Category Archives: Abolition Of Work

Countless Asian and African workers are forced to suffer through a form of modern-day slavery that continues to thrive across the Middle East.

Imagine youre offered the job of your dreams in Paris through a family friend. Of course you take it! You board the plane, excited for your new future. But when your plane lands in Oman instead of France, you start to panic.

A driver collects you, confiscates your passport and phone, and drives you to a home, where you are enslaved by a man who bought you from human traffickers to clean his familys home 21 hours a day and be his sex slave.

Tragically, this terrifying nightmare is a reality for countless African and Asian women in the Middle East.

The abusive kafala system of sponsorship on the Arabian Peninsula and in the Levant grants private citizens total control over migrants workers employment and immigration status. Its a form of modern day slavery, with no legal recourse for unpaid wages, abuse, and trafficking.

Tens of millions of foreigners from Nigeria, Uganda, Ethiopia, Ghana, Sri Lanka, Sierra Leone, India, and other countries are subject to this unjust system marked by human rights abuses, racism, and gender discrimination.

Slave labour was an integral component of Omans economy for centuries. From Oman, enslaved people were sold across the Arabian Peninsula to Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar for pearl diving. Slavery was only legally outlawed in Oman in 1970 though it continues today through kafala. Most Omanis still refer to black people with the Arabic word for slave.

When I was teaching in Oman, my university students told me that their families had former legal slaves serve at weddings to show off their familys wealth.

One female American friend, while walking with an Omani friend in his village, looked on with confusion when a dark-skinned woman ran up to him to submissively praise him. Who was that? she asked. His answer: We used to own her.

The pandemic has exacerbated the hell that many enslaved women today are living through in the Middle East. They are suffering more physical and sexual violence, and have even less of a chance at escaping if they do, they risk being jailed on absconding charges (there are even fugitive slave ads).

Oman does not treat forced labour as a crime, so they have no legal recourse to escape slavery, get justice, and return home. Many women have no embassy to run to and even if they do, they are of no help, as Tanzanian women in Oman and Ethiopian women in Beirut have found.

Physical beatings, sexual assault, and rape are common for domestic workers, who are forced to sleep on counters, cupboards, and balconies like animals.

Kasthuri Munirathinam, an Indian maid in Saudi Arabia, had her right arm chopped off by her employer for trying to flee her abusive work conditions. Ariyawathi, a Sri Lankan domestic worker in Saudi Arabia, had 13 nails and 11 needles hammered into her body by her employers. The body of Joanna Demafelis, a Filipina domestic worker, was found stuffed in a freezer in Kuwait by a Lebanese man and Syrian woman.

Other domestic workers have been doused with boiling water, had their hair shaved off, burned with irons, blinded with acid, electrocuted, dismembered, and thrown off high rise buildings. Omani women also have been documented choking them, pelting them with used sanitary pads, and stripping them naked to beat them with hangers.

The callous treatment of these women is connected to Omans long history of legalised sexual slavery. In addition, over an estimated 80 percent of Omani women have suffered Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), so Omani men often seek pleasure from sex workers, child brides in India, and women enslaved in their homes.

An untold number of women trafficked to Oman end up tortured and murdered, like Mariam Nakibuuka, and Kezia Nalwanga. Inconclusive death certificates are often issued to prevent families from seeking justice, such as in the case of Christine Nambeleke and Molly Bukirwa, whose death certificate read: already dead.

In addition to poor physical health, those who do return home have to contend with poverty, depression, PTSD, retaliation from human traffickers, and the shame of having been enslaved. Fortunately, some slavery survivors like Sumaiya Nannyanzi and Oyinlola Solanke use the media to warn other African women.

While many measures have been suggested to reform kafala, from better border controls to enactment of protective laws, kafala cannot be reformed, as it is inherently abusive. Kafala must, instead, be abolished.

It was my Lebanese students at the American University of Beirut who first made me aware of kafala by inviting me to the Migrant Worker Parade and to teach English on the Migrant Worker Task Force. Thanks to them, I realised how discussions of mental health are incomplete without including the high number of enslaved African women who jump to their deaths.

I am continually inspired by Omani human rights defenders, persecuted by their government for demanding basic freedoms, who now agitate in exile for migrant workers rights. I salute British journalists who publish articles on their governments complicity in these human rights abuses. I am in awe of brave Ugandan and Nigerian abolitionists who rescue women from slavery in Oman and arrange for their care when they return home.

It was in speaking with young Ugandan women on a slave ship flight returning home from Oman that I came face-to-face with these horrors, as I listened to their stories and witnessed one woman in a disturbing state of acute trauma from having just been raped. What would you say to a slave? I had no words for the nightmares they had survived just tears.

Abolition is an ongoing, transnational struggle. It is dangerous, creative, and lifegiving and it is happening all the time, only we never hear about it because its Americas allies allowing these particular abuses to occur.

Together, we can and we must end this horrendous suffering.

Disclaimer: The viewpoints expressed by the authors do not necessarily reflect the opinions, viewpoints and editorial policies of TRT World.

We welcome all pitches and submissions to TRT World Opinion please send them via email, to opinion.editorial@trtworld.com

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Kafala cannot be reformed, it must be abolished - TRT World

As thenation this week madeJuneteenth a federal holiday, honoring when the last enslaved Black people learned they were free, lawmakers are reviving calls to end a loophole in the Constitution that allowed another form of slavery forced labor for convicted felons to thrive.

Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley and Georgia Rep. Nikema Williams told The Associated Press they will reintroduce legislation to revise the 13th Amendment, which bans enslavement or involuntary servitude except as a form of criminal punishment. That exception, which has been recognized since 1865, has led to the common practice of forced labor by felons.

Social justice advocates say it created generations of Black families touched by mass incarceration and poverty and that the ramifications are still being felt today.Juneteenthseemed like the appropriate time to address this huge piece of systemic racism in the middle of our Constitution, Merkley said.

At the moment that we are celebrating, if you will, the 13th Amendment and the end of slavery and its eventual announcement we should at the same time recognize that the 13th Amendment was flawed, Merkley said. It enabled states to arrest people for any reason, convict them and put them back into slavery.

The amendments loophole for criminal punishment encouraged former Confederate states, after the Civil War, to devise ways to maintain the dynamics of slavery. They used restrictive measures known as the black codes, laws targeting Black people for benign interactions from talking too loudly to not yielding on the sidewalk. Those targeted would end up in custody for these minor actions, and would effectively be enslaved again.

The so-called abolition amendment was introduced as a joint resolution in December. Mostly supported by Democrats in both the House and Senate, it failed to gain traction before the sessions end. The hope this time around, Merkley said, is to ignite a national movement.

The issue is important to Williams, a Black woman who grew up in the South. She hopes this legislation wont be viewed through the prism of money and what the loss of prison labor would mean. Instead, she says, the history of the prison system and its relationship to people of color must be viewed in a people-centered way.

Our people have already been in chains and enslaved because of money, Williams said. We have to make sure that we are truly moving forward and not using money as a crutch of why were continuing to perpetuate sins of our nations founding and our nations history.

One group that has long been part of the movement is Worth Rises, a criminal justice advocacy group helping with the legislations rollout. The amendments clause has significant repercussions today, says Bianca Tylek, Worth Rises executive director. Incarcerated workers make at most pennies on the dollar for their contributions, she says, and they lack recourse if they get hurt working or have to work when sick.

Were talking about people who can be beaten for not working. People can be denied calls and visits, contact with their family, Tylek said. People can be put into solitary confinement. People can take hits on their long-term record.

Jorge Renaud, national criminal justice director for LatinoJustice and a parolee, said those punishments happened to him when he couldnt get through some jobs. He spent much of his 27 years in Texas state prisons doing hard labor like picking cotton, chopping down trees and grading roads. Texas does not pay jailed workers.

For Renaud, 64, what was worse than no pay was not having much sense of self-worth.

Its not just the choice to work. Its the choice to do anything, he said. We live in a country that prides itself on individuality. Its impressed upon you over and over again that you are worthless and you belong to the state.

Advocates of the bill note that it targets forced labor and not prison work programs, which are voluntary.

What were saying, Tylek said, is the value of that work must be demonstrated and people must not be forced to work against their will.

In Renauds experience, prison labor was also something often done without racial equity. White incarcerated workers often were assigned less labor-intensive tasks like running the prison library or refurbishing computers. But their Black and Latino counterparts got kitchen and laundry duty. He noticed a similar trend when he gave some legislators a tour of a prison unit three years ago.

The jobs that might prepare you for something out in the free world or are technology based are still reserved for whites, Renaud said.

More than 20 states still include similar clauses involving human bondage or prison labor in their own governing documents, which date to the 19th century abolition of slavery. Nebraska and Utah, which are represented by GOP senators, were two of the first to amend their constitutions for the very same issue last year through voter-approved initiatives. Only Colorado came earlier, removing such language through a ballot measure in 2018.

Merkley is optimistic that his Republican colleagues will ultimately support the legislation.

Nothing about this should be partisan, Merkley said. I think every American should be about ending slavery in our Constitution.

Williams, too, does not want this to be painted as a partisan issue.

I am willing to work with you as long as you are willing to work around making sure that everyone in this country regardless of their background, their ZIP code, or their bank account has access to the full promise of America, she said. That includes making sure we rid involuntary servitude in this country in our Constitution.

The 13th Amendment grew from President Abraham Lincolns determination that the Emancipation Proclamation did not do enough to abolish slavery, according to historians. While the Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves in the South in 1863, it wasnt enforced in many places until after the end of the Civil War two years later. Confederate soldiers surrendered in April 1865, but word didnt reach the last enslaved black people until June 19, when Union soldiers brought the news of freedom to Galveston, Texas. That day was dubbed Juneteenth.

Meanwhile, Lincoln proposed a constitutional amendment to dismantle the institution of slavery once and for all. The Senate passed the 13th Amendment in 1864, and the House followed in early 1865, barely two months before Lincolns assassination. The amendment was then ratified by the the states.

Constitutional amendments require approval by two-thirds of the House and Senate, as well as ratification by three-quarters of state legislatures. They are also rare.

Tylek, of Worth Rises, hopes other lawmakers will see that an exception to slavery bans is unacceptable.

Its a huge stain on our culture, on our Constitution, on our nation to say No slavery except, Tylek said. We have to be able to say no slavery no exceptions.

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Juneteenth spurs revival of abolition amendment by lawmakers - NEWS10 ABC

Shellyne Rodriguez,Hillary Paints a Banner(2020). Colored pencil on paper, 14 x 19 in. Used with permission of the artist.

When COVID hit, the Museum of Modern Art fired its freelance educators, including artist-activist Shellyne Rodriguez. In this interview,Rodriguez places that in a wider critique of museum labor practices, and discusses how Strike MoMA imagines a future of art for the people.

Since early April, artists and workers have occupied the public square across from the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in Manhattan. Under the name Strike MoMA, they are protesting the financial entanglements of the museums wealthy patrons as well as the institutions labor practices, including the furloughing of many employees during the COVID-19 pandemic. Building on the momentum of the past years social justice movements, Strike MoMA has pushed back on half measures offered to placate protesters. Organizers claim that only a radical readjustment will resolve their concerns about the museums ties to policing and crony capitalism. The coalition recently garnered support from artist groups such as Guerrilla Girls and Decolonize This Place, as well as activist-intellectuals includingAngela Davis, Fred Moten, Sandy Grande, and Gayatri Spivak. Demonstrations were propelled into national news again in recent weeks when activists clashed with museum security guards, despite director Glenn Lowrys assurance that MoMA would respect peaceful actions.

I envisioned myself as a rank-and-file worker who was demystifying the museum. My approach was to point out that these artworks and their creators are our allies, but this space is not.

For Shellyne Rodriguez, an artist and writer based in the Bronx, this protest is a natural progression. As a community organizer, she helps call attention to the relationships between art, real estate, and gentrification. As an educator at MoMA for nearly a decade, she did work that was in many ways an extension of her activism: running programs for MoMA that mainly took place outside of the museum and connected under-resourced and incarcerated populations with art. When COVID-19 shut down museums across the United States, MoMA terminated contracts for Rodriguez and nearly a hundred other educators, leading to public scrutiny of their precarious employment. Critics questioned why some of the museums most crucial workers were contracted on a freelance basis and not even considered employees of the institution. In a recent conversation, Rodriguez and I connected the dots between these layoffs, the continued resistance to MoMA, and a growing institutional critique rooted in abolition.

Billy Anania

Billy Anania: What were your main responsibilities at MoMA, and why do you believe the educators were among the first to be permanently terminated?

Shellyne Rodriguez: I worked there for about eight years in the education departments community and access programs, which connect schools and nonprofits with the museums art workshops. I helped out with the Alzheimers project, the Touch Tour for the visually impaired, the Primetime Initiative for senior citizens, and much more.

I also worked in community partnerships with Kerry Downey, who has written extensive critiques of community education in museums. These initiatives to bring arts education into the community are generally administered through contracts between the museum and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), which is pretty problematic. NGOs do not really represent a community; they are an extension of the welfare state. They provide services that used to be public goodspicking up the pieces that the state has neglected or let go due to austeritythrough the same kinds of questionable philanthropy as museums. But the communities they served really interested me and kept me there. I worked with Passages Academy, which is the education wing of the youth detention system in New York, including Crossroads and Horizon Juvenile Centersbasically jails for minors. I got to work with incarcerated kids, sex workers, undocumented children waiting to be reunited with their families, all in different locations. These programs were carved out long before I got there, and I inherited them.

Additionally, I started a whole new initiative in the museum called Night Studio. Im a GED kid who sort of fell through the back door of art school and managed to get some degrees, but I really wanted to create something for folks who were no longer teenagers. There are always programs for teens to get them involved in the arts, but I was interested in collaborating with people in their mid-twenties and thirties who were just coming around to getting a high schoolequivalency diploma, and who self-identified as artists but did not have any avenues to be supported in that. I started this program with the museums money, of course. It was intensive with lots of resources, and we taught them a great deal.

I envisioned myself as a rank-and-file worker who was demystifying the museum, but not necessarily trying to make people of the museum. My approach to education was pointing out that the collections are relics that artists originally made to say something, but which are now captured in this space. These works and their creators are our allies, but this space is not. I often used the museum for political education, because that is just my approach to teaching. In general, I tried to spend as little time there as possible. Art institutions try to pay in social capital, but I wasnt interested in that.

The museum used underpaid contract positions to make itself seem more committed to community initiatives than it in fact was.

BA: Given that your employment by MoMA was so contingent, it seems bizarre that the museum expected you to be so heavily invested in the company culture. But it seems clear that the museum used these underpaid contract positions to make itself seem more committed to these initiatives than it in fact was.

SR: Oh, I was basically operating as a program director, but, in reality, I was a gig worker. When the museum laid us all off, I was pissed that I no longer had a job, but I wasnt shocked. Of course education goes first; this is Neoliberalism 101. I have always seen the museum for what it is, and I did not expect some kind of benevolent action to occur. Glenn Lowry, the museums director, is basically a corporate CEO after all.

I was more offended the year before COVID-19 hit, when all the freelance educators were disinvited from the annual holiday party. Human resources reminded us that we were technically not museum employees, so we could no longer attend. I had been there for more than seven years, and others had been there for as many as thirty years. We were all appalled. Our immediate supervisors, who had no real power, said they would organize a dinner just for our department. I felt more insulted by this incident than anything else, but it was merely a liability issue for the museum. They wanted to avoid any circumstances in which they appeared to acknowledge we were actual employees of theirs. It was the most honest thing they ever did.

BA: It feels necessary to contextualize the educators within MoMAs broader labor structure. Museums tend to keep their workers as separate as possible, and they often farm out front-facing positions to third parties (including to private security companies, temp agencies, and catering companies), all while poorly compensating these workers and offering them no potential for union representation. But there is also more than one union at the museum, with different ones for blue- and white-collar workers, right? This is a business model that has been broadly adopted by museums (and with clear parallels to the neoliberal university), with a professional class of administrators and curators, then laborers who execute much of the museums daily operations and work under precarious conditions.

There is this mythology around museums that needs to be debunked. They are corporations like any other, except that their businesses accrete around a bonfire of fetishized art.

SR: There is this mythology around museums that needs to be debunked. They are corporations like any other, except that their businesses accrete around a bonfire of fetishized art. I am not sure why we ever expected any better from a corporation. Of course they treat their workers terribly and carry out union-busting tactics.

Union workers only comprise a small percentage of employees at MoMA, but the fact that there are unions gives the public a false impression that the museums workers have a seat at the table. In reality, business decisions are all happening multiple tax brackets above the vast majority of both unionized and nonunionized workers. Security at MoMA is unionized, but that is a whole other dilemma. Management always wants to make sure the cops are comfortable.

BA: The directors and trustees are not really beholden to every department, and many white-collar workers may not even know some departments or positions even exist. That is a known tool of union-busting: a portion of employees are given recognition while everyone else is left scrambling, thereby disrupting worker unity. In one sense, you have a unified group of workers agitating for short-term solutions, but can unions also wind up extending the life of longer-term issues?

SR: Well, the problem is that unions cannot solve everything. If we clamor for more unionization in the museum, then what do those contracts look like? I am thinking about how many times public sector unions bailed out New York City. The pensions of teachers and multiple city workers get invested into the bonds that keep the doors of state and federal prisons open. Its all intertwined. This is something that is addressed in Strike MoMAs Post-MoMA Futures platform. We are not going to fix these big problems by unionizing; that would just get us more of the same. Where does the money come from? Where do the pensions go? Once unions are involved in upholding the structure, because their pensions are on the line, they can actually start working to uphold the very people and structures Strike MoMA is protesting. Yes to collective bargaining power, but the devil is also in the details.

Once unions are involved, because their pensions are on the line, they can actually start working to uphold the very structures Strike MoMA is protesting. Yes to collective bargaining power, but the devil is also in the details.

BA: Can we talk more about Strike MoMA? How have the last few months shifted the conversation around museum futures?

SR: One idea that fascinates me is interconnected struggle, or an interlocking directorate. This term is loosely defined as the networks of oligarchs, multinational corporations, and defense industry profiteersthe cluster formed by those holding executive positions at companies while sitting on museum and university boards.

Strike MoMA recently highlighted MoMA trustee Gustavo Cisneros, who pretty much embodies the Latin American art empire; there is no bigger name than that. He also happens to sit on the board of Barrick Gold Corporation, which is the worlds largest gold mining company. They have committed atrocities all across the world: bodies piled up in East Africa, natural reserves decimated, loads of problems in South America.

BA: In the last five years, Barrick Gold has come under fire for its backdoor deals with Tanzanian policewho subsequently murdered more than sixty villagersas well as a controversial Chilean project shut down by that countrys environmental regulator, and cyanide spills in Argentina. Now theres talk of another mine project and tailings dam in the Dominican Republic, despite organized opposition on the ground there.

SR: Yes, and New York City makes up a huge portion of the Dominican diaspora, so this is of great concern here, too. Cisneross company wants to build a dam on a river that more than 4 million people depend upon, including people living in the capital, Santo Domingo. Cow and rice farmers, along with other people in that region, are engaged in guerilla tactics to stop this, fighting against officials and police who are backing Barrick Gold. Cisneros is also building a sustainable luxury resort in the Dominican Republic while all this is going down.

Then we have James and Paula Crown. They funded the Crown Creativity Lab at MoMA, and even named one of its programs The Peoples Studio. The Crowns own General Dynamics, which manufactures and sells the weapons used to carpet-bomb Gaza. They have been selling these same bombs to the Saudis, who have used them to ravage Yemen, and they sold battle tanks to the Colombian military forces that are now all over the streets raining hell on Colombians.

BA: Another MoMA board member, Steven Tananbaum of GoldenTree Asset Management, owns a significant portion of the sovereign debt of Puerto Rico. Tananbaum once boasted to Reuters about how forcing a restructuringof the commonwealthsdebtin effect guaranteeing it remain poorcould turn a fantastic profit for investors. And he is not even the only MoMA trustee working with the hedge funds enforcing Puerto Ricos debt. Theres also Leon Black, who recently stepped down for his associations with Jeffrey Epstein, as well as billionaire investors Daniel Och and Glenn Dubin. The global impact of this museum board alone feels insurmountable.

SR: These folks all work in solidarity together. They control their own domain, but they also wield significant power in our civic spaces where we go to work. And if they are working together, then we need to do the same. As someone who worked at MoMA for a long time, I cant sit this out.

These board members all work in solidarity. And if they are working together, then we need to do the same.

BA: I read your 2018 essay in the New Inquiry, titled How the Bronx Was Branded, and thought it was one of the most succinct explanations of how art and real estate work together. You showed that at the heart of the Bronxs redevelopment was a lofty public relations campaign that allowed artists, developers, and city officials to profit off the displacement of low-income families. How do museums contribute, and can you speak about the PR war they wage on the media and ordinary people?

SR: When I organize with Take Back the Bronxa volunteer grassroots collective centered around community controlI try to bring in how art contributes to gentrification here. This is how I first connected with Decolonize This Place, because they were thinking about museums all over the world in similar ways. The Bronx is the poorest borough in New York, with two of the poorest congressional districts in the country. We have a huge Yemeni community and a lot of Palestinians, too. We have spent so much time bridging the gaps in our communities to enrich conversations and inspire people to feel empowered by the spirit of interconnected struggle.

Museums exist in a market, just like real estate, and we are all somewhat in denial because they happen to be tied to something we love. I would never deny the levels of spirituality and poetics we all experience through art; that is the reason Im here. But we cannot conflate art with museums. They are not synonymous, nor are art and for-profit art galleries synonymous. We let these millionaires and billionaires convince us that their spaces are the only ones that legitimize art, and suddenly no other alternatives seem possible.

However, we are starting to see this all break down a little bit. While other museums were getting a lot of bad press for taking money from the Sacklers and oil companies and the like, the MoMA managed to stay off the radar for a long while. But recently there was an open letter signed by quite a few prominent scholars and artists denouncing the museums position on Palestine. Its the beginning of a conscious shift. I think people still feel some sort of religious feelings toward MoMA, you know? Thats our mistake. There is significant power on that board that cannot be overlooked.

We let millionaires convince us that their spaces are the only ones that legitimize art, and suddenly no alternative seems possible.

BA: I think many of us have only recently had our eyes opened to the myriad ways that money laundering factors into museum leadershiphow wealthy philanthropists can basically art-wash their wealth to uphold a positive reputation centered around humanity and creative expression.

SR: And this is part of a larger question: Are we, as artists and cultural workers, willing to engage with this problem? Are we willing to make it so the structures we have relied on, which hold these museums together, are rendered obsolete?

I remember during the first days of protests at the Whitney Museum in 2019we were protesting Whitney vice chair Warren Kanders, who owns weapons manufacturer Safariland Groupwhen a well-known art critic stopped by. He sauntered over and started yelling at some of the young people putting up banners, saying they had no respect and that we need these philanthropistsand that we were not old enough to remember the Culture Wars. I think the argument he was trying to make was that the government cant be counted on to fund museums, so we need to rely on the private sector. And of course the government routinely begs the private sector for help. Neoliberalism is the private sector governing, and this is just an extension.

People say, How will we take care of art? or How will we take care of the museum? To me, those are classist questions. How much of a museum collection is extracted? I am thinking of the MOVE bombing victim whose remains recently were revealed to be in the collection of the Penn Museum, and the price our communities pay because people want to keep the museum doors open. Its a bait and switch, like bombing a city and building a school.

BA: Yes, it feels as though this corruption and exploitation are inevitable outcomes of institutions founded on colonialist practices.

SR: A hundred percent. I have gotten so much out of speaking with and reading Ariella Asha Azoulay, particularly her book Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism (2019). Ariella could be a battle rapper; shes got bars. She makes an example of the camera shutter, the action that locks a historical moment into place and crystalizes its story. You will see photos in the newspaper of rappers like DJ Kool Herc and Swizz Beatz applauding a new hip-hop museum. That captured image of the museum, the crowds, and the applauding does not capture the periphery, which is the bulldozing of communities and gentrification occurring outside.

This is also how an imperialist project is born, and how art replaces humanity inside the museum. When the vitrine goes in, we go out. Its rooted in a death; once they put the shell-top Adidas behind the glass, they dont need the people anymore. They have the fossil, the souvenir, the head on a spike. That is the violence of modernityas Arthur Schopenhauer used to say, that art plucks the object of its contemplation from the stream of the worlds course, and holds it isolated before it. The museum wrenches the object from the world and holds it up for us. What gets left behind is murder, extraction, pillaging, and colonialism.

The museum wrenches the object from the world and holds it up for us. What gets left behind is murder, extraction, pillaging, and colonialism.

BA: I feel particularly drawn to this quote of yours from that New Inquiry essay: How would an artistic practice that aims to disrupt alienation appear in our hallways, elevators, and all the spaces we share in our communities? Have you found an answer to this?

SR: When we reweave the social fabric, the middleman is clearly what needs to be abolished, and abolishing the mediator means we talk to each other again. And when we talk to each other again, we can break down the alienation. One thing I have always admired about immigrant communities is how tightly knit they are, because they have not yet experienced the alienation of the metropolis. In contrast, for Black and Puerto Rican communities that have been here since the 1950s, it is much more difficult. We have gone through too much, been broken apart and separated to an extreme degree. We are an expendable labor force that experienced the first wave of the neoliberal project, which is why we also make up so much of the prison.

Alienation affects everybody in the city, though, and makes us all exist in separate worlds with our shared grievances. This came up during the 201920 FTP protests, when protestors challenged the New York police in the subway. Everyone was mad in their heads, but nobody was vocalizing it. How do we continue to crack that? I think it might require dialing back before all the organizing work, before knocking on doors, before galvanizing around the problemhow do we see each other? Its about locating that beginning point.

BA: In applying an abolitionist critique to museums, do we risk taking away from the contemporaneous prison/police movements? Or are they all interrelated?

SR: Abolition as a principle is not just about police. The museum is the police precinct, as Stefano Harney said in a recent talk, meaning these institutions are the well-funded gatekeepers of culture within a city of aesthetically minded people. They are involved in community policing, sending patrol cars in the form of curators and community outreach. We need to stop thinking about the police as the person in the blue uniform. That is just one pawn, not the whole picture. The police is the structure, and that structure takes many forms. Nonprofits and NGOs are police. We are talking about structures of power, and if we are undoing these structures, then that is abolition by definition.

Abolition as a principle is not just about police. The museum is the police precinct, meaning these institutions are the well-funded gatekeepers of culture.

How do we put this critique into practice and build toward these institutions being obsolete? This is why Strike MoMA is so categorically different from the Whitney Museum protests. Back then, it was about shining a light on one board member, to make an example of how one person touches all of our struggles. Warren Kanderss weapons were in Ferguson, in Palestine, in Puerto Rico, and at the border. With Strike MoMA, there is something growing in the park right across the street from the museum. We have been so conditioned to have the state mediate our every move and conflict, from loud music complaints to applying for welfare. A mediator is present at all times. Pushing that middleman out is abolition in practice; struggling to eliminate the need for the mediator is abolition. We call them no-cop zones. We do not need the police if we can handle the disagreements ourselves. We just need to learn how to talk to each other, and how to undo systemic problems for ourselves.

We apply this same principle to the museum. No one needs to stay awake at night, stressed out and ruminating over what will happen to art and artists if we drive out all the toxic philanthropistsas if philanthropy isnt toxic in and of itself. This is art were talking about, after all. The lack of imagination really kills me sometimes. This is supposed to be our space. What are we going to build next?

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Bringing Abolition to the Museum - Boston Review

The 13th Amendment may have outlawed the enslavement of Black people, but the United States continues to devise new ways to uphold the racist hierarchies that slavery was founded on and to restrict the freedom of the descendants of enslaved people.

Today, we see alarming echoes of the Reconstruction Era, when unjust laws prevented emancipated enslaved people from voting and exercising their power and influence as citizens of a democracy. During the 2020 presidential election, people who lived in predominantly Black neighborhoods faced significantly longer lines to cast ballots than people in predominantly white neighborhoods. In some cases, Black people were forced to wait more than five hours to vote. Now, lawmakers in 43 states have proposed at least 250 bills that would make voting more difficult. Historians say that these proposalswhich include ID requirements, reduced poll hours, and limits on mail-in votingwould represent the most dramatic curtailment of ballot access since poll taxes, literacy tests, and other restrictions effectively prevented newly emancipated men from voting in the late 19th century.

Obstacles to voting are just one means to curtail the liberty of Black people in the United States. Mass incarceration has picked up where slavery left off, separating families and dehumanizing and traumatizing the descendants of enslaved people. In the 156 years since slavery was abolished, Black people in the United States have gone from being considered less than human under the law to being treated as less than human by a criminal legal system that still punishes them more harshly than white people at every stage.

Because the 13th Amendment exempted people convicted of crimes, the criminal legal system has been used to extract labor from enslaved peoples descendants. Immediately after the abolition of slavery, Black codes criminalized activities like selling crops without permission from a white person. Other laws criminalized Black people for being too close to a white person in public, walking without purpose, walking next to railroad tracks, or assembling after dark.

As lawmakers expanded the criminal legal systems ability to arbitrarily send Black people to jail for minor crimes, convict leasing laws allowed plantation owners to lease convicted people. Historians have reported that people who were leased were treated even more brutally than enslaved people because plantation owners had a financial incentive to keep enslaved people alive. No such incentive protected victims of convict leasing. Most incarcerated people who were leased for labor did not even survive to complete 10-year sentences. Until the mid-1950s, states routinely forced chain gangs of imprisoned people to do public works projects while wearing chains weighing as much as 20 pounds.

While Black codes and chain gangs have faded into history, incarcerated people remain an easily exploitable labor source because desperate conditions compel many to accept any work for any pay just to alleviate some of the misery of their circumstances. Private companies and governments extract nearly free labor from incarcerated peoplewho are employed to do everything from building office furniture and making hand sanitizer to staffing call centers and performing 3D modelingin most cases for pennies an hour. In California, incarcerated people battle fires in 24-hour shifts for as little as $2.90 a day. The estimated minimum annual value of prison and jail industrial output is $2 billion.

It is long past time for the United States to abolish this modern twist on slavery. The labor of all people, including those who are incarcerated, deserves respect and fair pay. Freedom Unitedand National Equal Justice Association are two organizations which have campaigns to end these exploitive practices.

As the country commemorates Juneteenth, a holiday that celebrates the emancipation of enslaved people in the United States, remember that slaverys chains still rattle. Voter suppression is on the rise, and mass incarceration is another incarnation of state-sponsored, economically incentivized institutional terror that destroys the lives of Black people and many others in this country. This Juneteenth, Vera is redoubling our efforts to uproot slaverys lasting legacy and build a nation where all people are treated with dignity and respect.

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The Chains of Slavery Still Exist in Mass Incarceration - Vera Institute of Justice

Chandigarh, June 17

Punjab Advocate-Generals office has plunged into a crisis of sorts. Just about seven months before the Assembly polls in the state, differences have surfaced between Advocate-General Atul Nanda and the government, evident from the abolition of 23 not-so-high-level posts without consulting him. His wife and Additional Advocate-General Rameeza Hakim, too, has resigned from the post she held for more than four years.

Reacting to arbitrary abolishment of posts in his office, Nanda has shot off a communiqu to Chief Secretary Vini Mahajan, asserting the Home Department abolished 23 posts without so much as the courtesy of consultation with me to affect the functioning of his office. Nanda added some of the posts, including those of steno and librarian, were critical for the functioning of any lawyers office. The next six months are crucial as being end of the term. The government is likely to be faced with critical litigation, which will require this office to work at its best. At a time like this, to try and cripple my office with the abolishing of posts, betrays an arbitrary approach if not, a total non-application of mind by the ACS Home. TNS

The rest is here:

A-G, govt at odds as 23 posts abolished - The Tribune India

The Government has quietly suspended an ambitious programme of reform of the jury system as a result of other priorities.

The Working Group on Jury Service was established in 2018 to examine a range of issues including whether jurors should receive expenses and the potential widening of the jury pool.

Tougher laws to prevent jury tampering or intimidation were also to be considered by the group, as were specific laws against jurors disclosing the details of their deliberations after a trial.

It was also responsible for examining the abolition of the effective blanket ban on civil servants and certain professionals from jury service.

Under the current system, a wide range of people, including doctors, nurses, teachers and public servants, are excused as of right from jury service. This has led to concerns that juries are not truly representative of society.

The working group was established to examine 56 recommendations contained in a 2013 Law Reform Commission report. The report called for radical reform of a jury system which has remained essentially unchanged since the automatic exemption for women was abolished in 1976.

The working group was made up of senior officials from the Department of Justice, the Courts Service, Forensic Science Ireland, the Garda and the Director of Public Prosecutions office.

It met a number of times between April 2018 and April 2019 before ceasing work without delivering a final report.

Unfortunately other priorities then overtook the work of that group, a department spokesman said when asked why it had ceased meeting.

The department said the modernisation of the courts system remains a priority and that the operation of the jury system will be further reviewed in the future. This will include the work already carried out by the working group and any subsequent developments, in particular over the course of the pandemic, the spokesman said. Any reforms would of course require primary legislation.

The working group had asked legal experts and various groups in the justice sector, such as the Law Society, to make submissions on the topic of jury reform before it ceased work. The unannounced cessation of its work has caused frustration among some of those who made submissions.

One of those was Dr Mark Coen, a law lecturer and jury expert in UCD, who made a submission with his colleague Dr Niamh Howlin.

He said it appears the department shut the working group down and hoped nobody would notice.

The working group wrote directly to people, including me, seeking written submissions. However, the working group did not extend those of us who responded with written submissions, in February 2019, the courtesy of updates on what it was doing with those submissions, if anything, Dr Coen told The Irish Times.

The whole episode has not exactly been a model of best practice in conducting public consultation.

Dr Coen said he emailed the department several times seeking an update on the groups work but did not receive a response. He eventually contacted the departments secretary general and was told the working group has been put on hold due to competing priorities.

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Government suspends work of jury reform group due to other priorities - The Irish Times

THE contentious issue of commemorating in churches and cathedrals the lives of those who had been involved in the slave trade arose in the Consistory Court of Oxford diocese in a petition for a faculty to create an educational area dedicated to the life and work of the Revd John Newton (1725-1807), in the Grade I listed Church of St Peter and St Paul, Olney.

Newton was described in The Dictionary of National Biography (2010) by D. Bruce Hindmarsh as a slave trader and Church of England clergyman who had been accused of hypocrisy for holding strong religious convictions at the same time as being active in the slave trade, praying above deck while his human cargo was in abject misery below deck. Later in life, and after he had left the sea, he repented and supported the movement for the abolition of the slave trade.

An entry by Historic England stated that his singular position as a figure of unimpeachable moral authority with first-hand experience of the slave trade made his contribution to the success of the abolition movement extremely valuable.

The petition for the faculty was unopposed, and was brought by the Rector, the Revd Andrew Pritchard-Keens, and two churchwardens of St Peter and St Paul (the petitioners), where Newton had been an assistant curate from 1764 to 1780. On New Years Day 1773, he delivered a sermon, based on a hymn that he had written a few days earlier, Faiths Review and Expectations. That hymn later became Amazing Grace, and Olney came to be known, as the road sign into Olney proclaimed, The home of Amazing Grace.

In 1779, a book was published, Olney Hymns, written by Newton in collaboration with his close friend the poet William Cowper (1731 to 1800). It had 67 hymns by Cowper, and 281 by Newton, including Glorious things of thee are spoken and How sweet the name of Jesus sounds.

In 1780, Newton became Rector of St Mary Woolnoth, in the City of London, and while there he formed a strong relationship with William Wilberforce, whom he advised and supported in the campaign to abolish slavery. Newton and his wife were originally buried in the crypt under St Mary Woolnoth, but their remains had to be moved to accommodate the extension to the London Underground Northern Line, and the construction of Bank Underground Station. Their remains were transported to Olney, and interred in a tomb that is now a Grade II listed monument.

The Church of Englands guidance for parishes and cathedrals addresses concerns over memorials with links to slavery (News, 14 May). It notes that, although churches and cathedrals are, above all, places dedicated to the worship of God, not all members of the local community feel welcome there, and that might be because of the presence of objects commemorating people who were responsible for the oppression and marginalisation of others.

The report of the Archbishops Anti-Racism Taskforce also recognised that, while history should not be hidden, the Church did not want unconditionally to celebrate or commemorate those who had contributed to or benefited from the tragedy that was the slave trade (News, 23 April).

Given the sensitivity and relevance of Newtons involvement in the slave trade, the petitioners clarified how they proposed to approach the subject of the slave trade in their exhibits, which had been donated by the Cowper and Newton Museum, in Olney. They said that they intended to celebrate Newtons Christian conversion, his life as an evangelist and hymn-writer, and his inspiring relationship with Wilberforce. But they did not intend to sanitise or airbrush history and would highlight the evils of the slave trade and all that it involved. They also intended to celebrate Amazing Grace.

The Chancellor, the Worshipful David Hodge QC, said that, since the proposal was one that essentially involved the historical associations of the church and its cultural, ethical, and heritage values, it was not a proposal that, if implemented, would result in any harm to the significance of the church as a building of special architectural or historic interest. The ordinary presumption in faculty proceedings in favour of things as they stood had also been rebutted.

The planned changes were designed to bring into regular and beneficial use what was presently a little-used area of the church, and to ensure that it was available to educate visitors, in a balanced way, about Newton, his life and work, and to celebrate his later, and worthy, achievements while not overlooking or in any way seeking to diminish his earlier sins, the Chancellor said. As the home of Amazing Grace, with significant connections to Newton and Cowper, the church already attracted thousands of visitors every year, and the changes that were being proposed would serve only to enhance the visitor experience, thereby enhancing the churchs mission.

The Chancellor said that the new displays would serve to remind the worshipping congregation and visitors that Jesus came to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance (Luke 5.32), and would also bring to mind the true saying of St Paul, worthy of all to be received, That Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners (1 Timothy 1, 15), as they were instructed during the service of holy communion according to the Book of Common Prayer.

From the material presented to him, the Chancellor said, it appeared that the church was alive to the need to ensure that there was appropriate diversity amongst the materials to be displayed . . . and to recognise the vital contributions made to the abolition of the vile trade in human flesh by African and other global majority heritage writers and abolitionists, women and working-class reformers, rather than simply focusing upon the work of prominent white, upper- and middle-class male abolitionists like John Newton and William Wilberforce.

The faculty was therefore granted for the proposals to be implemented within six months.

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Exhibition to mark slave-owner turned Abolitionist John Newton - Church Times

Earlier this year Andy Smarick, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, wrote a compelling piece in Public Discourse advocating a conservatism of creation. Noting that conservatives are typically adept at well, conserving, he exhorts them to also get great at creating new institutions. For readers who may see conservative creation as an oxymoron at first glance, Smarick assures them that it is, in fact, just what our nation needs to maintain the most important aspects of society, culture and governance.

Perpetual institutions are necessary for ongoing needs, he acknowledges, though they may require updating and reform from time to time. In times of massive change, however, conservatives might better discriminate between the perpetual institutions we need (family, marriage, national and state legislatures) and those which we simply happen to have. Rather than spending precious time and money doing the incremental work of fine-tuning the latter, conservatives should look to those extraordinary eras when Americas civil society exploded with institutional fertility.

The years between 1820 and 1860 marked one such period, driven by the Second Great Awakening; reformers championing abolition, temperance and womens rights and the founding of many new colleges and universities. Smarick also cites the years between 1880 and 1920 when the Red Cross, NAACP, Boy and Girl Scouts and many other organizations were established. For conservatives, however, the real Golden Age was the two-decade organization spree between 1964 (Barry Goldwaters loss) and 1984 (Ronald Reagans landslide re-election) when conservative social entrepreneurs and donors established numerous institutions (including the Federalist Society, the Heritage Foundation, and the Manhattan Institute) which pushed conservative ideas forward and continue to do so today.

In encouraging a rebirth of conservative creation, Smarick deftly links such action to the conservative intellectual tradition, citing Alexis de Tocqueville, Robert Nisbet and Friedrich Hayek. He is equally careful to avoid advocating change in place of continuity, referring to Edmund Burkes comment that a state without the means of some change, is without the means of its own conservation. He cautions conservatives to avoid looking to national solutions for the problems they choose to tackle and turn instead on social entrepreneurialism that is focused more locally, that produces a diversity of institutions and that engages our fellow citizens in collective action.

And finally, Smarickaware of the frustrations that conservatives may face in attempting to reform perpetual institutions (and higher education comes immediately to mind)asks them to stay in those fights. We need to be part of the debates that take place inside of and about longstanding entities, he writes. But we must also appreciate that sometimes in order to preserve principles and practices that we hold dear, we must create new institutions dedicated to such causes.

For donors and others interested in following Andy Smaricks work around conservative creation, the Manhattan Institute held an event on June 2 titled A Conservatism of Creation: Building New Education Institutions. You can access it here.

Original post:

Conservative Creation: New Institutions to Preserve What We Hold Dear - Philanthropy Magazine

File Photo: Peruvian Presidential Candidate Pedro Castillo addresses supporters from the headquarters of the Free Peruvian Party in Lima, Peru, June 8, 2021.Reuters / Sebastian Castaneda

June 17, 2021

Marco Aquino and Stephanie Eschenbacher

Lima (Reuters) -Perus Election Commission voted against the June 6 presidential election on Thursday to quickly declare the final result and end the swirling tensions and uncertainties. He said he was working at maximum speed to check.

National Election Jury President Jorge Saras said in a Twitter message that all staff members of the organization would work to ensure that the checks on the votes contested throughout the weekend were accelerated.

Socialist Pedro Castillo claimed victory https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/perus-castillo-leads-election-with-501-votes-after-all-ballots-tallied-2021- 06-15 This weeks votes were slightly higher than his right-wing rival Keiko Fujimori. However, Fujimori vowed to fight, denying her party allegations of fraudulent elections that provided little evidence.

Election experts said the task of checking the disputed votes could take days or weeks, given that the Fujimori Party has demanded the abolition of about 900 voting tables.

In the 2011 and 2016 elections, Fujimori also ran and was defeated, but the official announcement of the winner was made until the end of June, and the number of votes was reduced.

Castillo has recently met with presidential candidates, other political party representatives, and civil society groups who ran in the first round of the election to build a bridge to form a government.

A clear election of 51-year-old former teachers and union leaders in power of the party in support of Marxist ideas is https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/stashing-cash-perus-urban-elite -Panics-socialist-looks-set-clinch-presidency-2021-06-15 A small urban elite in Peru.

Questions have also been raised about the possibility of a new wave of leftist government in South America, with elections scheduled in Chile, Colombia and Brazil within the next 18 months. Like Peru, everything is characterized by increasingly polarized political and economic problems exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Castillo claims https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/perus-socialist-president-in-waiting-seeks-calm-fears-amid-vote-tension-2021-06-16. He is not a communist and uses democratic means to redistribute wealth. But his promise to renegotiate mining taxes and abolish the countrys constitution surprised investors.

Ordered Regime Change

In a note on Thursday, JP Morgan said a more moderate message delivered by Castillo and his team as the vote lowered mass blood pressure.

Reaching out to more centrists will usher in a story of moderation, opening the door to moderate regime change scenarios, he added.

With 100% of the votes counted on Tuesday, Castillo was ahead with 50.125%, 44,058 votes behind Fujimori, the daughter of former president Alberto Fujimori, who was imprisoned.

The tough elections have deeply divided the Peruvians. Protest marches by supporters of both candidates take place almost daily in downtown Lima, calling for a quick resolution and respect for the will of the masses.

Julio Lewis, chief economist at Itau Bank in Brazil in Mexico and Peru, said the impasse in elections and the resulting delay in announcing the new governments economic policies could also have a ruthless impact on investment.

At a press conference on Thursday, Fujimori announced a team of lawyers appointed by her party to challenge the validity of the 250,000 votes cast at 900 voting tables in almost poor rural areas.

We have the right to know the truth, said Fujimori.

Attorneys at her party have stated that they will provide evidence of fraud to agencies such as the Organization of American States and the European Union. International observers have previously stated that they consider elections clean and transparent.

(Report by Marco Aquino and Stefanie Eschenbacher, Written by Aislinn Laing, Edited by Rosalba OBrien)

Perus Election Commission says it is working at maximum speed to resolve election questions

Source link Perus Election Commission says it is working at maximum speed to resolve election questions

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Peru's Election Commission says it is working at maximum speed to resolve election questions - Texasnewstoday.com

Recently, former Provost John Etchemendy sent a letter to the editor in which he made several false and misleading claims criticizing Abolish Stanford and defending the Stanford University Department of Public Safety (SUDPS). Throughout the letter, Etchemendy demonstrated an ignorance of both student demands and abolitionist principles, arguing for a misleading position of community safety that relies fundamentally on carceral solutions.

The former Provosts comments which argue that we should promulgate the standards and style of SUDPS nationwide are alarming in the context of SUDPSs violent history. Etchemendy consistently positions SUDPS as an exception to the long history of police violence, but it was during his tenure as Provost that an SUDPS Deputy was involved in the murder of East Palo Alto resident Pedro Calderon at the base of Stanford foothills. No reparations were ever made to Calderons family, and Stanford as Etchemendys own comments indicate seldom acknowledges that the event occurred.

Etchemendys letter is part of a larger pattern to which weve grown accustomed: Administrators pay lip service to ideas of equality and justice while actively refusing to take any concrete steps to realize these ideals.

Last week, on the one-year anniversary of the murder of George Floyd by the racist Minneapolis Police Department, students received an email from four Vice Provosts that thank[ed] our community centers, student leaders and student organizations for continuing a legacy of activism focused on the most vulnerable, citing the Black Lives Matter memorial Abolish Stanford helped construct on the Oval last June, and recognizing those creating change after so much unconscionable loss. Conveniently, their email omitted the fact that when the BLM memorial was actually up on the Oval, we were repeatedly informed that we had to take it down, or the administration would take it down for us.

Acknowledging the importance of scrutinizing University messaging and uplifting the truth, we at Abolish Stanford would like to take the opportunity to respond to some of the wildy deceptive claims advanced in Etchemendys May 20 letter to the editor.

Etchemendy opens with the misleading assertion that a previous Daily article covering our Abolition May rally does not recount any complaints about SUDPS because the department provides a blueprint of community policing. His suggestion is that the Stanford community simply has no complaints about SUDPS. But as many, many, many op-eds in the Daily have already noted, this is categorically false.

Despite Etchemendys assertions that SUDPS officers are familiar with the needs of the student community, interactions between Stanford cops and students have routinely proven otherwise. Stanford police are not waiting in the shadows on Santa Teresa to get to know the community better; they are racially profiling and terrorizing Black students where they live. And when Stanford allows its police to respond to a student mental health call armed with guns holding rubber bullets which can cause fatal nerve damage despite their label as non-lethal weapons they prove that they have ignored the demands of the student community, who have consistently called for non-punitive, non-carceral responses to mental health crises. Regardless of Etchemendys perception, SUDPS police do not know nor support the needs of the student community.

Etchemendys misconception of community policing is not at all unique. Stanford is one of the over 95% of four-year colleges with a student population greater than 2,500 that has their own law enforcement agency; these schools justify the existence of their police forces with similar arguments. But, there are countless instances of racial profiling, brutality, sexual assault and murder by these supposedly exceptional police forces. Thus, when Etchemendy asserts that SUDPS officers are somehow more dedicated to ideas of community safety than the swaggering big city cop, he relies on an already-debunked myth of campus cop exceptionalism so as to disregard the violence that SUDPS has inflicted on countless communities on and off campus.

For a professor whose research interests include logic, Etchemendys characterizations of our demands are startlingly illogical. From day one, Abolish has advocated not only for defunding SUDPS, but abolition everywhere. Etchemendy only manages to make one correct observation: Stanford does not have to maintain its own police force.

As we revealed at our rally, of the 1,015 incidents SUDPS responded to in 2020, 89.7% were nonviolent, and 64% were simply closed with no action. Even in the 10.3% of incidents which were deemed violent, police were and continue to be incapable of preventing harm; they do nothing, or they escalate the situation. And yet, as Etchemendy indicates, it is an active administrative choice to funnel resources into this false form of public safety.

We are not advocating, as Etchemendy suggests, for a utopian solution. Abolition takes work. We understand that it does not happen in a vacuum, and that liberation must extend across the peninsula and center the demands of those who have been most heavily victimized by police violence.

Many students on campus already have no need for campus policing, an institution that serves mainly to protect the financial interests of the University and abuse and surveil communities of color. Public safety results not from million-dollar police budgets and capital projects, but by addressing the social roots of inequality and mental health, and by paying reparations to the surrounding communities that Stanford continues to gentrify, police and vilify.

This is the work we at Abolish Stanford are committed to doing, together. We have no need for policing because the police do not keep us safe; we keep us safe.

Abolish Stanford

Originally posted here:

From the Community | Facing the facts: Abolish Stanford on SUDPS - The Stanford Daily