Category Archives: Government Oppression

By now, the world has witnessed white rioters seize the Capitol building in Washington DC. After hearing Donald Trump encourage them to reject the presidential elections outcome, thousands reportedly pushed through cops to storm ongoing congressional debates and reign supreme over politicians who fearfully scurried out of the halls of power. Draped in American, Confederate, and Trump flags, the raiders invaded the House floor, occupied representative offices, and filled balconies and scaffolds that line the windows. Joe Biden took to a podium to respond, cautioning the country that our democracy is under unprecedented assault.

On television, I saw paramedics rush a stretcher in the pandemonium. The woman bearing a bloodied face laying on top startled me, the anchor, and the cameraman. Please God, dont let that woman be dead, I prayed, though her eyes lacked an animating essence. When I saw the video of the Proud Boys burn a Black Lives Matter banner a few weeks ago, I knew there would be more violent acts of desperation because they need a cause to feel empowered. Envying the resistance of the oppressed, Trump supporters want reasons to march and chant, so they create enemies and feign vulnerability as their cause grows lost. They sacrificed their lives to save white supremacy, even though it threatens them, too, materially and morally. And Black lives may never matter to people, like the woman, who will risk their own white lives during a pandemic to attack the nations capital to protect Donald Trump.

A senior Capitol police officer reportedly shot and killed her. But even the police shooting of the Trump supporter did not immediately catalyze significant law enforcement action to stop the conservative Caucasian invasion. Later, I watched a group of unmasked white men and women chase down a Black law enforcement agent who wielded only a stick in return. I was angry. Not because I felt bad for the cop, but because in that moment, I watched him realize that he was Black, outnumbered, and per the Dred Scott supreme court decision, had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.

Wednesday was a reminder of one difference between white rebellion to feigned oppression and Black resistance to actual oppression: where there is radical Black resistance, there is state repression. Where there is white rebellion for conservative causes, there is collusion with the state. Even when the white cops are outnumbered, like the McKinney, Texas, cops who assaulted Dajerria Becton in her swimsuit, they escalate; he just pulled the gun out on Black teens who came to her rescue. Police have stomped, beat, shot, teargassed, and arrested protesters who organize, march, pray and sing for our multi-racial liberation movements. Including me. Yet on Wednesday, activists and bystanders knew damn well that if the election refusers who raided the Capitol were Black, then the same politicians who kneeled for George Floyd and painted yellow Black lives matter letters onto the streets would have sent the full force of the law to stop it.

However, calling for the police to treat white election-outcome deniers like they treat Black people fighting for social justice misses the purpose and function of police, which is largely to manage inequality. No parity exists for these protesters. When the political activist Bree Newsome scaled a pole to pull down the Confederate flag following the Charleston Massacre in 2015, a diverse pair of cops promptly arrested her. On Wednesday, police stood by as the Capitol raiders scaled a window to replace the United States flag with Trumps. White rowdy groups like this do not threaten the fundamentally racist, militarist, and capitalist foundation of the country; they are molded by it. So local and federal government usually let them have their way, from raiding and occupying federal property in Oregon, to massive biker shootouts that killed nine people in Texas; from the Oathkeepers militia group patrol in Missouri, to the militia groups that police thanked in Wisconsin, right before Kyle Rittenhouse did when he killed two men.

Trumpism is the predominant paradigm that accounts for the current capitol siege. Trump is obviously to blame for the most recent events. But only partly. I even forget this sometimes. Last year, I shared a story about an anti-immigration rally that I counter-protested in college. Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Kris Kobach were the headline speakers. White Republicans filled the packed Kansas auditorium, angry that they were losing their country to Mexicans that colonizers forced further south. Each speakers xenophobic and racist rhetoric was so violent and familiar that I finally said, It was like a Trump rally, seven years before he took office.

What racial justice activists make plain in the spectacle of Trumpism, law and order, and white nationalism is the violent failure of liberals and conservatives to foster any real democracy within these borders. Most of Americas violence is mundane and happens on the floors that were taken over by rioters. Just last week, Congress issued meager $600 pandemic relief checks to people facing widespread hunger, eviction, unemployment, disease and distress. There were no riots. Senate Republicans refused to raise the relief to $2,000 but rallied bipartisan support to override Trumps veto of a nearly $800bn military budget. Biden, the president-elect, has veto dreams of his own. If Congress passes universal healthcare during the deadliest month of the coronavirus pandemic, Biden will kill the bill. Unless we organize, there will be little resistance.

Trump refuses the legitimate election results, which is staunchly anti-democratic. However, the legitimate election results are also anti-democratic. The financial and social costs to run for most offices run high, though less violent than stealing an election or staging a coup. Candidates spent $14bn alone on advertising for the 2020 election cycle, and at nearly $1bn, the most recent Georgia special and runoff senate elections were the most expensive of any state in history. Democrats presented two billionaires and five millionaires as presidential candidates last year. The race, gender and sexual orientation diversity of the field obscured the desperate need for wealth redistribution, campaign finance reform and publicly funded elections. But without resistance, many of us celebrate the few people who overcome the barriers, and carry the our ancestors fought and died for this right card in our pockets, all the way to our own graves.

And while witnesses are now championing for DC police to quiet and quell the white riots tonight, Muriel Bowser, the mayor, will have additional support to secure the tens of millions in police overtime pay that will be most practiced on the Black and brown residents in the city. Why would a Black mayor concede to defunding the police when she can be celebrated nationally for renaming a plaza Black lives matter?

Ousting Trump is a good start to changing the Oval Office. But changing the president only changes the spectacle; the mundane violence will remain. As much as we ought to condemn the nationalists outside the walls of Congress, we must continue to organize against the politicians inside who maintain the racist, capitalist, and militaristic agendas that wreak their destruction beneath the galleries away from the cameras, away from the scrutiny, and away from the rest of us who actually have good reason fill up the streets.

Read the rest here:

Look at the Capitol Hill rioters. Now imagine if they had been black - The Guardian

by Steve SweeneyInternational editor

FOREIGN governments have been urged to delist the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) as a terrorist organisation amid fears that the state plans to use new legislation to crush opposition groups.

The National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) issued the appeal weeks after the CPP and its armed wing, the New PeoplesArmy (NPA), were outlawed under oppressive new anti-terror legislation introduced by the government of President Rodrigo Duterte.

An NDFP statement said: We denounce this malicious misdesignation of the CPP and NPA.

The party and the NPA are revolutionary organisations waging a national liberation struggle. The Filipino peoples armed resistance has long been recognised by domestic and foreign entities as a legitimate struggle against foreign and local oppression.

Formed in 1973, the NDFP is a coalition of revolutionary organisations,including trade unions andindigenous rights groups,which unites those fighting for national freedom and for the democratic rights of the people, according to its founding statement.

It is seen as the political wing of the CPP and had been involved in peace talks with the Duterte government in a bid to bring about an end to the decades-long conflict which has seen more than 40,000 people killed.

The NDFP warned that the government is preparing a heightened suppression drive to crack down on and potentially ban mass organisations, humanrights groups, political parties and non-governmental organisations.

The Philippines government insisted that it was necessary to designate the CPP as a terrorist organisation due to its inclusion on the terror lists of the United States, the European Union andNew Zealand, as well as Australia and Britain.

But the NDFP claimed that this is erroneous as the latter two countries do not list the CPP as a terrorist organisation and the others have not requested that the Philippines government does so.

It said it would be just and wise for the few governments that define the CPP and NPA as terrorist organisations to delist them.

It insisted that the groupsadhere to international standards on human rights and the humanitarian conduct of war.

They are against terrorism and have never engaged in any act of terrorism which is directed against innocent civilians and the people. There is not a single act of terrorism abroad that can charged against the CPP and NPA, its statement said.

The NDFP called for international solidarity and urged people to raise their voices and amplify the Filipino peoples demand to end the reign of tyranny and state terrorism.

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Governments urged to remove Communist Party of Philippines from terror list ahead of feared crackdown - Morning Star Online

Re: " Keeping people safe is not religious persecution ," letter, Dec. 17) Dear editor, Bravo to Les Miller for starting a conversation about civil liberties and how that relates to a crisis like COVID-19.

Re: "Keeping people safe is not religious persecution," letter,Dec. 17)

Dear editor,

Bravo to Les Miller for starting a conversation about civil liberties and how that relates to a crisis like COVID-19.I had a couple of issues with what he wrote, however.

My first issue relates to his statement that "everyone is free to have their beliefs in their own hearts and their own homes."If everyone is free to keep their beliefs to themselves, then why write in to publicly share his beliefs? It's interesting that he thinks it is perhaps the "fringe" groups who should keep their thoughts to themselves.

Second, to the comment, "No government in any western democracy...has in the last nine months told any person from any faith group that they're no longer allowed to believe what they believe." I think the disagreements come from the fact that some governments (for example inBritish Columbia) have shut down places of worship altogether, while allowing similarly-populated indoor venues, like bars andrestaurants, to continue operating.Many faith groups assert that worship services are "essential." While their freedom of worship and assembly is codified in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the writer seems to think it a light matter for governmentsto infringe on this right. In reality, it is only one of the many fundamental rights that we all enjoy every day.

Whether our governments follow their mandate to respect our rights and freedoms is something we all need to monitor constantly and defend where necessary.So please, let's be careful of downplaying some people's concerns over freedoms just because they may not specifically be our own.Oppression of "fringe groups" may just be the very first symptom of a government becoming indifferent to the democratic principles this country was founded on.It is everyone's responsibility to ensure our hard-won freedoms are preserved, and that our great country remains glorious and free.

See the article here:

Letter: Hard-won religious freedoms must be respected - Airdrie Today

SAN DIEGO Immigrant rights advocates moved for a temporary restraining order to block the Trump administrations latest attempt to circumvent an earlier court order prohibiting the government from applying an asylum ban to people who had to wait in Mexico because U.S. Customs and Border artificially limited the number of asylum seekers it would allow to enter the United States at ports of entry along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The Asylum Ban rule being pushed through in the final days of the Trump administration can have life or death consequences for affected refugees. The thousands of individuals subject to the Asylum Ban face a much higher burden to gain protection in the United States, and in most cases remain permanently separated from family members still living in perilous circumstances in their home countries. We will continue to fight to ensure that refugees who have already suffered from being turned away from ports of entry are not also prejudiced by this illegal asylum ban, said Erika Pinheiro, litigation and policy director of Al Otro Lado.

While our nation is in chaos and thousands of Americans are dying every day, the Trump administration is desperately trying to override a court order to deny asylum seekers their legal rights, said Melissa Crow, senior supervising attorney with the Southern Poverty Law Centers (SPLC) Immigrant Justice Project. In its final days the administration published a final asylum ineligibility rule that is functionally identical to an interim rule that the court previously prohibited the government from applying to individuals subject to metering before it took effect. This outrageous conduct flouts basic principles of separation of powers.

On December 17 the government issued the final asylum ineligibility rule, which is set to go into effect on January 19.

In its dying days, the Trump administration has launched another attack on asylum seekers and the rule of law by issuing a new final asylum ban regulation that is substantively identical to a prior version of an interim asylum ban which the courts have found unlawful, said Baher Azmy, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights. This emergency motion seeks to protect the integrity of a courts prior ruling and thousands of asylum seekers who might be vulnerable to this latest attack.

A federal court has ordered relief for individuals who were made to wait to seek asylum because of the administrations metering policy. The government may not withhold those protections simply because it does not agree with the ruling. The emergency motion seeks to protect these asylum seekers from this latest attempt to deny them access to the U.S. asylum process, said Karolina Walters, staff attorney at the American Immigration Council.

The case was originally brought by Al Otro Lado, a binational social justice legal services organization serving deportees, migrants, and refugees in Tijuana, Mexico, and a group of 13 asylum seekers who were turned away from ports of entry. They are represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights, Southern Poverty Law Center, the American Immigration Council, and the law firm of Mayer Brown LLP.

The filing can be viewed here.

For more information, visit Southern Poverty Law Center, Center for Constitutional Rights, and American Immigration Council.

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Al Otro Lado provides cross-border legal and humanitarian services to deportees, refugees, migrants in detention, and families separated by unjust immigration laws. Al Otro Lado also employs impact litigation and policy advocacy to promote systemic changes that protect immigrants rights. Learn more at alotrolado.org and follow us on social media for updates: Al Otro Lado on Facebook, and @alotrolado_org on Twitter and Instagram.The Center for Constitutional Rights works with communities under threat to fight for justice and liberation through litigation, advocacy, and strategic communications. Since 1966, the Center for Constitutional Rights has taken on oppressive systems of power, including structural racism, gender oppression, economic inequity, and governmental overreach. Learn more at ccrjustice.org. Follow the Center for Constitutional Rights on social media: Center for Constitutional Rights on Facebook, @theCCR on Twitter, and ccrjustice on Instagram.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, based in Alabama with offices in Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and Washington, D.C., is a nonprofit civil rights organization dedicated to fighting hate and bigotry, and to seeking justice for the most vulnerable members of society. For more information, see http://www.splcenter.org and follow us on social media: Southern Poverty Law Center on Facebook and @splcenter on Twitter.

The American Immigration Council works to strengthen America by shaping how America thinks about and acts towards immigrants and immigration and by working toward a more fair and just immigration system that opens its doors to those in need of protection and unleashes the energy and skills that immigrants bring. The Council brings together problem solvers and employs four coordinated approaches to advance changelitigation, research, legislative and administrative advocacy, and communications. Follow the latest Council news and information on ImmigrationImpact.com and Twitter @immcouncil.

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Immigrant Rights Advocates Ask Court to Block Trump Administration Attempt to Thwart Court Order - Southern Poverty Law Center

Hardly anyone in Turkey thought they would bid farewell to 2020 amid a fresh controversy surrounding the Islamic headscarf.

The response to Ali Babacan, who chairs the Democracy and Progress Party (DEVA), tearing up while talking about his sister's removal from the university during the infamous Feb. 28 process, fueled the debate anew. At the same time, Fikri Salar, a main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) heavyweight and former Cabinet minister, sparked controversy by publicly targeting women who cover their hair.

That Babacan, who cozied up to secularists and liberals for a while, reached out to conservatives with a reference to the headscarf ban unsettled skeptics, who have been urging him to engage in "self-criticism." Some have accused the former Justice and Development Party (AK Party) politician of "exploiting the past suffering of religious people." Others have said Babacan is "a follower of political Islam in the guise of a liberal."

Babacan could not even appease his critics by charging the ruling party for "using political power to oppress other groups." Instead, he was promptly asked to come clean and criticize his own political career.

Ironically, the former finance minister had emerged as a vocal critic of the AK Party government, brushing aside Generation Z's demand for reconciliation and mild language much like his former colleague, Ahmet Davutolu, who currently chairs the Future Party (GP).

The secularist backlash against Babacan's latest attempt to maintain his ties to conservatives speaks volumes about the dilemma facing Turkey's recently established political parties. Their fellow opposition figures do not tolerate the slightest outreach to conservatives Muslims, even if former AK Party politicians jump on the CHP's "dictatorship" bandwagon and agree to the restoration of a parliamentary system. In other words, they are strictly forbidden from paving a third way between the ruling party and the anti-government coalition, dominated by the CHP, the Good Party (IP) and the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP).

To make matters worse for them, the AK Party remains the true representative of conservative voters. President Recep Tayyip Erdoan abolished the headscarf ban that made Babacan weep. They cannot embrace the charge of authoritarianism or other liberal demands because everything is already taken.

Spokespeople for the DEVA and the GP target the government with the CHP's rhetorical ammunition, but they haven't uttered a single word yet to criticize opposition parties. One thing is clear: They cannot speak a genuine political language under that ultra-secularist oppression. They will end up further alienating conservatives, from among whom they emerged, and failing to make liberals and secularists happy.

I was deeply troubled by Salar expressing doubt about a judge, wearing a headscarf, protecting his rights and delivering justice. Those comments may have been dismissed as an act of ultra-secularist militance, not uncommon on the pro-CHP network Halk TV's shows, had the commentator been a leftist with extreme views. Instead, those words came from Salar, a prominent Social Democrat, revealing the deeply entrenched anti-headscarf sentiment among CHP's ranks.

It seems that the dream of reinventing the oppression that Turkey's religious citizens endured during the Feb. 28 process is still alive. That sentiment not only revives the outdated headscarf debate specifically, the arbitrary distinction between the providers and recipients of public services but also shows that the idea of "the reactionary threat" is very much alive in secularist minds.

To be clear, I do not expect the secularism debate in Turkey to come to an end. It is quite surprising, however, that such primitive interpretations of that principle are still so popular. One would have at least hoped that the crude, French-Jacobinist version was replaced by the Anglosaxon approach.

The fierce opposition to the religious headscarf, which Salar reaffirmed, clearly demonstrates that Turkey's Kemalists, leftists and secularists have not undergone the transformation necessary to appeal to voters. That's enough to understand why they cannot win elections.

The obvious question is whether conservatives should be concerned. It is no secret that conservative voters could experience another Feb. 28 process once the AK Party is no longer in power. The CHP leadership manages to conceal its thirst for revenge yet, perhaps, fortunately, pro-CHP networks like Halk TV kindly share the movement's real thoughts with the general public. There is a broad spectrum of CHP figures from those advocating a coup to those who want the call to prayer to be recited in Turkish and those who want to convert the Blue Mosque into a museum.

In contrast, the state's relationship with religion underwent a serious period of normalization under the AK Party. Muslim demands came to occupy a certain space in the public domain legally, as the secular lifestyle remained widespread. Outside the aggressive realm of politics, a fresh interaction between secularists and religious people became possible in socioeconomic life.

A brand of politics, which respects the religious demands of conservatives, will remain at the heart of Turkish politics. There is no reason to worry, as Erdoan's brand of struggle (rather than the liberal impostors bullied into self-critique) will be Turkey's strongest political current in the future.

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Turkish politics and discussions on Islamic headscarf | Daily Sabah - Daily Sabah

Ashli Elizabeth Babbitt served in four tours of duty during her 14-year US Air Force enlistment. A high-level security official, she survived some of the deadliest war zones in the world, including Iraq and Afghanistan.

Her life came to an abrupt end on Wednesday, not in a foreign country but in the US Capitol, where she was shot and killed by a plainclothes Capitol police officer after she and other rioters sought to breach a barricade in the building.

Im numb. Im devastated. Nobody from DC notified my son and we found out on TV, Babbitts mother-in-law told the New York Post.

Babbitt was one of five people who died during the violence, three others from medical complications including several heart attacks and one police officer who died from injuries inflicted by rioters. The riots, which come on the heels of the most violent summer in American since the 1960s, sought to disrupt Congresss vote to certify the Electoral Colleges vote for Joe Biden as president.

For months, President Trump and many of his supporters claimed Joe Bidens electoral college victory was illegitimate because of systemic voter fraud, a claim disputed by the Justice Department and multiple Republican state officials in the states where said fraud allegedly took place.

This is total fraud, Trump told Fox News following the election. And how the FBI and Department of Justice I dont know, maybe theyre involved. But how people are allowed to get away with this stuff is unbelievable.

In the days leading up to Congresss January 6 certification vote, thousands of aggrieved supporters of Trump poured into the nations capital believing, as does the president himself, that widespread voter fraud and irregularities mean the November presidential election was stolen.

Things quickly spiraled out of control.

The U.S. Capitol has been locked down after pro-Trump protesters broke into the building following an incendiary speech from the president in which he vowed never to concede defeat and called on his supporters to march on Congress, the Washington Examiner reported amid the chaos. After the defiant speech, thousands of rallygoers who had arrived in Washington to contest the results of the presidential election swarmed the outside of the Capitol, breaking past U.S. Capitol Police and metal fencing.

The Senate and House were adjourned, with leaders rushed off the floor by their security details as the groups breached several layers of security and gained access to the Capitol chambers, the report continued. At least one person is in critical condition after being shot during the chaos, while at least another five people have been transported to hospital.

Among them was Babbitt, a 35-year old woman from San Diego who ran a swimming pool supply store in Spring Valley. A self-described patriot, she was determined to be on hand to support her country and stop the steal.

"Nothing will stop us, Babbitt tweeted on January 5. [T]hey can try and try and try but the storm is here and it is descending upon DC in less than 24 hours....dark to light.

Twenty four hours later she was dead and the capital city was left scarred by violence.

There is no question that this loss of life is a tragedy. And we will leave aside the question of whether Babbitts killing was an excessive use of force. What we seek to answer is whether the siege of the Capitol that led to her death was a just political act, or whether her life was wasted in a misadventure that was foolish and wrong.

Sadly, the latter is the case.

The right to peaceful protest is a cornerstone of American society. The license to engage in violence, vandalism, and intimidation is not.

Once political protest descends into violence, it crosses the line of justice.

The extent to which voter fraud played a role in the 2020 election can be debated, like any other subject. Trump and his supporters are entitled to believe the presidential election was stolen and rigged. (We do not share this belief, and as noted earlier, neither does the Department of Justice, which said we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.)

Moreover, Trump supporters have every right to gather in Washington and protest the election results. This is a simple matter of free speech and assembly, both of which are protected under the Constitution.But a faction went much further than that Wednesday, perpetrating vandalism, property destruction, and trespass, as can be seen in these videos:

Political protest loses moral and constitutional legitimacy as soon as it becomes destructive or violent.

All Americans have the right to speak out and make our case in the public square. But the moment the first brick is thrown or a window is smashed, it crosses the line between exercising rights and violating the rights of others.

Some would counter that in the face of what they consider a stolen election and an America where their rights and freedoms are slipping away, violent unrest is justified by the extremity of the situation we face as a country.

A scan of Babbits Twitter feed reveals such concerns. From social media censorship, to compulsory lockdowns, businesses gone bankrupt or looted, political corruption, and voter fraud allegations, theres a powerful and understandable sense of grievanceand its a feeling gripping millions of Americans. Of injustice and oppression. Of the belief that everyday citizens are being trampled by political elites.

Underlying rioters rage is a sense of powerlessness; an absence of control or agency. These are conditions from which violence tends to spring.

To sum up: politically speaking, it is insufficient to say that power and violence are not the same, the philosopher Hannah Arendt once observed. Power and violence are opposites.

To be powerless in the face of injustice, in other words, is in many ways a recipe for violence.

It invites an important question. Can violence be used to set the world right? Injustice is very real, after all. Its something almost everyone has experienced at one time or another, albeit it to greatly varying extents. If violence can be used as a means to make things better, why should it not be employed in such a fashion?

This is not a new question, of course. And while Americans today, including many academics, increasingly see violence as a justifiable tool for political change, the answer to this age-old question is still a resounding no.

Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. artfully noted.

Kings words appear especially true in the dawn of 2021.

For the better part of a year, Americans have watched violence spread across our country, feeding on itself like some other-worldly organism. George Floyds death, captured by jarring images and moving video, naturally shook Americans. But what did the riots that ensued accomplish beyond at least 19 direct deaths and billions of dollars in property damage? They only sabotaged the police reform movement and led to more violence. More riots followed, devouring cities from Atlanta to Kenosha, Wisconsin, and beyond. Homicides also surged, increasing by 250 percent in some US cities.

Theres no denying that the riots brought additional attention to the issue of police brutality, but at what cost? Moreover, MLK reminds us that these victories are likely to be fleeting.

In spite of temporary victories, violence never brings permanent peace, the civil rights icon said. It solves no social problem; it merely creates new and more complicated ones.

King was exactly right. Unfortunately, the percentage of US adults who say violence is a justifiable means to advance political change has surged in recent years, among both Democrats and Republicans.

If Americans make excuses for or engage in violent agitation when its a cause they support, it becomes ever more likely theyll soon have the same behavior imposed upon them by their opponents.

Actions that undermine our natural rights can never advance progress.

To argue that violence is a justifiable means to confront injustice is to inevitably invite perpetual conflict. We live in a world of scarcity, but the one thing there has never been a shortage of is injustice. Its a bitter pill we all have tasted and experienced, to varying degrees.

This was especially true in 2020, a year of racial unrest, sweeping violence, and government overreach in which millions of Americans were ordered confined to their homes. Many saw their jobs, savings, and businesses evaporate before their eyes while lawmakers and corporations exempted themselves.

Injustice is real.

Just ask the family of Andre Maurice Hill, a 47-year-old unarmed black man who last month was killed in a garage by Ohio police responding to a non-emergency call. Hill, who was holding a phone, was shot by police within 10 seconds. Officers reportedly made no effort to save Hill, who residents described as an "expected guest," and he soon bled out.

"From what we can see, none of the officers initially at the scene provide[d] medical assistance to Mr. Hill, Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther said. No compression on the wounds to stop the bleeding. No attempts at CPR. Not even a hand on the shoulder and an encouraging word that medics were en route."

Is this injustice? Most certainly. But violence is not the solution to injustice, though many have a hard time believing this.

You truly really believe that non-violence is the sole and universal answer to injustice and oppression? an interviewer once asked King.

Very definitely, King responded. I feel that non-violence...organized non-violent resistance is the most powerful weapon that oppressed people can use in breaking aloof from the bondage of oppression.

King was not saying injustice should be accepted or confused with cowardice or inaction.

Non-violent resistance does resist, King noted. It is dynamically active. It is passive physically but it is strongly active spiritually.

The scene witnessed at the nations capital Wednesday was sad. It was also intolerable. All Americanseven those who support President Trump and agree with his election claimsshould condemn it.

In particular, conservatives and libertarians who criticized the Black Lives Matter riots in 2020, as we did, must similarly condemn the political violence in the nations capital. There is no coherent moral framework where the destruction of property and violence carried out in the name of racial justice is wrong, but similar violence of a right-wing persuasion is fine. (Or vice versa.)

Theyre both wrong. Alwaysyes, even in the presence of injustice (both real and perceived). Because violence is a monster that grows the more it is fed.

And sadly, its the most powerless who usually pay the price when it does.

Originally posted here:

US Capitol Attack a Reminder of the Perils of Using Violence in the Name of Fighting Injustice | Jon Miltimore, Brad Polumbo - Foundation for Economic...

David Graeber once postulated that the reason conservatives hate Hollywood is not just because of the film industrys sanctimonious liberalism but because this liberalism is disseminated by an industry that is profoundly nepotistic. From the Coppolas to the Barrymores to the Fondas to the Gyllenhaals to Gwyneth Paltrow, Matthew Broderick, Daniel Radcliffe, and Jaden Smith, Hollywood has notoriously and shamelessly granted opportunity, irrespective of merit, to those with the right connections at the expense of everyone else. Conservatives, Graeber argues, reject Hollywood because, in contrast to supposedly meritocratic (at least in the conservative imagination) industries such as business, Hollywood isunfair. That Hollywood is also bent on socially engineering the masses with the liberal fads of the day, while simultaneously trading in unending sex and violence, merely adds insult to injury.

Graebers recognition of conservatives overriding concern with fairness helps explain conservatives steadfast support for Donald Trump. Trump of course began his presidential run as an ostensibly unbeholden political outsider who took down the Bush and Clinton dynasties by asserting that he would halt all manner of global cheating and put America first. Promising to drain the swamp, the incoming Trump administration was characterized by an unusual and sometimes surreal openness as celebrities, eccentrics, and hangers-on dropped by to share their views with the president-elect.1A 21st-century version of Andrew Jacksons inaugural ball, this spectacle conveyed an administration freed from technocratic elites, micromanagers, and other unaccountable insiders (which is one reason why Trumps incompetence rarely concerns his supporters, since it is merely more evidence of his overarching authenticity). Indeed, it would be interesting to examine the publics letters to the president during those first months to determine whether there was an unusually high number of offers of assistance and auditions for employment given the perception, at least among his supporters, that the Trump White House was uncharacteristicallyaccessibleto those on the margins of the establishment.

Fundamentally, the notion that the Trump presidency is bent on establishing, or restoring, fairness mistakes appearance for reality. This critical distinction is obscured in Arlie Russell HochschildsStrangers in Their Own Land(2016), in which the Berkeley sociologist travels to Louisiana to explore the thinking of Trump-supporting conservatives.2Spending time with conservatives on their own turf and observing their interactions with their churches, workplaces, and neighbors, Hochschild pursues adeep understanding of conservatives from the inside. What she arrives at is a conservative deep story that is based on an extended metaphor of waiting in line. In sum, resentful, Trump-supporting, white people feel as if they have played by the rules by waiting in line in order to earn their rightful portion of the American Dream, but women, African Americans, immigrants, government workers, and even endangered birds are, with the aid of liberal government officials, increasingly cutting in front of them. When conservatives criticize the unfairness of this situation, they are shouted down for being racist ogres whose devotion to the Christian God, family, and country is the source of endless ridicule in mainstream culture.

Because much of Hochschilds examination relies on her acceptance of the aptness of the line metaphor, it is important to note that such a notion is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of contemporary life. Capitalism has never been based on a line in which the good life is a reasonable outcome for those who dutifully work and wait for it. This idea is incapable of explaining, for instance, the fixed poverty of fast-food workers or among migrant farmworkers whose political vulnerabilitywhich the state and business respectively produce and exploitindicates that they are less willing, as Hochschild and her interviewees would have it, than forced to work for sub-minimum wages. On the contrary, the image of a linein which people face the same direction in a single filemystifies the nature of a class society in which the power of a small elite is generated through exploitativeinteractionwith the majority. Unable to transcend the contradiction inherent in wages, which are simultaneously a negative cost of business and the primary means of workers survival, the system reproduces poverty, even as the number and identity of its victims can vary under different historical circumstances.

Needless to say, Hochschilds white conservative interlocutors do not blame their economic and other struggles on capitalism. On the contrary, Hochschilds interviewees, some of whom express faith in impending rapture, complain about illegitimate outsiders and societys supposed replacement of an honorable and rooted existence with cosmopolitan selves [that are] directed to the task of cracking into the global elite [who make] do with living farther away from their roots[and take] pride in liberal causes. Such concepts, Werner Bonefeld reminds us, have long been used to express a violently reactionary and anti-Semitic worldview that positions itself against an enemy that is viewed as abstract, fluid, universal, mobile, intangible, rootless, landless, and represented by money and society, all of which are attempting to destroy rooted communities that are connected to the land through farming and industry, blood and soil.3

Such language has an undoubtedly dangerous pedigree, but Hochschild intends for us to listen to it so that we might cultivate a mutual understanding that will enable the national community to repair itself, which begs the question of not only what a national community entails but also whether Hochschild is reversing cause and effect. Conservatives and liberals are in conflict not merely because they fail to understand one another but because they understand all too well that they are separated by increasingly unbridgeable interests. Conservatives, Hochschild notes, reject government regulation of their weapons and investments, i.e., their own self-interested pursuits. When it comes to restricting womens access to abortion or policing people of color, however, conservatives, whose political, social, and economic power is predicated on the domination of others, become ardent proponents of the regulatory state. Seeking to overcome such antagonistic interests through mutual understanding thereby constitutes a wrong answer to a wrong question. Conservatives do not conceive of themselves as merely one of many interest groups competing for influence over the government. On the contrary, they, not unreasonably, see themselves as occupying a fundamental and inviolable position within society precisely because of their historically aligned relationship to the state. Hochschild suggests this inheritance when she joins her interlocutors in describing US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan as our troops, and in the very fact that she accepts on faith that it is conservatives own land in the first place and that conservatives estrangement from it constitutes an unambiguously legitimate source of grievance. Reporting on her subjects as she finds them, Hochschild evades US militarism and the genocidal settlement of the land (i.e., US societys material preconditions) and, as a result, divorces her interviewees ideas from the imperial context that helped shape them. In so doing, she obfuscates what she seeks to explain.

Greg GrandinsTheEnd of the Mythcontextualizes todays crises through the metaphor of not a line of atomized individuals waiting for their turn but a frontiera border that evolved into a cultural zone or a civilizational struggle through the settlement of the West and beyond.4Unlike the line, the frontier produces aninsidethat is defined through antagonistic exchange with thoseoutsidewhether of shifting geographic boundaries or the domestic body politic. Whereas historians often debate whether the Constitution expanded or reversed the revolutionary spirit of the Declaration of Independence, Grandin highlights the racist expansionismwithinthe Declarations enlightened universalism. Beyond taxes and billeting, Jeffersons litany of King Georges crimes included the complaint that Britain was preventing the colonists from conquering the land of the merciless Indian Savages. That is, America may have been born free, but it was a freedomfroma government that sought to constrain its subjects violent oppression of others.

We see this conception of negative freedom again and again, as in a story Grandin recounts of a young Andrew Jackson, who when transporting slaves through federally protected Indian land, became outraged after a government official requested to see his passport. Writing My God, is it come to this Are wefreemen or are we slaves? Is this real or is it a dream?, Jackson threatened to murder the agent and devoted himself to getting him fired. Jackson, of course, would have the last laugh as, once president, he would expel (ethnically cleanse in todays language) the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Cherokee, Creek, and other Indigenous peoples from the southeast, where expanded chattel slavery and accelerated national expansion would take their place.

Such freedom not only drove early Western expansionmost dramatically via the Mexican land grabbut, once the continental frontier was closed, continued overseas through the Spanish-American War, the World Wars, and the seemingly unending US wars since. To be sure, the understanding of expansion itself evolved from the merely territorial (as with the taking of Puerto Rico, Guam, Hawaii, and other territories) to the economic (outlined in the Fourteen Points and at Bretton Woods Conference) to the political and the cultural. Along the way, the problems produced by expansion were resolvedor at least displacedby ever more expansion, an approach to national development that, Grandin argues, has left the US disoriented and destabilized now that its ability to expand has finally come to an end. US racist violence and other pathologies, provided no effective outlet in a contracting and crisis-ridden world system, have come home to roost under Trump, who can only offer the frontiers antithesis: the wall (one nevertheless wonders about the intensification of domestic racism attending, and surely lingering after, moments of US expansion, e.g., the virulent anti-Chinese racism during the settlement of the West and the anti-Japanese racism of WWII).

The End of the Mythperforms a vital service in tracing the intrinsic violence of US historical development, showing that this violence does not constitute a one-time original sin but is instead recursive as it is enmeshed within the assumptions of American freedom itself. Yet, notwithstanding Grandins attempts to juxtapose US development with seemingly more peaceful national paths (he favorably looks upon the South American republics, notwithstanding their own eventual warfare), US history and its current crises reflect not only the peculiarities of US development, but also the demands and contradictions of a fundamentally violent global system.

Indeed, neither Trump nor his racist immigration policieswhich include antecedents such as Operation Wetback, Pat Buchanan, and Californias Proposition 187are new to US history, as Grandin writes. But neither are they unique to contemporary global politics. As harrowing as the border patrols on the Mexican border are, one can find comparable brutality in the Mediterranean, which, as Nicholas De Genova writes, the EUs immigration policies have actively converted into a mass grave.5Similarly, the USs rightward shift may have been articulated by Ronald Reagan, but it was born in the crises of the global economy of the 1970s, which incapacitated the Left while emboldening the Right, not only in the US but also in countries including Germany, France, and the UK. Clinton was Reagans greatest achievement, but Reagan was the achievement of both a reemergent US South and an oversaturated global economy.

Lest we reduce striking similarities between the US and other countries to mere coincidence, we ought to look at not only the ideas animating and justifying US development but also the structure of the global system itself. The United States has, since at least WWII, been the most powerful country in the world, so it is easy to forget that in some ways it is also the quintessential nation-state, the first to have based its legitimacy on what is now the reigning system of government today: republican pluralism. Madison developed this concept in his discussion in Federalist No. 10 of the threat posed by factions, which he defines as a number of citizens, whether amounting to amajorityor a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.6Notably for Madison, the most common and durable source of factions, has been the various and unequal distribution of property.

Madisons solution to the problem of factions is brilliant, but he leaves us with a paradox: what is the difference between a majority faction of 99 percent of the population (which Madison would oppose) and the aggregate interests of the community or common good (which he supports)? What exactly does the common good consist of if not what the majority wants? Grandin suggests that Madison saw the common good as virtue and virtue as diversity itself, yet the contradictory interests contained within this diversitye.g., the mutually exclusive antagonisms between boss and worker or landlord and tenantcannot constitute the aggregate interests of the community, since it is not possible to aggregate contradictions without destroying one or the other, something Madison steadfastly opposes. When we talk, for instance, about hegemonic ideologies that claim to aggregate disparate interests, we are in reality speaking about the subordination of some ideologies (e.g., identities based on fidelity to family, city, or religion) to a dominant one (e.g., nationalism). Indeed, Madison recommends extend[ing] the sphere of government, not because he valued diversity as such, but in order to multiply factions so that they can offset one another, a specifically counter-majoritarian maneuver designed to make it more difficult for all who feel a common interest to discover their own strength. But what precisely is it that Madison is trying to protect?

Madisons purpose is made explicit when he defends his plan precisely because under it a rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project, will be less apt to pervade the whole body of the Union than a particular member of it. Writing amid Shays Rebellion, Madison was profoundly concerned with protecting natural property rights, not from the perspective of the framers narrow self-interest, a view frequently attributed to Charles A. Beard, but in general. Yet, even in general terms, private property, which is premised on the exclusion of the unpropertied, could not by definition constitute the common good. Madisons common good, then, could only be the wellbeing of a modern and decidedly unneutralstate that derives its power from asystemof private property that secures both the interests of property holders and the concomitant dependency of everyone else.

And this modern state, consolidated with the American and French Revolutions, was born into asystemof states in which the territory and power of each were inherently relational to the other. The US was founded through breaking away from Britain, and its earliest tasks, as Grandin notes, were to strengthen itself through acquiring land not only from stateless Indigenous peoples but also from its Spanish, British, and French rivals. It was within this geopolitical and national context that settlers, whom Grandin casts in a leading role in the story, helped spearhead Western expansion. Although these settlers often resented and exceeded the given policies of the federal government, their material wellbeing and political support were nevertheless contingent upon the state, which both protected them and capitalized on their efforts. Indeed, this good cop/bad cop dynamic of government/settler expansion is not unique to the US but reflects a pattern of development that can be found in numerous states including, perhaps most prominently today, Israel. That is, the determinative factor in US historical development was less, as Grandin suggests, an endogenous ideology or the settlers and other agents who articulated it, than a global system that provided the structure into which the US states material exigencies and ambitions were born.

US leaders were, to be sure, free to ignore the rules of the international system and not pursue state-building (as Grandin suggests in his comparison between the relatively humane John Quincy Adams and the genocidally-racist Andrew Jackson), but such dereliction was bound to come at a cost, paid for by either the individual (John Quincy Adams never received a majority vote and lost reelection) or the state itself. Justifying the USs annexation of the Philippines following the Spanish-American War, William McKinley, who originally opposed annexation as a criminal aggression,7was cognizant of these systemic pressuresnot least the urgent need to relieve an economy depressed by overproduced goodswhen he warned that if the US did not act it would be bad business and discreditable since its similarly glutted imperial rivals assuredly would.

None of this is to suggest that the development of a given state is a purely mechanistic affair, as there are of course contingencies as well as unique national cultures that influence all countries. Just the same, the cultural and the structural shape each other, and historically the former more often than not evolves upon material terrain shaped by the imperatives of the latter. Perhaps no event more than the Civil War, which Grandin only briefly discusses, demonstrates the confluence between the distinctively American version of freedom and the world system into which the US was integrating.

Although the existence of the federally intrusive Fugitive Slave Act gives lie to the Souths insistence that it was fighting for states rights as such, the South was just as assuredly fighting for its freedomtooppress Black people who provided the basis of its material and cultural way of life. To be sure, as Richard Hofstadter has shown, Southerners such as John Calhoun insisted that the Southern system protected slaves from the perverse freedomsfreedom to starve or lose limbs to industrial machineryof the North.8While the Souths brutally racist violence belied its professed paternalism and revealed Calhouns accusation against the North as atu quoque, both sides did fight over whose interests Black people would be forced to advance: the sectional and parochial aggrandizement of plantation owners or the expansion of an increasingly industrial national economy that was in competition with other states through the apparatus of wage-labor based capitalism. For it is too infrequently noted that the slaves were emancipated in the same decade as the liberation of both the Russian and Japanese serfs, indicating that even disparate nation-states were pursuing the same goal, and with the same techniques, of 19th-century modernization.

The Civil War showed that the US wouldunder the systemic pressures of growth or declineadapt itself to successfully compete in the global system, even as the war and its aftermath shaped a unique political culture. Although Reconstruction ended with the 1877 Hayes Compromise, it was not until the Spanish-American War that the South, Klan and all, was reincorporated into the nation on its own terms, as that war, as Grandin puts it, both re-legitimated the Confederacy and allowed resurgent racists to drape themselves in the high ideals of a now-reconciled national history. Taking redemptive pride in their contributions to US expansion, Southerners were now able to atone for their sedition against the nation, even as they carried the banner of that sedition to the farthest corners of the earth. With Woodrow Wilson segregating the federal government and Nixon adopting the Southern Strategy, the South won a peace that was predicated on the relegation of African Americans to a permanent underclass subsidizing postbellum capitalist society.

To speak, then, of Trumps fairness presupposes a historically specific understanding of that term. On one hand, Trump is likely the most flagrantly nepotistic and corrupt president in US history. Yet such conduct little matters to his supporters; insofar as his dealings are self-serving, they are necessarily a challenge to the far largersystemof corruption that he combats every day. Why criticize Ivanka for enriching herself through sweetheart deals abroad since this only means that the Trump family will now be further empowered to do battle against the Swamp?

On the other hand, Trumpian fairness, in its ideal form, is contingent upon foundational violence that naturalizes ongoing exclusion and oppression as timeless and apolitical. Accordingly, advocates of such fairness ferociously oppose any semblance of social or economic corrective as fundamentally artificial, exogenous, and unfair. It is furthermore a fairness based on conceptions of a masochistic self-sacrifice whose only assurance is not an acceptable standard of living but the freedom to destroy oneself in attempting to achieve it. For ordinary conservatives do not see that theywhether as Grandins settlers or Hochschilds workerswere never in charge of a state that, its flattery notwithstanding, has increasingly little use for them. Projecting their sense of a lost and exaggerated agency onto their enemies, they dangerously believe that those who have been historically trampled are somehow now in charge. For in the final analysis, the fairness of conservatives is built upon the vain attempt to recapture a freedom that is not only based on the oppression of others but was never designed to transcend its subordination to the state.

Notes.

1. Among others, Kanye West, Ted Nugent, and Kid Rock visited the new president. Trumps later decision to commute the sentences of Alice Marie Johnson and other prisoners was influenced by reality TV star Kim Kardashian, and Trump has helped create new celebrities such as his fans Diamond and Silk.

2. Arlie Hochschild,Strangers in Their Own Land, New Press: New York, 2016.

3. Werner Bonefeld, Notes on Anti-Semitism,Common Sense, Issue 21, 1997, pp. 60-76.

4. Greg Grandin,The End of The Myth, Metropolitan Books: New York, 2019.

5. Nicholas De Genova,The Borders of Europe, Duke University Press: Durham, 2017.

6. James Madison, Federalist No. 10, in James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John JayThe Federalist Papers, Penguin Classics: New York, 1987.

7. William McKinley, Decision on the Philippines,Digital History, accessed August 17, 2020,https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=3&psid=1257.

8. Richard Hofstadter,The American Political Tradition, Vintage Books Edition: New York, 1989.

This essay originally appeared in the Brooklyn Rail.

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Trump, the American Dream and the Frontier - CounterPunch.org - CounterPunch

BAME people are over-represented as essential workers on the frontline of the pandemic. Tim Dennell | Flickr

Under the cover of the pandemic, the actions of the UK government have reinforced systems of racial oppression. The virus discriminates based on race: Public Health England data has established that BAME people are dying in disproportionately higher numbers compared to their white counterparts. BAME communities are on the frontline. They are overrepresented as essential workers, being placed in the most dangerous lines of work and, as a result, are more likely to die of the virus. The pandemic has both highlighted structural inequalities and seen government inaction help to reinforce these systems of oppression. The governments failure to protect BAME workers on the frontline has left them vulnerable to a virus which discriminates.

The actions of the government were indicted in a recent report by Baroness Lawrence, the mother of Stephen Lawrence, the black British teenager who was murdered in a racially motivated attack in London in 1993. Commissioned by Sir Keir Starmer, the Lawrence Review condemned the government for perpetuating racial inequalities through its response to the pandemic. She states:

Black, Asian and minority ethnic people have been overexposed, under-protected, stigmatised and overlooked during this pandemic... The impact of Covid is not random, but foreseeable and inevitable the consequence of decades of structural injustice, inequality and discrimination that blights our society.

Lawrence sends a clear message: the governments response to the pandemic has highlighted, enforced and entrenched existing structural inequalities.

The racial discrimination of the virus is evident. Those of Bangladeshi origin are 50% more likely to die of the virus according to Public Health England data. Almost three times as many black males and twice as many black females were infected with the virus compared to their white counterparts. The disproportionate impact of the virus can be explained by the overrepresentation of BAME people in frontline professions, particularly in the health sector, education and the food industry. The government designating certain workers as essential saw many BAME people put on the frontline against a virus that the government has failed to control.

The BAME lives lost in the pandemic cannot be reduced to statistics; daily death tolls are dehumanising and have left the public desensitised to this still unfolding tragedy. The death of TfL worker Belly Mujinga, a black woman who was spat on by a passenger and denied PPE by her employer, exposes the shocking neglect perpetrated by those with a responsibility to protect essential workers. Her death further ignited Black Lives Matter protests earlier this summer. Areema Nasreen, a brown woman, was one of the first nurses to die of the virus. She worked tirelessly in the intensive care units in a hospital near Birmingham. These stories remind us of the lives behind every statistic and demonstrate the overexposure of BAME people on the frontline and the failure of the government to protect them.

The most vulnerable communities experience the greatest impact of the virus, while the government continues to deny them protection.

The racial disparity in the effects of the virus has been investigated and some have suggested that biological factors can partially explain why BAME people are more likely to die of the virus. The August PHE report states that once comorbidities such as cardiovascular disease, hypertension and type II diabetes are taken into account, the disproportionate impact of coronavirus on BAME people is less pronounced. The link between these conditions and poverty highlights the connections between material conditions, race and risk of suffering from the virus. The report fails to investigate the intersection between occupation, deprivation, race and coronavirus deaths, a gross oversight that prevents us from gaining a holistic understanding of the risk posed by the virus. This type of simplification reduces the issue to genetics and fails to take into account the way in which deliberate actions taken by the government have reinforced structural inequalities.

Socio-economic inequalities have exacerbated the racial inequalities entrenched by the pandemic. The option to work from home simply isnt available for many, meaning that not just those workers deemed essential have had to travel, often on public transport, to unsafe workplaces, putting themselves at risk in order to survive. Poor and crowded housing has aggravated this crisis. Half of all Bangladeshis and Pakistanis live in poverty, limiting their ability to self-isolate or shield and putting their lives at greater risk. Like the Grenfell Tower tragedy, poor housing has exposed the intersection between poverty, government neglect and institutionalised racism, which has ultimately led to the avoidable loss of BAME lives. The most vulnerable communities experience the greatest impact of the virus, while the government continues to deny them protection.

Not only has the government put BAME workers on the frontline, it has actively targeted their communities during the pandemic. The Conservative MP Craig Whittaker stoked backlash by suggesting that Muslims were to blame for the spread of the virus, with the Prime Minister failing to denounce the comments. Furthermore, an investigation by Liberty revealed that the police are more likely to fine black and brown people for breaking coronavirus rules. This targeting of BAME communities by the Conservative government predates the pandemic and can be seen by the hostile environment policies that led to the Windrush scandal. The Equality and Human Rights Commission recently stated that these discriminatory actions were against the law. Racism is deeply ingrained in the states consciousness, meaning the simultaneous targeting and neglect of BAME communities is far from incidental.

As with the Grenfell tragedy, the Windrush scandal and the hostile environment policies, the governments response to the pandemic indicates that it does not value BAME lives. These systems of oppression however, are part of a wider malaise. Entrenched structural inequalities, both in institutions and wider society, have been highlighted by the pandemic. This is a time of crisis, and BAME lives are on the frontline.

Varsity is the independent newspaper for the University of Cambridge, established in its current form in 1947. In order to maintain our editorial independence, our print newspaper and news website receives no funding from the University of Cambridge or its constituent Colleges.

We are therefore almost entirely reliant on advertising for funding, and during this unprecedented global crisis, we expect to have a tough few months and years ahead.

In spite of this situation, we are going to look at inventive ways to look at serving our readership with digital content and of course in print too.

Therefore we are asking our readers, if they wish, to make a donation from as little as 1, to help with our running costs at least until this global crisis ends and things begin to return to normal.

Many thanks, all of us here at Varsity would like to wish you, your friends, families and all of your loved ones a safe and healthy few months ahead.

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Cairo journalist Khaled Elbalshy launched his news website Darb Arabic for Path in March to provide an alternative to Egypts mainstream news media and to protect independent journalism.

But one month later, access to the site was blocked. And in September, authorities arrested Elbalshys brother, Kamal, to try to pressure the journalist into stopping.

Darb, which also documents violations against journalists and activists, is not the first independent publication Elbalshy founded. That was launched while the late Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was still in power. But all the sites have been blocked under consecutive governments since Mubaraks presidency. One, Katib, went offline after only a few hours.

Since 2017, authorities have acted without judicial authorization to block an estimated600 websites containing news and politics or focused on human rights, according to the World Report published by nonprofit Human Rights Watch.

Blocking a website will affect its work. Limiting its outreach will hold any possible revenue that might be generated from reaching to as much people as possible. This will prevent the platforms work from evolving and growing, and it will send a sense of frustration to journalists that it is no use to be part of a platform that does not reach people, Elbalshy told VOA.

To get around blocks, Elbalshy publishes content on social media like Facebook, which can be viewed in Egypt, as well as his website, which is accessible from other countries.

The shutdowns have not discouraged the journalist from trying to create a space for free and independent journalism in Egypt, but Elbaslhy says the arrest of his brother is the harshest measure Egypt has taken against his work.

Complete control

Only a few independent media outlets remain in Egypt that offer news outside the official narrative. Those websites cover stories considered sensitive by the government, like human rights violations or corruption by state officials.

For their editors, it is crucial to keep a free space for future journalists.

We are trying to keep alternative journalism alive. Platforms like Mada Masr, al-Manassa and my attempts, we have a responsibility in guarding a free space for future journalists and journalism, Elbalshy said.

These sites face financial, political, economic or religious pressure that make it harder for journalists to work with them because of loss of earnings or intimidation through arrests of them or their relatives.

The Egyptian government has been tightening its grip on media by restructuring media institutions and introducing laws that regulate journalism and media platforms. Activists say that the harassment of a free press soared in 2013 when President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi came to power after the army deposed the first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi.

The country ranks as the third worst jailer of journalists in the world, with 27 in prison, according to a report released in December.

Egypts Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not respond to VOAs request for a comment. Cairo has previously rejected international criticism of rights abuses, saying its arrests and other actions were in response to national security concerns.

In June, el-Sissiissued a decree to reshuffle members of the bodies that regulate TV, radio, print and online media in Egypt, including the Supreme Council for Media Regulation (SCMR).

'Negative' practices

The newly elected members have vowed to stand together against all negative media practices, and the media council ruled that only official government statements should be used in reporting on sensitive political, economic and health issues, such as the response to coronavirus, military projects in Sinai, Egypts dispute with Ethiopia about the latters dam project, and any story related to the president, his family and army generals.

Elbalshy said that these practices aim for complete control over media in a country where most outlets are owned or affiliated with those in power.

On the legislative level, the government made harsh laws to regulate media. We have daily practices of jailing people and charging them with publishing fake news on social media, Elbalshy said.

These arrests are legalized through exceptional laws that opened the door for blocking and censorship, which gave security officers the authority to arrest anyone who publishes anything, under the accusation of spreading fake news and abusing social media.

Even social spaces and religious expression are policed, Elbalshy said, citing arrests over content posted to TikTok and Instagram. In July, a court sentenced two women in their 20s to two years in prison and fined them for violating Egyptian family values with videos that showed them dancing and clowning around.

Push for freedoms

Despite the risks, journalists continue to advocate for a free press in Egypt. Earlier this month, Sherif Mansour, the Middle East and North Africa program coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), testified at a private hearing before the U.S. Congress.

In his testimony, Mansour described how his family has been punished for its work fighting for democracy and freedom in Egypt. Even after Mansour and some relatives left the country, authorities still harass members of the extended family, most recently arresting one of Mansours cousins, Reda Abdelrahman, in August.

A prosecutor this week renewed Abdelrahmans custody order until January 13.

Sadly, Redas case is not unique in Egypt, but also not unique for my family. Many of us have faced arbitrary detention, torture, threats by religious extremists and intimidation by state authorities, Mansour said in his testimony.

Link to aid

Experts say one way to encourage greater press freedom would be to make progress a condition for international aid.

A massive spending bill approved by the U.S. Congress includes $1.3 billion in military aid for Egypt. The bill includes requirements such as the support of independent media and internet freedom programs in countries including Egypt.

Mansour believes that conditional aid will at least pressure the Egyptian government to ease its crackdown, adding that Cairo should not be given military and financial support, training and collaboration from the U.S. with impunity.

The U.S. government did not challenge these governments enough, by aid conditionality, by withholding Washington trips and other means that provide these governments with the legitimacy that they use for oppression, he said.

While journalists at Egypts remaining independent media outlets continue to challenge the punitive measures targeting them, the political environment in Egypt remains largely hostile to their work.

The situation of journalism in general in Egypt is the worst of all times. There is a total absence of the idea of a free press, Elbalshy said.

Read more here:

The Fight to Stay Online in Egypt - Voice of America

More than a decade ago, Sundance, a member of the Muscogee tribe, led a successful effort to change the mascot of a high school from the Oberlin Indians to the Oberlin Phoenix. So when the Major League Baseball's Cleveland Indians announced that they will change their name, it was a big win for him and members of the Native community. But is it only the "tip of the iceberg," he said.

Sundance is the director of the Cleveland branch of the American Indian Movement, one of the organizations that has been urging national and local teams with indigenous names and mascots to change their names for more than 50 years.

There are so, so many issues that we need to address as indigenous people that are certainly more important than the mascot issue, but it is the mascot issue, among others, that prohibits people from seeing indigenous people as people, he told ABC News, adding that the Native American ethnicity is the only one that is widely used as a mascot across the country.

A protestor speaks to a crowd of demonstrators prior to the Opening Day game between the Cleveland Indians and the Kansas City Royals at Progressive Field, July 24, 2020, in Cleveland.

According to a FiveThirtyEight analysis, hundreds of schools across the country still use Native Americans as their team mascots -- monikers widely seen as racist and dehumanizing to the Native American community.

There are people who will downplay the importance of the issue and say, 'Gosh, don't you people have better things to worry about?' Well, dehumanization is, I think, the very root of all the other issues that we face, said Heather Whiteman Runs Him, a law professor and director of the Tribal Justice Clinic at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

Protesters sing and play the drums outside of Sports Authority Field at Mile High in Denver, Co., Oct. 27, 2013.

For decades, advocates for Native American rights had been working relentlessly to convince the teams to change their names -- from filing lawsuits to protests to applying pressure on teams and their sponsors.

But it was not until an immense movement swept the nation in the summer of 2020 after the police killing of George Floyd -- an unarmed Black man from Minneapolis -- that some of the most high profile teams relented.

After insisting in 2013 that a name change will never happen, Dan Snyder, owner of the Washington Redskins, announced in July that the team would change its name to the Washington Football Team, after FedEx, which has naming rights to the stadium, requested a change.

Advocates within tribal nations in our communities started working strategically to target the financial backing of the sports --- the Nikes of the world, the FedExes, Fawn Sharp, president of the National Congress of American Indians, told ABC News. That was part of our strategic thinking, knowing that you're trying to get something that is based on pure morality and a sense of justice is simply not enough -- that the power of the almighty dollar and money in this country, whether you're in sports, or a member of Congress, is such a powerful influence.

Meanwhile, in an interview with the Associated Press, Cleveland Indians team owner Paul Dolan cited the killing of Floyd as an awakening or epiphany that contributed to the teams decision, along with conversations with the Native American community.

Before deciding to change their name -- a change that is expected to take place in 2021 -- the Cleveland Indians stopped using the Chief Wahoo logo on their uniforms in 2019.

According to Sharp, who leads the countrys oldest and largest American Indian and Alaska Native tribal government organization, the widespread Black Lives Matter protests ushered in a national debate about race and racism in America -- one that finally included the rights of Native Americans.

We've known that a day of reckoning would come the momentum has just been an incredible sacred moment, Sharp said, adding that the organization has brought Indian Country together to advocate for the rights of indigenous people and to be an ally and partner with others that are disenfranchised.

In this Sept. 13, 2020, file photo, seats at Fedex Field display the Washington Football Team logo in Landover, Md.

The shift in energy comes amid some wins in representation for the Native American community that advocates are hoping will lead to policy changes.

Six Native Americans were elected to serve in the next Congress, a record in U.S. history. Meanwhile, Rep. Deb Haaland, who was nominated by President-elect Joe Biden to lead the Department of the Interior, could become the first Native American to serve in a presidential Cabinet. If confirmed by the Senate, Haaland would be the first Native person to oversee an agency that played a major role historically in the forced relocation and oppression of indigenous people.

Reps. Deb Haaland, right, and Rashida Tlaib, left, are seen in the Capitol's House chamber before members were sworn in on the first day of the 116th Congress on Jan. 3, 2019 in Washington.

For Whiteman Runs Him, there's a tremendous capacity for hope in this moment, but she remains cautiously optimistic.

Knowing history, we also have to be vigilant that theres enough done, she said, adding that the success of leaders such as Haaland will also depend on the support they get from other branches of government, especially Congress.

Sundance echoed the sentiment, saying, What we need are people who will maintain their Native identity in the face of rules and regulations that have been enacted to keep us oppressed.

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