Category Archives: Abolition Of Work

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

Admission for the lecture is pay what you wish.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What am I going to find? he thought.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Original post:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nuclear war

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Abolish nuclear weapons

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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LETTER | Strengthen efforts in abolishing nuclear weapons - Malaysiakini

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Almost 90 years ago, as he was forming his new administration, President Franklin D. Roosevelt summoned Frances Perkins to ask if shed become his secretary of labor.

The no-nonsense Perkins showed up with a list. On it, according to the website of the Frances Perkins Center in Damariscotta, shed written: a 40-hour workweek, a minimum wage, unemployment compensation, workers compensation, abolition of child labor, direct federal aid to the states for unemployment relief, Social Security, a revitalized federal employment service, and universal health insurance.

Radical stuff at least at the time.

I partly think this list was an attempt to overreach, Tomlin Perkins Coggeshall, Frances Perkins only grandchild, said with a chuckle in an interview last week.

His grandmother, he explained, had some misgivings about uprooting her life in New York City at the time and moving to the nations capital. So, knowing FDR well from her years as his industrial commissioner while he was governor of New York, she deliberately aimed high, telling the new president that shed only take the Cabinet post the first ever for a woman if he agreed to help her achieve all of her objectives.

Roosevelt, rather than dismiss the list as too much too fast, embraced every item on it. And thus, the New Deal was born.

She envisioned it, said Coggeshall, who founded the center that bears his grandmothers name and has spent a good portion of his life preserving her place in history.

Now, Coggeshall believes, its time for that history to repeat itself. And hes not alone.

They call themselves The Descendants. All now in their 60s or older, their names echo an era when bold ideas and actions lifted the country out of the Great Depression and set it on a social trajectory that was nothing short of transformational. And now, operating under the banner 21st Century New Deal, they say its time to do it again.

In addition to Coggeshall, they include James Roosevelt Jr., FDRs grandson; Henry Scott Wallace, grandson of Henry A. Wallace, who served as Roosevelts third-term vice president and at other times as secretary of agriculture and secretary of commerce; June Hopkins, whose grandfather, Harry Hopkins, was Roosevelts federal relief administrator; and Harold Ickes Jr., himself a deputy chief of staff to President Bill Clinton and the son of Harold L. Ickes, Roosevelts secretary of the interior.

Long proud of their forebears roles in reshaping American society, the group came together in 2020 to cheer on President Joe Biden as he invoked the New Deal in promoting his $3.5 trillion Build Back Better Act. And even as that legislation now sits dead in the water following West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchins refusal to join fellow Democrats in supporting it, the group continues to meet via Zoom each week, looking to the past for ways to steer the present.

On one Zoom call last year, they were joined by Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh, who happens to share his birthday April 10 with Frances Perkins. Theyre still working on opening a direct line to the White House if only to convey to Biden that they are behind him 100 percent as he mulls how to advance parts of his economic plan, if not the whole thing.

Whether its restoring monthly child tax credit payments, which ended in January, or getting serious about the climate crisis, or protecting future elections from voter suppression and other Republican-led shenanigans, they understand what theyre up against.

For starters, Coggeshall noted, had the filibuster existed then in its present form, the New Deal probably wouldnt have happened.

And as Wallace, the former vice presidents grandson, pointed out in a separate interview, Republican efforts to paint Biden as a socialist while similar to the headwinds FDR ran into almost a century ago are easily amplified in todays fractured media environment.

FDR was a master communicator with his fireside chats, Wallace said. And Im afraid our side is losing the framing war. We need to do a much better job letting people know that there is a social compact here. As Oliver Wendell Holmes said, taxes are the price of civilization.

Still, much like Frances Perkins once did in the face of her own formidable opposition, you have to start somewhere. If the filibuster is an anachronistic impediment to the common good, then why not abolish it outright? If the expanded child tax credit pulled 3.7 million kids out of poverty in this country, then why not reinstate it? And if wealthy people complain that their taxes are too high, why not point out that todays top marginal tax rate of 37 percent pales by comparison to the early 1950s, when it was a whopping 92 percent?

In an essay in this months issue of The Nation, Coggesshall and his colleagues told the story of how Perkins, the lone woman in a sea of powerful men, was directed by Roosevelt midway through his first term to come up with a plan for pulling the working class out of its Depression-era misery. And, with conservative backlash growing, he gave her precious little time to do it:

Quoting in part from The Woman Behind the New Deal, a 2009 biography by Kirstin Downey, they wrote:

Two days before the deadline, Perkins called her Committee on Economic Security (including our grandparents) to her home, led them into the dining room, placed a large bottle of Scotch on the table, andtold themno one would leave until the work was done. Thus was Social Security born

Many would say that kind of bold initiative is no longer possible. That our paralyzed Congress, a direct reflection of our polarized society, cant agree on anything of substance let alone a social and economic package to rival the New Deal.

Yet, not unlike their ancestors, this group wont give up. Nor will they forget.

Coggeshall, who lived in the family homestead in Damariscotta for years before selling it to the nonprofit Frances Perkins Center and moving to upstate New York two years ago, was only 11 when his grandmother died at the age of 85 in 1965. But he still remembers standing reverently over her grave in nearby Newcastle.

My mother said, Take some dirt in your hand and make the sign of the cross as you dribble it on the casket, he recalled. Ill always remember that.

And half a century later, as her only living descendant stands tall for everything she once stood for, what might she think of that?

Im sure my grandmother and the other New Dealers that were representing are smiling, Coggeshall said. And cheering us on.

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On Friday, the Supreme Court held that for the purpose of granting tax exemption based on the nature of agreements, the said agreements ought to be read as a composite whole.

In the present matter, in order to decide whether the agreement entered into between the parties was a job work agreement and fit for granting benefit of service tax exemption in terms of Notification No. 25/2012-Service Tax dated 20 June 2012, the Apex Court read the agreement as a whole. It noted that just because the agreement contained a provision for payment on the basis of rates, the same would not make it a job work agreement.

"On reading the agreement as a whole, it is apparent that the contract is pure and simple a contract for the provision of contract labour. An attempt has been made to camouflage the contract as a contract for job work to avail of the exemption from the payment of service tax."

A Bench comprising Justices D.Y. Chandrachud and Surya Kant dismissed an appeal filed assailing the order of the Customs, Excise & Service Tax Appellate Tribunal ("CESTAT"), which refused to extend the benefit of service tax exemption to the appellant and upheld the order of the Commissioner Central Excise Pune-I confirming demand of service tax, interest along with penalty.

Factual Background

Adiraj Manpower Services Pvt. Ltd. ("appellant") obtained service tax registration under the category of Manpower Recruitment or Supply Agency Service. On 01.01.2012, the appellant entered into a contract with Sigma Electric Manufacturing Corporation Pvt. Ltd., erstwhile Semco Electric Pvt. Ltd. ("Sigma"). Similar agreements were entered into between the parties on 01.02.2013 and again on 01.01.2014. As per the agreements, the appellant was required to provide personnel for felting, material handling, pouring and supply material to furnace. On 26.09.2014, the appellant was served with a show cause notice by the Commissioner Central Excise Pune-I, Commissionerate ("adjudicating authority") demanding service tax along with interest and penalty of Rs. 10,50,23,672. The allegations indicated that the appellant failed to pay service tax before due date for the period April 2012 to March 2014; to assess and discharge service tax with respect to the sales ledgers related to Sigma from September, 2012 to March, 2014; suppressed facts and made misrepresentation by filing incorrect ST-3 returns for the said period; the ST-3 return for April, 2013 to September, 2013 was filed after due date. The adjudicating authority held in favour of the Revenue. In appeal, CESTAT held that the service provided by the appellant to Sigma was a contract labour agreement and not in the nature of job work services exempted under Notification No. 25/2012-Service Tax issued on 20.06.2012.

Contentions raised by the appellant

Senior Advocate, Mr. Tarun Gulati, appearing on behalf of the appellant submitted that the definition of 'contractor' under Section 2(c) of the Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act 1970 ("CLRA") covers job workers and suppliers of manpower. However, the registration of the appellant under the statute would not automatically suggest that it was a supplier of manpower. Mr. Gulati contended that the agreements were in the nature of job work agreements. Placing reliance on Om Enterprise v. Commissioner of Central Excise, Pune-I (2018) 17 G.S.T.L. 260; Bhagyashree Enterprises v. Commissioner (2017) 3 G.S.T.L. 515, Dhanashree Enterprises v. Commissioner (2017) 5 G.S.T.L. and S. Balasubramani v. Commissioner 2019 SCC OnLine CESTAT 480, he argued that when the invoices were based on the work done on piece rate basis, the nature of work would be considered as job work and not manpower supply.

Contentions raised by the respondent

Senior Advocate, Mr. N. Venkataraman, Additional Solicitor General appearing on behalf of the Commissioner apprised the Court that as per Entry 30(c) of Notification dated 20.06.2012, in case of service provided in the nature of job work, the principal manufacturer (in this case Sigma) would pay the tax on the value of the final goods as well as the cost of the job work. Entry 30(c) reads as under -

"30. Carrying out an intermediate production process as job work in relation to

[...]

(c) any goods on which appropriate duty is payable by the principal manufacturer."

But, he argued, that the contracts entered between the appellant and Sigma were contract labour agreements whereby the appellant was not exempted from paying service tax. It was asserted that the provisions of the agreements indicated that the appellant was required to supply manpower services which is distinct from performance of job work. Mr. Venkataraman, submitted that if the work was indeed job work, then the appellant would have had service tax registration in the category "intermediate production process as job work". He alleged that the appellants have clearly suppressed the taxable value for the concerned period.

Analysis by the Supreme Court

The Court identified the issue as - whether the appellant was a job worker within the meaning of exemption notification dated 20.06.2012 or merely a supplier of contract labour. On perusal of the agreements entered into between the appellant and Sigma, the Court noted that they dealt with regulation of the manpower supplied by the appellant in the capacity of a contractor. The crucial elements of a job work agreement, like, nature of process of work to be carried out by the appellant; provisions for maintaining quality of work, nature of facilities utilised or infrastructure deployed; delivery schedule; specifications in regard to work to be performed and consequences of breach of contractual obligation were missing in the said agreements.

Headnotes

Service Tax - Whether contract is for job work or for supply of manpower - Agreement has to be read as a composite whole - In this case, though ostensibly, the agreement contains a provision for payment on the basis of the rates mentioned in Schedule II, the agreement has to be read as a composite whole. On reading the agreement as a whole, it is apparent that the contract is pure and simple a contract for the provision of contract labour. An attempt has been made to camouflage the contract as a contract for job work to avail of the exemption from the payment of service tax. The judgment of the Tribunal does not, in the circumstances, suffer from any error of reasoning (Para 17)

Case Name: Adiraj Manpower Services Pvt. Ltd. v. Commissioner of Central Excise Pune II

Citation: 2022 LiveLaw (SC) 190

Case No. and Date: Civil Appeal No. 313 of 2021 | 18 Feb 2022

Corum: Justices Dr. D.Y Chandrachud and Surya Kant

Authored By: Justices Dr. D.Y Chandrachud

Counsels for the Appellant: Senior Advocate, Mr. Tarun Gulati; Advocate-on-Record, Mr. Sameer Shrivastava, Advocates, Mr. Rohit Rathi, Mr. Rahul Totala, Mr. Kumar Sambhav.

Counsels for the Respondent: Senior Advocate, Mr. N. Venkataraman (ASG), Advocate-on-Record Mr. Mukesh Kumar Maroria; Advocate, Ms. Alka Agrawal.

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Service Tax - To Determine If Service Is For Job Work Eligible For Tax Exemption, Agreement Has To Be... - Live Law

This comes amid Putrajayas promise to study proposed alternatives to the death penalty before the end of this month, as mentioned by Minister in the Prime Ministers Department (Law) Datuk Seri Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar, who said a special committee tasked to review the death penalty had briefed him of its findings last month. Bernama pic

KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 21 The families of more than 30 death row inmates are hopeful that this year they will get some form of cheer should the Malaysian government decide to abolish the death penalty.

This comes amid Putrajayas promise to study proposed alternatives to the death penalty before the end of this month, as mentioned by Minister in the Prime Ministers Department (Law) Datuk Seri Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar, who said a special committee tasked to review the death penalty had briefed him of its findings last month.

Shamala T Manickarajah is a representative of the families who is spearheading the movement along with the various NGOs in order to push for the release, retrial, reduction of sentence, and ultimately, the abolishment of the death penalty of those convicted.

Shamala said she was inspired to help the families after finding out a childhood friends husband had been sentenced for drug possession. He has been in jail in Perlis for 13 years.

As part of her efforts, she shared how she helps the families write letters to the various agencies and to the Yang di-Pertuan Agong yearly begging for clemency for the convicted.

She said most of the families did not know how to go about getting clemency so she guided them through the process.

After repping my friend, I was going to Bentong jail and saw many prisoners crying, waiting for family members so I decided to help them and not just my friends husband. I recall in the early days I helped all the makciks and pakciks fill up their forms and wrote letters for them to the prisons and so on. Most of them are poor.

Last year, we went as a group to see Datuk Liew Vui Keong and he promised to look into our cases but he then passed away. When we went to Putrajaya to the offices, we were told they have our letters and are considering them so we are hoping for the best, Shamala said during a press conference organised by Amnesty International Malaysia (AIM) today.

We heard this year the Agong nominated 27 names for pardon. We are praying it is some of us because many of the victims have been in prison for more than a decade.

In August 2019, the Pakatan Harapan (PH) administration formed the Special Committee to Review Alternative Punishments to the Mandatory Death Penalty to examine alternatives to the mandatory death sentence.

The PH government collapsed in February 2020, however, before the Bill for the abolition of the death penalty could be tabled in the March meeting of Parliament that year.

Wan Junaidi had said that before the government decides on any amendments, it needed to determine the effectiveness of capital punishment as a deterrent to crime while also looking at alternative punishments.

Chiara Sangiorgio, an expert on the death penalty for Amnesty International, said the general public was always hesitant to agree to abolishing the death penalty but studies show that once the rule was in place, society eventually eased into it.

The global trend shows most countries are abolishing it as it was eight countries in 1958, now it is 108 countries that have abolished the death penalty.

When it is abolished, public opinion changes despite the initial hesitancy; hence, we need to continue to talk about death penalty and challenge its effectiveness as there is no evidence to show it prevents further crime, said Chiara.

In addition Chiara said from 2015 to 2020, 10 countries conducted executions and in 2020 Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Iraq made up close to 90 per cent of total reported executions worldwide.

There are eight countries including Malaysia that execute people for drug offences.

While the direction is clear, Malaysia is at a crossroads but they have the opportunity to make the change. Theres been some progress with the moratorium but what we have learnt when it comes to the use of the death penalty in Malaysia see lot of arbitrariness a lot of unfairness and discrimination.

The key learning from this is that piecemeal reforms will not work and fixing the unfixable will not work. Thats why we call for a bold stance to be taken by the government of Malaysia and get rid of it once and for all, she said.

Malaysia has had a moratorium on all executions since 2018 while awaiting recommendations from the committee.

Shamala said the families of the incarcerated understand that some of their actions are wrong, while others claim they were wrongly convicted; either way, she is hopeful there will be progress this year.

I feel the Malaysian government will definitely abolish the death penalty. From the families side, they are hoping the sentences of their loved ones can be reduced or they are released for time served, she said.

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Families of 30 death row inmates hopeful Putrajaya will abolish capital punishment this year - Malay Mail

A COVID super-spreader free-for-all could be unleashed in schools if the government recklessly lifts restrictions this week, unions warned yesterday.

Those in the education sector were joined by the TUC and Labour in telling Prime Minister Boris Johnson that his living with Covid plan was fraught with danger, particularly the abolition of self-isolation rules for infected people and the withdrawal of free testing.

Unite, Unison and GMB, representing school support staff, told the PM that his plan could lead to chaos reigning in schools and millions of hours of lost learning.

They accused him of seeking to please Tory back-bench MPs at the expense of public lives and safety.

In a BBC interview, Mr Johnson gave notice that he plans to lift restrictions and is instead in favour of encouraging personal responsibility.

He is expected to announce the details in the Commons today.

In a joint statement, the three unions urged Mr Johnson to think again and keep in place free testing and the requirement to self-isolate as an absolute minimum.

They said: The governments failure to provide clear, detailed guidance risks a super-spreader free-for-all in schools and other workplaces.

If the remaining safety rules are axed, schools will be left in an impossible situation, with parents unsure about whether to send their children into school, transmission rates soaring and new, more potent variants emerging.

Schools could soon face the nightmare scenario where staff and pupils who have been exposed to Covid or have it themselves are free to come into school without the mandatory need for isolation.

Pupils and staff unaware of their positive status will unknowingly spread Covid if ministers foolishly pull the plug on free kits.

Unison head of education Mike Short said: The Prime Minister appears to care more about keeping in with his backbenchers than he does about the health of the nation.

He called on Mr Johnson to put aside self-interest and err on the side of caution.

Unite national officer Jim Kennedy said: Once again, the Prime Minister is disregarding working peoples and the publics health this time, school staff, children and their families through reckless measures meant only to please his backbenchers.

GMB national officer Avril Chambers said: You have to question the motive behind this reckless decision. We suspect its yet another decision taken by this Prime Minister out of self-interest rather than for the good of the country.

Doctors union the British Medical Association (BMA) also questioned the lifting of restrictions as the toll of deaths and hospitalisations continues to mount.

BMA chairman Dr Chaand Nagpaul said: You have at the moment more people dying, more people in the hospital, than you had before Plan B [restrictions] was introduced.

It seems a rather odd decision to make. We need to see case rates fall down even more, remembering that people arent being restricted at the moment in any severe way at all people are living normally.

The TUC said that charging for Covid tests would be an act of madness in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis.

It warned that introducing charges would disproportionately hit front-line and low-paid workers, insisting that lateral flow and PCR tests should remain free for all who need them.

TUC general secretary Frances OGrady said: We are all looking forward to getting on with our lives, but the Prime Minister must put the country and public health first, not his backbenchers.

That means fixing our broken sick pay system once and for all. Workers who are laid low by Covid must be paid sick pay while they cant work or people will have to come into work and that will spread infections.

The ongoing failure to provide decent sick pay to everyone is leaving the country vulnerable to new variants and pandemics. Its astonishing ministers cannot see this.

Free tests must remain in place for all those who need them. This is crucial for workplace and public safety.

Labours shadow health secretary Wes Streeting said: I am particularly concerned about the end of free testing.

It is like being 2-1 up with 10 minutes left of play and subbing your best defender, he claimed.

We are not out of the woods yet on Covid and it is important that when the government publishes its plan for living with Covid tomorrow, that it is a robust plan that enables everyone to live well with Covid.

Unions called on the government to publish the scientific evidence behind the expected announcement to prove to the public that a bonfire of all the remaining Covid regulations is safe.

Mr Johnson claimed that Britain cannot continue to spendheavily on testing.

I think we need resilience, but we dont need to keep focused on testing, he said. We dont need to keep spending at a rate of 2 billion a month, which is what we were doing in January.

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Unions and Labour fear 'Covid superspreader free-for-all' as Tories plan to lift ALL restrictions and ditch free tests this week - Morning Star Online