Category Archives: Abolition Of Work

Morgan Freeman has spoken out against the ongoing call to defund the police, saying that he is not the least bit for the movement.

The actor was asked for his thoughts on police abolition during a recent interview, in light of the ongoing protests against racially motivated police brutality.

Police work is, aside from all the negativity around it, it is very necessary for us to have them and most of them are guys that are doing their job, Freeman told Selina Hill on Black Enterprise.

Theyre going about their day-to-day jobs. There are some police the never pulled their guns except in rage, that sort of thing. I dont know.

Freeman spoke to the Hill with Frankie Faison, his co-star on his upcoming film The Killing of Kenneth Chamberlain.

Well, I agree with Morgan, Faison told Hill. Im certainly not in favor of defunding the policemen.

Protesters pose with two portraits of George Floyd on June 6, 2020 in New York. Credit: Stephanie Keith/Getty Images

The topic has come under great speculation over the past 18 months especially, following the racially-motivated murder of George Floyd by policemen in May 2020 and the international protests that followed.

Many celebrities came forward to voice their support of police abolition, with The Weeknd,LizzoandJohn Legend signing an open letter calling for police budgets to be cut following Floyds death.

The open letter was launched by Patrisse Cullors, one of the co-founders ofBlack Lives Matterand a founding member of theMovement 4 Black Lives(M4BL) and calls for local officials to cut police spending and budgets and instead increase spending on health care, education and community programmes.

The time has come to defund the police, the letter states. It continues: Policing and militarization overwhelmingly dominate the bulk of national and local budgetsWe call for defunding of police and for those dollars to be rerouted to create a public national healthcare system.

You can read the letter in fullhere.

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Morgan Freeman speaks out against movement to defund the police - NME

Morgan Freeman has said that he does not support the movement to defund the police.

Police abolition is a movement that has gained momentum in recent years, especially within the US. Advocates propose replacing the police with alternative public safety infrastructure.

The movement has gained momentum in part as a response to police violence.

Speaking to Black Enterprises Selena Hill, the veteran actor said: Im not in the least bit for defunding the police.

Police work is, aside from all the negativity around it, it is very necessary for us to have them and most of them are guys that are doing their job. Theyre going about their day-to-day jobs. There are some police the never pulled their guns except in rage, that sort of thing. I dont know.

For an breakdown of what exactly is meant by defunding the police, you can click here.

Freeman can next be seen starring in The Killing of Kenneth Chamberlain, a drama which focuses on the story of an elderly Black veteran who is killed by the police.

Frankie Faison, who plays Kenneth Chamberlain in the film, endorsed Morgans comments in the same interview.

Well, I agree with Morgan, Faison said. Im certainly not in favour of defunding policemen.

Earlier this year, Freeman collaborated with a criminal justice professor to donate $1m to the University of Mississippi, for the purposes of establishing a Centre for Evidence-Based Policing and Reform.

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Morgan Freeman rejects movement to defund the police: Most of them are doing their job - Yahoo! Voices

All three of Americas largest mobile providers are phasing out 3G networks in 2022. This means that customers will need a 4G or 5G phone to stay in service.

Mobile service providers say,sunsetTheir 3G network in 2022. This means phasing out services for phones and other devices that only run in 3G.

Some VERIFY viewers have asked what that means to them and if they need to replace their 3G phones.

If I have a 3G phone, do I need to replace it with a 4G or 5G phone?

Yes, if you have a 3G only phone, you will need to replace your phone with a new model to get the service.

according to FCC, Mobile providers will phase out 3G networks as early as January 1, 2022. T-Mobile will shut down Sprints 3G network on January 1, 2022, and AT & T will shut down the 3G network by February 2022. Shut down its 3G network on July 1, 2022, and Verizon will shut down its 3G network by December 31, 2022. The FCC could affect customers from other providers as many other carriers use Verizon, AT & T, and T-Mobile networks.

According to the FCC, this means that many older mobile phones will not be able to send texts, make or receive calls, use data services, and will not be able to access 911. This affects not only 3G phones, but also certain older 4G phones that dont. Support Voice over LTE (VoLTE or HD Voice).

Those that dont support 4G or 5G will stop working when these networks are phased out, said David Burgess, a cellular technology expert.

He said 3G is being phased out because it is less spectrally efficient than 4G and 5G.

This was a 3G idea, says Burgess. In reality, 3G was a bit disappointing. The real-world spectral efficiency of 3G wasnt as high as engineers expected when the system was first designed, but now 4G is. Yes, this is even more efficient in the use of spectra and is actually much closer to performance expectations.

The FCC said the shift would create room for new technologies, including 5G. However, if you have a 3G phone, you dont need to upgrade to 5G 4G works fine.

The abolition of 3G will not affect 4G networks, said a Verizon spokeswoman. We are still investing heavily in 4G networks and will continue to invest over the years to come.

CTIA, a leader in the wireless communications industry, said: Less than 9% 2G or 3G subscription of US wireless connectivity Verizon says Over 99% of customers use 4G LTE or 5G.

AT & T provides list Which devices will continue to operate on the network after 3G is phased out. iPhone 6 and later models, Galaxy S4 Mini and later Samsung Galaxy models, and Pixel 2 and later Google Pixel models will all continue to work after the phasing out of 3G. Many phones from other brands, such as Motorola and LG, will continue to work. Phones older than those listed need to be replaced.

Major mobile operator providers have been preparing for this shift for years. In short, few customers are using 3G networks today.

Verizon, AT & T When T-mobile By providing instructions and contact information to determine if the phone needs to be exchanged, T-Mobile states that it will contact all affected customers directly.

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MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) Republican candidate for Minnesota governor Scott Jensen says a mass shooting at a St. Paul bar early Sunday morning shows the idea of defunding the police is ridiculous.

A woman was killed and 14 people were injured when gunfire broke out at Seventh Street Truck Park just after midnight. Three suspects have been arrested and are being treated at area hospitals for injuries suffered in the shooting.

READ MORE: 3 Men Arrested After Hellish Shootout At St. Paul Bar Leaves 1 Dead, 14 Injured

On Facebook, Jensen posted a video of Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher driving through the area of the shooting the night before it happened. Fletcher regularly livestreams patrols from his squad car.

We never had any shots fired right here, Fletcher says while driving past Seventh Street Truck Park. I hope we never do, but with this volume, at some point, its gonna happen, right?

We need cops, Jensen wrote. Sheriff Bob Fletcher predicted there would be a shooting at Truck Park in St Paul a night before it happens we need to trust our police and give them all the resources to keep our cities safe. Any talk of defunding them is ridiculous!

READ MORE: Minnesota Officials React To Mass Shooting At St. Paul Bar

Fellow Republican gubernatorial candidate Sen. Paul Gazelka echoed Jensens comments in a video posted to Twitter.

I dont have words for this. Weve got to get our streets back, Gazelka said of the shooting. We have to have more police on the streets, period. Minneapolis and St. Paul have got to get control of their streets. The city of Minneapolis has got to vote that they want more police, not less police.

In his 2022 budget address, St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter announced his intent to launch an Office of Neighborhood Safety, but noted that does not mean the St. Paul Police Department will disappear.

While this work alone wont realize all our neighborhood safety goals, we know there will continue to be some instances where there is simply no substitute for an officer, Carter said.

On the surface, Carters proposed 2022 budget shows about $1.2 million less spending on the citys police department. However, the proposal notes that this is due to shifting contract expenses from Police to other departments, including $4.6 million shifted to Emergency Management and about $455,000 to the City Attorneys Office.

If not for these shifts, Polices total spending would grow 3.5% from the 2021 adopted budget to the 2022 proposed budget, the proposal notes.

The proposal would also use $1.7 million from American Rescue Plan funding to to allow the Saint Paul Police Department to more easily fill vacant positions as officers retire, Carter said.

In Minneapolis, residents will vote in November on whether the city should replace its police department with a Department of Public Safety.

Calls for reduced funding to police departments across the country, and in some cases, abolition of police, have increased in the wake of George Floyds murder and other high-profile police killings. Advocates for defunding say the money spent on police departments could be better spent on alternatives to policing.

Yes 4 Minneapolis, a coalition championing the replacement of the Minneapolis Police Department, says those alternatives would include mental health and addiction specialists to help people in crisis, de-escalation experts and social workers.

But the group says their proposal would still include armed police to resolve violent or dangerous situations, to keep people safe.

Jensen was elected to the state Senate in 2016 and announced in 2019 he would not seek re-election.

Gazelka stepped down as senate majority leader last month before announcing his candidacy for governor.

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We Need Cops: Republican Candidates For Governor Decry Defund The Police Movement After St. Paul Bar Shooting - CBS Minnesota

The Signing of The Declaration of Independence, c. 1873, by Charles douard Armand-Dumaresq.(Public domain/Wikimedia)

No living historian has done more to illuminate the origins of our constitutional heritage in the Revolutionary era. His latest book adds to this record.

Legislators pandering to populist mobs, printing endless supplies of devaluing fiat currency. Lenders worried that rampant inflation will corrode their assets, diminishing their wealth through irregular means of de facto appropriation. Proliferation of legislation, each new act superseding the previous at such a pace that no one can understand the law, much less act upon it with confidence. A chronically divided Congress unable to agree upon a coherent, stable, and effectual foreign policy. Men of good taste and reputation politically sidelined by scurrilous demagogues. What could possibly rescue America from such a dire political crisis?

Framing and ratification of the United States Constitution, of course. To be clear, we are discussing the crisis of the 1780s what late-19th-century historian John Fiske termed The Critical Period of American History. Gordon Wood has devoted a prolific career to the better understanding of this era. As he began his undergraduate career in the early 1950s, economic historians typically agreed with Patrick Henrys assessment of American life in the Confederation period. The Anti-Federalist firebrand urged his fellow-delegates at the Virginia ratification convention to go to the poor man and ask him what he does. . . . He enjoys the fruits of his labor . . . in peace and security. Go to every other member of society you will find the same tranquil ease and content. How, then, to explain the dramatic transformation wrought in the constitutional framing? Following the thesis of Charles Beards Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States, neo-progressive historians of that era tended to picture the move for a new national government as something of a conspiratorial fraud, as Wood puts it in Power and Liberty: Constitutionalism in the American Revolution, his latest work on the early history of America.

In his influential The Whig Interpretation of History, English historian Herbert Butterfield warned against the distortive influence of culturally egocentric evaluative criteria: History is easily misunderstood when tendentiously presented as a glorious march leading upward to ourselves. This is sound advice for professional historians; it is for good reason that Butterfield is still assigned to graduate students. Unfortunately, this necessary corrective for uncritical chauvinism combined with Progressive economic determinism to discourage scholarly interpretation of the American founding as either unique or that dread word! good.

Bernard Bailyn, Woods graduate adviser at Harvard, was the first prominent American historian in decades to take the Founding generations political ideas seriously. In 1967s Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, Bailyn asserts that Patriot triumph introduced a new era in human history. From his encyclopedic survey of 17th- and 18th-century British and American colonial political literature, Bailyn concludes that the Revolutions leaders intended not the overthrow or even the alteration of the existing social order but the preservation of political liberty threatened by the apparent corruption of the constitution, and the establishment in principle of the existing conditions of liberty. Chapter one of Power and Liberty succinctly summarizes this American Whig view of British constitutionalism, and the revolutionary crisis it produced. The proper location of sovereignty this supreme lawmaking power, Wood writes, became the issue that finally broke up the empire. A more precise statement of the American Revolutions causes is impossible. To the British, representation meant Parliament. But by the 1760s, American colonials because of their different experiences . . . had come to believe in a very different kind of representation. To Americans, the process of election was not incidental. . . . People had to actually vote for their representative. If this seems an obvious truism, that is testament to the Revolutions epoch-making and ultimately world-shaping nature.

As the colonials appealed first to British law and their own written charters, they grew increasingly frustrated at Londons unwillingness to concede any portion of sovereign authority to their local assemblies. Finally, they despaired of trying to divide the indivisible, appealing rather in abstract terms to the peoples natural rights and locating sovereignty only in their directly elected representatives. The result of this gradual but precipitous evolution is best expressed in the Declaration of Independence, which Wood calls the most important document in American history.

We might call this neo-Whig understanding of the Revolutions constitutional ideology the BailynWood thesis. Power and Liberty is a masterfully succinct survey of that thesis. But Wood is not a triumphalist purveyor of hagiographic Founder-worship. He wrote in The Purpose of the Past: Reflections on the Uses of History that to understand the past in all its complexity is to acquire historical wisdom and humility and indeed a tragic sense of life. This is not a sad or pessimistic sense of life, rather a nuanced sense of . . . limitations. The American founders are not mythic giants, predestined to inexorable works of eternal greatness or at least, imagining them as such does little to help later Americans understand and utilize the institutions they bequeathed. Yet this generation brought about extraordinary and lasting progress. In chapter seven of Power and Liberty, Wood summarizes the transition from gentry-dominated government in a colonial world where power functioned as a private and often hereditary right, to a republican era of popular government circumscribed by private rights. For the Western world in general, Wood claims, this great demarcation, this sharpening of the difference between private and public marked the transition to modernity.

By invoking the rights of all men, the Revolutions leaders unleashed a tidal wave of change. They aimed to create republican governments that would abolish the abuses of patronage . . . that had plagued the old society, creating in their place republican citizens who were equal and independent. Perhaps counterintuitively, the Revolutionaries assertion of the primacy of the public good over private interests . . . compelled them to conceive of state power in radically new ways. Soon, newly republican state governments carved out exclusively public spheres of action and responsibility where none had existed before. One unintended consequence was the emergence of a populist political style. Where colonial elites had made claims to public office based on their wealth and social standing, republican candidates flattered the great mass of farmers and artisans by affecting the common touch, often falsely. As Wood has detailed at greater length in The Radicalism of the American Revolution and Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different, the Revolutions elite, gentry-class leaders unwittingly created a world with no place for men of their description.

But if the American Revolution brought about radical social change, how to account for the survival of and subsequent proliferation of that greatest of inequalities, slavery? Wood has publicly criticized the controversial 1619 Project, joining four other scholars in urging the New York Times to review factual oversights in its fundamental claims. In her introductory essay to the 1619 Project, Nikole Hannah-Jones identified the preservation of slavery as a central motivation for Revolutionary leaders, at least in the southern colonies. Wood et al. responded emphatically that this is not true. If supportable, the allegation would be astounding yet every statement offered by the project to validate it is false.

Considering this public dispute, perhaps Power and Libertys sixth chapter, Slavery and Constitutionalism, will generate the greatest interest. Wood begins that chapter by observing that in colonial societies where half the population at any one moment were legally unfree . . . the peculiar character of lifetime, hereditary black slavery was not always as obvious. Critical race theorists might bristle at the comparison of black slavery to white indentured servitude, but Woods point is clear and fair. The radical rights-based language of the Revolution first swept away legal distinctions between classes of unenslaved people, all now theoretically equal citizens. Unfreedom could no longer be taken for granted as a normal part of hierarchical society, Wood writes. Before long . . . indentured white servitude disappeared everywhere in America. This made the continued enslavement of blacks stand out the more starkly. As Sean Wilentz has compellingly demonstrated in No Property in Man, the American Revolution inspired a sweeping anti-slavery politics unprecedented in human history. Within a generation, slavery was abolished in all states north of Delaware. Even in Virginia, then by far the greatest slave-holding state, there was serious criticism of the institution that seemed destined to end in abolition yet continued well into the 19th century. When Americans did finally abolish slavery tragically late and at immense cost in requiting blood drawn with the sword it was the Revolutions ideals to which abolitionists appealed.

But neither this concise book nor the wider corpus of Woods work is best understood as a narrow response to radical theorists of race relations. As Wood outlines in chapters two and three of Power and Liberty, the Revolution unleashed what constitutional reformers such as James Madison viewed with alarm as excessive democracy in the states . . . a problem the confederation, however amended, however strengthened, could not handle. Madison fretted in his Vices of the Political Systems of the United States (1787) that the multiplicity and mutability of [state] laws prove a want of wisdom, an unjust defect still more alarming . . . because it brings more into question the fundamental principle of republican government, that the majority . . . are the safest guardians both of public good and of private rights. This is the core dilemma of the American constitutional tradition. The manner of the Framers resolution of that dilemma is the purpose of Woods magnum opus, The Creation of the American Republic, published in 1969.

The Declaration of Independence asserts that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. In the American political tradition, legitimate consent is direct representation through the electoral process. How, then, to safeguard the private rights of individuals from potential abuse at the hands of democratic majorities? Through their colonial and English heritage of written charters, and their Revolutionary experience of resistance to overbearing and unelected government, Americans developed a new constitutional theory. In Britains imperial structure, central authority had restrained the local, and crown-appointed executives restrained the legislative. The American Revolution consciously threw off those restraints, only for the Framers to reimpose analogous mechanisms less than a decade later. As Pennsylvanias James Wilson claimed amid the ratification debate, this was no antidemocratic counterrevolution. Instead, the U.S. Constitution shrewdly avoided choosing between the federal government and the states, thus evading the conceptual dilemma that rent Britains empire asunder. Sovereignty in America, [Wilson] said, did not reside in any institution of government, or even in all the institutions of government put together. Instead, sovereignty, the final, supreme, indivisible lawmaking authority, remained with the people themselves, Wood writes. In striking upon this idea, Federalists could scarcely restrain themselves in drawing out its implications, chiefly that locating sovereignty in the people themselves makes possible the idea of federalism. Sovereign power is not divided against itself. Instead, each layer and branch of government is a mere instrument of the people empowered to some particular and limited purpose. Thus, written constitutions themselves are not external restraints upon the people but supreme expressions of the peoples own will. The constitution is then, in the words of George Washingtons Farewell Address, until changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, sacredly obligatory upon all.

The whole genius of this constitutional heritage is perhaps nowhere more aptly stated than in Abraham Lincolns first inaugural: A majority, held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, . . . changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. No living historian has done more to illuminate the origins and emergence of that tradition in the Revolutionary era; I can imagine no better or more potently concise introduction to that historians work than Woods own Power and Liberty.

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Power and Liberty and Gordon Wood - National Review

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The village of Nelson made national headlines over the weekend after it was reported by the Telegraph that its name has been placed on a council list of problematic place names with links to the slave trade.

Cue social media outrage at suggestions that Nelson should be changing its name or that wokeness was somehow out of control.

The Daily Mail and the Times followed the story up as did Nation.Cymru albeit with their own angle suggesting the area revert to its Welsh name of Ffos y Gerddinen.

As a journalist I can see how this story was constructed.

The article implied that Caerphilly County Borough Council decided upon itself to create this list and the Telegraph got two Conservative politicians to criticise the Labour-run local authority.

While the council did create a list of place names with possible links to the slave trade, it was actually for submission to a national audit announced by the First Minister in June last year. This was in response to the Black Lives Matter movement.

The results of this were published in November last year 11 months ago. It was widely covered by the media at the time.

The audit stated that Horatio Nelson privately opposed the abolition of the slave trade, although he made no public declaration of his stance.

Newspapers and websites write for their audiences. The notion of an entire village cited as a problematic place in the context of the UKs culture wars (whatever they actually are) was simply a great story for the Telegraph and other right-wing outlets.

What the Telegraph published wasnt inaccurate (apart from describing Churchill Park as a park), but it was framed in such a way as to create controversy and outrage.

At the time of the audits publication in November last year, First Minister Mark Drakeford said: This is not about rewriting our past or naming and shaming. It is about learning from the events of the past.

It is an opportunity for us to establish a mature relationship with our history and find a heritage which can be shared by us all.

How can anyone argue with this aim? Unless you want to stir things up with the so-called culture wars.

The Telegraph article is a classic example of journalism generating a lot of heat but not much light.

I was torn over whether to spend time on this story today. I didnt want to write a story along the lines of Claims that Nelson will be renamed have been denied etc, as its obvious.

Of course, the council and its leadership have moved to say Nelson will not be renamed and they had to because of the reaction online.

The speed at which information (or misinformation) is spread these days is frightening the Telegraph article has already been referenced on Nelsons Wikipedia entry. So rather than just write a click-bait article with the obvious denials, I wanted to explain how this stuff can happen. Its what I think journalism should be about.

Richard is the editor and publisher of Caerphilly Observer which he set up in 2009. Growing up in Abertridwr, he started his career at the now defunct Campaign before stints at the Barry and District News and Brighton Argus.He can be contacted at richard@caerphilly.observer

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Nelson is not being renamed, but you don't need this article to tell you that - Caerphilly Observer

Born in Nigeria, he grew up in London and moved to Stranraer to live with an aunt when he was 14. It was not long before he was called a monkey, and then other names that are hard to repeat. The mum of his friend was spat on in the face and told to leave the country.

In London, he recalled, people disliked you because of the way you acted or because of your postcode but never because of your race. In Scotland, as Bemz moved from living in the majority to a minority, the opposite was true.

Bemz, 27, whose real name is Jubemi Iyiku, said: I never really experienced racism until I came to Stranraer. I can laugh at it now because it was so horrible but going from being the majority to the minority was very, very tough.

People needed something to annoy me with but I have got a really, really thick skin. They knew they could attack me using the colour of my skin.

"I am not going to say that Stranraer was a really bad place, but it was where I noticed racism first hand for the first time.

That was in the early 2000s, but Bemz says racism is still out there, although people are more subtle about it. He heard it on the bus to a Celtic match when he was called Bobo Bald a French Guinean footballer who played for the club - or at the Riverside Festival this summer, when he wore a Nigerian poncho and someone called him Joe Aribo, a Nigerian national who plays for Rangers.

One afternoon in Ayr, he was walking home with a pint of milk when police stopped to search him following reports of drug dealing in the area. The search never went ahead after Bemz said he was going home to put his milk in the fridge unless they could come up with good a reason why he was stopped.

At a nightclub in the town, people thought the toilet attendant must have been his dad because the man was black.

He says racism has affected him subconsciously and he will not go to certain places or areas. But, after becoming a father to a baby daughter, racism now keeps him awake at night.

He said: "I just know her life is going to be hell. Her mum is Irish Catholic and I just know there are going to be people who are going to make her feel that she doesnt belong in any space. Thats the only thing that kind of gets to me. Id take racism every single day of the week if it means she didnt have to deal with it.

Bemz found out he was going to be a father the day before he attended the Black Lives Matter protest in Glasgow, organised as part of the global response to the murder of George Floyd by police officer Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis in June 2020.

He said: It was a tough one for me. I had just found out I was going to be a dad but I still had to be there. Afterwards I came away and I just felt that I had a lot of work to do myself and that the community also had a lot of work to do.

"Listening to people who had been through the same experiences, I was like holy crap. There was a sense of unity but also a sense of disgust that I wasn't the only one."

Black Lives Matter protests unfolded across Scotland, from Orkney, to Oban, Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Dundee. Race equality chiefs in Scotland said they had never seen anything like the level of interest in anti-racism that was triggered by the killing of George Floyd.

How that momentum maintains itself is of great interest. At least 65 public organisations and institutions in Scotland, from universities to local authorities, made public anti-racism statements and pledges to act to improve diversity in the wake of the response. The Coalition for Racial Equality and Rights (CRER) is monitoring progress.

The rise of Black Lives Matter came as some of these same institutions faced up to their own historic links to racism and oppression as Scotland's significant role in the Transatlantic slave trade became abundantly clear.

Among them was Glasgow University, who financially benefited from Scottish slave traders in the 18th and 19th centuries by between 16.7m and 198m in todays money. The university has now set up a programme of restorative justice and will spend around 20m on a joint centre for research and development with University of the West Indies.

In November 2020, the university named its new 90m learning hub after James McCune Smith, who was born into slavery and became the first African American to be awarded a medical degree graduating from Glasgow. Twenty scholarships are now awarded in his name.

Others have followed in their reckoning. National Trust for Scotland promised to review its properties and collections linked to slavery, from Culzean Castle to Glenfinnan Monument. Historic Environment Scotland will do the same. The public is being asked how it wants Scotlands colonial and slavery past represented in the countrys museums.

Reviews into monuments linked to slavery in Inverclyde and South Ayrshire are underway. In Edinburgh an investigation continues into the citys statues, monuments, street and building names with links to slavery and colonialism.

Today, a plaque now sits at the Melville Monument in St Andrew Square, which honours Scottish political heavyweight and first Lord of the Admiralty Henry Dundas, which was vandalised several times during the Black Lives Matter protests.

The plaque, which will be made permanent, details Dundas role in deferring abolition of the slave trade and is dedicated to the memory of more than half a million Africans whose enslavement was a consequence of Henry Dundas actions.

Descendants of Dundas have described the plaque as misleading, with historian Sir Tom Devine describing it as bad history given the wider factors surrounding the delay to abolition.

Race equality campaigner Sir Geoff Palmer, who is leading the Edinburgh review and who for several years served on a separate group to get the Dundas plaque in place, said the Black Lives Matter movement had forced change.

Sir Geoff, who said the evidence against Dundas was unequivocal, said he was optimistic about the response.

He said: "Nothing like this has happened before.

"People are now aware that Black lives do matter. It is those people who push this whole idea that one race is inferior to another that now have a problem.

We have a plaque on the Dundas statue that is now going to be permanent. When has that happened before?

"When has a university like Glasgow, which benefited from slavery and is now going to set up educational links and scholarships in the Caribbean, named the building after a black person who is not a politician?

"And even if nothing else happens, some things have happened that are not reversible.

Around four per cent of Scotlands population is from ethnic minority backgrounds. The last census in 2011 recorded 141,000 people of Asian background and 36,000 identifying as African, Caribbean or Black. A further 34,000 were recorded as mixed, multiple or other ethnicities.

But moving the highly visible Black Lives Matter response to one side, deep seated inequalities in these communities in Scotland persist. Those of a BME (Black and Ethnic Minority) are twice as likely to experience poverty as someone from a white Scottish or British background.

The employment gap with white people sits at over 16 per cent, according to research by CRER and educational attainment by those in the BME communities is less likely to translate into the jobs market.

Meanwhile, almost two-thirds of race hate crimes around 4,000 are reported a year counted victims from a non-white ethnic group, despite making up only 4 per cent of the population.

Pressing work to address racism is ongoing at the Scottish Government, in particular systematic racism embedded into organisations and administrations. There is an acknowledgement that Black Lives Matter has helped to highlight the issue.

Last month, Christina McKelvie MSP, Minister for Equalities and Older People, gave an update on the governments immediate priorities on race equality.

She said: It is clear that it is not enough to simply not be racist, in order to truly take down the structural and institutional inequalities that make minority ethnic peoples lives worse in Scotland we need to have an actively anti-racist approach in everything we do.

"Anti-racism that is, seeing racism as a structural issue must be firmly embedded in organisational culture and practice in order to start tackling the roots of racism

She added: A challenge for us is how we are going to build systems and structures in Scotland that work against structural and systemic racism, and how we ensure that our policies translate to real, improved outcomes for minority ethnic people in Scotland.

"We recognise the need for deep and lasting change Scotland does not and cannot claim to be free from racism.

A government-led group, co-chaired by Dr Ima Jackson, senior lecturer in the School of Health and Life Sciences at Glasgow Caledonian University, is examining the health inequalities experienced by ethnic minority communities during the Covid-19 pandemic.

People from South Asian backgrounds in Scotland were almost twice as likely to die from COVID-19 with separate research finding ethnic minority communities feeling the economic effects of the crisis harder.

In immediate response, sustenance payments totalling around 700,000 were paid to minority ethnic communities impacted by the pandemic which covered mental health support, funded digital devices to allow people to stay connected and supported frontline support to access food and medical supplies. Multi-lingual advice on the vaccination programme was also created.

Dr Jackson said the group was set up because the health data on ethnicity in Scotland was so poor that the picture being reported both in England and the rest of the world could not be investigated here. Improving ethnicity data on health including at GP level and at the stage of hospital admissions - is now a critical task.

On housing, work continues to tackle poor accommodation or overcrowding in some minority ethnic groups, such as migrant workers and asylum seekers.

In schools, the role of Scotland and the UK in colonial history and slavery and the impact it has on the modern world will be embedded into the curriculum with resources now distributed to classrooms. There is a drive to increase the number of ethnic minority teachers, who represent around just one per cent of the workforce when eight per cent of pupils come from BME communities. The figure rises to 25 per cent in Glasgow, it is understood.

Jatin Haria, executive director of CRER, said some good things were happening but warned of the risks of losing momentum.

He added: "Meaningful change is not going to happen within a few months or even a few years. Its a long-term thing.

"I think racial equality is still relatively high on the agenda, I dont think it has been totally forgotten about following Black Lives Matter.

"We did worry that it might blow over in a few days or week. There is always a risk that it could disappear at any time and people could move on to something else

"But people are still talking about race in a way that they never used to.

He added: "There are some good things happening but these things can be cyclical. People do things for a short while and then it is dropped. We never move forward enough, we are always dropping it and then going back to the beginning, starting again at zero.

We really need to make sure that is not allowed to happen and I think there is enough momentum now to make sure that wont be the case.

For Bemz, as he watches his eight-month daughter grow, time for change is tight.

He said: Black Lives Matter put pressure on people to do things but I found myself doubting their intentions. Why werent they doing that 10 or 15 years ago?

"We can sit here and celebrate the small things that people have done but for me we wont know if there has been real change, lasting change, for another 10 years or so. We wont know until then if people held on to that energy they had when Black Lives Matter came to the forefront.

He added: "Slow progress to me isnt progress. It doesnt matter if we make progress when we are 30, 50, 100 years behind.

Black History Month runs during October

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Black History Month: 'I never knew what racism was until I moved to Scotland' - The Scotsman

By David M. GreenwaldExecutive Editor

People hear terms like defund the police abolish the police disband the police and most have an immediately thought that is likely a misconception of the concept.

I definitely tend to come down on the side of reform rather than abolition of police. As I have written, I would like to take a very deep dive there however, to the point where I would contemplate completing changing how we police and who polices.

But I am also open to ideas, and I caught a clip of Derecka Purnell, author of Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests and the Pursuit of Freedom. She was recently interviewed on the Daily Show its worth a watch.

As the host pointed out I think very correctly, If you even suggest a criticism of the police especially in America, you are seen as somebody who hates all police, youre seen as somebody who loves crime, youre seen as somebody who just doesnt believe in a functioning society.

Purnell pointed out it depends on who she talks to, but she gets the question what about murders, the rapists, will I be safe?

Im usually in conversation with people who are most vulnerable to violence from their loves, their neighbors, strangers, cops, she said. So then I ask them with a million cops right now, do you feel safe?

Usually their answer is no, she said.

Right now for many they dont have anything and as Purnell explained police at least feel like something.

But what she then said is that abolition is not merely the absence of police instead she argued, its eliminating the root causes of harm and its eliminating the kind of society that could rely on police to solve that harm. Because you know that police cant solve it.

Thats sort of where I start, she explained.

She also asked key questions: why do people kill people? Why do people commit sexual violence?

She argued, Because sending police to go and arrest someone whos a murderer, it doesnt prevent the murder.

She further argued, Its not as if police are standing out in front of their houses every night, protecting them from the bullets that entered their windows. Thats not what police can do.

Instead, she argues, Police can go get the person who may have killed them, but that doesnt save lives.

Now I think she misses what most people would consider two functions of police (1) that their presence may not stop all murders but their absence would likely lead to more murders. (2) They may not stop person A from killing person B, but they can if they catch person A, they potentially prevent them from killing person C.

Now where I thought she would go where I would have gone is that police actually dont do a great job of catching Person A in the first place. About half the murders go unsolved. Thats an astonishing failure rate. So they may not be deterring the killing in the first place and they are certainly not stopping the person before they kill person C if they ever would have (most people are not killing randomly in that manner and most murders are probably a one-off).

Where she did go is on solid ground though.

We actually know what eliminates and prevents murders, right. Which is a strong economy, jobs, healthcare, education, being connected as a part of a community where theres accountability, she said.

All of this of course is a long term goal that a lot of people will support, but changing society and changing mentality is not going to happen overnight.

Purnell acknowledges that.

Theres no way abolition is going to happen overnight, she said. There are one million cops. There are 2300 jails and prisons. There are 18,000 law enforcement agencies. America loves cops.

Whats so sad is that cops dont have an answer for every single scenario, she said. But who is funded? Police.

She said, if police are the answer, Why isnt all of these ills of society decreasing?

As the host pointed out: fundamentally what youre saying is Americans need to think about solving the cause instead of only treating the symptoms.

I think Derecka Purnell makes an important argument that we need to look at the cause of these problems. We know pretty much the root causes for crime. It starts with poverty and especially concentrated poverty which puts pressures on individuals, families and communities.

If you want to lower someones chances for committing crimes get them an education and a job.

Beneath that however, we need to deal with personal layers of trauma abuse, neglect, trauma, and the accompanying mental health disorders and substance abuse.

Where I think people like Purnell have a point is we will pay $85,000 a year to lock someone in a cage, but we whine every time we talk about funding these programs. We argue that these programs doesnt work, but incarceration doesnt work, 70 percent of people locked up will commit another crime precisely because we have not dealt with the underlying problems.

But our answer to that hey, lets incarcerate more. We could lock people up indefinitely which is what we started doing in the 80s and 90s and the problem is the bills climb and there are better ways to actually address the problem.

So I think she is right there. That said, we will always have a need for some sort of law enforcement in this country.

Other countries do not have near the crime problem that we do but every society has police. Where I have seen other abolitionists go is looking toward different structures for protecting public safety. I could go for that.

As I have said before I dont think the police we have are particularly effective at preventing crime, they are not very good at solving crime, and they are exceedingly bad at working on other social issues like mental health disorders and homelessness.

I think we can and should do better. Thats where I would go with this.

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Monday Morning Thoughts: A Look at What Police Abolition Could Look Like - The Peoples Vanguard of Davis

William Wilberforces movement to abolish slavery and the slave trade used the power of stories of Black British and female abolitionists, and ultimately led to the Slave Trade Act of 1807. Now a theatrical performance, written and directed by academics at Brunel University London and the University of Essex, is touring the UK to celebrate the vital contributions of individuals such as Olaudah Equiano, Mary Prince and Mary Birkett Card all in a unique immersive experience.

Audience members for each performance of Breaking the Silence bear witness to a fictionalised meeting by key members of the 18th and early 19th-century British abolitionist movement. Through original speeches, personal narratives and song, these individuals powerful stories are brought to life in their own words.

Breaking the Silence is being performed in historic churches where freed slaves are buried and/or with close ties to the slave trade and abolition, and is continuing to unlock local connections to slavery and abolitionists. It sold out in Sunderland Point, has visited Liverpool and Fulham, and will be performed in Hampstead, Soham, Manchester, Bristol and Nottingham all throughout Octobers Black History Month.

In partnership with Collisions Theatre Company, the work of verbatim theatre is written and directed by Dr Holly Maples of the University of Essex and co-written with historian Dr Inge Dornan from Brunel, and complements a programme of events and an exhibition Unlocking the Secrets of Slavery and Abolition, currently on display in Brunels Eastern Gateway Building organised by Brunel for the Being Human Festival in 2019. The original cast includes William Witt, Cliona Malin and Franki Mangru, all of whom are Brunel students or alumni.

Breaking the Silence is created with prestigious funding from Arts Council England and the Unity Theatre Trust, Brunel Research and Engagement and East 15 School of Acting, University of Essex Research.

To book tickets, or find out more about the tour, visit Collisions Theatre Companys Breaking the Silence tour site.

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Theatrical tour gives voice to 18th century Black British abolitionists - Brunel University News

All three of Americas largest mobile providers are phasing out 3G networks in 2022. This means that customers will need a 4G or 5G phone to stay in service.

Mobile service providers are planning to sunset 3G networks in 2022. This means phasing out services for phones and other devices that only run in 3G.

Some VERIFY viewers have asked what that means to them and if they need to replace their 3G phones.

If I have a 3G phone, do I need to replace it with a 4G or 5G phone?

Yes, if you have a 3G only phone, you will need to replace your phone with a new model to get the service.

According to the FCC, mobile providers will phase out 3G networks as early as January 1, 2022. T-Mobile will shut down Sprints 3G network on January 1, 2022, and AT & T will shut down the 3G network by February 2022. -Mobile will then shut down its own 3G network on July 1, 2022, and Verizon will shut down its 3G network by December 31, 2022. The FCC adds that many other carriers use Verizon, AT & T, and T-Mobile networks. Customers from other providers may be affected.

According to the FCC, this means that many older mobile phones will not be able to send texts, make or receive calls, use data services, and will not be able to access 911. This affects not only 3G phones, but also certain older 4G phones that dont. Support Voice over LTE (VoLTE or HD Voice).

Those that dont support 4G or 5G will stop working when these networks are phased out, said David Burgess, a cellular technology expert.

He said 3G is being phased out because it is less spectrally efficient than 4G and 5G.

This was a 3G idea, says Burgess. In reality, 3G was a bit disappointing. The real-world spectral efficiency of 3G wasnt as high as engineers expected when the system was first designed, but now 4G is. Yes, this is even more efficient in the use of spectra and is actually much closer to performance expectations.

The FCC said the shift would create room for new technologies, including 5G. However, if you have a 3G phone, you dont need to upgrade to 5G 4G works fine.

The abolition of 3G will not affect 4G networks, said a Verizon spokeswoman. We are still investing heavily in 4G networks and will continue to invest over the years to come.

CTIA, the leader in the wireless communications industry, states that less than 9% of wireless connections in the United States have 2G or 3G subscriptions, and Verizon has more than 99% of its customers using 4G LTE or 5G.

AT & T provides a list of devices that will continue to operate on your network even after 3G is phased out. iPhone 6 and later models, Galaxy S4 Mini and later Samsung Galaxy models, and Pixel 2 and later Google Pixel models will all continue to work after the phasing out of 3G. Many phones from other brands, such as Motorola and LG, will continue to work. Phones older than those listed need to be replaced.

Major mobile operator providers have been preparing for this shift for years. In short, few customers are using 3G networks today.

Verizon, AT & T, and T-Mobile provide instructions and contact information to determine if a phone needs to be exchanged, and T-Mobile states that it will contact all affected customers directly. ..

Other articles on VERIFY: No, electric cars are less harmful to the environment than gasoline cars

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Only 3G, 4G and 5G phones that were discontinued in 2022 will work

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Only 3G, 4G and 5G phones that were discontinued in 2022 will work - Texasnewstoday.com