Category Archives: Abolition Of Work

We cannot allow the capitalist ruling class to turn a blind eye to the plight of the incarcerated population not in general, nor in the particular circumstance of the global pandemic of Covid-19. In the U.S., there are 2.3 million human beings in state, federal, and county jails and more than 52,000 in immigrant detainment camps. Around the country, organizations and coalitions are calling for the immediate release of incarcerated people who are particularly vulnerable to COVID-19. The Party for Socialism and Liberation and La Riva/Peltier election campaign raise these demands as well.

Corona virus and prisons, jails, and ICE detention

It is impossible to quarantine in the context of incarceration. Every prison, jail, juvenile facility, and immigrant detention center will become an incubator of the deadly corona virus. Social distancing is physically impossible in lower security facilities. Inmates are in gate group cells usually made up of four to five 50-person cells. Even as big as 100-person dormitories exist in other facilities. In higher-security prisons, a facility-wide lock-down entails a 24-hour confinement in ones cell. This of course would mitigate recreation time in the yard as well as congregating in the prison cafeteria. Yet serving meals to locked-up inmates could still spread the virus. All regular cell searches put inmates in contact with correctional officers who are already bringing the virus into work from outside contacts.

Jails are already compromised in dozens of counties. Jails hold all people who are either awaiting trial or for transfer to a prison. Since jails are filled and overcrowded with people abducted from their communities, there are almost certainly more people carrying the virus than the few cases documented. Few COVID-19 test kits are available to gauge the real numbers.

Similarly, immigrant detention centers are group encampments already suffering from heap-like conditions, and detainees cannot be given adequate physical distance. Because of overcrowding and a lack of physical institutions, immigrant detainees are regularly rerouted to jails where many infections have already been documented. Immigrants are denied due-process rights and are jailed for coming to the U.S. seeking work or refuge.

Size and scope of the problem

In some cases, such as the infamous Rikers Island Jail in New York City, as many as 21 inmates and 17 correctional officers have already tested positive for the corona virus as of March 20, with already one death of an investigator. Urgent action is necessary. Presumably, every incarcerated person will be transferred to upstate New York prison facilities pending trial, compromising state prisons more pervasively. This is true everywhere people are bused en mass from the jails to the prisons.

In all cases, prisons, jails, and immigrant detention camps suffer the same inhumane and unsanitary conditions. Incarcerated people often lack access to regular running water, hot water, regular shower privileges, hand sanitizer (because they contain alcohol), and hand soap. An observation from formerly incarcerated people on the depictions of prisons in movies and TV shows is that they are shown to be clean. The reality is that mold is a common occurrence, and rodents, roaches and grime accompany the crumbling infrastructure of the countrys repressive apparatus.

Already across New Jersey, hunger strikes have cropped up in three facilities holding immigrant detainees, for lack of cleaning measures and a shortage of soap.

Similarly, the food served in these facilities is criminally insufficient. Prisons tip-toe on the minimum threshold for legally required calories provided for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Incarcerated people often depend on family support for funds to buy candy, ramen noodles, and chips from commissary at massive markups. This plays no small part in the prevalence of chronic health conditions in prisons.

Most studies conclude that the incarcerated population is many more times likely to be victim to chronic health conditions such as asthma, arthritis, diabetes, hypertension, sexually transmitted diseases, cancer or myocardial infarction.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, 73 percent of prison inmates and 77 percent of jail inmates report chronic conditions at admission, and only 44 percent claim to be satisfied with the medical care compared to the care they received prior to incarceration: Nearly half (48 percent) of prisoners and 43 percent of jail inmates reported that the health care received while incarcerated was better than or about the same as the care they received in the 12 months prior to admission.

One can conclude that the latter response is because the inmates were not previously receiving health care outside.

Wardens and correctional officers in a pigpen scramble

Around the country, health care workers, lawyers, prisoner rights activists, abolition groups, and even some corrections boards have called for the urgent release of inmates considered high risk.

Earlier this week Los Angeles County began releasing hundreds of low-level inmates to reduce the possibility of infection, and New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio said his city was considering similar measures. A decisive factor in this decision is not so much the moral uprightness of the authorities in control. Rather, corrections officers are calling in sick at much higher rates, and medical wings of the facilities are understaffed, under-resourced and over-burdened. Ohio corrections initiated a similar pressure-valve type of release. The United States repressive apparatus is cracking at the seams with this contradiction. Corrections associations and inmates alike are citing the inevitability of rebellion as the times get tougher.

The real possibility of losing control of the prisons looms over the heads of prison administrations everywhere. Robert Hood, a former warden of Colorados Supermax federal penitentiary, told ABC news: All of the sudden the guys that are the best inmates, the 50% to 60% who are in for drug-related, non-violent offenses, the guys in the dormitories not the lockdown guys all of a sudden theyre at the most risk. What would I do if I was an inmate in a dormitory? Id go smack someone in the head and I mean that. Id want to go on lockdown, because then Id be a little better off.

The call for release of at-risk prisoners is not consistent across the country. In fact, there may be a monetary incentive to keep them incarcerated. New York Governor Cuomo boasted that prisoner-made hand sanitizer was a superior product to anything else on the market. At a press conference, Cuomo gleefully announced, Open the curtain please! to show a line of New York State hand sanitizers created by CorCraft, which uses prison labor at 16 cents to $1.14 an hour. He then applied the CorCraft company hand sanitizer to describe it having the scent of a floral bouquet. In short, Cuomo sees the crisis as an opportunity to extract super profits from prison labor.

What is more, the Pandemic Influenza Surge Plan for Managing In- and out-of-Hospital Deaths, published by the New York City Chief Medical Examiners Office in 2008, explains that the citys Department of Corrections manages a mass grave site on Hart Island for people unable to afford burials. This grave site is currently worked by prisoners, and has been for the last 150 years. Thus, instead of a compassionate release on a massive scale of incarcerated human beings, the city plans to force prisoners to bury potentially massive numbers of people, including their own imprisoned brothers and sisters, in the event of mass deaths due to the COVID-19 crisis.

Crisis always comes to the prison; prisons are the crisis

A major contradiction has become clear one week into the corona virus pandemic: Capitalism is not capable of handling a global crisis. In the United States, this is particularly acute. The lack of access to health care, the 40 percent of the U.S. population that has only an average of $400 in personal savings, the millions who face layoffs and shutdowns, the massive homeless population amid the glut of empty houses and luxury condos, the vast food deserts, and the lack of a sufficient social safety net are now everywhere on display in their most brutal forms. Seldom remembered are the lives of 2.3 million people brutally incarcerated in Americas prisons and their families who also suffer from the imprisonment.

Every experienced prisoner-rights and abolition organizer knows that each time a hurricane approaches the United States the race is on to urge wardens and corrections boards to evacuate the prisons. In one particularly terrifying case, the inmates of Orleans Parish Prison were left to drown as Katrina swept in and guards abandoned the prison without opening the cells. Inmates were stranded neck deep in sewage water without food or drinking water for nearly a week. Some 517 of these incarcerated people are still unaccounted for.

How many hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, influenza, and pandemics will have to devastate the incarcerated population before decisive action towards a better future is taken? Some theories refer to the U.S. government as a carceral state, a state that funnels its problems into incarceration measures. Crime rates in this country dont match incarceration rates nearly as much as with unemployment, homelessness, and poverty rates. In short, the carceral state is the capitalist state, which exists to manage the affairs of a shrinking but wealthier ownership class amid a colossal working class (employed, unemployed, homeless, or incarcerated) scrounging to get by. One of the capitalist states greatest weapons in its racist class war has been the prisons.

The urgent action of early and compassionate release of prisoners with the COVID-19 crisis has already taken place in other parts of the world: Iran released one-third of its total prison population in response to the exigencies produced by the virus, some 85,000 temporarily freed people.

In the name of humanity

The 10-point program of the Gloria La Riva and Leonard Peltier presidential campaign addresses economic and social crises with radical solutions. Three points of the 10-point program are here especially relevant:

3| End racism, police brutality, mass incarceration Pay reparations to the African American and Native communities.

Mass incarceration and racist policing are symptomatic of the 400 years of brutal repression meted out to African-descended peoples in the U.S. and the genocide committed against the Native nations. Reparations must be paid to the African American and Native communities! More than 2.2 million people are behind bars in the largest prison complex in the world. End mass incarceration of oppressed and working-class people. Fully prosecute all acts of police brutality and violence. Free Leonard Peltier, Mumia Abu-Jamal and all political prisoners!

Adding to this demand in light of COVID-19, we call for the compassionate release of all elderly prisoners and those with chronic health conditions. The population of prisoners age 55 over has increased 400 percent in the last 20 years. For those who remain in the prison system, we demand radical reforms focused on humanizing the conditions, including paying prisoners at least minimum wage for their labor, stopping punitive punishment like isolation cells and extraction teams, and expanding educational and rehabilitation programs.

The immediate release of all pre-trial detainees, who can return to court after theyre reopened after the crises, and immediate freeing of those with release dates in 2020 and 2021. There are as many as 612,000 people in local jails who are not convicted that is, they are legally innocent. Only 32,000 of this population are considered violent, yet many deemed violent by the capitalist state only have enhanced statuses because of poor representation in the courts and, for many African American inmates, wrongful convictions. There are of course exceptions to the issue of general release, but they can be reviewed by peer boards not traditionally in the hands of the repressive state apparatus.

The immediate release of all youth prisoners (46,000) to return to their families or safe homes with guidance counselors to help in true rehabilitation.

At a federal level the majority of incarcerated people are in for public order (the preferred term to victimless crime) and property crimes. In almost all cases, these people could now be released from their 40- to 50-year sentences.

State Prisons make up the majority of incarcerated people, and similar to the other categories: public order, DUI, (racist) drug crimes, property crimes make up the vast majority. Almost 100 percent of these inmates should be freed.

Freedom for all people incarcerated on parole or probation violation (often failures to check in), for petty marijuana or alcohol consumption, police contact, or failure to pay for ankle monitors or restitution. In addition, freed prisoners need sufficient funds to be able to find housing and income until they are employed. Free education should also be offered as well as job training.

4| Full rights for all immigrants

Abolish all anti-immigrant laws. Stop the raids and deportations and demonization of immigrants. Shut down ICE and the concentration camps and reunite families. The governments war on immigrants must end. The border wall must be dismantled. Amnesty and citizenship for those without documents. Full rights for all!

All 61,000 immigrant detainees should be free. As the immigrant detainees have said in the New Jersey hunger strike, If we have to die, we would rather die out there than in here! This would entail not only closing all ICE camps and disbanding ICE but also releasing immigrant detainees who have been placed in local jails as overflow.

10| Take over the stolen wealth of the giant banks and corporations Jail Wall Street criminals

The vast wealth of the giant banks and corporations is created by workers labor and the exploitation of the worlds diminishing natural resources. The billionaires looted and destroyed the economy. It is time to seize their assets and use those resources in the interests of the vast majority. Power must be taken out of the hands of the super rich, and Wall Street criminals must be jailed.

Point 10 in the La Riva Program stands out in the context of $1.5 trillion stock market bailouts in response to the crisis. The billionaires have certainly shown solidarity with their own class. So much pain and death could be avoided if they were not the ruling class. If anyone belongs in jail, it is the bankers and the gangsters in the Pentagon and the White House.

Prisoner self-determination

We cannot hope to divine a new society on the basis of our imaginations alone. We can, however, say that the rest of the world operates with a fraction of our prison population. While the freedom of say 80 percent of the U.S. prison population would seem magical in its scope, it would still leave 500,000. That would place the U.S. fourth in total people incarcerated. The U.S. would still be in the running for the highest incarceration rate per capita.

Because the media pounds away at the population with such negative coverage of prisoners diverting attention from the real capitalist criminals the idea of many people being freed from the prisons, jails, and immigrant detainment centers could cause a negative reaction. But liberation is nothing to fear. What is truly scary is the idea that this racist mass incarceration system could be one large mass grave in the context of a global pandemic.

See more here:

Arrest the virus, free the prisoners! - Liberation

PUBLISHED: 14:20 19 March 2020 | UPDATED: 18:01 19 March 2020

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden speaks during a campaign stop at Driving Park Community Center in Columbus, Ohio. (Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)

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Post-virus politics might look very different, says John Kampfner, and there are signs that the centrists are fighting back

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The leader of the free world dismisses it as a hoax. Then he blames it on foreigners. Then he declares a national emergency two very big words. Then he tries to bribe the Germans to give him exclusive access to antibody research. Over the past four years the world has got used to the dangerous buffoonery of Donald Trump. Will coronavirus bring to an end this ugly era of populists and rehabilitate the less colourful but more thoughtful type technocrat?

The Americans have that choice shortly before them with the presidential election in November, assuming everything takes place on schedule. Until the outbreak of the current emergency it had become axiomatic to assume that voters would continue to embrace irrational emotion over common sense and give Trump a second term.He talked a good talk if brash nationalism is your thing. The stock market was high. Jobs were in plentiful supply, even if many were in the gig economy. America First was making his base, and just enough floating voters, feel better about themselves.

Meantime, the Democrats were tearing strips off each other. None of the candidates was cutting through until the choice was whittled down to two septuagenarian men (three if you add Trump) the radical socialist in Bernie Sanders and the centrist Joe Biden.

With enough swing states coalescing around Biden in the primaries, the assumption was that he would win the nomination and then would stumble to a debilitating defeat.

Wherever you looked around the world there appeared to be little counter-narrative to the autocrat or his (and they are all male) nationalist-populist friend in the West.

Viktor Orban was doing nicely in Hungary. The Law and Justice party was enjoying continued power in Poland. Jair Bolsonaro was doing fine in Brazil we all know the list.

At the same time, the few beacons of reason Jacinda Arden in New Zealand, Justin Trudeau in Canada and Germanys Angela Merkel were stumbling from one crisis to another.

And what of the UK? Last Decembers general election gave voters an unenviable choice between two hapless figures.

Boris Johnsons victory was far less a vote of faith than a vote with gritted teeth.

But win he did, resoundingly, suggesting that the party-that-loves-to-lose, Labour, was in for another 10 years in the wilderness.

With Johnsons handling of coronavirus coming under intense scrutiny, and with polls predicting that Keir Starmer will be voted in as leader of the opposition, could Johnsons foppish manner be misplaced?

Are character and solidity set for a return? When the pandemic eventually ends and nobody can predict how deeply or how long it will affect each nation will priorities have changed?

Johnson is trying already to make that transition to statesmanship rather than joker, reinforced by surrounding himself with two experts in the chief medical officer and chief scientific officer.

But any discerning observer knows that he doesnt look the part or sound the part.

In the US, the mismatch is considerably starker. Of all the people you might want to guide you through a crisis such as this, the loud-mouthed Trump would not feature highly on your list.

The White House has felt no need to pull together other countries for a coordinated global response.

Nowhere was that more obvious than in Trumps out-of-the-blue announcement banning all travellers from the Schengen Area except the plucky Brits before adding the UK a few days later.

As Gordon Brown wrote recently, contrasting the present situation with the coordinated response from global leaders during the 2008 financial crash: This us-versus-them nationalism has spawned a blame culture, with under-pressure governments holding everyone but themselves responsible for anything that goes wrong. And yet an ideology of everyone for himself will not work when the health of each of us depends so unavoidably on the health of all of us.

Bidens responses to the pandemic have deliberately highlighted a difference in tone. His message to voters has been that he is the man with experience; he may not be the most charismatic person in the world, he may stumble a bit, as he is getting on.

But he can lead America back into normality post-virus and post-Trump.

Biden would as virtually all US presidents, Republican or Democrat, have done work closely with other countries.

A traditionalist on foreign policy, as on much else, he believes that close friendships with Europe and elsewhere are vital for US security.

If, as I suspect they will, voters will, post-virus, want less of the macho and more of the reasoned, then Biden and Starmer will get a better reception.

The one lesson they, and others like them, will have to learn from the populists is to be more tenacious.

Tony Blairs government in 1997 had such a majority it could have been truly transformative. It did, of course, make some changes, but they were a fraction of what could have been achieved.

Barack Obama made some progress in his first two years, but not nearly enough. Then he was effectively blocked when the Republicans took back Congress and blockaded major legislation.

In other words, more centrist governments should abandon caution. On paper, even though not as revolutionary as Bernie Sanders or Jeremy Corbyn promised to be (Labours 2019 election manifesto was an extraordinary wish-list), Biden and Starmer are promising radical reform.

Biden is promising $750 billion to accelerate Obamas health care changes, a staggering $17 trillion in clean energy investment and tighter regulation to bring emissions to zero by 2050; a combined $2 trillion in new spending on early education, post-secondary education and housing, a $1.3 trillion infrastructure plan, and a $15 minimum wage.

To pay for it, to raise $4 trillion over a decade, he would increase taxes on the rich, making it if enacted one of the largest wealth transfers in American history. Yet even then, the 1% richest would see their annual income drop by only 10-15%. As for gun control, he promises stricter measures but that always seems to be the toughest nut to crack in US politics.

Starmers 10 pledges have been criticised by some as a variant of Corbyns list. He has recommitted Labour to public ownership of rail, mail, energy and water, outlined plans to abolish universal credit, pledged the abolition of tuition fees and promised to introduce the partys Green New Deal.

He would raise revenue in part by increasing income tax for people earning over 80,000, alongside reversing cuts in corporation tax and clamping down on tax avoidance (something all governments promise but seldom follow through).

In among all the uncertainty with Covid-19, some broad predictions do not seem misplaced. Health systems will not have to fight as hard as they have done for better funding.

The role of the state will not be so disparaged as it has been during the three-decade hegemony of the ultra-free marketeers.

Alongside that, will society really become more community spirited and less selfish?

Perhaps it will, but only in part. What it will prize is no-nonsense reliability. It is time for the technocrats to show their colours, radical but rational. The message from voters will be: dont hold back.

Defy your detractors and show more courage than the likes of Blair and Obama did.

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The centrists are fighting back - politics during the coronavirus outbreak | Latest Brexit news and top stories - The New European

NETFLIX is notoriously secretive when it comes to publishing its viewing figures. Everyone's favourite streaming service did so for the first time ever in January last year, long before lockdown became part of the every day lexicon. However, in the absence of access to such information, a not-so bold prediction: the number of visitors to the platform will surge over the coming weeks as self-isolation becomes routine.

It's heartening to learn, then, that there are plenty of sports programmes at the fingertips, the latest of which entitled The English Game, aired for the first time on Friday. The story is told through the eyes of two men, Arthur Kinnaird and Fergus Suter, and focuses on the role each had in the transformation of football from gentleman's pastime to professionalism and the all-encompassing game that it is today idolised by millions globally and greatly missed as part of the Coronavirus shutdown.

Written by Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes, The English Game is, as one would expect, a lavish if slightly jarring period drama. The six-parter centres on a series of FA Cup ties between the dominant side of the late-1800s Old Etonians (Kinnaird's team) and Darwen, Blackburn Olympic and Blackburn Rovers (Suter's teams, of which the latter pair are contracted to Blackburn FC).

In the first episode, Kinnaird, played by Edward Holcroft, is painted as a conflicted individual, caught between admiration for a new style of play as deftly practised by Suter (Kevin Guthrie), a Scottish footballer of some renown, and a loyalty to his Eton contemporaries, who favour a rumbustious, brutal game not unlike rugby without handling.

At one point, after an FA Cup tie against Darwen ends in a draw with Kinnaird refusing the team of upstart millworkers the chance to play extra-time, he tells a gathering of dinner guests: We took a raggle-taggle pastime, with different rules wherever it was played and we turned it into a proper game . . . for gentlemen.

As is often the way with period dramas, dramatic licence triumphs over fact. Kinnaird is portrayed as antagonistic in that first episode. Yet history demonstrates that it was Francis Marindin, the Football Association president and Old Etonians captain, who denied Darwen extra-time and insisted on a replay, which was drawn before the holders won at the third time of asking.

In real life Kinnaird was not just one of the best English footballers of his day but a man of some substance. A keen sportsman, he still holds the record for most FA Cup final appearances and won honours in tennis, athletics, swimming and canoeing.

In his re-released book, Arthur Kinnaird: First Lord of Football, the author and football historian Andy Mitchell, relates that he did more to popularise soccer than any man who ever lived.

Mitchell, formerly the head of communications at the Scottish Football Association, says: He came on to the FA committee in 1868 when he was at university and stayed on the committee for the rest of his life. He was thoroughly involved in the complete transformation of the game from this public park pastime to crowds of 100,000. He died in the year Wembley Stadium was built, 1923, that was [an indication] of how much the game had been transformed in his lifetime, on his watch.

The son of a Scottish MP, he was a banker in the family business, an evangelical Christian who aided the disadvantaged during times of epidemic, helped to set up schools to educate poor children and was a champion of better treatment for women. His liberal outlook came from his father an advocate for the abolition of slavery in thre US and greater rights for Scotland - and informed his own opinions on what would become football's existential crisis.

He had an enormous social conscience and I don't know how he fitted it all in with a job as a banker playing football and going off to teach in ragged schools at night and doing all this work for charity but he seemed to have a huge amount of energy and fitted it all in, says Mitchell. He was a great guy and deserves more recognition not just for his football achievements but for everything else that he did in helping the poor and disadvantaged in late-Victorian society.

The way he was brought up was to be very inclusive and to see the worth in everyone. His mother was very busy in charity and you can see this coming through. He took on his parents' charities after their deaths, running the YMCA, the YWCA, he did a lot of charitable work for women and he made a lot of speeches calling for better treatment of women in the workplace, better wages and this is pre-First World War. So, in some respects, he was ahead of his time.

Mitchell, who worked as a consultant for The English Game on specific stuff like how goalposts were put up, says the series should be viewed as a social drama, rather than historical documentary.

I didn't have much influence over the script itself. Every pocket historian is going to say 'that's not right' as is the way with any period drama. If you were so inclined, of course you could pick holes in the history. Basically it is a social drama showing how this transformation took place over a period and how the passing game came to be introduced to England and although the main protagonist is Scottish and people say 'Oh, it should be called the Scottish game' in fact, it is all about football in England and how that was transformed by the efforts of the Scottish players.

One of the main changes that followed the appearance of the first Scot was the advent of professionalism. Suter had been lured to Darwen with the promise of a job after losing his own as a stonemason following the collapse of the City of Glasgow Bank. Jimmy Love his team-mate had been a local contractor in the city before he, too, found work had dried up.

If some of this sounds eerily indicative of the uncertainty facing all of us today, there is a crumb of comfort in the discovery that Kinnaird, the son of a Scot, and Suter, who became known as one of the Scotch Professors (the name given to the trailblazing Scots who changed the way football was played) ushered in a new era while embracing a style that retains many of those hallmarks today.

However, the main objections to the presence of Scots in the English game was not about the manner in which they played the game but a rather more insidious problem; the use of ringers or paid professionals by northern teams which prompted a switch in the balance of power away from the traditionally dominant London clubs.

The top players, like Fergus Suter and Hugh McIntyre at Blackburn were given very soft loans so that they could buy a pub, adds Mitchell. Quite a few of them end up in the licensed trade, a fair few of them went bankrupt through their own lack of skills and knowledge but they were set up in business. And, if you're running a pub, you can take time off, you can play football. It was a means of getting people down, making them available for the football team but also giving them a decent living. This went on and on.

In 1884, with more and more players appearing from Scotland, the Football Association, faced with a tide they could not turn back voted to embrace professionalism, something that Kinnaird was, given his liberal sentiments, thoroughly at ease with.

He had no regrets, says Mitchell. Some of his contemporaries thought it was appalling the way the game had been spoiled by professionals and it was a shoddy concern but Kinnaird was very positive. Charles Alcock [the FA secretary] and Kinnaird led the charge and worked together to make sure that professionalism was adopted.

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The revolution will be televised: Meet the new Netflix stars who changed football forever - HeraldScotland

It is perhaps Bristols most famous area, with its zoo, bridge, brightly coloured houses and Georgian grandeur.

From the top of the hill next to the Clifton Suspension Bridge, the stunning view of the south west corner of Bristol takes in the river and the Cumberland Basin first, and just a mile or so away on the other side of the river is the south Bristol suburb of Ashton.

There are at least 20 other places in England called Clifton, but none more famous than the one at the top of the hill above Ashton.

And there are at least 50 other places around the world called Clifton - including 27 in the USA alone.

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You can find Cliftons in most of the English-speaking world - from Canada to New Zealand and Australia to South Africa. The Clifton area of Karachi in Pakistan is one of the poshest in the city - the bit on the coast where all the rich people live.

There are 14 places called Ashton in the United States - although the combined total population of them all is not greater than the number of people who live in Ashton in Bristol.

But there is another place where Clifton and Ashton are a mile and a half apart - and thats not in Bristol.

Its a place with huge, fascinating, disturbing and historic links to Bristol that still resonate to this day.

So, while were stuck indoors and need a bit of escapism, lets virtually go to the other Clifton and Ashton, and find an amazing place with long-standing links to Bristol, 4,210 miles away.

The tiny Union Island in the Caribbean is known as the Tahiti of the West Indies, because the shape of its volcanic mountain, rising out of the sea, is reminiscent of the famous South Pacific island.

Union Island is just three miles across and a mile up and down and, with the great big mountain in the middle, its population of around 3,000 live mainly in two little towns.

By the sea, the beach and the harbour is Clifton, the principal town of the island.

And a mile and half over the foothills to the west, around the coast a little way, is Ashton.

Do they play football in Ashton, and eat in expensive restaurants in Clifton?

Well, yes and no.

While Bristols Clifton has the Ivy and many other places of fine cuisine, there probably isnt anything quite as nice or relaxing as the Barracuda Restaurant, overlooking Clifton Harbour.

The harbour is a natural haven, with rocky outcrops encircling a sweeping curve of coast.

On a little peninsula to the east of Clifton is the little airport - with flights to bigger islands in the Caribbean being operated by a handful of the many airlines in the region.

Clifton and Ashton rely to a large part on being a beautiful stopover point for the tourists who sail about on the Caribbean on yachts.

That may be charter tours for a day, or island-hoppers who spend a few days or weeks there.

There are a few hotels, bars and restaurants, and watersports is a big thing on Union Island too.

Clifton Harbour is usually filled with kite surfers, while the other beaches around the island are popular with scuba divers.

The island is part of the St Vincent & the Grenadines nation, and its section of the island guide - written by the locals - describes a rocky island which is still largely untarnished by modern things like tarmacked roads and skyscraper hotels.

Take a ride on one of the half-dozen dollar buses for an overview of the island, it said.

Youll be surprised as to how little of the island is paved. Mountain bikers will appreciate this the most as the traffic is minimal and the terrain as varied as the road itself.

From Clifton, head up Fort Hill, the peak above the airport. The road looks impassable, but its not impossible. A few picnic tables are scattered across a shaded pasture, it added.

A cannon faces toward Carriacou and another strategically points to the entrance of the harbor. The view from the top is the best in all this island chain. On a clear day, both St. Vincent and Grenada are visible. After the breathtaking scenery, careful maneuvering down the rugged hillside feels adventurous.

Continuing over the hill, the hardtop road weaves through grazing lands with houses dotted here and there. We wouldnt recommend that any bushwhacking hikers attempt shortcuts through the scrub; the thorns in the bush are sharp as sea-urchin quills.

Past where the pavement ends by the seashore are mangroves, their propped-up root systems sticking out of the water. Large holes in the ground are home to crabs.

This is an ideal feeding area for crabs, shrimp and several species of fish that feed on leaf particles. Birders can expect to see kingfishers and herons here, with cattle egrets in the nearby fields.

South of Clifton, the road steeps over to Ashton, Union Islands second village. If you manage to get past the school cricket field without stopping to watch a game, continue on to Campbell, where the houses thin out. A reef system lies in Ashton Harbour between Union and Frigate Island. The road pushes toward the southern end of the island, no doubt with future residential development in mind, it added.

So while Ashton in Bristol is set to rapidly expand with housing developments happening, planned or mooted from the river bank to the Alderman Moore Allotment site, to Ashton Gates big Sporting Quarter expansion to the fields between Ashton Vale and the Long Ashton park and ride, the same is true for Ashton on Union Island - a new road stretching out south west along the coast is pointing to further development.

Clifton in Bristol is famous for its Whiteladies Road - a (usually) busy, bustling row of bars and pubs. The Clifton on Union Island is famous around the Caribbean for one bar in particular - Happy island.

About ten or 12 years ago, a Clifton resident called Janti Ramage started collecting all the empty conch shells that litter the shoreline.

He then decided that there were enough to stack up together, cemented with concrete, and create an artificial island, out on the rocky harbours edge.

He named it Happy Island, and its just about big enough for a bar, a kitchen and seating area.

Its patrons come by boat, of course, and are a mixture of local fishermen and workers in the tourism industry, and tourists themselves, with some enterprising local boat operators dropping off the rich Americans and telling them theyll pick them up in a couple of hours.

The reviews on TripAdvisor are overwhelmingly positive, describing Janti as the singing, smiling king of his little creation, with some tasty cuisine and his own mix of spiced rum punch, that people (on the whole) dont appear to mind paying ten dollars a glass for.

What almost everyone who goes to Happy Island remarks about is how the island is so small that you will be sitting there watching the kite surfers zip about on the water around you, and they will often take off and fly over the island - and the heads of the punters sitting at the tables.

Janti is described as a local legend - the nearby Palm Island donated some palm trees for his new kingdom, and his barbecued lobster is renowned across the area.

Perhaps the biggest party in Clifton is a relatively recent addition to the calendar - the Downs Festival, which takes place on the first weekend of September.

Ashton, meanwhile, is home to Bristols biggest cultural event - the annual Bristol Balloon Fiesta, which takes place at Ashton Court.

In the Clifton and Ashton 4,000 miles away, there are also two big events of the year - Easterval is a big thing during Holy Week in the run up to Easter, and then, in late May, theres a day long celebration which begins before dawn and lasts well into the night called the Maroon.

It involves a huge party, a carnival with drums, dancing and lots of food and marks the passing from the dry season in the first half of the year, into the rainy season - if the party doesnt happen, maybe the much-needed rains wont come.

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Like all of the islands in the Caribbean, the original settlers, the Arawak and the Caribs, were soon killed or died of disease when colonisers from western Europe arrived in the 16th century.

The island was one of many hundred in the Caribbean taken over by French and English slave traders and plantation owners, and the slopes of the big hills on Union Island were fertile for growing cotton.

Things started getting serious for Union Island in 1763 when the French handed over St Vincent & the Grenadines to the English, and the English immediately rewarded one of its own navy chiefs, Admiral Samuel Spann.

Spann gave Union Island its name, and immediately started filling the cotton plantations with enslaved people from the regions of Africa that are now Nigeria, Cameroon, Angola, and Ghana.

Spann was an influential man in Bristol, as well as on Union Island - where he literally owned not just the island but the people who lived there too.

The people brought to Union Island in chains on board Spanns Bristol-crewed boats were forced to work on the cotton plantations, and the villages they built were named Clifton and Ashton by Spann himself.

The names were given in honour of the two places on either side of the River Avon that the boats passed through on their way out of Bristol Harbour, before they sailed to West Africa.

Theres a false urban myth that the people trafficked as slaves by Bristols merchants came to Bristol in large numbers - but its not true, only a handful would ever have seen the original Clifton and Ashton, only the prison villages named by Spann that the slaves had to build themselves.

Back in Bristol, Spann became the head of the Merchant Venturers, and it was to him that Bristols MP Edmund Burke - whose statue stands in The Centre to this day - wrote one of Burkes most famous letters.

About ten years after Spann first took control of Union Island, there was a big issue in the union of two islands back home.

Ireland was part of the British Empire, just like Union Island, but there was a fierce debate about whether taxes on goods coming from Ireland should be imposed or maintained.

Bristols MP Edmund Burke, who today is most famous for the quote about the only thing that needs to happen for evil men to succeed is for good men to do nothing, was an Irishman himself, and a passionate advocate for free trade and the end to taxes on trade with Ireland.

But Bristols Merchants, led by Spann, fiercely opposed the dropping of the duties - it put them at a huge advantage and they were making a lot of money out of it.

Burke wrote two lengthy letters to the Merchants - addressed to Spann - explaining his position. It wasnt popular with Bristols voters - who were only the rich men of the city - and he didnt last long as the citys MP.

Back in Spanns Clifton and Ashton, generations of African people lived and worked in slavery and poverty. The abolition of slavery by the British Empire in the 1830s brought huge fortunes to one Clifton and Ashton, and little change to another.

In Clifton in Bristol, the owners of plantations and slaves were given compensation which amounts to the biggest single pay out by the British Government in history - until this week.

In the 1830s, it amounted to 40 per cent of that years GDP for the whole nation - at a time when Britain was the richest nation on Earth.

The Government borrowed so much money to do it, it wasnt until 2015 that the debt had been paid off.

The effects were huge for Clifton - with a massive amount of cash suddenly in their pockets, the rich merchants of Bristol sparked a big boom in development in Clifton, creating the suburb of grand Georgian houses we see today.

The plantation owners didnt lose their plantations, or indeed their slaves. Those people working in Clifton on Union Island might have celebrated their freedom, but the deal was that they still had to work for up to five years for free.

And then, on an island with nothing much except cotton plantations, the freed slaves continued on as share-croppers - their homes and land were still owned by the Spann family, who now employed them rather than enslaved them.

In 1850, Clifton and Ashton and Union Island itself were sold by the Spann family to a local businessman called Major Collins, and 13 years later leased to Charles Mulzac, an aggressive sharecropper of French descent.

The people of Clifton and Ashton in Bristol arent particularly noted for their rebellious natures - not compared with the likes of Stokes Croft, St Pauls or perhaps Easton.

But Clifton and Ashton on Union Island has always been a place of fierce independence.

In the late 19th century the locals rebelled against the conditions of their sharecropping, and won significant improvements. Many headed off to work on the whaling boats, and when Union Island was eventually bought back by the British Empire in the 1920s, the inhabitants of Ashton and Clifton found themselves, for the first time - in theory at least - on a level footing with those living in Ashton and Clifton in Bristol. They were British citizens and were even given the vote.

Union Island is part of the island chain nation of St Vincent and the Grenadines, and is the most southerly of those. The island nation of Grenada - which has such close links with the US, even though its a member of the Commonwealth - is close by, and can be seen from the hill above Ashton on a clear day.

In the 1970s, the people of Clifton and Ashton were so fed up with being the forgotten part of their country, that they rose up in rebellion and demanded to be allowed to breakaway from St Vincent and the Grenadines, and instead become part of the nation of Grenada.

Their country sent its own troops to the island - and soldiers fought the locals and patrolled the streets to put the insurrection down.

Since then, there has been positive change. The US Navy came to help build better harbour facilities, and investment in communications and the internet has helped the people of Clifton and Ashton embrace their new opportunities for tourism.

Excerpt from:

The story of 'the other Clifton and Ashton' and their remarkable links to Bristol - Bristol Post

the Amount of leakage of corporate data, related to the mass transfer of Russians to a remote format may increase in 2-3 times. How do you think interviewed by Izvestia experts, personal computers of employees to be more secure than office, and at home no one will be protected from spam and phishing attacks.

According to company Internet search, already from March 16 were recorded 4-fold increase in the number of phishing emails. Of course cybercriminals couldnt miss such a moment and email filled messages that contain malicious codes that allows you to make various offenses, from hacking social network account to encrypt the server of the company, said the head of Internet search Igor Bederov.

in solidarity With them in Group-IB. Attackers can pull sensitive data through the use of letters of trompe loeil, which allegedly contained important information on the topic of coronavirus for example, the abolition of travel.

At the same time vulnerable, even home computers with a configured VPN access and special systems to prevent leakage. According to the head of the Zecurion analytical center Vladimir Ulyanov, corporate data can be easily stolen due to the lack of visual control on the part of colleagues and cameras. The probability of leaks increases the transfer of communications when users begin to share work documents via personal email and instant messengers.

Additional risks arise when the employee changes the configuration or uses the programs, which were not agreed with administrators. Corporate systems, for example, may threaten a program downloaded from torrent trackers, says Director of cybersecurity Rambler Group Ilya Zuev.

to reduce the risk of leaks to a minimum, experts recommend that organizations install on home computers antivirus, configure a VPN connection with two factor authentication, and update all programs and equipmente, which is used for remote access. Not be amiss to segment the network that will help protect our corporate infrastructure, and share access rights.

Text: To.Hi-tech

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Mass migration to udalenku will double the number of leaks - The KXAN 36 News

Kosovos Ministry of Economy has formed a team to identify trade barriers and recommend to the Government of Kosovo further steps regarding the tax on Serbian goods.

It will recommend either the abolition or withholding of the 100% tax on the import of Serbian goods, Gazeta Express reports.

It is exactly one week since this team, consisting of nine members from different institutions, started to work. This team was founded at the initiative of the Kosovo Minister of Economy Rozeta Hajdari.

Based on the document obtained by the Pristina T7 television, the team consists of representatives of the Ministry of Commerce from different departments of this ministry, who also participate in the Kosovo Customs, Food and Veterinary Agency.

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Company representatives are also included in this group. The PKK, the Manufacturers Club and the Business Chamber are three bodies that represent the voice of Kosovo businesses.

Still, the American Chamber of Commerce of Kosovo is left out of the group. The Chamber told the T7 TV station that their views would have to be heard.

Despite our differing views on the issue of fees, the US Chamber of Commerce believes in the importance of the diversity of opinions and ideas that should be discussed within those bodies. However, over the past week we have had a meeting with both the Prime Minister and the Minister of Economy, at which we have communicated what is already a public view of the US Chamber of Commerce on the importance of undisturbed trade between the Western Balkan countries and therefore the full economic integration of the whole region, said Arian Zeka of the American Chamber of Commerce in Kosovo.

Vetvendosje and the Democratic Alliance of Kosovo stipulated in a coalition government agreement that the tax on Serbian products would be replaced by a measure of reciprocity.

(Blic, 25.02.2020)

https://www.blic.rs/vesti/politika/gazeta-kosovska-vlada-formirala-radnu-grupu-za-razmatranje-ukidanja-taksi/rgryqxx

This post is also available in: Italiano

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Kosovo government forms a task force for abolition of tax on Serbian goods - Serbina Monitor in English

Luxembourg may be a country only the size of Oxfordshire, but the government is making big claims for its abolition of fares on public transport comparing the move with the invention of the wheel, the arrival of the internet.

The mobility ministry says 29 February 2020, the day nationwide ticketless travel began, will become a date anchored in history, just like the first step on the moon.

The last opportunity to pay the nationwide1.70(2) flat fare was on bus number 6 in a suburb of the capital at 11.59pm on Friday 28 February.

Sharing the full story, not just the headlines

Citizens, expatriates and visitors can now enjoy permanent free travel throughout the Grand Duchy.

Its fantastic, said one of the first beneficiaries: Rosalind Brown, a marketing and communications specialist who has lived in the capital for 22 years.

Collectors item: one of the last bus tickets ever issued in Luxembourg (Simon Calder)

It does encourage you to hop on the tram. Im really glad that Luxembourg is the first country to do it. I hope others follow.

The policy has been launched by Luxembourgs deputy prime minister and mobility minister Franois Bausch.

The system that we developed in the last century cannot function any more, he told The Independent.

Everywhere we have congestion problems, the quality of life in urban areas is going down.

If we organise the big urban areas, this will help with climate change.

Luxembourgs transport system costs 430m(500m) annually, with fare revenue of 35m(41m) meetingbarely 8 per cent of the total.

The Grand Duchy is thriving economically but has severe problems with traffic. Luxembourg has more cars per capita than any other country in the European Union.

In Luxembourg City, where many expatriates from across Europe and the world live and work, there is strong backing for thenew policy.

Marija from Croatia, who works in a bar, said: We pay high taxes, so its good to get something back.

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Among many Luxembourgers, though, the move will make little difference to their travel plans: only one in five commuters currently uses public transport.

Each working day, the countrys population is augmented by 220,000 employees who commute from Belgium, France and Germany. There are fears that some of them may drive just across the border and park in a small town or villages, then jump on a free bus or train to reach their workplace.

But the deputy prime minister said that Luxembourgs government has spent 103m(120m) across the border in France to improve rail links and lure commuters from car to train.

Mobility is one of the most important challenges of humanity in the 21st century, said Mr Bausch.

Not every aspect of public transport is free: commuters who want to work in serenity can pay an extra 3 to travel first class on trains.

See the article here:

Like the first step on the moon: Luxembourg makes history as first country with free public transport - The Independent

Reader disagrees with

portrayal of Sanders

Robin Beres' recent column on Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and democratic socialism displayed shocking ignorance. Throughout her column she confused the democratic socialism advocated by Sanders with Soviet and Chinese communism. Communism advocates class warfare in order to achieve public ownership of all means of production, which the Soviet Union and China achieved through an authoritarian state. Sanders, on the other hand, seeks to strengthen democracy and roundly rejects Marxist theory and the abolition of capitalism.

In a recent speech at Georgetown University, Sanders explained that he supports a free market, but he wants to expand social programs in order to reduce widening income inequality. The economy needs to work for everyone, not just the few at the top who have the advantages.

Sanders is in the same progressive lineage as President Teddy Roosevelt and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Because of these previous presidents, we already have an economy that mixes capitalism with socialism. Sanders would like to see the U.S. develop programs such as universal health care similar to what exists in Canada and much of Europe. Such a program would save an enormous amount of money and be far more efficient than our current approach.

Sanders is not my preferred candidate. Too many of his ideas are political nonstarters. But he's certainly not a communist.

Original post:

Letter to the Editor, March 1, 2020: Reader disagrees with portrayal of Sanders - Richmond.com

Bernie Sanders wants to abolish ICE and halt deportations for everyone except violent criminals. Elizabeth Warren agrees with Sanders on deportations and says the U.S. should increase refugee admissions to 175,000 a year, nearly 10 times President Trumps current limit.

Amy Klobuchar promises to restore the right to asylum for victims of domestic violence. Joe Biden says he could persuade Congress, after decades of deadlocks, to overhaul and humanize the immigration system. Tom Steyer wants a virtual halt to deportations and an end to criminal prosecutions for unauthorized border-crossing.

Those views and others were in the spotlight for the first time in the Democratic presidential campaign at a recent forum on immigration issues a prime topic for Trump, but one that has received relatively little attention in debates and primary contests so far, with crucial votes looming Tuesday in California and several other states.

Of the candidates invited to send representatives to the Feb. 20 forum in Las Vegas, sponsored by Amnesty International, the only no-show was for Pete Buttigieg, former mayor of South Bend, Ind.

All the prominent contenders, including Buttigieg, agree on reversing Trumps most far-reaching policies: the zero-tolerance arrests and prosecutions of all undocumented immigrants, separating children from their parents, severe restrictions on asylum, and the wait in Mexico mandate for 60,000 asylum-seekers that was halted by a federal appeals court on Friday. Also, they would end Trumps cancellation of deportation reprieves for 700,000 migrants who entered as youngsters and another 320,000 from nations ravaged by wars or natural disasters, and diversion of federal funds to build a wall at the Mexico border.

But some of their differences were on display at the forum, including Sanders plan to break up Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the post-Sept. 11 agency whose officers conduct immigration-related arrests and workplace raids nationwide.

The nation doesnt need an agency roaming around simply for the purpose of terrorizing and deportation, said the Vermont senators representative, campaign manager Faiz Shakir.

He said current ICE agents should be reassigned to border safety work while immigration enforcement is turned over to the Justice Department. And the U.S. also needs a moratorium on deportations, Shakir said, removing only violent criminals who have served their sentences while sparing 99% of the people living here peacefully and contributing to Americas economy.

Warrens spokesman, Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, expressed similar views on deportation while saying ICE should be reformed from top to bottom, with immigration enforcement assigned to some other agency. Massachusetts Sen. Warren also doesnt believe that folks should be terrorized in their workplace, and wants lawyers to be provided for migrants seeking asylum, Castro said.

Bidens representative, Nevada state Sen. Yvanna Cancela, wasnt asked about deportation policy. But at another Nevada event hosted by CNN, the former vice president promised to halt all deportations for his first 100 days in office, and then to deport only immigrants who have committed a felony in the United States apparently not including the felony of illegal re-entry.

A week earlier, Biden had acknowledged, in an interview with Univision, that the record 3 million deportations under President Barack Obama including 1.7 million removals of immigrants with no criminal records had been a big mistake.

But he said the Obama administration began to get it right with Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, which allowed 700,000 immigrants brought to the U.S. before age 16 to remain in the country and get work permits for renewable two-year periods. Trump has sought to abolish the program, a dispute now before the Supreme Court.

At the immigration forum, Cancela said Biden opposes abolishing ICE but believes it has become a domestic witch-hunting organization that needs to return to its intended mission of combatting terrorism.

Similarly, Melissa Franzen, a state senator from Klobuchars home state of Minnesota, said Klobuchar does not propose to eliminate ICE, but wants it revamped and restructured to work toward keeping people safe, not terrorizing communities.

Asked about immigrants who have been sent back to Central America under Trumps order that bans virtually all Central Americans from seeking asylum, Franzen said Klobuchar would reverse the ban while taking steps to make sure the deportees can apply for U.S. asylum in their home country. Castro said Warren would allow them to return to the U.S. to apply.

Franzen said Klobuchars priorities would be to restore the right to asylum for those fleeing domestic violence, reversing a Trump administration policy; ending the caging of children, and, in the first year, winning congressional approval of a more enlightened immigration policy.

But Cancela said Biden was the one who has the relationship with Congress and the experience to get it done and rewrite the immigration laws, with a path to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants.

Steyer, the only candidate to attend in person, agreed with Sanders and Warren on deportation policy and also said unauthorized border-crossing should not be treated as a crime a position endorsed by Sanders and Warren, but not by the other candidates. The criminal law has been on the books since 1929, but was seldom enforced until the mid-2000s, and has been ramped up under the Trump administrations zero tolerance policy.

Steyer said ICE should be revamped, not abolished, but called for an end to the relationship between ICE and local law enforcement, a position akin to the sanctuary policies of California and many of its local governments.

When Steyer advocated a ban on housing detained immigrants in private prisons, the forum moderator, BuzzFeed News reporter Hamed Aleaziz, a former Chronicle staff writer, pointed out that the billionaires hedge fund had invested in Corrections Corp. of America, a leading owner of private prisons.

That was a mistake, Steyer replied, but I reversed it 15 years ago ... sold it for moral reasons, before anyone was talking about it.

Buttigieg, while bypassing the forum, has outlined immigration policies that include an end to ICE detainers orders to local police agencies to keep immigrants in custody so they can be deported and a pathway to citizenship for most current undocumented migrants.

He has not called for abolition or restructuring of ICE, but said he would favor cuts in the agencys budget and in the lockup of immigrant families and asylum-seekers to reduce detention of immigrants by at least 75%.

Another Democratic contender, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, was not invited to the forum since he did not take part in the Nevada presidential caucus. His positions on immigration, outlined earlier this month, include substantial increases in refugee admissions and visas including placed-based visas for states and local governments to meet their economic needs a ban on private detention of immigrants, and reversal of Trumps asylum restrictions.

As mayor, Bloomberg signed laws in 2013 that limited New York Citys cooperation with ICE and barred local law enforcement from holding and handing over migrants with little or no past criminal record. But in a 2017 television interview, he rejected the concept of sanctuary cities.

You cannot have everybody deciding which laws they should obey, Bloomberg said. The law is the law.

Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @BobEgelko

See original here:

Democratic presidential candidates where they stand on immigration - San Francisco Chronicle

After a seven-year effort, Enrichmond has settled into the lead stewardship role at Historic Evergreen and East End Cemeteries, the too-often-forgotten resting place of generations of the citys African Americans. As our work unfolds, we witness the uncovering and resurrecting of so much of Richmonds history that was in jeopardy of being lost. Amid the overgrown brush and sprawling bramble are gravestones of many heroic figures who played proud and esteemed roles in shaping Richmonds story.

Foremost among them is Maggie L. Walker, the Jim Crow-era businesswoman who championed civil rights and economic empowerment and whose memory is celebrated today in many ways. Other luminaries include John Mitchell, the one-time slave and contemporary of Walker, who founded a bank, became a Richmond city councilman and could evoke fear as the editor of The Richmond Planet. Sarah Garland Jones (1866-1905) was the first African American woman licensed to practice medicine in Virginia, and she went on to found Richmond Community Hospital.

These are only a few cornerstones of Richmonds African American history and culture. The cemeteries include thousands of individuals who built our city, our commonwealth and our nation. They serve as a reminder of our collective history in making a more perfect union as Freedoms First Generation the first generation of African Americans freed after the (national) abolition of slavery.

Enrichmond and our partners have achieved much over the past three years. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) awarded Evergreen Cemetery the official designation as a site of memory associated with the Slave Route Project one of the first in the world. The National Trust for Historic Preservation awarded financial support through its African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund to help launch the first phase of Evergreen Cemeterys restoration. And finally, the recently completed two-year Historic Evergreen Cemetery master plan lays out a detailed plan for reclamation of Evergreen and a foundation for the same for East End.

The reclamation of Historic Evergreen and East End Cemeteries helps us unearth poignant stories and personages. Enrichmond is committed to its responsibilities and dedicated to its stewardship of these sacred places. This commitment was most evident when we hosted 500-plus volunteers during the 2020 Martin Luther King Day of Service. But our greatest display of commitment is when our staff goes to work each and every day to partner with amazing individuals, groups, organizations and businesses to reclaim these sacred places. It is our honor.

As with any journey of commitment, it is the collective effort of many that not only makes the work successful, but also fulfilling and enduring. Throughout our stewardship, we have taken to heart the African proverb, If we stand tall, it is because we are standing on the shoulders of many ancestors. Those who inspire us to stand tall and endure are the new heroes of Evergreen and East End who gave of their time, talents and treasures to preserve black history on 100 acres in the East End of Richmond. Individuals like Veronica Davis, who along with Jim Bell and others, formed the National Association for the Restoration of African American Historic Cemeteries and Virginia Roots to foster volunteerism in support of black history. Or John Shuck, who recently celebrated his 10th year of volunteer service in both cemeteries. Davis and Shuck teamed up to form the Friends of Evergreen and Friends of East End organizations that have provided years of support to volunteers. Or Marilyn Campbell, who has volunteered almost 10 years to the preservation of African American genealogical research.

These are only a few of the thousands of volunteer heroes who have cleaned gravestones, recorded names and cleared plots again and again. Above all, it has been the hope and commitment of Evergreen and East End family members the living legacies who never stopped coming to the burial sites of their loved ones. Even when the ivy seemed relentless, the privet and overgrowth unstoppable, they came. When Enrichmond needed a partner to lead its master plan of reclamation, they formed the Executive Planning and Review Team (ExPRTs). They moved heaven and earth to make sure the path was clear. It is their path we now walk together. It is a blessing to be at their side on this journey.

New stories are growing out of the hallowed earth at Historic Evergreen and East End Cemeteries, where a renewed sense of optimism is drifting through the trees and meadows. The Richmond community has come to recognize the historical treasures buried amid the 100 acres, and new generations of heroes are taking up the mantle to see that they are preserved.

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John Sydnor column: A new generation of heroes at Historic Evergreen and East End Cemeteries - Richmond.com