Monthly Archives: February 2022

On April 9, 2012, people marched 40 miles from Bethune Cookman College in Daytona Beach to the Sanford Police Department.The march marked 40 days after Trayvon Martin was killed by George Zimmerman and no arrest was made. "We didn't pick the name 'Dream Defenders' for no reason. We understand what 'defender' means. We defend justice, we defend our generation, and we defend the world at large," Vanessa Baden said.The Dream Defenders name was created after Trayvon's death, but this group had been marching for justice for years. "But then in 2006, when a young Black boy named Martin Lee Anderson was brutally beaten to death in a juvenile boot camp, Ben responded to the call of, you know, being able to represent the family from a legal perspective, he was able to take the hands of the family and walk them right into the governor's office and demanding more from our elected officials. But Ben couldn't do that without a groundswell of grassroots activism and support," founder Ahmad Abuznaid said.Since Martin Lee Anderson died while at a work camp for troubled teens, this group formed under the guidance of Civil Rights Attorney Ben Crump. What they didn't know is the movement they kicked off in Sanford would grow and spread and pop up in communities across the nation, and create what's now known as Black Lives Matter. "I think we were one of those core organizations that went on to create this movement for Black lives network. And we're really proud of that work now. We can't do it on our own. And, and also Florida was really the home of Dream Defenders. And so while we really had a lot of national involvement and conversation and national building, we were most impactful here in Florida. So I'm incredibly proud of the advancement Dream Defenders and Florida organizing across the board has given us over the last 10 years," Abuznaid said.There were fears the movement that began in Sanford would turn violent. Thousands of people were expected to march through the streets and gather in Fort Mellon Park. Civil rights leaders were set to speak, with the family of Trayvon Martin joining them demanding an arrest. But there was no violence, only peaceful protest. "You seen thousands rally in the state of Florida, but also, you know, thousands, and tens of thousands rally across the country. And we saw similar iterations after the uprisings in Ferguson. And we saw similar iterations after the murder of George Floyd," Abuznaid said.While Abuznaid and the Dream Defenders don't take sole credit for the BLM movement, they do know their role helped inspire a nation to hold people accountable. And their hope is organizations like theirs and others aren't needed in the future. "Abolition of slavery seemed insane to people at the times where slavery was operating. Abolition of Jim Crow laws, was insane to people when Blacks and whites were still segregated lunch counters in schools. And so right now people may think it's insane to demand, you know, abolition of certain structures and systems that have continued to show us that they're not solving the problem they were created to solve for," Abuznaid said.

On April 9, 2012, people marched 40 miles from Bethune Cookman College in Daytona Beach to the Sanford Police Department.

The march marked 40 days after Trayvon Martin was killed by George Zimmerman and no arrest was made.

"We didn't pick the name 'Dream Defenders' for no reason. We understand what 'defender' means. We defend justice, we defend our generation, and we defend the world at large," Vanessa Baden said.

The Dream Defenders name was created after Trayvon's death, but this group had been marching for justice for years.

"But then in 2006, when a young Black boy named Martin Lee Anderson was brutally beaten to death in a juvenile boot camp, Ben responded to the call of, you know, being able to represent the family from a legal perspective, he was able to take the hands of the family and walk them right into the governor's office and demanding more from our elected officials. But Ben couldn't do that without a groundswell of grassroots activism and support," founder Ahmad Abuznaid said.

Since Martin Lee Anderson died while at a work camp for troubled teens, this group formed under the guidance of Civil Rights Attorney Ben Crump.

What they didn't know is the movement they kicked off in Sanford would grow and spread and pop up in communities across the nation, and create what's now known as Black Lives Matter.

"I think we were one of those core organizations that went on to create this movement for Black lives network. And we're really proud of that work now. We can't do it on our own. And, and also Florida was really the home of Dream Defenders. And so while we really had a lot of national involvement and conversation and national building, we were most impactful here in Florida. So I'm incredibly proud of the advancement Dream Defenders and Florida organizing across the board has given us over the last 10 years," Abuznaid said.

There were fears the movement that began in Sanford would turn violent. Thousands of people were expected to march through the streets and gather in Fort Mellon Park. Civil rights leaders were set to speak, with the family of Trayvon Martin joining them demanding an arrest. But there was no violence, only peaceful protest.

"You seen thousands rally in the state of Florida, but also, you know, thousands, and tens of thousands rally across the country. And we saw similar iterations after the uprisings in Ferguson. And we saw similar iterations after the murder of George Floyd," Abuznaid said.

While Abuznaid and the Dream Defenders don't take sole credit for the BLM movement, they do know their role helped inspire a nation to hold people accountable. And their hope is organizations like theirs and others aren't needed in the future.

"Abolition of slavery seemed insane to people at the times where slavery was operating. Abolition of Jim Crow laws, was insane to people when Blacks and whites were still segregated lunch counters in schools. And so right now people may think it's insane to demand, you know, abolition of certain structures and systems that have continued to show us that they're not solving the problem they were created to solve for," Abuznaid said.

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How Trayvon Martin's death led to the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement - WESH 2 Orlando

Americas first newspaper dedicated to ending slavery is being resurrected and reimagined more than two centuries later as the nation continues to grapple with its legacy of racism.

Therevived version of The Emancipatoris a joint effort by Boston Universitys Center for Antiracist Research and The Boston Globes Opinion team thats expected to launch in the coming months.

Deborah Douglas and Amber Payne, co-editors-in-chief of the new online publication, say it will feature written and video opinion pieces, multimedia series, virtual talks and other content by respected scholars and seasoned journalists. The goal, they say, is to reframe the national conversation around racial injustice.

I like to say its anti-racism, every day, on purpose, said Douglas, who joined the project after working as a journalism professor at DePauw University in Indiana. We are targeting anyone who wants to be a part of the solution to creating an anti-racist society because we think that leads us to our true north, which is democracy.

The original Emancipator was founded in 1820 in Jonesborough, Tennessee, by iron manufacturer Elihu Embree, with the stated purpose to advocate the abolition of slavery and to be a repository of tracts on that interesting and important subject, according toa digital collection of the monthly newsletter at the University of Tennessee library.

Before Embree's untimely death from a fever ended its brief run later that year, The Emancipator reached a circulation of more than 2,000, with copies distributed throughout the South and in northern cities like Boston and Philadelphia that were centers of the abolition movement.

Douglas and Payne say drawing on the paper's legacy is appropriate now because it was likely difficult for Americans to envision a country without slavery back then, just as many people today likely cant imagine a nation without racism. The new Emancipator was announced last March, nearly a year after the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in May 2020 sparked social justice movements worldwide.

Those abolitionists were considered radical and extreme, Douglas said. But thats part of our job as journalists providing those tools, those perspectives that can help them imagine a different world.

Other projects have also recently come online taking the mantle of abolitionist newspapers, including The North Star, a media site launched in 2019 by civil rights activist Shaun King and journalist Benjamin Dixon thats billed as a revival of Frederick Douglass' influential anti-slavery newspaper.

Douglas said The Emancipator, which is free to the public and primarily funded through philanthropic donations, will stand out because of its focus on incisive commentary and rigorous academic work. The publications staff, once it's ramped up, will largely eschew the typical quick turnaround, breaking news coverage, she said.

This is really deep reporting, deep research and deep analysis thats scholarly driven but written at a level that everyone can understand, Douglas said. Everybody is invited to this conversation. We want it to be accessible, digestible and, hopefully, actionable.

The publication also hopes to serve as a bulwark against racist misinformation, with truth-telling explanatory videos and articles, she added. Itll take a critical look at popular culture, film, music and television and, as the pandemic eases, look to host live events around Boston.

Every time someone twists words, issues, situations or experiences, we want to be there like whack-a-mole, whacking it down with the facts and the context, Douglas said.

Another critical focus of the publication will be spotlighting solutions to some of the nations most intractable racial problems, added Payne, who joined the project after working as a managing editor at BET.com and an executive producer at Teen Vogue.

There are community groups, advocates and legislators who are really taking matters into their own hands so how do we amplify those solutions and get those stories told? she said. At the academic level, theres so much scholarly research that just doesnt fit into a neat, 800-word Washington Post op-ed. It requires more excavation. It requires maybe a multimedia series. Maybe it needs a video. So we think that we are really uniquely positioned.

The project has already posted a couple of representative pieces. To mark the one-year anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol building, The Emancipator publishedan interview with a Harvard social justice professorandcommentary from a Boston College poetry professor.

It also posted on social mediaa video featuring Ibram X. Kendi, founding director of BUs anti-racism center and author of How to be an Antiracist,reflecting on white supremacy. Kendi co-founded the project with Bina Venkataraman, editor-at-large at The Boston Globe.

And while the new Emancipator is primarily focused on the Black community, Douglas and Payne stress it will also tackle issues facing other communities of color, such as the rise in anti-Asian hate during the global coronavirus pandemic.

They argue The Emancipators mission is all the more critical now as the debate over how racism is taught has made schools the latest political battleground.

Our country is so polarized that partisanship is trumping science and trumping historical records, Payne said. These ongoing crusades against affirmative action, against critical race theory are not going away. That drumbeat is continuing and so therefore our drumbeat needs to continue.

Editor's Note: Boston University owns WBUR's broadcast license. WBUR is editorially independent.

Continued here:

Abolition newspaper revived for nation grappling with racism - WBUR

American Ancestors/NEHGS and the Boston Public Library present an American Inspiration author talk virtually hosted by GBH Forum Network, featuring bestselling author Linda Hirshman and moderator LMerchie Frazier.

In her latest work about social movements, the legal scholar and social historian Linda Hirshman chronicles abolition the social spirit, people, and political alliances that changed American history.

The overturning of slavery was an astonishing historical achievement, a crucial landmark in moral progress. Chronicling its origins in the Second Great Awakening, Linda Hirshman shows how the movement was fraught with tensions from within. Yet it moved forward, driven by a powerful activist triumvirate: printer William Lloyd Garrison, who was a core creator of the movement; Frederick Douglass, the charismatic former slave whose eloquence roused the nation; and the lesser-known Maria Weston Chapman, a Boston socialite whose copious and largely unexplored correspondence Hirshman fully examines.

Dont miss learning more about these key players, their New England story, and the political movement that fueled the Republican Party and, ultimately, the Civil War.

Photocredit: book cover

This virtual event will begin at 6pm Eastern Standard Time.

Forum Network events are free and available to the public, but you must register for webinar access.

GBH encourages you to use Zoom Webinar to watch for this event. Zoom is free to the public but you will need to download it to your computer first. You can download Zoom here. If you already have Zoom, you will not need to download the platform again.

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Linda Hirshman with The Color of Abolition: How a Printer, a Prophet, and a Contessa Moved a Nation (Virtual) - wgbh.org

The idea seemed so ludicrous to GOP Sen. Jeff Brandesthat he was exasperated as he pleaded with his Senate Committee on Appropriation colleagues to vote down SB 1078.

I mean, were not serious with this bill. I cant believe that, he said. Lets not do this. This is not a good bill. This isnt ready for primetime. This isnt ready for spring training. Im not sure this things even ready for t-ball.

But the bill, put forth by fellow Republican Sen. Travis Hutson, cleared its final Senate committee stop. Hutsons bill puts strict limitations on membership eligibility for Floridas Soil and Water Conservation District boards. The bill would require candidates for the volunteer public office to be agriculture producers working or retired after at least 15 years of work or employed by an agriculture producer.

An amendment added Monday further limits membership to producers who make at least $500,000 in a year.

Buck Carpenter is an agriculture producer from Madison County. He told senators all of his income comes from agricultural exports. But under the bill, even he wouldnt be eligible to serve on the board and wants more inclusivity.

I am nowhere close to half-a-million in revenue, he said. Farmers, we buy everything at retail, sell everything wholesale and pay for freight both ways. So we have absolutely nothing to gain.

The Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (FDACS) said it worked with Hutson to craft the bill into something digestible, but still found it too restrictive.

FDACS Agricultural Water Policy Director Chris Pettit said those boards work in partnership with FDACS to not just implement best practices and policies from the department, but to also implement education and outreach components and engage in agricultural projects that require engineering. He said it would be wholly appropriate for experts in fields like environmental science, education and engineering that might not be a farmer or employed by one to serve on a board.

The ability to have specific expertise in engineering, science, education and outreach are vital, Pettit said. Generalists can go as far as they can go. I would call myself a generalist in many areas. Theres just benefits to having the ability to draw from a broad pool of experts.

Hutson expressed his offense with some mocking his bill and suggesting that agricultural experts arent also experts at engineering, education and environmental science.

Farmers are not stupid. They can understand this. They can resolve these issues. Theyve got staff there, he said. So farmers arent stupid and I dont think people should start minimizing the farming community or people that work for farmers.

Hutsons bill almost called for the abolition of the district boards. He said he was told the boards in his area didnt have enough representation from the agricultural community. But when he received pushback from other boards, he changed the bill to amend board membership. But board members said they dont want the bill either.

Nicole Crosby is chair of the board in St. Johns County, part of Hutsons district. She said a public records request to find out about alleged complaints yielded no results. She challenged the constitutionality of the bills restrictions and said it could be a slippery slope.

We have a 14th Amendment that says you cant put unreasonable restrictions on a candidate for public office. Residency, age, mental competency, those are reasonable restrictions. But restrictions that rule out perhaps 95% of Floridians from running for an office are unreasonable and unconstitutional. Whats next, major restrictions on who can run for House or Senate?

The next step for SB 1078 is a vote on the Senate floor and possible adoption.

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Bill putting strict limits on Soil and Water Conservation District boards passes final Senate panel - Florida Politics

Prison abolitionist and author of the Golden Gulag, Ruth Gilmore, talked about the police industrial complex at Thursday nights virtual lecture hosted by the Office of Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging.

Gilmore is well known for her work which discusses the disparities in Californias prison system and co-founded the California Prison Moratorium Project, which works to prevent the construction of private and public prisons in California, said history professor Tithi Bhattacharya, who introduced Gilmore.

Ruth Wilson Gilmore remains, the activist scholar who drove miles and miles across California to visit prisoners and write some of the most searing critiques of the prison industrial complex, Bhattacharya said.

Gilmore addressed the international solidarity that came during the 2020 Black Lives Matter marches in response to the murder of George Floyd.

I am hopeful at the moment, strangely enough, because of the global outpouring of solidarity that I took to be exactly that solidarity, not charity," she said.

Gilmore said the awareness of police brutality brought by the aftermath of the George Floyd protests brings the U.S. one step closer to abolishing prisons.

If I were to use a PowerPoint tonight, she said, I would start with a series of images of murals painted by people all around the world in the wake of George Floyd's murder, expressing solidarity murals in Japan, South Africa, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Europe, North and South America, Central America and into the Caribbean.

Gilmore said she believes that abolitionists should be relentless in their fight against prisons regardless of whether or not they care about an individual prisoner.

She shared the story of sociologist douard Louis as an example. Louis' book, Who Killed My Father, details the poor conditions responsible for his fathers preventable death.

Louis wrote that despite his disdain for his father on account of his frequent abuse, he would still fight against the reasons his father died.

I hated my father, Gilmore said, quoting from Louis book. I do not have to care for him as an individual to care that he should not have been murdered and that, to me, is part of the heart of abolitionism.

Be curious about abolition and be curious about struggles people are already engaged in, she said

It's only by organizing people that anything is going to change.

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Ruth Gilmore discusses abolition and the prison industrial complex - Purdue Exponent

BUFFALO, N.Y. Carole Emberton, PhD, an associate professor of history in the University at Buffalo College of Arts and Sciences, will discuss her new book, To Walk About in Freedom: The Long Emancipation of Pricilla Joyner, on March 9 at 6 p.m. at the Buffalo History Museum, 1 Museum Court, near Elmwood Avenue in Buffalo.

Admission for the lecture is pay what you wish.

Embertons book is an exploration of emancipation told through the stories of a formerly enslaved woman born in the antebellum South. Pricilla Joyners life before and after the Civil War provides personal details of the emotional, political, social and familial experiences of someone who traveled what historians now call the long emancipation as part of an extended search for belonging.

There were approximately 4.5 million people enslaved in the United States in 1865, but slaverys end did not arrive swiftly with the Civil Wars conclusion or the signing two years earlier of the Emancipation Proclamation. Slaverys death spanned decades of struggle and full emancipation remains, as Emberton writes, an unfulfilled promise.

Emancipation was a profoundly personal experience and the legacies of slavery were long lasting, says Emberton. Freedom did not simply arrive for those who were enslaved thats not what happened. Slavery came to an end through an extended and fraught process, and what Pricillas story tells us is that for many people emancipation was a journey that spanned an entire lifetime after slavery.

Pricilla Joyners story sat largely dormant, a fragmented chronicle told to Thelma Dunston, one of the writers charged with collecting the life histories of everyday Americans, including former slaves, as part of the Federal Writers Project (FWP), a Depression-era initiative that grew out of the Works Progress Administration beginning in 1935.

Emberton was working with this archive to learn what the people of emancipations charter generation had to say about freedom and what they did to recreate their lives after slavery. When Emberton discovered Joyners story, she immediately saw it as the anchor of a book that could provide light to emancipation in a story told through Joyners eyes.

I was touched by the personal nature of Pricillas story, says Emberton. When people think about emancipation and the end of slavery, theyre usually thinking about things like civil rights and voting rights, which are very important, but the story Pricilla tells in the FWP archive is the story about family, finding a home, and searching for a place where she belongs.

Joyners journey began when she was 12, when she goes to live with a community of freed slaves. Its here that Emberton says Joyner finds acceptance, love, a spouse, and the beginning of family. Its not her whole story, since the historical record about Joyner contains too many gaps for what might be considered a biography. To Walk About in Freedom is a book Emberton calls more of a microhistory, a small book about big things. Its a book about obstacles that the legal abolition of slavery never dismantled, but its also a story of joy realized through the creation of families and communities.

All the stories on the long road to emancipation are unique, but there are overlapping themes, where to live, and how to find family and build community, says Emberton. The answers were always different, but individuals often worked with the same set of questions, and that created a commonality.

That readers have Pricilla Joyners story today results from her overcoming reluctance about being interviewed on the subject of slavery and emancipation. I dont like to talk about it to folks, she admitted to her interviewer, Thelma Dunston, but dont mind telling it for the work you are doing. If it will do any good to have my life in a book, you can use it.

Pricilla Joyners story never made it to a history book, until now, thanks to Embertons work.

These stories will give readers a ground level view of emancipation, she says. These are powerful, heart-wrenching stories that are not widely known.

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Book explains the long process of emancipation through the eyes of a formerly enslaved woman - UB News Center

The New York state legislature is debating between two bills that decriminalize sex work. The bills agree on the need to decriminalize sex workers but offer very different approaches for doing so. The Stop Violence in the Sex Trades Act seeks to fully legalize the sex trade. The Sex Trade Survivors Justice and Equality Act, which is adapted from the Nordic model, would decriminalize sex workers while keeping in place laws penalizing pimps and clients.

In an odd twist, the first bill, which takes a libertarian and free-market approach to sex work, is supported by leftwing groups including the Democratic Socialists of America. Sex trafficking survivor groups, political moderates and prosecutors have mostly supported the more cautious, regulated approach. I believe advocates for both bills want the best for sex workers. But the first approach a blanket decriminalization of sex work, including of pimps and johns may make sex workers less safe, not more.

No one disputes that sex workers face serious and constant risk of violence, and that the status quo is unsustainable and unjust. Since sex work is illegal in all states except Nevada, sex workers who are at high risk of violence by clients, pimps and the police generally have no way to organize for better labor protections, or to report violence without risking incrimination. In other countries, decriminalizing sex workers has made them safer. Studies of Sweden and Northern Ireland found that even partial decriminalization reduced street prostitution, lowering client violence.

Decriminalization also aims to break the vicious cycle of police violence, incarceration and deportation. I have so many issues with the vice squad, New York state senator Jessica Ramos, who co-sponsored the Stop Violence bill for full decriminalization, told me. She accuses the police of either doing too much or too little.

When a Queens vice squad raided a Flushing massage parlor in 2017, a worker fell off a second-floor balcony and died. In 2018, police officers across New York, including members of a vice squad in southern Brooklyn, were arrested for providing protection for a sex trafficking ring. The ring operated across boroughs including in the district Ramos represents, where mostly Latina sex workers, some of them undocumented immigrants, walk the streets.

People who are most often targeted for police harassment or arrests or for violence due to or related to sex work are women, poor people, people of color, immigrants and trans people, Mark Mishler, the legislative director for New York state senator Julia Salazar, who sponsored the Stop Violence bill, told me.

Theres some evidence that arrests of sex workers in New York might already be decreasing on their own. The NYPD cites an overall decline in prostitution-related arrests (including of buyers and pimps as well as workers) in recent years. Arrests went from 1,069 in 2019 down to 193 in 2021. In an emailed statement, an NYPD spokesperson told me, The NYPDs enforcement priorities shifted in early 2017, and have continued, leading to fewer arrests over recent years of sex workers for prostitution and a greater share of arrests of those who buy sex and promote sex for sale.

Nevertheless, advocacy for full decriminalization has conjoined itself with vast, increasing leftwing support for police abolition. Leftwing and sex workers groups have embraced the abortion rights slogan My body, my choice, readapting it to sex workers freedom to do whatever they choose with their bodies. Under the slogan Sex work is work, the DSA considers full decriminalization as a central fight for the labor movement and for socialist feminism.

Perhaps. But a misguided legislative intervention can hurt more than help. In 2018, for example, Congress passed Fosta/Sesta, a law that banned online sex ads inadvertently flushing more sex workers out into the streets, where rushed negotiations put them at even greater risk of client-perpetrated violence.

The movement for full decriminalization is anti-discrimination, anti-carceral and anti-police. But what do its arguments have to say about the concrete reality of sex trafficking? The Stop Violence bill might be more ideologically photogenic, but its opponents worry that full decriminalization might provide loopholes or a carte blanche for sex trafficking, a prospect that supporters of the Stop Violence bill dont seem to acknowledge.

Alexi Meyers, a former prosecutor and a consultant for the partial decriminalization bill, told me that if the Stop Violence bill repeals a statute criminalizing promoting prostitution (which refers to pimps) at the felony level, it would take away the bread and butter of trafficking cases.

In New York, sex trafficking laws look for material force like drug use, physical violence, kidnapping by withholding someones passport, or the destruction of property as evidence of sex trafficking. But force is often psychological, with consent manufactured.

Cristian Eduardo, a Mexican immigrant and sex trafficking survivor, told me that his traffickers often made him believe that he was choosing the life. This was in 2015, when he lived in an apartment in Queens operated by traffickers who gave him food, housing and vital HIV medication which they convinced him he couldnt get elsewhere in exchange for sex with whichever john they assigned him.

The sex buyers are often very violent and abusive, Eduardo said about his years in trafficking. I never knew what was going to happen. The only thing I knew was I was going to be used as an empty vessel.

He says that if had been asked in court if he had consented to his treatment, he probably would have said yes, at the time. I didnt know it was exploitation, I thought it was my own fault and my own choice, he said.

Meyers, who worked on trafficking cases at the Brooklyn district attorneys office, added, We dont always have victims who are cooperative with prosecutors whether they are so highly traumatized by what theyve been through, or whether they are terrified of their trafficker. For this reason anti-pimping statutes are all the more important; they are a way to get traffickers off the streets without having to prove in court that their victims were definitively coerced.

Yet advocates for full decriminalization often seem blithely uninterested in this dilemma. When I asked Mishler, Julia Salazars legislative director, about trafficked workers who might be hesitant to testify against their traffickers for fear of violence or homelessness, he said, Thats not our problem. The law is the law.

I put the same question to Mariah Grant, the research and advocacy director of the Sex Workers Project, which supports full decriminalization. You arent going to arrest your way out of this problem, she said. What we need is money that is being wrongfully diverted towards trafficking cases that, in fact, are not actually trafficking, but people who are adults consenting to work in the sex trades to be instead moved towards social services.

But this stance not actually trafficking feels like willed ignorance, ethically lazy or naive in the extreme. Yes, trafficked sex workers need social services, but they also need laws, not ideals, to protect them. You cant girlboss your way out of trafficking.

According to the New York State Interagency Task Force on Human Trafficking, there were about 1,000 confirmed victims of sex trafficking in New York between 2007 and 2019, a number that Meyers told me is probably an undercount of the actual victims. If the Stop Violence bill passed, that number could go up. One 2013 study of 150 countries showed that, on average, countries where prostitution is legal reported larger human trafficking inflows. For instance, sex trafficking in Germany declined gradually through 2001, then after sex work was decriminalized in 2002 began to increase again.

There are persuasive advantages to full decriminalization. Sex workers would be able to unionize. Third-party workers, like those operating phone lines or client screeners, could work without fear of being prosecuted as pimps, creating a safer workplace. An increased demand of buyers, once decriminalized, would give sex workers more bargaining power. A 2007 study in New Zealand has shown that after full decriminalization, almost 65% of sex workers found it easier to refuse clients, and 57% reported improved police attitudes towards sex workers.

But even as sex work is work, the sex trade cant be treated like any other service industry, because most service industries arent inextricably entangled with violence and organized crime. Any law decriminalizing sex workers needs to address the sex trade as a whole, and prioritize the needs of the most disadvantaged. Its possible to reduce violence against sex workers while also protecting those in trafficking; partial decriminalization would accomplish that.

Its just so sad that people are like, yes, sex work is empowering, sex work is work, Eduardo said. And Im like, You are not fighting for the vulnerable when youre not fighting for the ones who are in need. Youre fighting to give more power to those who already have it.

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New York might decriminalize sex work. But will it do so safely and responsibly? - The Guardian

by Jacob A. Miller 18, University Advancement | February 28, 2022

In April 2019, Witney Schneidman made the long walk from the entrance of Swem Library to Special Collections with a pit in his stomach.

What am I going to find? he thought.

He asked to see the ledger of his ancestor, Samuel Francis Bright. The aging books were brought out with care by the Special Collections curator, and the cream-colored pages spread before him.

He found that his ancestor, Samuel Bright, had owned enslaved people on the William & Mary property where he sat. This discovery sent him on a path that eventually led to establishing a scholarship for descendants of the enslaved.

The Lemon Scholarship will provide need-based scholarship support for students who are descendants of enslaved persons in the U.S., or who have a demonstrated historic connection to slavery. Additionally, and to the extent possible, preference will be given to those with direct lineage to enslaved individuals who labored on former and current grounds and property controlled by W&M, including the Bright family farm. The scholarship is named for Lemon, a man who was once enslaved by William & Mary and who represents the many known and unknown African Americans who helped to build, maintain and move the university forward.

While the Bright House is today best known as the historic portion of the W&M Alumni House, the Bright family has a long history with William & Mary. In approximately 1839, Samuel Bright bought a nearly 600-acre tract of land immediately to the west of William & Marys property. The farm was called New Hope, and it was used by Samuel to supplement the work done at his other property on the east side of town, Porto Bello. The Bright family also maintained a residence in the town of Williamsburg, located near the Powder Magazine in the center of town.

Theres a lot of people in the records, says Sarah Thomas 08, M.A. 12, Ph.D. 18, associate director of the Lemon Project at William & Mary, a multifaceted and dynamic attempt to rectify wrongs perpetrated against African Americans by William & Mary through action or inaction. For example, in 1850, there were 14 enslaved individuals on Samuel Brights properties, and there are ages of the enslaved listed in the records as well. In the 1840s at New Hope, Bright constructed an icehouse, a corn house, rebuilt dwellings, built a negro quarter, a kitchen all of that is in the account books in Special Collections.

In 1852, 44 slaves were present on the New Hope farm.

According to Thomas, the people the Brights enslaved at New Hope may have performed leased labor for the university to help with woodcutting and other tasks, because the Bright property was close to the campus. William & Mary, as well as its students and faculty, both owned and relied on the leased labor of enslaved persons to operate until the abolition of slavery in 1865. However, Thomas and the Lemon Project team have not seen leasing records between Bright and William & Mary, but they plan to study the Bright records in the archives soon.

After the Civil War, Samuel Brights son, Robert, inherited the lands owned by his father, including New Hope. In approximately 1871, he built a large brick house on the property, as evidenced by tax records. After the house was passed down through the family, it was sold to William & Mary in 1946 and would become the Alumni House in the decades that followed.

The Bright family has an interesting history, Thomas says. They arent particularly well-known if this property wasnt bought by William & Mary, we wouldnt know much about them or the people they enslaved. But thankfully, they left behind an extensive documentary record for us to study.

As Schneidman sat reading the account books of his ancestor, he was struck by the gravity of what he was reading.

Just to see the names, it was so powerful: Mary Jane, 16 years old, slave worker called Washington, slave worker called Daniel, Amy, Anne, the list went on. There were no African names there. What does that say? People had just been ripped from their origins, from their identity, from their families, from their history. It was right there in black and white.

This chapter of their past was something his family never discussed, he says. He left Swem in a mix of emotions, but one thing became certain in the weeks and months that followed.

I asked myself, what are you going to do about it?

Schneidman is the senior policy advisor and head of the Africa practice for Covington & Burling, LLP. He has had a sweeping 50-year career connected to Africa.

After graduating from boarding school in Massachusetts, he took a year off to travel to Israel and Europe in the early 1970s. His journey took a detour to Africa after meeting fellow travelers from the continent. This detour would prove to be life changing.

While in Uganda, military dictator Idi Amin executed a coup dtat, which Schneidman heard Amin himself announce over the radio. This was a transformative experience for him and awakened him to the world as it was, he says, not the world he had known in the United States.

In university, he delved into the study of Africa, spurred on by that historical moment he witnessed.

From the time I first visited Africa between high school and college, I knew what I wanted to do in my career I wanted to be a bridge of understanding between the United States and Africa, and maybe one day I could help shape U.S. policy toward Africa, says Schneidman. He later served as deputy assistant secretary of state for African affairs under President Clinton, as a member of the Africa advisory committees in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and at the U.S. Export-Import Bank. He also co-chaired the Africa Experts Group on Barack Obamas campaign for the presidency and was on the Presidential Transition team.

Schneidman is the author of Engaging Africa: Washington and the Fall of Portugals Colonial Empire, which Foreign Affairs described as a a must-read for anyone interested in decolonization or Cold War diplomacy.

In recent years, he decided to write his memoir in hopes of inspiring young people to become more involved in entrepreneurship and economic development on the continent, as he himself was inspired 50 years ago. He hoped to encourage them to work on bringing the United States and Africa closer together.

One of the touchstones for me was to write the fullness and the truths of my experience and that led me to my familys story, he says.

Schneidmans paternal grandfather was a Jewish immigrant from Lithuania to Philadelphia. Schneidman was taught about the antisemitism his family faced because of their Jewish heritage. Even in the face of discrimination, though, his family succeeded in America; his great-aunt opened a successful fashion store in the city and his father later ran the store.

He grew up knowing that his great-grandmother, Nannie, came from Williamsburg. A century later, in 2003, Schneidman and his mother came to Swem Special Collections for the first time to see correspondence of Nannie Bright. Several years ago, though, Schneidman began to think there was more to the story that he was missing. He was curious as to whether or not the ancestors he knew little about, well-to-do farmers in the 1800s, might have owned slaves.

I emailed the librarian at Swem and asked if maybe there were enslaved workers on the Bright farm? And they told me, Without a doubt. They invited me to come look at the documents they had, he says.

It was at that point, in spring 2019, that he first saw the ledger books from his ancestor, Samuel Bright, with the names of the enslaved individuals the Brights owned, carefully recorded in faded ink on the page, the years of their bondage climbing beside their names in each column 1828, 1835, 1848, 1852.

Over the next year, he told his family about what he learned to prevent, what he called, another generation of silence on this.

They cared about what I had discovered, and we came together as a group to do something bigger than all of us, he says.

In December 2020, Schneidman reached out to staff at the Lemon Project to learn more about the Brights and to discover ways he could give back. He wanted to, in some way, attempt to rectify the actions of his forebears and promote racial reconciliation.

His goal, initially, was to support initiatives already underway at the university, either through the Lemon Project, other programs or other funds working to address William & Marys slaveholding past.

Then, in May 2021, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam signed a bill requiring five Virginia universities that benefited from and exploited slave labor, including W&M, to establish scholarships and programs specifically for descendants of the enslaved.

When that happened, that proved to me that we are not alone as a family fighting to redress systemic racism, Schneidman says. There are people who care about this and are willing to invest of themselves. For me to be part of a larger effort to provide opportunities to descendants of enslaved individuals is incredibly affirmative. Its what I want to be associated with and a way for our gesture to be maximized.

Schneidman, his sisters Liddy Lindsay and Margot Brownell, his son Sam and his niece Lela Beem have established the Lemon Scholarship Endowment as one of the scholarship funds consistent with the 2021 legislation, the second endowment of its kind at W&M. The first scholarship endowment for descendants of the enslaved was created in memory of the late Anne R. Willis, the wife of long-time W&M faculty member Dr. John H. Willis, Jr., by her children in early 2021.

We have a long road to travel, and we are still on that road, working toward healing, reconciliation, diversity and inclusion there is more we can do to ensure our students feel like they belong, Thomas says. The Lemon Scholarship and scholarships along these lines are important. We need more scholarships like it what Mr. Schneidman is doing is a great model for people across Virginia and beyond as a way to reconcile the past and help others today.

Schneidman knows there is still work to be done. He says his research showed him that history lives on in all of us today, in the stories we tell and the way we tell them. As anyone who has walked the brick pathways of William & Mary or through the streets of Williamsburg has experienced, history is ever-present even today. For Witney Schneidman and his family, engaging with that history is one way to ensure there isnt another generation of silence, but a generation of action.

I hope this scholarship enables students to be able to realize their dreams, whatever those are, and that they will be equipped with the skill and knowledge to be the very best that they can be, he says.

Throughout his own journey of reconciliation, he has felt fortunate to both have had this opportunity and has been able make this kind of contribution. Each of us in our own way has a role to play in this. Thats part of the challenge, to figure out what our role is and how can we contribute to make our country live up to its full value and potential.

For more information or to contribute, please contact Suzie Armstrong 93, executivedirector of development for scholarships and special projects, atsmarmstrong@wm.eduor757-221-7647.

Original post:

A journey of reckoning and discovery | William & Mary - William & Mary News

LETTER | The news that Russian President Vladimir Putin has put Russias nuclear forces on high alert is alarming. This is an extremely dangerous move, one that reeks of brinkmanship, that could plunge the entire world into an unending nuclear winter.

A nuclear weapons attack on its own is already catastrophic, but one that is inflicted on a world already struggling with the impact caused by Covid-19 and the climate crisis could push our planet over the cliff edge.

No matter what arguments are laid over who is the aggressor, we must not forget that people in both Ukraine and Russia, and perhaps other countries, are mourning the death of loved ones who were sacrificed in this war.

Many people in Russia and Ukraine have roots in both countries and love them equally. There is no us or them in such a situation.

This conflict once again demonstrates how dangerous it is for nuclear weapons to exist in our midst. The high alert declaration may result in further escalation of this conflict and push the whole of humanity closer and closer to the nuclear abyss.

Nuclear war

In an interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in November 2019, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev stated that nuclear weapons must be destroyed in order to save our planet. He further said: "As far as weapons of mass destruction exist, primarily nuclear weapons, the danger is colossal."

On Jan 3 this year, five nuclear-weapon states (US, France, China, UK and Russia) issued a joint statement, part of which states: We affirm that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.

I hope that the signatories will keep this stark truth in mind as global leaders seek a peaceful end to this conflict.

Many leaders from various fields around the world have called for the complete and total abolition of nuclear weapons over many years, including former leaders of nuclear weapons states such as Gorbachev and former US defence secretary William Perry. Both have commented that a nuclear war has become more likely than ever.

I am hopeful that the leaders of Russia, Ukraine and other countries will do whatever is necessary to pull away from the brink of nuclear war and bring a peaceful end to this conflict based on our shared humanity.

In view of the dangers of possible nuclear war that this conflict intimates, it becomes more important for us to call out even louder for the abolition of nuclear weapons.

In January 2021, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) - which Malaysia ratified in September 2020 came into force in the midst of the pandemic, and the treatys first Meeting of State Parties (MSP) is scheduled to be held in March.

This is a significant treaty that, when given full support, will ensure the dismantling of the global nuclear weapons arsenal.

In his latest peace proposal, noted Buddhist philosopher and Soka Gakkai International (SGI) leader Daisaku Ikeda wrote: The significance of the TPNW goes beyond the framework of a conventional disarmament treaty in that it has at its core the commitment to the norms of humanitarianism preventing catastrophic destruction - and of human rights - safeguarding the right of the worlds people to live.

the TPNW is indispensable to protecting the peace of humankind as a whole and the preservation of the global ecosystem, the basis of life for present and future generations.

Abolish nuclear weapons

A single nuclear attack or war will not just cause a major humanitarian catastrophe, but also cause environmental and ecological destruction on a massive scale.

In his proposal, Ikeda also quotes the words of acclaimed US economist John Kenneth Galbraith: If we fail in the control of the nuclear arms race, all of the other matters we debate in these days will be without meaning.

There will be no question of civil rights, for there will be no one to enjoy them. There will be no problem of urban decay, for our cities will be gone. So let us disagree, I trust with good humour, on the other issues.

But let us agree that we will tell all of our countrymen, all of our allies, all human beings, that we will work to have an end to this nuclear horror that now hovers like a cloud over all humankind.

Nuclear weapons will truly put an end to all our arguments, for it will put an end to all of us first.

I call upon our government to strengthen its efforts for the abolition of nuclear weapons and to aid efforts in ensuring the quick resolution of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

I also hope the government will also do more to educate the public on the dangers of nuclear weapons and the importance of the TPNW in order to gain wider support from Malaysians in creating a world free from nuclear weapons.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.

See more here:

LETTER | Strengthen efforts in abolishing nuclear weapons - Malaysiakini

Black activist and icon Angela Davis saluted with documentary exhibit at Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University

Angela Davis - Seize the Time brings together 220 objects, many from from the archive of Oaklands Lisbet Tellefsen. On view are papers from her short, troubled employment at UCLA in 1969, and material from her arrest and trial for part in a fatal shootout (she was found not-guilty). During her incarceration pre-trial, Davis inspired many artists, who created work to support her case, including Elizabeth Catlett and Faith Ringgold. Some of those works are included in the Zimmerli show, along with art by contemporary artists Roberto Lugo, Coco Fusco and others, whose works are in dialog with Davis and her struggles. The traveling show is on view at Zimmerli through June 15, 2022, and moves to the Oakland Museum of California in the Fall of 2022.

This groundbreaking exhibition documents the image, influence, and activism of Angela Davis. With some 220 objects, Seize the Time not only examines Daviss arrest, incarceration, trial and the national and international campaigns to free her, but also positions her as a continuing touchstone for contemporary artists. The exhibition is on view through June 15, 2022.

The Zimmerli Art Museums Angela Davis Seize the Time is inspired by and centered on an archive created by Oakland archivist Lisbet Tellefsen. The exhibition opens with material from the spring of 1969, when Davis was offered a teaching position at UCLA, which was rescinded, reinstated, and ultimately terminated all within about a years time because of her membership in the Communist Party and her political activism.

In the summer of 1970, she was accused of involvement in a shootout that resulted in the death of four men. Fearful for her life, Davis went underground, spending months as a fugitive, until her arrest in New York City in the fall. Denied bail, she spent the next 16 months in jails in New York and California. During this time, the white media painted Davis as a dangerous Black radical, but her image also became a key weapon in an unprecedented international effort to free an incarcerated Black woman. The work of Black artists who produced art in support of Davis, including, Elizabeth Catlett, Wadsworth Jarrell, and Faith Ringgold, are shown in the galleries alongside posters by unknown artist activists.

Daviss trial began in February 1972 and is presented through television footage, magazines, press photography, court sketches, and legal writings. In June, the all-white jury returned a verdict of not guilty on all counts. Upon her release, Davis resumed her academic and teaching career, publishing foundational texts on intersectional feminism, and continued to engage in the ongoing struggle for justice and prison abolition.

The sense of the archive as an active communal conversation shaped the conception of the exhibition. Interwoven within the rich accumulation of historically grounded material are works by contemporary artists. This productive tension between past and present, fact and imagination, helps to assert Daviss significance in a broader narrative about memory and possibility:

Works by additional artists Terry Boddie, Bethany Collins, Mel Edwards, Rene Green, Yevgeniy Fiks, Juan Sanchez, Carrie Schneider, Stephen Tourlentes, Keith Walsh, among others further expand the parameters of the exhibition. Images, music, and words actualize and revisit communal memories of Davis and the issues that she has been committed to for more than fifty years.

Angela Davis Seize the Time is co-curated by Donna Gustafson, the Zimmerlis Curator of American Art and Mellon Director for Academic Programs, and Gerry Beegan, professor in Art & Design at Rutgers Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University, with the assistance of an advisory group of intersectional scholars, artists, activists and archivists, including Nicole Fleetwood, Daonne Huff, Ericka Huggins, Steffani Jemison, and Lisbet Tellefsen. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue of the same title, which is available in the museum and from Hirmer Publishers and The University of Chicago Press. It also travels to the Oakland Museum of California in the fall of 2022.

This project is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Grant funding has been provided by the Middlesex County Board of County Commissioners through a grant award from the Middlesex County Cultural and Arts Trust Fund. Additional support is provided by Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Endowment, Voorhees Family Endowment, Estate of Regina Heldrich, and donors to the Zimmerlis Major Exhibitions Fund: Kathrin and James Bergin, Joyce and Alvin Glasgold, and Sundaa and Randy Jones.

ABOUT ZIMMERLI ART MUSEUM | RUTGERS The Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum houses more than 60,000 works of art, with strengths in the Art of the Americas, Asian Art, European Art, Russian Art & Soviet Nonconformist Art, and Original Illustrations for Childrens Literature. The permanent collections include works in all mediums, spanning from antiquity to the present day, providing representative examples of the museums research and teaching message at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, which stands among Americas highest-ranked, most diverse public research universities. Founded in 1766, as one of only nine colonial colleges established before the American Revolution, Rutgers is the nations eighth-oldest institution of higher learning.

Angela Davis Seize the Time is on view through June 15, 2022 at Zimmerli Art Museum(71 Hamilton Street, New Brunswick, NJ, 08901) Voorhees Gallery. Admission at the Zimmerli is FREE to everyone. Tickets are not required for exhibitions.

activist, AKA Mrs. George Gilbert, andy warhol foundation, angela davis, archivist, artist activists, bethany collins, black artists, california, Carrie Schneider, coco fusco, Daonne Huff, Donna Gustafson, elizabeth catlett, Ericka Huggins, faith ringgold, fbi, Gerry Beegan, Harriett Tubman, intersectional feminism, juan snchez, justice, Justin Hicks, Keith Walsh, Lisbet Tellefsen, Lorraine Hansberry, mel edwards, national endowment for the arts, new york city, Nicole Fleetwood, Nina Simone, oakland, prison abolition, renee green, roberto lugo, rutgers, sadie barnette, Seize the Time, Steffani Jemison, Stephen Tourlentes, Terry Boddie, trial, University of Chicago Press, wadsworth jarrell, yevgeniy fiks, zimmerli art museum

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Black activist and icon Angela Davis saluted with documentary exhibit at Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University - theartblog.org