Daily Archives: May 9, 2021

By Joseph Giglio| The Patriot Ledger

While many national constitutions come and go every few decades,the U.S. Constitution has served the purpose for which it wasintended for more than two centuries. The United States is proudof its tradition of freedom of speech that was established in theFirst Amendment to the Constitution.

It allows for public criticism of the government.Without it, such behavior could land you in prison just ask Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.Still, there were many times in American history when this principle was traduced.

More: Giglio: Electric cars one of several disruptions that will steer auto industry

For example, some of the same people who ratified the Bill of Rights voted in Congress in 1798, during the presidency of John Adams, to pass the Alien and Sedition Acts that made it a crime to utter false, scandalous, or malicious speech against the government or the president.

The first 10 amendments to the constitution are known as the Bill of Rights. They were proposed by Congress in September 1789 and ratified by the states in December 1791.

Freedom of speech isnt the only freedom protected by the First Amendment. It reads: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceable to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

More: OPINION/COLUMN: Giglio: Managing the demographic risk of an aging population

Freedom of speech is considered a fundamental bedrock of liberty, allowing citizens to express their ideas and bring about changes that reflect the needs of its people. It gives voice to conflicting or dissenting opinions that promote healthy debate that moves society closer to realizing Americas founding ideals.

The Civil Rights Movement is a perfect example of free speech in action. During the 1950s and 1960s, activists such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. used free speech as a tool to force change in society. Exercising their voice, these activists were able to outlaw racial discrimination that plagued the country.

More: OPINION/COLUMN: Giglio: Threat of rising inflation could burst any number of asset bubbles

But freedom of speech is not an unlimited right.The First Amendment only protects individuals speech from U.S. governmental oppression, control, and censorship; it does not extend to private entities.Companies have significant leeway to set their own standards and policies regarding employee conduct.

There is nothing illegal about a private firm censoring people on its platform. For example, Facebook banning former President Trump indefinitely from its platform and Twitter permanently banning him were within the companies legal rights in the aftermath of the Capital incursion on January 6.

The nation has long grappled with which types of speech should be protected and which should not. Interpreting the broad guarantees of free speech in the First Amendment has not been an easy task. Over time, the Supreme Court has spilled barrels of ink defining the freedom of speech. It has upheld peoples right to critique the government and hold political protests, but hasnt extended protection to those who incite action that might cause harm.

But what constitutes harm is still a matter of debate. For some, it is limited to physical harm as in the case of falsely shouting fire in a crowded movie theater. For others, harm encompassed a compromise to the dignity of others, as in the case of hate speech. Another recent argument is that free speech should be curtailed if it causes offense and the speaker makes you feel disrespected. This argument may be setting a lower bar for limiting free speech. But that is a story for another day.

In todays politically charged climate, some people believe government should restrict certain speech. But thankfully, the First Amendment protects everything from car commercials to fiery protests.

While it may be unfashionable to quote Americas first President, it merits recalling what he said about free speech: If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.

Naturally, everyone has their own interpretation of those comments.

Joseph M. Giglio is a professor of strategic management at Northeastern Universitys DAmore-McKim School of Business.

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OPINION/COLUMN: Giglio: The First Amendment and free speech - The Patriot Ledger

Mothers have often been associated with conservatism: linked to cloyingly sentimental cultural ideals or depicted as victims of patriarchal oppression.

In the 19th century, the middle-class mother was idealised as the angel in the house, while during the boom years after the second world war she was depicted as a devoted homemaker in her suburban castle.

During the 1970s, second-wave feminists thoroughly critiqued the relegation of women to childrearing. This left some with a lingering sense that becoming a mother was an old-fashioned or politically regressive choice.

But in fact there is a long tradition of maternal radicalism in Australia. Mothers have been out on the streets, fighting for change, as frequently as they have kept the home fires burning. This tradition still thrives in the present day as we saw recently when thousands of women joined the March4Justice to protest against gendered violence, often accompanied by their daughters and sons.

Mothers of the first wave of feminism in Australia were staunch advocates for social change.

The woman movement emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, led by feminists such as Louisa Lawson and Rose Scott. Activists drew on their status as mothers as the basis for their progressive political demands to grant married women rights over property, custody and inheritance, as well as voting rights.

Lawson argued:

If we are responsible for our children, give us the power and sacredness of the ballot, and we will lift ourselves and our brothers to a higher civilisation.

The effectiveness of these maternal activists was proven in 1894 when South Australia became the first electorate in the world to give women the vote.

Further evidence of the political power of first-wave feminists came in 1912, when the Commonwealth government approved the Maternity Allowance. This was radical in using government funds to provide state support to mothers as citizens, undercutting the authority of their husbands.

Read more: Mothers explain how they navigated work and childcare, from the 1970s to today

In the 1960s and 1970s, while womens liberation movement activists such as Merle Thornton, Marcia Langton and Zelda DAprano were demanding equal rights for women, middle-class mothers around Australia were quietly rebelling against the medicalisation of pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding.

The Nursing Mothers Association of Australia (later the Australian Breastfeeding Association) adopted guerrilla-like tactics, spreading through local cells in suburban kitchens around the country. Led by women like Mary Paton, the NMAA formed volunteer-based groups in local areas where veteran mums would offer cake, comfort and counsel to new mothers. Almost single-handedly, the NMAA reversed declining breastfeeding rates.

Meanwhile, the so-called natural childbirth movement sought to counteract the medicalisation of birth. Through groups like the Childbirth Education Association, reformers fought to grant women more information and choice about childbirth. They also worked to make the experience less frightening by creating more welcoming birthing spaces and allowing support people to attend labour. These are all changes we now take for granted.

Their legacy continues today through groups like Birth for Humankind, which provides childbirth support for disadvantaged women and supports Birthing on Country for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women.

Maternal protest continues in the 21st century. Amid the swelling ranks of environmental groups like Extinction Rebellion (XR) and Australian Parents for Climate Action (AP4CA), mothers and grandmothers (as well as fathers and grandfathers) are particularly prominent. Like the maternal activists who came before them, these women base their political claims in their care relationships with children.

One XR member and grandmother explains,

I dont have a choice. If you see your loved ones coming to harm you protect them.

AP4CA member Corinne pleaded:

For this years Mothers Day [] my wish is for the Australian government to take genuine action on climate change so that we, Mothers across Australia, can continue to raise our children, knowing that they will have a future worth living for.

Knitting Nannas Against Gas was founded in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales and has since spread around the world. Their Nannafesto explains that they base their opposition to the exploration and mining of coal seam gas and other non-renewable energy sources in their position as grandmothers, and their desire to save the land, air and water for the kiddies.

Mothers have a long history of political activism not just in Australia, but around the world. The caring for children that mothers perform is of course of the utmost significance. But to assume that mothers are essentially apathetic, passive or uninterested in issues beyond the home is to drastically underestimate their potential.

Read more: Brazen Hussies: a new film captures the heady, turbulent power of Australia's women's liberation movement

Not only are mothers politically active, but their causes are diverse, from economic and political rights, to childbearing and reproductive reforms, to environmental concerns.

Perhaps its time we viewed mothers as naturally politically inclined, as philosopher Sara Ruddick argues, and inherently future-oriented.

After all, anything that threatens the present and future worlds their children will inhabit matters deeply to them.

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Looking for the perfect Mother's Day gift? Why not smash the patriarchy - The Conversation AU

M. Thevarajah is a longstanding member of the National Committee of the Socialist Equality Party of Sri Lanka. He has played a key role in the partys struggle among tea plantation workers and the fight to build rank-and-file committees in this key section of the islands working class. He made these remarks at the 2021 International May Day Online Rally held by the World Socialist Web Site and the ICFI on May 1.

Comrades,

As part of the developing class struggle globally, working class struggles are emerging in Sri Lanka, India and the rest of South Asia.

Hundreds of thousands of plantation workers in Sri Lanka took strike action on February 5 demanding a daily wage increase to 1,000 rupees [about $US5]. The Ceylon Workers Congress (CWC), the main plantation union, a partner of the government of President Gotabhaya Rajapakse, did not call this action to mobilise workers against the government and plantation companies, but to let off steam under conditions of mounting anger among the workers over the companies refusal to accept even a meagre rise in daily wages.

About 500 workers at the Alton Estate in the Maskeliya area in Sri Lankas central plantation district were on strike from February 2 until March 26. In addition to demanding a 1,000-rupee daily wage, they opposed management repression and defied the CWCs refusal to support their action. Seizing on an angry protest held by striking workers in front of the estate managers bungalow, Alton management and the police launched a massive witch-hunt against the Alton workers in an attempt to break their strike.

As a part of this witch-hunt, 20 workers and two youth were arrested by the police and put in remand prison by a local magistrate. They were only released on harsh bail conditions. Alton management has terminated the service of 38 workers, including 20 who were arrested. All 38 workers and two youths face frame-up charges.

The CWC is actively collaborating with management and the police in this witch-hunt, even providing a list of workers to be arrested. All other unions active in the estate, including the National Union of Workers, Democratic Workers Congress, Up Country Peoples Front, and Lanka Jathika Estate Workers Union, are abetting this witch-hunt by not doing anything to defend the workers.

This repression not only failed to discourage the plantation workers from conducting a struggle for a wage increase and a reduction of work targets set by the management, it also prompted workers at one estate after another to join the struggle. Under these conditions, the Socialist Equality Party in Sri Lanka has energetically intervened at Alton Estate, as well as at other workplaces, for the building of Action Committees to unify these struggles and provide them with a socialist perspective.

The SEP has launched a campaign to defend the Alton workers against the management-company witch-hunt, explaining that it is a part of the assault of the Rajapakse government, ruling elite and big business against the working class as a whole. We have demanded the withdrawal of all bogus charges against the Alton workers and the reinstatement of all sacked workers immediately. The campaign has won widespread support from plantation workers and other sections of the Sri Lankan working class.

The call made by the ICFI for an International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees to begin and develop a global counter-offensive of the working class against assaults by the ruling class on their social and democratic rights is an important step forward. The SEP is fighting to rally the working class in South Asia, including plantation workers in Sri Lanka, in support of the ICFIs call.

In response to the growth of opposition in the working class and oppressed masses, the ruling classes in South Asia, like their counterparts worldwide, have resorted to whipping up communalism to divide and weaken the working class. They have also intensified their plans for dictatorial forms of rule. In Sri Lanka, the Rajapakse government is whipping up anti-Tamil and anti-Muslim chauvinism, claiming the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) is attempting to raise its head again and seizing on the 2019 Easter Sunday bombing.

The Tamil and Muslim bourgeois parties in Sri Lanka have responded in kind by promoting their own reactionary forms of nationalism, thus assisting to divide the working class along racial lines.

The nearly three decades of anti-Tamil racialist war waged by successive governments in Colombo against the LTTE was ended in May 2009. This defeat of the LTTE was not merely a military defeat, but the outcome of the bankruptcy of its reactionary bourgeois separatist program. In line with that policy, the LTTE was utterly hostile to the working class in Sri Lanka, India and internationally. They focused on appeals to the imperialist powers, above all the US and European ruling class, and their regional allies, such as India, claiming that they would support the oppressed Tamil masses against successive Colombo governments.

Even after the military defeat of the LTTE in 2009, the north and east of Sri Lanka has remained under military occupation. Underscoring the real class character of the racialist war conducted for 30 years under the pretext of fighting terrorism, the racial oppression of the Tamil people continues.

The Tamil bourgeois nationalist parties, including the TNA (Tamil National Alliance), are continuing their reactionary pro-imperialist policies. They support the military-strategic offensive of US imperialism and its ally India against China in the hope of getting their assistance to pressure Colombo into accepting a power-sharing arrangement between the Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim elites to secure the privileges of the Tamil elite.

Along these lines, the TNA actively supported the regime-change operation sponsored by the US with the assistance of India after Sri Lankas presidential election in January 2015, which replaced the government of President Mahinda Rajapakse with the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government.

The TNA went on to closely collaborate with the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government, even under conditions of the continuation of the military occupation in the northern Jaffna peninsula, and intensified attacks on the social and democratic rights of the working class and oppressed masses, including the imposition of IMF-dictated austerity measures.

The SEP vehemently rejects national separatism and insists that democratic rights can be secured only as part of the struggle to overthrow capitalist rule through a unified struggle of Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim workers based on a socialist program. For this the leading social force for the political transformation, the working class, must be organised and mobilised independent of the bourgeois parties and their left hangers on across all communities. The aim of this united movement of the working class is to overthrow bourgeois rule and establish a Sri Lanka-Eelam Socialist Republic, as a part of a Union of Socialist Republics in South Asia and internationally.

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The SEP leads the fight against company, police and union witch-hunt of Sri Lankan plantation workers - WSWS

Since then, the East German state has been apart ofhistory. Therefore, this article raises the question ofwhat role the GDR plays inthe historical consciousness ofthe Federal Republic ofGermany and how its society relates tothe legacy ofthe vanished state today.

Assessments ofthe GDR and its role inGerman history continue todiverge widely. Before the peaceful revolution inthe GDR, the thesis ofHermann Rudolph about the GDR asaGerman alternative was repeatedly cited. Onthe other hand, after 1989, the writer Stefan Heym saw itonly asafootnote inhistory. This reflects not only the changed views, caused by1989, but also historiography. Ifuntil the end ofthe existence ofthe GDR inthe East and West the history ofapartial German state was written almost asanational history, the historian Christoph Klessmann presented the parallel post-war development oftwo German states asanovelty inhis work Die doppelte Staatsgrndung, first published in1982.

The collapse ofthe GDR and the communist state system naturally changed the perspective. Political scientist Peter Graf Kielmansegg spoke out against the parallel history oftwo German states. Historian Hermann Weber, onthe other hand, saw the main flaw ofthe SED regime inthe lack ofdemocratic legitimacy ofthe East German state. Against this background, the question ofthe similarity and comparability ofthe two German dictatorships inthe 20th century almost naturally provoked itself.

Finally, in1992, the Enquete-Kommission Understanding the history and consequences ofthe SED dictatorship inGermany was created for this purpose, consisting of16members ofparliament and 11experts. During 44open and 37closed-door meetings, the commission heard 327 witnesses and scientists. Astudy, which was about 15,000 pages long, was subsequently published asafinal report.

Incontrast, former GDR historians emphasised the anti-capitalist lines asthe tradition onwhich government and society inEast Germany was based, while atthe same time emphasising its autonomy and intrinsic value. This was intended tosubstantiate the claim that the history ofthe GDR was ultimately alegitimate and autochthonous alternative tothe Federal Republic. SoRolf Badstbner, along time professor atthe Central Institute ofHistory ofthe Academy ofSciences ofthe GDR, wrote atthe turn ofthe millennium: Infact, wewere dealing with two different lines ofdevelopment and potential opportunities, which, after the First World War and its consequences, simultaneously manifested themselves asepoch-making processes and constellations. His colleague Heinz Karl even saw inthe GDR nothing more than aconsequence and implementation ofdemands which were proclaimed back inthe 19th century, which have since been atthe centre ofpolitical disputes and for which they have been fought inrevolutionary actions since 1918. The historians ofthe former GDR, however, were not only concerned with the line ofargument that stressed the role oftradition. They wanted tolegitimise the vanished state inretrospect and atthe same time fit itinto the continuity ofthe social movement inGermany. Academically, however, historians who view the GDR asthe second German dictatorship inthe 20th century have largely prevailed.

However, for the general public, this question does not seem sosimple. Itisespecially noticeable here that the West ofGermany knows almost nothing about the history ofthe eastern part ofGermany after 1945. Although the GDR has earned the right toappear inschool textbooks after its collapse and the reunification ofGermany, what iswritten there mainly emphasises only the repressive aspects ofthe history ofthe GDR. Only intextbooks for the 12th or13th grade thatis, shortly before the certificate ofmaturity can you find details about the socialist state. Students inWest Germany mostly learn only about the negative side ofthe GDR. They hear about anunjust state, anineffective economic system and the Ministry ofState Security, which controlled all spheres oflife ofthe citizens ofthe GDR and was supposed toeliminate any political opposition.

That iswhy, more than 30years after the reunification ofGermany, millions ofpeople have practically nobasic knowledge about this most important episode ofGerman history. For this very reason, itshould not besurprising why somany people inEast Germany still feel that theyre misunderstood, and are considered only asvictims ofthe dictatorship. But only inthe rarest cases does this correspond totheir real life experience. The positive aspects ofthe GDR, such associal security and public welfare, are scarcely represented inhistorical memory.

While the historical image ofthe GDR inthe east ofthe republic also includes biographies ofindividuals, certain economic aspects ofthe GDR, and just the everyday life and mentality ofthe population, inthe west itismainly about the contrast between the dictatorship ofthe SED and the main democratic system, orthat between social oppression and afree pluralistic society.

This indirect historical image ofthe GDR isprobably one ofthe reasons that inthe West, the experience ofoppression, disappointment inthe fall ofcommunism and humiliation inthe East isoften transmitted inthe form ofstories and feelings. Inthe West, this leads toalatent rejection ofthe East associalist, underdeveloped, and sometimes even radically right. Thus, much can besaid about the fact that history lessons inschools should oppose this opinion with amore objective point ofview and thus ensure greater mutual understanding between East and West Germans.

East Germans still consider themselves outsiders, and itislargely due tothe fact that they have not yet entered the social, political and economic elite ofthe Federal Republic. For example, out of200 top managers ofthe largest German corporations included inthe Dax stock index, only four are from East Germany. Among the rectors ofGerman universities, there isnot even asingle representative from the former territory ofthe GDR. None ofthe 25presidents and presiding judges ofthe highest courts inEast Germany are from the five new federal states.

Ifthe elites are not strengthened through the inclusion ofthose who spent atleast part oftheir historical past inthe GDR, the historical memory and everyday culture ofthe second German state will belost forever, because itwill not bepreserved for acommon Germany. Itislike anidentity, part ofwhich issimply cut off. Itisstill unclear how tomake upfor what has been neglected over the past decades. However, itisclear that ifnoeffort ismade, the feeling offrustration inthe context ofGerman reunification will persist for avery, very long time, especially inthe East.

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The Influence of the GDR on the Formation of Historical Memory and Modern Identity in Germany - Valdai Discussion Club

Sharon Lavigne was teaching a special-education class when her daughter called to tell her about the Sunshine Project. Named for its proximity to Louisianas Sunshine Bridge, the operation, helmed by the Taiwanese behemoth Formosa Plastics, was on track to build one of the worlds largest plastic plants. Already the air Lavigne breathed in her native St. James Parish was some of the most toxic in the United States. Now Formosa planned to spend $9.4 billion on facilities that would make polymer and ethylene glycol, polyethylene, and polypropyleneingredients found in antifreeze, drainage pipes, and a variety of single-use plasticsjust two miles down the road from her family home. The concentration of carcinogens in the atmosphere could triple.

It hurt me like an arrow through my body, Lavigne told me when I visited her at her home in Welcome, Louisiana, last December. Everyone else was saying we had to move. Within a few months of learning about the Sunshine Project in spring 2018, Lavigne, whos 69, organized a community meeting in her den. Aint gonna happen, Lavigne said. We not gonna be moved out and bought out and throwed out the window. The group went on to found Rise St. James, a faith-based nonprofit with the mission of halting industrial development in the parish. I was not a person who would speak up, Lavigne said. Boy, did that change. That fall, Lavigne was spending so much time organizing marches and speaking publicly about Formosa that, after 39 years of teaching, she retired. Then two of Rises members diedone of cancer, the other of respiratory distress and other medical problems, conditions Lavigne links to pollution from existing plants. Stopping Formosa became her full-time job.

In Louisianawhere more than a 12th of the countrys estimated 4 million enslaved people lived prior to the Civil Wardescendants have the right to visit their ancestors graveyards. So when Lavigne learned in late 2019 that enslaved people from the Buena Vista Plantation, whom she believes shes descended from, may have been buried on Formosas proposed building site, she tried to visit. Upon arriving, she said authorities told her she was trespassing and that if she returned, shed be arrested.

Back in July 2018, Coastal Environments, or CEI, an independent archaeological and environmental contractor, had alerted the Louisiana Division of Archaeology about two possible cemeteries on Formosas land, based on historic maps of the Buena Vista and Acadia Plantations. Formosas archaeological consultants had missed those sites in their initial survey, but after being instructed by the state to look again, they found and fenced off the Buena Vista cemetery. According to the Center for Constitutional Rights, a legal-advocacy nonprofit, Formosa made no public announcement of this discovery. Lavigne found out about its existence more than a year later via a public-records request submitted by Rises lawyers. The Acadia cemetery, Formosa reported, had still not been located and may have been destroyed by a previous owner, but both CEI and the Center for Constitutional Rights dispute that claim, arguing that Formosas surveyors searched in the wrong area. In March 2020, CEI identified five additional anomalies on Formosas territory that could also be slave cemeteries and have not yet been excavated. (Archaeologists conducted thousands of shovel tests no remains have been found other than at the Buena Vista site, Janile Parks, Formosas director of community and government relations, wrote me via email. When [Formosa] learned of remains at the Buena Vista site ... the company immediately coordinated with the appropriate authorities. [Formosas] archaeological investigations of the site have been transparent and are matters of public record.)

Rise formally requested access to the Buena Vista cemetery last year for Juneteenth, a holiday commemorating the day that enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, found out they were freemore than two years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. Formosa denied the Juneteenth request, and Lavigne took them to court. In a statement to the Associated Press, the companys lawyers questioned the need for the ceremony on the basis that archaeologists couldnt confirm the ethnicity of the human remains. District Judge Emile St. Pierre sided with Rise, giving the group temporary access to the property. We need healing, St. Pierre said at the end of the hearing. Lets look at where we are in America.

The conflict between Rise St. James and Formosa comes at a time when many Americans are insisting the country acknowledge and address the horrors of slavery and its repercussions. Around the country, cities have debated whether to take down Confederate monuments, inciting protests. Down the river from St. James Parish, in New Orleans, several monuments have already been removed, and the city council is preparing to rename schools and streets that honor Confederate officials and segregationists. Yet whats happening with the Buena Vista grave site is unique. Unlike monuments, which are symbolic, the cemetery contains human remains, which have endowed the land with enough cultural capital to sway a judge, at least temporarily, in favor of the community that claims it. Like a time capsule, the graves link the petrochemical industry to the plantation economy, revealing how Louisianas petroleum industry profits from exploiting historic inequalities and showing how one brutal system gave way to another.

Two hundred years ago, nearly every inch of Mississippi Riveradjacent land south of Natchez was part of a plantation. Rich soil made for strong harvests, and river access allowed for the easy export of goods. In Louisiana, those plantations grew sugarcane, the white gold that propelled the southern economy. Arduous to harvest, grueling to press, and treacherous to boil, sugar had been a rare commodity, a crop barely worth the effort, until the transatlantic slave trade solved the problem of labor. In the half century preceding the Civil War, 1 million people were sold into the Deep South, relocated from Virginia, Maryland, and Kentucky to Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Along the lower Mississippi River, the population of enslaved people quadrupled despite their being worked so hard that death rates often exceeded birth rates. Nonconsensual laborers produced a quarter of the worlds cane sugar, which became so lucrative as a crop that, for a time, the nations highest concentration of millionaires lived between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. Back then, Louisiana was the second-richest state per capita, a staggering feat when you consider that almost half of its residents lacked legal ownership of their bodies.

Drive along the lower Mississippi River today in southern Louisiana, and youll see vestiges of that history, though the state now has the second-highest poverty rate in the union. Houses are small and trailers abundant, but more than a dozen plantations still exist, offering tours, meals, wedding venues, and overnight stays, their advertising thick with honeyed narratives about an opulent white lifestyle long gone. Until two years ago, a sign at Rosedown, the most visited plantation in the state, described enslaved people as happy with a natural musical instinct. Ormond Plantations website laments the hard times suffered after the war between the states. Only one plantation museum in Louisiana, the Whitney, focuses exclusively on the labor and culture of African and African-descended people. There, visitors can pay their respects at memorials for the enslaved, tour slave cabins, and peek in the overseers shed, where the tools of chattelneck braces, balls and chains, leg irons, and paddleshang from the walls and ceiling.

The land adjacent to the Mississippi River bears the marks of another brutality, unmissable from a car, barge, or plane. Beside the restored plantation houses and acres of sugarcane that still stripe the landscape, a newer economy chugs and chuffs. More than 150 petrochemical plants operate along the 85-mile stretch of land from New Orleans to Baton Rouge. Stadium-size holding tanks, miles-long pipes, and flaring smokestacks create skylines reminiscent of cities, though, aside from the occasional security truck, few humans are visible. Names such as Syngas and American Styrenics make it difficult to tell what each plant makes, but whatever it is, you can smell it, cough it out, and sometimes see it falling, a soft yellow rain from a discolored sky. The sheer quantity of plastics, synthetic rubbers, electronic components, and fertilizers manufactured here is enough that experts call the area the Silicon Valley of the petrochemical industry.

The Sunshine Project has an unmistakable doomsday quality. According to a 2020 Pew Research Center poll, about two-thirds of Americans believe the federal government should do more to reduce global climate change, yet Louisianas Department of Environmental Quality has written permits for the proposed facilities to emit more than 13 million tons of greenhouse gases a year, the equivalent of three and a half coal plants. In addition, extensive research on the damaging effects of plastics has spawned a global movement to ban single-use items such as bags, straws, and cups. Despite this, Louisianas governor, John Bel Edwards, defends the Sunshine Project, hailing its proposed facilities as an economic win. In addition to tax revenue, Formosa anticipates that itll support an estimated 8,000 temporary ancillary positions in the construction and service industries and create 1,200 on-site jobs with an average yearly salary of $84,500, almost triple the median household income for St. James Parishs Fifth District, where the plants would be located.

Lavigne thinks those numbers are spin. The state has often equated industry with progress, but petrochemical facilities have a documented history of outsourcing labor. Lavigne is doubtful that Formosa will hire people from her community, besides for low-paying security worka perspective her parish councilman, Clyde Cooper, shares. These new companies don't hire anyone from the community, Cooper told me over the phone. People come, even from outside of the state, to work in construction and in the plants. (In 2018, Cooper voted to back the Sunshine Project, on the condition that the company agree to preferential hiring from within the parish, plus funding for a hurricane evacuation route and free cancer screenings for residents of the Fifth District.)

As for taxes, Louisianas notoriety for corporate welfare has long made it a haven for refineries and manufacturers. Since the 1930s, the Industrial Tax Exemption Program has allowed a state-level board to make decisions about parish-level property-tax exemption. According to a study by Together Louisiana, a statewide network of community organizers, from 1997 to 2016 the ITEP board approved all but eight of 16,931 corporate-tax-exemption applications. In 2017 alone, those exemptions cost state parishes about $1.9 billion, money that couldve been spent on local parks, libraries, and schools. In 2016, Edwards issued an executive order returning decision-making power on property-tax exemptions to the parishes, but he backtracked in 2020 when he gave corporations the option of appealing local decisions to a state board.

And yet, taxes and jobs are the least of Lavignes worries. What keeps her up at night are emissions. In the entire U.S., only one plant emits chloroprene, an ingredient in wet suits and Koozies thats linked to liver and lung cancers. That its in southeast Louisiana is no accident. As reported by ProPublica, the state has a reputation for having policy makers sympathetic to industry, and lax environmental regulation. Since the 1980s, residents have been documenting high rates of miscarriages and cancer, earning the parishes along the Mississippi River the nickname Cancer Alley. Ask anyone, Harry Joseph, the local pastor of the 114-year-old Mount Triumph Baptist Church, said during a bike tour highlighting environmental injustice. Theres not a household here that hasnt dealt with cancer. The region has improved considerably since the 1963 Clean Air Act and the 1972 Clean Water Act created federal pollution limits. But in the past decade, hydro-fracturingthe practice of injecting pressurized liquids into bedrock in order to extract fossil fuelshas produced a glut of natural gas thats fueled the establishment of new chemical plants, and environmental progress is expected to backslide.

Already under scrutiny for allegedly protecting the industry its meant to regulate, Louisianas Department of Environmental Quality has proposed an air-emissions allowance for the Sunshine Project that includes: 7.7 tons of ethylene oxidea carcinogen linked to breast cancer, non-Hodgkins lymphoma, leukemia, and miscarriages; 36.58 tons of the carcinogen benzene; and 1,243 tons of nitrogen oxides, which cause and exacerbate respiratory illnesses. (Formosa has relied on sound science in design of the Sunshine Project and is confident it meets all regulatory criteria, Parks said in her email. Protecting health, safety and the environment is a priority in project engineering, design and operations.) In a still-unresolved 2020 lawsuit, a coalition of environmental organizations allege that these quantities surpass federal air standards and that the Louisiana DEQ failed to consider existing air pollution and disproportionate racial impacts in its assessment. (Our permits were issued in accordance with all applicable state and federal laws, Gregory Langley, the press secretary for the Louisiana DEQ, told me by email. Great care is taken in the site selection process to identify a safe location for the plant that is protective of the adjacent communities and their residents.)

At the heart of the dispute is the Louisiana Tumor Registry, a project from Louisiana State Universitys School of Public Health meant to track cancer risk throughout the state. Although the registry reports no elevated cancer risk in St. James Parish, critics point out that its data neither take into account residents proximity to plants nor measure the impact of new facilities. This missing information matters. The 824 residents of Welcome arent the only ones in the immediate vicinity of the Sunshine Project. Fifth Ward Elementary is a mile awaynearly all of its 123 students are Black.

Its not by chance that 158 years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, rural Black communities bear the environmental consequences of Louisianas biggest industry. Overlay a map of southern Louisianas petrochemical and petroleum plants with archival maps of the areas plantations, and youll find that in many cases the property lines match up. One oppressive economy begets another, Barbara L. Allen, a professor of science, technology, and society at Virginia Tech and the author of Uneasy Alchemy, a book on environmental justice in the region, told me over the phone. The Great River Road was built on the bodies of enslaved Black people. The chemical corridor is responsible for the body burden of their descendants.

Allens research examines the extractive economy: how sugar monocropping transitioned to petrochemical manufacturing. During Reconstruction, the Freedmens Bureau gave land grants to Black maroons and the formerly enslaved along the lower Mississippi, parceling out slivers of large plantations to extended-family groups as part of reparations, while returning the bulk of the land to white owners. The result, Allen wrote in a 2006 article, was a pattern of large, contiguous blocks of open land under single ownership separated by communities of freed blacks and poorer whites. Like plantations, petrochemical and petroleum plants benefit from large acreage and easy access to some of the worlds busiest shipping lanes. When the oil industry moved in during the first half of the 20th century, corporations began buying up the intact plantations. More than a century later, the pattern established during Reconstruction is still visible, only instead of plantations, Louisianas historic free towns share fence lines with plants.

The proliferation of petrochemical plants along the lower Mississippi is undoubtedly slaverys legacy. Before the Civil War, the state relied on the plantation economy. Today it relies on an industrial economy, which continues to disenfranchise residents. In her 2016 book, Strangers in Their Own Land, the sociologist Arlie Hochschild observes that many rural white Louisianans believe they must sacrifice environmental regulation in order to have jobs. For many rural Black Louisianans, that sacrifice is much starker. When industry moves in, descendants of the formerly enslaved get neither environmental security nor well-paying jobs. Like the plantations and land owners who came before them, petrochemical plants and their leadership have emerged as a new kind of boss, determining what happens not only to the land but also to the people who live there. The court case about Juneteenth access to the Buena Vista cemetery illustrates just how much this is a struggle about ownership of bodies: who decides which bodies go where, who has access to the bodies of the deceased, and ultimately who determines which chemicals Black people are exposed to.

Politics in Louisiana often revolves around industry. St. James Parish, on its face, is hunky-dory: fifty-fifty Black and white, Anne Rolfes, the founder and director of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, a nonprofit that partners with fence-line communities to advocate for environmental rights, said during the aforementioned bike tour. However, the African American population is mostly at one end of the parish, in the Fourth and Fifth Districts. And where do you think the land-use plans put all the petrochemical plants? Lavigne lives in the Fifth District, where nine plants are in operation, two are under construction, and four more, including Formosas megaplexwhich itself includes 14 unique facilitiesare proposed. This concentration of industry is enabled by zoning laws. Typically, land-use plans separate residential areas from industrial ones, but in 2014, the St. James Parish council voted to change river-adjacent sections of the Fourth and Fifth districts from residential to residential/future industrial. The council will fight to keep the petrochemical plants out of the white districts, but they roll out the red carpet when it comes to the Fourth and Fifth Districts, Rolfes said. Its worse than redlining. Its shocking, really. The council has a written plan to wipe out Black communities. Councilman Cooper acknowledged biased consideration in the councils zoning, but stopped short of calling it environmental racism. I dont think its strictly on being racist. They got big plots of unused cane and farmland on the river and theres a rail there and easier access because its not as populated.

Rolfes assessment, however, is backed by the local historical record. In 1987, traces of vinyl chloride were discovered in the blood of children from nearby Reveilletown, a historic free town founded in the 1870s. Following a settlement, Georgia Gulf Corp., the owner of a neighboring plant, bought out the rest of that town for $3 million. Two years later, vinyl chloride had contaminated the groundwater in the historic free town of Morrisonville, and Dow Chemical Company spent $7 million buying out residents. In 2002, yet another free town, Diamond, sandwiched between two Shell Chemicals plants, was bought out decades after two fatal chemical explosions. In each case, Black families had little choice but to leave, giving up not only their houses, which pollution had rendered unsellable, but also their community. This repetition of buyouts has created what environmentalists believe is a dangerous precedent: Instead of remedying safety and environmental concerns, plants that pollute can pay their way out of trouble.

Even before the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, the river parishes nickname had begun shifting from Cancer Alley to Death Alley. The kinds of preexisting conditions that make COVID-19 especially deadly thrive here, giving one rallying cry against systemic racismI cant breathehaunting significance. Still, the environmental-justice movement, which combines a demand for racial equality with the push for environmental protection, has gained traction in St. James Parish during the pandemic. Shortly before Rises Juneteenth ceremony, Formosa announced that it would halt construction on the Sunshine Project until COVID-19 rates dropped in the area. The decision coincided with an increase in negative media attention about its handling of the rediscovered grave sites and an impending environmental lawsuit, which was thrown out when the Army Corps of Engineers announced that it was reevaluating Formosas wetlands permits. Though the company resumed preconstruction activities such as road building and soil testing in October, Formosa said it would defer major construction until a COVID-19 vaccine was widely available. Work on the property is still halted today. (The significant economic impact of COVID-19 has contributed to difficulty in evaluating construction, Formosas Parks wrote. Ongoing legal proceedings also contribute to the delay.) Meanwhile pressure is mounting to shut down the whole project.

Two U.S. representatives, the Democrats Ral M. Grijalva of Arizona and A. Donald McEachin of Virginia, are pushing the Biden administration to permanently revoke the Sunshine Projects permits. (The congressman who had represented St. James Parish, Cedric Richmond, left his post in January to join President Joe Bidens cabinet. So far hes made no comment for or against Formosa.) Experts appointed by the UNs Human Rights Council have weighed in too, calling on the United States and St. James Parish to recognize and pay reparations for the centuries of harm to Afro-descendants rooted in slavery and colonialism. Such support is hard-earned, but how much it will matter in the long run is unclear. Industry [in Louisiana] has just exploded, Allen, the Virginia Tech professor, said. In five or 10 years I wonder if the region will even be livable.

Oppression runs deep in southern Louisiana, but so does resistance. On January 8, 1811, a group of enslaved people marched from Woodlawn Plantation in St. John the Baptist Parish toward New Orleans. With each plantation they passed, more people joined, armed with cane knives, hoes, clubs, and guns, until more than 500 people flowed downriver, bent on founding a new Black nation. Within days, the rebellion was quashed. Dozens of Black men and women were killed by federal troops and plantation militia, and many more were sentenced to death, their severed heads mounted on spikes and displayed along a 60-mile stretch of river.

For a time, knowledge of the revolt was lost, a victim of historical amnesia. Over the past decade, though, tours, book publications, and museum exhibits have restored the event to the popular imagination. In 2019, that history came alive when the artist Dread Scott led hundreds of mostly Black volunteers in period costume on a 24-mile march past plantations and petrochemical plants, ending the reenactment at a destination the original insurgence never reached: New Orleanss Congo Square. Their rebellion is a profound what if? story, reads Scotts website. It had a small but real chance of succeeding.

In some ways, Lavignes work with Rise isnt so different. When she and her peers organize, the odds are against them. Theyre a small group advocating for change in a region shaped by plantations, in a state where politicians consistently choose industry over environment, against a corporation they believe is determined to make plastics no matter the human cost. We are here to acknowledge the evil of slavery and its aftermath, Lavigne announced to her online audience and to the few dozen people gathered in person at Buena Vista cemetery last Juneteenth. She placed a bouquet of roses near eight rediscovered grave shafts. Those were their very bodies. Their very labor, one onlooker observed. We honor our ancestors by thriving. The crowd swayed, singing, I said, Lord, help me please / I got up singingshouting!victory.

The stories Louisianans tell about their history matter. The 1811 revolt ended in horrific violence, but today that history is often recounted with a kind of instructional reverence. Here were enslaved people who dreamed and organized and marched so that their children might experience a better life. Here were people who were beaten down and rose up anyway, knowing very well that their greatest hope for survival might end with the loss of their life. They stroveyes, they didand look at how they nearly succeeded.

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Louisiana Chemical Plants Are Thriving Off of Slavery - The Atlantic

THE National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM) and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) on Thursday announced that they will appeal the Quebec Superior Court decision regarding Bill 21 to the Quebec Court of Appeal.

It has been almost two years of second-class citizenship for Quebecers who wear religious symbols such as the hijab, kippah, or turban. We promised that we would not stop fighting until second-class citizenship ends for all Quebecers. saidYusufFaqiri,NCCM Director of Quebec Affairs.

Justice Marc-Andre Blanchard recognized that there are fundamental problems with Bill 21. The stories of how real people continue to be harmed by Bill 21 are clear in this decision. There are real life consequences to the harms that Bill 21 causes, the organizations said.

The government wants to make us believe that the courts decision divides Quebecers. In fact, the legislation known as Bill 21 is itself the source of division, discrimination, and harm to Quebec society. Quebecers deserve choice and freedom from government oppression and that is why we will continue to fight Bill 21. said Noa Mendelsohn Aviv, CCLA Equality Program Director.

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National Council of Canadian Muslims and Canadian Civil Liberties Association appealing Bill 21 decision - Voiceonline.com

In March 2017, a group of hackers from China arrived in Vancouver with one goal: Find hidden weak spots inside the worlds most popular technologies.

Googles Chrome browser, Microsofts Windows operating system, and Apples iPhones were all in the crosshairs. But no one was breaking the law. These were just some of the people taking part in Pwn2Own, one of the worlds most prestigious hacking competitions.

It was the 10th anniversary for Pwn2Own, a contest that draws elite hackers from around the globe with the lure of big cash prizes if they manage to exploit previously undiscovered software vulnerabilities, known as zero-days. Once a flaw is found, the details are handed over to the companies involved, giving them time to fix it. The hacker, meanwhile, walks away with a financial reward and eternal bragging rights.

For years, Chinese hackers were the most dominant forces at events like Pwn2Own, earning millions of dollars in prizes and establishing themselves among the elite. But in 2017, that all stopped.

One of Chinas elite hacked an iPhone. Virtually overnight, Chinese intelligence used it as a weapon against a besieged minority ethnic group, striking before Apple could fix the problem. It was a brazen act performed in broad daylight.

In an unexpected statement, the billionaire founder and CEO of the Chinese cybersecurity giant Qihoo 360one of the most important technology firms in Chinapublicly criticized Chinese citizens who went overseas to take part in hacking competitions. In an interview with the Chinese news site Sina, Zhou Hongyi said that performing well in such events represented merely an imaginary success. Zhou warned that once Chinese hackers show off vulnerabilities at overseas competitions, they can no longer be used. Instead, he argued, the hackers and their knowledge should stay in China so that they could recognize the true importance and strategic value of the software vulnerabilities.

Beijing agreed. Soon, the Chinese government banned cybersecurity researchers from attending overseas hacking competitions. Just months later, a new competition popped up inside China to take the place of the international contests. The Tianfu Cup, as it was called, offered prizes that added up to over a million dollars.

The inaugural event was held in November 2018. The $200,000 top prize went to Qihoo 360 researcher Qixun Zhao, who showed off a remarkable chain of exploits that allowed him to easily and reliably take control of even the newest and most up-to-date iPhones. From a starting point within the Safari web browser, he found a weakness in the core of the iPhones operating system, its kernel. The result? A remote attacker could take over any iPhone that visited a web page containing Qixuns malicious code. Its the kind of hack that can potentially be sold for millions of dollars on the open market to give criminals or governments the ability to spy on large numbers of people. Qixun named it Chaos.

Two months later, in January 2019, Apple issued an update that fixed the flaw. There was little fanfarejust a quick note of thanks to those who discovered it.

But in August of that year, Google published an extraordinary analysis into a hacking campaign it said was exploiting iPhones en masse. Researchers dissected five distinct exploit chains theyd spotted in the wild. These included the exploit that won Qixun the top prize at Tianfu, which they said had also been discovered by an unnamed attacker.

The Google researchers pointed out similarities between the attacks they caught being used in the real world and Chaos. What their deep dive omitted, however, were the identities of the victims and the attackers: Uyghur Muslims and the Chinese government.

For the past seven years, China has committed human rights abuses against the Uyghur people and other minority groups in the Western province of Xinjiang. Well-documented aspects of the campaign include detention camps, systematic compulsory sterilization, organized torture and rape, forced labor, and an unparalleled surveillance effort. Officials in Beijing argue that China is acting to fight terrorism and extremism, but the United States, among other countries, has called the actions genocide. The abuses add up to an unprecedented high-tech campaign of oppression that dominates Uyghur lives, relying in part on targeted hacking campaigns.

Chinas hacking of Uyghurs is so aggressive that it is effectively global, extending far beyond the countrys own borders. It targets journalists, dissidents, and anyone who raises Beijings suspicions of insufficient loyalty.

Shortly after Googles researchers noted the attacks, media reports connected the dots: the targets of the campaign that used the Chaos exploit were the Uyghur people, and the hackers were linked to the Chinese government. Apple published a rare blog post that confirmed the attack had taken place over two months: that is, the period beginning immediately after Qixun won the Tianfu Cup and stretching until Apple issued the fix.

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How China turned a prize-winning iPhone hack against the Uyghurs - MIT Technology Review

YANGON Every night at 8pm, the stern-faced newscaster on Myanmar military TV announces the days hunted.

The mug shots of those charged with political crimes appear onscreen. Among them are doctors, students, beauty queens, actors, reporters, even a pair of make-up bloggers. Some of the faces look puffy and bruised, the likely result of interrogations. They are a warning not to oppose the military junta that seized power in a Feb 1 coup and imprisoned the countrys civilian leaders.

As the midnight insects trill, the hunt intensifies. Military censors sever the Internet across most of Myanmar, matching the darkness outside with an information blackout. Soldiers sweep through the cities, arresting, abducting and assaulting with slingshots and rifles.

The nightly banging on doors, as arbitrary as it is dreaded, galvanises a frenzy of self-preservation. Residents delete their Facebook accounts, destroy incriminating mobile phone cards and erase traces of support for Myanmars elected government.

As sleep proves elusive, it is as if much of the nation is suffering a collective insomnia. Little more than a decade ago, the most innocuous of infractions owning a photograph of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, or an unregistered cellphone, or a single note of foreign currency could mean a prison sentence.

Some of the militarys Orwellian diktats rivalled those of North Korea. Now, three months after Myanmars experiment in democracy was strangled by the generals power grab, the sense of foreboding has returned. There is no indication that it will ease.

For the better part of 60 years, the militarys rule over Myanmar was animated not by grand ideology but by fear. Today, with much of the population determined to resist the coup-makers, a new junta is consolidating its grip by resorting, yet again, to a reign of terror.

Myanmar is going back to the bad old days when people were so scared that their neighbours would inform on them and they could get arrested for no reason at all, said Mr Ko Moe Yan Naing, a former police officer who is now in hiding after opposing the coup.

The military, known as the Tatmadaw, may have modernised its arsenal, acquiring Chinese-made weapons and Russian fighter jets. But its propaganda is stuck in a time warp from back when few challenged its narrative. On Wednesday, the State Administration Council, as the junta calls itself, banned satellite TV.

For all the fear percolating in Myanmar, the resistance has only hardened. On Wednesday, the National Unity Government said it was forming a peoples defence force to counter the Tatmadaw.

But the Tatmadaw has built an entire infrastructure dedicated to one purpose: perpetuating its power for powers sake.

Its bureaucracy of oppression is formidable. An army of informers, known as dalan, has reappeared, monitoring whispers and neighbours movements. And local officials have taken to banging on doors and peering into homes, as a dreaded system of household registration is reintroduced.

Sequestered in military compounds without good Internet access, soldiers have little ability to tap into the outrage of fellow citizens. Still, news does filter in, and some officers have broken rank. In recent weeks, about 80 Myanmar air force officers have deserted and are now in hiding, according to fellow military personnel.

Politics is not the business of soldiers, said an air force captain who is now in hiding and does not want his name used because his family might be punished for his desertion. Now the Tatmadaw have become the terrorists, and I dont want to be part of it.

BLOOMBERG

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Myanmar military once again using fear to control the country - The Straits Times

These last weeks, months, years and decades we keep on adding names to the list Adam Toledo, Daunte Wright, MaKhia Bryant, Ronald Johnson, Pierre Loury, Rekia Boyd, Nickolas Lee, Laquan McDonald, Archie Lee Chambers, Maurice Granton, Anthony Alvarez. The list of victims of police murder seems never-ending. Then there is the list of police torture survivors Gerald Reed, Stanley Howard, Tony Anderson, Darrell Fair, Sean Tyler, Kilroy Watkins, and on and on and on. Many of us speak these names. We show up at the rallies and actions demanding justice. We work tirelessly to dismantle the long-serving systems and structures that brutalize and kill Black and Brown bodies. We feel the anger and the terror. But, we dont often acknowledge that behind every name, every video, every individual locked up in the United States, every police stop, immense and complex trauma is left behind.

Our language is limited in its ability to name the multiple consequences of the particular compounded trauma wreaked by and left behind at the hands of the state directly and indirectly. This absence of language is a result of the invisibility and denial that our systems rely upon to continue to enact oppression. Language is essential for helping us to examine, analyze, identify, reflect and act. We currently exist very much in a pre-language reality, where there is little acknowledgement of the harm, trauma and death that is caused by the state organization of police and mass incarceration. This lack of official language to name that trauma, of course, serves a specific agenda. If you cannot name a thing, it is harder to mobilize against and around it, it is harder to uproot it, and it is very easy to deny it exists at all, let alone address its human and societal impact except for the brief moments of extreme violence that force a disruption of the dominant narrative by providing a momentary glimpse into the normal operations of the violence of the state.

At the Chicago Torture Justice Center (CTJC), we work with survivors of police violence, police torture and police murder every day. We also know that it is not only incidents of violence that leave a scar. Even those who havent been victims of direct violence are experiencing complex trauma the trauma of a lifetime of knowing that every time you lay your head down at night, or walk to the bus stop, or drive down the street, your chances of being targeted, assaulted or even murdered at the hands of the police are disproportionately higher if you are Black, if you are Brown.

In Chicago, this means that Black people are 22 times more likely to be killed by police than their white counterparts, and Latinx people are six times more likely. If you are a Chicago police torture survivor, or a family member of a loved one killed by the Chicago Police Department (CPD), or if you are trans, or homeless or disabled, these statistics are compounded. This means that there are significant portions of the population of the city that are living in constant awareness of the deadly potential every single law enforcement agent carries with them. In a city that has one of the largest police forces per capita among big cities in the United States, the instances of running into police are higher than most places in the country.

For over 70 percent of Chicagos residents who are Black and Brown, this police presence comes at a high cost. In addition to the lives lost and constant threat of danger, there is a trail of trauma leading to increased states of hypervigilance, unsafety and helplessness. This lived reality for many Black and Brown individuals overwhelms the nervous system, and forces individuals and communities to develop survival strategies and coping mechanisms that seek to mitigate the reality of living with a perpetual threat to life and well-being.

These conditions add to the reasons why communities that are surveilled and occupied by policing are also always the poorest and have disproportionate rates of health disparities related to stress. This ongoing stress is state regulated and maintained. Oppression, as defined by Prentis Hemphill, is how society organizes itself to control and distribute trauma. This definition helps us better understand the political nature of health, wellness and trauma, and underscores the important questions of: Who does it serve when we are unwell? Who necessitates and perpetuates our unwellness and our unhealth, and why?

The violence direct and indirect of racialized policing is both traumatic and trauma-producing. For many, this means that since the point of birth, the outside world has represented a perpetual environment of violence and harm, with government agents being the largest perpetrators and managers of this violence. Danger and threat to life is embodied by police, reinforced by politicians who give cover and legitimacy to policing, and enforced through the courts. This can mean then, for some, safety has never been experienced outside of loved ones, family and immediate community.

Violence at the hands of police is trauma-producing. Seeing police officer after police officer completely escape any consequence and be able to kill and harm with impunity is trauma-producing.

Seeing a court system that allows officers with patterns and practices of abuse and court-verified torture to testify and have their word valued more than those who lived the harm, which is the current reality specifically relevant to CPD torture survivors, is trauma-producing.

Witnessing the ongoing existence of the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), the union representing police officers, which continues to justify police-perpetrated torture and murder, is trauma-producing. In Chicago, FOP leadership alone represents more than at least 142 disciplinary allegations, yet the mayor continues to engage with and pander to the union. Witnessing that pandering is trauma-producing, too.

What do we know about systemic trauma, defined by CTJC as repeated, ongoing violation, exploitation, and/or deprivation of groups of people? We know that it overwhelms and breaks down our senses of safety and connection, and leaves us on hyperalert. We know that being in a constant state of hypervigilance can rob us of a feeling of having autonomy or control of our self and our bodies. This tension gets stuck and wreaks havoc emotional, spiritual, social and physical if it is not tended to and if we dont invest attention and resources in mitigating its impact. Increases in blood pressure, sleep disturbances, ability to engage in intimate relationships, and more are just some of the consequences of chronic hypervigilance and persistent and complex trauma. All of these conditions tend to be depoliticized in the dominant narrative somehow, Black and Brown communities are simply more impacted by predispositional health factors. In fact, they are consequences of focused deliberately imposed trauma by the state.

At CTJC, we recognize that addressing trauma is not a one-on-one experience that can only happen in a therapists office. It is about helping to find new ways to generate safety (internal and external) and to increase our self-determination our ability to name for ourselves what we need and care about. When our systems are under perpetual siege, when we are not able to experience senses of safety, our bodies, which are experts at survival, know how to shut down or numb out as part of our trauma responses.

Our work is to enable self-determined processes of reintegration back into the body, as we learn how to generate safety for ourselves and our communities. We understand that healing is also a political project that includes ending the systems that necessitate and create violence. These individual, community and systemic processes occur together and at times simultaneously.

This last year has seen our communities take massive steps towards collective healing as they rose up to unapologetically name what they needed to feel and be safe. They have stepped into their truth and power to demand not only the defunding of CPD, but also the types of services and investments that will make a difference in their lives and communities. They have collectively moved to heal deep generational wounds of oppression. However, they have been met with police in riot gear and with a refusal by our city government to shift funding away from the police. We have seen 65 percent of unrestricted CARES Act money going to CPD as instructed by our mayor (of the $1.2 billion in CARES Act funds allotted to Chicago, and of the $470 million for personnel costs, $281 million went to the CPD), while the communitys demands for vital support services are rejected.

Our communities are trying to heal, and our city and its systems and structures are not listening and more often than not, acting in ways opposite to what the community is saying they need. That is trauma-producing.

This is all playing out in Chicago at a time when the country has been forced to face the multiple violent realities of policing and the myriad ways in which government bodies collaborate to protect police, deny survivors and families truths, and perform superficial platitudinal commitments of change all while police continue to murder. As an example, during Derek Chauvins trial, an average of three people a day were killed by police nationwide. As the verdict was being prepared to be aired, Columbus, Ohio, police shot and killed a 16-year-old child, MaKhia Bryant, after she called them for help.

The violence we are marching against is not only the physical violence you can watch on video after video of CPD, but the structural violence of decision after decision our city is making to compound trauma, invest in carceral strategies rather than life-affirming ones, and to prioritize and protect the systems and institutions that perpetrate so much harm on our communities. That structural violence also kills and is further trauma-producing. One of the leaders of Justice for Families, Arewa Karen Winters, the great aunty of Pierre Loury who was killed by CPD officer Sean Hitz in 2016, redefines PTSD to stand for present traumatic stress disorder because, as she observes correctly, trauma is ongoing.

The people of Chicago are telling us what they need to feel safe. They are telling us what they need to take care of each other. They are telling us what they need to heal. We need to listen to them.

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Police and State Violence Have Secondary Impacts: Complex and Lasting Trauma - Truthout