Daily Archives: March 2, 2022

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.

The revived version of The Emancipator is 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.

Deborah Douglas, Co-editor of The Emancipator

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, Tenn., 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 to a digital collection of the monthly newsletter at the University of Tennessee library.

Before Embrees 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 papers 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 its 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.

Amber Payne, Co-editor of The Emancipator

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, The Emancipator published an interview with a Harvard social justice professor and commentary from a Boston College poetry professor.

It also posted on social media a 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.

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Abolition newspaper revived for nation grappling with racism - The Miami Times

Edelweiss by Above the Treeline Launches Employee Bookclub Aimed at Helping to Dismantle Systemic Inequities Through Discovery, Awareness, Commitment

ANN ARBOR, Mich. March 2, 2022 (Newswire.com)

Above the Treeline Edelweiss+, the online platform that serves as the primary hub for publishers to market, promote and sell their titles, announced the creation of the Legacy Book Club. The Legacy Book Club is designed for employees to engage in critical and reflective dialogue. This company-wide investment is part of an organizational commitmentto address systemic inequities both internally and externally.

John Rubin, CEO & President of Above the Treeline, states, Two enthusiastic employees came to us with the idea for this book club, and the organization has really rallied around it. We sit at the hub of an industry whose core is about understanding different perspectives and pushing folks to go beyond narrow views of the world. This book club is a great opportunity to live those values internally.

In January 2022, employees read Abolition. Feminism. Now. by leading scholar-activists Angela Y. Davis, Gina Dent, Erica R. Meiners, and Beth E. Richie. This newly released title is described as a celebration of freedom work, a movement genealogy, a call to action, and a challenge to those who think of abolition and feminism as separateeven incompatiblepolitical projects. During the January Legacy Book Club session, three of the authors Davis, Dent, and Richie joined to discuss perspectives and answer questions.

Nikki Siclare, Senior Help Desk and Education Specialist at Above the Treeline, is a co-founder of the Legacy Book Club. In describing why Abolition. Feminism. Now. was the obvious inaugural choice for the club, Siclare states, The conversations on abolition are growing and changing every day, and we respect the idea of unlearning in order to gain new ways to better our communities. Deidre Dumpson, Retail and Library Client Success Manager and Legacy Book Club co-founder, adds, In order to innovate and create radical change, weengage to listenrespectfully andactively with an ear to understanding others views and collectively form new ideas and ways of being.

The Legacy Book Club is an organic extension, associated with Ascend (Formerly Treeline2020), of the mindset throughout Above the Treeline. The mission of Ascend is to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion in publishing and technology industries. This is done by investing in organizations that are already doing this work well, supplying access through internships and scholarships, and amplifying underrepresented voices.

Annie Rubin, President of Above the Treeline, explains, It is not optional to dismantle systemic racism, address climate change, and support LGBTQIA+ individuals. It is an integral part of our company mission and how we choose to make an impact in our world.

Edelweiss by Above the Treeline empowers the book publishing industry with marketing, sales, and business intelligence tools that make the journey from author to reader more efficient. Over 200,000 book professionals engage in the community and utilize the platform to discover titles and manage the processes that keep them competitive. The company has been privately owned since 2002 and based in Ann Arbor, MI. For more information, visitwww.abovethetreeline.com.

Media Contact:Amanda Murphy, Marketing Director918.210.8343 (cell)[emailprotected]

Press Release ServicebyNewswire.com

Original Source:Edelweiss by Above the Treeline Launches Employee Bookclub Aimed at Helping to Dismantle Systemic Inequities

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Edelweiss by Above the Treeline Launches Employee Bookclub Aimed at Helping to Dismantle Systemic Inequities - Digital Journal

A new book by UB historian Carole Emberton explores emancipation 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.

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

Admission is pay what you wish.

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.

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 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.

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 long process of emancipation through eyes of formerly enslaved woman - UB Now: News and views for UB faculty and staff - University at...

The gospel message of liberation and reconciliation should push us toward the abolitionof prisons and policing. Here are 10 Bible passages that help us wrestle with questions of mass incarceration, criminalization, and violence:

Jesus mission statement when he begins his public ministry in Galilee includes a promise of liberation and release for those who are incarcerated. While the New Testament context of captivity wasnt entirely the same as modern imprisonment, Jesus promise aligns liberation of prisoners with healing and good news for the poor and oppressed. Taking Jesus words in this text seriously forces us to ask: If Gods reign is characterized by freedom for prisoners, why are we supporting incarceration now?

The story of Joseph contains a promise of Gods fidelity throughout Josephs incarceration. God never leaves Joseph, and eventually vindicates him. Meanwhile, the stories of the two men imprisoned with Joseph Pharaohs baker and cupbearer highlight the arbitrary nature of incarceration, as one is freed and the other executed. As civil rights lawyerBryan Stevenson says, our current system treats you better if youre rich and guilty than poor and innocent. This is the inevitable result of a system that exists to serve the interests of the powerful.

The prophet Jeremiah is an early political prisoner. Before the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians, he is imprisoned because he tells King Zedekiah that God wants him to surrender to the Babylonians so Jerusalem will be spared. Jeremiahs imprisonment reminds us that incarceration is fundamentally a tool of power. In our times, too, people who oppose the powerful in ways that are declared illegal from whistleblowerChelsea Manningto water protectors at Standing Rockto Black Lives Matter protesters face prison.

Daniel and his three friends Azariah, Hananiah, and Mishael (the Jewish names for Shadrach, Mishach, and Abednego) present examples of civil disobedience and another reminder that legality is not the measure of morality.In these stories, the Jewish exiles in Babylon refuse to obey laws designed to interfere with their religious practice and are punished by the state for it: Daniel is thrown into the lions den, and Azariah, Hananiah, and Mishael are cast into a fiery furnace. Their words to King Nebuchadnezzar we have no need to present a defense to you in this matter (Daniel 3:16) are a sign of their fidelity to God to deliver them, but also a challenge to the very legitimacy of punishment from an unjust state. When our systems of prisonsand policinglead to unjust and raciallydisparate outcomes for marginalized people and communities, we can also say in response: [W]e have no need to present a defense to you in this matter. Our current system of mass-incarceration-as-racial-control is not the arbiter of justice.

Jesus public ministry begins after John [the Baptist] was put in prison (Mark 1:14). Jesus preaches the coming kingdom of God under the shadow of that arrest. And when John, from prison, asks Jesus for a sign of whether he is the Messiah, Jesus response points to practices of solidarity and liberation that he is already enacting in the world (Matthew 11:4-6).

We, like John, see signs of hope and solidarity already being enacted among those who are criminalized and incarcerated such as organizing by groups like the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committeeand grassroots prisoner support organizations led by incarcerated people and their loved ones like the California Coalition for Women Prisoners. This is a potent reminder that abolition begins with smaller acts of liberative hope.

Swiss theologian Karl Barth writesthat the criminals crucified along with Jesus formed the first certain Christian community. As U.S. theologian and abolitionist Rev. Nikia Smith Robert writes, Jesus proximity to criminals and his position of criminality make the cross and resurrection a site of retribution and resistance that points to the possibilities of transformation of our system of mass incarceration. In other words, Jesus crucifixion as a criminal, among criminals, sets God ultimately on the side of those who are criminalized.

Peter is miraculously released from prison twice in the book of Acts. In considering this story as Christians, we must be careful and take its description of the religious authorities with some reservation, remembering that it was composed in the context of Jewish-Gentile schisms in the first century. The New Testaments villainization of Jewish leaders has had violent consequences throughout Christian history. The point here is not to condemn the high priest or the Sadducees, or to draw an exact parallel between the prison Peter was in and our modern prison-industrial complex but instead to recognize God's liberating action within the story. The liberating work of God makes Peters story resonate with contemporary abolitionist efforts.

Paul and Silas are also imprisoned while preaching by the Romans, in their case, and after being accused by a slaveholder whose wealth they had threatened. Their incarceration is clearly the result of challenging an established order of power. While they are in prison, God again miraculously opens the doors and breaks the chains in the prison.

Paul and Silas dont escape but instead stay in order to protect the life of the jailer, and then convert him. This story, while it again shows Gods liberating power in the face of incarceration, can complicate our search for an abolitionist narrative in the Bible. Yet perhaps it demonstrates the varieties of forms solidarity and resistance can take within carceral settings. The power of God is present in the singing of hymns in the prison and among those who are incarcerated; prisonis where the jailer finds God. Abolition unlike criminal justice reform must be driven by the needs and priorities of incarcerated people and those who love them, because that is where the liberating power of God is present.

What do we do about harm and violence without prisons? Abolitionists turn to restorative justiceand transformative justice, methods of dealing with interpersonal harm by meeting the needs of those harmed within a community. The New Testament offers support for this work in Matthew 18, as activist theologian Ched Myers and restorative justice practitionerElaine Enns write. The admonition to protect little ones (Matthew 18:6), they explain, requires we prioritize the needs of those who have been harmed or who are at risk of harm, especially when they have less power in a situation (a key insight of transformative justice); the parable of the lost sheep (Matthew 18:1114) reminds us that God doesnt want anyone thrown away or excluded, regardless of what they have done (a foundational value of restorative justice).

A word of warning: Treating Matthew 18:1520 as a process to follow is dangerous, especially if it ignores power dynamics in situations of harm or abuse! Supporting those who have been harmed must always take priority in our practices of restorative and transformative justice. Nonetheless, this chapter as a whole supports values of safety and restoration, and teaches us that God is with us in the process of what abolitionists Mariame Kaba and Shira Hassan call fumbling towards repair.

Jesus description of the final judgment offers the last word on incarceration, and although this appears in the gospel of Matthew, its a fitting ending because its a picture of the end times. Jesus identifies himself with those who are criminalized and incarcerated, and even promises that our solidarity with them is what determines our eternal destiny.

As biblical scholar Lee Griffithwrites, when we act in solidarity with those in prison, It is not that we find God there; it is that God finds us there. We can honor Gods identification with those who are criminalized and imprisoned when we commit ourselves to abolition.

Go here to see the original:

What Does the Bible Say About Prisons? - Sojourners

Monday

History Makers

Join Linda Hirshman for a virtual discussion of her book The Color of Abolition: How a Printer, a Prophet, and a Contessa Moved a Nation. Hirshman explores the roles of Frederick Douglass, printer William Lloyd Garrison, and Boston socialite Maria Weston Chapman in the fight for abolition. 6 p.m. Free. Register at americanancestors.org.

Thursday

Swift, Reimagined

Fans of Taylor Swift, this ones for you. Student musicians and dancers will perform the singer-songwriters hits for Great American Songbook: Fearless The Music of Taylor Swift at the Berklee Performance Center. Performances will include the songs Shake It Off, You Belong With Me, and Blank Space. 8 p.m. Tickets from $20, with discounts for Berklee ID-holders. berklee.edu/events

Opens Friday

Art and Innovation

The Harvard Art Museums highlight dozens of cutting-edge artists in Prints from the Brandywine Workshop and Archives: Creative Communities. Brandywine, a Philadelphia-based organization, was established to foster innovation and diversity in the arts. $20 for adults; free on Sundays and for students, youth, and other groups. Through July 31. Reservations required at harvardartmuseums.org.

Friday and Saturday

Gods and Mortals

Head to the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams for the world premiere of Yemandja, a musical starring Grammy Award-winner Anglique Kidjo. The work is reminiscent of a Greek tragedy and explores love, betrayal, honor, and the terrors of slavery. Tickets for Fridays show, at 8 p.m., start at $20. Saturday includes 4 p.m. performance and Mass MoCA benefit events, from $250. massmoca.org

Saturday

Colorful Celebrations

Immerse yourself in the sounds of Red Baraat, which fuses North Indian bhangra with hip-hop and punk, as the band rocks out for Holi, a Hindu festival celebrating spring, at the Somerville Theatre. Harini Rini Raghavan and Radha open. Tickets from $28. 8 p.m. globalartslive.org

Share your event news. Send information on Boston-area happenings at least three weeks in advance to week@globe.com.

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Five things to do in and around Boston, Feb. 28 - March 6 - The Boston Globe

An Erdington byelection special four-page wrap-around with the Socialist issue 1169

Voting for more of the same will only get us more of the same. And, when that same means soaring energy bills for us and soaring energy profits for them we cant take any more of the same! Cuts to public services hit us hard, while billionaires get even richer.

A vote for Labour or the Tories will be seen by Boris Johnson, or Sir Keir Starmer, as support for their approach: to carry on privatising our NHS, letting the bosses get away with fire and rehire, saddling our young people with tens of thousands of pounds of student debt, and so on.

At best, there will be a discussion on how working-class people should pay for the crisis we didnt cause. No party in Westminster says make the billionaires pay instead because working-class people dont have our own political voice, our own party.

Dave Nellist, a member of the Socialist Party, is standing as the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) candidate so we can use our vote to send a message to Westminster that we have had enough and want an alternative to their same old, same old.

Dave will be a voice for us instead. He has a record of being a workers MP who only took a workers wage and as a fighter for working-class people. The result in this by-election wont change the government, but a vote for Dave can shake up the establishment. Daves campaign is also part of the fight to build a powerful voice for the working class a new mass workers party.

Youth clubs, home care, school budgets, swimming pools, libraries many have disappeared, and more have been cut beyond recognition, privatised by profiteering corner-cutting companies, or now carry hefty charges. The decent public services needed for dignity, support and a start in life are being destroyed.

These attacks represent political choices about which part of society should foot the bill which class. The Tories made their position clear from the get-go in 2010, with the slashing of 40 billion of funding for councils in the years since. In that period, the amount paid by FTSE 100 companies in dividends to shareholders doubled to a record 110 billion in 2019. This is still the fifth-richest country on the planet.

Birmingham City Council, like all the Labour-led councils across the country, has dutifully accepted the Tory line and cut over 770 million from services since 2010. Over 13,000 jobs have been slashed. Birmingham Labour council has closed 43 youth centres, 12 nurseries, 21 childrens centres, five childrens homes, four libraries and countless community and leisure facilities. And then privatised or sold off most of whats left, as its trying to do with Short Heath playing fields too.

Labour cuts

The Labour candidate for Erdington, Paulette Hamilton, was a council cabinet member in 2018 when Birmingham care workers in Unison took strike action against the council plan to cut their hours. Some workers faced a cut from 37 hours to just 14 hours a week! Their 20-month strike defeated the plan, and the new rota was dropped. Unite and Unison refuse workers were also forced to strike against cuts in 2019.

Paulette has no defence, as she told LabourList: Ive had that portfolio for over seven years they can only name two disputes. I have managed a budget of over 354 million. I have also managed the public health budget each year of over 100 million. And they have highlighted two disputes that happened over five years ago, when we were looking at how we could upgrade a service. We had cross-party agreement when it was all decided. Thats cross-party with the Tories by the way

In Coventry, the Labour council is brutally attacking the trade unions trying to defend services and jobs. That council is refusing to pay bin drivers the rate for the job. But even worse, it is paying outside workers twice the going rate to do the work of their own workforce, spending over 2 million in an attempt to break the strike in defence of fair pay.

The socialist-led Liverpool Labour council in the 1980s provides a lesson of what a fighting council could do if it chose to represent and mobilise the working class. Its legacy is undeniable. It includes 4,800 houses and bungalows built; six new nursery classes built and opened; five new sports centres, one with a leisure pool attached; three new parks built; and rents frozen for five years.

The council defeated Tory Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, winning 60 million for Liverpool. It was achieved on the basis of workers and young people taking a democratic part in the decision process. That was in the form of mass meetings but also mass demonstrations and strike action to fight for what had been agreed in the council chamber.

Councils today have a lot of power to fight back against Tory attacks. Councils in England, for example, are responsible for over one fifth of all public spending. If they were to use their reserves and borrowing powers to produce budgets based on whats needed, and combine this with a Liverpool-style struggle, a mass movement could be inspired and built to end Tory austerity and kick them out.

New mass workers party

Today this type of struggle against the Tories is necessary but it is impossible in Starmers New Labour. As we go to press, Labour councillors who say they might vote against this years cuts face being expelled; Jeremy Corbyn is not allowed to sit as a Labour MP; and Starmer takes the side of Coventry council against the workers. The lesson is that cuts can be fought but we require councillors and a party with a no-cuts programme. Labour is not that. A new party must be built.

That can start now. Elections are taking place on 5 May with over 6,000 council seats up. In its existence since 2010, thousands of working-class fighters have stood as no-cuts candidates for the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) trade unionists, socialists, community campaigners, student activists people with a record of standing up to the bosses and campaigning for their community and pledged to vote against cuts.

Standing no-cuts candidates has meant theres a real choice on the ballot paper in those areas. This can also help spread the idea of building a new mass workers party. It can also be an effective way of putting pressure on councillors they dont like a challenge to what they see as their right to rule. So why not be part of that?

See http://www.tusc.org.uk for info.

Birminghams unemployment rate of 12.6% is the highest of any major British city. Now Erdingtons GKN plant is set to close with the loss of 500-plus skilled jobs. Johnsons Tory government could have intervened, nationalised and saved GKN, but instead it let it go to the wall. The Socialist Party fights for the nationalisation of GKN under democratic workers control and management.

Boris Johnson claimed the Tories wanted Brexit to level up working-class communities, but their Brexit is about freedom for the bosses to exploit us. Dave, in contrast, led one of the three national campaigns to leave the EU, explaining it is Thatcherism on a continental scale which limits a governments ability to defend working-class interests for example to nationalise plants threatened with closure.

Johnsons plan for Brexit is the same as the EUs: giving big employers more liberty to attack workers pay, rights and conditions and to sell off our NHS to US private health companies. We need an MP to cut through both Tory and Labour Brexit jargon and put workers first.

Ben Robinson, an organiser of Youth March for Jobs

Dave Nellist has been a longstanding campaigner for young peoples rights. As an MP in the 1980s, Daves maiden speech was against Thatchers Youth Training Scheme forcing young people into low-paid work, and helping to build the movement against it.

Just over a decade ago, I was one of the Youth Fight for Jobs marchers who walked through Coventry on the way from Jarrow to London, following in the footsteps of the 1936 Jarrow march for jobs. In the aftermath of the 2007-8 financial crash, politicians and big business were asking working-class people to pay the price. Youth unemployment shot up to around a million 16 to 24-year-olds.

Again, Dave was one of our biggest supporters, joining us early in the march and helping to organise a rally and protest in Coventry, where he was a Socialist Party councillor. As we marched through the streets, local young people joined us and cheered as we spoke about fighting the Labour councils attacks, including to the local college, and the need for a socialist fightback.

These are just a few examples of Daves record. With fresh attacks on education, and low pay and job insecurity still rife for young people, we need a fightback. Dave has proven time and again that he is a fighter for young people and the working class, and will use any position to build that fightback. Vote for a fighter, vote Nellist!

Adam Powell-Davies, Socialist Students

Every year, hundreds of thousands of students leave university into a world of low pay and temporary contracts, owing the government close to 30,000. The moment we graduate, this figure starts growing. And thats just to cover tuition, leaving aside loans to cover the cost of rent and food.

However, there is no question that the wealth exists in society for education to be run as a free public service, available to all. After all, billionaires wealth has increased by $5 trillion to $13.8 trillion since March 2021. The question is: who owns and controls this wealth, and how is it used?

Free education is entirely possible. After all, university tuition fees were not introduced in Britain until 1998, under newly elected New Labour prime minister Tony Blair. In contrast, as Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn showed the huge support for free higher education when students, young people and workers joined mass rallies in the run up to the 2017 general election. The 2019 election manifesto grey book estimated the cost of abolishing tuition fees and restoring maintenance grants for full-time and part-time students at 13.6 billion. The obstacle is the profit system and the defenders of capitalism.

Corbyns anti-austerity programme was met with disdain by Tory and right-wing Labour MPs, who claimed there is no magic money tree. Yet the same Tory government has shown that the money can be found when the capitalist system they defend is under threat spending over 400 billion since Covid struck, including the 37 billion set aside for the botched test-and-trace system.

The current tuition fee system leaves university graduates saddled with debt for much of our working lives. In fact, the government predicts that only 25% of current undergraduates will have paid off their debt by the time they retire. The situation is only set to worsen following the Tories announcement that the student loan debt repayment window will be extended from 30 to 40 years and the repayment threshold lowered.

Alongside free education, we need institutions that are fully funded by government, and controlled by students, workers and the wider working class. This would bring to an end the university managements vicious attacks on the conditions of staff in the name of balancing the books.

But who will launch the fight for free education? Under Keir Starmer, the Labour Party has taken a clear rightward turn to the side of big business. As of yet, the current Labour leader has not officially renounced his 2020 campaign pledge to support the abolition of tuition fees. But he has retreated from nationalising utilities, suspended Jeremy and introduced rule changes designed to lock out the left from taking the leadership again.

And where was Starmer when students were organising rent strikes last year? When Young Labour urged him to back the rent strikes, he did not respond. A Labour spokesperson refused to confirm the partys position. Starmers right-wing machine has even gone as far as prohibiting access to Young Labour social media accounts, in an attempt to censor Labours official youth wing. Starmer is hell-bent on completing Labours reconfiguration into a safe pair of hands for British capitalism. It is difficult to imagine him ever demanding the super-rich pay for education.

This is why it is time for students to build a new mass movement, starting with campus-wide rallies of students and university workers already on strike, to discuss the next steps to fight cuts and marketisation.

But without a political alternative outside the Labour Party, students would be fighting with one hand tied behind our backs. A mass movement of students fighting for free education would be strengthened by representatives in Westminster like Dave Nellist, fighting on our side against the bosses.

Even just a modest tax or levy on the vast wealth of the super-rich would be enough to provide free education and reinstate maintenance grants. But why should the capitalists maintain their control over our education, and over the economy and the rest of society?

Socialists fight for the wealth and resources to be owned and controlled by the majority, the working class. By nationalising the banks and big business to be run under democratic workers control and management, a socialist government could plan production to meet everyones needs. Only such socialist measures, coordinated with socialist movements internationally, could guarantee a flourishing, free education system on a permanent basis.

Ian Hodson, President Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union: As a founder and funder, and after 119 years of support for the Labour Party, our members decided that they could no longer be supportive of a political organisation riven by factionalism, and more interested in securing positions in its own ranks than dealing with the huge inequalities and hardship so many in our society face.

We have witnessed in recent weeks the actions of Labour in power with its treatment of its bin workers. They are no different to those of the Tory party. We need a fresh start, and Erdington offers an opportunity to send a real shot across the bows of the Westminster elite. By electing Dave Nellist, the people of Erdington will be sending one of their own someone who will be a powerful voice for ending the hardship we see daily in our society. Be it food, energy or housing poverty, it is a political choice by voting Dave Nellist you will be saying its time for change, and time for a better society for all.

Pete Randall, Unite rep for Coventry bin strikers: Dave stands on the side of workers, the community and is honest. So honest, he pledges to take a workers wage! This isnt about greed, its about delivering for the people. Hes done it before, hell do it again.

Chris Williamson, ex-Labour MP and Resist: I have known Dave Nellist for over 30 years. He is a real community champion. No other candidate can match his track record. By contrast, the Labour Party ignores the interests of local people and Labours response to the cost of living crisis is almost identical to the Conservatives.

Joe Simpson, Deputy General Secretary of the Prison Officers Association: I support Dave Nellist simply because of who he is. Dave is a sincere, genuine working-class man who will speak up for his constituents in Erdington and will protect them from the devastating cuts which will come in the next few years. No other candidate is speaking up for the people of Erdington and giving them a voice in parliament they will just take the money, sit on their hands and vote in favour of the party they belong to.

That is the exact opposite of what Dave will deliver, he will deliver a working-class voice on a working-class wage with a working-class agenda.

Naomi Byron, Unison NEC (personal capacity) and NHS worker: If Dave is elected to Parliament again he will be a real workers representative there. I know Dave will always fight to defend the NHS and for its renationalisation. He stands with health workers and outsourced workers. He fought against the Private Finance Initiative when New Labour introduced it, he is fighting against the Health and Care Bill, for proper NHS funding, and a proper pay rise for all.

Hugo Pierre, Unison NEC (personal capacity) and school worker: I am confident, that if elected, Dave would make a great MP for Erdington. Dave knows the West Midlands and has fought against the drop in workers living standards as formerly skilled, well-paid jobs have been replaced with low-paid precarious work.

He supported and gave solidarity to the Birmingham bin and home care workers who were attacked by the Labour council.

As a trade unionist, support for your struggle is the key. Im backing Dave in Erdington because he will have your backs. But workers across the country will also have a principled and determined socialist fighting for our cause.

Tosh McDonald, retired President of ASLEF the train drivers union and former councillor for Doncaster Town ward: By voting for Dave Nellist, the voters of Erdington have the chance to make a real change to Britains political landscape. With no real difference between Westminsters main parties and their careerist politicians, Dave is a refreshing breath of fresh air. Taking a workers wage instead of lining his own pocket, standing up for people instead of big business, Dave is a real peoples politician. A vote for Dave is a vote to change politics in Birmingham and beyond.

The Socialist Party is part of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition, working with trade unions and others to stand no-cuts, fighting candidates, and take those first necessary steps towards building the new mass workers party we so urgently need.

Within the campaign for working-class political representation, the Socialist Party fights for a bold socialist programme that shows how we can really transform things. The first step is nationalisation of the biggest 150 banks and corporations that dominate the economy, under democratic working-class control and management. This would put the levers for the first steps towards a socialist planned economy, democratically run to meet the needs of all, into workers hands not those of the bosses.

The pandemic revealed the potential power of workers many times, forcing bosses to take safety measures they didnt want to take. What could the six-and-a-half million members of the trade unions do if we acted together? Combine that with those not yet in a union, linked up with young people, and communities!

Key to bringing that potential power to bear is the mass organisation of workers, including building a workers political voice. It also means strengthening the trade unions, the main workers organisations in the workplaces, where workers confront the bosses in the struggles over safety, pay, and conditions.

But it also means joining the Socialist Party. We stand firm for socialism come what may standing up against the bosses, the Tories, and the Labour Blairites, charting a way forward to build the maximum unity of the working class in the struggle for socialist change.

Fighting for a socialist alternative to war, poverty and inequality is an international struggle against an international capitalist system. The Socialist Party is affiliated to the Committee for a Workers International (CWI) to build a worldwide struggle for socialism.

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Erdington byelection - Working-class people need a voice - Socialist Party

Political talent is in short supply. So is a willingness to step up and take the burdens and the blows of office. The leader of Newcastle city council, Nick Forbes, has been toppled as a result of destructive tribal shenanigans, likely to deter others from giving up most of their life to become councillors. All political careers end in failure, goes the old dictum, and its usually so.

But Forbess career has been no failure. As leader of the council for 11 years, he steered his city through the lost decades savage cuts, protecting vulnerable people where he could and upholding Newcastles pride with ingenuity and political imagination.

One of a generation of outstanding Labour council leaders, he was deselected from his seat in Arthurs Hill ward, which he represented for 22 years, after an ambush this month. His deselection is reported to have been the result of a clash with the former Labour chief whip, local MP Nick Brown. Rules may have been breached in the process, and the party will investigate, ChronicleLive reports. But Forbes prefers to walk away with his dignity intact, he tells me, not fight over rulebooks. Whats more, his tenure in office shouldnt be defined by the petty factionalism that ended it, but by the hard task of preserving his city in an age of austerity, against vicious odds.

Does his downfall show he was a failure? Financially, some might say: at 48, he received total pay of 27,600 a year, with no pension, for the past 11 years for heavy responsibilities. But he walks away reflecting on how he navigated killer cuts of 40% of Westminster funding. Labour leaders are trapped by the Tories gleeful ploy to devolve the axe, forcing local authorities to make agonising choices with shrunken budgets, taking the full blast of local blame. Right from 2010, Labour cities the poorest places took the hardest hit, Tory shires the least. Now with levelling up, funds again are diverted to Tory towns often not the poorest rather than the most deprived cities.

What should they do? Protest, certainly. But they still have to carry out the cuts, find clever ways to raise funds and try to protect the weakest. Thats our tightrope, Forbes tells me, to highlight the hardship of cuts without damaging the citys reputation. At election time, despite the blows, they still have to proclaim achievements and Newcastle still dazzles its visitors.

Survival meant dealing with the enemy: he struck an early city deal with central government, he tells me, allowing Newcastle to keep business rates fixed for 25 years and to borrow to build. He also claims that they have built more council housing in the last 10 years than in the previous 30. Aggressively pursuing vacant owners, hundreds of empty properties have been brought back into use.

Defending families against the monstrous bedroom tax, they built homes with a hobby room rather than a spare bedroom. With the 2011 abolition of the education maintenance allowance, which supported poor children staying on in sixth forms, they found 15 a week for the neediest.

Newcastle council had a living wage long before the rest of the UK. Partnerships with the private sector have been key: that includes a good work pledge, where hundreds of employers agree union representation, pensions and no zero-hours contracts. The government dismantled the welfare state, so we had to create our own. Of course, it was slender protection against tidal waves of poverty from the 37bn national benefit cuts, money that was taken from pockets of the poor and from the citys economy. When a large number of Englands 3,500 Sure Starts were lost, Newcastle kept them for 30% of the poorest. Only when Forbes cut the arts did national celebs protest, not about lost nurseries and youth clubs. Newcastle is a city of sanctuary for asylum seekers and unaccompanied refugee children, despite far-right marches and demos outside mosques. Its Labour councillors were mainly male and white, now half are women, with more ethnic minority members, including the UKs first Roma councillor. As an LGBTQ+ leader, Forbes has taken shedloads of homophobic abuse.

He grumbles that London-based journalists rock up in Newcastle, hear his list of the citys thriving inward investments and jobs created but then go home to write only about grinding poverty, featuring grim up north scenes from Byker and Benwell. I plead partly guilty, because theres no escaping the brutal effects of Westminster-induced hardship, though I reported on the Forbes administrations enterprise and inventiveness too.

His detractors accused him of spending too long out of his ward but those against moderates resented his place attending moderate Keir Starmers shadow cabinet. Each shadow minister now has a local Labour leader as part of their team, at last drawing on Labours formidable local strengths. Forbes will be gone from there, no longer chairing the Convention of the North and sitting as a member of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership.

Forbes should be remembered not for his fall amid red-on-red factionalism, but for his public service, even in the harshest years and against the odds. What a pointless and destructive waste.

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Look at the fall of a brilliant Labour leader and see why so many shun public service - The Guardian

Stella Creasy, the Labour MP, is on a one-woman crusade to make the House of Commons more "family friendly".You may remember her from the row over whether or not babies should be allowed in the Chamber.

Yesterday morning saw her take up the cudgels on this point once again. Tweeting in the early hours, she wrote:

Me and kid2 finally leaving parliament after the votes for the policing bill went on until 1am - tell me again this system is family friendly

There is no doubt that making parliamentary life kinder on MPs with families is a worthwhile enterprise. Life in the Westminster goldfish bowl can definitely take its toll; the divorce rate for MPs is consistently higher than the national average.

But the challenge is to find a way to do it for all Members. Unfortunately, the vision of a "family-friendly" Parliament held up by Creasy benefits only the select few and undermines the actual business of Parliament too.

Why? Because the idea that Westminster could be "family-friendly"on a day-to-day basis only makes sense if youre a London MP, or at least have your family in London even if your constituency is elsewhere.

Acts of performative parenthood, as when Louise Mensch walked out of a select committee in 2013 to go and pick up her children, only ever occur in this context; nobody has yet cited the school run to justify hopping on a train up to Manchester or Scotland before the weeks work is done.

The truth is that when New Labour started to oversee cuts to Parliaments sitting hours in the name of being "family friendly", most MPs knew it was basically just a cut in their hours and voted for it on that basis. The diary of Chris Mullin, one Labour MP who opposed the changes, chronicles it in detail.

It was also he who pointed out (very unfashionably) that the result would simply be leaving the great majority of his colleagues in London several nights a week with no parliamentary business to engage them, and that this might create a highly social environment and, well, pressure on marriages.

The abolition of late sittings has also had an inevitable effect on the actual work of Parliament too, especially by giving rise to the awful programme motion. This is where the amount of time for any debate is fixed in advance, and is why you so often see the Speaker cutting speeches by MPs to four minutes three minutes two minutes

Suffice to say, such constraints are not conducive to genuine intellectual engagement and exchange, and produce a system wherein MPs are too often basically reading things into Hansard or creating clips for social media.

Little wonder that in recent years the House of Lords, which does often sit late, has been picking up more of the slack when it comes to the detailed work of legislation.

Any debate over making the House of Commons "family friendly"ought to start by acknowledging that there are limits to how much that can or should be done. Being an MP is a job, and doing that job properly has time and energy commitments that cannot be infinitely adapted to an individual's preferred work/life balance.

It should also take as an explicit starting point the need to treat all MPs equitably: it is not "anti-family" to expect Creasy to sit late and vote if the alternative is just that other MPs, also mothers, would be stuck in a hotel rather than home with their own children.

With those as our starting points, a real "family-friendly"policy might actually be a step backwards, away from some of New Labours misguided reforms.

Return the House to late sittings three nights a week, Monday through Wednesday. Use the extra time not only to ease controls on debate, but also to scrap the Friday morning sitting altogether.

That would allow every MP to return to their constituency on Thursday night, and spend three days near their families.

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Stella Creasy's vision of a 'family friendly' Parliament would be a disaster - The Telegraph

The Long Peace was not inevitable. Like other examples of human progress, it was the dividend of particular brainchildren: ideas and institutions designed to mitigate the tragedies of the human condition.

Get Weekend Reads from IdeasA weekly newsletter from the Boston Globe Ideas section, forged at the intersection of 'what if' and 'why not.'

Of the contributors to peace identified in Better Angels, three of them interstate trade, membership in global organizations, and the United Nations outlawry of wars of aggression applied to Russia but failed to inhibit it. Two others did not apply to Russia in the first place.

One was democracy. Russia is an electoral autocracy, lacking the checks and balances that can inhibit a leader from dragging his country into stupid wars. The framers of democracy designed these checks as a safeguard against tyrants. Today we might diagnose them as malignant narcissists, with a grandiose craving for glory, a lack of empathy, and a petulant sensitivity to affronts.

The other irenic force is Enlightenment humanism: the conviction that the ultimate good is the life, liberty, and happiness of individuals, with governments instituted as social contracts to secure these rights. Putin cleaves instead to romantic nationalism, in which the ultimate good is the prestige of ethnic nations. Governments and strong leaders are their embodiments, and they struggle to stake out spheres of influence and rectify historic humiliations.

A week into this anachronistic war, obviously no one knows whether it will reverse the Long Peace and send the world back to an age of warring civilizations. Maybe but maybe not.

The refusal of the United States and European Union to send its armies to meet Russias on the battlefield, very different from the responses that launched the world wars, means that the other zeroes that defined the Long Peace no nuclear war, no great-power war, no wars between rich countries (Ukraine being the poorest in Europe) will probably continue.

And the pacifying restraints may yet kick in. Russia is enmeshed with the global economy and will feel the pain of sanctions that were swifter and severer than predicted. It is being booted out of a wide swath of organizations it wants to belong to, from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development to the Eurovision Song Contest. And Putins middle-fingering of the norm against wars of aggression is earning him the reputation not as a great man in history but as a deranged thug.

Can shunning by the community of nations make a difference? Though populist nationalists pretend that globalization is a passing fad, our irreversibly interconnected world is likely to punish any country that tries to go it alone. Many of a nations challenges dont respect lines on a map, and membership in an international problem-solving community will be necessary to deal with them. They include trade, technology, pandemics, terrorism, climate, piracy, cybercrime, and migrants, together with the desire of its citizens to work, study, and travel abroad and to enjoy the pleasures of world culture.

Also unlikely to go into reverse is the ongoing humanitarian revolution and its decimation of barbaric customs. Past centuries saw the abolition of human sacrifice, heretic-burning, torture-executions, chattel slavery, Jim Crow, and the legal rape of wives by their husbands. In the decade since Better Angels was published, the data show continuing declines of other violent practices, including child abuse, female genital mutilation, forced marriage, capital and corporal punishment, land mines, and the criminalization of homosexuality.

Yet another of these barbaric customs is war. The valuation of human well-being over norms of conformity and authority will make it harder for any leader to turn his populace into cannon fodder to indulge his dreams of historical grandeur.

For these and other reasons, even when countries have breached the Long Peace, the invasions have seldom gone well for the invader.

History is not cyclical, but it is jerky. After the biblical Israelites abandoned human sacrifice, they kept having to take measures to prevent backsliding into the pastime. France has the dubious distinction of abolishing slavery twice, the second time after Napoleon had reintroduced it. Yet the second or third or nth time was the charm: We no longer have slave auctions. Nor do we have a need for laws against burning children as an offering to Moloch.

Could Putins new altar of human sacrifice also turn out to be a temporary backsliding in the obsolescence of interstate war? Lets hope so, but it wont happen by itself. It will require that we continue to promote the forces of enlightenment that have sent violence into decline, including the valuation of human life and the norms and institutions of global cooperation.

Steven Pinker is a professor of psychology at Harvard University and the author, most recently, of Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters.

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Is Russias war with Ukraine the end of the Long Peace? - The Boston Globe