Category Archives: Government Oppression

In January, the US government officially determined that Chinese government actions against the Uyghur people constitute genocide. As a candidate, Joe Biden was there first.

Uyghur Americans felt a surge of hope when Bidens team condemned the oppression of our people in August, saying the unspeakable oppression that Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities have suffered at the hands of Chinas authoritarian government is genocide and Joe Biden stands against it in the strongest terms.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken has affirmed that he shares his predecessors judgment that Chinas crimes constitute genocide. His commitment to Americas role in upholding international human rights is deep. He has spoken about his stepfather, who survived the Holocaust after finding safety upon encountering American GIs: Thats what America represents to the world, however imperfectly, he said.

The totalistic nature of the crimes against Uyghurs is horrifying to contemplate. However, Chinas outsized role in the global economy means that companies and countries around the world are reluctant to speak out.

Take surveillance technology. My entire homeland of East Turkistan has been transformed into a high-tech police state, complete with Muslim-tracking software touted by Chinese tech firms such as Huawei, Dahua, and Hikvision.

Their surveillance cameras, used to monitor Uyghurs inside and outside so-called reeducation camps, are still sold worldwide. Beijings model of total surveillance is already being exported globally.

Blinkens team should get to work immediately on its commitment to work with allies to end tech complicity. The worldwide tech industry, including giants such as Amazon and Google, must no longer be free to cooperate with companies helping to conduct Chinas racial profiling and 24/7 digital surveillance of Uyghurs.

At one stroke, the State Department can also provide a safe haven for Uyghurs at risk in third countries by designating Uyghurs as Priority 2 refugees. Priority 2 will remove a critical choke point by eliminating the need for UNHCR processing, given the UNHCR track record of failing to protect Uyghurs from Chinas extensive reach.

Incredibly, even many Uyghurs who have reached the US are still in limbo. States Citizenship and Immigration Services under Biden must expedite Uyghur asylum applications pending for as long as five years.

The previous administrations action to ban imported products manufactured with forced-labor and sanction perpetrators remains inadequate.

The January 13 ban on cotton and tomato products, while impactful, was hardly proportional to the massive scale of Chinas state-organized program of modern slavery. The Biden administration needs to go further, enacting a full regional ban on all products from the Uyghur Region and imposing criminal penalties on companies attempting to evade the ban.

What must come next is a multilateral approach. Uyghurs around the world look to the US as the only country that can lead a global response to the genocide. Bidens focus on global relationships based on shared democratic values is exactly whats needed, and his commitment to multilateral approaches gives him tremendous credibility in bringing Europe and other allies on board.

Only the US has imposed Magitsky-style sanctions on the perpetrators of these human rights abuses. America must invest in diplomacy to persuade other countries that expressions of concern are empty without targeted sanctions.

No government should allow companies to import goods made through the forced labor of Uyghurs. Measures under consideration in Australia, Canada, and the UK should be taken up by other countries. American diplomacy needs to put the question plainly to allies in Europe, Asia, and beyond: are you going to continue to sit on the sidelines while your companies profit from state-organized modern slavery?

As the US re-joins the UN Human Rights Council, Uyghurs expect Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield to mobilize a long-overdue multilateral response to Chinese atrocities. The International Labor Organization and the UN Security Council have remained completely silent to date. This has to change.

Chinas ongoing crimes against Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples are rightly recognized as one of the most severe campaigns of ethnoreligious persecution since World War II.

There is no time to lose. Rescuing the survivors of Chinas genocide will not be up to American GIs this time. Its up to Mr. Biden and his team to lead a global response.

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What President Biden Should Do About the Uyghur Genocide - The Globe Post

Book review by Peter Lackowski

In 1781, the Bolivian indigenous leader Tupac Katari led a rebellion in which La Paz, the Spanish colonial capital of Upper Peru, was besieged for 109 days. The siege ended with the arrival of a Spanish army. Katari was captured, he and his wife, Bartolina Sisa, were gruesomely executed, and thousands of indigenous people were massacred. For many years this was treated as a minor event in history books, but in the latter half of the twentieth century Katari and Sisa have been celebrated as symbols of the resistance to oppression by the indigenous majority, and as martyrs in a national revolution whose time has finally come.

The Five Hundred Year Rebellion: Indigenous Movements and the Decolonization of History in Bolivia, by former Towardfreedom editor Benjamin Dangl (AK Press), is the story of decades of work by organizers, activists, intellectuals, and politicians to turn this story of indigenous resistance to oppression into the symbol of national liberation. It follows the way social movements have related to the question of indigenous identity, and their efforts to organize and focus its power, up to the point of electing an indigenous president. It is a story of decolonization, of people freeing themselves from the mental and political structures that were imposed upon them by imperial powers.

In 1952 the National Revolutionary Movement (MNR) led a revolution that made historic gains with expanded rights for workers, land reform, and national economic sovereignty. It was supported by miners, workers and peasants, but it was led by a white and mestizo middle class who saw the indigenous majority as primitive, people who needed to be modernized, assimilated, and brought into the economy as workers and capitalist farmers. This implied giving up communal economic forms, traditional clothing, using Spanish, and finding their place in a capitalist society.

While peasants welcomed the land reform, cultural change was resisted.

Many indigenous people benefited from improvements in their rights and education, but as their conditions improved they became more aware of how racism was limiting their advancementit was not just poverty. By the 60s Aymara, many of rural origin who had got into the university, were forming Katarist circles that promoted a powerful, liberating ideology. In the words of Luciano Tapia, a protagonist in the movement, I understood that, far from feeling as though I were a beggar and foreigner in my own ancestral land, rather, I should instead feel proud of being a descendant of the great and glorious civilizations from this part of the world. From this comes the reason to maintain that beyond being a simple campesino class. We are fundamentally a living historical reality, a people made of flesh and bone, a real Nation.

Honoring a History of Resistance

Kataristas looked back at a time when Andean people lived in a society that was superior in its values and organization to 20th century Bolivia. That society was not a Utopia, it was a living reality that their ancestors created. Their country hadbeen violently taken from them and they had been enslaved. However, there is a history of resistance to be proud of, not just the rebellion of Tupac Katari, but many others who are being rediscovered as the stories of the elders are compiled. Dangl tells how indigenous thinkers and activists deepened and popularized these ideas, turning them into a political force.

The revolution of 1952 had empowered a government sponsored peasants union, but a series of subsequent coups eroded its gains after a few years. Kataristas went to work to take control of the state-dominated union, using their message to build morale and solidarity. One of their early leaders spoke of analyzing things with two eyes, that is, that exploited campesinos were members of the wider oppressed working class of Bolivia and also exploited as indigenous people. By 1979 they created a new peasants union that was affiliated with the Bolivian Workers Central (COB), the national union of miners and industrial workers.

Bolivia has relatively few roads, and they run through areas with concentrations of campesinos. Road blockades have been a key tactic for indigenous struggles all the way back to Tupak Kataris time. Katarist ideology enhanced this strategic asset, raising morale and determination by enabling people to see their actions as part of a historic continuity. Dangl skillfullyembeds these stories of campesino resistance in a concise account of Bolivias tumultuous history of those times.

Aymara students at the university in La Paz in the 1970s found themselves in an environment in which they were expected to abandon their indigenous identity, even to the point of having to adopt a Spanish sounding surname. They also learned that there was virtually no information at all about the history of their people. Two chapters of the book are devoted to their response: the Andean Oral History Workshop (THOA), a project in which the students worked collaboratively with indigenous communities, often the ones they grew up in, to collect memories from elders. They were able to reconstruct historical struggles and biographical information about Aymara leaders who worked for justice, and they turned them into widely distributed books, radio programs other media. The chapters on the work of THOA provide a fascinating story of a nation discovering its own history by reassembling the fragments stored in the living memories and family stories of its people.

Ayllus were the basis of pre-Columbian society in the Andes.They are communities typically consisting of two or more settlements at different altitudes to take advantage of the different ecological zones for a greater range of produce. Dangl explains how they function on the basis of reciprocity and mutual obligation, sharing not only produce but also the risks that come with adverse weather, arranging labor parties for tasks like harvesting, and observing decision-making by consensus. Leadership responsibilities rotate routinely among members among members; governance is egalitarian and participatory.

The ayllu is stable enough to have survived long after the conquest in more remote areas, but the Spanish and their creole successors had other uses for allyu lands and populations, and by the middle of the twentieth century they were gone. But in the 1980s people began to advocate for their revival, and by the nineties a national network of ayllus was well under way. Dangl traces this expanding reconstructive effort and its complicated relationships with successive governments, the campesino union, and other groups.

This book was written at a time when Evo Morales was nearing the end of his third term. It was clear that while Bolivias first indigenous president had been in officefrom 2006 to 2019the county had undergone substantial economic expansion, and that those who had benefited most notably were the poorest, that is, mostly the indigenous. Not only were they better off economically, they had also developed a new understanding of their place in their own country.

The symbols of Tupak Katari and Bartolina Sisa evolved as the MAS (Movement for Socialism) understandably, adopted them wholeheartedly, but more in their role as political leaders and less as revolutionaries. But the MAS government has been criticized for some decisions that are inconsistent with the vision that the Kataristas articulated. As an astute observer, Dangl alludes to some of those contradictions, but to analyze them in depth would be outside the scope of the book.

The Kataristas presented an idealized pre-Columbian society, outlining a socialist vision that many Bolivians would like to make a reality. The ideas of national liberation and communal society have taken root. Benjamin Dangls book tells how that came about; it will be a valuable resource in understanding what is to come.

Peter Lackowski is a retired Vermont school teacher who has been visiting and writing about Latin America, including Bolivia, since 2004.

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Bolivia's Five-Hundred-Year Rebellion - Toward Freedom

The 6 January storming of the US capitol caused outrage amongst a large number of world leaders. Some of these dissenting world leaders, however, are now using the event as a central tactical argument to shore up their authoritarian regimes. Whilst there was a consistent display of shock and outrage from many governments, two of Americas principal rivals took a particularly different approach to the event. Both China and Russia have used the event as an instrument of propaganda at a time when stirring xenophoic and nationalist sentiment are important tools in Xi and Putins tactical arsenal.

Russian media was quick to capitalise on the chaos that unfolded on January 6th 2020, using the violent storming on Capitol Hill to discredit not just America, but the idea of democracy. State media immediately highlighted that the American electoral system is flawed, outdated and prone to various violations and irregularities.

Indeed, a spokesperson for the Foreign Affairs Ministry remarked [w]e would point out that the electoral system in the US is archaic and doesnt meet modern democratic standards, creating the possibility for various violations. The argument that the US has no right to criticise Russias electoral system, which has consistently been labelled as being prone to fraud and various other issues, was a central element.

There has also been emphasis on how the Washington events have invalidated the US right to promote and push for democracy in other parts of the world. Konstantin Kosachev, chair of the Russian Senates Foreign Affairs Committee, announced [t]he celebration of democracy is over . . . America no longer forges that path, and consequently has lost its right to define it. Much less force it on others.

Some news outlets in Russia pointed to another instance of perceived hypocrisy, highlighting that many US lawmakers and political commentators initially were supportive of revolution in former Soviet states, where people have stormed government buildings and tried to overturn electoral results.

As former politician Sergei Markov put it, [t]he same politicians, experts, and media who only recently justified the seizure of government buildings in Ukraine, Belarus, and the street riots against Trump by supporters of Black Lives Matter and Antifa, now are categorically condemning the storming of the Congress.

The Russian narrative around these events has been enormously convenient for, and is directly linked to, Russia gearing up for their own state Duma elections in September of this year. Particularly in the lead up to these, Russia will be able to use the events that occurred in Washington to further silence dissent.

Given that previous Russian elections were reported to have had mass violations, Russia can use the siege to discredit any criticism from the US in the lead up to, or after, elections, in which the United Russia party is expected to win. The storming of the Capitol very much played into Russias hands, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi calling it the biggest gift to President Putin.

Russian political figures have drawn an additional parallel. Following the permanent suspension of Donald Trump from Twitter, one lower house legislator remarked, [s]ocial networks must work under strict rules within a legal framework because absolute freedom of information is becoming a weapon in the hands of extremists. This suspension bolsters certain autocracies practice of censoring their citizens and social media platforms. This is, once again, something that the US, after condemning other countries for using such a practice, have now done themselves.

This observation was also made in the Chinese media. The Chinese government and media reactions have greatly mirrored those of Russia, being keen to highlight US hypocrisy. However, China has been a bit more specific in their own grievances.

The stories of hypocrisy in Chinese state media specifically compare Westerm media and governments quick condemnation of protesters rioting and occupying the Capitol with their contrasting media coverage of Hong Kong activists when they stormed the Legislative Council building in July 2019.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Hua Chunying, argued, [e]veryone may remember how some US politicians and media described the riots in Hong Kong, but look at their choice of words today. The US mainstream media have unanimously condemned todays event, called it violent and shameful and described the protesters as rioters, extremists and thugs. But do you remember what they said about Hong Kong rioters?

Again, in line with the Russian view, Chinese state media were keen to highlight the events as an undermining and discrediting of the democratic process, and to discredit the USs title as the leader of the free world. The Global Times tabloid called the episode a sign of internal collapse and degradation of the US political system not easily reversible.

Another state broadcaster, CCTV, noted, [t]he United States, which has always promoted democracy and human rights, is now the country of riots, conflicts and curfews. Many Chinese internet users mirrored sentiments expressed by Russia, commenting that the chaos unfolding in America was revenge and karma for its double standards.

Chinese reporters were in fact provided with instructions on what to emphasise in their reporting of the Capitol siege. Examples of the themes encouraged were other foreign leaders concerns about their alliances with the US, and the angle that democracies can be hijacked by the uneducated if allowed to.

Some Chinese netizens even mocked the Five Demands that were famously called for during the 2019 Hong Kong protests, reframing them to fit the US context. Indeed, the Capitol siege could not have occurred at a better time for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). On the eve of the siege, Hong Kong law enforcement were arresting 53 political activists, including one American human rights lawyer. Such activity would usually make headline news, but as a result of the Capitol riots, went largely unnoticed.

The violent, criminal behaviour of the Capitol rioters provided Beijing with an almost perfect narrative to claim that censorship is a superior type of governance, a particularly useful and timely narrative at a time when they are attempting to clamp down on Hong Kong.

A similar story is unfolding in Russia, with citizens becoming increasingly unhappy with the United Russia Partys offering. The events of January 6th have the potential to play a part in solidifying the oppression of these two peoples, as well as others around the world. Iran, Turkey, Belarus, Zimbabwe and Venezuela are other nations that have spoken out, with similar evaluations of what the riots have laid bare about the fragilities of democracy. The Capitol riots appear to have come at an almost opportune time for two autocratic powers that are keen to tighten their grip on power in 2021.

Whether this insurrection may in fact spook Xi and Putin is another, less likely, possibility. Both leaders placing a high premium on continuity and stability, the events on Capitol Hill might have spooked them both. After all, if such a popular uprising can take place in the home of Western democracy, it can happen anywhere.

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The Capitol Riots: How Have Americas Two Biggest Rivals Reacted? - Global Risk Insights

John Jays celebration of Black History Month traditionally culminates with our annual Malcolm/King Awards Breakfast, which pays homage to the two Civil Rights giants, Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., while also recognizing the incredible talents of our student award winners and present racial justice visionaries. While this years celebration may be a little different, the vigor in how we honor their legacy remains the same. In anticipation of this years virtual Malcolm/King Awards Breakfaston February 26, 2021, we spoke with the student award winners to understand what Black History Month means to them and to learn how they hope to advance the goals of justice and equality for all.

Jonathan Arias 22, a Political Science major from Queens, New York, has dreams of becoming a public official where he could help reimagine the current policies and practices that currently disadvantage African-Americans. The system were currently living in was designed to hold back minorities, he says. A month to celebrate Black excellence and African-Americans pushing past this unequal system doesnt seem like enough.

The system were currently living in was designed to hold back minorities. Jonathan Arias

What goals do you have for advancing equality and fairness for all peopleespecially African-Americans?I plan on finishing my Political Science major and then try to make an effort politically. There is so much unfairness in this world, especially in this country, that it seems almost impossible to overcome. As a public official, I would try to right historical wrongs, or die trying. There is so much that I want to tackle. I want to negate the impact of redlining, fight the school-to-prison pipeline, eliminate private prisons, and implement the proper distribution of funds for schools to all communities. Whether as a congressman or even as the future President of the United States, I plan on making a positive impact for all underrepresented communities.

There is so much that I want to tackle. I want to negate the impact of redlining, fight the school-to-prison pipeline, eliminate private prisons, and implement the proper distribution of funds for schools to all communities. Jonathan Arias

If you could talk to Malcolm X or Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., what would you ask them? What would you want to say to them?I would talk to Malcolm X about his Ballot or the Bullet speech; it is one of my all-time favorites. In his speech, it is the white man who is the common enemy. He specifically said he is not anti-white but rather anti-exploitation, anti-degradation, and anti-oppression. I would like to ask him his stance on politicians since Im a Political Science major who is interested in becoming one. Due to the speech, I know his perspective on politics and politicians, but what if my intentions were good-hearted? How do I make an impact then? Would I gain his respect then?

Dr. King once famously said, Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. As a student at a school focused on justice, what does that quote mean to you?The quote means that we shouldnt lose hope. Even though minorities have been suffering due to hatred and oppression, we are meant to have justice sooner or later. Our sense of equality and fairness may not come within our lifetime, but it is bound to happen. In my political life, I hope to continue the work toward achieving true equality and that moral universe.

The last 12 months have been challenging, with a global pandemic that has disproportionately affected our Black and brown communities, and a national reckoning on systemic racism. What steps can we take to move forward as a society and a country to make equality for all achievable?One of the few things that need to happen is delivering the second round of stimulus checks to people. There have been many minorities who have lost jobs, lost their homes, lost lives, lost family members, and can barely afford to live life. These people were struggling before the pandemic, so imagine now. Beyond the second round of stimulus checks, the government also needs to grant tuition relief for the past year, especially for public and state universities.

If I cant change the world, I can change the life of the kid who will change the world. Jonathan Arias

If everything goes according to plan, where do you see yourself in 10 years?I see myself with a masters degree in Political Science. I hope to be giving my all for my constituents as an elected official. If Im not able to make a change politically, I could see myself becoming a professor or a teacher. If I cant change the world, I can change the life of the kid who will change the world.

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Malcolm/King Award Winner Jonathan Arias '22 Sets His Sights on a Political Career to Tackle Inequality | John Jay College of Criminal Justice - John...

By Martin Fey| For The Bulletin

A decade following Americas victory over the British in the War of 1812, running from 1815 until 1825, is known as The Era of Good Feelings. Americans found little to disagree about, the existing political parties atrophied, and the once powerful Federalist party of George Washington vanished. President James Monroe, elected in 1816, announced that it was his intent not to reconcile Federalists and his own Democrat-Republicans but to exterminate both parties as threats to democracy. He was re-elected unopposed in 1820.

That unanimity is hard to imagine today. The foremost reason is the lust for power. In the early 1800s the federal government was a small, poorly financed institution, its authority severely constrained by the Constitution and considered inferior to that of the states. Today the federal government is playing with over $6 trillion a year, an unimaginable treasure trove that Democrats and Republicans struggle to control. The U.S. government freely dictates to the states by heavily taxing their citizens and then doling the cash back along with encyclopedic conditions and minus a hefty bureaucratic brokerage fee.

The second reason is ideology. Historically Americans have eschewed political schools of thought, but the incessant push toward socialism, which started with the New Deal, has created an atmosphere similar to that which existed prior to the Civil War, when irreconcilable differences split the nation. From the 1960s to the year 2000, left-leaning Democrats pushed mainly for more social-welfare spending. They were countered by ostensibly more fiscally-conservative Republicans, epitomized by President Ronald Reagan. It was a Yin-Yang tussle that supposedly kept things in balance.

Todays leftists want more than welfare programs. They want to redefine America, starting with rewriting history so that American exceptionalism is replaced with the idea that we are a nation forever stained with the original sins of slavery and colonialism. We and particularly our children are being indoctrinated with the idea that racism is the most important issue facing us, that it is as virulent and systemic as ever, and that the only solution is to reject the past and embrace the ever-changing moral standards set by the left. There must be common sense gun control, but no common sense abortion restrictions. Free speech is a fundamental right, but only if that speech doesnt irritate sensitive liberal minds. The Constitution is sacred, but not when it stands in the way of the progressive agenda.

Prosperity is the biggest obstacle to socialism, so it must be restrained. Prosperity is one of the reasons the left hated President Trump. Miniscule unemployment and real increases in wages made people feel self-reliant; socialism needs government dependents. That is why the Biden administration is so eager to grant citizenship to anywhere between 16 and 22 million illegal aliens (see recent Yale study), most of them financially needy. The middle class, another obstacle to socialism identified by Karl Marx, must be made more dependent through heavy taxation and loss of jobs via globalization.

Unlike the countries of Europe and Asia, Americas are not bound by common DNA and long history but by ideals born less than 250 years ago. When we stop agreeing on those ideals we will forever move away from any era of good feelings and instead toward division, turmoil and oppression.

Martin Fey is a member of the Quiet Corner Tea Party Patriots.

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View from the Right: When we stop agreeing on ideals we will forever move away from any 'era of good feelings' - Norwich Bulletin

Question: Should governments be able to create laws that prevent people of a particular faith from entering their borders?

Julia McKay - Unitarian Universalist

Rev. Julia McKay is the minister of High Plains Church Unitarian Universalist and a professional spiritual companion dedicated to embodied life practices that enhance our deepest ways of knowing.

Does it make a difference if the government has a state-endorsed religion or a preferred but not officially sanctioned faith?What aboutnations with no official religion? Or those adverse to religion? A state religion is often about who is granted civil rights, e.g., who has legal status, what in group is granted benefits over others.Christianity was usurped by Constantines Roman Empire only when the faith began to gain massive social power.So, was the contemporary ban on Muslim travelers to the U.S. because Islam is the faith most often backed by governments worldwide?Isnt the deeper question really about what dangers we face when the power of government aligns with the power of faith?

Sarah Bender - Buddhist

Sarah Bender is a Roshi (senior teacher) in the Koan Zen Buddhist tradition. She is a resident teacher for Springs Mountain Sangha, a Zen community in Colorado Springs (smszen.org).

More than 7,874,965,825 people inhabit Earth. There are 197 sovereign nations (193 United Nations members) and 4,300-plus religions. The International Human Rights Declaration (UN, 1948) affirms the right to seek a safe place to live and the right to believe what we want; and one of the Covenants on Human Rights calls for prohibition by law of any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence. Barring people on the basis of their beliefs, instead of behavior, violates international agreements; it harms not only those wishing to enter a nation, but also the people national laws are intended to protect. Fanning religious fear and intolerance produces internal violence, where healing and understanding are essential to our survival.

Ray Hendershot - Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

Ray has served on a mission to England, has been a bishop, and has held other key leadership positions in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Currently, he works with other faiths to provide service to our community.

We believe in the right to worship God according to our conscience and allow all people the same privilege. Freedom of religion is a fundamental right in the United States and is protected by our Constitution. As citizens we are responsible to obey the laws of the country wherever we live or visit. People of faith who honor the laws of their country and desire to visit another country should not be prohibited, if they are willing to honor the laws of the country they want to visit. God has directed us to love our neighbors. People of faith should set examples of high moral standards and treat others as loving neighbors, as we are all children of God.

Bryan Garner - Ceremonial Magician

Rev. Bryan Garner is a published author, Ninjutsu instructor, lecturer and western ceremonial magician. He is currently pursuing ordination into the Apostolic Gnostic Priesthood of the Apostolic Johannite Church.

The issue really boils down to the individual believer. In religions where sacred texts require or encourage the suppression, oppression or obliteration of people of differing beliefs, this becomes unacceptable, especially for a believer that decides to follow these teachings literally. Without a doubt, imposing governmental restrictions could lead and has led to unfair discrimination against certain peoples. However, disregarding potential threats in favor of inclusion and acceptance alone has its risks. The government might be viewed as corrupt and bigoted for several reasons, many valid, but people killing other people over belief is unfortunately a long-lasting tradition in the history of humankind.

Join the conversation at InGoodFaith.org.

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Opinion: Should governments be allowed to ban people of a certain religion? - Colorado Springs Independent

Fake German heiress Anna Delvey was released from prison last week. She spent 19 months at Rikers Island awaiting trial, and then another 21 months at Albion Correctional Facility after she was convicted of scamming hotels, restaurants and banks out of more than $200,000. Features in Vanity Fair and New York magazine led to that sticky sort of fame, sickly and delicious to so many of us, so of course people were clamouring to interview her when she came out. Prison, she told the press, two days after her release, Its just pointless. Its a huge waste of time I feel like its insane. To take people, to lock them up, take everything away from them, and just to expect them to reform. She continued: They have this universal solution for everyone and that should not be the case. And the thing is, even if you can only hear this as a whinge, the bored complaints of a bratty grifter, spat through a mouth of gum, shes right.

The pandemic, along with its horrors, has also offered an opportunity to reshape how we live. From the small, like the clothes we wear, to the large a move away from offices, or the provision of hotel rooms for homeless people. There was even a moment for prisons. Last April, justice secretary Robert Buckland launched an early-release scheme to ease the pressure on prisons. But despite around 4,000 prisoners being eligible, by the time it paused in August, just 275 had been released. The moment passed. Now, one in eight prisoners in England and Wales has tested positive for Covid-19, and staff warn of a mental health crisis as prisoners are confined to their cells, with visits and education programmes restricted.

Prisons, each an identity crisis in brick and steel, wobble in intention between deterrent and punishment, rehab facility and cage. It doesnt really matter where they land none work. Prison is not a deterrent: the UKs prison population has risen by 69% in the past 30 years, yet theres no link to levels of crime. It doesnt rehabilitate either: almost half the people who leave prison reoffend within a year of release. For those serving sentences shorter than a year, it leaps to 65%. The Prison Reform Trust reports prisoners and staff are less safe than they have been at any point since records began; since 2012, sexual assaults in prison have quadrupled. Shall I continue? Why not? I have the fury and I have the ink.

The penal system perpetuates racial and economic oppression; more than a quarter of the adult prison population and nearly half of all children in custody are from a minority ethnic group. On release, adults are given 46 (a figure thats stayed the same since 1995), with 16% of them ending up on the streets. Prison doesnt work. Unless no. Unless, it does. Unless the aim of prison is not really one of the polite ideas above. Unless the aim is to simply remove undesirable bodies from society, in which case yep, all going well. All good.

Getting rid of prisons once seemed like a radical and dangerous idea. Its difficult, wrote abolitionist Angela Davis in 2003, to envision a social order that does not rely on the threat of sequestering people in dreadful places designed to separate them from their communities and families. Prison had been so successfully embedded into society that it was hard to imagine life without it. But while social structures have barely changed, it appears the average human has; today fewer than one in 10 people believe having more people in prison is the most effective way to deal with crime.

Perhaps this is because it costs the taxpayer 41,000 per year to keep a single prisoner behind bars. Or because prison separates 17,000 children from their mothers every year. Perhaps it comes from a realisation of the fluidity of what, or who, is decided to be dangerous a sex worker, a woman who hasnt paid her TV licence (this crime accounts for a third of all criminal prosecutions against women), the people who signed off on the Grenfell cladding, the ministers responsible for illegally detaining child refugees? In Everybody, Olivia Laings upcoming book about freedom, she reminds us that, Any human body can be criminalised by the state, not because of a crime thats been committed, but because that particular body has been designated criminal in its own right. I read this chapter quite late at night by the light of my phone. Its hard to know how a shared freedom can be achieved while prisons exist in their present form, silos for bodies that were never dangerous in the first place. I slept badly.

During this pandemic, the government had a real chance to reduce prison numbers, or even abolish womens prisons altogether. They failed. But below stairs, our civilian minds are changing. Along with tireless activists, high-profile villains like Anna Delvey (whose glamorous crimes come soon to Netflix) are contributing to a mainstreaming of the idea that prison not only damages those locked up, but also erodes the humanity of those of us walking free.

Email Eva at e.wiseman@observer.co.uk or follow her on Twitter @EvaWiseman

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Prison reform is slow, but could the will to change be growing? - The Guardian

In 2019, the government of Hong Kong proposed a bill that allowed the extradition of Hong Kong citizens to mainland China for trial. The bill set off months of protests, and eventually the Chinese government responded with a stricter measure that allowed for arrests of anyone in Hong Kong who voiced political dissent.

In doing so, the Hong Kong and Chinese governments effectively ended the 'one country, two systems' framework, and subjected Hong Kong's residents to the dictatorial rule of the Chinese Communist Party.

The sweeping national security law paved the way for a fascistic crackdown, with several high-profile pro-democracy figures arrested. Now, with every week that passes, there is a new, tragic case of a brave soul speaking out against Beijing and finding themselves locked away.

One recent example is radio DJ Edmund Wan Yiu-sing. "Giggs", as he is better known, is charged with four counts of "doing an act with a seditious intention". In other words, the Chinese government believes that Wan used his media platform to stir hatred and contempt against the authorities although it has not offered any details of what "seditious" things he is alleged to have said.

Wan's case is notable for a troubling reason. He was not charged under the national security law, or any other hurried new legislation from the last couple of years designed to quash brewing unease among pro-democracy activists. Instead, he was charged under the Crimes Ordinance, which has not been amended since 1972, when Hong Kong was still under British colonial rule. For a first offence on this charge, Wan could end up with a fine of HK$5,000 and two years in jail.

Last year, a group of British members of Parliament all members of the governing Conservative Party formed the China Research Group to campaign on issues relating to Hong Kong, and other China-adjacent areas of foreign policy. While their efforts have been admirable in drawing attention to China's atrocities and forcing the government's hand on matters of diplomacy, there has so far been a lack of appreciation of the role Britain has played in laying the foundations in Hong Kong for the oppression we are seeing today.

The Wan case is not the first time colonial-era British laws have been used to malicious ends by the CCP-controlled Hong Kong government. For instance, in April of last year, in an extraordinary indication of the disdain the ruling regime feels for those who speak out against it, Hong Kong chief executive Carrie Lam doubled down on a ban on face masks which had been introduced in October of the previous year.

Lam even went to court to defend her right to prevent dissenters from covering their faces, despite the raging coronavirus pandemic, thanks to another colonial-era British law. The law in question the Emergency Regulations Ordinance was introduced in 1922 to combat strikes by Chinese fishermen who were protesting against their pitiful wages. It was passed in a single day with minimal scrutiny, and it remains on the statute book, with appalling consequences a century later.

Unlike the CCP's genocidal campaign against the Uighur ethnic minority in the country's Xinjiang province, where Beijing claims nothing of note is taking place, the Chinese Communist Party likes to draw the world's attention to its deeds in Hong Kong. It is as if the CCP is taunting Britain, the region's former ruler. For instance, it released a statement via state propaganda channels last July urging the UK to 'abandon the illusion of continuing its colonial influence' there.

So while the Chinese government makes out as though it is rescuing Hongkongers from the grip of its British imperial overlords by oppressing them and reneging on its international commitments, it is in fact making use of the legacy of British rule in Hong Kong for its own dictatorial purposes. This fact ought to be acknowledged in the UK, and it should inform the UK's response to China's aggression in the region.

Last month, after the governments of China and Hong Kong said that they would no longer recognize British National Overseas (BNO) passports as valid travel documents, the British government implemented a new visa scheme, granting Hong Kong residents a path to UK citizenship. This is a good start, but in light of the above, it plainly does not go far enough.

Hongkongers, through no fault of their own, are caught in the middle of a deeply unpleasant diplomatic divorce between the UK and China. They are stuck under the thumb of an abusive parent and it is Britain's duty to do everything in its power to help them upend and relocate their lives to the UK, even if that means embracing radical ideas. Half-measures will not suffice. Britain is Hongkongers' only safe refuge now they must be made to feel welcome.

Jason Reed is a policy analyst and political commentator. He is the UK liaison at Young Voices. Jason writes for the Times (of London), the Independent, the Telegraph, and many other outlets.

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Because of its colonial past, the UK has a duty to help residents of Hong Kong - Business Insider

This article is part of Liberations commemoration of Black History Month, 2021.

The housing struggle in Harlem during the Great Depression took New York City by storm, as some of the most oppressed sectors of society united and stood tall in the face of exploitation. Their resistance won major gains and taught future activists mass-action tactics that are still relevant in a winning strategy for change.

The Great Migration saw more than a million-and-a-half Black people flee the Klan-ridden, destitute South for better opportunities in Northern industrial jobs.Harlem became a prime destination. Due to segregation, Black people were relegated to live in pre-designated areas where landlords took advantage by charging exorbitant rents in comparison to what was charged white immigrant communities.

Communist Party and the HarlemTenants League

The Harlem Tenants League laid the foundation for militant mass action in Black communities for substantive change against racist rent hikes. The Leaguewas formed in 1929 at the suggestion of Richard Moore, a Black member of the Communist Party. Moore was to be elected the Leagues first president.The capitalist caste system, Moore wrote, which segregates Negro workers into Jim Crow districts makes these doubly exploited black workers the special prey of rent gougers. Black and white landlords and real estate agents take advantage of this segregation to squeeze the last nickel out of the Negro working class who are penned in the black ghetto. Rents in Negro Harlem are already often double and sometimes triple those in other sections of the city.

The Communist Party played a major role in both the Harlem Tenants League and the Unemployment Council, another significant organization of that period. The multi-national CP prepared itself to do neighborhood organizing. It raised consciousness among European immigrant members living in Harlem on the urgent need to fight systemic racism, the absolute necessity of rooting out any racism or backwardness within its ranks, and the need to be in full solidarity with both the Black communities and its Black members.

The CP became known by Black Harlem residents and gained respect when it initiated a national campaign to free the Scottsboro Boys, nine Black teenagers falsely charged with raping a white woman in Alabama in 1931. For example, a CP-initiated Harlem rally that year demanding freedom for the Scottsboro defendants and an end to legal lynching began with a few hundred mostly white members, but swelled to several thousands as Black people joined it in the streets because the issue was of vital concern.

Segregation and high rents

The Harlem Tenant Leagues initial organizers recognized that the rising rents in Harlem had become an inherent feature of segregation. The League decided to take action by holding protest meetings, organizing marches and strategically interrupting rent-law proceedings to galvanize community support. They organized rent strikes to resist rent increases. This tactic, although at the time new and unfamiliar to many, would evolve as the cornerstone of collective tenant activism during the Depression.

The most comprehensive gain the League helped win was more favorable tenant laws. The Civil Practice Act included both the Rivers and Perkins bills which addressed poor living conditions and rent increase protection; these bills were the earlier forms of New York City tenant laws.

1934 Harlem rent strike

By the onset of the Depression the Black community was especially ravished by unemployment with rates hitting 65%. The Harlem Tenants League had gained popularity in the community as it became a community support program that aided Harlemites against eviction. It helped create a culture of support and taught community members practical support skills like organizing rent parties and pressuring government agencies to support struggling Harlemites.

The Depression raised class consciousness, and the political and organizational influence of the Harlem Tenants League was felt in the Harlem rent strike of 1934. The first building to go on strike was a modern elevator building on Edgecombe Avenue in the Sugar Hill area, which had became increasingly popular for middle-class Black people in the formerly all-white neighborhood. But the new Black residents were subjected to sharp increases in rents with maintenance quality suffering tremendously. Enraged by the racist landlords, other Edgecombe Ave. tenants banded together and joined the rent strike and picket lines to protest high rents and poor conditions. Victories were won in all the organized buildings.

Another significant strike that year was among the tenants of Knickerbocker Village on the Lower East Side which produced the Knickerbocker Village Tenants Association. Both strikes played prominent roles in popularizing mass action housing reform.

Harlem Unemployment Council battles evictions

The Harlem Tenants League remained primarily a community support program. As the Depression raged on, there was clearly a need for other kinds of organizations more deeply embedded in the grassroots. The CP initiated Unemployment Councils, mass organizations which, while led by communists, were open for all to join. The Councils developed significant roots within the community.

One of the major tactics of the Harlem Unemployed Council was eviction resistance,sometimes organizing whole neighborhoods to stop evictions in progress. They frequently organized sit-ins, demonstrations and disruptions of government home relief bureaus. Their actions spurred mass support within the community, as they often won immediate reforms to alleviate desperate Harlemites.

Harlems Unemployment Council stood as an example, and sparked rebellion and action as other communities took notice and adapted their own tactics. In the Bronx, tenants became so emboldened by solidarity that when a marshal would come to evict a tenant it became common practice for the community to band together and return their items back inside the home. The city paid the marshals for individual evictions; as a result of this resistance in some instances the marshals were repeatedly sent back to unsuccessfully attempt the same eviction, making them too expensive. So people won the right to stay in their apartments.

If the city tried to intimidate the community with a large police presence, many communities did not hesitate to come together and fight back.In the Bronx, there were sometimes as many as 4,000 militants in the streets and on buildings, resisting the police and demanding the right to a home. Most were women. They threw hot water down on the police from buildings, threw marbles under the feet of police horses, or stuck the horses with the long needles used by hat makers.

The movement was national. In Chicago, when three Black communist organizers were killed in 1931 by police during one of these rent riots, 50,000 people took the streets in a memorial march.

Comparisons with conditions today

The heroism of the Black Harlem masses was rooted not only in the economic implosion of the Depression era but also in the fact that, while housing is a basic human right, landlords sought to exploit suffering for profit.

Today the COVID-19 pandemic has made even clearer the inability of the system to put people above profit. Some 78 million claims for unemployment were filed in the last year due to the governments mishandling of the pandemic. With so many unable to pay rent, there is the possibility of thousands or even millions of evictions once the eviction moratorium is lifted, yet rents have not been canceled. There are six empty homes for every homeless person in the United States, as landlords warehouse apartments to keep profits high.

Much as the struggles in the 1930s exposed the role of the police, the Movement for Black Lives uprising over the summer of 2020 sparked a mass rebellion that tied in the fight against killer cops and police brutality.

Pickets, marches, rent strikes, creating organizations and building localized pressure campaigns are the order of the day just as they were in the 1930s. The organizers in Harlem and elsewhere have taught us that the power lies with the people coming together and it is possible to win. For the Harlem community, it was a struggle for reform, but the most necessary element was the struggle for liberation.

Today, the Black struggle still leads the way in the fight for housing andthe fight against all forms of oppression. Let us take note, and build a movement, not just against the forms of oppression by themselves, but a movement against the whole capitalist system which benefits from such vile exploitation.

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Fired up! Harlem's fight for housing in the 1930s - Liberation

The impact of COVID-19 has made it starkly clear to those who live with disability that the imposed barriers of societal organisation make them disabled, explains Penny Pepper

In the early days, I watched every Government COVID-19 announcement and realised there were new labels placed upon me and millions of others.

The sick, the elderly, the disabled the vulnerable. What an interminable hollow mantra of pseudo-caring.

So, Im more vulnerable and disabled people feature too high in the COVID-19 death tally. Why? Answers may lay outside the obvious mainstream thinking.

The first question is: who the hell are these disabled?

Theres a likelihood of every human being experiencing impairment and perhaps disability in their lifetime (yes, they are different states), but you wouldnt know it from our presence in mainstream life.

Official Government figures stated in 2014 that there are more than 11 million who fall within their definitions, which includes those with mental health issues, diabetes and invisible impairments. We are the largest minority group in the UK, if not the world.

But oh, the disabled are tragic. Or sporty brave. Or embarrassing. Theyre ungrateful. Theyre a burden. More recent history condemned us as scroungers.

How we reclaim our place within the human family explicitly and fully included underpins much of my work.

Many of us have fought to move the oppression of these markers we never chose, including the new smothering COVID-19 blanket of the extra vulnerable.

We start with the realisation that impairment comes easily with the intricacy of our complex human biology the human animal breaks easy. But, we who live disability, know it is the confrontation with the imposed barriers and breakdown of societal organisation that makes us disabled.

This is the social model of disability.

This understanding of disability, the social model, has been around for more than 40 years and continues to liberate the minds of disabled people.

It underpins our civil rights movement. Developed in the 1970s by disabled anti-apartheid refugee Vic Finkelstein, this led to the formation of UPIAS the Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation and the intellectual foundation of the social model in The Fundamental Principles of Disability, the manifesto for any self-respecting disabled activist to this day.

It defined us as oppressed. Now we knew not whats wrong with us, whats wrong for us.

The simplest way to demonstrate the social model is to use me as an example.

I became a wheelchair user at 14 after childhood illness. I didnt have the language of the social model, but I was soaked in rebellion even as a baby writer, able to see that endless tweaking of me medically would never make a difference to whether I could get on a bus. I saw the barriers and instinctively knew they should be removed.

By the time I went through punk and found my tribe, I was fortunate to live through the emergence of the social model, particularly in disability culture. Vic Finkletstein took an early role in the London Disability Arts Forum, where later I served on the editorial committee and received early writing commissions.

I understood, at last, it was not my fault I couldnt get that job in an office up four flights of stairs or use the tube to get there. The fault was caused disability was caused by societys failure to competently and comprehensively ensure our equality and inclusion. Not only in how the environment is arranged but in attitudes that continue to marginalise by the lack of access which can be defined loosely into three key areas.

First, the environment perhaps the most obvious in explaining the social model. An example is the requirement that buildings are not reliant only on stairs.

Secondly, information a barrier is printed material in inaccessible formats. While technology should have made these barriers easier to remove, in some cases it has multiplied them. But this isnt merely about printed or online material. Access is created through audio as well as print. British Sign Language as well as verbal language.

Thirdly, negative attitudes from which all the other barriers manifest and magnify, which are the toughest to dismantle. A rallying cry, Nothing About Us Without Us, reflects our frustration at what is imposed and, while our activism grows, we remain marginalised in the big Out There.

Sometimes, just sometimes, I wake up and am not disabled in my fully accessible, barrier-free home, with a personal assistant employed to the Choice and Control concept developed by disabled people.

When I leave home, the first barrier a lack of dropped kerbs reminds me quickly I am disabled again.

The sombre truth is that the social model highlights how the failure of governments to fully respond within this framework brings us firmly to the current COVID-19 impact that the unnecessary barriers still experienced cause such an excessive number of disabled people to be affected, beyond any existing comorbidities.

My own experience with COVID-19 highlights this. Me, the gobby old punk, entirely charming but scathing in the face of injustice and barriers.

Ive needed two tests over the past year and the first saw me set off with my PA to the testing centre, where I was assured on the phone of access and parking. When we arrived, I was confronted with a flight of steps and nowhere to get out of my car (environmental barrier), and no signage as to where I could actually get in (information barrier). Negative attitudes opposed me at the No Entry gate when I was blanked by security staff and let through only after my PA was lectured, the old does she take sugar? trope.

The second was a home test. I couldnt open the packet or read it as the font too small. Fortunately, my PA removed those barriers and, when it came to my vaccine, ironically, there was not a single barrier. But I am an old rebel. I know how to fight.

Ive screamed at my TV hearing the reports about the disproportionate death toll of COVID-19 among people with learning difficulties and within the disabled population as a whole. The statistics are grim, showing up to 60% of Coronavirus deaths are within our community.

If accessible information is not available, if there are barriers to care or transport, then these are the horrific obstacles removable obstacles to access a vaccine. It sounds basic and it is obvious, but little action is being taken.

We dont need yet more enforced circumstances that create a specific vulnerability arising from our social exclusion.

If I dont scream, I weep. Yet, along with other activists, Ive learnt how to fight through my words and have a responsibility for those disempowered to speak, who have faith that I raise their concerns and share their stories.

The social model, if put into full practice, would not only liberate disabled people from oppression (including those yet to come), it would transform outmoded concepts of the human condition.

Progress is evident but equality remains elusive as the horror of COVID-19 shows.

I fight on, social model my eternal touchstone from those that went before me.

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Who the Hell are the Disabled? Byline Times - Byline Times