A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Cambodia to Peru
This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
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The UK government has apologised for failing to equally commemorate up to 350,000 British Empire troops who died in WW1.
The controversy centres on a report on equality of commemoration by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC). This report came off the back of a 2019 documentary on the issue presented by Labour MP David Lammy.
Overlooked
The report shows that tens of thousands of imperial troops were not commemorated in the same way white soldiers were. It also found that somewhere between 116,000 and 350,000 servicemen were either not commemorated by name or overlooked entirely. Most of this group came from African, Arab, and Asian countries:
This report estimates that between 45,000 and 54,000 casualties (predominantly Indian, East African, West African, Egyptian and Somali personnel) were commemorated unequally.
A further 116,000 casualties (predominantly, but not exclusively, East African and Egyptian personnel) but potentially as many as 350,000, were not commemorated by name or possibly not commemorated at all.
The organisation accepted a degree of responsibility for the imbalance:
Although conditions and circumstances sometimes made the IWGC’s job difficult or even impossible, on many occasions differences in commemoration were avoidable. This report finds that the IWGC is responsible for these shortcomings – either because of its own decision making or its complicity in the decision making of other authorities.
It also acknowledges that “prejudice” played a role:
Despite clearly making this argument, this report also shines a light on wider administrative errors and prejudiced attitudes that influenced or played a role in bringing about these issues.
Ultimately, many of these errors and attitudes belonged to departments of the British Imperial Government, including the War Office and Colonial Office.
Scandals
The historian David Olusoga called the issue:
one of the biggest scandals I’ve ever come across as an historian
He also tweeted that the unequal treatment amounted to a form of apartheid:
We're being criticised for using the word apartheid to describe Voi Cemetery in Kenya. I struggle to think of a better phrase to describe this place. Watch for yourself.
The other outrage is that the Commonwealth War Graves commission knew about this for years – and did nothing https://t.co/ZlPr12Piea— David Olusoga (@DavidOlusoga) April 23, 2021
Olusoga then linked to the 2019 documentary made by David Lammy. Here, Lammy discovered that East African troops had been buried without headstones. He also found that most of these headstones are in what is now an overgrown verge between a road and a well-preserved cemetery for white troops in Kenya.
In a Guardian piece on the issue, Lammy described some of the attitudes which had led to the unequal commemorations:
The logic for this outrage was explained by Gordon Guggisberg, the governor of the Gold Coast (now Ghana), who wrote in 1923: “The average native of the Gold Coast would not understand or appreciate a headstone.” A War Graves Commission document refers to African soldiers and carriers as “semi-savage”. Another states “they are hardly in such a state of civilisation as to appreciate such a memorial”, and “the erection of individual memorials would represent a waste of public money”
A founding principle of the war graves commission was that those killed in the war, whatever their rank or background, should have equality in death.
Featured image via John Warwick Brooke/Wikimedia Commons
By Joe Glenton
This post was originally published on The Canary.
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On 22 April, we commemorate the 28th anniversary of the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence. His untimely death led to the 1999 MacPherson report – a watershed moment for race relations in Britain. But 28 years on, we are still fighting against racist oppression in all areas of life.
The murder of Stephen Lawrence
According to the inquest, “five white youths” murdered 18-year-old Lawrence in 1993 in “a completely unprovoked racist attack” in Eltham, South-East London. Police arrested five suspects but didn’t convict them. Only two of his attackers – Gary Dobson and David Norris – were sentenced in 2012. The tragedy set Lawrence’s parents Doreen and Neville on a decades long fight for change and for justice.
The 1998 inquiry into police mishandling of Lawrence’s case concluded with the MacPherson report, “one of the most important moments in the modern history of criminal justice in Britain”. It found the Metropolitan police to be institutionally racist and set out 70 recommendations on how to tackle racism in British policing, education, legislation, and public life. Institutional racism, as set out in the MacPherson report, is defined as:
the collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture, or ethnic origin. It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping which disadvantage minority ethnic people.
Reflecting on Lawrence’s legacy, the conviction of Derek Chauvin, and the police killing of young Ma’Khia Bryant in Ohio, No More Exclusions community organiser Zahra Bei told The Canary:
I think we need to resist the temptation to create symbolic martyrdom out of Black suffering, and Black trauma, and Black pain. I think both George Floyd and Stephen – and all the other Black people, young Black people, children – that have died would much rather be alive than being commemorated or remembered as symbols of justice – or injustice.
She concluded:
I think today should be a day of reflection and rejoicing, but also a day of resolve that we’re not going to fail young people like Stephen Lawrence anymore.
What has changed?
In the Stuart Hall Foundation’s 2021 race report, Stephen Ashe analyses the staggering 589 recommendations that have been made across education, employment, health, housing, policing, and the criminal justice system in 13 different race reports published between 1981 and 2017. Ashe found that the government and legislators have failed to implement many of these recommendations. In the wake of the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, prime minister Boris Johnson announced a Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities. Exasperated by the government’s failure to implement existing recommendations on how to tackle racial inequality, shadow justice secretary David Lammy said:
I made 35 specific limit recommendations in the Lammy review. Implement them. There are 110 recommendations in the Angiolini review into deaths in police custody. Implement them. There are 30 recommendations in the Home Office review into the Windrush scandal. Implement them.
In its report, the inquiry – led by Tony Sewell – concluded that it “found no evidence of systemic or institutional racism”.
Bei told The Canary:
I think that much more work remains to be done. I feel that we’ve failed the youth… and I think we’re actually positively going backwards now. Given the people who are in power, the policies that are in place. The constant denial, gaslighting, and… state violence and oppression that we see.
Policing and the criminal justice system
In spite of decades long calls for institutional reform, we’ve seen little positive change in policing and the justice system. Black people continue to bear the brunt of racist policing. According to 2019/20 data, officers are nine times more likely to stop and search Black people, and 18 times more likely to do so using section 60 powers. Police are over 5 times more likely to use force against Black people than their white counterparts, and 8 times more likely to handcuff Black people when they are “compliant”. They’re also 9 times more likely to draw tasers on Black people.
Today, Black people account for 8% of deaths in police custody but only 3% of the population. Since 1990, 189 people from Black or ethnic minority backgrounds have died during or following police contact. Yet no officer has been prosecuted for murder or manslaughter, despite several rulings of “unlawful killing”.
In the case of youth justice, race disparities are getting worse. While children and young people from Black and ethnic minority backgrounds made up 26% of those in the youth justice system in 2008, they now make up 43%. The joint enterprise doctrine and gang databases continue to target and criminalise young Black men. And when Black Brits rose up against these injustices in summer 2020, they were over-policed and under-protected by a racist force.
The education system
As exemplified by the increasing presence of police in schools, and government plans for ‘secure schools‘, Britain’s education system is inextricably linked to the criminal justice system. Disproportionate school exclusion rates and the defunding of youth support services have created a PRU-to-prison pipeline that systematically criminalises Black working-class children and young people. As reported in The Canary in 2020, the Institute of Race Relations revealed Britain’s ‘two-tier’ education system:
A system in which ‘deserving’ students are encouraged to thrive in the academy sector, while those deemed ‘undeserving’ are relegated to pupil-referral units (PRUs) and alternative provision (AP) – most of which aren’t fit for purpose. This has the greatest impact on working-class Black Caribbean boys, who are over-represented in school exclusion rates, in PRUs and AP (where they are vulnerable to exploitation by criminal gangs), and the youth justice system.
Racist uniform policies reflect the extent to which schools criminalise and police Black and Brown children. Teachers are more likely to underestimate Black students’ grades, and teach a curriculum that doesn’t reflect the world we live in. Meanwhile, Pimlico Academy leadership is threatening students who rose up against the school’s racist, misogynistic, and Islamophobic culture with school exclusion. And other schools are pushing Black educators out for speaking up against injustice.
In workplaces across Britain, employers and colleagues continue to subject workers of colour to explicit and institutional racism. According to the Trade Union Congress (TUC) Racism at Work survey, over 70% of workers from ethnic minority backgrounds have experienced racial harassment at work in the last five years.
Racism in healthcare
The coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic has shone a light on the disgraceful health disparities that exist in Britain’s health service. We have seen people – including healthcare workers – from Black and ethnic minority backgrounds die in disproportionate numbers. In 2020, medical students revealed how medical schools still fail to teach “life-or-death” clinical signs in darker skin. And according to MBRRACE-UK’s 2020 report on maternal deaths, Black women are four times more likely to die during pregnancy by comparison to white women. During the Black maternal health parliamentary debate on 19 April, Labour MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy shared her harrowing experience of pregnancy, demonstrating that Black women are not necessarily safe in the hands of medical professionals no matter who they are.
Hostile environment
We are yet to see justice for the victims of the Windrush scandal. Campaigners are still fighting for the Jamaica 50, 13 of whom the government deported in 2020. And the Home Office is still prepared to deport Osime Brown – a Black 22-year-old autistic man with learning disabilities. He was imprisoned in 2018 under the defunct joint enterprise act for the theft of a mobile phone and lost his leave to remain. The Home Office now intends to deport Brown to Jamaica, a country he left when he was four years old. And the situation is getting worse.
The Home Office has admitted that abhorrent new immigration legislation designed to “criminalise and deport migrant rough sleepers” is likely to discriminate against People of Colour. Meanwhile, police continue to surveil and criminalise Muslim communities as part of Prevent and the war on terror.
Ethnic inequalities in housing persist. And the survivors and bereaved families of the Grenfell fire are still fighting for justice for the tragedy’s 72 victims, and for institutional change to ensure the avoidable tragedy isn’t repeated.
Britain’s culture war
In spite of these realities, equalities minister Kemi Badenoch defended the government’s ludicrous race report in parliament on 20 April. A “shocking” report that the United Nations says “cites dubious evidence to make claims that rationalise white supremacy”. Meanwhile, Tory MPs have written to the Charity Commission reporting race equality think tank Runnymede Trust for “pursuing a political agenda”.
Stating that the report is “null and void if it fails to acknowledge systemic and institutional racism”, Bristol Green Party councillor and Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) candidate Cleo Lake told The Canary:
It was the tenacity, persistence and bravery of Stephens’ parents, Doreen Lawrence (now Baroness Lawrence) and Neville Lawrence, that led to the Macpherson inquiry and subsequent watershed 1999 Macpherson report, that birthed the term and notion ‘institutional racism’. To turn back on this now when there is still work to be done disrespects this history and contemporary efforts by a large cross section of society towards real change and progression.
Lake is calling on councillors, candidates, mayors, PCC, and candidates to sign an open letter calling for the government to revoke the report. Looking to the future, she added:
Let’s create change. Let’s live to higher standards. Let’s move beyond a state that all too often, all too apparently unknowingly peddles hate.
Decades of government inaction demonstrates that we can’t wait for the racist state and its institutions to implement change. We must demand that the government and legislators implement the hundreds of changes that have been recommended over the years.
In the meantime, our hope lies in grassroots activists and organisations fighting on the ground for justice every day. It lies in community leaders who put people before profit, and everyday people who support the work they do. Today, we celebrate Lawrence’s life and legacy and remember that the fight for racial justice is far from over.
Featured image via James Eades/Unsplash
This post was originally published on The Canary.
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It would be hard to find a more widely revered civil rights organization than the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, or NAACP, which has campaigned for the “political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons” since its anti-lynching crusades more than a century ago. It’s little wonder, then, that major industrial interests take pains to portray themselves as allies of the group’s work.
Fossil fuel companies and utilities, in particular, want you to believe they’re helping people of color. To burnish this image, they may donate money to local NAACP chapters, which exist all over the country and can operate with relative autonomy. But the relationships have sometimes gone further than that. Over the past decade, state NAACP officials in Florida, Illinois, and California have positioned their chapters as opponents of renewable energy efforts, raising questions about their donors’ influence — and setting off alarm bells in the organization’s national office.
As a result, the national NAACP put out an April 2019 report listing the “top 10 manipulation tactics of the fossil fuel industry” and warning its chapters not to fall for them. The organization’s crusade to educate its chapters is ongoing: Earlier this month, it released a second edition of this report, which is titled “Fossil Fueled Foolery.”
In a press release, NAACP leaders argued that “the scales are ‘tipped’ and to beat wealthy corporations at their own game,” smaller chapters have to be aware of the ways that polluters deflect accountability for the effects of fossil fuel production and pollution on low-income communities of color. Prominent methods, the report says, include co-opting community leaders and organizations, praising “false solutions” like “clean coal” while claiming community-led solutions are impractical, and promoting false narratives about industry support for renewables.
The NAACP’s first report in 2019 came after a local Florida chapter began regurgitating utility companies’ talking points against the growth of residential solar energy in the state. The chapter had reportedly received $225,000 in donations from the utility Florida Power & Light. From 2013 to 2017, utility giants poured roughly $1 billion in donations into dozens of churches, nonprofits, and advocacy organizations across the country, at least five of which were local NAACP chapters. The donations often went to minority communities to try to obtain local support for pollution-heavy projects.
The new NAACP report explains that co-optation also often extends to utility companies funding and even creating fake community organizations, which create the “false impression that there is community support” for corporate-backed projects. In 2019, for example, the California utility SoCalGas created and funded the group “California for Balanced Energy Solutions,” which organized and lobbied against a city plan for clean energy in San Luis Obispo.
The NAACP says that fossil fuel companies use deceptive and subtle language reminiscent of former President Donald Trump when they present themselves as champions of “clean” energy choices, which discredits actual clean energy options and provides a false sense that they are alleviating the poverty and pollution faced by communities of color. In a country where roughly 70 percent of Black people live within 30 miles of a coal-fired power plant, fossil fuel use will continue to fuel “toxic pollution [that] harms tribal groups, communities of color, and low-income communities, and our earth,” according to the report.
In the same vein, the report cautions against fossil fuel companies that publicly support sustainable energy sources as a solution to communities’ environmental and economic struggles, because in private the companies often “fight for regulation to maintain their monopoly on the energy economy.” While that Florida utility company shelled out hundreds of thousands of dollars to the local NAACP chapter to have them fight the state’s push for solar energy, publicly the company had been accepting donations and campaigning for “community-based” solar projects for more than two decades.
The report also suggests 10 strategies to help communities counter these slick tactics, including local organizing, legal action, and pushing for campaign finance reform. Whatever it may take to stall these tactics, the NAACP has reached one conclusion for certain: “a new energy economy is the only real solution,” and speeding up the country’s shift away from oil, gas, and coal is imperative.
“We have tried various fossil fuel pathways and have met a ‘dead-end,’” the report says.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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It would be hard to find a more widely revered civil rights organization than the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, or NAACP, which has campaigned for the “political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons” since its anti-lynching crusades more than a century ago. It’s little wonder, then, that major industrial interests take pains to portray themselves as allies of the group’s work.
Fossil fuel companies and utilities, in particular, want you to believe they’re helping people of color. To burnish this image, they may donate money to local NAACP chapters, which exist all over the country and can operate with relative autonomy. But the relationships have sometimes gone further than that. Over the past decade, state NAACP officials in Florida, Illinois, and California have positioned their chapters as opponents of renewable energy efforts, raising questions about their donors’ influence — and setting off alarm bells in the organization’s national office.
As a result, the national NAACP put out an April 2019 report listing the “top 10 manipulation tactics of the fossil fuel industry” and warning its chapters not to fall for them. The organization’s crusade to educate its chapters is ongoing: Earlier this month, it released a second edition of this report, which is titled “Fossil Fueled Foolery.”
In a press release, NAACP leaders argued that “the scales are ‘tipped’ and to beat wealthy corporations at their own game,” smaller chapters have to be aware of the ways that polluters deflect accountability for the effects of fossil fuel production and pollution on low-income communities of color. Prominent methods, the report says, include co-opting community leaders and organizations, praising “false solutions” like “clean coal” while claiming community-led solutions are impractical, and promoting false narratives about industry support for renewables.
The NAACP’s first report in 2019 came after a local Florida chapter began regurgitating utility companies’ talking points against the growth of residential solar energy in the state. The chapter had reportedly received $225,000 in donations from the utility Florida Power & Light. From 2013 to 2017, utility giants poured roughly $1 billion in donations into dozens of churches, nonprofits, and advocacy organizations across the country, at least five of which were local NAACP chapters. The donations often went to minority communities to try to obtain local support for pollution-heavy projects.
The new NAACP report explains that co-optation also often extends to utility companies funding and even creating fake community organizations, which create the “false impression that there is community support” for corporate-backed projects. In 2019, for example, the California utility SoCalGas created and funded the group “California for Balanced Energy Solutions,” which organized and lobbied against a city plan for clean energy in San Luis Obispo.
The NAACP says that fossil fuel companies use deceptive and subtle language reminiscent of former President Donald Trump when they present themselves as champions of “clean” energy choices, which discredits actual clean energy options and provides a false sense that they are alleviating the poverty and pollution faced by communities of color. In a country where roughly 70 percent of Black people live within 30 miles of a coal-fired power plant, fossil fuel use will continue to fuel “toxic pollution [that] harms tribal groups, communities of color, and low-income communities, and our earth,” according to the report.
In the same vein, the report cautions against fossil fuel companies that publicly support sustainable energy sources as a solution to communities’ environmental and economic struggles, because in private the companies often “fight for regulation to maintain their monopoly on the energy economy.” While that Florida utility company shelled out hundreds of thousands of dollars to the local NAACP chapter to have them fight the state’s push for solar energy, publicly the company had been accepting donations and campaigning for “community-based” solar projects for more than two decades.
The report also suggests 10 strategies to help communities counter these slick tactics, including local organizing, legal action, and pushing for campaign finance reform. Whatever it may take to stall these tactics, the NAACP has reached one conclusion for certain: “a new energy economy is the only real solution,” and speeding up the country’s shift away from oil, gas, and coal is imperative.
“We have tried various fossil fuel pathways and have met a ‘dead-end,’” the report says.
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Fossil fuel interests say they’re allies of communities of color. The NAACP disagrees. on Apr 20, 2021.
This post was originally published on Grist.
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Charlie Harrison, a Metropolitan police officer, has been jailed for breaking a Black man’s knee in a ‘clear case of racial profiling’. Harrison fractured Carl Abrahams’ knee while Abrahams was visiting his partner’s grave with his children. Southwark crown court found Harrison guilty of causing grievous bodily harm. He has been jailed for two years and three months.
The incident
On 31 December 2018, Abrahams – a 47-year-old Black man – was visiting his partner’s grave in east London “with his two teenage sons”. Harrison – part of the Metropolitan police’s violent crime taskforce – approached the family after getting out of an unmarked police car. The plainclothes officer failed to identify himself. Without warning, Harrison kicked Abrahams’ knee, fracturing it and knocking him to the ground.
According to the Guardian, a passerby protested against the officer’s conduct. At this point, Harrison’s colleagues “rushed out their cars” and threatened to arrest the passerby.
Abrahams reported the incident to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) in January 2019. He sought hospital treatment and was left on crutches for 12 weeks. He told the court that his children are still afraid of police and “fear they will be targeted because of the colour of their skin”. The Directorate of Professional Standards (DPS) launched an investigation in 2019.
A ‘clear case of racial profiling’
On 12 April, the court sentenced Harison to two years and three months in prison. In an interview, Harrison claimed that he stopped Abrahams to look for “drugs and weapons”. But during his trial, he claimed to have found it suspicious that Abrahams and his sons “noticed” his car.
Judge Gregory Perrins said:
Having heard the evidence at trial, I strongly suspect that the reason that you stopped Mr Abrahams and his sons was because they were black.
He added:
Had Mr Abrahams and his sons been white I suspect that you would have simply drove on by; this was in my judgment a clear case of racial profiling.
The judge found that Harrison had “no grounds” to carry out a stop and search, or to arrest Abrahams and his sons. During the trial, Harrison suggested that Abrahams’ sons were being “aggressive and confrontational”. But the judge stated that “the video footage shows the exact opposite”.
Perrins concluded:
Having heard the evidence at trial I see no basis upon which you could genuinely have thought it necessary to defend yourself from a man walking down the street with his two sons with his hands in his pockets.
This was a deliberate assault.
The officer is now facing a “fast-track discipline process”. The Met will “consider whether race played a part in Harrison’s actions”.
Not a case of one ‘bad apple’
Commander Paul Betts said:
This matter was subject to a thorough investigation by the Met’s Directorate of Professional Standards and PC Harrison charged and later convicted by a jury.
He added:
His actions were found to have fallen well below the standard we expect of our police officers, with a man left badly injured. This type of behaviour has no place in our police service and undermines the confidence of the communities we are here to protect.
However, this incident of racial profiling and assault is not just a case of one ‘bad apple’. It’s the product of institutional racism in the Metropolitan police. Harrison’s taskforce were told to search for Black males suspected of violent crimes. And although Harrison has been imprisoned for grievous bodily harm, he has not yet been dismissed from the Met police.
More broadly, a UCL study found that “young Black males in London were 19 times more likely to be stopped and searched than the general population”. And according to the government’s ethnicity facts and figures:
the Metropolitan Police made 80% of all searches of Black people in the year ending March 2020.
22 years on from the MacPherson report, Black Londoners are still bearing the brunt of an institutionally racist police force.
Featured image via James Eades/Unsplash.
This post was originally published on The Canary.
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For more than half a century, 441 Bauchet Street has been the address where Los Angeles’ most stark social and environmental inequalities converge. It’s the location of L.A.’s Men’s Central Jail, the largest facility in the most populated county jail system in the country. On any given day, about 5,000 people are incarcerated there.
A block south from the jail is the 101 freeway, one of the most traveled highways in America, which generates dangerous levels of air pollution linked to a slew of birth defects. A block east is the L.A. River, home to at least 20 different pollutants, from feces to oil, at levels that violate federal standards. Another 100 yards east is the SP Railyard and Union Pacific Transportation Center, which operate at all hours, receiving big rig diesel trucks that spew an estimated 40 tons of particulate matter into the air annually.
According to data compiled by the Environmental Protection Agency’s environmental justice screening tool, those detained inside Men’s Central Jail are situated closer to toxic wastewater and hazardous waste than 96 percent of the country. Their lifetime cancer risk from the inhalation of air toxics is in the 100th percentile, meaning there is virtually no place in the country where it’s higher.
Men’s Central’s proximity to extreme toxicity isn’t an anomaly. A Grist analysis of the 11 jails in the three biggest county jail systems in America — Los Angeles, New York City, and Chicago — found that people residing within or surrounding eight of these facilities are in the 90th percentile or higher for pollution-related cancer risk, respiratory hazards, and diesel pollution exposure. Nine of the facilities are located closer to toxic wastewater than at least 97 percent of the country, and all 11 are in the 90th percentile or higher for proximity to hazardous waste.
Source: EPA / EJSCREEN
Percentiles are relative to the U.S. national population. A score of 96 in Hazardous Waste, for example, means detainees and community members are situated closer to hazardous waste than 96 percent of the country.
Adam Mahoney / Clayton Aldern / GristNone of this is accidental. New York City’s biggest jail, Rikers Island, was built on a former landfill. Now, its inmates reside in closer proximity to hazardous waste than 97 percent of Americans. Chicago’s Cook County Jail, located in the middle of Little Village, one of the most polluted communities in America, is home to more diesel pollution than virtually anywhere else in the country.
While formal research on toxicity and prisons has typically focused on more permanent detention facilities, such as state prisons, little has been done around jails because they’re seen as temporary holding facilities for people awaiting trial. But data show that it is common for some people, and particularly poor people, to spend months and sometimes years in county jail before ever being convicted of a crime. Cash bail requirements mean that people who can’t afford to put up enough money to be released on bail are often effectively serving a sentence while nominally awaiting trial.
For this reason, jails could be an emerging focus of the environmental justice movement. This is because environmental justice advocates focus on so-called “frontline communities” — places that shoulder a disproportionate burden of a society’s waste, contamination, and pollution. Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley,” for example, hosts many of the nation’s petrochemical plants, and its majority-Black residents see the effects show up in their health.
David Pellow, director of the Global Environmental Justice Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara, argues that those incarcerated in county jails constitute a frontline community equally worthy of the movement’s attention. But historically, Pellow says, those cycling through the detention system have been ignored in the environmental justice movement because they’ve been “viewed as populations who just do not matter.”
“Their fate is linked to ours, from the water systems that we are all drinking, to the air that we all breathe, to the land that we all live on,” he told Grist. “A jail wall is nothing but a wall — not much more.”
Indeed, patterns of incarceration lay bare the relationship between race, poverty, and pollution. We know that a history of discriminatory housing policies, like redlining, forced people of color to undesirable and often toxic parts of cities. Today, those same communities are more likely to be over-policed and in poverty, making people of color more vulnerable to pollution and criminalization. This social and environmental harm is then intensified when members of these communities are moved out of the toxic environments in which they live and into toxic facilities where they are held against their will.
“Black and brown and poor white folks in prisons and jails are clearly coming from communities where they are at greater risk for these social and environmental threats,” Pellow said. “Then they are being siphoned off, extracted, taken hostage by the state, and locked up in cages in the belly of this beast.”
Some research suggests that mass incarceration creates environmental harms that reach well beyond these marginalized communities. A 2020 study on how mass incarceration contributes to climate change found that increasing state-level incarceration rates between 1997 and 2016 were correlated with increases in industrial emissions and the use of toxic chemicals, because of the expansion of industrial prison supply manufacturing operations.
At the local level, some organizers in California have had success combining anti-detention and environmental justice organizing. Golden State organizers were able to block the construction of two jails in San Francisco in 2016 by framing the facilities as toxic burdens on the surrounding communities. In 2019, the Los Angeles-based Youth Justice Coalition and other community groups were able to stop a new jail after claiming the new building would worsen the community’s air pollution and potentially contaminate the surrounding soil and nearby water sources by disturbing two underground chemical storage tanks.
Through its “all jails are toxic” campaign, the group argues that jails “worsen things like traffic pollution and the degradation of natural resources,” leading to greater environmental racism in local communities, according to Youth Justice Coalition’s Emilio Zapién. The coalition contends that the money dedicated to incarceration could better be spent on measures to disrupt the need for jails, such as education, food, and jobs programs.
With a focus on sites of incarceration as points of environmental harm, Pellow hopes the environmental justice movement will be redefined to emphasize the collective need for transformative interventions for the most marginalized.
“Focusing on these carceral spaces allows us to expand the realm of how we define not only environmental justice concerns, but also environmental justice activism and leadership,” Pellow added.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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For more than half a century, 441 Bauchet Street has been the address where Los Angeles’ most stark social and environmental inequalities converge. It’s the location of L.A.’s Men’s Central Jail, the largest facility in the most populated county jail system in the country. On any given day, about 5,000 people are incarcerated there.
A block south from the jail is the 101 freeway, one of the most traveled highways in America, which generates dangerous levels of air pollution linked to a slew of birth defects. A block east is the L.A. River, home to at least 20 different pollutants, from feces to oil, at levels that violate federal standards. Another 100 yards east is the SP Railyard and Union Pacific Transportation Center, which operate at all hours, receiving big rig diesel trucks that spew an estimated 40 tons of particulate matter into the air annually.
According to data compiled by the Environmental Protection Agency’s environmental justice screening tool, those detained inside Men’s Central Jail are situated closer to toxic wastewater and hazardous waste than 96 percent of the country. Their lifetime cancer risk from the inhalation of air toxics is in the 100th percentile, meaning there is virtually no place in the country where it’s higher.
Men’s Central’s proximity to extreme toxicity isn’t an anomaly. A Grist analysis of the 11 jails in the three biggest county jail systems in America — Los Angeles, New York City, and Chicago — found that people residing within or surrounding eight of these facilities are in the 90th percentile or higher for pollution-related cancer risk, respiratory hazards, and diesel pollution exposure. Nine of the facilities are located closer to toxic wastewater than at least 97 percent of the country, and all 11 are in the 90th percentile or higher for proximity to hazardous waste.
Source: EPA / EJSCREEN Percentiles are relative to the U.S. national population. A score of 96 in Hazardous Waste, for example, means detainees and community members are situated closer to hazardous waste than 96 percent of the country. Adam Mahoney / Clayton Aldern / Grist
None of this is accidental. New York City’s biggest jail, Rikers Island, was built on a former landfill. Now, its inmates reside in closer proximity to hazardous waste than 97 percent of Americans. Chicago’s Cook County Jail, located in the middle of Little Village, one of the most polluted communities in America, is home to more diesel pollution than virtually anywhere else in the country.
While formal research on toxicity and prisons has typically focused on more permanent detention facilities, such as state prisons, little has been done around jails because they’re seen as temporary holding facilities for people awaiting trial. But data show that it is common for some people, and particularly poor people, to spend months and sometimes years in county jail before ever being convicted of a crime. Cash bail requirements mean that people who can’t afford to put up enough money to be released on bail are often effectively serving a sentence while nominally awaiting trial.
For this reason, jails could be an emerging focus of the environmental justice movement. This is because environmental justice advocates focus on so-called “frontline communities” — places that shoulder a disproportionate burden of a society’s waste, contamination, and pollution. Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley,” for example, hosts many of the nation’s petrochemical plants, and its majority-Black residents see the effects show up in their health.
David Pellow, director of the Global Environmental Justice Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara, argues that those incarcerated in county jails constitute a frontline community equally worthy of the movement’s attention. But historically, Pellow says, those cycling through the detention system have been ignored in the environmental justice movement because they’ve been “viewed as populations who just do not matter.”
“Their fate is linked to ours, from the water systems that we are all drinking, to the air that we all breathe, to the land that we all live on,” he told Grist. “A jail wall is nothing but a wall — not much more.”
Indeed, patterns of incarceration lay bare the relationship between race, poverty, and pollution. We know that a history of discriminatory housing policies, like redlining, forced people of color to undesirable and often toxic parts of cities. Today, those same communities are more likely to be over-policed and in poverty, making people of color more vulnerable to pollution and criminalization. This social and environmental harm is then intensified when members of these communities are moved out of the toxic environments in which they live and into toxic facilities where they are held against their will.
“Black and brown and poor white folks in prisons and jails are clearly coming from communities where they are at greater risk for these social and environmental threats,” Pellow said. “Then they are being siphoned off, extracted, taken hostage by the state, and locked up in cages in the belly of this beast.”
Some research suggests that mass incarceration creates environmental harms that reach well beyond these marginalized communities. A 2020 study on how mass incarceration contributes to climate change found that increasing state-level incarceration rates between 1997 and 2016 were correlated with increases in industrial emissions and the use of toxic chemicals, because of the expansion of industrial prison supply manufacturing operations.
At the local level, some organizers in California have had success combining anti-detention and environmental justice organizing. Golden State organizers were able to block the construction of two jails in San Francisco in 2016 by framing the facilities as toxic burdens on the surrounding communities. In 2019, the Los Angeles-based Youth Justice Coalition and other community groups were able to stop a new jail after claiming the new building would worsen the community’s air pollution and potentially contaminate the surrounding soil and nearby water sources by disturbing two underground chemical storage tanks.
Through its “all jails are toxic” campaign, the group argues that jails “worsen things like traffic pollution and the degradation of natural resources,” leading to greater environmental racism in local communities, according to Youth Justice Coalition’s Emilio Zapién. The coalition contends that the money dedicated to incarceration could better be spent on measures to disrupt the need for jails, such as education, food, and jobs programs.
With a focus on sites of incarceration as points of environmental harm, Pellow hopes the environmental justice movement will be redefined to emphasize the collective need for transformative interventions for the most marginalized.
“Focusing on these carceral spaces allows us to expand the realm of how we define not only environmental justice concerns, but also environmental justice activism and leadership,” Pellow added.
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline America’s biggest jails are frontline environmental justice communities on Apr 15, 2021.
This post was originally published on Grist.
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It’s not just oil and gas companies that are causing the climate crisis — the financial sector has played a role, too. A new report from the environmental advocacy group Women’s Earth and Climate Network International, or WECAN, outlines connections between the banks, asset managers, and insurance companies that finance oil and gas development and the damage inflicted by the fossil fuel industry — in particular to women, hitting women of color hardest. It also lays out how the financial sector can clean up its act.
The report examined projects that produce significant harm to frontline communities in the United States and parts of Canada, ranging from intensive oil extraction in Kern County, California, to the construction of Minnesota’s Line 3 pipeline, to chemical plants in St. James Parish, Louisiana, an area known as ‘cancer alley.’ It then identified the financial institutions that enabled those projects through both direct and corporate-level financing, including the banks that funded those projects, the asset managers that invested in them, and the insurance companies that underwrote them.
Based on an examination of 30 companies, the report identified eight fossil fuel companies — Enbridge, Chevron, Shell, Formosa, Total SE, Marathon Petroleum, Occidental Petroleum, and Exxon Mobil — as the worst actors in terms of damage to communities. It also flagged seven financial institutions — Bank of America, BlackRock, Capital Group, JP Morgan Chase, Liberty Mutual, Bank of Canada, and Vanguard — as the main financiers of those companies. This financing stands in stark contrast to the Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance commitments these institutions made when publicly committing to voluntary standards such as the UN’s Principles for Responsible Investment (which have been adopted by Vanguard, BlackRock, Capital Group, Royal Bank of Canada, and Liberty Mutual) and the Equator Principles (accepted by Bank of America, Royal Bank of Canada, and JP Morgan Chase), investment frameworks that are meant to prioritize human rights and reduction of carbon emissions.
“This report is really important because it goes beyond fossil fuel companies themselves and puts a spotlight on the financial institutions,” said Derek Siedman, a research analyst from the Public Accountability Initiative who was not involved in the report. “It really shows how Wall Street — the banks, the money managers, the investors — are systematically financing and propping up environmental injustice.”
The report also documented the ways that these projects hit women — in particular, women of color — first and hardest, in terms of exposure to contaminated water and air, which can produce specific risks of breast and ovarian cancer, impacts on birth outcomes, and risk of sexual violence due to the presence of labor camps surrounding oil and gas infrastructure. “There are specific effects on women’s bodies, and their health, and their safety, and their social and economic conditions,” said Osprey Orielle Lake, founder of WECAN. “If we want to truly address the climate crisis we must lead with climate justice and that means understanding the gendered and racial impacts of the fossil fuel industry,” she added in an email.
Lake told Grist that the report was motivated by organizing around divestment that followed the Dakota Access Pipeline protests at Standing Rock. “There was a lot of need to do something after Standing Rock to continue that fight and that struggle,” she said.
The report includes a specific set of recommendations for Wall Street about how it can improve its decision-making when it comes to environmental justice and climate change, including ending financing and insurance of fossil fuel companies and infrastructure. It also calls on Wall Street to stop financing companies without “a clear and explicit timeline to align with limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees C.” Lake hopes the report will produce steps towards divestment from the financial institutions identified. “What we cannot do,” she said, “is to continue as we are.”
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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It’s not just oil and gas companies that are causing the climate crisis — the financial sector has played a role, too. A new report from the environmental advocacy group Women’s Earth and Climate Network International, or WECAN, outlines connections between the banks, asset managers, and insurance companies that finance oil and gas development and the damage inflicted by the fossil fuel industry — in particular to women, hitting women of color hardest. It also lays out how the financial sector can clean up its act.
The report examined projects that produce significant harm to frontline communities in the United States and parts of Canada, ranging from intensive oil extraction in Kern County, California, to the construction of Minnesota’s Line 3 pipeline, to chemical plants in St. James Parish, Louisiana, an area known as ‘cancer alley.’ It then identified the financial institutions that enabled those projects through both direct and corporate-level financing, including the banks that funded those projects, the asset managers that invested in them, and the insurance companies that underwrote them.
Based on an examination of 30 companies, the report identified eight fossil fuel companies — Enbridge, Chevron, Shell, Formosa, Total SE, Marathon Petroleum, Occidental Petroleum, and Exxon Mobil — as the worst actors in terms of damage to communities. It also flagged seven financial institutions — Bank of America, BlackRock, Capital Group, JP Morgan Chase, Liberty Mutual, Bank of Canada, and Vanguard — as the main financiers of those companies. This financing stands in stark contrast to the Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance commitments these institutions made when publicly committing to voluntary standards such as the UN’s Principles for Responsible Investment (which have been adopted by Vanguard, BlackRock, Capital Group, Royal Bank of Canada, and Liberty Mutual) and the Equator Principles (accepted by Bank of America, Royal Bank of Canada, and JP Morgan Chase), investment frameworks that are meant to prioritize human rights and reduction of carbon emissions.
“This report is really important because it goes beyond fossil fuel companies themselves and puts a spotlight on the financial institutions,” said Derek Siedman, a research analyst from the Public Accountability Initiative who was not involved in the report. “It really shows how Wall Street — the banks, the money managers, the investors — are systematically financing and propping up environmental injustice.”
The report also documented the ways that these projects hit women — in particular, women of color — first and hardest, in terms of exposure to contaminated water and air, which can produce specific risks of breast and ovarian cancer, impacts on birth outcomes, and risk of sexual violence due to the presence of labor camps surrounding oil and gas infrastructure. “There are specific effects on women’s bodies, and their health, and their safety, and their social and economic conditions,” said Osprey Orielle Lake, founder of WECAN. “If we want to truly address the climate crisis we must lead with climate justice and that means understanding the gendered and racial impacts of the fossil fuel industry,” she added in an email.
Lake told Grist that the report was motivated by organizing around divestment that followed the Dakota Access Pipeline protests at Standing Rock. “There was a lot of need to do something after Standing Rock to continue that fight and that struggle,” she said.
The report includes a specific set of recommendations for Wall Street about how it can improve its decision-making when it comes to environmental justice and climate change, including ending financing and insurance of fossil fuel companies and infrastructure. It also calls on Wall Street to stop financing companies without “a clear and explicit timeline to align with limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees C.” Lake hopes the report will produce steps towards divestment from the financial institutions identified. “What we cannot do,” she said, “is to continue as we are.”
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How Wall Street funds environmental injustice against women on Apr 15, 2021.
This post was originally published on Grist.
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An organisation that represents police officers is kicking off about people sharing videos of arrests and other police interactions on social media. It’s calling for platforms like Twitter and YouTube to do something. But the group’s claim that cops are somehow the victims here doesn’t exactly ring true.
Stop sharing cop videos, says cop
The Metropolitan Police Federation (MPF) is the Met Police’s “staff association”. It represents more than 30,000 cops. And it’s recently hit back at people sharing videos of its officers’ conduct on social media.
The MPF said in a statement that its leader Ken Marsh:
has called for the government and force leaders to tackle social media firms that enable footage of officers dealing with incidents to be shared.
Marsh said it was time to end:
trial by social media.
He also said:
It’s time to step in. We want something done… Officers shouldn’t be subjected to this while simply doing their job.
Stop and search
A specific incident prompted the MPF’s statement. It involved the Met’s Territorial Support Group (TSG) stopping and searching a Black man last year. As the MPF itself said, TSG officers:
stopped [him] under the Road Traffic Act. Officers then searched the man’s car under the Misuse of Drugs Act.
The MPF noted that:
Evidence showed that the man failed to comply with the officers’ verbal demands and refused to show his hands, which led to him being handcuffed in his car.
The incident in question ended with the police officers not finding anything. So, people shared partial footage of the incident on social media. Then, as the MPF wrote, the man:
complained to the IOPC [Independent Office for Police Conduct] that he had been stopped in an aggressive manner, that the grounds for the search were false, that the force used by the officers was unnecessary, and that they had failed to use PPE when searching him and his car.
The IOPC only upheld the man’s complaint about PPE. This is not surprising given the police investigate themselves and it is notoriously hard for people to get any semblance of justice. Indeed, over the last decade, only one in 200 complaints against the Met Police were upheld.
The MPF claim this is an example of why social media companies should stop people sharing videos. But this is not the whole story.
Institutional racism?
The Guardian reported on the incident in July 2020. As it wrote:
In the original incident… on 23 May, Colaço said he was stopped after being “aggressively tailgated” by the Metropolitan police, with officers then running to his car and banging on his window. They later said they had been able to smell cannabis from his car.
As he queried why he was being stopped, Colaço, 30, was forced into handcuffs, video footage shows. He agreed to leave his car and stood with officers who searched him, while others combed through his BMW and found nothing.
Just days later, police stopped Colaço again. This time, City of London police allegedly smashed his window. It was just after he was on C4 News talking about the 23 May incident and institutional police racism. As reported in March, an IOPC investigation into this incident resulted in it upholding Colaço’s appeal. And it told City of London police to re-conduct its own investigation.
Nothing to see here
The Guardian said Colaço claimed police have searched him “about 20 times”, but he “did not have a criminal record”.
So, in other words, the incident the MPF is using as an example of why the public shouldn’t share cop videos is arguably an example of the institutional racism that pervades the Met’s use of stop and search. Of course, the MPF would disagree. Marsh said of the 23 May incident:
Yet again my colleagues, after thousands and thousands of pounds have been wasted, have been found to be doing their job exactly as they should.
“Censorship” and “whitewashing misconduct”
Police monitoring group Netpol disagrees with the MPF’s call. It told The Canary:
To somehow prove its dubious case for ‘trial by social media’ the MPF started off arguing for the release of all body camera footage. But the Met rejected this idea last year. This was after its own internal review showed officers displaying “poor communication, a lack of patience, a lack of de-escalation before use of force is introduced”.
Now the MPF instead wants the Tories to put pressure on companies like Twitter and YouTube to censor people who share evidence of oppressive policing. This is evidence that has often helped to challenge officers’ misleading versions of events. And it has also led to the disciplining of violent officers. Netpol argues that in the face of the enormous power that officers wield, filming the police is one of the few effective ways of ever successfully holding them to account.
Last year the French government tried to criminalise members of the public who shared images of police officers. But widespread protests forced it to backtrack.
The British government should learn from this clumsy attempt at censorship and ignore the increasingly desperate attempts by the MPF to whitewash repeated cases of misconduct by its members.
Who will police the police?
Just days ago, someone shared this footage on Twitter:
A @Hs2Rebellion non violent peaceful protester doing a slow walk on a public highway was forcefully arrested. Is this an appropriate amount force? #killthebill #democracy pic.twitter.com/jwoVmeTLwz
— Boots On The Ground News! (@bearwitness2019) April 12, 2021
Should people not share this kind of footage? The MPF thinks not. But the problem with its position is twofold.
Firstly, the MPF seems to believe that its officers are beyond public reproach. That or they just know how bad these incidents look and want to avoid the public holding them to account for their actions.
But secondly, it thinks that the reason for its officers engaging with the victims in these videos is correct in the first place. For example, Colaço is clearly the victim of systemic, institutionalised police racism. Yet the MPF claims its officers are the victims.
This skewing of the narrative is endemic of the current approach to policing. It ties into the contentious Police Bill. And it also shows the creeping authoritarianism that pervades the police and their bosses in government.
Featured image via The Canary
By Steve Topple
This post was originally published on The Canary.
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Mosques are preparing for Ramadan after the holy month had to be observed during coronavirus (Covid-19) restrictions last year without the usual community prayer gatherings.
Ramadan, the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, begins with the first sighting of the new moon. It’s expected on 13 April this year in the UK, although this may change.
Vaccinations
Many Muslims abstain from all eating and drinking during daylight hours. But Muslim medical professionals have urged those fasting to still get vaccinated against coronavirus.
Salman Waqar, from the British Islamic Medical Association (BIMA), spoke to the PA news agency. He said Muslim scholars across the world have said vaccinations do not break the fast. And people should not delay their jab on account of Ramadan.
Thank you @AliRacaniere @SouthAsianHF et al for highlighting the issues related to vaccine rollout in Ramadan.
We have created some resources which could help clinicians and patients decide about taking the vaccine and dealing with its side effects. #SafeRamadan https://t.co/fOCp2WIE3b pic.twitter.com/y9HB8ep3Rz
— British IMA (@BritishIMA) April 8, 2021
Suspicions and stigma
Waqar co-authored a study that assessed the impact of Ramadan on coronavirus deaths in 2020. The study found that the observing of Ramadan rituals did not contribute to a rise in deaths.
The report said:
There has been much commentary suggesting that the behaviours and cultural practices of minority communities explain their increased exposure to the pandemic.
It said these claims were “not evidence-based” but “unhelpful distractions” from existing health inequalities.
Waqar added:
We don’t want to exceptionalise Muslim communities for observing these religious or cultural practices. Everyone everywhere is fed up with being stuck indoors.
Even when places of worship were open, Test and Trace didn’t attribute many cases of Covid transmission to those places.
Of course, the data is self-reported, so there is some under-reporting of that, but there doesn’t seem to be a suggestion that places of worship are responsible for outbreaks of Covid.
Our analysis on #Ramadan & #COVID19 mortality with @miqedup @NazimGhouri @MehrunishaS @Halima_Begum @MichaelMarmot.
Recent commentary on culture and behaviour are distractions from addressing the systemic root causes underpinning these inequalities.https://t.co/f8X3xLCt3S pic.twitter.com/prwVOExdVa
— Salman Waqar (@salmanWaqar) April 1, 2021
Precautions
The East London Mosque and Muslim Centre is one of the largest mosques in Europe and the biggest in the UK. On Fridays before the pandemic, it would accommodate more than 7,000 worshippers at a time. The mosque is now preparing to welcome people back for Ramadan prayers.
Head Imam Shaykh Abdul Qayum said they were “blessed” to be able to return:
However, we shouldn’t forget that we are still in a pandemic, and as such, the mosque has taken appropriate precautions to ensure that Ramadan in its premises is conducted in a safe way.
The mosque won’t open until 15 minutes before prayer starts. Everyone is asked to leave with 10 minutes of it ending. The Ramadan prayers, usually two hours long, have also been shortened.
Worshippers are to bring their own prayer mats and bags for shoes. And no one under the age of 12 should attend. Sanitation stations have been placed throughout the building, which will operate with a one-way system.
Spirituality and community
Traditionally, the mosque hosts a big iftar meal after sunset so everyone can break their fast together. But this year donations are being made to the mosque’s foodbank instead.
Khizar Mohammad, from the mosque, said:
The vast majority of people are very receptive to the rules. They understand the need for them because one of the key features of Islam is that it advocates the preservation of life, so that overrides a lot of rules.
Zara Mohammed (MCB/PA) Zara Mohammed, the first female secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, said she was looking forward to a more “health-conscious and sustainable” Ramadan when it came to breaking her own fast. She said:
We are hoping that it will give everyone a renewed optimism, in a sense to be grateful and come back again to the spiritual
She said the month was one of the biggest charitable times for Muslim communities, adding:
My message would be to keep in mind and pray for those who are still going to have a quite difficult Ramadan because they are not going to be around their loved ones, whether they are shielding or have lost loved ones through this time.
By The Canary
This post was originally published on The Canary.
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On 10 April 1981, young Brixton residents rose up in response to police oppression, entrenched inequality, and marginalisation. The unrest soon spread to urban centres across the UK.
The Scarman Report went some way to identifying the root causes of the rebellions. But successive governments have failed to deal with these issues, and have exacerbated them in many cases. 40 years of cuts and privatisation, an increasingly fascist state, and a devastating pandemic have resulted in a frustrated, volatile population with little to lose. If plans for the proposed Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill go ahead, we could see history repeat itself.
The battle for Brixton
In 1981, the New Cross fire exacerbated community mistrust of the police. The arson attack – which killed 13 young Black people – was one of a series of racist attacks in the area and across Britain. Despite this, the police dismissed claims that the fire was an act of racial violence. After years of marginalisation, heavy-handed policing, and alienation, the community rose up on 2 March 1981, the Black People’s Day of Action. An estimated 20k people marched through London to demonstrate against Britain’s indifferent police, media, and government.
Met Police’s ‘Operation Swamp ’81‘ further aggravated tensions in Brixton. The force used the ‘sus laws’ to harass young Black men in the area. These were laws which increased police powers to stop, search, and arrest anyone deemed ‘suspicious’. In early April 1981, plainclothes officers stopped and searched nearly 950 people in 5 days, often without reason. Following the stabbing of a young Black man, and increased police presence in the area on 10 April 1981, young people in Brixton rose up. The unrest in Brixton lasted for two days, but spread to urban centres across Britain. Namely Moss Side (Manchester), Toxteth (Liverpool), and St Paul’s (Bristol).
“We’re just as powerless”
Many of these uprisings were sparked by attempts to challenge arrests, raids, and assaults on young Black people. Hundreds were injured. The Runnymede Trust highlights that the Scarman Report – commissioned in response to the urban rebellions – “stressed the importance of tackling racial disadvantage and racial discrimination”. Black Past adds that the report “blamed the police for escalating the tensions”.
Tony Cealy, who took part in the uprising as a 15-year-old, told the Voice:
I suppose, looking back now it was an opportunity to tell the British state that we had had enough of being victimised by the police. It was an opportunity to fight back and let people know that enough was enough.
Reflecting on the rebellion’s legacy, he added:
We’re just as powerless as we were during the 1981 uprisings.
Lessons learned
Since the 1981 urban rebellions shook the nation, Britain has seen numerous major uprisings. These include the 1991 Handsworth uprising, the 2001 race riots in Bradford, and the 2011 Tottenham uprising following the police shooting of Mark Duggan. While varying in scale, location, and demographics, the causes of each violent uprising were essentially the same. Entrenched inequality, marginalisation, and unjust, heavy-handed policing.
In the decade since 2011, privatisation and cuts have eroded our public services on an unprecedented scale. The government has created a hostile environment for immigrants and stoked the flames of Britain’s culture war. The nation has been ravaged by a deadly virus thanks to government incompetence. Unemployment is at a four-year high. We’re facing a child poverty crisis combined with dramatic cuts to youth support services. We’ve seen disproportionate heavy-handed policing of the pandemic and of peaceful protests. In other words, the nation is a tinderbox waiting to be set alight.
And now the government plans to thrust the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill upon us. The draconian bill seeks to further increase police powers and criminalise vast swathes of the population. This includes children and young people, Traveller communities, rough sleepers, and anyone who dares to publicly protest against the encroaching police state. The breadth of the proposed bill’s impact is reflected in the diverse range of organisations that have come together to form a “massive coalition” to oppose it. Meanwhile, the police have met peaceful ‘Kill the Bill’ protesters with brutality, while the mainstream media has told a different story.
If the government enshrines its draconian bill in law, rather than supporting communities and dealing with poverty, trauma, and unmet needs, it’s likely that we’ll see yet another long, hot summer of violent discontent.
Featured image via john linden/YouTube
This post was originally published on The Canary.
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Varying coronavirus (Covid-19) health outcomes are the result of “intersecting forms of disadvantage”, including structural inequalities faced by certain communities, experts have said.
Intersections
A combination of political, economic, and social factors can have “exponential impacts” on certain groups. That’s according to a paper from the ethnicity subgroup of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage). A Sage meeting on 25 March considered the paper. It was published on 9 April.
It follows the government-commissioned ‘Sewell Report’ on racial disparities which was published last week. Many experts criticised the report for failing to recognise the impact of institutional racism in British society.
The ethnicity sub-group of Sage noted that people from all minority ethnic groups had a higher risk of dying with coronavirus compared to white British people in the first wave. The sub-group advises the government on the coronavirus risks and impacts for minority ethnic groups.
During the second wave, the elevated risks among black African and Black Caribbean groups had “attenuated somewhat”. But it remained considerably higher for Bangladeshi and Pakistani groups.
Interaction of factors
The paper said evidence suggests the continued high mortality rates in Bangladeshi and Pakistani groups are due to the amplifying interaction of four key factors. These are:
- Long-standing health inequities.
- Occupation and housing factors.
- Barriers to accessing care.
- Including stigma and racism, and the potential influence of policy on behaviour.
Moreover, many co-morbidities associated with severe coronavirus, such as diabetes, are more prevalent among British Pakistani and Bangladeshi groups, the paper notes.
These groups are also more likely to work in occupations with a greater risk of exposure, such as hospitality and retail. They’re also more likely to be in precarious work, making it harder to take sick leave, or be self-employed with uncertain incomes.
Tackling the problems
Measures addressing their economic situation and workplace rights will help decrease exposure and transmission, the paper says.
It says evidence shows that increased self-isolation payments would assist all low-paid workers. And family members may require further support through food delivery, paid care workers, and paid-for accommodation outside the home in order to self-isolate.
It also suggests introducing workplace vaccination schemes in high-risk workplaces. And adds that incentivising, or legally requiring, employers to give paid time off for vaccination could improve take-up rates.
The paper also said that members of larger, multigenerational households are at higher risk due to poor quality, dense housing. It further said that older members are at risk of exposure from younger relatives and care networks linking households.
A focused public health campaign could help improve uptake in disadvantaged, minority community areas, the authors say. The campaign could explain the importance of testing in schools to prevent transmission into the family home.
The paper also notes evidence which suggests that stigma, including racism, is a fundamental cause of health inequalities. It drives morbidity and mortality, undermining access to housing, employment and healthcare.
A history of experiencing stigma can directly affect an individual’s health and also stop people from accessing care, the paper says.
The paper notes that stigma, including racism, is a fundamental cause of health inequalities and drives morbidity and mortality (Danny Lawson/PA) Driving stigma
Recent research suggests some government interventions increased stigma. For example, introducing restrictions before Ramadan and Eid last year “fuelled disproportionate public emphasis on transmission within this religious group”.
Multigenerational households have also been singled out as a source of transmission. This has fuelled division and stress for certain groups, the authors added.
The Sage members said the Black Lives Matter movement may have created empowerment. The result is “greater use of cultural, religious and collaborative approaches to reducing risk and transmission of Covid-19 in black communities”.
But the authors said Bangladeshi and Pakistani groups have not reported similar feelings. And establishing or rebuilding trust in these communities may take longer in the absence of an equivalent national movement.
They write:
It is essential that the public environment changes, particularly during the vaccination rollout and with the implementation of local interventions to prevent local transmission or surge testing in areas where new variants emerge.
If Covid-19 becomes endemic in a local area, public communications and media should clearly state this is due to the structural driver of socio-economic disadvantage, and supportive messages should be given to avoid compounding stigma and exclusion, and thereby worsening health outcomes from Covid-19.
By The Canary
This post was originally published on The Canary.
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Counter-terror raids are one part of the government’s approach to state security. But, there’s one crucial aspect which is being overlooked. That’s the impact such raids have on families who face heavy-handed tactics from police forces.
As part of the Investigations Unit’s #ResistBigBrother series, we’ve been working with CAGE to bring forward the real impact of the hostile environment for British Muslims.
Business as usual
Over the summer of 2020, a number of addresses were raided by counter-terror police. A Guardian report at the time of the raid said:
Police said two east London addresses were raided and at one a man aged 27 was arrested. At a second address in east London a man aged 31 and male aged 17 were detained. In Leicestershire police arrested a man aged 32.
Since this raid, at least one man has been convicted after an operation from the Metropolitan police and MI5.
CAGE told The Canary:
With regards to the raids, there were two in East London, impacting the same family. Two brothers were arrested in the Ilford premises and a third brother in a separate East London premises. Of the two from Ilford, one was released NFA [no further action], the other was charged.
Our client is the man who was released on NFA and his family. We don’t represent the charged men in this case.
Forced entry into premises to conduct an arrest or carry out a search warrant are commonplace. However, these raids are also happening in the context of tensions from government-led Islamophobia, rejections of Islamophobia as a type of racism, and suspicion of Muslims. Tactics that fall under the umbrella of counter-terror strategy, then, require a closer look.
Speaking out
Since the raid, the family represented by CAGE have spoken to The Canary about their ordeal.
In a collective statement they told us:
The raid on our family home was an extremely traumatic experience for the whole family and we are still trying to recover from the damage it caused. We were terrified when hoards of armed police broke our door down and forced their way in, without any explanation and with elderly family members inside.
A recent review from the Law Commission has taken a look at how search warrants are carried out. In 2018, the commission said:
The laws around search warrants should be modernised with more protections put in place to protect individuals’ rights
When this report was published in 2020, the commission set out a series of recommendations that, among other things, look to:
- Streamline the process of obtaining and carrying out search warrants.
- Tighten up laws around the right to search and obtain electronic information.
- Further protections to signpost to occupants why their home has been raided.
The review largely looks at the process for search warrants rather than protections for individuals. This said, the review does recommend:
introducing a statutory requirement for law enforcement agencies executing search warrants to provide an occupier with a notice of powers and rights. In addition, we recommend the introduction of a specific search warrants “your rights and the law” webpage on the Government website. Finally, we recommend that application forms are amended to invite the issuing authority to record their reasons for granting a warrant which may be executed outside usual hours.
Given that the Network for Police Monitoring already have a ‘know your rights‘ section, as do CAGE, it’s difficult to see this recommendation as one that genuinely safeguards the rights of citizens. It could also be argued that the efforts to uphold rights are the responsibility of the police, rather than individuals themselves.
The Law Commission’s review is extensive and has contributions to make to police reform. But, the question is: can police reform bring justice?
Aftermath
The family went into more detail about their encounter:
We felt completely petrified, humiliated and targeted and cannot understand how it was all justified. It was so public; they turned the house upside down but in the end there were no charges brought and no further action from police towards our brother. He was declared completely innocent.
The Home Office releases quarterly statistics on information related to counter-terrorism. This includes numbers on people arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000, outcomes of terrorism-related charges, and the ethnicity of people arrested, among other things.
However, this doesn’t include statistics on people who face charges, convictions, or no further action after a counter-terror raid.
Anas Mustapha, spokesperson for CAGE, told The Canary:
There is a lack of accountability for ineffective raids and no impact assessment on raided families.
A lack of transparency on the outcomes of counter-terror raids is yet another area with gaps in police accountability.
As the Law Commission’s review show, the protection of civil rights is not at the forefront of attempts at reform. This is troubling for all people, but particularly for Muslims.
Senior lecturer at the University of York Katy Sian told The Canary:
Counter terror raids fall disproportionately upon members of the Muslim community who have been unjustly surveilled and targeted as part of the Islamophobic War on Terror campaign.
Trauma
There is a lot of trauma to grapple with for families who experience raids.
Indeed, the family also told us:
We have been subjected to abuse and attacks from our neighbours and the local community, not to mention that it was all over the news. What the news failed to mention is that the raid did not amount to anything. Our brother has been unjustly defamed and wants to get on with his life, but this stigma will follow him for the rest of his life. The deep fear and anxiety that this has caused the entire family will not just disappear overnight.
Since summer 2020, Mustapha confirmed that:
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The front door remained broken for two-months. It remained unsafely boarded up until the family was able to replace it.
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The use of firearms alerted neighbours who became hostile to the family.
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They were the subjects of abuse and a suspected hate crime when a brick was thrown into their front room, shattering the glass and leaving sharp debris everywhere.
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Their elderly grandmother was not allowed to take her medication during the raid and was refused access to it.
Sian continues:
These raids are deeply traumatic for the families who are harassed, intimidated and subjected to force in their own homes, under unclear circumstances and with limited information. The long term harms of these actions include fear, anxiety, and a sense of paranoia.
Pattern of behaviour
With criticisms of the Prevent strategy, the Shawcross review, and policies coming out of the Commission for Countering Extremism, there are many examples of Muslims being treated as enemies of the state.
Mustapha told us:
There must be accountability for how these raids are conducted, their effectiveness and damage to community relations.
These raids also help maintain the narrative of suspect communities against Muslims and sustain the constant onslaught on our collective freedoms through new laws and policies.
The theatre of these search warrants serves to create a culture of fear and suspicion targeted specifically at Muslims.
Sian told The Canary:
Communities of colour are already mistrustful of law enforcement agencies due to deep seated racism, such as profiling, and excessive use of force. Counter terror raids serve as another means to control and regulate people of colour.
Everyone should be concerned at accounts and experiences like this family’s. It’s all the more concerning, and life threatening, for Muslims and Communities of Colour.
The Metropolitan Police had not responded to a request for comment at the time of publication.
Featured image via Unsplash/Phil Hearing
This post was originally published on The Canary.
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Covid failings, crackdown on protest, police discrimination and resumed arms trade with Saudi Arabia all listed in annual report
Amnesty International has published a stark rebuke of the UK government’s stance on human rights, saying that it is “speeding towards the cliff edge” in its policies on housing and immigration, and criticising its seeming determination to end the legal right for the public to challenge government decisions in court.
In its annual report on human rights around the world, Amnesty International says the UK’s increasingly hostile attitude towards upholding and preserving human rights legislation raises “serious concerns”.
Related: ‘Narcos are looking for me’: deadly threats to Peru’s indigenous leaders
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
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The Minneapolis police chief testified that Derek Chauvin’s use of force against George Floyd was “in no way, shape or form” in line with police policy.
As the trial for the police officer accused of killing Floyd continues, Medaria Arradondo is one of few police chiefs to testify against his own officer. The sixth day of the trial also heard the doctor who tried to save Floyd’s life testify that the cause of death was likely asphyxiation.
Amid a low prosecution rate for police officers accused of fatalities, Chauvin’s trial could set a precedent for how such officers are treated in future.
He “should have stopped”
Arradondo said Chauvin’s actions showed a disregard for the “sanctity of life”, and that he “vehemently” disagreed that there was a justification for his actions.
He added that while some force may have been reasonable at first, Chauvin’s ensuing actions did not count as “objectively reasonable force”.
Arradondo, Minneapolis’s first Black police chief, is unusual in testifying against his former officer, whom he fired after Floyd’s death.
This testimony builds on the prosecution’s argument that the length of time Chauvin had his knee on Floyd’s neck was against police policy. In a pretrial filing, Chauvin’s lawyers said he was following policy and “did exactly as he was trained to do”.
“Lack of oxygen”
The doctor who tried to save Floyd’s life after he was brought to the emergency room also gave testimony. Dr Bradford Wankhede Langenfeld said in court that he believed Floyd’s cardiac arrest to have been caused by asphyxiation.
He went on to say there was no evidence that a heart attack or drug overdose killed Floyd. He also said paramedics didn’t “report that the patient complained of chest pain”.
After the Minnesota medical examiner declared the cause of death as cardiopulmonary arrest, Chauvin’s lawyers argued Floyd died from a heart attack or a drug overdose. Langenfeld also added that being given CPR earlier could have increased Floyd’s chances of survival fractionally. This follows on from witness testimony that the police made no attempt to give Floyd medical treatment.
An important trial
Chauvin has been charged with both second-degree and third-degree murder, the former of which could see him spend up to 40 years in prison if he’s convicted.
To secure a conviction, the prosecution must convince the jury that Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck was a “substantial causal factor” in his death.
Around 1,000 fatal shootings by police are reported every year in the US. Since 2005, just 139 police officers have been arrested for manslaughter or murder by shooting. Only 44 have been convicted with 42 cases still pending.
There was a wave of outrage after Floyd died in May last year that led to protests around the world. Demonstrators called for an end to police brutality and racism.
Featured image via Flickr/Lorie Shaull
This post was originally published on The Canary.
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Slavery is our nation’s original sin; the treatment of people of color a blot on the history of a country “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Those who might have thought that … Continue reading
The post Our Racist Past appeared first on BillMoyers.com.
This post was originally published on BillMoyers.com.
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The government’s widely criticised report from the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities fell into more disrepute today.
A number of academics are on the list of “Stakeholders” even though some have had no contact with the commission. The report says:
The Commission heard evidence from many during the course of its work. It would like to thank the following for their participation
The problem
However, writer S.I. Martin, whose name is on this list at the end of the report, told The Canary that he only discovered his name was included in the report this morning:
I’ve had no contact whatsoever with the commission, nor would I. Anyone who knows me knows that I would never speak to them
Martin explained that:
I understand the government has admitted that my name was entered in error – we’ll never know whose error it was. In future editions my name will be excluded.
Stephen Bourne also took to Twitter once it emerged that his name was in the list of stakeholders:
To my horror I named as one of the 'academics & individuals' who was consulted by the Commission on Race & Ethnic Disparities. I wonder how many others were consulted without their knowledge? pic.twitter.com/2Vhnygjsd7
— Stephen Bourne (@blackpoppies14) April 1, 2021
The report itself
You don’t need to be a genius to see that the report’s claim that Britain is not institutionally racist is at best false and at worst an insult to the concept of reality.
Indeed, a commenter on Twitter said the report could well be a distraction:
What the #RaceReport has done is reduce the whole country to playing the ‘It’s Racist’ ‘It’s not Racist’ game, keeping everyone locked in nongenerative oppositional exchange, making it almost impossible to address what needs to change! It’s a distraction technique par excellence
— Emma Dabiri (@EmmaDabiri) April 1, 2021
We’re not going to start listing all the reasons Britain is institutionally racist, as we’d be here forever. But we can say that labels of racism don’t need the consent of the people and institutions who are racist.
Approval
There are a handful of people of colour who have been involved in the production of the report. However, as Martin told us, that means very little:
The presence of people like Sewell and Kasumu are there to give it a stamp of decency or approval by some parts of the communities that they do not represent. To find my own name thrown into that mess initially caused hilarity. But, this is indicative of how this administration operates, there will be no explanation or apology.
Tony Sewell, the chair of the commission, was sharply criticised by Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu:
Racist Boris Johnson 'Race Commission' fronted by token Black man, Tony Sewell, finds Institutional Racism doesn't exist
A #WhiteSupremacy LIE to gaslight entire nation #ThisIsWhyIResist
Britain. Is. Not. A. Model. Of. Racial. Equality.#BlackLivesMatter https://t.co/Kl2ckrZ8HJ
— Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu (@SholaMos1) March 31, 2021
Meanwhile, advisor to the prime minister Samuel Kasumu has quit:
His exit is allegedly not linked to the landmark report by the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities (Cred), which faced heavy criticism over its findings, although the timing is proving uncomfortable for the government either way.
Warning
Concerning the outcry against the report from many angles, Martin told us:
We should prepare ourselves collectively for dealing with a government that are genuinely crooks and liars, and cannot apologise and be accountable.
The government investigating into its own institutions then finding them not racist doesn’t have much weight to it.
What does have weight, however, are basic errors in citation that show the lack of care taken with the report from a callous and ineffective government.
The Cabinet Office had not responded to a request for comment at the time of publication.
Featured image via Unsplash/James Eades
This post was originally published on The Canary.
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Boris Johnson’s most senior Black adviser has resigned. It comes after the government faced backlash over a review which claimed Britain is no longer a country where the “system is deliberately rigged against ethnic minorities”.
Fallout
Downing Street said Samuel Kasumu will remain in post until May and he had planned his departure for several months.
His exit is allegedly not linked to the landmark report by the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities (Cred), which faced heavy criticism over its findings, although the timing is proving uncomfortable for the government either way.
A No 10 spokesperson said Kasumu has played an “incredibly valuable role” during his time as a special adviser. They added:
As he previously set out, he will be leaving government in May – this has been his plan for several months and has not changed.
Any suggestion that this decision has been made this week or that this is linked to the Cred report is completely inaccurate.
Politico said Kasumu notified the prime minister’s chief of staff Dan Rosenfield of his decision to quit his job – which paid up to £75,000 – last week. He has reportedly been unhappy in government for some time, with a resignation letter drafted – but then retracted – in February.
In the letter, which was obtained by the BBC, Kasumu accused the Conservative Party of pursuing “a politics steeped in division” and suggested equalities minister Kemi Badenoch may have broken the ministerial code in her public spat with a journalist.
“Telling”
Shadow women and equalities secretary Marsha de Cordova said:
To have your most senior adviser on ethnic minorities quit as you publish a so-called landmark report on race in the UK is telling of how far removed the Tories are from the everyday lived experiences of black, Asian and ethnic minority people.
Their divisive report appears to glorify slavery and suggests that institutional racism does not exist, despite the evidence to the contrary. It is no wonder they are losing the expertise from their team.
(PA Graphics) The Cred report was published on 31 March and has faced heavy criticism.
Commission chairman Dr Tony Sewell said his team had found no evidence of “institutional racism” and the report criticised the way the term has been applied, saying it should not be used as a “catch-all” phrase for any microaggression. The commission said geography, family influence, socio-economic background, culture and religion all affect life chances more than racism.
Its findings have been described as insulting and divisive, and the chairman of the review has been accused of putting a “positive spin on slavery and empire” when explaining its recommendation on teaching history in schools.
In response to the criticism, Sewell said to suggest it was “trying to downplay the evil of the slave trade” is “absurd”. He added:
It is both ridiculous and offensive to each and every commissioner. The report merely says that, in the face of the inhumanity of slavery, African people preserved their humanity and culture.
In the face of adversity, allies come together. It's clear this Commission wants to set race relations back by 20 years – we're not going to let that happen. Stay mobilised, stay engaged, stay positive.
In case you missed our event, catch it here: https://t.co/jfV1iSAmtg pic.twitter.com/jmfGX6AVBa
— Runnymede Trust (@RunnymedeTrust) March 31, 2021
Influence
The report proposed a Making Of Modern Britain teaching resource to “tell the multiple, nuanced stories of the contributions made by different groups that have made this country the one it is today”.
In his foreword to the report, Sewell said the recommendation is the body’s response to “negative calls for ‘decolonising’ the curriculum”. He wrote that the resource should look at the influence of the UK during its Empire period and how “Britishness influenced the Commonwealth”, and how local communities influenced “modern Britain”.
He added:
There is a new story about the Caribbean experience which speaks to the slave period not only being about profit and suffering, but how culturally African people transformed themselves into a remodelled African/Britain.
Highlighting the passage on Twitter, de Cordova said it was “one of the worst bits” of the report which was “putting a positive spin on slavery and empire”.
Halima Begum, chief executive of race equality think tank the Runnymede Trust, said:
Comments about the slave trade being a Caribbean experience, as though it’s some kind of holiday … this is how deafening it is, cultural deafness, it’s completely out of kilter with where British society is, I believe.
By The Canary
This post was originally published on The Canary.
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CONTENT WARNING – SOME READERS MAY FIND THE GRAPHIC SCENES DESCRIBED HERE DISTURBING
George Floyd’s struggle with three Minneapolis police officers trying to arrest him, seen on bodycam video, has been shown in court at the trial of one of the officers.
“I’m sorry”
The footage included Floyd’s panicked cries of “I’m sorry, I’m sorry” and “I’m claustrophobic!” as the officers tried to push him into the back of a police SUV. At one point, Floyd bucks forward, throwing his upper body out of the car.
Officers eventually give up, and Floyd thanks them – and is then taken to the ground, face down and handcuffed.
Officer Derek Chauvin’s knee pins his neck, another officer’s knee his back, and a third officer holds his legs. As this happens the officers talk calmly about whether he might be on drugs.
Officer Thomas Lane was recorded saying:
He wouldn’t get out of the car. He just wasn’t following instructions.
The officer also asked twice if the officers should roll Floyd on his side, and later said he thinks Floyd is passing out. Another officer checked Floyd’s wrist for a pulse and said he could not find one.
The police on trial
The officers’ video was part of a mountain of footage and witness testimony in Chauvin’s trial on murder and manslaughter charges, showing how his alleged attempt to pass a counterfeit 20-dollar note at a neighbourhood market last May escalated into Floyd’s death.
A security camera scene of people joking around inside the store soon gave way to the sight of officers pulling Floyd from his SUV at gunpoint.
In this image from store video, George Floyd, right, is seen inside Cup Foods on May 25 2020 in Minneapolis (Court TV via AP, Pool) The extended bodycam footage gave jurors the fullest view yet of the roughly 20 minutes between when police first approached Floyd’s vehicle to when he was loaded into an ambulance. When Floyd was finally taken away by paramedics, Charles McMillian, a 61-year-old bystander who recognised Chauvin from the neighbourhood, told the officer he did not respect what Chauvin had done.
Chauvin could be heard responding:
That’s one person’s opinion. We gotta control this guy ’cause he’s a sizable guy… and it looks like he’s probably on something.
Floyd was 6ft 4in and 223 pounds, according to the post-mortem examination, which also found fentanyl and methamphetamine in his system. Chauvin’s lawyer said the officer is 5ft 9in and 140 pounds.
Chauvin, 45, is charged with murder and manslaughter for kneeling on the 46-year-old’s neck for nine minutes, 29 seconds, as he lay face down in handcuffs.
The most serious charge against the now-fired officer carries up to 40 years in prison.
Defence lawyer Eric Nelson, left, and defendant Derek Chauvin, right (Court TV, via AP, Pool) “You can’t win”
Floyd’s death, along with the harrowing bystander video of him gasping for breath as onlookers yelled at Chauvin to get off him, triggered protests around the world and a reckoning over racism and police brutality across the US.
As Floyd was pinned down by Chauvin and other officers, bystander McMillian could be heard on video saying to Floyd, “You can’t win” and “Get up and get in the car”.
Floyd replied: “I can’t.”
The defence has argued that Chauvin did what he was trained to do and that Floyd’s death was not caused by the officer’s knee, as prosecutors contend, but by Floyd’s illegal drug use, heart disease, high blood pressure, and the adrenaline flowing through his body.
Guilt
The arrest and alleged murder came after Floyd reportedly handed a cashier at Cup Foods, 19-year-old Christopher Martin, a counterfeit note for a pack of cigarettes.
Martin said that he watched Floyd’s arrest outside with “disbelief – and guilt”. “If I would’ve just not taken the bill, this could’ve been avoided,” Martin said, joining the burgeoning list of witnesses who expressed a sense of helplessness and lingering guilt over Floyd’s death.
Martin said he immediately believed the 20-dollar note was fake. But he said he accepted it, despite believing the amount would be taken out of his pay by his employer, because he did not think Floyd knew it was counterfeit and “I thought I’d be doing him a favour”. Martin then second-guessed his decision and told a manager, who sent Martin outside to ask Floyd to return to the store.
Floyd and a passenger in his SUV twice refused to go back into the store to resolve the issue, and the manager had a co-worker call police, Martin said.
Martin said that when Floyd was inside the store buying cigarettes, he spoke so slowly “it would appear that he was high”. He also described Floyd as friendly and talkative.
By The Canary
This post was originally published on The Canary.
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On Wednesday 31 March, the Daily Mail trumpeted that there is “NO evidence of institutional racism” in the UK. If you ignore the UK’s “racist” prime minister, its institutional racism, and the Daily Mail‘s long history of “racist” propaganda – then yes – the UK is not institutionally racist.
Nothing to see here
The Daily Mail‘s front page on 31 March was about a government report into racism. The media has widely reported that the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities report found no evidence of institutional racism in the UK. BBC News noted that:
The UK “no longer” has a system rigged against people from ethnic minorities, a review set up by No 10 says.
It also said the report claimed:
the UK is not yet a “post-racial country” – but its success in removing race-based disparity in education and, to a lesser extent, the economy, “should be regarded as a model for other white-majority countries”.
A foreword to the report by chairman Tony Sewell, an education consultant and ex-charity boss, said: “We no longer see a Britain where the system is deliberately rigged against ethnic minorities.”
So, enter the Daily Mail to give its opinion on the report. Like we all needed that.
The Daily Mail says we’re not racist. So it must be true.
It bleated:
BRITAIN’S RACE REVOLUTION
Landmark report says UK ‘a model to world’ on diversity – and finds NO evidence of institutional racism
Wednesday’s Daily MAIL: “Britain’s Race Revolution” #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/PCrm4cO8bN
— Allie Hodgkins-Brown (@AllieHBNews) March 30, 2021
Editor of Red Pepper Jake Woodier summed the situation up well:
Racist prime minister of racist government conducts a review that finds no institutional racism, and then reported on and lauded by racist newspaper.
Maybe it’s just me, but it seems a bit convenient! https://t.co/iOqaN72s3l
— Jake Woodier (@JakeWoodier) March 30, 2021
Someone pointed out on Twitter that the Daily Mail has a long history of racist and prejudiced front pages:
— Friction is dereliction. (@DoandDieForThe1) March 30, 2021
As another Twitter user said:
Gaslighting on a national scale… it's honestly enough to drive you mad https://t.co/LeVPk1EuWw
— RoRo (@RoNicMo) March 30, 2021
Sewell claimed that:
No-one denies and no-one is saying racism doesn’t exist. We found anecdotal evidence of this. However, evidence of actual institutional racism? No, that wasn’t there, we didn’t find that.
But one group representing Black people has pulled the report apart.
“Structural”
The group Black Activists Rising Against Cuts (BARAC UK) was highly critical. Its co-founder and national chair Zita Holbourne told The Canary:
There have been several government reports into racism which have yet to be implemented. Those reports exposed the fact that race discrimination is real, obviously black communities did not need the reports to know that as we live with structural and every day racism every day.
But now here is the report of the commission making another set of recommendations but ‘telling us’ that actually racism doesn’t really exist and effectively it’s all in our minds and we are holding onto the past.
An “accusatory tone”
Holbourne also took issue with the tone of the report:
The report says:
This commission finds that the big challenge of our age is not overt racial prejudice, it is building on and advancing the progress won by the struggles of the past 50 years. This requires us to take a broader, dispassionate look at what has been holding some people back. We therefore cannot accept the accusatory tone of much of the current rhetoric on race, and the pessimism about what has been and what more can be achieved.
But as Holbourne emphasised:
If we are to look back over 50 years we will see that gains fought for by our parents generation have been stripped away in recent decades, we have endured over 10 years of austerity which amplified that existing racism and now we are in a pandemic which has exacerbated existing discrimination and inequality included that experienced by racialised people. It seems to be suggesting that racism is all in our heads and if we are held back its our own fault and thinking.
‘Accusatory tone’?! Are we expected to speak positively about our lived experience of racism. Are they suggesting we brought racism on ourselves?
She continued:
Did the Windrush generation facing deportation and destitution inflict the injustice they faced on themselves?
This is what is seems to suggest. It would be an understatement to call the report disappointing but we were never expecting it to deal with structural racism.
An “even more hostile environment”
Holbourne concluded:
As a trade union representative and community activist I represent people every day in individual and collective cases where unequal pay, barriers to promotion and progression, discrimination in policing and the judicial system, in the labour market, racist harassment and bullying at work, the impacts of cuts and now Covid, hate crime and abuse, deaths at the hands of the state and much more and their lived experience of direct and structural racism is real.
To try and disregard that and suggest that Black Lives Matter protestors in the UK were only responding to the horrific murder of George Floyd and not all the things above happening here in the UK as well is shocking.
It creates an even more hostile environment for anyone facing racism .
The Daily Mail parroting a flawed report into racism sums up the UK. That is, racists trying to obscure the fact that the country is still institutionally and societally racist. No amount of propaganda from right-wing tabloids and biased and quite frankly insulting reports will convince anyone otherwise; not least the people who are still on the receiving end of Britain’s institutional white supremacy.
Featured image via Allie Hodgkins-Brown – Twitter screengrab and Public Domain Pictures – Pexels
By Steve Topple
This post was originally published on The Canary.
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Secretary of state takes veiled swipe at Trump administration and says change of approach is ‘in America’s interests’
The United States will speak out about human rights everywhere including in allies and at home, secretary of state Antony Blinken has vowed, turning a page from Donald Trump as he bemoaned deteriorations around the world.
Presenting the state department’s first human rights report under President Joe Biden, the new top US diplomat took some of his most pointed, yet still veiled, swipes at the approach of the Trump administration.
Related: Pompeo claims private property and religious freedom are ‘foremost’ human rights
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
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When Dorothy Walker was looking for a place to live in Berkeley, California, it didn’t take her very long to learn that half the city was off-limits to her family. It was 1950, and the rules were clear: “Because my husband was Japanese, we couldn’t live east of Grove Street, because no one not white was allowed to live there.”
The Supreme Court outlawed explicitly racist real estate covenants in 1968, and around a decade later, Berkeley changed the name of Grove Street, which divides the wealthier eastern half of the city from the west, to Martin Luther King Jr. Way. But some 70 years after she first went house hunting with her husband, Walker argues that, though the rules that kept the city divided by race and class have evolved, their effects remain.
If you want to know how century-old land-use laws could possibly be relevant today, you can find that lesson in Walker’s story.
Dorothy Walker and Joe Kamiya in 1949. Courtesy of Dorothy Walker Each time judges or federal lawmakers tried to make racial segregation illegal, starting in 1917, Berkeley and other cities around the country replaced them with ordinances that entrenched segregation by income and wealth instead, reserving certain parts of town for people who could afford their own house and a roomy yard. By requiring only single-family homes set back from their property lines in the white parts of towns, “municipalities basically codified existing patterns of demographics,” said Stephen Menendian, who researches the way policies affect inequality at the University of California, Berkeley.
Walker spent the bulk of her life fighting to open up neighborhoods to more people. Now it’s finally happening: A wave of cities and states are eliminating single-family zoning to allow the development of denser housing stock in previously exclusive areas. Minneapolis legalized triplexes in 2018, and Oregon effectively eliminated single-family zoning the following year. Recently, California and Seattle partially followed Oregon’s lead, allowing people to build small backyard houses without a lengthy review process. In January, Massachusetts told 115 municipalities around Boston to legalize the construction of multi-family buildings, and Sacramento voted to legalize fourplexes. Berkeley’s City Council could join them this week, making Walker’s 50-year dream of a more urban and diverse Berkeley come true.
It’s a long-overdue trend, said Muhammad Alameldin, an economic equity fellow at the Greenlining Institute, an Oakland, California-based nonprofit founded to undo the legacy of race-based housing rules. “The general consensus is that exclusionary zoning raises housing costs, and that disproportionately hurts people of color,” he said. Greenlining and others have prioritized eliminating those practices for decades, Alameldin explained, “but it’s finally getting some momentum because housing costs are starting to hurt the wealthier, whiter residents, as well.”
When Walker and her husband, Joe Kamiya, went looking for a home, there were no scenes or confrontations; landlords simply told them that they’d have to find a place in the western half of the city, as if it were a fact of nature, a result of explicitly race-based neighborhood covenants. It made Walker, who is white, angry. She had already seen how such discrimination could grow into something much worse: Just a few years earlier, the United States had sent some 120,000 Americans of Japanese descent, including Kamiya and his family, to internment camps, and confiscated their homes, businesses, and other property.
Dorothy and Joe stand in front of the house where she grew up 1949. Courtesy of Dorothy Walker In the Jim Crow South, paramilitary groups like the Red Shirts and the Ku Klux Klan enforced the color line. In the north, rules that maintained segregated cities were often unwritten and sometimes enforced by violence. In 1897, white residents of Chicago’s Woodlawn neighborhood “declared war,” threatening their Black neighbors until they moved out. People were driven from their homes by mobs hurling threats, rocks, and sometimes dynamite. San Francisco was one of the first cities to codify these rules, banning Chinese residents from portions of the city in 1890.
Berkeley’s housing discrimination was more subtle. In 1916, the city passed a zoning plan that permitted only single-family homes in the wealthiest parts of town, which had the effect of banning apartments and other cheaper forms of housing. A prominent realtor, Duncan McDuffie, championed the rules as a means to preserve neighborhood character, and avoid “the evils of uncontrolled development.”
Starting with New York in 1957, states began passing fair housing laws to make this kind of discrimination illegal, but they persisted in California. An assemblyman from Berkeley, William Byron Rumford, pushed through the state’s Fair Housing Act in 1963 only to see Californians vote to overturn the law through a ballot proposition. Finally, in 1968, the Supreme Court struck down the practice and reinstated Rumford’s law.
Around the same time, the country was in upheaval over integrating schools, more than a decade after the Supreme Court outlawed school segregation in 1954. Walker was working as part of a committee to oversee the integration of Berkeley’s schools. The system they devised was one of the most comprehensive in the country. The city bused white students down from the wealthy hills in the east, and up from the working-class flatlands in the west, until every school had a student population with an even spectrum of skin tones. It was the first city with a population of over 100,000 to institute two-way busing voluntarily in 1968. The next year, a little girl from the west side of the city named Kamala Harris would ride the bus east for her first day of kindergarten.
But Walker feels little pride for her contribution to the effort. “It failed almost immediately,” she said.
The schools were mixed, but the students still kept to their neighborhood friends while at lunch and on the playground. Part of the problem was that most of the city’s elementary schools were in the wealthier, eastern part of town. The more affluent parents raised money and volunteered their time to start clubs and enrichment programs for their local schools. “I’m sure the parents didn’t want to exclude anyone, but the buses left right when school was over, and most of the programs were after school, of course,” Walker said. The white kids hung out after school for the chess clubs and sports teams, goofed around, and formed friendships.
Kids head for a school bus in Berkeley, California, in February 1970, as part of a program to mix Black and white students. ASSOCIATED PRESS According to Walker, by the time the students reached middle school, they’d solidified their peer groups along mostly racial lines. “The Black children were always at a disadvantage because the youngest ones had to be bused,” she said. “What I learned was that the problem wasn’t the schools, it was the surrounding neighborhoods. To really desegregate the schools you need to desegregate the city.”
When the Berkeley City Council asked Walker, who had recently finished her stint on the schools committee, to serve on the planning and zoning commission, she leaped at the opportunity.
The formula seemed clear to her: Diverse neighborhoods need diverse housing options, rooms and apartments that the poor could afford among the big houses of the wealthy. After discussing her idea with a professor and lawyer who urged her on, she proposed eliminating single-family zoning to the rest of the planning commission. She doesn’t remember the year — 1971 or 1972 — but she does remember that her colleagues didn’t exactly embrace her proposal. “I was basically a voice in the wilderness crying out for density,” she said. “It was just so radical. It fell like a stone.”
Instead of loosening restrictions, citizens moved to clamp down. In 1973, Berkeley’s residents put what they called the “Neighborhood Preservation Ordinance” on the ballot to make it harder to demolish old buildings and build new ones. Preservationists who wanted to save historic architecture allied with wealthy hill dwellers who wanted to protect their neighborhoods from change, in tandem with left-wing activists who wanted to stop profit-driven developers. Meanwhile, Black voters were split between those who wanted to open up historically white neighborhoods to integration and supporters of the measure who wanted to hold on to the neighborhoods where many Black families had established a community.
Ben Bartlett, a current member of Berkeley’s City Council who is Black, has suggested that the measure was a means to stop the spread of the growing Black population. Sophie Hahn, another council member, said that many Black residents and their allies saw the ordinance as a way to avoid losing their communities to bulldozers. Over the previous decades, “urban renewal” efforts, most famously led by Robert Moses in New York City, had flattened working-class, Black, and brown neighborhoods to make way for highways and new buildings. In 1955, the city leaders of Roanoke, Virginia, condemned a Black community to make way for a post office and a Ford dealership. In 1962, a Chrystler factory and a new interstate pushed out 4,000 residents from Hamtramck, Michigan, uprooting half the city’s Black residents. Planners also chose Black neighborhoods as the ideal spots for pouring new concrete in Miami, Atlanta, Philadelphia, and across the country. As James Baldwin put it, “Urban renewal means negro removal.”
Congress of Racial Equality members picket in front of the Urban Renewal office in Rockville Centre, New York in September 1965. Newsday LLC / Contributor / Getty Images By 1973, when Berkeley voted on its Neighborhood Preservation Ordinance, the era of urban renewal was over and the pendulum had swung in the opposite direction. It was politically profitable to rail against bulldozers, developers, and new housing. Walker fought “tooth and nail” against the measure, warning it would further entrench the city’s segregated neighborhoods and drive up housing costs. But the ordinance passed by a solid margin.
The decades since have made Walker look like a Cassandra: Berkeley’s land-use restrictions kept developers from building new houses as the state’s population soared, driving up the cost of housing. In the last 70 years, California’s population has nearly quadrupled, while Berkeley’s population count has barely budged: from 114,000 in 1950 to 121,000 more recently. Berkeley’s median home price is now $1.4 million, roughly twice as expensive as the state’s. Meanwhile, the Black population dwindled from 23 percent of the city in 1970 to 8 percent today.
After conducting a granular analysis of the 100-odd municipalities in the San Francisco Bay Area, Stephen Menendian, the UC Berkeley inequality researcher, found that single-family zoning was still functioning “as a mechanism for racial exclusion.” Most of the land in the Bay Area surrounding Berkeley is zoned for single-family homes; just 17 percent is open to other types of housing. The net effect, Menendian said, is to concentrate affluence in some neighborhoods and poverty in others. “As you increase the level of single-family zoning, you have a clear decrease in Latino and African American people in a community,” he said.
Clayton Aldern / Amelia Bates / Grist Take the Bay Area city of Piedmont. Its population is 70 percent white, its median household income tops $130,000, and it’s entirely zoned for single-family housing. Children there have access to well-supported schools and generate some of the best test scores in California. Just across the border in Oakland, where the white population makes up 28 percent of the city, median household income hovers around $51,000, and 65 percent of the residential land is zoned for single-family housing. Oakland struggles to teach hundreds of homeless students while often overhauling foundering schools. The children lucky enough to grow up in Piedmont also breathe cleaner air and can expect to live 6 to 10 years longer. The zoning keeps most of the money on one side, and most of the problems on the other.
Some version of the same story has played out in Washington, D.C., Chicago, Seattle, St. Louis — where a couple of suburbanites last year brandished guns at Black Lives Matter protesters and warned that President Joe Biden might end single-family zoning — and seemingly everywhere that these zoning rules exist.
Walker takes no joy in her vindication. “We have tried to thwart the law of supply and demand for 50 years, and now we can’t fix it,” she said. “If you wonder why there are 1,200 homeless people living on Berkeley’s streets and why our children can’t afford to live in this town anymore, it’s because of that. We have killed our own future.”
At some point over the past 50 years, people started listening to Walker. Back in 1984, when current California State Senator Nancy Skinner won her first election and took a seat on the Berkeley City Council, she was predisposed to side with conventional wisdom in opposition to market-rate housing. But in 1990, Skinner, a longtime environmentalist, helped start an international association of cities working to fight climate change and, as she worked with these cities, she realized every one of them shared a fundamental problem: Their buildings were spread too far apart, encouraging residents to drive.
“In every one of those cities, except those in very cold climates dependent on coal, transportation was the leading source of greenhouse gas emissions,” Skinner said. “Then I looked at all these studies showing how the automobile dependence was based on land-use decisions and realized we were never going to be able to tackle city emissions unless we tackled land use.”
Skinner soon started turning up at zoning meetings to support new residential construction in Berkeley and found herself working hand-in-hand with Walker. They also teamed up with a young activist named Lori Droste, who would go on to become Berkeley’s vice-mayor. The trio would kick off the process of abolishing single-family zoning. Droste adopted Skinner as a mentor and considers herself one of Walker’s political descendants. “She’s so amazing, and she was so ahead of her time,” Droste said.
Dorothy Walker speaks at an event held in her honor in Berkeley, California. Courtesy of Dorothy Walker In February, Droste wrote an unusually detailed resolution to start the process of opening up the exclusive parts of Berkeley to multi-family homes, then sent it to Walker. As Walker read through the final pages of whereases and therefores, tears formed in her eyes. She is 90 years old. And even though she’d fought for it most of her life, Walker had not expected to live long enough to see Berkeley end single-family zoning.
Plenty of people are still opposed. In a recent council committee meeting, Berkeley residents logged into Zoom to voice their objections. Patrick Sheehan, an architect and former planning commissioner, warned that the proposal might prevent people from fighting efforts to put more homes in their neighborhoods. He claims Droste’s proposal does nothing to create more affordable housing. “It’s a gift to developers by deregulating developments of four units without restriction on the number of bedrooms,” he argued.
Becky O’Malley, the editor of a lefty anti-development newspaper, The Berkeley Daily Planet, fumed over the assertion in Droste’s resolution that the city’s housing restrictions had fueled racial inequality. “I am 81 years old, and I have devoted most of my life to achieve racial equity,” she said. “The idea that a twerp like Lori Droste offends the good Berkeley people of my generation leaves me unable to speak to the substance.”
In the past, the political group O’Malley calls “her age peers” — progressives who cut their teeth protesting against the Vietnam War — won the day with arguments like this. But the political landscape has shifted. Sophie Hahn, the Berkeley council member, has voted in the past to limit development, but now thinks the time is right to allow for more housing. “There’s a big new generation coming up, supplanting the political power of the older generation,” she said.
It makes sense that members of Berkeley’s old guard are getting frustrated with those who suggest that they are reinforcing segregation when they fight to preserve single-family zoning. The people who championed the Neighborhood Preservation Ordinance back in 1973 believed zoning rules were a buffer against gentrification and would help Black neighborhoods control their own destiny. “They were good people, with good intentions,” Hahn said.
Perhaps these good-intentioned people couldn’t have anticipated the consequences. Carole Kennerly, who became the first Black woman elected to the Berkeley City Council in 1975, said the ordinance created a tangle of red tape and required homeowners to spend a lot of money preserving architectural details. She was once admiring a beautiful century-old house in a predominantly Black neighborhood when the owner walked up. “She got to describing all the intricacies that she had to go through, and it was off-putting for the family,” Kennerly recalled. “It made it hard for them to keep the house.”
Housing experts agree that loosening zoning won’t bring down Berkeley’s stratospheric housing prices. “There’s no hope; it will never be affordable again,” said Karen Chapple, a city planning professor at UC Berkeley. But making it possible for more people to live in the city, she said, would put less pressure on residents to flee to surrounding cities and tamp down the growth of sprawling exurbs.
There are also environmental benefits that come with greater density, like better bus lines, more walkable neighborhoods, and cleaner air. “People of color suffer disproportionately from emissions and pollution,” said Greenlining’s Alameldin. “Tearing up single-family zoning really does help with that.”
It was about 10:30 in the evening in February, and the Berkeley City Council was prepared to vote on Droste’s resolution. Around 200 residents were logged into the council’s Zoom call, some of them the same who had spoken at the previous meeting. A few described the resolution as an attempt to pick the pockets of the poor for the sake of greedy developers. One speaker after another described supporters of the resolution as either a shill for the real estate industry, racist, or stupid.
For decades, the City Council acceded to arguments like these, squashing efforts to build more housing. On this night, however, a younger voice piped up to support the measure, and another thanked the council. The meeting kept going into the depths of the night. There were so many enthusiastic voices queued up to support the proposal that, as midnight drew near, Mayor Jesse Arreguin asked them to simply say, “I support the resolution” rather than use their allotted minute. When the time came for the roll call at the break of a new day, every single member of the council voted in favor. The political alliances that Walker had spent half a century fighting had been supplanted by a new generation that shared her views.
Read Next “For a long time, the Berkeley City Council was dominated by people who were 65 and older,” Councilmember Terry Taplin said. “I’m 32, and I’ve completely given up on the idea that I’ll ever own a home. When we lost our crappy rent-controlled apartment my husband and I had to move into separate places. So those NIMBY arguments about protecting lot size and views aren’t meaningful to me.”
The February vote merely put the City Council on the record as supporting the reforms. To turn Droste’s resolution into reality, and end single-family zoning a century after Berkeley created it, council members must grapple with the details. On Thursday, the council will have a chance to back that resolution with action, as it is scheduled to vote on a proposal that would allow up to four units, then ask the planning and zoning commission to sort out the details. “Who knows how long they are going to be chewing on that,” Droste said. Even if everyone is working in harmony, checking the boxes of California’s environmental quality law generally takes a year and a half.
Walker hopes to live to see her efforts come to fruition. “Think what we could have achieved if we had been providing housing on a regular basis with supply meeting demand,” she said about the decades of time lost defending the zoning practice. “The price of housing would be totally moderate now for everyone.”
The Berkeley she envisioned would be truly urban — many more apartments, fewer front yards, less parking, more buses — and much more diverse, a place where the average elementary school teacher could buy a home.
But that opportunity has passed for good, regardless of whatever the city does with its zoning laws, Walker insisted. The wait has “been too damn long.”
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Zoned out: One woman’s half-century fight to desegregate Berkeley on Mar 24, 2021.
This post was originally published on Grist.
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As Grist unveils a new look and updated mission, we are checking in with notable figures working for a more just and sustainable future.
Dr. Robert Bullard was talking about environmental justice long before the term entered the political mainstream. His 1990 book Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality — an exploration of the siting of industrial facilities near Black, brown, and low-income communities, compromising residents’ health and fortunes — earned him the moniker “the father of environmental justice.” He’s a distinguished professor of urban planning and environmental policy at Texas Southern University in Houston and an award-winning author of 18 books on a broad range of issues from environmental racism and urban land use, to climate justice and community resilience.
If he was early to understanding the unequal environmental burdens faced by vulnerable communities — everything from living next to petrochemical plants to now residing near the front lines of climate-fueled extreme weather events — he believes 2020 is the year when the rest of the world caught up. “Let me just speak out from the heart,” he told Grist. “2020, I think, was a watershed year for justice.”
People connected the dots, Bullard said, as a result of images they were seeing on their televisions or phones and stories in magazines and websites. Communities of color suffered more deeply from the COVID-19 pandemic. Indigenous Americans are dying of the disease at nearly double the rate of white Americans; African Amercians face a rate that is 63 percent higher. The murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbury, and others brought disparities in policing and criminal justice to the forefront. And in turn, Americans headed to the polls during the last presidential election in record numbers because they understood what was at stake: their lives.
Now with a new presidential administration in office, Bullard is watching to see if the issues that were uncovered last year will lead to lasting solutions to systemic problems in the future. Grist spoke to him about the prospects for both climate action and environmental justice over the next four years — and beyond. This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Q.We just marked the one-year anniversary of the World Health Organization declaring COVID-19 a pandemic. We’ve seen how it has devastated communities that have long borne the impact of pollution, particularly in Texas, which was just hit by this debilitating winter storm. Can you discuss the need for solutions put forth to address the climate crisis to also address long-standing environmental justice issues?
A.I think it’s important that people understand that we can come up with new policies that attempt to address our current situation as these natural and man-made disasters hit us. But if you talk about real solutions, we have to talk about systemic barriers and systemic policies and structural, institutional factors that are still creating disparities and vulnerabilities.
If we talk about the legacy pollution, communities that have borne the burden of pollution for decades (in some cases centuries), and communities that have been the victim of racial redlining, of neighborhoods and communities where the home loans were denied, insurance was denied, and where basic services were denied, you can see the footprint of that denial, of that racial discrimination, that may have occurred 100 years ago in the 1920s.
Solutions have to begin to address and unpack and unravel and attack those systemic factors that are still occurring right now, in terms of access to transportation that will limit people’s ability to get to a grocery store that may not be in a food desert, or getting access to a COVID test site that you may not be able to get to if you don’t have a car, or getting to a vaccination center that you may not be able to get to because there may be a limited number of pharmacies and health centers. And there are studies that show that poor people and people of color have to travel longer distances to get to all these things.
So the system planning will need to make sure to address the overlay of discrimination that will make communities of color more vulnerable in getting access to those things that will make us healthy, including a grocery store and including a site that’s been designated a vaccination center.
When the winter storm Uri hit us, it hit the state, it hit Houston, it hit all our major cities and hit rural areas. But the communities where the impacts were felt the greatest were communities where vulnerability is the circumstance in which most of these communities live 24-7.
Q.I’m wondering how you’re feeling right now, at this moment, about whether we can stave off the climate crisis and address environmental justice comprehensively?
A.I feel optimistic, hopeful, and positive right now. We are what, 50 days in? And looking at what the administration has been able to achieve, the way that they have framed the issues coming out the shoot, and the types of individuals that have been nominated to the various positions, as far as I’m concerned, it’s all good.
The environmental justice that we developed in 1991 is that people who are most impacted must speak for themselves and must be in those rooms when decisions are being made about their self-determination, their communities, and their livelihoods. They must be in the room. And I’m seeing a lot of that happening, filtering up. And that’s a good thing, as opposed to being top-down and being somehow told that this is how we’re going to do it. They’re into talking about engagement as partners, trying to make sure that there are metrics and there are measures — and there is accountability — that are being put in place in almost every major city that I work in and that I know people who work in. We know that there will be millions of dollars flowing back to our states and to our localities. And there has to be accountability at the local level so that when money hits the mayor’s office or development office, there will be accountability and that the money will need to flow to need.
Q.Can you say a little more about the idea of “flow to need”?
A.When the Biden-Harris administration talks about how they’re going to apply this equity lens, and when we talk about moving to this green economy and moving to green energy, and talk about the kinds of jobs and the kinds of resources that are generated, and how we’re going to use monies that come from this new economy — that they’re going to direct 40 percent to disadvantaged communities — these are the first communities that need to see the money and then the plans and then the programs. And the shovel-ready projects need to start rolling off the assembly line quickly. Because these are the communities that have been hurting for decades and have been left behind, ignored, have been invisible, and resources have bypassed them — even when billions of stimulus dollars roll into the state — which is the reason they get left behind. And we say no more. No more. They need to be in the front of the line. They need to be at the front of the queue as the lines form.
Q.Part of President Biden’s environmental justice plan includes rooting out the systemic racism in our laws, our policies, and institutions. What do you see as some potential solutions to address these deeply entrenched systemic issues?
A.If you look at the rollouts for the Biden-Harris administration in terms of how it is treating environmental justice, climate justice, economic justice, food security, food justice, you can see that there is a racial justice and equity lens that’s being applied. And I think a lot of that has to do with the kinds of participation and engagement that was broadened during this period that most of us were locked down. You can see it embedded in the way that the administration is looking at the issue of climate change, and the appointments that have been made that will be dealing with climate change, with environmental justice and the issues around equity and racial justice, the issues around health, and the issues around housing, the issues around energy, around transportation.
You can see with, for example, a department that has a history and legacy of centuries dealing with native Indigenous people in a way that is totally disrespectful. I’m talking about the Department of Interior, and I’m not afraid to call names. When you look at that nomination of Deb Haaland to be secretary of that department, that’s historic. It’s more than just an appointment, it’s sending a signal.
And when we see these kinds of signals being sent, and planning and programs being pushed forward, you can see that justice, as I said before, is at the core. They’re not running away from justice.
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Dr. Robert Bullard, the ‘father of environmental justice,’ is watching the movement grow up on Mar 23, 2021.
This post was originally published on Grist.
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As part of our #FollowTheMoney series, The Canary has been monitoring Prevent funding from the Home Office. We submitted a freedom of information (FOI) request which asked to see the details of Prevent programme funding between 2015 and 2020.
What we got was a breakdown of the numbers – and nothing more.
The details
We asked for:
- An annual breakdown of Home Office funding of the Prevent programme between 2015 and 2020.
- A breakdown of Prevent funding as allocated to local councils between 2015 and 2020.
- Details of any other Prevent projects funded by the Home Office between 2015 and 2020.
The Home Office gave us this breakdown of funding from 2015 to 2020:
Financial Year Total Budget (£) 2015/2016 42,800,000 2016/2017 37,700,000 2017/2018 45,500,000 2018/2019 47,300,000 2019/2020 45,100,000 Over the past 5 years, this is an average of over £43.6m per year in funding for the Prevent programme.
This is a significant amount of money. And that’s before we even get on to the widespread criticism of the Prevent strategy.
Security concerns
The Home Office declined to answer our two other questions, citing security reasons and commercial interests.
It admitted that:
Sharing information on Prevent priority areas, projects, and the level of funding they each receive, could enhance the openness of government and help the public understand, in greater depth, how the resources are used to most efficiently safeguard vulnerable individuals from being radicalised.
However, according to the Home Office, this openness is overtaken by the national security risk. Its response states:
Such a breakdown could allow an individual to build a threat map of the country, potentially identifying local authorities where people are most at risk of being radicalised. This could increase the risk of individuals being drawn into terrorism, undermining the national security of the UK.
It also continues, interestingly, to say that it can’t disclose which projects have got Prevent funding because:
some charities may be concerned about reputational damage both generally and within the vulnerable communities they are engaging with, if they are publicly linked with Prevent. Therefore, there is a significant risk that fear of having their identity unilaterally disclosed via FOI would make some charities less willing to work with Prevent, increasing the risk of individuals being drawn into terrorism.
What damage could association with Prevent do?
Currently, Prevent funding is under the spotlight with the upcoming William Shawcross-led review of Prevent. Part of the criticism of Shawcross is outlined in this investigation from the Guardian:
In the past Shawcross has been a critic of Islam. In 2012, as a director at the conservative Henry Jackson Society, he claimed: “Europe and Islam is one of the greatest, most terrifying problems of our future.
Advocacy organisations and activists have criticised the move, including Amnesty International, CAGE, Inclusive Mosque Group, and the Network for Police Monitoring.
However, a policy document from the Commission for Countering Extremism (CCE) is more cause for concern for activists.
The CCE, led by Sara Khan, has set out to find gaps in legal frameworks in relation to counter-terror strategies. While this is separate from Prevent, both policies do tackle extremism and counter-extremism strategies at length.
“Nothing of real weight to counter extremism”
In the CCE report, it’s stated that:
The extremist threat is a serious challenge, which Government has grappled with for many years. Previous efforts to counter extremism, such as the 2013 Government Extremism Taskforce and the 2015 Counter-Extremism Strategy, have been well- intentioned but had only limited success.
Mark Rowley, who led the review, said:
Whilst we have a well-established counter terrorism machinery across police, intelligence agencies, government and others, we have nothing of real weight to counter extremism.
Now it’s worth mentioning that Prevent is one of the most prominent counter-terror strategies from the Home Office. So the question is this: if Prevent has had over £35m in funding every single year since 2015 (to say nothing of pre-2015), why is that money producing “nothing of real weight to counter extremism”?
Where is that money going?
When we reached out to the Home Office for comment, a spokesperson told us:
Prevent saves lives and turns them around.
Since 2012, almost 3,000 people have been adopted onto Prevent’s voluntary and confidential Channel programme, helping them to move away from terrorism and enabling them to live more stable and fulfilling lives.
Last year, 82% of those that exited the process did so with no further radicalisation concerns.
However, Prevent itself has long been decried as racist, Islamophobic, and ineffective.
Of course, the CCE is discussing legal stopgaps in relation to counter-extremism strategies. But one striking arm of the government’s counter-extremism strategy has been Prevent. And the same criticisms that can be levelled at Prevent can be levelled at the CCE’s approach.
Culture of violence
Indeed, one of the major recommendations of the policy review from the CCE focuses on closing an apparent gap in the law while claiming it will:
steer well clear of treading on fundamental principles of freedom of speech
As part of our #FactOfTheMatter series, the investigations unit has covered how the government has weaponised free speech debates to quash dissent.
The CCE’s policy document, however, does the same thing. Prevent has already been criticised for being a restriction on freedom of speech. Yet here the CCE expresses concern at the need to give greater powers to police and the criminal justice system:
Too often those within the criminal justice system are unable to discern the difference between robust theological arguments and carefully constructed campaigns of threats, hatred and intimidation by extremist actors.
Here, the CCE admits counter-terrorism is creating freedom of speech issues – even as it seeks to give these programmes greater powers.
Prevent has already laid the groundwork to breed suspicion of Muslims. The involvement of free speech debates add fuel to this fire.
Clarity
The Canary spoke to CAGE, which the CCE mentions by name in the policy document. The CCE says:
As we have seen first-hand, CAGE has labelled counter extremism efforts as ‘Islamophobic’. In our view this is highly misleading and inflammatory
CAGE spokesperson Anas Mustapha said:
The role of the CCE is to find ways to expand the scope of repression powers, specifically, the CCE has been making moves to suffocate Muslim civil society.
This would fly in the face of the CCE’s claim to preserve freedom of speech.
Mustapha continued:
Counter Terrorism laws already prosecute offences which are far and away from violence in any meaningful sense of the word; there is no need to expand such powers further. However, these laws have created a market niche where forever expansion of laws, powers and funding is essential to sustain its growth even at the cost of our freedoms
This is a stark warning. And one that characterises the CCE’s policy recommendations as more interested in preserving regressive Prevent strategies than in protecting freedoms.
Vigilance
The current stream of policy documents from the government shows sustained attempts to curb the freedoms of immigrants, Muslims, and other communities of colour in Britain.
As we await the Shawcross review of the Prevent strategy, there’s much to be wary of when it comes to whose freedoms are protected.
Featured image via Flickr/Elliott Brown
This post was originally published on The Canary.
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A coalition of over 550 Muslim organisations, mosque councils, Muslim academics, community organisers, individuals, and allies have signed a pledge to boycott the latest review into the Prevent programme. The coalition consists of individuals and bodies that already boycott Prevent and those who still engage with Prevent, united against the appointment of William Shawcross.
Dubious record
Shawcross, a neoconservative through and through, is well known for his support for the illegal war in Iraq and Rupert Murdoch, and even for praising the US army as the biggest defenders of human rights.
He aligns to a worldview in which the destructive nature of neoliberalism rules supreme. A world where people of colour, in the UK and globally, must bow to the world’s elite as much as workers must do so – if not more.
Shawcross’s past directorship at the Henry Jackson Society says it all. It’s a thinktank with extensive links to the US Islamophobia industry that have been constantly exposed.
It is this nefarious and Islamophobic world to which Shawcross belongs. He isn’t just right-wing. He’s far-right.
What’s most stark about Shawcross’s appointment is not the overt intention to whitewash the harms of Prevent, but the audacity of appointing a rancid Islamophobe to review a programme that’s constantly been described as Islamophobic.
The move is about sending a message, like so many others from this government, to say ‘we will do whatever we want’.
And in response to this insult, we have perhaps the biggest coalition of British Muslims united to boycott it. We know this review will not be balanced. Nor will it create any trust.
It’s for this reason that the coalition supports not only a boycott but steps towards a truly independent ‘Peoples’ Review’. This is the only way in which the overwhelmingly negative and corrosive nature of Prevent can be properly scrutinised. The nature for which the government has constantly provided political cover.
Resistance
Regardless of our action, resistance against the harm that Prevent causes must continue.
The height of that resistance was in 2016, two years after Prevent was made a statute duty for public services and universities. The National Union of Teachers (NUT) passed a motion at its annual conference overwhelmingly calling for the rejection of Prevent, stating it has created “suspicion in the classroom and confusion in the staffroom”.
The National Union of Students (NUS) also escalated its campaign Students Not Suspects, leading resistance in universities.
Voices have been raised in the NHS too. In one piece, Charlotte Heath-Kelly stated:
people go to their GP or their hospital when they are at their most vulnerable – so how can it be appropriate to assess them for signs of political ‘extremism’ when they are in pain?
Hundreds of academics called Prevent a “failed policy” and added its been:
roundly debunked by academics and experts across the board
They criticised it for being “not only ideologically-driven” but also failing to “engage alternative thinking”.
Moreover, they emphasised that it’s having a “chilling effect” on free speech and academic freedom in universities. This is something echoed more recently by the director. of human rights NGO Liberty.
The damage done
However, that resistance has since dampened. This mistake has only led to the normalisation of Prevent and legitimised the idea of turning our public sector workers into informants for the state.
The damage it’s still doing to our society, especially to Muslims, is alarming. According to the Observer:
624 under-sixes [were] referred to Prevent between 2016 and 2019 . During the same period, 1,405 children between the ages of six and nine were also referred to the scheme.
So it’s enabling the state profiling of children – not ‘safeguarding’ them as the government claims.
A recent, major three-year study of Islam on campus revealed that Prevent reinforces negative stereotypes of Islam and Muslims. Despite this, Prevent training continues for university staff as it does for all public sector workers.
Authoritarianism
We’ve seen with the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill just how authoritarian this government’s tendencies are. We understand innately the need to resist the clamping down of free assembly and protests. Even if it’s passed by Parliament as law, we understand the need to oppose that law through civil disobedience.
The same must happen with Prevent.
Mainstream campaign groups such as Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT), Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), Stand up to Racism, Extinction Rebellion, & Greenpeace have already been identified as ‘extremist’ in Prevent training material. This shows that not just Muslims but the broad Left, and anyone who wishes to protest against this government, could eventually be labelled and treated as ‘extremists’, with all the scorn, state-harassment and blacklisting that comes with it.
As Muslims, we are escalating our resistance against Prevent’s creeping authoritarianism. If we are to beat it, the left must escalate its resistance against Prevent, too.
Featured image via YouTube/ Channel 4 News
By Imran Shah
This post was originally published on The Canary.
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At the start of 2021, Mohamud Hassan, a 24-year-old Black man, died after being released from police custody. 10 weeks later, the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) has served misconduct notices to three more South Wales police officers and a custody officer in relation to Hassan’s sudden, unexplained death. Hassan’s family is calling for the suspension of the officers involved as well as of chief constable Jeremy Vaughan.
“Conspiracy”
The officers involved are now under investigation. Hassan’s family is calling for them to be suspended, along with South Wales police chief Vaughan. The family stated:
Despite all the evidence increasingly pointing to this having been an entirely avoidable death had South Wales police carried out their duties properly, Vaughan continues to do nothing, and no officers have been suspended to date.
Hassan’s family and their supporters, including BAME Lawyers 4 Justice vice-chair Lee Jasper, are concerned about a “conspiracy” between South Wales Police and the IOPC. Six days after Hassan’s sudden death in January, Vaughan issued a defensive statement. It said that his force had referred the matter to the IOPC “not because we thought that police officers had done anything wrong, but because it was the right thing to do”.
Meanwhile, the IOPC released a statement suggesting that Hassan “had not suffered any physical trauma that could have resulted in his death”. But the additional misconduct notices that the IOPC has served to South Wales officers completely undermine these statements.
IOPC’s poor conduct
Hassan’s family members continue to be concerned by “a lack of transparency by the IOPC”. And they now understand that “there may have been some ‘slippage’” in the handing over of police bodycam footage. Further, the IOPC relayed the sensitive news to Hassan’s family via email, shortly before publishing the press release. This happened despite requests that the IOPC not contact the family directly.
Hassan’s aunt said:
I am heartbroken to find out the extent of cover-up, lies and deceit in this investigation.
She added:
I know all too well the extent of Mohamud’s injuries as I saw him when he came home from Cardiff Bay station. He was fine when they took him the evening before. If the IOPC think that the arresting officers used excessive force they should be suspended immediately to stop this happening to someone else.
Institutional racism in South Wales police
In a statement, Hassan’s cousin said:
In any other job you’d be punished if your actions caused somebody to die […] but it looks like some people in South Wales police think they’re above the law. It’s no wonder that Black men like me see the police as a threat when we are taken from our beds, attacked and left to die. This isn’t justice.
Hassan’s family isn’t alone in their loss at the hands of South Wales police. Mouayed Bashir died after South Wales police officers restrained him. His family is also seeking justice. And both families are calling for the IOPC to release records and police bodycam footage. We also mustn’t forget South Wales police and the Crown Prosecution Service’s failure to prosecute a suspect over the tragic death of 13-year-old Christopher Kapessa.
Meanwhile, campaigners are seeking justice for Siyanda Mngaza. She was imprisoned for defending herself against a racist attack by four men. Moreover, South Wales police failed to investigate Mngaza’s accusations about the racist assault, despite physical evidence.
These cases all point to institutional racism in the South Wales police force. This racism must be rooted out, and the force must be held to account.
Holding the police to account
Whether it’s the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, or police crackdowns at the Clapham vigil commemorating Sarah Everard’s life, or at demonstrations defending our right to protest, we must continue to demand accountability. Police “brutalised” women at Everard’s vigil. And they arrested legal observers at the subsequent protest. Black Protest Legal Support stated:
An attack on legal observers is an attack on vital community movements that hold the police to account. Legal observers are volunteers, independent of the protest, who monitor police conduct on the ground and provide legal support to those attending or arrested.
Law enforcement targeting independent witnesses is yet another sign that the police refuse to be held to account. We rely on independent police monitoring groups to challenge excessive, discriminatory policing, and to encourage police to act with humanity and accountability. According to INQUEST, 1,780 people have died in police custody or following contact with police in the UK since 1990. But no officers have been convicted. This shows us that the IOPC is not fit to hold the police to account.
Without accountability, police are emboldened to act with impunity. Without accountability, we will continue to see tragedies and miscarriages of justice. That’s why we need to take a stand and fight for justice for Hassan, Bashir, Mngaza, and countless others.
Featured image via Lee Jasper
This post was originally published on The Canary.
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On 16 March, a gunman killed eight people at three different massage parlours in Atlanta, Georgia, including six Asian women.
The spa shootings
Police arrested 21-year-old Robert Aaron Long and charged him with several counts of murder. Police have identified four of those killed as Ashley Yaun, 33, Paul Andre Michels, 54, Xiaojie Tan, 49, and Daoyou Feng, 44. Although he admitted to the shootings – and most of the victims were Asian women – Long has denied that the attacks were racially motivated.
People have criticised sheriff Jay Baker for his apologist remarks claiming that the shooter had “a sex addiction, and sees these locations as a temptation for him that he wanted to eliminate”, and that “yesterday was a really bad day for him”. Indeed, remarks such as this work to legitimise acts of white supremacist terrorism, and play into racist, misogynistic ideologies that dehumanise, objectify, and fetishise Asian women. It is both concerning and telling that a sheriff involved in the investigation of this tragedy feels comfortable publicly perpetuate these damaging, controlling images.
Asian American and Pacific Islander communities speak out
Sharing thoughts under the #StopAsianHate hashtag, members of the East and Southeast Asian American and Pacific Islander communities are condemning anti-Asian violence following the tragedy. As Christine Liwag Dixon set out, the anti-Asian tropes we see perpetuated in Hollywood are partly to blame for tragedies such as this:
Asian women are so often seen and treated as objects, as trophies and this very real problem is often seen as a punchline i.e. jokes about mail order brides, the portrayal of Asian women in Hollywood.
And Asian women are murdered because of it.
— Christine Liwag Dixon (@cmliwagdixon) March 17, 2021
Individuals and organisations are coming together to rally against anti-Asian hate. Asian Pacific Islander Political Alliance co-executive director Mohan Seshadri said:
Our folks are pissed off and ready to fight.
They added:
The way we get through this is together by organising our people and feeling solidarity.
Highlighting the “anti-Asian rhetoric” repeated by Republican politicians, actor George Takei said:
Call a hate crime what it is. And GOP leaders, stop fanning violence with anti-Asian rhetoric. You should be ashamed at what you have unleashed.
Executive director of the Asian American Advocacy Fund Aisha Yaqoob Mahmood said:
I think the reason why people are feeling so hopeless is because Asian Americans have been ringing the bell on this issue for so long
International rise in anti-Asian hate
The tragedy is the latest in a spate of violent hate crimes against East and Southeast Asian people in the US and beyond. Advocacy group Stop AAPI Hate revealed that they have received 3,795 reports of anti-Asian hate incidents since the start of the pandemic, a majority of which were from women. This is largely due to the unjust racialisation of the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic. We only need to look at mainstream media headlines and comments from high-profile politicians labelling the virus “Kung Flu” to see who is fuelling this rise in hate.
Over the pandemic, the US has seen hundreds of violent cases against East and Southeast Asian people, particularly the elderly. Some of the most recent cases include that of 84-year-old Vicha Ratanapakdee who died after someone pushed him to the pavement in San Fransisco. Someone else pushed a 91-year-old man to the ground in Oakland Chinatown. And 61-year-old Noel Quintana was slashed on the face on the New York subway. Back in July 2020, two men slapping an 89-year-old Asian woman and setting her on fire pushed organisers to establish the They Can’t Burn Us All movement.
Other countries with significant Asian populations have also seen an increase in anti-Asian racism. Police in three major Canadian cities said that they have seen a rise in anti-Asian hate crimes. In Vancouver, hate crimes against people of Asian heritage have risen by 717% since March 2020.
Meanwhile, the UK has seen a 300% increase in crimes targeting people of East and Southeast Asian heritage since the beginning of the pandemic. The violent attacks of Singaporean student Jonathan Mok and Chinese lecturer Peng Wang demonstrate that although members of the East and Southeast diaspora in Britain are incredibly diverse, most are treated with the same forms of racism. According to an Ipsos Mori poll, “one in seven people would avoid people of Chinese origin or appearance” due to the perceived threat of coronavirus. This reflects the deeply ignorant place anti-Asian racism comes from, and the widespread damage it causes.
Support the struggle against anti-Asian hate
The global community must come together to condemn white supremacy and anti-Asian racism in all their toxic forms. Support must go beyond mere expressions of solidarity. Real allyship means calling out xenophobic and anti-Asian sentiment at every turn. It means checking in on Asian friends, family members, and colleagues, and amplifying the voices of East and Southeast Asian activists, organisers, and community members. Finally, it means supporting and donating to organisations that work to challenge racism towards people of East and Southeast Asian heritage. The fight against anti-Asian racism is bound with the global struggle against white supremacy, misogyny, capitalism, and imperialism.
Featured image via Wikimedia Commons – Kches16414
This post was originally published on The Canary.
