Category Archives: Abolition Of Work

In six months physical punishment of children in Wales will be outlawed, with parents facing a criminal record if they continue to smack their kids.

But the controversial law change, passed in January 2020, has been criticised by campaigners after new Welsh Government guidance tells the public to call the police or social services if they see or suspect a parent smacking their child.

The criticism comes after the Welsh Government announced a multi million-pound fund to offer bespoke parenting support to those who are deemed by police to have broken the law.

Read more:Controversial 'smacking ban' will cost up to 8m to bring into action in Wales

Currently, parents are entitled to smack their children as long as it doesn't leave a red mark, but from March 21, 2022, all types of physical punishment, such as smacking, hitting, slapping and shaking, will be illegal.

A new document, published in mid-September, advises members of the public: "If you are concerned that a child is being physically punished you can contact your local social services department. You can also call the police in an emergency or if a child is in danger."

Campaign group, Be Reasonable, said the new legislation will criminalise parents, despite the Welsh Government maintaining that the law is about protecting children's rights. Simon Calvert, a spokesman for the Be Reasonable campaign, said: "They repeatedly told the public the legislation would not criminalise loving parents, yet their impact assessment says the bill for the ban could top 7.8 million, including nearly a million (964,000) for extra policing. Why do you need extra policing if you are not criminalising anything?"

But the Welsh Government said the Act did not create a new offence through removing the "archaic" 160-year old defence of reasonable punishment. The new guidance states: "Changing the law does not of itself criminalise anyone. It is an individuals actions in relation to the law that may lead them to receiving a criminal record.

"If an adult physically punishes a child in their care after 21 March 2022 they could be reported to the police. The action the police take will depend on the individual circumstances of the case. In all cases the police and/or CPS will apply two tests is there evidence to charge and is it in the public interest to do so. They will also consider what is in the best interests of the child."

During scrutiny of the bill, it was shown a small number of individuals may be charged or prosecuted where that may not happen now, the Welsh Government agreed. But as of March 2022, it would be up to police forces to determine the best course of action based on their established processes and procedures. They will have three options to take:

The third option is an alternative to going to court and will only be made available to parents who accept responsibility for their actions and are keen to engage in support. It's designed to encourage and support parents in adopting positive parenting techniques while making it absolutely clear that the physical punishment of children is wrong in all circumstances.

The Welsh Government confirmed each local authority will share an initial 500,000 fund to offer the bespoke parenting support to individuals. This will increase to 810,000 annually over the next three years, beginning in April 2022.

The cash, worth 2.9m over the four years, will be made available to fund a "highly skilled parenting support worker" in each local authority, who will take referrals from police and work with parents and carers who have agreed to engage in tailored one to one parenting support in conjunction with an out of court disposal order.

Julie Morgan, deputy minister for social services, said: "Im pleased to announce a new funding package for additional tailored parenting support as a rehabilitative alternative to prosecution in cases where the police are involved.

This support, delivered by local authorities, will be designed to encourage and support parents in adopting positive parenting techniques while making it absolutely clear that the physical punishment of children is unacceptable in all circumstances."

Scotland was the first nation in the UK to ban smacking when the defence of justifiable assault was removed from Scots law in November 2020. Once the Children (Abolition of Defence of Reasonable Punishment) (Wales) Act 2020 come into force in Wales, it will give children the same protection from assault as adults.

Sally Holland, the Childrens Commissioner for Wales, said the "landmark" legislation for childrens rights in Wales could not come soon enough. She said: "I wholeheartedly support this legislation as there is no room for physical punishment in Wales or the long-term trauma caused to children as a result of it. Im pleased to see the Welsh Government investing in raising awareness of this new law and promoting positive parenting techniques. Physical punishment simply does not work as a means of disciplining children."

But Mr Calvert disagreed and said ministers had ignored the facts to implement a policy that was "purely ideological" and "not remotely grounded in the real world". He added: "We repeatedly warned that making actions that had hitherto been legal illegal, would criminalise parents. And everyone knows that a loving mum who taps her toddler on the back of the hand is not harming her child.

"It is not too late to stop this pernicious and costly ban that will see loving parents facing arrest or prosecution for making the kind of sensible, loving choices that our own parents made when we were little. Even if acquitted, a parent could have their livelihood wrecked as the information will be recorded on police databases and made available to employers such as schools and hospitals, stopping them from working with children or vulnerable adults."

In the run up to the change in law, the Welsh Government has embarked on an awareness campaign during the summer and will be rolling out a nationwide advertising campaign on TV and radio from Tuesday. It will also be working alongside local safeguarding partners in each region in Wales to ensure all parents and carers are made aware of the law before it comes into force next year.

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How Wales' smacking ban will work when it comes into force - Wales Online

Two thousand and seven hundred milesthats the distance between L.A. and the capital of the East Coast state where one current Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officer lives. According to recent data obtained by L.A. TACO through the California Public Records Act, at least two dozen police officers live outside of California.

Texas and Arizona are tied for the top out-of-state destinations for Los Angeles police; a combined ten officers call the state best known for the Grand Canyon and the Lone Star State home. Idaho falls in second, followed closely by Nevada.

While the majority of police officers that reportedly live beyond California reside in neighboring western states, at least one officer lives in Tennessee, and another lives as far asNew Jersey, according to LAPD data. Its unclear how much time these officers actually spend in states outside of California.

The list of officers living outside of the Golden State includes lower-ranking junior personnel that have been with the department at least three to four years as well as detectives, sergeants, and at least two senior-level lieutenants, according to data provided by the LAPD and a publicly available roster of sworn department personnel. L.A. TACO was unable to identify 12 of the officers by name and rank.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) first began looking into LAPD officers living outside of the city during the early 90s. In 1994 they published a report called From the Outside In, which found that more than 83 percent of all LAPD officers lived outside of the City of Los Angeles. The racial and ethnic diversity in which officers and their families reside, socialize and go about their personal routines generally bear little resemblance to the city the officers police, the report stated. An L.A. Times article and data analysis from 2014 similarly found that only 21 percent of Los Angeles police officers received their paychecks at a residence within city limits.

The idea of sometimes well-paid city employees living out of state angers some taxpayers who believe that police officers and other city workers should live close to the communities that they work in, especially if theyre considered emergency responders. Earlier this month, Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez revealed that more than 100 firefighters live out of state, including a captain who lives in Texas, makes more than $200,000 per year and was recently seen on video attacking the city for issuing a vaccine mandate for city employees.

We should have officers who are patrolling our communities that have some skin in the game, that are invested in the community. William Gude

Reached via email, Los Angeles Police Chief Michel Moore told L.A. TACO: We will need to research this further to understand who these individuals are and their assignment. I do believe an LAPD officer living out of state would pose significant logistical issues of their ability to meet the demands of our work in Los Angeles.

Recent news reports suggest that at least one detective works in the Force Investigation Unit (FID) the unit tasked with investigating police use of force instanceswhile they live in Idaho. Another lieutenant supervised a protest outside of Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcettis house as recently as July.

We should have officers who are patrolling our communities that have some skin in the game, that are invested in the community, said William Gude, a Hollywood resident. He documents cops in his free time and has filed hundreds of complaints against the LAPD for alleged misconduct. Ideally, you would like them to live in a neighborhood they patrol.

Gude first found out about out-of-state cops while chatting with an unidentified officer that assists him with his work. He mentioned youd be surprised how many cops live out of state. I really couldnt believe it until he explained to me the way schedules work.

According to Gudes source, officers can work three days straight and then take four days off. The following week they can reverse their schedule so they have a total of eight days off and then six days working. So that really stood out to me that one, they could have such a schedule that would allow them to commute, but also the fact that they make enough money that they can commute to other states. Additionally, Gudes source told him that officers would sometimes pool resources to rent a crash-pad close by the station where they work.

Although BLM-LA firmly believes in police abolition, Minor tells L.A. TACO that until they achieve that goal, they feel police should live in the jurisdiction that pays their salary.

In the past, city workers who live outside of L.A. have defended their choices, claiming theyre seeking out more affordable housing markets or school systems that are perceived as better than whats offered here. Last year the median price of a home in Los Angeles County climbed to more than $770,000. Meanwhile, the average LAPD officer earns more than $120,000, and the highest-paid officials make more than twice that amount. Some experts have said that the city should create incentives and resources if they want employees to live within the city.

In other instances, like the case of The LAFD captain that went viral, the decision to reside out of state seems to have less to do with money. I am a captain of the Los Angeles City Fire Department. I commute back and forth. I moved to Texas for a reason, for the freedoms that it offers, Captain Cristian Granucci was quoted as saying in a 2018 online article.

If one is paid by the government, one should live within that governments jurisdictional area, Paula Minor, organizer and Police Accountability Team Leader for Black Lives Matter Los Angeles (BLM-LA), told L.A. TACO in a statement. However, we realize that where police live cannot alone improve the relationship with those it polices.

BLM-LA believes that prosecuting cops that kill civilians, ending qualified immunity, making police carry their own professional liability insurance, and holding cops that harm people accountable would improve relations between police and the communities they work in.

Although BLM-LA firmly believes in police abolition, Minor tells L.A. TACO that until they achieve that goal, they feel police should live in the jurisdiction that pays their salary.

Read more:

At Least Two Dozen L.A.P.D. Officers Live Out of State, Yet Their Salaries Are Paid by L.A. Taxpayers - L.A. TACO

Bookseller Charlie Pugsley always has tried to meet people where they are including on his front lawn.

And that's precisely howStewart Rafert's book shelf unexpectedly got a bit fuller one Sunday morning during his daily walk around his Clintonville neighborhood.

Taking a different route than normal, Rafert happened upon a book sale known as Bookspace what Pugsley has dubbed his efforts to get thought-provoking books in the hands of people who want them.

Rafert, an80-year-oldbook lover, couldnt resiststopping totakea peekat the half dozen tables, along witha few book cases, there were full ofmostly newhardback and softback covers in frontof asmall apartment building on the corner of East Tulane Road and Indianola Avenue.

Immediately, I noticed this was an intelligent set of books remarkably so, Rafert said.

He walked away with two titles The Last Interview: and Other Conversations by Ursula K. Le Guin and a book on historical ecology calledPeople and theLand Through Time byEmily W.B.(Russell) Southgatebut promised to be back later in the day when he had more timeto peruseand chat.

Mission accomplished for Pugsley.

Pugsley, 35, who lives in that apartment building on Indianola,createdBookspace during the summer of 2015 as a way to get different books ones not always sold at major retailers or others that might be classified asradical to people looking toeducate themselves or become more aware of the world around them.

I love books, said Pugsley,a northwest Ohio native who graduated from Denison University in Granville. Its the way I like to connect with the world with people. Ive alwaysfelt comfortable in a bookstore and that was a space I wanted to cultivate.

Book stores, he continued, are community spaces, where children are comfortable to visit and people arent expected to buy anything.

After a few years of working in restaurants in Nashville after college, Pugsleycame to the conclusion he wanted to become a bookseller in whatever form that might take.

Not able to open an actual storefrontyet, he spent nine months buying up every interesting book he could find at thrift stores.Then, he moved to Columbus with the books all 5,000 of themto try and sell them wherever he could.

He started with flea markets and other similar events,

I set up a table, and people responded to it, Pugsley said. No one there was selling books there, and people were really excited about it.Ive learned along the way, and its evolved the entire time.

He's also set up a few temporarybrick-and-mortar operations, including renting a space that he turned into a bookstore once a week for nine months. He alsospent three months selling out of a room in a shared workspace in German Village.

When the pandemic hit, he beefed up his online presence to sell more books that way. And more recently, professors at area colleges have sent their students to him to buy booksneeded for a specific class.

In 2020, he had his first sale outdoor his apartment building.

My neighbors had ayard sale and were like, Hey, you can sell books, he said. I set up a couple of tablesand it went extremely well way better than at any flea market so Irealized, Ok, this is what were doing.

His twice monthly front-yard sales (when the weather is nice) have been so successful, coupled with his burgeoning online store, that hes been able to put food-service work behind him andfocus full-time on the endeavor the past 18months. Hesold upwards of 4,000 books in 2020.

He plans to host his next Bookspace sale Sept. 25.

Now, he focuses on new books and zines, instead of the used varieties that got him started.It helps, he said, thathis apartmentis in a high-traffic areaon Indianola.

EliasRoussos was in the area looking at a townhouse and happened to drive bya Bookspacesale earlier this month. Heinitiallythought it was a yard sale, but, like Rafert, he was pleasantly surprised to find a book sale with an amazing selection.

I want to read all of these, the 26-year-old from Reynoldsburg said. I wasntlooking for books, just a distraction.

In the end, he walked away with five titles, includingHow Europe Underdeveloped Africa, a 1972 book by Walter Rodney, and two novels from theParable series by Octavia Butler.

The books seem curated to suit my interests, Roussossaid. Usually, when I go to bookstores, its a challenge to find things. Not today.

He laughed as he checked out with Pugsley, commenting hed probably be up late reading the next few nights.

The Parable series, youre going to love it, Pugsleytold him.

The bookseller, who hopes to one day open a permanent bookstore location,said he loves when repeat customers come back to tell him how much they enjoyed a book or what they learned from it or how it changed them.

He said his business has been bolstered by the events of the past 18 months both the pandemic and social justice uprisingsas peoplehad more time to read and manywerelooking for titlesabout topics that he has sold for years,such as police abolition,critical race theory, gender and trauma.

I filled a niche that people were now actually looking for, Pugsley said.

Bookspacesells both nonfiction and fiction books. Some are by local authors, like Hanif Abdurraqib and Elissa Washuta, and Pugsley said he hopes toincrease the number of Ohio writers in his selection. Hes also working on adding and learning more about poetry and graphic novels.

One table at his sale is reserved for childrens books, a favorite category of his since he has a 4-year-old son.

Even withthe hundreds of titles he has available, Pugsley knows that his stores selection and missionwontresonate with everyone and hes OK with that.He said he simply wants to be a resource for people whomight be looking for something to read thats a bit off the beaten path.

I want to provide information that you would not find if you werent looking for it or open to it, Pugsley said. Thats why I exist to make it more the norm for these kinds of books to be in everyday vernacular.

award@dispatch.com

@AllisonAWard

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Clintonville bookseller offers thought-provoking titles from front lawn with Bookspace - The Columbus Dispatch

In the streets: The movements participants included more women and people of color than many media outlets suggested. (Emmanuel Dunand / AFP via Getty Images)

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The thousands of people who flocked to New York Citys Zuccotti Park 10 years ago this fall to protest capitalism run amok were far more diverse than the media let on. Its true there were a lot of white people, but in the NYC encampment there were many BIPOC people and women of color, like myself, who had very visible leadership roles, says Sandy Nurse, a carpenter and local organizer who recently won the Democratic primary (and effectively the election) for the 37th District of the New York City Council.1

In the fall and winter of 2011, I interviewed dozens of women at the encampmentmostly queer and BIPOCwho led marches and demonstrations, got kettled and arrested, facilitated contentious meetings, and participated as fully as their white male counterparts. Some had arrived to express anger at the fallout from the 2008 financial crisis (summed up by the chant heard everywhere that fall: Banks got bailed out / We got sold out) or just ambled over out of sheer curiosity. And though the tumultuous energy of the early days of the occupation drew them in, they quickly took on a second job: teaching their fellow protesters about racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, and how those forces work together, even in the would-be utopia of the park.2

Mel Butler, who now lives in western Canada with her family, arrived in Zuccotti Park thinking about economic exploitation and ended up doing mostly feminist work. Recalling her time in New York, she says she watched these isms rear their head, being continually surprised, and then unsurprised, that many Occupiers were focused only on class issues. Maybe the original goals of Occupy were not broad enough, she says. How can you just deal with one form of inequality?3

She and her fellow activists pushed back on language that erased race. They called attention to police brutality against people of color and confronted sexual assault in the park. They denounced transphobia within womens spaces. They raised questions about who was doing work like running the kitchen and facilitating meetings and whether that work was getting respect. They implemented a progressive stack, which allowed people from marginalized groups to speak first. As the year went on, they even held a series of community dialogues about power and privilege to bring a race and gender analysis into their public-facing activism and into the park itself. We were hacking through, little by little, says Ariel Federow, a longtime activist and recently a public defender. Occupy tried to be a space for those conversations.4

The results were mixed. By the spring of 2012after the Zuccotti Park encampment was brutally evictedevents like the jubilant May Day march and a new encampment in Union Square were led by, and centered around, women of color, immigrants, care workers, and unhoused people in a newly intentional way, according to the participants. But the larger Occupy movement, with its decision-making assemblies and spokescouncil meetings, never fully recovered from the combination of police crackdown and internal strife. The manarchist reputation lingered.5

Now, in interviews 10 years after Occupy, many of these activists note that almost every issue they drew attention to has gone mainstream, such as when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez talks about being an assault survivor on Instagram, or when Elizabeth Warren focuses on Black maternal mortality, or when TikTok stars hype intersectionality. In fact, intersectionalitythe term coined by Kimberl Crenshaw to describe how various oppressions interact with one anotheris such a keystone of the left that it has engendered a conservative backlash. Despite those attacks, left movements like Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, Indigenous water protection, disability justice, and even Covid mutual aid all strive to acknowledge the overlapping oppressions that had to be painstakingly explained at Occupy meetings.6

Marisa Holmes, who made a film about Occupy, thinks the movements internal struggles and even its failures have helped sow the seeds for a decade of social change because of the unique way the protests worked: continuous and out in the square. We were putting these practices and ideas out in the open, in public space, she says. A lot of people were newly radicalized. Maybe Occupy was their first point of contact.7

Holmes and other activists I spoke with are quick to credit the work that began before Occupyespecially INCITE!, a 2000s-era network of radical women of color who organized within an abolitionist framework, as well as the global uprisings of 2011 that stunned the world as young people in Tunisia, Egypt, Spain, and elsewhere took over public space and refused to surrender italong with the work that followed Occupy for inspiring the movements that have emerged since. And many see Occupy as key to their own awareness of both the possibilities and the limitations of organizing. A lot of young activists took what we learned there about race or gender and said, How do we build groups where this is the focus? says Manissa McLeave Maharawal, who is now an academic and has worked on housing policy and eviction defense since Occupy. How do we find groups that are doing this work and continue learning?8

Occupys emphasis on economic justicethe 99 percent versus the 1 percent narrativelacked a strong racial justice analysis, Nurse says. This was evident even in October 2011, when a document, the Declaration of the Occupation of New York City, was introduced at a General Assembly, the horizontal, consensus-based decision-making body of the encampment. As it was being read for approval to a crowd of hundreds, a few listeners were struck by language that seemed to ignore racism: It referred to the world as one people, united, with no mention of race. In a move to amend the language, a group of South Asian activists, including Maharawal and Hena Ashraf, took part in a block of the resolution. I am someone who isnt afraid to speak up, Ashraf, who is now a filmmaker in Los Angeles, told me this summer. They were using language that I wasnt feeling. The small group sat down and drafted new language while walking skeptical white participants through the basics of racial oppression. Their subsequent blog posts about the interaction, highlighting the presence of people of color at Occupy, the naivete they encountered, and the opportunity to move past that ignorance in a public way, were widely circulated. It was both exhausting and galvanizingso real it hurts, as Maharawal wrote. But at activist gatherings today, Maharawal says, such confrontations, and all the messy learning they entail, arent necessary. Its a relief, she says. She credits Black Lives Matter with easing, if not eliminating, the burden of Racism 101 conversations.9 Current Issue

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BLM protests have brought the danger of Black peoples daily existence to the fore while also drawing attention to the racialized nature of economic exploitation. For Maharawal, the movement achieved many of the goals set forth by the Occupy People of Color Caucus that formed after that fateful General Assembly. I remember a couple years later I was at a march against police brutality, and I saw some other people from the POC caucus. I was like, These are the kinds of protests we were trying to have. This is the analysis we were trying to bring to Occupy, Maharawal says.10

In the decade following Occupy, the constant stream of videos showing police brutality created one flash point after another and helped shift the focus, even for those who were already personally affected by police brutality, like Occupy participant Shaista Husain and her family, who she says were scarred by racist policing on Staten Island. During Occupy, I still didnt have the words to say, This is the most important thing we need to talk about right now, she says. If you dont deal with race and racism in NYC, thats not direct democracy.11

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Just as activists of color had to combat ignorance about race, Mel Butler found herself doing feminist work at Zuccotti. It started with people saying, Dont just hug people who might not want to hug you back, she says. Butler joined Occupys feminist and Safer Spaces working groups early on, and she soon found trans inclusion to be a stumbling block. There were some people that were transphobic, but the issue I confronted more often was ignorance and confusion, she says. I remember being ridiculed by so-called feminists for bringing trans issues up, because they thought it wasnt a real thing.12

While her efforts to educate people within the working groups slowly made inroads that year, Butler says the changes of the past decade have made those discussions easier. A few years after Occupy, at the gym, she heard a Top 40 radio station covering Caitlyn Jenner. They were talking about pronouns and lingo that seemed so radical for us to try to discuss during Occupy in 2011, she says. I was crying on the Stairmaster! Similarly, the basic concept of consent has become easier to bring up in mixed-gender groups since the #MeToo era. Theres still room for improvement, but theres been a huge shift, Butler says.13

Yet sometimes the new language masks old problems. Ashraf says she feels gratified that queerness and different gender identities are more accepted today. But I do feel kind of jaded, she adds. Because people now say, I know all these inclusive words and how to use them, but theyd still rather listen to themselves.14

Direct democracy: Occupy Wall Street adopted the use of the progressive stack, which allowed people from marginalized groups to speak first in meetings. (Ramin Talaie / Corbis via Getty Images)

As the allegations of sexual harassment at Occupy encampments multiplied, many participants tried to create ways to handle these and other safety issues through mediation and an internal system of security, even escorting offenders off the grounds rather than alerting the police. Harassment survivors and other Occupiers didnt always think that worked in practice, even if they understood the problems with a criminal-justice-based response or knew that law enforcement was often indifferent and even hostile to victims within the movement.15

Ashwini Hardikar, who was organizing a radical child care collective in 2011, arrived at Occupy as an anti-capitalist interested in racial justice. But then she was sexually harassed at Zuccotti Park, and after a post she wrote about it went viral, she began to hear stories of harassment in Occupy encampments all over the country. I think that being at Occupy was one of my first experiences being in a space where at least a small faction was trying to utilize abolitionist-style ways to address sexual harassment and violence, she says, recalling the mediation processes and community agreements the Safer Spaces Working Group attempted to put in place, even as reports of inappropriate behavior and assaults multiplied at Zuccotti.16

She retains some reservations about efforts to build a restorative justice utopia while simultaneously running a movement. In theory, yes, Im totally for it, she says. But the reliance on long amounts of time for participation is a big challenge. You have to be in a community with someone to have a process like that work. The protracted, sometimes enervating process of consensus-building isnt always sufficient to address urgent threats of violence. In fact, despite many attempts, the Safer Spaces group never officially passed its community agreement through the fractious decision-making bodies of Occupy, even if in practice it put those elements in place.17

When the movement for prison abolition went national during the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, and communities like ChaZan encampment and autonomous zonepopped up in Seattle, Hardikar watched to see whether the activists there would have more luck threading the needle. I do think that women and nonbinary survivors of color are asked to take on heroic and creative roles and be the guinea pigs, she says, especially when it comes to reintegrating the people who made them feel unsafe. Occupy really showed me how challenging it is to put these ideals in place.18

Maharawal also feels that Occupys mission to be open to all was a limitation. It was unpopular at the time to say, I dont want to include someone who is racist, she says. People were saying, We can teach them. Todays post-Trump polarization, along with a new understanding of police surveillance, she adds, has made it less likely that todays lefty groups will err on the side of welcoming all comers. Ariel Federow puts it more bluntly: What I hope is that, in progressive spaces, we are less likely to tolerate fuckery.19

Another concern is the ways that the movements attempts at openness fell short of a real welcome. Several of the people I spoke with now have young children. All are living through Covid. Theyve been thinking about who was absent in 2011, who didnt have the time, ability, or immigration status to participate: caregivers, people with health issues, essential workers. Even for them, the need for self-care was eclipsed by the desire to be part of this juggernaut. Holmes points to the chant heard at marches: All day / All week / Occupy Wall Street. There was a sense of urgency, she says. In her organizing in the years since, including at the NYC Metropolitan Anarchist Coordinating Council, Holmes has tried to be more vocal about the toll that facilitating takes and the need to train others to do the work, in order to make the movement more resilient, fairer, and harder to target. Its a very feminized role, to hold space for a collective, she says. Its taxing. But you cant have a horizontal or directly democratic movement without facilitation. I understand now that its a generation-long struggle. We need to build communities of care first, and dismantle the ableism and patriarchy and white supremacy that were bringing in.20

A bigger tent: Feminists at Occupy Wall Street called attention to police brutality against people of color and confronted sexual assault in the park. (Don Emmert / AFP via Getty Images)

For all their critiques, however, everyone I spoke with felt that Occupy achieved at least some of what it set out to do. It changed the conversation in the United States about wealth inequality, paved the way for stronger stances from figures like Warren, Ocasio-Cortez, and Bernie Sanders, and brought policy issues like debt and health care to the fore. Sandy Nurse points to the Cancel Student Debt movement, which started in Washington Square Park in a huddle of the Occupy Student Debt Working Group. The fact that Sanders and Warren ran on the promise to cancel student debt to some degree is a testament to that work, she says. Occupys critique of dark money in politics has had an impact too, Nurse adds. In my own race for city council, we were able to run a grassroots campaign without money from special interests. That is now the norm for leftists and progressives looking to run for office.21

Nurses successful campaign is one example of how Occupy helped to prime New York for change. On a more basic level, the echo of the peoples mic is heard at almost any protest here. Occupy was ended by the cops but trickled out in all directions, Federow says. Organizing is, at its core, about building relationships and skills, and for me, those relationships and that trust came back around in other work later. Friendships, new ideological commitments, and even families began at Zuccotti Park. Butler recalls picnics with her Safer Spaces comrades, who became her best friends. Theres a substantial list of spouses and partners who met at Occupy.22

Thats because, for all of Occupys flaws, there was something exhilarating and unforgettable about being part of what Federow calls a real moment in New York radical history. Its a chapter that people will study in textbooks someday: being kettled on the Brooklyn Bridge. Defending the park with brooms. Talking about the personal toll taken by capitalism over the sounds of drum circles.23

Husain, who now organizes tenants in Brooklyn, says that while the policy issues from the Occupy era have gained new prominence, what is missing is the horizontalism, the direct democracy, and the mutual aid. She firmly believes that electoral politics cant create meaningful change without mass demonstrations. As society weathers one crisis after another, she imagines a new Occupy-like movement that integrates the lessons of the past decade, finally getting right what the previous iteration got wrong. The true meaning of progressive stack goes beyond intersectional: The people who are the least visible become the most visible, she says. One day were all going to put it into practice and have our shit together.24

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Sexism and Racism on the Left: What Has and Hasnt Changed Since Occupy Wall Street - The Nation

Two weekends ago, a Stanford undergraduate shared a series of images on social media containing explicit endorsements of anti-Black racism, slavery and depictions of violence against other students. There were immediate calls to expel Chaze Vinci to protect Black communities on campus.

Over five thousand signatures have been collected on a petition to have Vinci expelled. To illustrate the threat he poses to our community on campus, screenshots of his arrest record are framed next to his social media posts, alongside a photograph of him smiling in a Stanford T-shirt. Even as University President Marc Tessier-Lavigne announced Vinci would not be returning to campus this upcoming quarter, students continued to demand he be permanently removed from campus.

As a Black graduate student I understand the hurt, fear and outrage that has surfaced in response to Chaze Vincis online behavior. It has affected me in ways I wont put to words. But Im troubled by how our need for safety has been framed; Im cautious about the strategy that is taking shape.

To substantiate the danger he poses to the Black community, weve widely appealed to Chaze Vincis arrest record. This appeal resonates with a claim at the core of our judicial system: individuals engaged in criminal behavior are a threat to the broader community. Theres a humorless irony in using his past in this way: by invoking criminality in an effort to keep Black students safe, were appealing to the same logic that has been used, historically and presently, to justify state-sanctioned violence against Black communities.

Maybe this approach is necessary. While Stanfords administration bloviates about their progressive social values via email, they have done little to earn the trust of Black students on campus. Anticipating an inadequate administrative response, I can imagine how students would advocate for their safety, first, by employing the most legible narrative available in that moment, and second, by channeling this need through conventional administrative responses, such as expulsion.

But this approach will fail us not simply because were appealing to the same rhetoric used in service of anti-Black racism, but because this strategy is misaligned with our needs as a community.

Violence unfolds across multiple timescales the transient episodes that take place between individuals, the rhythmic imposition of social norms, the glacial construction of economies. Yet so many of our legal and emotional frameworks for conceiving of and responding to violence are fixated on the momentary interactions between individuals. By collapsing the interdependencies between history and intention, context and consequence, we do more than misunderstand the nature of interpersonal harm: our systems for accountability fail to create the conditions necessary for healing, much less address the circumstances that give rise to violence. Instead, we depend almost entirely on a strategy of safety through exclusion, removing community members to keep them from causing further harm a premise of the carceral logic under which our judicial system operates.

Condemned by both liberal and conservative communities on campus, marred by his criminal record, it will be relatively easy for us to exile Vinci. It may even be necessary. But how does this strategy relate to our broader political commitments? When we remove someone from our community, they are forced into other places, with other people; do we have any responsibility to these communities? There is an assumption (or at least a hope) that punishment will lead to some form of behavioral change; if we believe that this change is possible, then, what conditions are best suited to bring about this process? We might believe that people who have harmed others deserve opportunities for healing; what role should accountability play in this process? Critically, how do carceral strategies relate to our capacity to address the structural dimensions of anti-Black racism both on and off campus?

We need to design systems of accountability that enhance not undermine our capacity to address structural forms of violence, systems that are, in their very design, centered on our communitys needs for safety while also preventing further harm. This process will require novel frameworks for holding people who have hurt others accountable, and it must include the recognition that our actions are codetermined by our lived environments not as a route to avoid individual accountability, but to reconceptualize it. So often the harms that take place between individuals reveal broader patterns of institutional violence, economic coercion and social conditioning; to create the environments necessary for healing within our communities, we must dismantle the cultures and institutions that engender this violence.

These ideas have long been operationalized under the rubrics of prison abolition and transformative justice frameworks. In my time at Stanford, Ive met so many people across the University who are committed to these principles. I know that we are all, in our own ways, actively working to understand how we can embody these ideals in our day-to-day lives. In doing so, we are confronted with the same lesson, time and time again: intellectually understanding these ideas doesnt mean we know how to bring them into the world. Because, yes, learning to outmaneuver the prevailing conceptual and administrative frameworks is a formidable task but also because the most intimate aspects of our personal lives (our emotional experiences, desires, fears) have been entrained by deeply unjust institutional practices. These include the ways we respond to harm, yearn for safety, react when we learn weve hurt someone. Speaking to members of the Stanford community about Chaze VInci, so often there is a tension between our political analysis and our emotional needs. Its a difficult feeling to grapple with, especially without a strategy for how we might align the two.

What might that strategy be? And, more generally, how might we respond to Chaze VIncis behaviors within a transformative justice framework? Its easy to hope for neat solutions to this question industry-scale strategies for how we should respond to violence or protect people who have been hurt. But that isnt how developing these practices works, nor should it. As broad as these ideas might seem, transformative justice requires an intimate understanding of the individuals and communities involved, the harm that has been done and the resources we have access to in our response. In fact, adhering to simple heuristics can perpetuate the harm taking place in our communities. Sometimes, well-meaning communities underestimate the challenges that emerge in caring for people who have been harmed or holding the people who have hurt them accountable. Sometimes the systems that take shape are brittle and can easily be exploited, providing cover for individuals to avoid accountability.

It is not necessary that Stanford as a set of policies and administrative practices participate in this process on campus. If nothing else, the work of abolitionist organizers in this country is a testament to the possibility of developing community-based responses to violence even in the face of brutal, totalizing institutions. But there is a world where Stanford commits itself to this project. This commitment would create new possibilities for how we design systems of safety and accountability on campus but it would also come with its own concerns. Especially given institutions and communities steeped in carceral, disciplinary modes of punishment, we have to acknowledge that developing transformative responses to violence will require humility. We might want to establish partnerships with existing organizations and individuals who have been developing transformative justice frameworks in their communities for generations people with experience strategizing around safety and accountability in the face of interpersonal violence and institutional neglect. Fortunately, there are many transformative justice and abolitionist organizations (The Kindred Collective, Project NIA, Safe Outside the System, Sylvia Rivera Law Project) as well as organizers, storytellers, artists and healers within them (Cara Page, Mariame Kaba, Ejeris Dixon, Dean Spade). Reaching out to these organizations and organizers (along with so many others impossible to list here) could provide us with a grounded approach and considerable expertise as we reimagine our administrative and community response to violence. Establishing these kinds of long-term relationships would also create an opportunity to materially support organizations and individuals that are doing transformative work in their communities.

Amid a pandemic, and following a tide of uprisings in response to state-sanctioned violence against Black communities, we are preparing to resume our in-person lives on campus. Fraught as it will be, it is a moment for us to reevaluate what it means for us to be together and to redraw our intentions for the communities we want to create not only in terms of how we respond to harm, but how we cultivate our relationships in the days, months, and years that follow. We owe it to ourselves and to each other.

Originally posted here:

From the Community | Transformative Justice - The Stanford Daily

There is just under a week to go until the German elections are held on 26 September. The Social Democratic Party (SDP) is ahead of the CDU/CSU by a few percent in the polls, the Greens seem to have been knocked out of the race for first place. Yet a lot can still happen at the eleventh hour.

Most experts are betting on a coalition of SPD with the Greens and FDP (a traffic light coalition). Or CDU/CSU with the Greens and FDP (Jamaica). A Grand Coalition (CDU/CSU/SPD) is somewhat less likely, as is a Grand Coalition plus the Greens (Kenya) or the FDP ( Germany).

One of the main themes in the negotiations will be regardless of the outcome how Germany can meet the climate targets without sacrificing the innovation and competitiveness of its businesses. Of the major parties, the SPD and the Greens are, in a nutshell, pushing for more government intervention and higher taxes. The CDU/CSU and FDP, on the other hand, want to give companies more leeway.

A more detailed overview of what the parties think about climate, innovation and technology is provided below.

The Social Democrats realize that it is essential for industrialized Germany to generate more electricity in the coming years and, of course, green electricity in particular. According to Olaf Scholz, this is not yet sufficiently recognized by the main opposition CDU/CSU.

Scholz therefore wants in his first 100 days, if he becomes chancellor, to have a commission study how much energy will be needed in 2045. The power supply must be 100% CO2neutral by that time. Policy can then be adjusted accordingly.

A hot topic in the campaign is how that CO2 neutrality goal can best be achieved. The SPD is committed to a combination of stricter rules and market forces. Where rules and regulations are concerned, the SPD goes further than CDU/CSU and FDP although not as far as the Greens.

An example is that the SPD, like the Greens, aims to work towards a maximum speed of 130 km/h. Train travel must become cheaper than flying. On top of that, companies will have to deal with rising CO2 levies.

By 2025, the price per metric ton of CO2 should be 55 euros. In the year after, it should range between 55 and 65 euros for CO2 emission rights. The SPD wants to move as quickly as possible to a European trade in those rights.

Germany now applies a CO2 price of 25 euros per metric ton to the transport and building sectors.

The revenues from CO2 levies are returned to the citizens, among other things, in the SPD program via a gradual abolition of the so-called EEG-Umlage (RenewableEnergies Actlevy). This is a green surcharge that is paid on top of the regular electricity price in order to finance the subsidy on green electricity. In 2020, this amounted to 30.9 billion euros.

To pay for climate-related investments and improved social services, the SPD wants to increase taxes on companies and high earners, among other measures. In return, however, there will be better tax deductions for investments.

Like all the other parties, the SPD further promises to do something about the massive bureaucracy. That should help start-ups, among others. The same is true for digitalization. This is also something that all major parties agree on. Germany has no future if it continues to work with fax machines, paper notes, poor Internet coverage in rural areas and schools without computers.

Finally, the SPD has launched a project group for Neue Erfolge. This is looking for ways to improve innovative capacity. An important role will undoubtedly be played by the KfW Bank (Kreditanstalt fr Wiederaufbau) which supports innovative projects and companies through loans and shareholdings.

You can find the entire program of the SPD here.

The Union, just as the SPD does, attaches great importance to cutting red tape. Among other things, the Christian Democrats want it to be possible in future to set up a company within a maximum of 24 hours. Furthermore, CDU and CSU, like the other parties, want to be rid of the bureaucratic monster EEC.

When it comes to the climate, the CDU/CSU is pushing hard for a European CO2 emissions trading scheme. According to them, this is the best way to get scientists, companies and consumers to change their behavior and to promote new technologies. Unlike SPD and the Greens, they are not pinning a much higher premium on the future price of CO2

They are also less committed to the targets set for solar and wind energy. The advantage of this, according to CDU leader Armin Laschet, is that there is more room for technologies other than just electromobility. Consider synthetic fuels, for instance.

CDU and CSU also want to allocate more money to places where research, companies, start-ups and students come together, in other words, the campus model. Some successful examples in Germany are TU Mnchen, RWTH Aachen and Silicon Saxony.

They want to support young companies with a future fund totaling 30 billion euros. This fund must be part of a larger European plan for the future. Laschet, like the French President Macron, wants Europe to be less dependent on China and the US in a number of key technologies, such as quantum computers, artificial intelligence and the manufacture of batteries and computer chips.

Other issues from the Union program can be found here.

The Green Party (Die Grnen) accuses the other parties of not coming up with enough concrete proposals to meet the climate targets. According to party chair Annalena Baerbock, strict rules do not have to stand in the way of innovations and market forces.

In an interview with the Handelsblatt newspaper, she points to the past ban on the use of CFCs to protect the ozone layer and catalytic converters in cars. At first, there was a lot of resistance to this from companies, but this quickly innovative solutions plenty of impetus.

The Greens have more hard targets that CDU/CSU and FDP are critical of. For example, the Greens want to ban the sale of new combustion engine cars starting in 2030. Like the SPD, they want a lower speed limit on freeways. By the year 2025, at least one million roofs must be equipped with solar panels. Per year, 5 to 6 gigawatts of green electricity must be generated additionally. Germany should also stop using coal-fired power plants sooner (in 2030). In the meantime, it is okay to invest in a better gas infrastructure, but this infrastructure must be usable for hydrogen in the future.

The Greens believe that it is ultimately preferable for businesses to know where they stand, rather than having to constantly shift the goalposts. This also applies to the government, by the way. Clear goals compel action and can be monitored by society.

Like the SPD, the Greens are going for higher CO2 levies in order to meet climate targets and promote environmentally friendly technologies. They are only going slightly further with a price of 60 euros per metric ton by 2023. The Greens are also in favor of more technological cooperation within the EU and the US. This is more difficult with China.

You can view the entire program of the Greens on their website here.

In this regard, the FDP is a somewhat more pragmatic. Shutting out China is not the way to go, according to party leader Christian Lindner. What really matters is making products that are as good, and preferably better, than those produced elsewhere in the world.

According to the FDP, higher taxes, strict regulations and bans are forbidden poison for the investment and innovation climate. The Freie Demokraten are also opposed to all kinds of subsidies that are currently handed out to industry and citizens in order to meet climate targets. This applies in particular to the car industry which makes hefty profits. The 1 billion subsidy to a Tesla battery factory is something they disapprove of.

According to Lindner, American tech companies were not created out of bans either. Things should be made a lot easier for entrepreneurs. It needs to be made much easier for German entrepreneurs especially the smaller ones to do business. Reducing bureaucracy is an easy way to improve the business climate. The same goes for improving the currently lousy digital infrastructure that is eroding Germanys competitive strength.

A study by the Berlin-based European Center for Digital Competitiveness (ECDC) ranks Germany among the weakest countries in all of Europe in this area, which includes Eastern Europe and the Balkans.

The entire FDP program can be found here.

Polls are being held frantically in Germany. Most Umfragen (polls) are fairly close to each other. The most recent overview can be found here. It only shows the parties that are likely to exceed the 5% electoral threshold.

See the rest here:

How German political parties aim to combine climate and innovation after the Merkel era - Innovation Origins

Around half a million people could slide deeper into rent debt and face eviction from their homes as a result of the Universal Credit cut, a charity has warned.

The DWP will remove a UC top-up of just over 80 a month equivalent to 20 a week from October, saying it was only a temporary measure during the pandemic,

But the reduction in benefit payments will mean a 360 million wall of rental debt built up during the coronavirus crisis is set to get worse, its claimed.

READ MORE: DWP benefit fraud: 7 things theyre checking your bank account and social media for

About 500,000 private tenants are now trying to stay on top of rent arrears across the UK, according to calculations from StepChange Debt Charity.

Private renters in arrears said they were behind by just under 800 on average.

The charity said cutting Universal Credit will escalate entrenched difficulties.

It highlighted the case of a 61-year-old from Essex in 2,000-worth of rent arrears, who said: I have recently managed to get some help from the council regarding my rent and am just about managing to pay it in full, but Im still not really able to pay anything towards the arrears.

Luckily the landlord seems fine with this at the moment, but obviously that could change at any time.

READ MORE: DWP Universal Credit cut: Six essential facts including exact date top-up ends

StepChanges research suggests around one in 10 renters who are in work expect to be evicted from their homes as a result of their debts within the next 12 months.

In another case, a woman who works for a travel company and is in 2,000 of rent arrears told StepChange: My husband is suffering with long Covid and although he is at work, the stress of not hitting his targets is really affecting his mental health.

He is just about earning enough to pay the rent, but not enough to be able to contribute towards the arrears.

Phil Andrew, chief executive of StepChange, said: Covid support schemes, while a lifeline for many, havent been able to help renters address their arrears and with cuts to Universal Credit and the end of furlough imminent, there is a real danger of thousands losing their homes.

Thats why StepChange is calling for a dedicated financial support to help ensure renters can safely wind down Covid rent debts and keep their homes.

By establishing a dedicated rent debt fund, and by scrapping the planned Universal Credit cut, the Government can avert the threat of a rise in evictions, problem debt and homelessness that will compound financial and social problems and hamper economic recovery.

More than 8,600 people were questioned as part of the research.

Chris Norris, policy director for the National Residential Landlords Association, said: Many tenants and landlords have struggled throughout the pandemic.

The end of furlough combined with cuts to benefits creates a perfect storm as those affected face the prospect of rent arrears getting worse.

These are debts that landlords cannot afford to sustain indefinitely. The Chancellor needs urgently to follow the examples set in Scotland and Wales and come forward with transitional support to get Covid-related arrears paid off.

A Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government spokesperson said: Our 352 billion support package has helped renters throughout the pandemic and prevented a build-up of rent arrears.

We also took unprecedented action to help keep people in their homes by extending notice periods and pausing evictions at the height of the pandemic.

As the economy reopens it is right that these measures are now being lifted. We will bring forward further proposals in due course to create a fairer and more effective private rental sector that works for both landlords and tenants, including the abolition of Section 21 no fault evictions and further support for landlords where repossession is necessary.

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Universal Creditis thebiggestchange to thewelfare system in a generation.

But what exactly is it and how does the system work? Heres all you need to below. Follow the links below to find out more.

1. What is Universal Credit?

Universal Credit is a new social security benefit that was approved in the Welfare Reform Act 2012 and first appeared in 2013. By the end of 2018, it was rolled out to all jobcentres.

It replaces six existing benefits, now known as legacy benefits. Find out more by clicking on the link above.

2. Universal Credit calculator how much you will get

The amount you are given is calculated according to various factors.

The Government says if you have children, a disability, or you need help paying for your rent, you may be entitled to extra amounts on top of the standard allowance. Find out more by clicking on the link above.

3. Universal Credit eligibility and how to apply

Among the qualifying criteria, you must be on a low income or out of work.

And its important to bear in mind your partners income and savings will be taken into account, even if they themselves are not applying for the benefit. Find out more about eligibility by clicking on the link above.

4. How often is it paid and how the online account works

To get Universal Credit, TWO accounts are needed.

One is a Universal Credit online account where your details (such as the date of the next payment) are available to look at, the other is a payment account at a bank or building society where the Government pays in your money. Find out more by clicking on the link above.

5. Universal Credit contact numbers if you need help

There are some special helpline numbers to call if you want assistance. They have been changed to freephone numbers so there is no charge for calling. Find out more by clicking on the link above.

6. How to change your payments if youre struggling

Claimants need to be aware the first payment doesnt come through until five weeks after a claim and then every month after that.

If youre not used to waiting a whole month for your payment, it can prove difficult. But there is a little-known way around that. Find out more by clicking on the link above

7. What to do if your Universal Credit payments are cut

There are occasions where the Department for Work and Pensions imposes sanctions on claimants if they appear to have broken the rules, for instance by not showing up at jobcentre appointments.

In such cases, Universal Credit can be cut or stopped altogether. Find out what to do by clicking the link above.

Follow this link:

DWP Universal Credit Cut Triggers Eviction Warning For Thousands Of Tenants - Todayuknews - Todayuknews

It's not where anyone expects to see a clutch of Black and brown city kids with multicolored hair and nose rings walking silently through a labyrinth.

But past the rows of corn, the roadside crosses and the Trump flags off a gravel road in Wright County about 75 miles northwest of the Twin Cities, youngsters pondered the big questions of life as chickens and guinea hens flapped wings and murmured.

"Welcome to Rootsprings," said Signe Harriday, artistic director of Minneapolis' Pillsbury House Theatre. "This is a place where people can come to calm their nervous systems in beautiful nature. It's a sacred space dedicated to liberation and healing."

A sharp thinker and theater-maker, Harriday is best known for working her way through thickets of texts. But she greeted a recent visitor in overalls and sweat beading her brow. She had spent the morning clear-cutting walking paths on the property, located on 36 biodiverse acres in Annandale, Minn.

A rural haven aimed at artists, activists and anyone seeking rejuvenation, Rootsprings was part response to the rawness and trauma exposed by the killing of George Floyd, and the concomitant unrest. And it is one of a number of such projects afoot. St. Paul's Penumbra Theatre, in fact, is expanding its mission to become not just a place for performing arts but also a center of wellness and healing.

Rootsprings has eco trails, a spring-fed lake and three cottages for overnight guests, including a geodesic dome named for science-fiction writer Octavia E. Butler. It also has a retreat center and idyllic natural features.

The lake, called "the sacred pond" by previous owners, is guarded by a stately pair of trumpeter swans. A great blue heron, frozen in a hunt, makes its still, glassy surface look like a painting.

"Here, we can make art and reclaim our relationship with nature," Harriday said.

Rootsprings is rising on land where rejuvenation has been a central focus for decades.

The Franciscan Sisters of Little Falls built the property in 1988, operating it as Clare's Well, a hideaway where one could go for prayers and meditation. The sisters, known for their ministry to immigrant communities and for their work as counselors, therapists and teachers, sold it in 2015 to Daniel and Joan Pauly-Schneider, who continued to own it in the same spirit but rebranded the property Wellsprings Farm.

Last February, the Schneiders sold it to the Rootsprings cooperative three lesbian couples of color: Harriday and partner Alice Butts; Erin Sharkey and Zoe Hollomon, and Alejandra Tobar Alatriz and Saby Labor.

The collective lives at the property full-time, as it is a working farm with a barn, animals, pear and apple orchards as well as gardens.

Sharkey, a writer, educator and graphic designer, has been a tireless activist for the abolition of slavery in the only constitutional carveout where bondage is permissible "as punishment for a crime" in the 13th Amendment. She said that tending to the farm is itself restorative.

"The solitude, the land, nature and beauty we all need these things," Sharkey said. "Everyone deserves this kind of peace and tranquillity."

Sharkey tools around the property in a golf cart, taking visitors on a survey of the different types of topography.

There's prairie, where milkweed thrives for monarch butterflies. The wetlands filter the water for the lake. And the forests are thick with hardwoods.

"Historically, we've not had access to things like this," Sharkey said, savoring the air.

While the co-op members enjoy its amenities full time, Rootsprings hosts guests who come for day retreats or overnight stays.

On a recent weekend, day guests included youngsters brought there by the Irreducible Grace Foundation, founded in St. Paul in 2012 by Darlene Fry and other educators seeking to close the graduation gap by providing resources and opportunities to kids in foster care and transitional housing.

"They can get in touch with their higher selves," Fry said. "We want to help them continue to build resilience."

Fry made the day trip with much of her foundation's team, including artistic director Natalia Davis and program director Jan Mandell, a retired teacher from St. Paul's Central High School.

"I can't tell you how much we appreciate this," Mandell said. "It's a great space to do the work of healing."

Harriday said that the collective is mindful of the safety of its guests. Cellphone service is spotty on the farm, so guests are encouraged to communicate ahead of time so that they are expected.

Rootsprings offers a battery of wellness programs. Guests participate in yoga and quilt-making. Some practice capoeira, the Afro-Brazilian martial art. Others meditate.

It looks and feels like summer camp. But the project is still in process.

"We're in a place of discovery, of listening and learning, so we're truly into what the land is telling us, and not just what we think should be there," Harriday said. "Part of what's so beautiful about this experience is that the dream is already happening. We're already hosting our community, from group retreats to writers' workshops to strategic planning, and care and respite for social-justice warriors."

Ultimately, Harriday said, Rootsprings is a reclamation project from past distress.

"There's a lot of trauma around Black bodies in rural spaces," Harriday said, signaling a history that stretches from slavery to lynching to prison chain gangs. "And we have to get right with all of that in order to go forward."

Rohan Preston 612-673-4390

Read more from the original source:

Welcome to Rootsprings, a retreat for thinkers, zen seekers and theater-makers - Minneapolis Star Tribune

The world is hanging on every word from the virtual conference of Britains Liberal Democrats this weekend, as no one ever said. The Lib Dems are accustomed to being mocked when they are not simply ignored, but they have needed all the resilience they can muster since their coalition with the Tories ended with a devastating cull of their parliamentary representation at the 2015 election.

They have endured two more bad general elections since. They tried a relatively fresh face as leader, Tim Farron, and flopped in 2017. Then they fielded a highly familiar face as leader, Sir Vince Cable, but he was eased into retirement before fighting an election. In 2019, Jo Swinson vaingloriously declared that she could become prime minister and cancel Brexit only to be evicted from her parliamentary seat. Under her successor, whose name is on the tip of your tongue, the partys poll rating bobbles along at around 8%, about a third of what they had before their support was cannibalised by the coalition experience.

With just a dozen MPs, the Lib Dems have a monumental struggle to get their voices heard on the airwaves. Sir Ed Davey is entitled to put one challenge to Boris Johnson at prime ministers questions roughly every five weeks. For every question the Lib Dem leader gets, Sir Keir Starmer gets 30 and Ian Blackford, the leader of the Scottish National party in the Commons, receives 10.

So any positive publicity is nectar for the Lib Dems. Their singular moment in the spotlight in the past 21 months was in June when they drubbed the Tories at the Chesham and Amersham byelection and took the seat with a stonking swing of 25 points in the blue heartlands of Buckinghamshire.

That byelection has had three important consequences. It gave a big morale boost to a party in desperate need of one. It also demonstrated that a vote for them will not always be a wasted vote; it can have a national impact with significant fallout. Boris Johnson used his reshuffle to send Michael Gove to try to fix the mess the Tories have got into over housebuilding. Mr Goves first act in his new role has been to freeze changes to the planning regime. That can be traced straight back to the angst among Tory MPs triggered by the Lib Dem victory in the Chilterns.

The byelection win had one further effect. It prompted Sir Ed to clarify his electoral ambitions and decide where to concentrate his partys crimped resources. He has chosen to stake his chips on trying to make gains in the blue wall of Tory constituencies, mostly to be found in southern England, where the Lib Dems are the primary challenger. One senior Lib Dem remarks: You dont have to be Einstein to work out who the enemy is. Of the 91 seats where the Lib Dems are second, 80 are held by Conservative MPs.

Drawing on the experience of Chesham and Amersham, the partys strategists think they have identified the types of voter who are biddable away from the Conservatives to the Lib Dems. First, there are those liberal, tolerant, internationalist-minded Tories who largely supported Remain. These voters recoil at the bombastic and nationalistic rhetoric of the Johnson government, they shudder at cuts to the international aid budget and they shiver when Priti Patel suggests shell use warships to force fragile rafts and dinghies brimming with refugees back to France. Another, often overlapping group, are One Nation Conservatives who fear that the Johnson government is tearing apart the UK and dislike the governments priorities. The Lib Dems have just launched a campaign pointing out that NHS workers face a cut to their incomes of nearly 1,000 because of the hike in national insurance and the cut to universal credit.

They also think they can find support from previous Tory voters who are repelled by the prime ministers character. The Johnson shtick plays well with some, but not with those who mind about his lies, dont think hes decent and are appalled by the sleazy aura around his premiership. One Lib Dem who knocked on many doors during the Chesham and Amersham contest says she kept coming across this type of ex-Tory who would say things like: I cant bear voting for that overgrown schoolboy.

The Lib Dem strategy could be assisted by the reshuffle. While Mr Johnson weeded out some of the most egregious duds in the government, he also populated the cabinet with more abrasively populist personalities. Liz Truss is top of the pops with Tory activists who delight in her ideological fervour and manic boosterism. They will celebrate her elevation to the Foreign Office. Her brand of zealotry and relentless self-promotion is less appealing to more centrist voters. Nadine Dorries, a shock appointment as culture secretary, is a ferocious culture warrior. She has a back catalogue of incendiary remarks almost as extensive as the prime ministers own. She has lambasted the BBC as a biased leftwing organisation and called for the abolition of the licence fee. That will appeal to similarly frothy rightwingers who are convinced that Broadcasting House is a nest of wokeish Trots. Strident BBC-bashing is less appealing to the gentler species of Tory who enjoys the likes of The Archers and Antiques Roadshow and puts more trust in the BBCs news than the shrieking version served up by the rightwing tabloids.

In his quest to woo centrist voters, something else offers encouragement to Sir Ed. That is his fellow knight, Sir Keir Starmer. At the last election, Jeremy Corbyn was as lethal to the Lib Dems as he was to his own party because he scared swing voters into the arms of the Tories. As one Lib Dem strategist puts it: Life is incredibly more difficult for us when there is a Labour leader who frightens moderate voters because they think voting for us risks letting in someone who will be catastrophic for them. The Lib Dems could work with Sir Keir in a way they never could with Labours previous management.

Sir Ed, who sat in the coalition cabinet, says his party is now resolutely anti-Tory. Yet he is highly wary of the notion that all the anti-Tory parties should formally join forces in the name of a progressive alliance. The Labour leadership is similarly sceptical. Electoral pacts, in which one party stands down in some places in exchange for the other not competing elsewhere, are fiendishly difficult to negotiate. Politicians do not own voters. They arent inanimate objects to be shoved behind one party or another on instruction from above.

What we are likelier to see is more subtle forms of collaboration. Labour did not put much energy into the contest for Chesham and Amersham, which helped the Lib Dems present themselves as the only choice for voters who wanted to punish the Conservatives. At the Batley and Spen byelection in July, the quiet Lib Dem effort concentrated on peeling away moderate Tories, which may have helped Labour to its narrow victory in the Yorkshire seat.

The best example of Labour and the Lib Dems prospering from an informal pact was the 1997 election. In Paddy Ashdown for the Lib Dems and Tony Blair for Labour, both parties had popular leaders with a lot of compatible views and a mutual ambition to get rid of a Conservative government. Neither stood down candidates, but they laid off each other and focused the energies of their respective parties where they were best placed to unseat Tories. The Lib Dems more than doubled their number of MPs to 46 and Labour got an enormous 418.

Theres another lesson from that era for the Lib Dems. The late Sir Paddy did not just attack the Tories and he did not try to be a pale version of Labour. He developed a flair for taking distinctive positions and finding signature policies that persuaded voters it was worthwhile to pay some attention to the Lib Dems. Sir Ed has found it even harder to cut through to the country than Sir Keir. Colleagues concede that their leader is an unknown to the great majority of the public. One veteran Lib Dem, who knows how tough the job is from personal experience, says that Sir Eds stiffest challenge is to find opportunities to put himself at the heart of the national conversation. He makes his conference speech today. It will be a test of whether he has things to say and ways of saying them that will get himself and his party noticed. Byelections are too unpredictable in their frequency and type to be the sole source of succour for the Lib Dems. They are in pressing need of finding other means to get in the spotlight.

Andrew Rawnsley is Chief Political Commentator of the Observer

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Tories repelled by Johnson can help the Lib Dems knock down the blue wall - The Guardian

LAHORE : Minister for Social Welfare & Bait-ul-Maal Syed Yawar Abbas has expressed his resolve to address the issues of brick kiln workers for whom law exists but is not complied with.

Speaking at a seminar organised by Bonded Labour Liberation Front Pakistan (BLLF) here on Saturday, the minister assured the brick kiln workers that there is reasonable space in Social Welfare Department to work for their welfare. He said he would do his level best to raise their issues in the parliament as well. He condemned complaints of connivance of police with brick kiln owners to keep workers in bondage. He and Minister for Human Rights and Minority Affairs Ijaz Alam Augustine were chief guests at the event attended in large number by lawyers, civil society representatives and a large number of brick kiln workers.

Ijaz Alam Augustine in his speech appreciated the efforts of BLLF and offered governments help in its effort to get the kiln workers their rights. He said establishing a special taskforce to redress the complaints of bonded labour will be considered. He said majority of the victims of forced labour belong to the minorities which face all types of discrimination.

MPA Uzma Kardar, Chairperson Standing Committee on Gender Mainstreaming, was so moved at hearing the plight of bonded labour that she started crying. She assured to move a resolution in Punjab Assembly and volunteer her services for the betterment of the brick kiln workers.

Dr Ashraf Nizami said it was the primary responsibility of the state to eradicate this curse of bonded labour system. He saluted Syeda Ghulam Fatima for her services. He said social security is constitutional right of every citizen and the state must ensure living wages and social protection for workers.

Justice (retd) Nasira Javed Iqbal also expressed grave concern at the plight of brick kiln workers.

At the end, participants of the seminar gave following recommendations: Statutory revision and implementation of wage board award, replace minimum wages with living wages for all workers, take effective measures to implement Bonded Labour Abolition Act 2012, have comprehensive, effective and efficient inspection for proper implementation of the labour laws at brick kilns, add brick kiln workers in the welfare schemes of government like Hunarmand Naujawan ,'Apna Ghar, Insaf Sehat Card, etc. arrange for online education of the children of these workers, provide Khidmat Card, housing, water and sanitation facilities and BLLF also demanded for a fair survey of brick kiln workers among other demands. The CM was demanded probe registration of fake criminal cases against brick kiln workers, vulnerable to forced labour, and take action against responsible police officers.

To stop police violence in connivance with brick kiln owners against the victims of forced labour, there is an urgent need of a high-profile commission for fact-finding on fake criminal FIRs, the seminar demanded.

It was demanded that all political parties must address the issue of bonded labour/forced labour in their constitution and cancel membership of party leadership if anyone is found involved in evil practice of bonded labour.

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Seminar highlights plight of kiln workers - The News International