Daily Archives: June 27, 2021

"In most circles prison abolition is simply unthinkable and implausible. Prison abolitionists are dismissed as utopians and idealists whose ideas are at best unrealistic and impracticable, and, at worst, mystifying and foolish. This is a measure of how difficult it is to envision a social order that does not rely on the threat of sequestering people in dreadful places designed to separate them from their communities and families. The prison is considered so 'natural' that it is extremely hard to imagine life without it." Angela Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete?

Scalawag founded Abolition Week in 2020 to spotlight incarcerated writers, reflect on our values as an abolitionist organization, and encourage fellow media to join us. As the national media is shifting its attention away from demands to restructure, defund, and abolish the police, Scalawag's Abolition Week is an appeal to keep these conversations at the forefront. Learn more.

Last summer, in the wake of the police killings of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and countless others, we wanted to tear the world down and build anew.

Violent crackdowns by police on protesters showed us what we already knew to be true: The state's never-ending reliance on dehumanizing tactics doesn't just cause harm in our streets or prisons, but everywhereour schools, our statehouses, our borders.

Black ancestors in the South long ago began this work of building a world without the horror of state-sanctioned violence and bondage. This is the legacy we've inherited. This is our work as abolitioniststo radically imagine and build toward a liberated world. As prison scholar Ruth Wilson Gilmore said, "Abolition is about presence, not absence. It's about building life-affirming institutions."

We wanted to tear the world down. But what are we building in its place?

For our partas parents, partners, children, friends, neighbors, writers, and artistswe're committed to rejecting retribution as a way of life. We try not to shun our loved ones or shame our colleagues.

We do this imperfectly. We do this with devotion. We understand that punishing others in our personal lives makes it easy to uphold unjust systems of punishment everywhere.

For our part as journalists, this work also means shining a light on ongoing abolitionist efforts right now, lending our platform to those who are actively harmed by carceral systems as many newsrooms remain silent and complicit.

Each day this week, Scalawag will be publishing stories, hosting events, and engaging in conversations around abolition with incarcerated people, abolitionist scholars, artists, organizersand you. If you've been doing this work, thank you. If you're new to abolition, welcome.

Abolition is an unwillingness to accept that the conditions of the South's origin storyfrom slavery, to segregation and Jim Crow, to policing and prisonsare unchangeable, and a commitment to adapt in response even as they continue to regenerate.

Abolition is the strategic reallocation of resources, funding, and responsibility away from oppressive systemsincluding the policetoward community-based, life-affirming models of safety, support, and prevention. We're here to imagine and support the life-affirming movements, organizations, and ways of being that serve as the building blocks for the liberated world we all deserve.

In a liberated world, instead of armed agents of the state arriving during a mental health crisis, a trained counselor arrives. Instead of tax dollars funneled into anti-bias cop training and the militarization of small-town police departments, community money goes to Black- and brown-owned food cooperatives, free health care clinics, and accessible housing.

We believe this liberated world will come to us, in part, through abolition.

Abolition is the dismantling of oppressive institutions and the systems that keep folks in bondage.

The liberated world we're building is one in which all people are free from prisons and cages, where the state has no power to seize or control our bodies, where people address harm through restorative justice rather than punitive consequences, where we are free to be our whole selves in communities built around a shared ethical agreement to support and love one another, and where we never use violence as a means to enforce safety.

Abolition asks us to take a long view, to stop repeating harms done long ago that echo through our country, communities, families, and bodies. It's the work of unraveling the very roots of this country.

Abolition is the eradication of the state being able to control or seize your body, the creation of community accountability measures in place of our punitive systems, including police, prisons, and jails.

And we know something about that in the South. The home of slavery is also the birthplace of slave revolts. People who call this place home sparked the fights for civil rights, labor organizing, and almost every other movement rooted in dismantling oppressive systems. For too long, though, white southerners have been unwilling to accept the real history of the South. For generations, steeped in the Lost Cause of the Confederacy and "states' rights," they've refused the reality of slavery, Jim Crow, and segregationwhich makes easy work of ignoring the ongoing horrors of racial violence.

Meanwhile, Black Southerners have time and again envisioned our future. Abolition is the continuation of the work Black ancestors in the South did to radically imagine, seek, and take back their freedom from chattel slavery. That work is not done as long as police and prisons live on to uphold legal enslavement on this land.

Abolition is an imaginative tool for redefining and refining our existing reality. Abolition believes in healing our ways of connecting to one another preceding, during, and after instances of harm and severed bonds.

This week, you'll meet abolitionist artists, organizers, thinkers, and fighters radically imagining a world where racism, extraction, and domination are outdated modes of our collective past. We can't understand what life-affirming institutions are until we understand the institutions that are life-destroying, by design.

People in power over incarcerated folks silence those on the inside to make sure those of us on the outside never hear their stories. We are not meant to know the harsh conditions inside our prisons or the conditions that brought people there in the first place. And hard as these stories are to hear, we must hear them to begin advocating for the dignity of those who have experienced these conditions firsthand.

So, this week, you'll meet formerly incarcerated folks and those still on the inside whose insights are more revelatory, more worthy than anything we as scholars, artists, and journalists might offer. Once you understand the reality of prisons, you'll see why the need for abolition is immediate.

Abolition is necessary for liberation. And it's necessary for our dignity, our sanity, our wholeness. None of us are free in a society that profits off the imprisonment and dishenfrachiment of its people.

Abolition is not easy. For most of us, it's hard to imagine upending what we know of how society functions, to imagine our communities wholly free of our deepest-rooted, most powerful systems. But just as abolition is about presence, it's also about willingness.

We must be willing to refuse that the conditions of the South are as unchangeable as many who hold power here and many who've never stepped foot here would have us imagine.

We must be willing to bend time, to look honestly at our history, ourselves, and our roles in upholding systems where people are not free. We must be willing to dream our wildest dreams.

Realizing Abolition is an opportunity to gather together with others committed to challenging the existence of prisons in our society

Illustrations for this piece are by E.L. Tedana. Active with A.B.O. Comix since 2017, they plan on working with A.B.O. Comix once released as well. They have been incarcerated for 20 years and are currently seeking post conviction relief. E.L. is eligible for parole in 2 years.

Artwork for Scalawag's Abolition Week 2021 is provided by A.B.O. Comix, a small press and advocacy collective that works in solidarity with currently/formerly incarcerated LGBTQ people to amplify their voices and publish their creative endeavors.

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Welcome to Abolition Week Scalawag - scalawagmagazine.org

While the 13th Amendment abolished chattel slavery, an often ignored clause still allows for slavery and involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime. This slavery clause is now the target of #EndTheException, a new campaign launched this year on Juneteenth weekend. #EndTheException is pushing for the passage of the Abolition Amendment, a joint resolution cosponsored by Sen. Jeff Merkley and Rep. Nikema Williams, which would strike the slavery clause from the 13th Amendment making it so that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude may be imposed as a punishment for a crime.

On Saturday, June 19, as communities across the country celebrated Juneteenth a long celebrated holiday by Black Americans, particularly Black Texans Merkley and Williams joined advocates from groups including WorthRises, LatinoJustice PRLDF, JustLeadershipUSA, and the Anti-Recidivism Coalition for an online discussion about the #EndTheException campaign and to explain how the promise of freedom has yet to be unfulfilled.

The average incarcerated worker earns 86 cents per hour, and yet in five states Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, and Texas laborers inside earn nothing. Jorge Renaud, the national criminal justice director for LatinoJustice PRLDF, was incarcerated in Texas for 27 years. For 13 years, he experienced not just the painful labor of fieldwork chopping trees and picking cotton, sorghum, and corn but also retaliation when refusing to work.

[It was] two years into my last sentence I had a 60-year sentence, Renaud said, I thought I was going to die in prison and I drew a line. I said, There are some things Im not going to do for you all. I dont care what you do to me. So Im working out in the fields and I threw my aggy [grubbing hoe] up in the air and I was lucky they didnt shoot me. They said, Youre not going to work? and I said, Im not going out in the fields for yall, and they put me in solitary for a couple of years.

Renaud spoke of how prisons force incarcerated laborers to work any type of job assigned to them, and how protesting such work will inevitably lead to being assigned more brutal jobs, more degrading jobs until you finally end up in solitary confinement. [Then] you dont have to work but now youre in there with nothing: no privileges, no commissary, no visitation, no nothing.

The inclusion of the slavery clause made the passage of restrictions targeting Black people like the Black Codes possible as well as convict leasing of the late 19th century. Its important not to erase the unique horrors faced by those who were enslaved and those who are currently or formerly incarcerated, but the fact is that the slavery clause helped enable the current system of prison labor where incarcerated people are forced to work for both the state as well as private companies for little to no pay.

Recent years have brought more attention to how private companies make up a small portion of those who benefit from incarcerated labor only roughly 1% of incarcerated laborers are employed by private companies and about 6% of imprisoned workers are employed by state agencies who task them with jobs including manufacturing furniture for public colleges, making hand sanitizer, or washing scrubs and linens for state hospitals. In truth, the overwhelming majority of work performed by incarcerated laborers involves facility maintenance a fact that panelist Deanna Hoskins, president and CEO of JustLeadership USA, came to understand years after her own incarceration in Ohio where she was not paid at all for her labor.

I thought it was an incentive, Hoskins said. We take these jobs thinking, Ill work in the kitchen to get extra food, or Ill work in the laundry to get out of the current pod and not be in the chaos.

It wasnt until Hoskins went to work for a Department of Corrections that she understood whose labor was actually keeping the facilities operating. The state was effectively undercutting their employee budget by having incarcerated individuals staff services like laundry, landscaping, working in the kitchen, custodial work, janitorial work, gardening, and so on.

Even down to state departments actually used womens prisons as their call centers to alleviate them from having to pay for that, Hoskins said.

In Texas, Renaud pointed out, the type of work provided to those inside also varies tremendously based on race. Black and Latinx people are often assigned to these more custodial positions while their white peers are more likely to get jobs that enable them to acquire more technical skills.

I once took a tour about five years ago, Renaud said. I took some legislators down to a prison in TDCJ where they [offered] computer refurbishing. They had some 47 people in there [working on computers] and there were two Black individuals and like three Latinos. That job at least could give you some technical expertise [so that] when you got out there would be a prestigious job or maybe a well-paid job, [but it] was reserved still for white people.

The phenomenon reminded Renaud of the separation between enslaved people working in the house versus the field. It also serves as a reminder that in addition to the loss of wages and the strain that places on families who are now tasked with financially supporting their incarcerated loved ones, prison labor also fails to provide jobs that can translate into careers upon release.

Even jobs that could lead to fruitful careers, such as positions in Californias Conservation Camps where incarcerated people fight fires alongside local and state fire departments, are rife with inequity. In addition to not earning anything close to the wages enjoyed by their free world counterparts, incarcerated firefighters are often barred from continuing this work upon their release because of restrictions in getting their license due to their past conviction. For Michael Mendoza, director of national advocacy for the Anti-Recidivism Coalition, this profoundly stifles peoples ability to reshape their lives.

When we talk about jobs in prison, Mendoza said, Were talking about jobs that dont lead to actual careers because of these exceptions and these laws that we desperately need to change.

In addition to advocating for The Abolition Amendment at the federal level, movements to end prison slavery are being made on the state level as well. Thus far, Colorado, Utah, and Nebraska have abolished prison slavery in their state constitutions and groups like the Abolish Slavery National Network are working with grassroots organizers in 24 other states to help works towards the same goal.

Writers, historians, and activists have warned about the dangers of overconflating chattel slavery and mass incarceration arguing that doing so ignores the unique horrors faced by those who were enslaved and those who are currently or formerly incarcerated but the slavery clause is an important tie between the two oppressive systems that must be addressed. As the country winds down Juneteenth celebrations for the yearthe first in which the day was commemorated as a federal holiday #EndTheException organizers are tasking the public with not just memorializing the past but also considering our responsibility in the present to create a more free future.

This fight is deeply important to the soul of our nation, said Kamau Allen, lead organizer with the Abolish Slavery National Network. We find ourselves at a crossroads to decide who we want to be as a society moving forward. We must win and we can win because weve done this before.

Prism is a BIPOC-led nonprofit news outlet that centers the people, places and issues currently underreported by national media.

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Organizers Are Calling on Congress to Close Loophole That Enables Prison Slavery - Truthout

As the United States celebrated Juneteenth as a national holiday for the first time this year, a number of major cities in the Netherlands have asked the Dutch government to recognise the abolition of slavery with a national holiday here as well.

Earlier this month, President Joe Biden passed legislation officially recognising the anniversary of the abolition of slavery in the United States on June 19, and the public holiday was celebrated on Friday, June 18 for the first time, as the official holiday fell on a Saturday this year.

Linda Nooitmeer, chair of the National Institute of Dutch Slavery History and Legacy (NiNsee), praised the US decision to recognise the significant day in history, calling it a real step towards worldwide recognition of the history of slavery.

To further this recognition, Nooitmeer said she would like to see Keti Koti (broken chains) recognised as a national holiday in the Netherlands to celebrate the abolition of slavery in Suriname and the Dutch Antilles on July 1, 1863, and honour the lives lost. When we commemorate the victims together, we recognisethat the history of slavery has had an impact and continues to have an impact, Nooitmeer explained. Then you can also ask what we are going to do to nullify its effects."

A number of Dutch cities have supported Nooitmeers call, as Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, and Utrecht urged the cabinet to make Keti Koti(July 1) a national holiday. Councillor for Amsterdam,Nenita La Rose from the Dutch Labour Party (PvdA), believes the holiday can aid national reflection on the Netherlands history and the ongoing impact of slavery.

In a letter to the cabinet, the cities call for the hidden and inconvenient history of slavery to be brought out of the shadows, allowing for the stories of the slavery past and colonial history [to] be discussed openly. In addition to making Keti Koti a holiday, the cities would like to see a national survey conducted into the role the Netherlandsplayed in the slave trade, and would like a National Bureau of Racism and Discrimination to be established.

Nooitmeer has, however, said that the holiday can only work if it operates as a first step towards taking further action to combat the long-term effects of slavery. Concrete measures must follow, she says. Investments in Afro-Dutch communities in the Netherlands and in the former colonies, combating abuses in the housing and labour market. Something must be done, otherwise, such a day will remain symbolic."

Thumb: National Monument to Slavery, viaStadsarchief Amsterdam / Martin Alberts.

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Dutch cities ask government to recognise abolition of slavery with national holiday - IamExpat in the Netherlands

Senator Bernie Sanders appears to have changed his mind on the deduction for state and local taxes (SALT). Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, Sanders previously has come out quite strongly against lifting the cap, saying in May: It sends a terrible, terrible messageyou cant be on the side of the wealthy and powerful if youre going to really fight for working families.

But the Senators draft budget document includes money for partially lifting the SALT cap. No further details are available at this point, but Sen. Sanders has also said in a TV interview: There are middle-class families in states where property taxes are very high, that are paying a whole lot in state and local taxes. And I think we have to support them. On the other hand, if you got some billionaires who own a massive mansion, should they be able to write off their state and local taxes? The answer is no, they should not.

No doubt there are political considerations at play here. But from a policy perspective, Sen. Sanders was right in May and is wrong now. Any relaxation of the cap will necessarily benefit people towards the top of the income ladder. If the cap was lifted to $20,000, for example, over 95 percent of the benefit would flow to the top income quintile. Not billionaires, perhaps but hardly the neediest in our society.

We have argued against lifting the $10,000 cap in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and in a short analysis for Brookings. Our case is quite straightforward: the benefits of repeal would flow to the rich and affluent, who now have a disproportionate influence on the Democratic Party. To be specific, the top 1 percent would get an average tax cut of over $35,000. The middle class would get an average tax cut of about $37 (note that our analyses here relate to full repeal, since we do not know yet what alternative Sen. Sanders has in mind):

This is not a good way to spend $70 billion each year, especially for politicians committed to fighting inequality. Over the past several decades, the top of the income distribution has dramatically pulled away from everyone else. The top one percents income more than tripled from 1979 to 2017. They do not need a tax cut.

Arguments have ensued. Emails have been received. Tweets have been tweeted. A SALT caucus has formed. And many questions have been asked. Here we set out, as fairly as possible, what we think are the strongest counters to our position, perhaps some of which have influenced Sen. Sanders and why we dont find them persuasive.

We dont deny the politics here. But good policy is good policy even if the political motivations behind it were questionable. The motivation of legislators is not a good measure of the quality of the policy itself. Good policies can result from bad motivations, as well as the other way around. One of the casualties of political polarization is to adopt a stance towards policy based largely on its provenance. The view that a policy must be good or bad because it was pursued by Obama or Trump is a dangerous one indeed. Two wrongs do not make a right.

The idea of a donor stateor even a moocher stateoften emerges in arguments over SALT. The impression given is that the Treasurer of New York State writes a big check to the Secretary of the Treasury. But of course, that is not what is happening. The IRS taxes people, not states. And rich people pay more taxes. So, a donor state is just a state with lots of rich people living it. If there is an unequal geographic distribution of income, then a progressive tax and transfer system will have so-called donor states by designit means the system is working.

Further, there is no strong argument that rich people living together in a place with high taxes should be taxed less by the federal government than equally rich people in another state. Why should a New York millionaire contribute less than a Las Vegas millionaire towards national goods from which they derive equal benefit, for example national defense, or infrastructure, or AmeriCorps? The argument sometimes made here is that the New Yorker is contributing more to government services overall (through the New York tax system), and that some of the benefits of this spending might spill over to the residents of other states. This is an empirical question, however, and to our knowledge, there is not a definitive answer. These spillovers are almost certainly second-order effects in any case. Given the strong first-order distributional effects, that $70 billion a year does not look justified in the least.

This is not a case of double taxation. Citizens receive government services at the local, state, and federal levels. Sure, some functions overlap, but the separate levels of government often provide different types of services. As a citizen, you benefit from all three levels, thus you should fund all three. People are not being taxed on the same money twice, they are simply funding different entities out of their income. To call this double taxation is like complaining about paying for a burger from one store and paying for a muffin from a different one. And as Josh McCabe has pointed out: other countries with federal systems do not have anything like a SALT deduction. Of course, we might be getting it right, while Canada, Germany, and Australia are screwing it up: but we do not think so.

This is a reasonable argument. It raises two questions: 1) What is the empirical evidence for this? 2) If the concern is valid, is SALT the best policy to address it?

Leaving the cap on the SALT deduction may result in state and local governments moving away from income taxes and towards sales taxes. The evidence here is mixed, but the shift in revenue is plausible, especially in the long run. Frank Sammartino and Kim Rueben, our colleagues at the Tax Policy Center, summarized the literature thus: Several empirical studies have found a measurable effect of the SALT deduction on the mix of state and local taxes, but only a few of them also have found an effect of the deduction on either total state and local revenues or expenditures. Regardless, these effects are almost certainly small, which means that on net, the SALT cap is still a progressive reform. As Jason Furman, chair of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Obama, puts it, I like calling SALT [cap] repeal the Democratic version of trickle-down economics. It is *slightly better* trickle down but slightly better than terrible is, well, pretty bad.

Even if the SALT deduction does slightly increase the fiscal space for states to raise revenue, it is then hardly the optimal approach. If the goal is to support state spending that hopefully helps the disadvantaged, trying to increase that spending by giving the rich and affluent a federal tax break is, to put it kindly, a convoluted policy design. It is like entering your house by climbing over the back fence, onto the garage roof and through the upstairs bathroom window. It can be done, but it is easier to walk through the front door. Similarly, it is far more efficient for the federal government to support states through direct spending. As Josh Bivens at EPI puts it:

The SALT deduction is one tool for redistributing tax revenue, but most working people dont have access to it, because they dont itemize their tax deductions to be able to qualify for it. We should transfer federal aid directly to states to allow them to use the money on targeted healthcare, infrastructure, and education spending, which would more progressively distribute the money and allow states to be more responsive to recessions.

We have pointed to some alternatives to lifting the SALT cap. One is to establish a State Macroeconomic Insurance Fund (SMIF), as proposed by Len Burman, Tracy Gordon, and Nikhita Airi. This fund would act as an automatic stabilizer for state revenues during downturns. Another idea is to restructure the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant to be more generous and equitable. Josh McCabe thinks we should look to Canada as an example, where the funding formula is on a per capita basis and includes automatic annual increases. While the specifics of any of these plans can be debated, there are multiple alternatives to help state spending without reverting to a regressive tax break.

A related question involves the political feasibility of federal support for state spending. In other words, even if we are right in theory, in practice politics may require a second-best solutionthe SALT deduction. Since the other policy options are not currently on the table, the argument goes, lets restore the full SALT deduction as a least-worst option. To follow this line of argument is to treat public policy as a truly dismal science, and to adopt a deeply pessimistic view of political possibilityespecially given the big shifts in policy over the past year and a half. Keeping the cap on the SALT deduction is an opportunity to put better alternatives in place, even if these cannot be enacted immediately. But we should be clear. Even if the deduction was not going to be replaced, ever, with an alternative form of state support, we would still oppose lifting the cap. Even if the goal is worthy, the policy approach is so shoddy that it does not deserve the $70 billion annual price tagespecially when there are so many better candidates for that spending.

This is the purely political argument, and likely the one really driving the policy agenda here. The thinking goes: even if lifting the cap is bad and regressive policy, it is a small price to pay if it helps the Democrats to hold on to the Senate and/or House in 2022, or the White House in 2024. Perhaps lifting the SALT cap will in fact win some votes for Democrats in affluent suburbs of expensive citiesbut of course it is impossible to know for sure how big a political factor this one issue will really be.

These are partisan political calculations that are of course well outside our scope here, though it would be nave to assume that bad policy can never be good politics. Our role here is simply to point out that lifting the SALT cap is really bad policy, and against the stated progressive goals of many of those proposing it and leave it to others to judge what kind of politics we want.

This concern is overstated. The most recent data suggests no discernable change in the net migration of adjusted gross income from high-tax to low-tax states due to the SALT cap. Of course, the data is yet to be subject to rigorous causal analysis, but based on the descriptive trends and previous studies, we think the conclusion is likely to hold.

The literature is very mixed on how responsive rich taxpayers are to state taxes. Several papers find small migration effects. Two papers examine top tax rate increases in New Jersey and California, respectively, and each find small migration effects with substantial net revenue gains. Another paper looks at administrative tax data of millionaires across states and finds that higher state taxes have small effects on migration. This paper emphasizes the theory of social embeddedness of elites over the transitory millionaire hypothesis. In other words, even the richest among us choose where to live based on more than just the tax codesocial networks matter too.

Several papers find larger migration effects but come with important caveats. One study finds that state estate taxes have a large effect on migration, but in almost every case, states benefit on net from having an estate tax. In other words, the revenue collected from the estate tax exceeds the missed remaining lifetime income tax revenue from the movers. Two prominent papers that find large mobility effects are based on specific populations: European soccer stars and star scientists. These are likely upper-bound estimates on migration effects and are unrepresentative populations anyways.

Wellyes and no. This is more a problem of what one of us has called the Me? Im not Rich! problem, consisting of people failing to understand their relative affluenceoften by pointing to their considerable outgoings. But according to the Census Bureau, only 16 percent of households have incomes of at least $200,000 in the New York City area. In the San Francisco area, 26 percent of households do. Even by comparison to the other people living in these cities, these folks are squarely upper middle class.

The point here is that the income distributions of these cities are different to the U.S. as a wholebut not wildly so. Of course, it is more expensive to live in the New York City or San Francisco metro areas than in most other parts of the U.S. But this is in no small part because these are desirable places to live with robust public services, cultural amenities, rich labor markets, etc. And of course, wages are higher too. It is not clear why high demand is a sufficient reason for lifting the SALT cap. There is also something of a vicious cycle at work here. The high cost of living (especially in the Bay area) is driven in part by exclusionary zoning, too: but policymakers have repeatedly failed to make more progress on that front. The basic point here is that most of the people who would benefit most from lifting the SALT cap are rich, even by New York and San Francisco standards.

This is a bad argument for at least two reasons. First, and most fundamentally, there is only so much revenue the government can feasibly raise and a long list of important social problems that need to be addressed. We should prioritize scarce resources to pay for far more important policies, like making the expanded child tax credit permanent and addressing the racial wealth gap, among many others. Of course, raising marginal rates should be on the tablebut lets not waste our limited tax dollars by simultaneously giving a handout to the rich and affluent.

Second, lifting the SALT cap and paying for it with marginal rate increases would actually make the SALT deduction even more regressive. Deductions get more valuable as marginal rates increase. If someone is in the top marginal tax bracket under current law (37 percent) and the SALT cap is lifted, the marginal dollar deducted is worth 37 cents. If the SALT cap was lifted and the top rate is raised to, say, 40 percent, then that marginal dollar deducted is worth 40 cents. This approach puts SALT deduction advocates in the awkward position of paying for a regressive tax change by making that same tax change even more regressive; the fiscal equivalent of going round in circles.

So, there are some arguments for lifting the SALT cap, and not all of them are silly or specious. But even the best arguments for raising the cap are weak. Any of the goals listed by those arguing for its removal could be reached more efficiently and equitably in other ways. Far from seeking to restore the deduction, even if only in part, Congress should be moving towards its abolition.

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Note to Bernie: The 8 arguments for restoring the SALT deduction, and why theyre all wrong - Brookings Institution

Hajar Press is the new house setting an exciting precedent for the future of print publishing. The press aims to platform writers of colour, creating space within publishing for these writers where theres little. Founded by Brekhna Aftab and Farhaana Arefin, Hajar Press responds to the widespread commercialisation of diversity, by giving its writers room to produce transformative and urgent writing, fearlessly unpicking and critiquing systematic inequality, and encouraging readers to imagine a world beyond.

We are political, in that we dont take a neutral stance on issues like Palestine, abolition, capitalism, etc. co-founders Brekhna and Farhaana tell me. We ask our writers, What would you want to write if you could write anything you wanted? This boundary-less, free approach to writing means that Hajar Press has a line-up of some of the timeliest, fluid writing that the UK has to offer being published by them this year.

Jamal Mehmood provides the Houses latest offering with The Leaf of the Neem Tree, with gentle reflections on loss. It follows Fovea/Ages Ago by Sarah Lasoye, a careful, tender rumination on childhood, growth and time. Both books set the precedent for the talented writers releasing projects on Hajar later this year. Lola Olufemi, Heba Hayek, Yara Hawari, and Cradle Community are all releasing writing with the press, each their own fascinating explorations of worlds yet to exist, how to build those worlds, and the conflicts of our current state of living.

Most importantly, the press is tied incredibly close to the anti-racist struggle.

Anti-racism is embedded in the fabric of everything Hajar publishes. The mainstream publishing industry perpetuates at best a constrained and at worst a racist imaginary. Weve seen how successful publishers talk about diversity only when it serves the bottom line, or how free speech and publishing a plurality of voices is invoked to publish racists or bigots instead of building trust with marginalised communities (which would mean actually doing the work to publish a plurality of voices!).

Hajar instead makes very clear that we are not cynically using the cloak of impartiality to publish sellable but harmful works. Instead, we want to actively engage with our communities to archive our stories and create beautiful experiments in the process.

We caught up with the Hajar Presss co-founders to hear about the exciting work they have in the pipeline, their aim to reject mainstream understandings of diversity, and creating a pocket for themselves within a predominantly white independent publishing scene.

What are you planning to publish this year?

Fovea / Ages Ago by Sarah Lasoye

Sarahs collection takes primary school as its landscape, showing how those formative first experiences, with their patterns and emotional contours, are often very impactful and can stay with us in later life. We love the energy in her poetry its full of sharp movement and acute insight as well as how the work is full of reverence, for childhood, for friends, for the world around us, for artistic predecessors.

The Leaf of the Neem Tree by Jamal Mehmood

Bittersweetness makes up the very fabric of this collection tales of migration and heritage weave into a tapestry that is soulful and quietly spiritual. There is a slow unravelling of grief and vulnerability in a work that otherwise feels quiet and still, a sort of grief that becomes magnified through time and across different continents. Yet, meditations on the mundane aspects of life give the reader gentle reassurance, and the sea is an ever-present source of catharsis.

Sambac Beneath Unlikely Skies by Heba Hayek

This is a beautiful collection of flash fiction stories, or short vignettes, reflecting on the narrators childhood in Gaza, Palestine, and on the echoes of these memories in adulthood, lived painfully far away from home. Hebas writing is sensory, full, honest and brilliantly deft traces of the past subtly mirror or layer over the present, and behind the longing and chaotic devastation is an overarching, comforting sense that everything fits together.

The Stone House by Yara Hawari

Yara has a distinctive style of writing that is quite striking: thoroughly measured, almost laconic, darkly humorous and deeply chilling. This novel not only tells the story of a family surviving trauma, but it also provides a careful and rigorous history of Palestine. The perspectives of three characters a grandmother, a mother and a son piece together the dystopian horror of settler-colonialism and the risks people will take to reclaim their homes.

Brick by Brick: How We Build a World Without Prisons by Cradle Community

This is an accessible introduction to prison abolition, written for anyone impacted by state violence and capitalism not just seasoned activists. Its hugely collaborative, drawing on the collective knowledge and experiences of many people organising across different movements for justice, like housing, climate change, feminism and migration. Cradle honours and shares examples of abolitionist work being done in the UK context, as well as in the Global South, demonstrating very powerfully how all of our struggles for liberation are interconnected.

Experiments in Imagining Otherwise by Lola Olufemi

For Lola, every turn against this world towards another is also a turning back to face the histories that precede us. People call books groundbreaking all the time, but when we read Lolas proposal, we sensed the radical potentiality in every line. Lola builds upon the collective work of black feminists and community organising to present radical literature as a living body of work. Formally ambitious and politically arousing, this is a book that invites us to experiment with the possibility of imagining otherwise.

How did you go about recruiting the selection of writers you are currently publishing?

Were both so proud to be publishing each one of our six 2021 authors. We feel that they all embody the values of Hajar, and their writing harnesses the spirit of freedom were trying to encourage. Early last year, we started reaching out to writers whose work we were interested in, introducing our project and values, and asking what they would write if they could write anything the only guide being a general min and max word count. Some were writers whose work wed heard at live poetry readings; some we knew from activist networks; some were known for nonfiction writing and journalism but wanted to foray into fiction. It was so exciting to start developing ideas with people, albeit kind of weird having all these crucial conversations during lockdown there were a lot of Zooms!

This has been a tough year, but working with our writers has been truly inspirational. All of our writers have such a vivid political understanding of the world, but they take that understanding and experience and show that things dont have to be this way. We feel so lucky to be working with writers who are carving out a new world with their words. Weve had wonderful conversations with them, and sharing stories with each other has been cathartic. We hope we can create spaces where others can have those conversations too, because they have been healing. Thats what we want Hajar to be about: carving out new worlds and creating healing spaces for people of colour.

Do you feel there is an urgency to platform newer writers of colour, if so, why?

Absolutely. Most of our writers are publishing their first books with us. We want to give a platform to new (which doesnt need to mean young) writers, but also to writers who may have published before but want to experiment with different forms of writing. We aim to build long relationships with writers at all stages in their careers, to help them to develop their work over their lives and give them space to keep trying new things.

Most publishers arent keen to take risks, particularly in times like these when its mainly backlists and bigger names driving sales. A shift to buying books through online retailers also means that readers are less spontaneous in selecting works, browsing to find what they are looking for specifically, or choosing books based on algorithms. For this reason, its important that publishers give a lot of attention to newer writers, help them develop their craft and put energy into marketing and publicising their books in creative ways.

Its also important that we dont do the classic publishing thing of putting newer writers in restrictive boxes, asking them to write books about oppressive parents, or salacious memoirs just because theyre POC. Newer writers should be given the space to write about what they want!

Where do you see the press in the coming years?

Our dream for Hajar is to connect with readers and writers, to open up a sense of possibility politically and creatively for people of colour. In the future, we would love to grow our community of subscribers and start exciting reading groups and conversations around our books. Were also looking forward to collaborations with other comrades and groups, like our friends at Maslaha and Shubbak. And we cant wait to publish more beautiful, revolutionary writing. Weve recently launched a short story competition as part of MFest, open to unpublished Muslim writers of colour.In an industry known for its hierarchies and exclusivity, initiatives like this give marginalised writers the opportunity and platform to develop their work.

Were also both very committed to making Hajar sustainable, to building something that will last. To do that we know we have to be attentive to our capacity and resources, so that we dont overstretch ourselves and can continue giving each of our authors the attention and care they deserve. This year weve been working for Hajar for free, but thanks to the overwhelming support we received from our communities through last years crowdfunder, we do have enough money to be able to publish our first list of books. Were not sure yet how were going to raise the funds for our 2022 list, so unfortunately a lot of what we do will depend on funding.

As long as we can continue publishing works that archive our stories and experiment with possibilities of radically changing the world, while looking after each other, well consider Hajar to be a success.

Fovea/Ages Ago by Sarah Lasoye and he Leaf of the Neem Tree by Jamal Mehmood are both published by Hajar Press

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Features | Tome On The Range | Hajar Press: The Indie Publisher With Anti-Racism At Its Core - The Quietus

During its annual meeting earlier this month, the voting members of the Southern Baptist Convention known as messengers passed a resolution calling for the immediate abolition of abortion without exception or compromise.

The affirmative vote for the boldly worded resolution came after messengers had already voted in favor of a similar motion stating the conventions opposition to abortion as well as its support for the Hyde Amendment, which bars the use of federal taxpayer dollars for abortions, according to Baptist News Global.

[B]ecause abolishing abortion is a Great Commission issue, we must call upon governing authorities at all levels to repent and obey everything that [Christ] has commanded, exhorting them to bear fruit in keeping with repentance by faithfully executing their responsibilities as Gods servants of justice, and working with all urgency to enact legislation using the full weight of their office to interpose on behalf of the preborn, abolishing abortion immediately, without exception or compromise, the resolution states in its conclusion.

It references the following Scripture passages:

For John had been saying to Herod, It is not lawful for you to have your brothers wife. Mark 6:18

Then Jesus came to them and said, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age. Matthew 28:18-20

For the one in authority is Gods servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are Gods servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. This is why you pay taxes, for the authorities are Gods servants, who give their full time to governing. Romans 13:4,6

Tom Ascol, pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Cape Coral, Florida, has been one of the staunchest supporters of the resolution.

In a blog post at Founders Ministries, a group he leads, Ascol explained the resolution was slated to have been presented at the 2020 SBC meeting. That event, though, was canceled due to the pandemic.

It is time for Southern Baptists to repent of their complicity in searing the conscience of a nation that has yet to cease the slaughter of unborn innocents, he wrote. [S]outhern Baptist churches and leaders do not have to wait to take stronger actions to abolish abortion from our nations land.

The complicity to which Ascol was referring dates back to 1971 and 1974 when the SBC passed and then reaffirmed, respectively, its Resolution on Abortion.

That motion called for Southern Baptists to work for legislation that will allow the possibility of abortion under such conditions as rape, incest, clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother.

The SBC has passed more than 27 resolutions on abortion since then. Since the 1980s, all such resolutions have been pro-life in nature, though none have been as strongly worded as the one agreed upon last week.

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Ascols brother, William, who pastors Bethel Baptist Church in Owasso, Oklahoma, led the charge to approve the resolution, telling messengers that the Bible tells us to rescue those who are being taken away to death.

During his presentation in support of the motion, the Oklahoma preacher introduced a woman who regrets her decision to have an abortion. He said she now lives with the trauma and the scar that she murdered her own children, but has since found forgiveness from God.

Can we not rise and stop the Holocaust? Ascol asked.

There were some, however, who while they are pro-life opposed the resolution, arguing it was too harshly worded.

Alan Branch, a professor Christian ethics at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, said he didnt favor the resolution because it advocates a particular political strategy and could ostracize godly politicians who are working within the political system to make gains for the pro-life movement, but would be unable to turn the tide entirely.

This is a poorly worded resolution, he said. I thought about trying to amend it, but, as a seminary professor, it would take me too many hours to straighten it out here on the floor.

***As the number of voices facing big-tech censorship continues to grow, please sign up forFaithwires daily newsletterand download theCBN News app, developed by our parent company, to stay up-to-date with the latest news from a distinctly Christian perspective.***

Similarly, Josh Wester, director of research for the SBCs Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, which is staunchly pro-life, took issue with some of the language in the abolition resolution.

This resolution, while it is aimed in absolutely the right direction, is the wrong resolution, he said, noting the SBC is known to be resolutely against abortion already, describing the procedure as a heinous evil, a grievous sin.

Read this article:

Southern Baptist Convention Calls for 'Immediate Abolition of Abortion Without Exception or Compromise' - Faithwire

A memorial was held in New Yorks Washington Square Park for Dominique Lucious, a transgender woman murdered in Springfield, Mo. on April 14. This year is on pace to be the deadliest for trans and gender-nonconforming people in the United States. (AP photo by John Lamparski/NurPhoto)

While the American public may have a broader understanding of the experiences of people who are transgender, non-binary and gender-nonconforming, violence against these communities in the form of killings and prejudiced American policy has continued to rise.

This year is on track to be the deadliest on record in America, with 29 trans and gender-nonconforming people killed. At this time in 2020, which was a record-breaking year for such killings, 13 had been reported, according to the Human Rights Campaign. Though recently proposed legislation, like the LGBTQ Essential Data Act, aims to combat that violence by better tracking those deaths, more than 100 anti-trans bills have meanwhile been proposed this year the most in U.S. history by conservative lawmakers. Thirteen of those bills have passed.

UC Berkeley Associate Professor Eric Stanley (Photo courtesy of UC Berkeley Othering and Belonging Institute)

We dont want more data. We want less deaths, said Eric Stanley, an associate professor in gender and womens studies at UC Berkeley. Trans people are positioned in relation to a normative culture that is both fascinated and repelled by us. Its not usually, I hate you, get away. Its more often, I hate you. Come really close so I can terrorize you.

The culture war has landed on trans communities, and that violence is specifically brutal and very corporal, added Stanley.

An expert in queer and trans social movements, Stanley has organized and advocated for transgender rights in the Bay Area for decades. Their book, Atmospheres of Violence comes out this fall and delves into the contradictions and central role of racialized and gendered violence in the United States.

Stanley spoke with Berkeley News about the impact that racist and colonial institutions have had on transgender communities, and how the public can move forward with structural and transformational change.

Eric Stanley: There could be an increase in reporting, or other factors. But what we do know is that every year since they started recording murders of trans people, weve seen an increase.

But the way I think we should frame it is one person murdered is one person too many.

Were currently in this time of LGBT formal equality. The troubled language of full citizenship is used to make it seem like transgender communities are no longer living through contiguous harm. Yet, at this same time, along with the waves of anti-trans legislation, we still see these vicious attacks.

Paying attention to this violence forces that narrative of progress back. We are in a very different space than the one that the dominant culture wants us to believe were in.

We have to remember that these beautiful people were stolen from their lives much too early, and that is a loss for us all. We must also be clear that Black, brown and Indigenous trans women continue to be hyper-impacted by these and other forms of violence. But this is not to say that people remain singularly abject; these same communities are organizing to end the deadly world and create one where we might survive.

So, anti-trans violence is always racialized within the idiom of gender. And thats important to remember.

A majority of the victims in anti-trans violence and killings are Black and Latinx women. Stanley says Black trans people are also hyper-incarcerated in relation to white trans people. (Flickr photo by Victoria Pickering)

Structuring forces like anti-Blackness and colonialism produce trans as an understandable form of identity, and at the same time, it remains a place of refuge. So, of course, white trans people who are otherwise well-resourced are going to experience anti-trans violence in different, and less intense, ways.

In terms of incarceration, Black trans people are hyper-incarcerated in relation to white trans people, because white people are incarcerated less than Black people. And so, those same legacies of slavery and anti-Blackness that constitute policing continue within marginalized communities.

It also seems important to note that the demands to abolish the police sparked by the concentrated police killings of Black people that built momentum in the streets last summer have seemingly been flipped upside down. We are now living in the nightmare world where, once again, increased policing is being sold as a racial justice project. And were seeing the same thing with gender and sexuality as people argue for more police to protect trans people.

But we know thats antithetical and would disproportionately harm Black and/or trans communities.

We dont want more data. We want less deaths.

Sometimes data can be useful, so Im not suggesting otherwise. But I think its fetishized in a way where people believe the truth lies in the data, when the truth actually lies in peoples lived realities.

Lawmakers will create the architecture to house data, but not the housing for low-income trans people.

I would caution against this singular approach. For example, people demand the end of policing, but then are only offered the promise of more data.

I think lawmakers will create the architecture to house data, but not the housing for low-income trans people. I say this in an attempt to restage the question of violence, to ask where it begins and ends, and to continue to ask what people need to thrive.

What we are building is a movement against the structures that push people toward harm, versus just counting them after the fact.

Its never just one thing. Its always a constellation of systems that are rubbing up against each other. Its racial capitalism. Its the ongoing impact of settler colonialism and imperialism. Its also the institutions of policing, imprisonment and deportation. These are all different forms of domination situated together that produce this atmosphere of violence.

So, in responding to these murders, we need to be thinking about all of those things, all the time. That is hard and doesnt make for a very good mainstream news story: They want a single bad person, not a whole deadly system.

But most forms of anti-trans violence are specifically brutal. Theyre also very corporal. Trans people are positioned in relation to a normative culture that is both fascinated and repelled by us. Its not usually, I hate you, get away. Its more often, I hate you. Come really close so I can terrorize you.

Trans people are positioned in relation to a normative culture that is both fascinated and repelled by us.

We see this in the ways trans people are produced as props in the latest culture war.

These anti-trans bills are rooted in an obsession with the idea of trans peoples bodies. The politicians authoring these bills are saying, Let me study you, produce you as a singular object outside of yourself, so that I cannot just terrorize you, but produce your life as terror. This is, as I explore in my book, the other side of assimilation.

But, I mean, compared to 20 years ago, people have a broader understanding and lexicon of trans, non-binary and gender-nonconforming people. So, there is that. And we are seeing more media visibility, but the violence is still increasing.

So, then, what is the relationship between visibility and violence?

Some people argue that visibility can, unfortunately, create access for people to commit more harm. But thats not exactly what Im saying.

I would want to caution against that perspective because it can place the blame of anti-trans violence on trans people.

The point that I want to underscore about visibility is that it does not self-evidently produce material changes. The story that the dominant culture tells us is that rights and visibility will offer a more livable life. But its really much more nuanced than that.

And its not to say that visual and material cultures are separate. They are tightly bound. But what Im always pushing for are structural, which is also to say epistemic, changes, including the redistribution of resources and the return of stolen lands. I think that we sometimes lose track of that.

Within all this sorrow, there is also the intense creativity and shattering beauty of trans life.

Moments where people find ways to resist and strategize for living against the parameters of what was offered to them. Those things are really important to hold onto because this all can feel overwhelming.

Miss Major (Griffin-Gracey) has been active in revolutionary struggles for the last 50 years, and she continues to transform possibilities. She is a friend and a family member that I have learned a lot from. And the kind of space that she makes for so many other people is really powerful.

Shes somebody that gives me hope, or as close as I can get to it.

Well-known Bay Area trans women activist Miss Major was featured during a recent San Francisco Pride Parade. (Photo by Quinn Dombrowski/flikr)

I think there are multiple ways to get involved. But it is important to approach the work through an understanding that the binary gender system is a product of colonialism. And that trans does not only name an identity, it is also an analytic.

If youre interested in supporting trans liberation, then figure out who is organizing against the street sweeps of homeless people living in Berkeley and join them. Thats a trans issue. Housing, access to health care, prison abolition, defending the West Berkeley Shellmound. Those are all trans issues, not only because they impact trans people, but also because trans people are there fighting back.

Working toward another world is our only way out. Attempting to reform a system, like the prison industrial complex, will not eliminate its violent foundations. Reforms, as insurgents remind us, actually make the system bigger, make the system much deadlier, make the system more racist, more classist and ableist.

You cant reform a system that is built on slavery, on Indigenous genocide, on transphobia, and through all forms of degradation we have to abolish it.

So, we also cant lose sight of the radical transformation that we want and need, our collective life depends on it.

Continue reading here:

Why is anti-trans violence on the rise in America? - UC Berkeley

Minnesotas Healthy Start Act gives incarcerated people who are pregnant or who give birth during their sentences the option to receive pre- and post-natal care in community-based prison alternatives. Pictured: A still from the film Tutwiler, which tells the story of pregnant women incarcerated at the Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women in Wetumpka, Ala. (Elaine McMillion Sheldon /PBS)

In July, Minnesota will make history as the first state in the U.S. to implement legislation that ends the practice of separating incarcerated parents from their newborns. Signed into law in May, the Healthy Start Act provides the option for incarcerated people who are pregnant or who give birth during their sentences to receive pre- and post-natal care in community-based prison alternatives.

Currently, incarcerated people in Minnesotalike many other states in the U.S.return to prison only two to three days after giving birth. Pregnancy itself brings an onslaught of harm and potential human rights violations for incarcerated people: shackling during childbirth; coerced cesarean sections and non-consensual sterilization; the unwanted presence of prison guards in an intimate space. The trauma of childbirth is then exacerbated by the near-immediate separation of the incarcerated mother and their newborn.

I kept thinking, the whole time I was in prison, is my baby going to know who I am. Is my baby going to remember me? said Jennifer Brown, a Minnesotan woman who was four months pregnant when she was incarcerated for a first-time probation violation. In March of 2020, she gave birth to her son Elijah while in prison. Forty-eight hours after giving birth to him, I had to pass him over to people I didnt even know.

Normally, with an incarcerated client, that postpartum visit is emotional, Raelene Baker, program director of the Minnesota Prison Doula Project, told Ms. You go into the prison and theyre lactating for the baby that they dont have with them.

The experience Baker explains was the reality for 278 pregnant people in Minnesota who were sentenced to serve time in prison between 2013 and 2020. This bill is an incredible opportunity to disrupt cycles of trauma, said state Representative Jamie Becker-Finn, who played a leading role in the passage of the legislation.

The Healthy Start Act is a monumental first step in securing birth justice for incarcerated parents. For Bakerwho has been working as a doula in the Minneapolis area since 2004the law will significantly impact the operation of her organization, the Minnesota Prison Doula Project. The doulas at the organization provide emotional, physical and informational support to pregnant and postpartum incarcerated parents.

Instead of going to a birth with two corrections officers and a looming separation, we will be able to help them welcome their baby with a partner with them if they choose, or other family members, because they will be able to welcome their baby with more choice. That will look a lot different, Becker-Finn told Ms.

While there has been much deserved celebration over the Healthy Start Act, doulas and organizers advise close watch of the bills implementation. The idea of it sounds really good. Im curious to see how the execution will happen, because its allowing the commissioner to make each individual determination, said Baker. So it could look different for every personthey could be going to treatment, they could be going home, they could be on confinement.

Similar organizations to the Minnesota Prison Doula Project exist across the United States working to secure legal and human rights for incarcerated pregnant people. Marianne Bullock, the founder of the Prison Birth Project in Western Massachusettsin existence from 2008 to 2018shared a similar sentiment to Baker: This is a start. For sure, this is a great start. The implementation of this is what actually matters.

For those who want to see similar legislation to the Healthy Start Act in their states, the most important piece of advice: Center those directly affected.

Listen to incarcerated people and what they need, because what they need might not be what youre necessarily thinking about, said Baker.

Bullock emphasized a similar note: If you dont have people directly affected doing this work, sharing their stories on their own terms, you know, its going to take you a lot longerand its going to be a lot less impactful.

Looking towards a future without birth behind bars, abolition emerges as a long-term goal among those with direct experience working with incarcerated parents.

I wish our work towards changing policies were more in-line with dismantling criminal systems and shrinking carceral systems, Bullock said. I think the policies we need now are ones that no longer rely on caging, surveilling and controlling people to solve problems.

Reforming prisons most often results in more prisons and more control, so I am hesitant to say this legislation is a step in the right direction. And, I never want to say my value of abolition is more important than a mother being with her baby, today.

Bullock encourages readers to hold two things at once: celebrating the Healthy Start Act for how it will materially improve the lives of incarcerated pregnant people, while acknowledging it is our job to always look towards how we can further create the conditions for true justice.

Up next:

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Ending Birth Behind Bars: Minnesota's Healthy Start Act and Where We Go From Here - Ms. Magazine

Good spake from Newton Emerson which (like Brian Feeneys piece on Wednesday) highlights another trapdoor in its rejectionist rhetoric around the Protocol

The cynically engineered electoral competition between Sinn Fin and the DUP ratcheted their votes up together, then down together as despairing voters deserted them in the Alliance surge, until the implosion of the DUP over Brexit suddenly left Sinn Fin polling 9 percentage points ahead.

This is the safety margin for the nationalist electorate the extent to which Sinn Fin can be punished for failure without putting unionists back in the lead. Although republicans will never adopt the SDLP slogan of making Northern Ireland work, they have been given a tremendous incentive to make Stormont work.

Beyond Conor Murphy and Gerry Kelly, Sinn Fin has drifted into controlled co-option of loyal but relatively unknown junior figures. That safety margin may allow a slowly expanding SDLP to build on its gains from December 2019.

Regarding the DUP, Newton notes that its previous out and out oppositional rhetoric is changing almost before our eyes

How do you make the protocol work, then go to the polls telling people this is their chance to scrap it?

Semantic distinctions are being carefully noted. Calling for the protocols abolition is hopeless belligerence. Sounding just tough enough, while welcoming whatever compromise might be offered, is the only way forward.

In his leadership campaign against Poots last month, Donaldson vowed to vigorously oppose the protocol both in principle and in practice and to boycott North-South institutions even if this threatened to collapse devolution.

This week, on becoming DUP leader, he said I will play my part to bring stability if the UK and EU recognise and deal with the flaws in the protocol.

Thats pretty much now where everyone else is (and where Arlene was in the first couple of weeks in January). Its fate lies in the willingness (or otherwise) to put his trust in the hands of the British Prime Minister and the joint committee.

Mick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty

See original here:

If the UK and EU recognise and deal with the flaws in the protocol - Slugger O'Toole

The Supreme Court has disappointed again.

While not interfering with the bail granted to the three student activists Natasha Narwal, Devangana Kalita and Asif Iqbal Tanha in the Delhi riots and conspiracy case, it has, vide its order of June 18, 2021, effectively stayed the Delhi high court order on Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.

To my mind, the court had no option but to confirm the bail for to do otherwise would have been to legitimise the lawlessness of the state and to throw all legal principles to the winds.

But it has undone this good work by once again adopting a balancing act (becoming all too familiar now) to keep the executive in good humour, by decreeing that the Delhi high court decision of June 15, 2021 cannot be quoted as a precedent for other UAPA cases. This is as perplexing as it is unfortunate.

Also read: Delhi HC Verdict Granting Bail To UAPA-Accused Student Activists Is Entirely Logical

The court has given no reason for the virtual stay, other than to express surprise that the bail order is of 100 pages, and that it has pan-India implications.

The surprise we can live with (nothing surprises us any more) but the pan-India part is more difficult to swallow. And this is the reason: UAPA is a pan-India legislation so obviously any judgment on it will have pan-India implications too. Which is a very good thing: for far too long have our courts avoided questioning the draconian and unconstitutional provisions of this law. If one high court has finally done so, its judicial impact should be felt all over the country.

Why is the apex court so uncomfortable with this?

The Supreme Courts order is also self contradictory. By confirming bail to the three accused it implicitly accepted the rationale and reasoning of the Delhi high court order which resulted in the decision to grant them bail. But by staying the order and deciding to examine its correctness it seems to be suggesting that it is not sure of its legality.

This is a legally untenable position, and shows a certain waffling on the part of the honourable judges, and also perhaps a desire to accommodate the sudden panic in the Union home ministry and Delhi police.

Legal luminaries can argue about all this till Uttar Pradesh chief minister Adityanaths cows come home. I am no luminary but I do know a few adages, one of them being: War is too important to be left to generals.

Similarly, I would venture to postulate that Justice is too important to be left to lawyers and judges. For these worthies are the bone crunchers, endlessly chewing on lifeless words, phrases, rulings, ratio decindi and what not. In the process they forget about the flesh and blood of human reality, of the lives being tortured by their unending, academic and arcane arguments. They forget that at the end of the day law and justice are nothing but common sense, and that it is high time they extricated themselves from the thicket of legalese they have lost themselves in, back to the straight, wide path of common law and common sense.

Also read: Five Questions on the Shameful Proceedings Against Natasha Narwal, Devangana Kalita, Asif Iqbal

As the eminent British jurist and writer John Mortimer said: No brilliance is needed in the law, nothing but common sense and relatively clean finger nails.

And it is nothing but common sense which the Delhi high court has displayed in its order, clothed in unassailable legal principles. It is common sense to demand prima facie evidence of wrong doing before locking up someone for years without trial.

It is common sense to distinguish between a common crime and terrorism.

It is common sense to insist that dissent is not sedition.

It is common sense to rule that if an accused cannot be granted a speedy trial then he is entitled to bail, as Justice (retired) Deepak Gupta pointed out in an interview the other day.

It is common sense to declare that the Advisory Board of UAPA cannot be the final word or arbiter of a persons guilt and that the courts are entitled nay, duty bound to look into its decisions.

It is common sense to pronounce that inferences and speculation cannot take the place of hard evidence and proof. What is there to examine in these self-evident truths, as the Supreme Court proposes to do?

Student activists Natasha Narwal, Devangana Kalita and Asif Iqbal Tanha outside Tihar prison, after a court ordered their immediate release in the north-east Delhi riots conspiracy case, in New Delhi, June 17, 2021. Photo: PTI

No matter how you look at the Delhi high court order from a laymans or a legal eagles perspective it fully meets the requirements of both the law and of common sense. The principles and law enunciated by it require no further examination , which is why the Supreme Courts stance on it boggles the mind.

It is high time time our judges took their noses out of their legal tomes and felt the pulse of the people. They should not have an exaggerated sense of their infallibility, should not confuse real justice with their love for didactics, should understand the wishes of the public.

The judiciary would do well to remember that all great legal and social reforms have been driven by the people, not by the courts or governments the suffragette movement for voting rights for women, the anti-slavery campaign, the right to abortion, the acceptance of gay rights, the abolition of apartheid, and the right to privacy. Law and justice follow in the wake of what is right, not the other way around.

And every time our apex court has been insensitive to such deep feelings of the populace it has had to eat its own words and revise its orders very soon. Just in the recent past it has had to quash the infamous ADM Jabalpur order; it had initially set aside the brilliant Delhi high court decision of 2013 on decriminalisation of gay sex but had to revise its position in 2018; in 1962 it had ruled that privacy is not a fundamental right but has since upheld it in a number of judgments; in 1985 it had held that adultery was a crime but just last year it held otherwise.

Also read:State Anxious to Suppress Dissent Says HC, Grants Bail to Natasha Narwal, Devangana Kalita, Asif Iqbal Tanha

I have no doubt at all that in this case also, the Supreme Court will have to ultimately lift the stay: as they say, history doesnt repeat itself, but it rhymes.

A sensitive and responsive judiciary should anticipate, and be one step ahead of social and legal changes and reforms; it should not be merely reactive; it should not live in awe of the executive. This is especially true of the India of today where judges need to step out of their book-lined studies and sterile chambers and smell the stench of repression in the streets, see the accumulating debris of a collapsing criminal justice system.

The need to see the 45 million pending cases, the indiscriminate use of UAPA and sedition laws, the 2% conviction rate in UAPA, the 500,000 incarcerated prisoners of whom 70% are undertrials, the increasing number of people acquitted after years in jail without bail Ilyas and Irfan in Maharashtra have just been found not guilty after spending nine years in jail under terrorism charges, 115 persons have been granted bail in Karnataka, Akhil Gogoi, an MLA in Assam has been acquitted just this week in one of the two UAPA cases lodged against him.

The increasing number of acquittals and bails in UAPA demonstrate vociferously the illegal manner in which such cases are fabricated simply to incarcerate those activists whom the government finds inconvenient. The Delhi high court order goes a long way to stem this rot, and by staying it the apex court has undermined not only the sanctity of the high court but also the expectations of the citizens. All without citing any cogent reason for doing so.

I sometimes wonder: what will it take for our superior courts to grasp the fact that in their obsession with technicalities and legalese, they are smothering the real spirit and essence of justice common sense and compassion.

Is it that they feel that they themselves are immune from the state sponsored savagery being inflicted on the common public outside their sanitised ivory towers? Was Benjamin Franklin right, after all, when he said: Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are?

Its time to be outraged, my lords.

Avay Shukla is a retired IAS officer. A version of this article appeared on his blog and has been edited by The Wire for style.

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In Questioning Activists' Bail Order, the SC Has Smothered Justice With Legalese - The Wire