germany to Rome.

Zollner:It was at a lakeside in Finland on the 29th of August 2013, so 19 months after the establishment of the center. I was giving a retreat there. Early morning I woke up with a beautiful sunshine and it occurred very clearly to me that we had to move to Rome because if we were to continue that work, which was at the time still to be determined by Church authorities and our donors, it had to be at a place where everything is the Catholic Church is coming together.

In Rome you have the Holy See and its dicasteries and bishops coming through here all the time, you have many congregations and religious orders with their headquarters. The CCP was established in Munich as a center of the institute of psychology of the Pontifical Gregorian University, but we saw that we needed also the physical closeness with the rest of the university here in Rome. When I asked Cardinal [Reinhard] Marx the following morning, with no preparation, if we could move to Rome he said, that not only we could move to Rome, but we had to. Hed given lots of money and logistical support, as the CCP was in offices that belonged to the archdiocese.

Honestly, I cant imagine what would have happened had we stayed in Munich.

Have things really changed, or is all cosmetics, and the Church still faces the same struggles and challenges, with the same flaws?

What I meant is that people now talk about issues like child sexual abuse that have been around for a long time but were not mentioned or talked about, were not really in the media. The same thing with MeToo or religious sisters, why did we not realize this before? Why did the abuse crisis explode in Germany only in 2010, while one could follow occasional news about abuse at least since 2002, after The Boston Globe Spotlight revelations? Yes, it didnt come to the tipping point in Germany until January 2010.

I ask journalists asked sometimes: Why didnt you report about abuse before, why didnt you do interviews with victims 12 years ago? It seems that societies have to come to a certain awareness or sensitivity to really be able to address these issues. And this is the reason why, still now, I guess that 75 percent of countries in the world are not at that tipping point. Yes, we talk now especially within the Catholic Church about abuse in many countries, but has it gotten to the stage of a general preoccupation, interest and work about it? No.

The pandemic has shown that once people have to care for their lives, food and health, they forget about everything else. And even in those countries where there is no immediate need to fight for ones life and food day after day sexual violence is a reality and a topic people despise and reject to talk about.

Even though we know that with the pandemic, its gotten worse

On top of it, yes, this is the case according to all what we know from research: violence and abuse at home and sexual exploitation online have increased dramatically.

Pope Francis and Father Daniel Portillo of CEPROME, the Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Formation for the Protection of Minors from the Pontifical University of Mexico. In a video he sent to CEPROME in 2020, with the priest standing next to him, Francis urged Latin Americans to work on abuse prevention even though you will be threatened, because there are those who are threatened. More than one will tell you that they are capable of hiring a hit man to clean up the field. (Credit: Screen capture.)

What will it take for people in the pews, in dioceses, and in the Vatican, to do something constantly, not only when a story breaks?

Del Portillo: I believe that the pandemic has put a stop or a pause to the issue of prevention in different environments, and I say this particularly because of the actions that we as a Church should have taken in this past year, from the Vatican and also from each episcopal conference. The pandemic to some extent put a pause, perhaps even more severe, to this work of prevention, in such a way that people have been left with the impression that actions were going to be taken and then nothing was done.

I believe that this should redouble our efforts to see concretely what we have to do, because the pandemic itself offers resources to be able to deal with issues such as intrafamily abuse. We have to see how through the screen, from the digital world, we can offer our help as a Church. But I think the Church has been too discreet in the pandemic.

I have met bishops who tell me that today the Church has concentrated on prevention and not on evangelization, as if trying to choose. I think that when we evangelize, we prevent and when we prevent, we evangelize. They are not two alternatives to choose between, because one is part of the other. But let me insist, we have to realize that there are actions that should have been taken and were not taken.

I believe that we have stopped the prevention process, and it will be even more difficult for us to resume when we want to do so. The justification for inaction is the pandemic, and the pretext is very easy to explain why everything has stopped. But I dont know what kind of pandemic we are referring to, whether it is Covid or the one that is coming.

Zollner: We are convinced that working for a safer Church, listening to victims and protecting young people is evangelization and is part of the mission of the Church. But for many, bishops and lay people, this is not obvious, they dont see it that way. I struggle with the question: why is this so? It seems obvious to me that if you dont defend the minors and the vulnerable ones, we dont follow what Jesus lived and said. Because he identifies with the little ones, the exploited ones, the wounded ones.

Honestly, I believe that a good number of people in leadership are aware that they have, for many years, in different capacities and responsibilities, failed that part of the Gospel, and theyre struggling to accept that failure, admit that sin. And even if it wasnt a sin or a crime, it was certainly inconsistent with the Gospel. Repenting on this, admitting it and confessing to it, seems to be pretty demanding, personally and institutionally. Apart from that questions around how we deal with our official doctrine on sexuality and how we live it up automatically arise when one sees the sexual misconduct of clergy. And Im not talking only about homosexuality: how we present the official doctrine on sexuality and how we ourselves live it and how its dealt with in the pastoral field is often very different from the official doctrine. I believe its a call to admit honestly that often we are not living up to an idea that we preach, that we arent as perfect as we project ourselves and people imagine how we are.

In the general public, when people see the misbehaviors and crimes connected to abuse or its cover up, it makes a huge difference when the perpetrator who is a priest as compared to a sports trainer, a public-school teacher or a choir director, and even parents. People are so angry and disappointed because they didnt expect a priest to behave like that or a bishop to cover up abuse. Who in the world should be expected to most protect the most vulnerable ones, if not a priest?

Dont people at this point take for granted that priests misbehave?

When it comes to enrolment in Catholic schools or youth ministry, numbers are not down as much as you would expect. People still trust when they have a good relationship with the parish priest or the school leaders. In countries where you have the Church as a leader in safeguarding and prevention people trust those they personally know. The biggest setback is not that a priest fails or misbehaves that could be understood and forgiven. The real problem is when we dont own our failures, deny them and move on as if nothing had happened.

We need to talk of this image of a perfect, pure society of saints which seems to somehow be in the back of the mind of many people in the Church. This has never been the full truth and it will never be the reality of the Church in this world. As Teresa of Avila says in the Interior Castle: even if you reach the seventh mansion, the deepest point of unity with Christ, you still you can fall and fail.

As long as we are on this earth we are never perfect in all not even saints and our ideals as we painfully learn in these years. But we have the Lords promise that when we confess a sin, we will be forgiven. I dont understand why we have such a hard time owning up to what we have done wrongly, even if it wasnt the current bishop or provincial but his predecessor.

What needs to happen?

Last week I was with the heads of the French bishops conference. I can say that this meeting confirmed my impression of the encounter in Lourdes when I was invited by them three years ago: they have an approach that you dont see in many other bishops conferences. From my point of view, it seems that they are really trying to listen to and to engage with victims on a regular basis and their understanding of the depth of the spiritual wound is much deeper. They dont seem to have that anxiety or fear of being confronted with devastating news that are about to be published.

The independent commission that they have presented will come up with numbers higher than what we have seen in other countries thus far. And this will present a devastating reality for the victims first, and also for the disappointed faithful. But the bishops seem to be willing to own this reality, and from there understand what their responsibility is in moving forward. Of course, you can always point the finger towards other institutions, but the French bishops seem to know this is not the way.

The Catholic Church can lead in this reform

Exactly, if we are honest and committed to safeguarding.

People who know Francis better than I do, seem to believe that he can change the Vatican by inspiring a change of heart in those who work in the Vatican or who are part of the leadership. But this expectation has led to many known faces still retaining their positions. Can the Church reform itself when it comes to sexual abuse when there are so many faces with a looming cloud of doubt over them?

As we see in the discussions in Germany at the moment, people have to own their personal responsibility. We have seen now that one of the bishops in the U.S. who was accused of not following Church procedure, was asked to step down following the procedures of Vos estis lux mundi [You are the light of the world].

These are encouraging steps that dont depend only on a change of heart, which I have always favored, because law in itself is too little. You need both: change of law and change of mentality. This pope, at least with Come una madre amorevole [As a loving Mother], with Vos estis, the abolition of the pontifical secret on these cases, has made lasting changes. The introduction of vulnerable adults into Church law means that as a CCP we couldnt continue work only in child protection anymore. We need to include also the dignity and care for e.g. a seminarian who is exploited by the Rector or a 35-year-old laywoman who goes to a priest for spiritual direction because shes fighting with her husband.

Follow Ins San Martn on Twitter:@inesanma

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Anti-abuse center gets upgrade, sensing both progress and frustration - Crux Now