Category Archives: Abolition Of Work

The Good Lord Bird begins with the end of its story, with abolitionist John Brown awaiting his execution. After a failed raid at an Army weapons depot, he has been sentenced to hanging. He looks out into the crowd that has gathered below the gallows with his wild passionate eyes and says what a beautiful country.

The Jason Blum (Get Out, Whiplash) produced adaption of the novel(winner of the National Book Award for Fiction in 2013) by James McBride follows the last years of controversial and divisive abolitionist John Brown leading up to the American Civil War. The show is a quasi-historical take on Brown and his ideals and journey. The line between fact and myth is blurred and acknowledged by the show saying This is a true story...some of these things happened.

The Good Lord Bird delivers a timely and super entertaining drama that doesnt fall short of its big ideas.

Ethan Hawke (Training Day, First Reformed) doesnt play John Brown as much as he transforms into him. He is a bearded liver-spotted fanatic. His eyes are wild and filled with his zealous determination to accomplish his mission of abolition of slavery by any means necessary. He recites scripture and prays like a rabid preacher, ready to burst out and proclaim his cause at any moments notice. He can be wrathful with righteous fury in one moment and extremely chilling in the next. Brown has a dogged and absolute belief in the sinfulness of slavery and will do anything to fight it. He believes the complicity white Americans have in its practicedestroys the very premise upon which America was founded.

Brown is the chaotic force of the story but the real protagonist is Onion played by Joshua Caleb Johnson. Henry Shackleford nicknamed Onion by Brown and his group of abolitionist soldiers was a slave who after his father was killed joined Brown. Brown assumes Onion is a girl because he misheard Onions father believing he called him Henrietta before he was killed. Onion goes with it, donning a dress and playing the part. In the beginning, Onion views himself as a captive even after being told he was free time and time again. Onion feels it is safer pretending to be a girl and doing whatever this crazy white man says to do.

Onion becomes a passenger on a runaway train.

Onion and Brown eventually come to an understanding that he hasnt really been free even though Brown took him away and told him he was free. Onion never had any agency about his fate and followed John for survival and did what he was told. John recognizes how ignorant he had been with Onion and gives him the respect he deserves.

Onion sees Johns failures and short-sightedness firsthand, but also his conviction and unwavering commitment to abolition. He becomes a true believer in Browns cause and decides to see it through the end.

John Brown could have easily been portrayed as the familiar and much-maligned white savior, the all-knowing, perfect, and infallible protagonist who is the man to lead black people to freedom but he isnt. Brown is complicated. The way Black characters view him varies, some view what he is doing as necessary and some see him as some white savior whos just stirring up trouble. Brown continuously fails in battle and strategy. He fails to get the support he needs, he continually makes bad decisions, and hes impulsive. He gives all the money he raised for supplies and his army away. He also sends people on secret missions who cant keep secrets.

At one point he lectures Frederick Douglass (Daveed Diggs: Hamilton, Snowpiercer) in an attempt to win his support that black people have to be willing to die for freedom and once they see that their revolution will spread like wildfire. Douglass responds by asking how someone who has never been in bondage tells someone that has what they have to be willing to do for their freedom.

Brown considers himself as only a vessel for doing Gods work which he sees as freeing the enslaved Black people of America, nothing more. His mission is all that matters to him and he is uncompromising in his methods. He wants to purge the sin of slavery from this land with blood, no matter the cost.

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The show could have been a dark affair, but its given levity and life. The odd-couple nature of Onion and Browns relationship is great fun. The best running gag throughout is how every white character is fooled by Onions disguise and almost every black character immediately knows he isnt a girl. The violence is often comedic as it is graphic.

Overall TheGood Lord Bird has powerful moments and a relevant story with great characters. It plays fast and loose with fact and myth keeping its subject matter at the forefront to make bold statements and create intrigue. The subject matter isnt pacified and its message is clear, America cant move forward or be what it claims to be without a reckoning of its sins and failures.

John Brown wanted to be the spark that lit the fire of revolution and freedom. He failed in aspects but he succeeded in passing on his ideals. If this year has taught us anything its that the fire for change is still burning and the fight is not over.

The Good Lord Bird can be seen on Showtime.

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Contributor Jamil David is a native Houstonian and Texas Southern University alumnus. He is interested in TV, sports and pop culture. @JMLJMLD

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Review: The Good Lord Bird - Houston Press

I was so run off my feet dealing with the problem that I lost a stone in weight in a single week. I wasnt eating, I wasnt getting enough sleep, I was just utterly, utterly exhausted. Hence, when I was on Newsnight, being interviewed, I was a bit inadequately briefed, and my blood sugar was so low I wasnt performing at the standard I should.

For Stewart Stevenson, the winter of 2010 offered one of the most significant lessons of his time as a minister. Scotland had experienced a huge snowfall, dragging transport networks to a standstill, and as the then transport minister, Stevenson had found himself working around the clock.

Whatever you might do, he said, you ought to be sure you are fit enough to do it, and that you arent saying yes to whatever people want you to do. There will always be more that people want you to do than is seriously possible. If I learned anything from 2010 its that I need to think carefully about my own physical and mental preparedness for things that come along.

That time as Minister for Transport, Infrastructure and Climate Change saw Stevenson take the SNPs first act through parliament the abolition of tolls on the Forth and Tay Bridges as well as leaving him responsible for steering the climate change act through shortly afterwards. A minister from 2007 to 2012, and an MSP since 2001, Stevenson now holds the record for most speeches in the Scottish Parliament currently sitting at over 838, comprised of more than 670,000 words. But his time in the SNP stretches back much further, to a party meeting in November 1961, after a friend brought him along to a local event in Cupar, in Fife.

There were around 40 of us that ended up at this meeting and if memory serves then about 25 joined the party that night. Theres an important lesson in that: most people end up in a political party because someone took them along and invited them. The number of people who sit down and rationally decide theyre going to join a political party is comparatively modest.

Thats one of the important things about it, when you join a political party and I think the SNP in particular you create lots of social connections that are part of your political life, whether as a volunteer or an elected member. The first conference I went to, I think was 1975. That was also the first conference I spoke at, 45 years ago. Even now, when SNP conferences are orders of magnitude bigger than the one I went to in 1975, you still find yourself bumping into people you havent seen since the last conference, and chewing the fat with them and having debates that are personal, social and of course political.

The partys conferences offer a snapshot into the changes the SNP has seen over the last few decades, with the years since 2007, and particularly post-2014, characterised by a huge growth in its membership and reach, alongside a drive to professionalise. Back in the 70s, 80s and 90s, Stevenson and his contemporaries became accustomed to meetings comprising a couple hundred people at most. Fast forward to the post-indyref years and the scale is barely recognisable, even if Stevenson also emphasises that some aspects remain the same.

We have more resources human resources and financial ones to draw on in campaigning, so we are quite different in a sense to how we were. But even so, the one thing that hasnt changed is that we kind of all know each other, and thats very important.

When you go to conference, no one gets protected from anyone else. Anyone who goes along on a day pass, if they arent a delegate but are just visiting, doesnt feel discouraged from approaching anyone. You see many of these conversations taking place, and that has always been the case. Its one of the best things about it.

Richard Lyle joined the SNP in 1966, following a meeting of his local Uddingston branch. He was 16 at the time, and threw himself into local campaigning, before eventually standing for the council elections in 1974. I got soundly beat, he told Holyrood.

But perseverance and his connection to the local area eventually paid off, and he won his first council seat, through a by-election, by a majority of 169. Then, in 2011, he made the jump to the Scottish Parliament as part of the SNP landslide win, and after a total 45 years in office he has become the longest serving SNP politician.

Still, it feels a long journey from the political fringes to the dominance the party enjoys now. He told Holyrood: Were talking about darkest Lanarkshire here, the first time I turned up at a vote the guy turned to me and said what are you doing here son, we could weigh the Labour vote. And it was true, they could. Lanarkshire was the fiefdom of the Labour party. We actually got stoned out of Chapelhall once, people were throwing stones at us. Its been a long road. There were times youd ask what you were doing it for.

But what we have to remember is that we got here because of the work done by giants people who steered our party and the people still steering it. Its been hard but we have to remember who put us there: the electors.

Weve seen a tremendous surge. You know, I was the first in my seat to win a deposit back. Its been enjoyable but its also been long and hard. And with the greatest of respect to people whove just joined us, remember how we got here. Always remember that you are only as good as your last result. From the 70s to the 80s to the 90s, Ive been there. I remember a penny for Scotland, Its Scotlands oil, Stop the world, Scotland wants to get on, all of it.

Clearly the party has come a long way since the days Lyle was scrambling to sell raffle tickets to raise local funds, but despite the progress made in the push towards independence, the Uddingston and Bellshill MSP is one of a sizeable group of experienced names to announce they will stand down at the next election. Stevenson too has stated that he will not run in 2021, alongside Maureen Watt, Mike Russell, Roseanna Cunningham, Alex Neil, Linda Fabiani, Gil Paterson, Gail Ross, Bruce Crawford, Angus Macdonald and Aileen Campbell.

Ill be 71 next year, Lyle said. In 1976 I told my wife, its alright hen, Ill get beat next May, Ill only be in the council for six months. Then, 45 years later she goes aye, right. She believes me now though. My kids grew up with me being a politician, theyve never known anything else. I think its time to do something else, and I want to spend time with my grandkids. I want to give time back to my wife and to them.

Maureen Watt, meanwhile, is another planning her retirement at the next election. A former minister, she joined in May 1974, immediately after an SNP conference in Elgin, on the advice of Winnie Ewing. But while the decision not to stand was a difficult one, as far as she is concerned, its time for others to step in.

I think some people are making a big thing about this, she said. I wasnt in [the parliament] in 1999 and Roseanna [Cunningham], I think, has been the longest serving politician not including council, like in Richard Lyles case both in Westminster and here. She had her 25 year anniversary in the past year. But its just people retiring, and thank god people in the Scottish Parliament dont feel they have to go on to their late 70s, then stand for leader, like in America. People are retiring at an age, thinking that there are other things to do in life, besides politics.

For some people it was quite certain they definitely wanted to do it and I know Roseanna and I hummed and hawed for long enough. But yes it was a very difficult decision. To have seen us take Scotland so far along the road to independence, its now up to others to take us over the line.

Yet clearly that loss of those names will have consequences. Parties rely on new blood to stay relevant, but, equally, in the world of politics, experience counts. So what advice would Watt give to a new member, with ambitions of being elected?

Its really important you come to politics with something to give, in terms of experience, and work experience. Its important people have worked or have a deep interest in something else, rather than just wanting to go into politics, because it is a deeply insecure job.

Stevenson too, cautions against going straight into elected politics at a young age. The single most important thing that someone has to have to survive in politics is a good understanding of yourself, he said. Many of the things that will be said about you will, in other circumstances, be deeply hurtful, and you wont recognise them as being about you. You need to have that innate sense of who you are, so youre not hurt by things that are said by other people, or by journalists. I would say to any activist, dont go into elected politics until you feel you know yourself, because otherwise you will be listening to other peoples descriptions of you, and not enjoying it very much.

I wasnt conscious of learning that. I stood for parliament in 1999 and didnt get elected, then when I was elected in 2001 I was 54. So I probably had reached an age where I had worked out who I was. Not necessarily consciously, but in a way that meant I could shrug my shoulders at some of the things people say.

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"It's been a long road. There were times you'd ask what you were doing it for" - SNP campaigners on lessons from the past - Holyrood

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Posted by Dr. Chamundeeswari Kuppuswamy

Women farmers are a forgotten lot, they do not own assets and are not recognised for their work. While 85 percent of rural women work in agriculture, only about 13 percent are land owners, according to OxfamIndia. Patriarchal practices and gender socialisation are factors primarily responsible for this plight of the women farmers, meaning that land rights structurally escape women. Structural forces include law and policies. Customary laws are structural forces that affect women farmers badly. Customary laws have social legitimacy in local communities because they are bound up integrally with family life in India. Though customary laws of all religions including Muslims, Christians and others affect women, this article will specifically analyse the impact of Hindu customary laws on women farmers.

The impact of customary laws and its redressal is complex, and this article explains the complexities involved in bringing legal reform to age old customary laws. It is easy to wish for customary laws to disappear, but it has not been easy to bring about its abolition, as the struggle for a Uniform Civil Code in India clearly indicates.

The impact of customary laws and its redressal is complex, and this article explains the complexities involved in bringing legal reform to age old customary laws. It is easy to wish for customary laws to disappear, but it has not been easy to bring about its abolition, as the struggle for a Uniform Civil Code in India clearly indicates. Another angle in which the subject of customary laws has to be viewed is the international angle, that of sustainable development. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals 2030 asks that customary law be reformed, not abolished. The reason for this is that it is always necessary to have a rule of law, and not to create a vacuum by doing away with it completely.

Also read: Punes All Women-Run Maval Dairy Is Struggling To Survive After COVID-19

Since in India, customary laws are the fundamental personal laws, it would create a vacuum to remove it, and thereby scupper the goals of sustainable development. Most people do not resort to civil and criminal laws and courts for redressal.In fact, it has been found in a recent survey that less than 29 percent go to lawyers and courts for a legal problem. Another deeper reason is a failure of modernity from an environmental perspective. With the advent of the enlightenment era and the industrial revolution, it was expected thatmodernisationwould displace custom,but international law is reiterating the place of customary law in the modern world, possibly in the light of unsustainablemodernisation.

A study in south India conducted by the University of Hertfordshire (UK) and Periyar University in Salem in Tamil Nadu (hereinafter UKIERI study) has found that customary practices are still very outdated and are far worse than customary laws in terms of discriminating against women. At least customary laws seek equality on paper, but customary practices are justified through a system of non-recognition of womens agency.

Since the amendment of the Hindu Succession Act in 2005, womens share of land is equal to that of the male member of a Hindu joint family, therefore this puts women farmers in a rural area at par with men in a joint family. However, the rights and duties as distributed within a joint family have resulted in womens disinheritance in a family, and this is commonly practiced in the Salem district. Customary laws such as the womens right to be maintained and the sons duty towards the parents and others in the joint family who have the right to be maintained have led to practices whereby sons claim more inheritance that daughters, irrespective of whether they discharge their duties or not. And the customary laws have morphed in practice as patriarchal power boosters. While analysing the interviews conducted with local women, it emerged that the root of the customary property laws lies in the joint family system that is built on the notion of collectivism and duties towards each other.

The joint family system is still strong in India, and with it comes the system of patrilocal residence of the woman. Women farmers, farm workers interviewed in the UKIERI study cited this reason as a major cause for disinheritance of land. In-depth interviews were conducted about land ownership in the community in a village in Salem district, and the respondents came from the BC, MBC and ST communities. Women are given marriage gifts (Stridhana, according to Hindu customary laws) and often not much more than that.The value of these marriage gifts come nowhere close to the value of their inheritance. In Tamil Nadu, the equal share in inheritance as coparcenary was already stipulated underTamil Nadu Succession Act, 1989well before the central Act of 2005. The upbringing, and Stridhana put together is considered enough compensation for the lack of inheritance share in the land that is part of the undivided family property. Women are regularly disinherited because of partition, i.e. division in the family property that occurs before the death of the head of the family.

The Partition Act 1893 allowed for partition to be recognised by the law, and set out procedures for acceptable partition. This law however did not change the disadvantage that women were put under in that Act, in that women did not receive or share, nor could they initiate a partition. But the 2005 Hindu Succession Amendment Act changed that and put women at par with men when it comes to partitioning the family property. The UKIERI study in Salem revealed that partition always benefits the male siblings in the family and that the changes in the 2005 law are not being adopted in the customary practices.It is clear that customary laws foster customary practices even though they are not the same things, and therefore it is easy to understand why calls for abolition of customary laws have force.

It would be a mistake to consider that customs and customary law can be replaced or need to be phased out of existence, since this would go against the grain of human behaviour. What is needed is a common will and strong dialogues organised at the governmental level to foster reform that is organic and bottom-up.

In India, personal laws have been in review since the Rau committee in 1942 and earlier colonial efforts, the Constitution has committed through the Directive Principles of State policy to bring about a Uniform Civil Code, but the difficulty in implementing it is obvious from the number of years that have passed since its inception. It would be a mistake to consider that customs and customary law can be replaced or need to be phased out of existence, since this would go against the grain of human behaviour. What is needed is a common will and strong dialogues organised at the governmental level to foster reform that is organic and bottom-up.

Also read: How Are The Recent Farmers Protests In India A Feminist Issue?

The FAO and the World Committee on Food Security have recognised this, and have adopted the VGGT or the Voluntary Guidelines on land governance in the context of national food security, which urges countries to keep the best of both worlds. It urges countries to support and promote customary laws which provide a stable society and rule of law from the ground up, at low cost and organically developed. However it specifically recognises that customary law can hurt women, disinherit them and disempower them, therefore the women farmers interests and rights are safeguarded in the instrument. As a pioneering instrument on land and food matters, the VGGT holds the key to women farmers rights, and India needs to seriously consider following the responsible governance recommendation of the VGGT and to steer discussions in reforming customary law, and taking customary practices along with it.

Community leaders, and customary heads who resolve disputes on customary interactions should be reached out to in the context of reform of customary laws. Radical and out-of-the-box approaches need to initiate that real bottom up dialogue on the status of women in modern times, the role of the joint family system and the winners and losers from this. Our women, our food, our farming, and ultimately the survival of the planet is at stake here.

The author likes to thank PhD student Lianne Oosterbaan for the data for this article from fieldwork done for the UKIERI project.

Dr. Chamundeeswari Kuppuswamy is trained in public international law and currently is Senior Lecturer at Hertfordshire Law School, and Co-Convenor of the European Society of International Law Interest Group on Environmental Law. She is a recipient of the 2014 Happy 100 Listing from the Independent newspaper for making a difference to peoples lives in the UK. She can be found on Instagram, Linkedin and WordPress. You can read her work on securing tenure rights for food security, here.

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The Impact Of Customary Laws On Women Farmers In India - Feminism in India

Kaleb Autman

Kaleb Autman is an 18-year-old creative director and producer, writer, and organizer based out of Garfield Park. He organizes with the Let Us Breathe Collective.

This essay was published as part of Essential Work, an Injustice Watch series that centers the perspective of young Black activists in Chicago who are wrestling with the coronavirus pandemic, racial injustice, and police violence.

Since I was a child, Ive been fascinated by the city within our city; my homeland, Chicagos West Side, or Outwest as westsiders call it. Our dialect carries the Southern twang that we packed in our suitcase on the journey North. Our fashion, lingo, and communal attributes can only be categorized as unapologetic and over the top. The West Side also has a long lineage of freedom fighting and abolition work, from the Haymarket Square riots to the larger-than-life politics of Fred Hampton and James Bevel.

I was raised in a socially conscious household and community. It Takes a Village Early Learning, a daycare in the Humboldt Park neighborhood, gave me a safe place to run to. The walls were filled with so much Black joy, creativity, and, most of all, dreams. My educators taught me about the legacy of my ancestors, Black Power, and our obligations to social change.

After It Takes a Village, I attended Village Leadership Academy, a social justice-focused elementary school. I learned more rigorously about the world and got to travel the globe in service to social justice scholarship and community service.

In South Africa, we fostered community with those living in Soweto, one of Africas largest townships. In Haiti, we studied the Haitian Revolution. In Brazil, we studied the origins and significance of Capoeira, an ancient Afro-Brazilian martial art that enslaved people used to fight their oppressors. These experiences taught me my duty to other life and the transnational nature of our liberation struggle.

But it wasnt until I started organizing in 2014 that I began to understand my communitys history of freedom fighting. I was 12 then, watching resistance sweep the nation after police killed Mike Brown. I sent a DM to an organizer named Page May on Twitter and asked her where young people like me fit into this resistance whose parents were scared to let them leave the house, let alone go to a protest. Page responded with, lets talk.

She invited me to gather in a room with other young black and brown students struggling to process the world, systems, and trauma we inhabited. We sat and talked for hours that day, and carried our conversations into more meetings, which spurred the first direct action that I co-organized: Reclaim MLK Day Chicago 2015. We convened hundreds of people to walk from our school to the Juvenile Temporary Detention Center, calling attention to the school to prison pipeline, police brutality, and the reclamation of MLKs legacy.

I continued my political radicalization with mentors and comrades like Damon Williams, Mariame Kaba, Bella Bahhs, Barbara Ransby, and Kelly Hayes. They helped teach me the foundational elements of organizing.

Since then, Ive co-organized, consulted, and documented an array of campaigns, events, actions, and initiatives. Some efforts flat out succeeded like the #ByeAnita Campaign that ousted former Cook County States Attorney Anita Alvarez. Others shifted the social narratives and conversations about our communities experiences living at societys margins, such as the #SayHerName campaign.

In the summer of 2016, my organizing home, the #LetUsBreathe Collective, and other organizations descended on the notorious Homan Square, an off-the-books police site in North Lawndale known for disappearing upwards of 7,000 civilians from 2004 to 2015. Organizers and freedom fighters chained themselves to ladders to shut this torture site down for one day. What we didnt know was that this would turn into a 41-day abolitionist occupation. We slept on site, ate meals, and learned what it truly meant to be in community with one another. It was beautiful, traumatic, joyful, and a spiritual awakening all in one.

I can only continue this work because of the lessons of community, healing, trauma, and faith that Freedom Square taught me. Too often, young people arent given a seat at the table, whether the conversation is about organizing or not. I feel its my duty as an experienced organizer to help young folk navigate this work. In times like these, it is essential to look to youth leadership and provide them the tools of their own radicalization.

***

This nation of supposed freedom has taught us, those who live at the margins, that we dont belong, that our fight is spontaneous and never sustained. But I know my history.

I know my ancestors were freedom fighters, and they are teaching me how to fight.

As Black folk migrated to the West Side in the decades after WWII, they faced white terrorists who claimed to be protecting their communities from Black people. The white communal structure would not accommodate them no matter how excellent they strived to be. But Black people kept moving to the West Side. Thus White Fight became White Flight. Our abolition grows from the inheritance of a crumbling community and our resistance to the implied worthlessness of our existence by the state (and even community benefactors).

When Martin Luther King Jr. showed up in North Lawndale in 1966, he, alongside others, called attention to racial segregation in housing, education, and employment. During the Chicago Freedom Movement of 1965 and 1966, Black westsiders made the same demands for affordable housing, for the defunding of criminalization and policing, for investment in communities, for access to gardens and good grocery storesthat westsiders are still demanding today. These were the same demands that resistors called for in 1968 when the West Side was left to burn after Kings assassination.

Most people Outwest dont read Angela Davis or know what the Police-Industrial Complex is by name, but they damn sure know it by experience. From Homan Squares tortures to countless unlawful searches and seizures, westsiders know state violences wrath. Westsiders also understand the need for redistribution of resources at a city-wide level.

We walk streets that have had potholes in them for years. We shop at stores that lack fresh fruits and vegetables. We know that the City of Chicago closes our schools and hospitals but keeps spending more money on police. We know that corrupt politicians of all creeds have sold our communities to developers who seek to push us out. Black Chicagoans at large are leaving the city. What will this mean for Black Chicago and Chicago in general? I dont know. But I do know that communities havent and will not go down without a fight.

***

I have been in deep reflection about my role as an artist and a person who believes in change. Covid-19 has taught me that no matter how many Angela Davis or Huey Newton books we read that we will never be prepared enough. How are we going to feed our people with no knowledge of the land? How will we educate our children virtually when many of them arent meeting the states proficiency standards with in-person learning?

Covid-19 has expanded the already rising needs of community members needing food, baby supplies, and education resources. Many working-class folks I know lost one and sometimes two jobs due to Covid-19.

We have a duty to feed and nurture and hold each other (not physically, of course) in new ways. Ive been working diligently to support organizing and mutual aid efforts as best I can without contracting the disease or passing it to someone else. After the pandemic broke out, most of the physical organizing that Id been a part of had to stop.

But when resistance began sweeping the nation after police murdered George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, the streets called in ways that Id never seen before. One minute I was trying to secure pampers and wipes for a family, and the next minute, I was organizing jail support for young people arrested during actions.

This time has taught me the importance of sustainability and fluidity in our organizing efforts. At one moment, we are on the streets screaming and marching, and the next, were in peace circles with those who have abused community members. No matter where we are or whomever were around, I know we will be singing, dancing, and getting free. This is the workeating, praying, crying, strategizing, loving, reading, studying, listening, building, and hoping.

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'My ancestors were freedom fighters, and they're teaching me how to fight' - injusticewatch.org

Step by step we have seen the slave power advancing; poisoning, corrupting, and perverting the institutions of the country; growing more and more haughty, imperious, and exacting. The white mans liberty has been marked out for the same grave with the black mans.Frederick Douglass, Speech on the Dred Scott Decision, 1857

Loud and exultingly have we been told that the slavery question is settled, and settled forever, declared Frederick Douglass in 1857. The Supreme Court had just decided, in the infamous words of Chief Justice Taney, that Black people had no rights that a white man is bound to respect. Therefore, the opinion held, state governments did not have the constitutional authority to outlaw slavery.

That ruling in Dred Scott v. Sanford was supposed to be the last word on the question of slavery, enshrining it as a permanent, constitutionally protected part of the republic. In reality, though, Douglass explains, slaveholders had been fighting a losing battle for four decades, attempting to preserve their inhuman system in the face of growing opposition. The Missouri Compromise of 1820, the Congressional gag rule of 1835, the annexation of Texas in 1845, the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850: all were designed to impose slavery on a nation that increasingly rejected it.

The fact is, Douglass quipped, the more the question [of slavery] has been settled, the more it has needed settling!

The free states of the North could no longer keep a respectable distance, nor entertain the fiction that slavery was a uniquely Southern problem. There was only one way forward. The American people have been called upon, in a most striking manner, to abolish and put away forever the system of slavery.

We are facing a similar moment now, a high-water mark of reaction like 1857. Like Southern slaveholders before the Civil War, the reactionary forces that dominate the current Republican Party understand that their program is opposed by a majority of the American people, and that their ability to impose that program is incompatible with democracy even the limited democracy of the capitalist republic.

The Trump regime is their response, a desperate play to retain power. In embracing the man Ta-Nehisi Coates called the first white president, they hoped to win their gag rule, their Fugitive Slave Law, their Dred Scott decision: a way of enshrining reactionary power in the Constitution, shoring up right-wing dominance against the erosion of its popular support. In one sense, the Trump regime simply follows the established pattern of the extreme right: voter suppression, packing the federal judiciary with conservative extremists, gutting regulatory agencies, and using executive power to advance the interests of extractive, defense, insurance, prison, and financial firms. That strategy dates back to at least the Reagan era, and it accelerated after the 9/11 terror attacks and then again, even more sharply, after the election of the first Black president and in the aftermath of the Great Recession.

As the crises of capitalism deepen, however, the Trump regime and its core supporters have escalated their fascist provocations. Coronavirus is resurgent, and tens of millions face homelessness and hunger now that COVID-19 relief payments have expired. Rather than cooperating with Democrats to fund relief for working families, state and local governments, and public schools, Senate Republicans demand more and more tax cuts for the rich on top of the $135 billion doled out during the first two rounds of stimulus. Intent on restarting the profit engine at any cost, conservative billionaires funded the anti-mask movement and re-open protests, where armed right-wing vigilantes disrupted legislatures and defied public health orders. Authorities look the other way, just as they do when police murder Black men and women in the streets and even in their beds. The president declares himself and his supporters immune to oversight and empowered to exercise violence against their political enemies. Those who criticize his regime or the white supremacy that infuses it are labeled traitors, thugs, and terrorists. The same president who defended the very fine people of the neo-Nazi mob in Charlottesville now deploys secret police to gas, beat, and kidnap Black Lives Matter protestors. The fascist threat looms so close that even the colorblind can tell the whites of its eyes from the white of its hood.

But here again, echoes of Douglass: the more it has been settled, the more it has needed settling.

Led by Black and Brown working-class youth, a vast democratic movement tests its strength. Grabbing what is possible with one hand and what is necessary with the other, it has dragged the two so close together that their edges have begun to overlap, allowing demands like community control and even abolition of police to emerge as immediate, practical questions.

Also significant are moves by traditionally conservative organizations to repudiate the most odious icons of white supremacy. Mississippi has removed Confederate imagery from its state flag. NASCAR has banned the display of Confederate flags at its events, and the president of the Southern Baptist Convention announced that he was retiring the Broadus gavel, a symbol of his office that once belonged to a Confederate slave owner. The Boy Scouts of America have stated their solidarity with Black Lives Matter and amplified their work on diversity and inclusion, which will now include a merit badge that is now mandatory for any Scout who wants to achieve the organizations highest rank. Though symbolic, these decisions reflect the growing cultural isolation of the extreme right.

Finally, public rebukes of the Trump regime like those by the Supreme Court, Republican allies, senior military officials, the asylum officers from Citizenship and Immigration Services, and even by voices from Fox News testify to the disarray within the ruling class.

At the same time, the sharpening of capitalisms economic, social, and political crises during the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the dead end of neoliberalism. With over 200,000 dead and 27 million out of work, 40 million Americans facing evictions that will further complicate efforts to contain the spread of the virus, an underfunded public health infrastructure and a dysfunctional health care system, and pharmaceutical companies raking in billions from drugs developed on the public dime, it is clear that the free market and its apologists have little to offer in the way of solutions.

Yet the House and Senate Democrats have fought for an unemployment extension, increases to SNAP benefits, ongoing stimulus payments, and oversight of payments to big corporations showing the degree to which the liberal section of the ruling class casts its eyes leftward in search of solutions. This is particularly marked in the European Union, where Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel have walked back their long commitment to austerity in favor of a massive stimulus package where the blocs richest nations will take on debt to bail out those hardest hit. As one comrade, Wallace Sparks, put it, the problem with being against socialism is that eventually you run out of other peoples talking points especially when a crisis hits.

Just as the pandemic showed whose work was essential to keeping the country going, the response shows that working-class and peoples forces now provide not only the momentum, the boots on the ground, but increasingly the ideological and political leadership of the struggle against the fascist threat. With the ruling class mired in bitter internal struggles and the peoples movement converging around demands for justice, equality, and democracy, we are in a moment of democratic revolution, like Reconstruction or the civil rights movement, where it is possible to change how political power is distributed and how it is used, in ways that push at the boundaries of capitalist democracy.

We have the chance to take decisive action against the most racist, anti-democratic, and violent section of the capitalist class: the Trump regime, its lackeys in the Republican Party, and the corporate backers, propaganda networks, and terrorist organizations that enable their rule. Doing so will weaken the capitalist class as a whole, stripping it of the ability to force the burden of this crisis on the backs of workers.

What would such a victory look like? Can it be measured with simply parliamentary arithmetic, by tallying up legislative majorities, or does it require other benchmarks? And where would it put us in the struggle for socialism?

With Douglass words to abolish and put away forever the system of slavery still ringing in our ears, we might say that the decisive defeat of reactionary forces is summed up in a single word: abolition! Not seeking compromise with the extreme right, not normalizing it, accepting it, or carving out a space for it in the name of bipartisanship and civility, but recognizing at long last that it is incompatible with even basic democracy and dismantling its whole political apparatus.

Revolution and Reconstruction

Such an abolition of reactionary institutions is what Lenin theorized as a decisive defeat of tsarism in his major essay on Russias 1905 revolution, Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution. Lenins argues that the task of Communists is to help the working class take leadership in the struggle for democracy even when that means fighting alongside liberal-democratic forces from the capitalist class, and even when the immediate gains to be made remain within the bounds of the limited, imperfect, and unstable democracy of capitalism.

After all, Lenin reminds us, there is bourgeois democracy and bourgeois democracy. That is, the level of democracy in a capitalist state depends on the balance of forces. (Think, for example, of the difference between the New Deal and neoliberalism: both are configurations of capitalist democracy, but with very different orientations.) Russias 1905 revolution set in motion a cross-section of the empire: urban and rural proletarians, struggling peasant farmers and small business owners, students and democratic intellectuals, members of national minorities, and some big capitalists. For Lenin, the main question was who would lead that revolution, who would stamp it with their class interests and political priorities.

Democratic-minded capitalists might oppose the monarchy to a degree, he proposed, but their own power as a class depended on the ability to exercise undemocratic control over labor. Their class interest would push them toward compromise with the tsarist state to maintain the old repressive institutions and block the initiative of the people. Therefore they would limit themselves to slow and partial reforms.

Wage workers, however, had a material interest in the advancement of all forms of democracy and equality, including the eventual abolition of capitals power over labor in a socialist state. Thus, working-class leadership in the democratic revolution would direct it along the way of fewest concessions and least consideration for the monarchy and vile, rotten, disgusting and contaminating institutions that go with it, leading to the establishment of a republic based on universal, secret-ballot suffrage and equal political and civil rights for all, regardless of sex, class, or nationality. The new democratic republic would not be socialist, but it would place the working class and its allies in the best possible position to fight for socialism (to turn against the bourgeoisie . . . the democratic institutions which will spring up on the ground cleared of serfdom).

To borrow our own countrys history as an example, the framers of the Constitution left us a scaffolding for a capitalist republic, but their vision of popular sovereignty, political equality, and inalienable rights was constricted and distorted by their reliance on a particularly savage form of capitalist exploitation linked with settle colonialism: slavery, in which enslaved African labor was used to cultivate land stolen from Native nations through state-sponsored displacement and genocide.

PostCivil War Reconstruction comes closest to what Lenin envisions: a decisive defeat of reactionary forces, and a decisive advance of democracy under the leadership of Black workers demanding the abolition of slavery and full political rights. It was, in the words of historian Eric Foner, a remarkable, unprecedented attempt to build an interracial democracy on the ashes of slavery. The defeated Confederacy was placed under military occupation. Old state governments were dissolved and, in most cases, placed under the administration of the Union Army. The Freedmens Bureau was established even before the wars end to provide relief for newly free people and refugees. However, as Du Bois describes in Of the Dawn of Freedom, the Bureau grew during Reconstruction into a transitional government that made laws and used state power to enforce them. That governments main purpose was to protect the rights of new Black citizens freedom from enslavement (13th Amendment), due process and equal protection (14th Amendment), and voting rights (15th Amendment).

However, before the Union could fulfill its promises to Black citizens and put democracy in the South on a solid political and economic footing, the balance of power in Congress shifted away from Radical Republicans and toward a bipartisan group anxious for reconciliation between Northern and Southern capital. Many of the gains of Reconstruction were swept away in a tide of reaction and white supremacist terror that lasted well into the twentieth century, leaving behind the jetsam of Confederate monuments that protestors are now tearing down.

Obviously, neither the Freedmens Bureau nor Lenins revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry provide a ready-made template for our current struggle. The threat we face is not from outside not a separatist slave power or a leftover feudal monarchy. Rather, it festers within the bourgeois-democratic republic, where it works to undo the gains of two centuries of struggle for equality. Equally significantly, workers and oppressed people now wield tools of political struggle that they did not have when Lenin was writing, let alone at the beginning of the U.S. Civil War: universal suffrage, labor unions, public education, and mass communication technologies. Finally, capitalism itself is both vastly more developed and more volatile, closer to its end than its beginning. It is no longer a question of achieving capitalist democracy (as it was for Lenin), or even just of broadening it (as during Reconstruction), but of directing its deepening crisis toward socialism rather than fascism.

Despite the differences of context, a basic point of strategy emerges: the extreme right has got to go. Neither the liberal-democratic configuration of capitalism put in place after World War II nor its neoliberal reboot at the end of the Cold War has proven capable of keeping extreme right and fascist forces in check any more than it has been able to deliver on its promises of shared prosperity and equal opportunity. In fact, time and again, the liberal bourgeoisie is drawn into cooperation with the extreme right to advance its own interests. While we would be foolish to dismiss opposition to the Trump regime from within the ruling class, we must also be clear about the need for a revolutionary, working-class, abolitionist approach to the struggle against fascism and for democracy.

An abolitionist approach is rooted in a broad peoples uprising whose leading forces are no longer willing to tolerate violent, oppressive, and undemocratic institutions a movement with the tactical flexibility to acquire power and the unity and determination to use it to reshape the institutions of the republic.

What does democracy look like?

This is not the place for a programmatic discussion of the demands that might be raised in the struggle to abolish the extreme right. Such a program will take shape in the course of struggle, driven by the work of building mass unity. Nonetheless, three arenas of struggle seem central to the task, based on the current strategy and tactics of the extreme right and the demands of the movements rising against it.

The first is the fight against white supremacist terrorism, whether committed by vigilantes like Kyle Rittenhouse or by police under the guise of law and order. In fact, the links between law enforcement and white supremacist militia organizations are well documented and have only become clearer with Trumps insistence on using federal law enforcement to terrorize immigrant communities and suppress Black Lives Matter protests. This fight has two sides. On the one hand, we must designate and target white supremacist groups who advocate armed violence as the terrorist organizations they are, and identify, remove, and prosecute any law enforcement personnel who are shown to be working with them. On the other, we must fundamentally transform defund, restructure, and even abolish those law enforcement agencies that now function as the main domestic terrorist organizations of the ruling class, especially militarized urban police forces and the Department of Homeland Security, which Trump seems to have activated as the advance troops of a fascist takeover.

The struggle for voting rights is the second arena. The Republican Party shows its neo-Confederate colors most clearly in its unrelenting campaign to disenfranchise racially and nationally oppressed people, as well as youth and the poor. An abolitionist approach to the struggle against the Trump regime and the extreme right must beat back any attempt to restrict voting rights, including by restoring the Voting Rights Acts powers and penalizing officials and organizations who engage in voter suppression. It must also go beyond defensive struggles, working to expand the electorate by securing the right to vote for incarcerated people, opening a path to citizenship for immigrants, and allowing non-citizen residents to vote in local elections.

But voting rights is about more than who gets to vote. Its also about what we get to vote on, and how much our votes count. The Senate and the Electoral College, designed to limit the role of the people, are incompatible with a one person, one vote electoral system. Outside the narrow political sphere, we can also fight for community and workplace democracy, by establishing community control of police and by turning back the 40-year tide of privatization and union busting that have placed more and more of our social and economic life under unilateral, unaccountable corporate control. The right to organize and bargain collectively, to maintain strong public institutions, and to regulate how businesses operate in our communities is as fundamental to democracy as the right to cast a ballot in a presidential election.

The final arena is the struggle against the right-wing propaganda machine that saturates society with the ideas of the most backward section of the ruling class. This machine includes billionaire-funded university centers, conservative mass organizations like the NRA, radio and broadcast monopolies like iHeartMedia and Sinclair Broadcasting, content producers like Fox News and Breitbart, and social media platforms that amplify conspiracy theories and enable the ghoulish behavior of right-wing provocateurs (not to mention the murderous behavior of gun-toting terrorists). Reforms like breaking up media monopolies, restoring the fairness doctrine, providing subsidies for independent media outlets, and regulating social media as a public utility could vastly limit ability the ability of reactionary billionaires to propagandize for their agenda.

This struggle is distinct from the battle of ideas, which aims at uniting people around a particular vision of society. It has nothing to do with targeting peoples beliefs. Instead, it is a question of property, and how its misuse threatens democracy: of wealth generated by our labor, stolen and accumulated in vast quantities by the capitalist class, and concentrated into institutions that amplify the speech of a reactionary minority. The goal is not to ban one set of ideas, but to restrict the role of corporations in deciding which ideas people encounter. Just as the fight for voting rights aims at leveling the playing field in the struggle for political power, demands like overturning Citizens United and regulating social media as a public utility aim to level the field in the battle of ideas. This is not an attempt to limit free speech or close down political dissent, but a fight to preserve democratic liberties from the effects of concentrated wealth.

From one abolition to the next

Reforms that increase the breadth and power of the electorate, control the use of state violence, limit monopoly power, and restrict the role of property in the battle of ideas will have the biggest impact on the extreme right, but they will limit the power of the capitalist class as a whole, including those forces who allied themselves with the democratic movement in opposition to fascism. This is true, to one degree or another, of every democratic reform. A decisive, abolitionist defeat of the extreme right will entail new limitations on capitalist property rights just as the abolition of slavery and the enfranchisement of freed people did, just as the National Labor Relations Act and the Civil Rights Act and the Affordable Care Act did, to greater or lesser degrees.

In other words, the fight to dismantle the political apparatus of the extreme right will bring forward the contradiction between democracy and capitalist property. In his analysis of the 1848 revolution in France, which toppled the last Bourbon monarch, Marx says that it struck off the crown behind which capital had kept itself concealed, clearing the way for open class struggle. The abolition of the monarchy cleared the way, he proposed, for the struggle to abolish capitalism.

Paraphrasing him, we might say that the decisive defeat of the extreme right will strike off the white hood beneath which capital conceals itself, making it ever clearer that the fight for democracy must challenge capitalist power directly. As CPUSAs program puts it, the next phase of struggle will pit the anti-monopoly coalition, led by the working class and its closest allies, against the biggest transnationals (including forces who are currently part of the broad democratic and anti-fascist movement).

These phases are not self-enclosed, airtight historical units. The anti-monopoly coalition is already taking shape within the struggle against fascism, within organized labor, around progressive candidates like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and on issues like collective bargaining, single-payer health care, tenants rights, debt forgiveness, redistributive taxation of the rich, cutting the military budget, and rebuilding the public sector. Likewise, the reactionary right will persist well past when we dismantle its institutional infrastructure.

Nonetheless, a decisive, abolitionist defeat of the extreme right will take us around a corner. Not only will it eliminate the immediate threat of a fascist takeover, it will deprive the liberal bourgeoisie of the main cover for their own undemocratic demands on labor. It will also reveal new possibilities of struggle, including the formation of an independent workers and peoples party.

We cannot turn that looming and all-important corner if we fall into the trap of measuring victory by tallying parliamentary majorities. Defeating Trump will be a victory, as will breaking Republican control of the Senate. But if we are to move forward decisively, those majorities must be put to the work of change, used to dismantle the infrastructure of fascist and neo-Confederate reaction that brought Trump to power an infrastructure so entwined with the Republican Party itself that the two are inseparable.

It remains to be seen if our capitalist republic can survive without organized white supremacist terror, without voter suppression, without the vile, rotten, contaminating and disgusting institutions that have festered in it since the founders took slavery and settler colonialism as the basic tools of nation building. What is clear, however, is that it can no longer survive with them.

So, for democracy: in defense of we have won so far, and onward to what we have yet to win. The work begins with the resounding defeat of the Trump-GOP regime this November, but it must be carried on, from one abolition to the next, to the point where our struggle explodes out of capitalisms narrow confines and reshapes the world.

As we think about that work, we should ask ourselves the question Lenin takes as the title of the final chapter of Two Tactics: dare we win?

Image: Joe Brusky (CC BY-NC 2.0).

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Democratic revolution, from one abolition to the next - Communist Party USA

Civil Rights icon Angela Davis speaks with Crossroads students about prison abolition, community and contemporary activism

By Lydia You

Dr. Angela Davis talk with local students on social justice was broadcast on Sept. 8 and again on Sept. 14 due to popular demand

Thank you so much, Im like, so starstruck right now, an excited Alana Cotwright exclaimed over video chat. Cotwright, a senior at progressive, private K-12 school Crossroads School for Arts & Sciences in Santa Monica, was speaking to her idol: philosopher, academic, author and iconic American political activist, Dr. Angela Davis.

Cotwright and a handful of other students from Crossroads School were participating in an online panel hosted by the schools Institute of Equity & Justice, which was broadcast on Sept. 8 and again on Sept. 14.

Angela Davis, born in 1944, grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, where her experience with deep segregation helped incite her prolific activist career at a young age. She recalled how the KKK burned down part of her church after she participated in an interracial discussion group, and how she witnessed bombings at several houses and churches in her neighborhood.

The only way we could live in dignity was to resist and so I spent my entire life resisting and its been a wonderful life, she said with an impish smile, crediting her teachers and community for never letting her doubt her self-worth despite the violent, entrenched racism she faced.

Davis is perhaps most well-known for her seminal work in establishing and popularizing the concept of the prison-industrial complex in America. She herself was once on the FBIs Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list, and spent over a year in prison between 1970 and 1972 after being linked with communist organizations and tied to a fatal court shooting. She was ultimately acquitted in 1972.

Davis spoke about the mental and physical tolls of imprisonment: I remember I had these horrendous stress headaches that would not go away.

Nowadays, we see passionate calls to defund the police and strong advocacy for prison abolition filling our social media feeds and protest chants on the streets. But how does one go about implementing these sweeping reforms in a logistical sense? Davis elaborated during the talk with students, discussing how her time in prison informed her ideas on criminal justice and incarceration.

I was beginning to understand the role that the prison plays in structural racism, said Davis. Prisons have become as powerful as they have precisely because in our capitalist world, these services are considered to be commoditiesand the imprisonment process itself becomes a kind of profit making process. But capitalism is racial capitalism. It has always been racial capitalism.

Her views on prison abolition center on reforming the very systems that our country is structured on housing, education, health care and diverting funds from prisons and law enforcement to instead invest back into making these services free and accessible.

Abolition is not simply about the negative process of getting rid of prisons. Its more about creating a society that does not require prisons, that doesnt need these institutions of violence, Davis said.

Many students asked Davis to give advice to young activists just starting to form their own personal socio-political views.

Ive personally noticed an overwhelming number of young people who are becoming or wanting to become radicalized at an earlier age, observed Crossroads senior Kai McAliley. A lot of young people are currently searching for identities that might be outside or even explicitly against certain current social and political structures. How should this generation that is currently questioning structured society carry themselves in order for these individual roots to grow into a powerful community? McAliley asked.

Davis herself, of course, knows what its like growing up in a fraught time period of a nation reckoning with centuries-old racial and social tensions.

She replied to McAlileys question with a call for older activists to be more forgiving of young peoples mistakes, and encouraged young people to chart their own paths and explore different ways of expressing and resisting. I often say that art helps us to feel what we dont yet know how to say. And in that sense, art is the beacon of light. Art can shape the path and I point this out because oftentimes people assume that in order to make a difference in this world, one has to be your conventional political activist. And some people love doing that work, and that is what they should do. But other people are more passionate about poetry. And so why not use poetry as an entre into the movement, or music?

Davis also underlined the importance of community in her talk, and pointed out the pitfalls of falling into the individualistic mindset that is nurtured through our current hyper-capitalist system.

Ideologies of capitalism represent the individual as the basic unit of society they dont recognize the importance of history, they dont recognize the importance of community But capitalism has transformed you know, all of the services, all of the things we need as human beings into commodities, Davis said. This is what I think I have spent my entire life attempting to do to point out that community allows us to grow and develop in ways that we could never imagine if we were only individuals.

Now, at age 76, Dr. Angela Davis is looking to pass on the torch to a new generation of young activists.

Virtually every major revolutionary transformation in the world has been spearheaded by young people, she said, smiling at the earnest faces speaking to her on the screen. Young people are always in the vanguardbecause were talking about your future.

Excerpt from:

EDUCATION: Passing the Torch - Argonaut Online

Shreyas Gupta had just started to doze off at 2:45 a.m when a glass bottle smashed through his bedroom window.

His first thought was that there had been an explosion. Glass littered his windowsill; shards scattered across his carpet, reflecting moonlight. A bottle of Hells Belle beer rolled across the floor, still intact. He heard tires screeching on the street.

It was the night of Sept. 4, a Friday. Five days earlier, Gupta, a senior, had appeared on local TV news station WRAL to represent Abolish Duke IFC & Panhel, the group he helped start thats advocating for the abolition of 24 Duke fraternities and sororities. It was the first time he had spoken publicly about his involvement.

I just never thought something like that could happen while I was at Duke, he said of the act of vandalism.

Gupta cant prove the incident was related to his role in Abolish Duke IFC & Panhel. Still, he and other members of the team have received some backlash since the groups creation, but most antagonizers choose to wage their battles online, in Instagram DMs or on Facebook Messenger. After WRAL interviewed him, Gupta received a Facebook message from an older man he didnt recognize. Troublemaker! the message read. Why dont you leave Duke!

A few minutes after his window shattered, Gupta went outside to see egg yolks dripping down the wood panelling of the house. More broken beer bottles and egg shells littered the front lawn. Hell probably never know who vandalized his home or if they were retaliating against his calls for abolition, he said, but being physically threatened in his home made everything feel a lot more real.

Although the idea of abolishing Greek life isnt new, this iteration of the movement started with the creation of an Instagram page in mid-July, when criticisms fueled by the Black Lives Matter movement came to a head. The account, which was created before the Abolish Duke IFC & Panhel group, offers a space for students and alumni to share anonymous stories about their experiences in Duke Greek life. It now boasts more than 2,300 followers.

The students who began the Instagram page, who havent publicly revealed their identities, also started a petition calling for the formal abolition of all Duke chapters of the Interfraternity Council and Panhellenic Associationhistorically white Greek organizations The petition has garnered more than 400 signatures.

Conversations sparked from the Instagram prompted Gupta and four other students to launch the Abolish Duke IFC & Panhel website about a month later. The same day, Aug. 12, their open letter was published in The Chronicle. The group has since amassed more than 40 members, Gupta said, and the open letter has more than 350 signatories.

The movement has prompted campus sororities and fraternities to internally evaluate their organizations. Panhellenic Association members Zeta Tau Alpha and Alpha Delta Pi have since voted to relinquish their charters. The attempts were rejected by the organizations national councils, according to the chapters.

But although calls for abolition began two months ago, for the five student leaders of Abolish Duke IFC & Panhel, the movement has been a long time coming.

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Four of the five members of the leadership team chose to speak with The Chronicle: Gupta, Christine Bergamini, Elena Gray and Carmela Guaglianone. Gupta said vandalization of his house dissuaded the fifth member from publicly attaching their name to the group.

Bergamini, a senior and former member of Kappa Alpha Theta, said she decided to disaffiliate when the Duke chapter was prevented from signing the list of demands issued by the Black Coalition Against Policing, which outlined a number of steps including the eventual abolition of the Duke University Police Department. To Bergamini, this proved the organization was only willing to engage in performative activism.

Senior Victoria Sorhegui, president of Dukes Theta chapter, confirmed in an email to The Chronicle that Thetas national policy prevents the chapter from attaching the sororitys name to the list of demands because of its political undertones. Representatives of the national organization did not respond to an email or phone call seeking comment in time for publication.

Gray, a senior previously in Kappa Kappa Gamma, said she had overall positive experiences in her sorority, but as a white woman, eventually, I had to ask myself why I was able to benefit from it, what factors of my identity allowed me to be welcomed.

Once I started asking myself those questions, I couldnt run from the problems of Greek life anymore, she said.

Guaglianone, a senior, accepted a snap bid from Gamma Phi Beta her freshman year but dropped a few months later. Greek life controls much of Dukes social culture, she said, and she has watched the archaic system place the burden of reform onto the members it disadvantages, often forcing victims of racism and sexual assault to advocate for necessary changes to their organizations.

Gupta had planned to drop his fraternity, Pi Kappa Phi, before the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement, which he said allowed him to reflect on his own identity as an Indian man. He and his friends wrote an open letter to the fraternity detailing racism within the Greek system. A mass exodus of the junior and senior classes followed.

In total, 31 members reported disaffiliating, according to Abolish Duke IFC & Panhels disaffiliation tracker, a number confirmed by Gupta. Pikapp President Brian Hu, a senior, told The Chronicle that the number has risen to 35.

Other than providing the number of members who have disaffiliated, Hu did not respond to requests for comment for this article.

Gupta clarified that the call for abolition does not apply to the Multicultural Greek Council or the National Pan-Hellenic Council, which, as Abolish Duke IFC & Panhel wrote in their open letter, provide community to BIPOC students on Dukes campus.

Gray and Bergamini said they recognize that their privilege as white women allowed them to benefit from and enjoy many aspects of their affiliations. Yet all three female leaders cited sexual assault by fraternity members, which Bergamini labeled innate to the Greek system, as a central motivation for their calls for abolition.

Pretty much every single one of my friends, including myself, has experienced sexual assault to some degree by fraternity members, Bergamini said. Its normalized. Why is that something were allowing?

In a 2018 survey, 48% of female students reported having experienced sexual assault at Duke. But from May 2018 to May 2019, only 169 cases were reported to the Office of Student Conduct.

Gray said misogyny in the Greek system stems from the binary and heteronormative nature of Greek life, which creates a power imbalance between fraternities and sororities.

If you break down a single fraternity partythey have the alcohol. They control the venue. They choose the clothes the mostly female participants are wearing, the theme, and how you get there and back, she said. You want to feel empowered as a woman, but that isnt an option.

Senior Rohan Singh, president of the Duke Interfraternity Council, wrote in an email that the members of the IFC executive board absolutely condemn acts of sexual assault and are aware that it is an issue that plagues our community.

We are taking measures to be proactive about eliminating sexual assault within the IFC, and encourage students to report acts of assault to Duke Student Conduct, he wrote.

Those opposed to abolition have argued that reforming the Greek system at Duke is a more feasible and desirable response to the criticisms lodged against Greek life. But Gupta, Bergamini and Gray said theyve tried to reform their organizations from the inside. They said it cant be done.

Bystander intervention trainings, a common reform strategy within fraternities and sororities to address the incidence of sexual assault, can only be so effective, said Gupta. He recalls one session hosted by his fraternity, led by a brother who is by no means an expert, and while attendance was mandatory, he said many members never showed up.

For trainings designed to combat implicit bias, the session takes two hours max, one day a year even when most members are in attendance, Bergamini said. Those reforms can be implemented, but they dont change the makeup of the organization.

Reforming the rush process has its limits, too, she said. Although dues can be lowered and sororities can make efforts to increase diversity, dues are never going to cost zero dollars, and being in a sorority has other associated costs, like formal dresses and costumes, she said. You can never eliminate the selectivity issue of whos allowed entrance into these organizations to begin with.

Bergamini also said Duke employs experts to tackle university reform while relying on unpaid student labor to address issues in Greek life like rampant racism without institutional support.

Gupta remembers feeling the burden of justifying the actions of members of his fraternity against students of color. But its not the responsibility of people of color to teach you how to not be racist, he said.

Mary Pat McMahon, vice provost and vice president for student affairs, highlighted several structures at Duke that serve to address misogyny and racism in Greek life, including the Office of Student Conduct, the bias response group and University Center Activities and Events staff, but she acknowledged that student training also plays a role.

Its definitely my goal to not burden students who are most impacted to have to do the training and the work, she said. Theres plenty of work that we have to do to become a more inclusive and truly equitable campus.

Yet the central issue with attempts at reform, said Gupta, is that the Greek system isnt broken. The group wrote in their open letter that fraternities were created after the Civil War to separate wealthy white male college students from the rest of the increasingly diverse student body. Therefore, Gupta said, Greek life is functioning exactly as it was intended, to uphold power structures and reinforce white privilege.

To make this system equitable and safe, Bergamini said, it would have to turn into something that its not.

Formal abolition would require that the Duke administration terminate their contracts with each of the national Greek organizations, as outlined in the Panhellenic executive boards abolition clarification statement.

McMahon noted that she hasnt yet heard from the national councils of ADPi or Zeta, the two Duke Panhel chapters that voted to relinquish their charters.

What our students are seeking is going to be the priority for how we think about going forward, she said.

Senior Kate Chen, president of the Duke Panhellenic Association, responded in an email to Abolish Duke IFC & Panhels statements. Reform within Duke Panhellenic is integral, she wrote.

Panhellenic members have the power to change how we support our members, include potential members, and treat other members of the Duke community, she wrote. These changes are much needed, regardless of whether Panhellenic as a greater community exists.

She also stated that the board seeks to lessen the association between IFC and Panhel and plans to indefinitely end all mixers with all-male organizations.

Singh said he felt obligated as a person of color to seek a leadership role in his fraternity. But he agreed that people of color should not be forced to educate white fraternity members on issues of racism, and said the IFC executive board is considering working with external consultants and Duke programs to design an anti-hate-and-bias curriculum.

The board also set up a task force to address campus sexual assault and is working with Duke Panhel and the Office of Student Conduct to promote better reporting practices, Singh said.

As a council, we are hoping to transform, rather than reform, our fraternities, he said.

Abolishing Greek life feels radical because Duke has never dared imagine what the universitys social culture would look like without it, Gupta said.

Theres no consideration of what the best option might be, he said. Its like, we have Greek life, and we will continue to have Greek life, so lets just tweak it so people are okay with it.

Although dissolving on-campus Greek housing would be a step in the right direction, it cant solve the major inequities inherent to Greek life, he said. In place of Greek organizations, Gray suggested a residential college system similar to those at universities like Yale and Princeton, which would address many concerns of advocates for Duke housing reform and change the face of Dukes social scene.

Asked if the administration is considering housing reform in response to racism and misogyny in Greek life, the short answer is yes, McMahon said. This is the time to ask the question, because everything is in its own funky spot right now.

This is going to be a year where we think a lot about the larger systemic connections around housing, student organizations, selectivity, and structures that are inherently racist or sexist, or in which students assume a certain identity or status, McMahon said.

Abolish Duke IFC & Panhel also wants Duke to halt the rush process for the spring semester to allow for continued discussion about the future of the Greek system.

Chen confirmed in an email that the Panhel executive board will have a vote Sept. 25 to determine what sorority rush will look like in the spring semester, including the possibility of postponing or canceling rush altogether, and that they plan to release a final decision Oct. 1. Senior Adam Krekorian, IFC recruitment director, wrote in an email that IFC plans to hold virtual recruitment in January.

Before the abolition of campus fraternities and sororities is possible, Abolish Duke IFC & Panhel wants the Duke administration to publicly recognize them.

If we can be brought in to have these conversations with administrators, at least they know what the students want, Bergamini said. That way, the administrators arent just relaying messages by themselves.

The group began exchanging emails with McMahon on Tuesday, which Gupta said is the first time they have formally reached out to set up a meeting with Duke administrators, having recently broken their anonymity. They plan to meet with Gary Bennett, vice provost for undergraduate education, and John Blackshear, dean of students, along with McMahon.

Gupta did meet individually with Duke administrators after his house was vandalizedgetting a bottle thrown through your window is a quick way to get an administrator to listen to you, he said.

Still, he said many students involved with Abolish Duke IFC & Panhel now feel afraid to speak out. The leadership team discussed releasing their names many times, and until recently wanted to remain anonymous, fearing potential repercussions.

But, Gupta said, Its bigger than us.

Editors note: The author of this article was briefly a member of a Panhellenic Association sorority during her first year at Duke but disaffiliated because of the cost.

Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly characterized the open letter that Shreyas Gupta and his friends wrote to his fraternity. It detailed racism in the Greek system generally, not just instances they had experienced, and not all the authors were people of color, as was originally stated. This article has also been updated to reflect that Panhel will hold a vote on spring rush Sept. 25, not a town hall to discuss it. The Chronicle regrets the errors.

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'It's bigger than us': Abolish Duke IFC & Panhel fights to get rid of two dozen Greek organizations - Duke Chronicle

If youve been involved in left politics in the last four years, youve probably heard a lot about the Overton window. Weve been told that Bernie Sanders has shifted the Overton window with his social-democratic policy proposals, that Bernie and Trump have jointly managed to break the Overton window, and that radical slogans like abolish the police must be supported by anyone who wants any sort of police reform because it shifts the Overton window in the right direction.

Sometimes, people who use these phrases are making a purely descriptive claim. Shifts occur in which ideas are widely discussed by political commentators. In 2014, for example, only a handful of prominent figures were foregrounding single-payer national health insurance. Now everyone who talks about politics for a living has said something about whether Medicare for All is a good idea. This in turn has helped spur centrists to develop proposals that lie somewhere in between Medicare for All and the health care laws currently on the books.

No one denies that shifts of this kind happen. The question is why they are happening and how consequential to real politics these evolutions are. Can shifting the Overton window help the Left get closer to achieving our goals?

Joseph Overton was a senior vice president at a libertarian think tank in Michigan, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. He developed his window idea in the mid-1990s as a way of convincing potential donors that his organization was doing valuable work.

The Mackinac Center spends its time arguing for proposals to bust labor unions, undercut the movement for climate justice, and generally make things worse for most people. Its not hard to see why wealthy plutocrats would support this agenda, but Overton understood that even inherently attractive products benefit from good marketing. He made a brochure for potential donors with a cardboard slider to illustrate how the window of political possibility on any given issue could be shifted along a spectrum going from total government control to a libertarian utopia of zero government intervention.

After his death in 2003, the concept was taken up and named after Overton by his Mackinac colleague Joseph Lehman. Public officials cannot enact any policy they please like theyre ordering dessert from a menu, Lehman told the New York Times. They have to choose from among policies that are politically acceptable at the time. And we believe the Overton window defines that range of ideas.

Crucially, the point wasnt about implementing the policies the Mackinac Center actually wanted. He would tell them that neither the most libertarian nor the least libertarian possibility was ever going to become a reality. Instead, they should think about points on a spectrum.

Ideas within the window on Overtons slider might be implemented. Ideas that were too far outside of the window were radical or even unthinkable. Summarizing Overtons thinking in the New Republic, Laura Marsh says he proposed that the most effective way of moving relatively libertarian ideas into the mainstream wasnt to advocate for minor, incremental changes to an already accepted idea but to make the best case for a currently unthinkable idea and thereby move policy proposals adjacent to that from radical to acceptable.

At least two kinds of commentators whose political preferences sharply diverge from those of Joseph Overton seem to think that leftists can shift the Overton window by advocating policies previously considered to be unthinkable. On the one hand, some moderate progressives are, at least in their more conciliatory moments, happy to have the likes of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez shifting the Overton window on progressive policy. If Bernie and AOC are putting Medicare for All on the table, for example, this might have the virtue in the eyes of some of these Democrats of making a public option more likely.

The second group is made up of leftists genuinely committed to transformative goals who think that advocating the loaf that theyd love to have someday at least makes it more likely that theyll get half a loaf sometime soon.

The moderately progressive case for the value of Overton window manipulation is typified by Rachel Maddow. She did a segment on Overton and his window just before she interviewed Bernie Sanders in December 2015. The way to shift the window, she said, was to advocate super-extreme positions which change the realm of whats politically possible because after something super-nuts has been floated positions which are slightly less nuts will start to look acceptable. She illustrated this dynamic by describing Donald Trumps rivals for the GOP nomination first denouncing Trumps proposed Muslim ban and then making somewhat similar proposals themselves. When she segued from this segment to the Sanders interview without even a commercial break, the implication was lost on no one. This guy might be a little crazy, and he certainly wont be the nominee, but hey, at least hell help shift the conversation in a more progressive direction.

Anecdotally, Ill say that I heard a lot of this kind of thing after Bernies first defeat in 2016. Sometimes it came from liberals trying to cheer up their dispirited leftist friends. Sometimes it came from leftists themselves looking for a silver lining in the outcome of the primary. In a way, members of both groups would say, Bernie has already won. Just look at all the concessions to him in the Democratic platform!

This was always pretty thin gruel. American major party platforms are wish lists with little practical significance. But its the kind of consolation that rings especially hollow after Bernies second defeat this time to a man who has strongly suggested that if Medicare for All were passed by a Democratic House and Senate during his second term, he would veto it.

In a way, the idea that we should put forward radical demands not in order to achieve them but so that less radical versions of them will become policy just sounds like common sense. Any union negotiator will tell you that it makes sense to bring ideas to the bargaining table that are highly unlikely to make it into the actual contract. If you demand eleven, you might at least end up with three.

The problem with using this analogy as a prism for thinking about what kind of a left political agenda were putting forward is that there are some fairly large and relevant disanalogies between the two cases. To start with, a union negotiator suggesting contract language it would be difficult for the boss to accept knows that the unions members would love these proposals.

Those extra two weeks of paid vacation every year might never become a reality, but thats not because the people on whose behalf the negotiator is working dont want them. Contrast that to demanding the abolition of all policing in a country where 81 percent of black Americans dont even want police presence in their neighborhoods to be reduced. Demanding eleven is sometimes a good strategy for getting a nervous enemy to grant you three, but its far less clear that when the majority of the people you think would benefit from a policy dont even want two, demanding eleven will get them to want three.

In at least some cases, it might even have the opposite effect. It remains to be seen whether the gambit will pay off, but Donald Trump certainly seems to believe that hell get a lot of mileage out of blurring the lines between (a) the tepid and grotesquely inadequate police reforms proposed by Joe Biden, (b) the more popular idea of defunding the police, and (c) police abolitionism, and using popular fear of (c) as a cudgel against even (a). To be clear, I dont think the possibility of the Right using this kind of rhetorical strategy against us is a good enough reason not to put forward radical policy proposals. Right-wing fearmongers will lie about any progressive idea as a matter of course. The point is just that we have little reason to believe that proposing very unpopular ideas will do anything to make more moderate versions of those ideas more popular.

The second, related problem is that company negotiators arent going to come back with a proposal for an extra two days of paid vacation out of a sheer desire to continue to look reasonable in a situation where the boundaries of the discussion have shifted. If the demand has any impact its because the union has real-world leverage. If bargaining breaks down, the workers might walk off the job and hurt the companys bottom line. No parallel mechanism exists to make establishment politicians sit up and take notice when a faction thats out of power engages in a purely rhetorical escalation of its demands.

The analogy between negotiating tactics at bargaining tables and ultraradical slogans printed on protest signs or advocated in left-wing magazines gets even thinner when we remember that much of the point of the latter isnt to directly spook policymakers into making concessions. Our goal is to shift public opinion in our direction so that we can build up a movement with enough support to actually win such concessions or, better yet, to take power so we can implement our ideas ourselves. And for that task, the negotiating analogy just isnt relevant. You cant spook a majority of the population into wanting the things that you think they should want.

None of this means that socialists should only advocate things most people already support. It doesnt even mean that theres no value in making currently unthinkable ideas a little easier to imagine. About half of the articles I write for Jacobin are attempts to do exactly that. But the point of the exercise isnt to somehow trick skeptics into supporting something halfway in between our radical aspirations and the status quo.

Sometimes the activity of the Left might well result in inadequate reforms implemented by establishment figures that greatly improve on previous conditions. But we dont get any closer to that goal by going for broke on a rhetorical level. Instead, that becomes possible when we build up a movement so powerful that our political enemies see the need to make concessions to stop us from coming to power. And the way we build up such a movement is by clearly and persuasively articulating what we actually want in a way thats compelling to large numbers of people whose material interests would be served by that agenda.

Thats the opposite of verbally advocating things we arent even sure make sense for the sake of shifting the Overton window. Doing the latter, if anything, undermines our ability to convince persuadable people that a better world is realistically possible.

Ghoulish right-wing think tanks like the Mackinac Center do advance the agenda of their wealthy donors. But the way they do it isnt well-represented by Joseph Overtons cardboard slider moving some ideas into the window of political possibility by making previously unthinkable ideas a few steps beyond those proposals a bit more thinkable. Rather, the main value of think tanks to their donors agenda comes from doing things like filing amicus briefs in court cases, providing cheat sheets of arguments used by partisans in debates about things that already politically possible, and even writing sample laws that fit the preexisting policy preferences of right-wing donors.

A think tank (or a political magazine) that wants to be useful to its political goals might well spend some time, or even quite a bit of its time, advocating ideas that probably arent going to become popular any time soon. Im a socialist. I dont just want to nationalize health insurance by implementing Medicare for All. I want to nationalize every hospital in the country by taking a page from Britains postwar Labour government and creating a National Health Service. Oh, and Id also like worker control of the means of production. Thats pretty far outside of the window of political possibility in America in 2020.

But we need to be clear on what advocacy for these ideas can and cant accomplish. Medicare for All is already quite popular, which is one reason it makes so much strategic sense for us to focus on it right now, but its quite doubtful that its going to be made more popular by socialists talking about currently fringe ideas that go beyond it. The point of talking about creating an American NHS isnt to trick anyone into supporting M4A. Its to persuade people who already support M4A that our work wont be done when weve accomplished it.

Its important for radicals to work to make whats currently unthinkable thinkable. But thats not so we can shift the Overton window so far that something halfway between those unthinkable horizons and the miserable present can become politically possible. Its so that we can actually achieve the kind of unthinkable future that we desperately need.

Originally posted here:

Let's Stop Talking About the Overton Window - Jacobin magazine

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of The Eyeopener.

Content warning: This article contains mentions of police violence, racism, sexual violence and death.

By Alannah Fricker

On June 4, Ryerson University announced that it would not proceed with its plan to hire special constables as security staff in response to pressure from community members and the wake of global police violence. While they do not carry guns, special constables work closely with armed police officers and are often equipped with handcuffs, pepper spray and batons. They are also granted the power to detain, search, ticket, arrest and use force with minimal legal sanctions.

While the announcement to cancel the program was a win for many of those who sounded the alarm and a testament to years of sustained pressure from Black and Indigenous people at Ryerson, it remains a symptom of a more complex fight for justice and safety on campusone that problematizes less obvious forms of surveillance and punishment and calls attention to the universitys ongoing relationships with police and security.

On Aug. 20, the university announced the creation of a presidential external expert panel (EEP) on campus safety and security, to develop a different approach to campus safety. The EEP is composed of mostly lawyers and includes DiversiPros Hamlin Grange, the former Toronto Police Services (TPS) board member who led the consultation process to bring special constables to Ryerson in 2020. We should be outraged that anyone involved in shaping alternatives to police on campus is pro-police. It is troubling that the group positioned as experts do not learn, work, teach or live in this community. Therefore, I am steadfast in my call for abolition.

After the brutal murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police on May 25, the movement to defund and abolish the policean idea previously positioned on the marginsquickly became mainstream and realizable. In so-called Canada, police murders and widespread community outrage forced the hands of politicians, media, institutions and schools to reposition themselves at a distance from police.

While some of the killings were high profile, many were not. As of September police murders of Black and Indigenous people in Canada included DAndre Campbell, Jamal Francique, Eishia Hudson, Regis Korchinski-Paquet, Chantel Moore, Ejaz Choudry, Rodney Levi and Jason Collins. More hidden were the deaths of those caged in jails and prisons due to neglect and murder, including Jordan Sheard, Michael Croft, Shawn Spaulding and countless others killed by capitalism under the guise of COVID-19, drug overdoses, poverty and suicide.

Police and prisons do not keep us safe from violence. They are violent and they should be abolished from our campuses entirely

I mention these deaths as a reminder that police and prisons do not keep us safe. They are especially dangerous to those whose bodies are marked as disposable by the state and its dominant classes. Police, like their counterpartsprisons, detention centres, child welfare systems, courts and lawscannot be reformed to achieve justice because they exist to maintain order through subjugation within enduring systems of white supremacy, hetero-patriarchy, ableism and capitalism.

Police are antithetical to the goals of our institution which should include supporting the learning and wellbeing of students, staff, faculty and the community. Research has repeatedly and overwhelmingly concluded that police erode trust with, alienate and criminalize Black, Brown, Indigenous, dis/abled and undocumented learners and teachers. Black and Indigenous people in Canada are targeted and severely overrepresented in all areas of the injustice system when compared to the overall population. Police regularly enforce unjust laws that exacerbate issues related to poverty, homelessness, substance use, drug dealing, sex work and mental health.

We know that creative, community-led alternatives to police exist, which are rooted in transformative justice, free housing, education, food, water and status for all. Yet police and prisons remain, justified by their control over racialized and Mad bodies, and the disappearance of so-called dangerous people from our communities.

But who are the dangerous people? Most crimes are low-level, rooted in poverty and desperation and involve property, drugs and personal relationships. Police and prisons do little to prevent violence and rarely resolve cases of serious harm.

Rather, they regularly uproot people from their communities and enact against them insitutionally-sanctioned acts of assault, rape, neglect, deprivation, torture and murder.

Police and prisons do not keep us safe from violence. They are violent and they should be abolished from our campuses entirely.

In our search for alternative community safety models, we must be cautious of stigmatizing discourses and attempts to reform rather than transform the ways we keep each other safe. We must be clear, solution-focused and uncompromising in our demands and continue to take action when the university acts in bad faith.

While it is not exhaustive, I offer a shortened version of Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy (CSSDP) Ryersons list of demands that we urge the university to adopt to support community safety:

In closing, I would like to urge you to take action and exercise your power as a stakeholder. I encourage you to follow and support the work of the Black Liberation Collective-Ryerson and CSSDP Ryerson; Latinx, Afro-Latin-America, Abya Yala Education Network Toronto; Toronto Prisoners Rights Project; Black Lives Matter-Toronto and others demanding supportive, police-free campuses. I encourage you to send a message to decision-makers at Ryerson to demand an end to relationships with police; attend workshops to build your capacity to respond to emergency situations; and read, write, speak and act in support of police and prison abolition.

Abolition is inevitable and I know that we will win, but it is up to us to care for each other and take the necessary steps to realize it in our lifetime.

Alannah Fricker is a Ryerson bachelors of social work graduate, an Ontario Institute of Studies in Education masters in social justice education student, lead organizer with the Toronto Prisoners Rights Project and Abolition Coalition andfounder of CSSDP Ryerson.

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OP-ED: No cops on campuswe keep each other safe - The Eyeopener

Event starts with film screening Sept. 24, discussion Sept. 25

The Latin American and Iberian Institute at The University of New Mexico has announced its Fall 2020 Im/migration and Human Rights Series, co-sponsored by the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology, the Alfonso Ortiz Center for Intercultural Studies, and El Centro de la Raza.

All events will be held virtually and require pre-registration. For more information or questions, contact the LAII at laiioutreach@unm.edu.

LAII Im/migration and Human Rights Series:

Border South Film Screening and Discussion with Filmmakers

Available to view starting at 1 PM on Thursday, Sept. 24 Discussion at 3 PM on Friday, Sept. 25

Every year hundreds of thousands of migrants make their way along the trail running from southern Mexico to the US border. Gustavos gunshot wounds from Mexican police, which have achieved abundant press attention, might just earn him a ticket out of Nicaragua. Meanwhile anthropologist Jason painstakingly collects the trails remains, which have their own stories to tell. Fragmented stories from Hondurans crossing through southern Mexico assemble a vivid portrait of the thousands of immigrants who disappear along the trail. Border South reveals the immigrants resilience, ingenuity, and humor as it exposes a global migration system that renders human beings invisible in life as well as death.

For more information, visit the LAII website. Pre-registration required, limited spots available.

The Pushback Film Premiere and Discussion with Director Kevin Ford, Congresswoman

Veronica Escobar, and former Congressman Beto ORourke

Monday, October 5 4 PM

The first of two Latinas to represent Texas in Congress, Veronica Escobar, and the only African-American woman to run for city council in Austin in 2018, Natasha Harper-Madison, lead a diverse group of progressive voices across Texas as they fight decades of institutional racism and policies of discrimination along the border. The battle over immigrant rights, land seizures to build the border wall, and the troubled racial history of the state form the backdrop to a film that explores how a place once known for its reactionary politics is becoming more liberal, more diverse and more at risk for violent conflict. Join us for a dynamic live conversation about the current political climate and what's at stake this election season, with special guests Congresswoman Veronica Escobar and former Congressman Beto O'Rourke. The Director of The Pushback, Kevin Ford will join us in conversation and share exclusive clips from the new documentary before the film's release on TVOD.

For more information, visit the LAII website. Pre-registration required, limited spots available.

Discussion with fronteristxs collective members hazel batrezchavez and Bernadine Hernndez

Thursday, October 8 3:30 PM

In this presentation the fronteristxs collective will discuss their ongoing collaborative work in the abolition movement. They will talk about the historical violence of the US immigration system and its relationship to racism in the criminal justice system. The fronteristxs collective is currently working with several coalitions on 1) the #FreeThemAll campaign to demand immediate release of individuals from jails, prisons, and detention centers 2) the campaign to divest NMERB funds from private prisons 3) and a legislative ban on private prisons in New Mexico. The collective will shed light on the ways that those in power work to silence individuals and give insight on how you can get involved in the campaign to #FreeThemAll.

For more information, visit the registration website. Pre-registration required.

Las Madres de Berks Screening and Talkback with Michelle Angela Ortiz

Sunday, October 18 2 PM

Join us for a free screening and talkback of Las Madres de Berks short documentary created by artist Michelle Angela Ortiz. Las Madres de Berks documentary shares the testimonials of four mothers that were detained for two years with their children at The Berks County Residential Center, a family prison in Pennsylvania. Berks is the oldest of the three permanent family prisons for immigrant families in the country. Despite being held up as a model by proponents of immigrant detention, the center has amassed a record of human rights violations.

Award-winning visual artist, Michelle Angela Ortiz created the Las Madres de Berks Documentary, as part of her "Familias Separadas" public art project which amplifies the stories of families affected by detention and deportation in the United States. Ortizs main community partner, the Shut Down Berks Coalition has been fighting to close down the Berks family prison for years.

For more information, visit the meeting registration website. Pre-registration required.

Justicia For the Children Screening and Discussion with Filmmakers

November 19 2 PM

Frontera elders speak and demand justice for children who have been detained, separated from their families and who have gone missing in the borderland of El Paso Texas and Ciudad Juarez Chihuahua Mexico. Ya Basta! Join us for a discussion with filmmakers, community members, and the musical artist behind "Justicia For the Children."

For more information, visit the meeting registration website. Pre-registration required.

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LAII to host Im/migration and Human Rights Series - UNM Newsroom