adelaideretrocomputing-blog

[racialdiscriminationday]

Today we join our voices again to urge all States to push forward in the fight against racial discrimination.

“The commemoration of the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination is a moment to take stock of the persistent gaps in the implementation of our shared commitment to protect hundreds of millions of people whose human rights continue to be violated due to racial discrimination. It is also an opportunity to recommit to our promise to fight all forms of racism everywhere.

Through our work, we see clearly that racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, and related intolerance continue to be a cause of conflict around the world. We are witnessing a dangerous regression in the fight against racism and racial discrimination in many spaces. Minorities, people of African descent, people of Asian descent, Indigenous Peoples, migrants, including asylum seekers and refugees, are particularly vulnerable as they often face discrimination in all aspects of their lives based on their racial, ethnic or national origin, skin colour or descent. In this regard, it is crucial that States implement their international human rights obligations and commitments under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action.

Initiatives aimed at revitalising multilateralism, including the Summit of the Future, provide an important opportunity to firmly establish the collective responsibility of States in ensuring concrete progress to address structural and systemic racial discrimination and its root causes.

The proclamation of an International Decade for people of African Descent in 2014 marked a significant milestone in the global effort to combating systemic racism and racial discrimination faced by people of African descent worldwide.

As the International Decade comes to an end, it is time to confront and rectify the pervasive obstacles and barriers hampering recognition, justice, and development for people of African descent. We call on States to respond to growing calls for reparatory justice and economic empowerment for people of African descent. We also call on States to leave no person of African descent behind in their efforts to realise the Sustainable Development Goals.

Today we join our voices again to urge all States to push forward in the fight against racial discrimination. We also call on States to proclaim a second International Decade for People of African Descent, to ensure greater recognition, justice, and development for people of African descent, including by engaging meaningfully in reparatory justice processes for past injustices.”

*The experts: Ms. Ashwini K.P., Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance; Ms. Tracie L. Keesee and Mr. Juan E. Méndez, Experts of the International Independent Expert Mechanism to Advance Racial Justice and Equality in the context of Law Enforcement; Ms. Barbara Reynolds, Chairperson, Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent; Ms. Verene Shepherd, Chairperson, Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, Ms. June Soomer, Chairperson-Designate, Permanent Forum on People of African Descent; and Ms. Hanna Suchocka, Chairperson, Group of Independent Eminent Experts on the Implementation of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action

For further information and media enquiries, please contact: Niraj Dawadi (niraj.dawadi@un.org)

[reasonsforhope]

Article | Paywall Free

"Maryland Gov. Wes Moore issued a mass pardon of more than 175,000 marijuana convictions Monday morning [June 17, 2024], one of the nation’s most sweeping acts of clemency involving a drug now in widespread recreational use.

The pardons forgive low-level marijuana possession charges for an estimated 100,000 people in what the Democratic governor said is a step to heal decades of social and economic injustice that disproportionately harms Black and Brown people. Moore noted criminal records have been used to deny housing, employment and education, holding people and their families back long after their sentences have been served.

[Note: If you're wondering how 175,000 convictions were pardoned but only 100,000 people are benefiting, it's because there are often multiple convictions per person.]

A Sweeping Act

“We aren’t nibbling around the edges. We are taking actions that are intentional, that are sweeping and unapologetic,” Moore said at an Annapolis event interrupted three times by standing ovations. “Policymaking is powerful. And if you look at the past, you see how policies have been intentionally deployed to hold back entire communities.”

Moore called the scope of his pardons “the most far-reaching and aggressive” executive action among officials nationwide who have sought to unwind criminal justice inequities with the growing legalization of marijuana. Nine other states and multiple cities have pardoned hundreds of thousands of old marijuana convictions in recent years, according to the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. Legalized marijuana markets reap billions in revenue for state governments each year, and polls show public sentiment on the drug has also turned — with more people both embracing cannabis use and repudiating racial disparities exacerbated by the War on Drugs.

The pardons, timed to coincide with Wednesday’s Juneteenth holiday, a day that has come to symbolize the end of slavery in the United States, come from a rising star in the Democratic Party and the lone Black governor of a U.S. state whose ascent is built on the promise to “leave no one behind.”

The Pardons and Demographics

Derek Liggins, 57, will be among those pardoned Monday, more than 16 years after his last day in prison for possessing and dealing marijuana in the late 1990s. Despite working hard to build a new life after serving time, Liggins said he still loses out on job opportunities and potential income.

“You can’t hold people accountable for possession of marijuana when you’ve got a dispensary on almost every corner,” he said.

Nationwide, according to the ACLU, Black people were more than three times more likely than White people to be arrested for marijuana possession. President Biden in 2022 issued a mass pardon of federal marijuana convictions — a reprieve for roughly 6,500 people — and urged governors to follow suit in states, where the vast majority of marijuana prosecutions take place.

Maryland’s pardon action rivals only Massachusetts, where the governor and an executive council together issued a blanket pardon in March expected to affect hundreds of thousands of people.

But Moore’s pardons appear to stand alone in the impact to communities of color in a state known for having one of the nation’s worst records for disproportionately incarcerating Black people for any crimes. More than 70 percent of the state’s male incarcerated population is Black, according to state data, more than double their proportion in society.

In announcing the pardons, he directly addressed how policies in Maryland and nationwide have systematically held back people of color — through incarceration and restricted access to jobs and housing...

Maryland, the most diverse state on the East Coast, has a dramatically higher concentration of Black people compared with other states that have issued broad pardons for marijuana: 33 percent of Maryland’s population is Black, while the next highest is Illinois, with 15 percent...

Reducing the state’s mass incarceration disparity has been a chief goal of Moore, Brown and Maryland Public Defender Natasha Dartigue, who are all the first Black people to hold their offices in the state. Brown and Dartigue have launched a prosecutor-defender partnership to study the “the entire continuum of the criminal system,” from stops with law enforcement to reentry, trying to detect all junctures where discretion or bias could influence how justice is applied, and ultimately reform it.

How It Will Work

Maryland officials said the pardons, which would also apply to people who are dead, will not result in releasing anyone from incarceration because none are imprisoned. Misdemeanor cannabis charges yield short sentences and prosecutions for misdemeanor criminal possession have stopped, as possessing small amounts of the drug is legal statewide.

Moore’s pardon action will automatically forgive every misdemeanor marijuana possession charge the Maryland judiciary could locate in the state’s electronic court records system, along with every misdemeanor paraphernalia charge tied to use or possession of marijuana. Maryland is the only state to pardon such paraphernalia charges, state officials said...

People who benefit from the mass pardon will see the charges marked in state court records within two weeks, and they will be eliminated from criminal background check databases within 10 months."

-via The Washington Post, June 17, 2024. Headings added by me.

[allurlsaregone-blog]

“Our nation is now so rich, so productive, that the continuation of persistent poverty is incendiary because the poor cannot rationalize their deprivation... It is an anachronism in the second half of the 20th century. Only the neglect to plan intelligently and adequately and the unwillingness genuinely to embrace economic justice enable it to persist.

…they [African-Americans]are taught by every media of communication that we [the United States] are so opulent we can enjoy both butter and guns [domestic prosperity and foreign wars]. That is why they confront the white power structure with their program and challenge it to produce one of its own. The creative combining of both programs would unite social and economic justice into a single package of freedom.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1966) The Nation’s 150 Special Anniversary Issue

[probablyasocialecologist]

Palestinian human rights organizations have shown that one in five Palestinians has been arrested and charged in Israeli military courts since the occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in 1967. Each year, this figure adds approximately 500–700 Palestinian children, some as young as 12, who are detained and prosecuted in Israeli military courts.

[...] During the ongoing genocidal war across historic Palestine, Israeli carceral violence and arrest campaigns have only intensified. In the months prior to October 7, an approximate 5,200 Palestinians were detained in Israeli prisons. As of mid-March, that number exceeds 9,000. Over the past five months alone, Israeli occupying forces have arrested over 7,600 Palestinians in the West Bank, in addition to an unknown number of detained Gazans. Conditions are worsening for the imprisoned. Immediately following the war’s outbreak, the Israel Prison Service (IPS) placed prisoners in total isolation, prevented them from leaving their cells, and restricted access to water and electricity. The agency ceased providing what had already been poor-quality medical care and has dispensed inadequate food, enacting a starvation campaign against prisoners. Guards inflict violence, torture, and degrading treatment such as reportedly forcing captives to “bark.” IPS also banned visits for family members and delegates from the International Committee of the Red Cross, and severely restricted lawyer visits—cutting prisoners off from the outside world. My research inside Israeli military courts and prison visitation rooms—both as an anthropological researcher and a family member of prisoners—highlights the systematic nature of this violence and its justification through legal codes. Through an intricate web of military laws and orders, Palestinians become racialized—a sociopolitical process through which groups are seen as distinct “races” ordered in a social hierarchy. The Israeli carceral system racializes Palestinians as inherently “criminal” and thus deserving of punishment. Following the occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in 1967, the Israeli military was vested with the ultimate authority of government, legislation, and punishment over the Palestinian population. This includes prosecuting Palestinians in military courts and charging them under the nearly 1,800 military orders that govern every aspect of daily life: conduct, property, movement, evacuation, land seizures, detention, interrogation, and trial. The orders include provisions for indefinitely detaining Palestinians without charge or trial through a policy inherited from British colonial practices. Over 3,500 Palestinians are being held in this state as of early March. Other provisions regulate the arrest and interrogation of Palestinians and how long they can be denied lawyer visits. With a near 100 percent conviction rate, Israeli military courts hand down absurdly high sentences, sometimes amounting to dozens of life sentences. Torture inside Israeli prisons and detention facilities is sanctioned by Israeli High Court of Justice (HCJ) rulings that permit the exercise of violence under pretexts of “security” and protecting “public order.” Enmeshed within this carceral reality is Israel’s labeling of most Palestinian prisoners as “security prisoners.” This designation masks the political nature of their imprisonment and sanctions violations against them. As opposed to Palestinian “security prisoners,” incarcerated Jewish settler-citizens receive rights such as making telephone calls, going on home visits under guard, the possibility of furlough, and conjugal visits. These rights are denied to the mostly Palestinian security prisoners, who are viewed and racialized from the start as criminals.

26 March 2024

[mariacallous]

Recently, Planned Parenthood released a statement on the Oct. 7th attacks and the broader conflict between Israel and Palestine. Their statement condemned Hamas’s attacks on civilians, and specifically condemned sexual assaults committed against Israeli women during the violence. They also noted how thousands of Palestinian women and children had been killed in Israel’s counteroffensive, stated the need for Palestinian women to maintain access to reproductive and maternal healthcare, and condemned both anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.

The social media reaction to such a balanced and empathetic statement? Furious, unrelenting anger.

The statement was quote-tweeted thousands of times by social media users outraged by the statement. Planned Parenthood was accused of spreading Israeli propaganda, ignoring Palestinian deaths and fabricating rape claims, and enabling genocide. These outraged users aren’t conservatives who always oppose Planned Parenthood—they’re progressives furious that an organization they normally support put out a statement they hated. Now there are calls to end donations and Planned Parenthood staffers are fighting with donors. Their own employees, affiliates and organizers are making public statements against them.

This outcome was predictable to anyone with even a cursory knowledge of social media dynamics. And it raises an obvious question—why release a statement at all?

Metastatic social justice

It’s actually quite common for organizations and activists to get into hot water these days by addressing areas outside their expertise. Trans activists in Vancouver loudly insisted there can be no Trans Liberation without Palestinian Liberation, which caused pushback all over Canada. Two years ago, New York City’s Pride organizations courted controversy by excluding LGBT police officers from the city’s Pride parade in the name of racial justice. There are YIMBY housing organizations taking a stand on abortion rights and climate organizations demanding a Federal Job Guarantee.

There’s a common theme here. Organizations that appear to be single-issue advocacy groups are increasingly commenting and taking stances on issues outside of their narrow focus. Activism is becoming more global in nature—if you are an activist for one cause, you’re expected to speak up about all causes now. It’s not enough to ‘stay in your lane’, you need to be protesting and advocating for all forms of social justice. Pro-choice advocacy is now part of your racial justice non-profit. Jobs packages are in your environmental bills. Your LGBT organization has a stance on ‘Defund The Police’ and your housing group has a stance on Israel/Palestine. Social justice is metastasizing.

This phenomenon has happened on the right as well—see the NRA transitioning from being a somewhat non-partisan group to essentially being an arm of the GOP—but it’s especially striking in the current progressive movement. There’s a real sense in which NYC Pride is no longer an LGBT advocacy organization, but rather an overall progressive social justice organization. That may sound like an exaggeration, but they kicked out a gay organization (the Gay Officers Action League) to accommodate another form of social justice. It’s the internal logic behind a LGBT Pride march excluding LGBT people.

This also explains the online fury at Planned Parenthood. Their statement was thoughtful and balanced, but deviated from the dominant and overwhelmingly pro-Palestinian progressive narrative. Their donors expect them to advocate not just for progressive goals in women’s health, but progressive goals everywhere.

This type of activist mission creep risks stunting the progress on the core issues that social justice advocates care about.

The downsides of missions creep

The urge towards mission creep comes from a reasonable place. If you care so deeply that you spend your free time (or your career!) as an activist for a particular issue, the odds are that you also have strong feelings on many other issues. You’re also likely to live in a bubble of activists and people who think like you, and so your conversations professionally and socially may often center around all sorts of political issues. But as an activist it’s important to remember that most people you’re trying to reach are not like you and don’t think like you.

The typical voter is over 50 and does not have a college degree. They also don’t think about politics all that much. They are far, far away from the mindset of a typical activist. And when they do have political opinions, those opinions are far more varied and haphazard than a committed political partisan would guess. I think a few minutes scrolling the twitter feed of the American Voter Bot is invaluable to understand how voters think. This bot takes real voters and profiles them in brief tweets. While some look as expected—a Democrat who supports gun control, for instance—many look like this:

Most people are a confusing mix of demographic signals, issue positions and partisan identification, and they rarely fit squarely within one political tribe. That’s the danger of turning a single-issue advocacy group into a generalized progressive messaging group—you’ll end up alienating a far wider group of potential allies than you realize.

If Issue Group X declares loud progressive positions not just on Issue X but also on gun control, abortion, Palestine, Medicare For All, trans rights, free trade and school prayer, they won’t attract a large diverse group of people who care about Issue X. They’ll end up attracting a narrow slice of progressive activists who are ideologically pristine enough to agree with them on every issue.

The ultimate result of activist mission creep is that your issue ceases to be something that people across the ideological spectrum can work together on. It becomes coded as a red tribe vs blue tribe issue, gets swallowed by the general culture war, and progress grinds to a halt as partisan warfare starts.

The most likely outcome of Planned Parenthood voicing an opinion on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is not that they make any difference at all towards that conflict. It’s that they alienate their own supporters with differing views on Israel/Palestine. They’ve undercut their own ability to make progress on reproductive care and reproductive rights for no gain.

One thing at a time

None of this is to say that individuals shouldn’t care about many issues at once—they obviously should. And general purpose ideological organizations can and should tackle many policy areas. But it’s a poor strategy for single-issue groups to try to become general purpose organizations. There are real benefits to staying in your lane.

One example of a movement that has done a reasonable job at this is the pro-housing YIMBY movement. While there are some instances of YIMBY groups straying from their purpose, for the most part they’ve done a good job staying narrowly focused, and that that focus has allowed them great success.

YIMBYism is a far more ideologically diverse movement than many people realize. There are conservative YIMBYs, neoliberal YIMBYs, Democratic YIMBYs, libertarian YIMBYs, and many left or socialist YIMBYs (although in true socialist tradition, some want to break away from the YIMBY label and create a sub-label PHIMBY). This isn’t just a feel good story about how conservatives and liberals can be friends—this has a real impact on YIMBYs getting things done. It’s part of why you see both Republican and Democratic officials at the local level working towards YIMBY solutions in different cities, and why those solutions can often pass without bitter partisan warfare. It’s why the YIMBY Act in Congress had Republican and Democratic co-sponsors. It’s why YIMBYs are scoring victories in blue states like California and red states like Montana.

This sort of thing matters. YIMBYs are a big tent and they’re getting things done. It’s hard enough to make real change happen on a single policy or a single issue. Whole movements try for years and still sometimes fail. Single-issue groups trying to address every issue at once aren’t going to succeed. The urge towards mission creep is strong, and too many groups are weakening their core strengths to address problems they can’t solve. Single-issue organizations shouldn’t burden themselves with having the answer to every question, with having a stance on every issue, and with having to be all things to all people. It’s ok not to comment. It’s ok to stay in your lane and just work on one problem. It’s ok to try to change the world just one issue at a time.

[wingedcatgirl]

so this post is going around and it's total misinfo because he actually did "do this for" all those. they-very-much-did.jpg

credit to @stirdrawsandreblaws for calling out the lies and @keastaroni for putting the links together but i'm reposting rather than reblogging because they added it as a reblog and i do not want to interact with the op of that post (a quick glance at their blog suggests that they're kind of an asshole)

It is a very easy google search, 100% Roe v Wade (abortion access) - July 2022 Student loan debt - August 2022 Canceled 5 Billion dollars in student loan debt Jan 19th, 2024 COVID - Ten within first two days Covid Vaccination required for Federal Workers Promoting Covid safety in Domestic and international travel Climate issues - First day of his presidency Executive order to revitalize our commitment to environmental justice for all BLM - also first day of his presidency Executive order on advancing racial equity and support for underserved communities School Shootings - March 2023 Hawaii - August 2023 Remember to be cautious of what you see online, it's election year. Do your research and stay informed. Continue voicing for the causes that matter to you, let your representatives know what you want from them. Vote!! Resources for demanding cease-fire in Gaza

[cartermagazine]

Today In History

Sammy Davis, Jr., legendary entertainer, received the 53rd NAACP Spingarn Medal on this date March 30, 1969 for: his multifaceted talent, his participation in the civil rights movement, and for his dedication to freedom, justice, quality, and the brotherhood of all mankind.

He overcame prevailing racism to establish himself as an entertainment legend, becoming a successful comedian, actor, dancer and singer. As part of the Rat Pack, with Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. was known for films like Ocean’s 11 and Sergeants 3.

As his fame grew, his refusal to appear in any clubs that practiced racial segregation led to the integration of several venues in Miami Beach and Las Vegas.

A Tony-nominated performer, Davis was also associated with popular recordings like “I’ve Gotta Be Me” and the No. 1 hit “The Candy Man.”

CARTER™️ Magazine

[kemetic-dreams]

Jamil Abdullah al-Amin (born Hubert Gerold Brown; October 4, 1943), is an American human rights activist, Muslim cleric, African separatist, and convicted murderer who was the fifth chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the 1960s. Best known as H. Rap Brown, he served as the Black Panther Party's minister of justice during a short-lived (six months) alliance between SNCC and the Black Panther Party.

He is perhaps known for his proclamations during that period, such as that "violence is as American as cherry pie", and that "If America don't come around, we're gonna burn it down." He is also known for his autobiography, Die Nigger Die! He is currently serving a life sentence for murder following the shooting of two Fulton County, Georgia, sheriff's deputies in 2000.

Brown's activism in the civil rights movement included involvement with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Brown was introduced into SNCC by his older brother Ed. He first visited Cambridge, Maryland with Cleveland Sellers in the summer of 1963, during the period of Gloria Richardson's leadership in the local movement. He witnessed the first riot between whites and blacks in the city over civil rights issues, and was impressed by the local civil rights movement's willingness to use armed self-defense against racial attacks.

Brown later organized for SNCC during the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer, while transferring to Howard University for his studies. Representing Howard's SNCC chapter, Brown attended a contentious civil rights meeting at the White House with President Lyndon B. Johnson during the Selma crisis of 1965 as Alabama activists attempted to march for voting rights.

Major federal civil rights legislation was passed in 1964 and 1965, including the Voting Rights Act, to establish federal oversight and enforcement of rights. In 1966, Brown organized in Greene County, Alabama to achieve African voter registration and implementation of the recently passed Voting Rights Act.

Elected SNCC chairman in 1967, Brown continued Stokely Carmichael's fiery support for "Black Power" and urban rebellions in the Northern ghettos.

During the summer of 1967, Brown toured the nation, calling for violent resistance to the government, which he called "The Fourth Reich". "Negroes should organize themselves", he told a rally in Washington, D.C., and "carry on guerilla warfare in all the cities." They should, "make the Viet Cong look like Sunday school teachers." He declared, "I say to America, Fuck it! Freedom or death!"

In this period, Cambridge, Maryland had an active civil rights movement, led by Gloria Richardson. In July 1967 Brown spoke in the city, saying "It's time for Cambridge to explode, baby. Black folks built America, and if America don't come around, we're going to burn America down." Gunfire reportedly broke out later, and both Brown and a police officer were wounded. A fire started that night and by the next day, 17 buildings were destroyed by an expanding fire "in a two-block area of Pine Street, the center of African-American commerce, culture and community." Brown was charged with inciting a riot, due to his speech.

Brown was also charged with carrying a gun across state lines. A secret 1967 FBI memo had called for "neutralizing" Brown. He became a target of the agency's COINTELPRO program, which was intended to disrupt and disqualify civil rights leaders. The federal charges against him were never proven.

He was defended in the gun violation case by civil rights advocates Murphy Bell of Baton Rouge, the self-described "radical lawyer" William Kunstler, and Howard Moore Jr., general counsel for SNCC. Feminist attorney Flo Kennedy also assisted Brown and led his defense committee, winning support for him from some chapters of the National Organization for Women.

The Cambridge fire was among incidents investigated by the 1967 Kerner Commission. But their investigative documents were not published with their 1968 report. Historian Dr. Peter Levy studied these papers in researching his book Civil War on Race Street: The Civil Rights Movement in Cambridge, Maryland (2003). He argues there was no riot in Cambridge. Brown was documented as completing his speech in Cambridge at 10 pm July 24, then walking a woman home. He was shot by a deputy sheriff allegedly without provocation. Brown was hastily treated for his injuries and secretly taken by supporters out of Cambridge.

Later that night a small fire broke out, but the police chief and fire company did not respond for two hours. In discussing his book, Levy has said that the fire's spread and ultimate destructive cost appeared to be due not to a riot, but to the deliberate inaction of the Cambridge police and fire departments, which had hostile relations with the African community. In a later book, Levy notes that Brice Kinnamon, head of the Cambridge police department, said that the city had no racial problems, and that Brown was the "sole" cause of the disorder, and it was "a well-planned Communist attempt to overthrow the government."

While being held for trial, Brown continued his high-profile activism. He accepted a request from the Student Afro-American Society of Columbia University to help represent and co-organize the April 1968 Columbia protests against university expansion into Harlem park land in order to build a gymnasium.

He also contributed writing from jail to the radical magazine Black Mask, which was edited and published by the New York activist group Up Against the Wall Motherfucker. In his 1968 article titled "H. Rap Brown From Prison: Lasima Tushinde Mbilashika", Brown writes of going on a hunger strike and his willingness to give up his life in order to achieve change.

Brown's trial was originally to take place in Cambridge, but there was a change of venue and the trial was moved to Bel Air, Maryland, to start in March 1970. On March 9, 1970, two SNCC officials, Ralph Featherstone and William ("Che") Payne, died on U.S. Route 1 south of Bel Air, when a bomb on the front floorboard of their car exploded, killing both occupants. The bomb's origin is disputed: some say the bomb was planted in an assassination attempt, and others say Payne was carrying it to the courthouse where Brown was to be tried. The next night, the Cambridge courthouse was bombed

Brown disappeared for 18 months. He was posted on the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Ten Most Wanted List. He was arrested after a reported shootout with officers in New York City following an alleged attempted robbery of a bar there. He was convicted of robbery and served five years (1971–76) in Attica Prison in western New York state. While in prison, Brown converted to Islam. He formally changed his name from Hubert Gerold Brown to Jamil Abdullah al-Amin.

After his release, he moved to Atlanta, Georgia, where he opened a grocery store. He became an imam, a Muslim spiritual leader, in the National Ummah, one of the nation's largest African Muslim groups. He also was a community activist in Atlanta's West End neighborhood. He preached against drugs and gambling. It has since been suggested that al-Amin changed his life again when he became affiliated with the "Dar ul-Islam Movement"

On May 31, 1999, al-Amin was pulled over while driving in Marietta, Georgia by police officer Johnny Mack for a suspected stolen vehicle. During a search, al-Amin was found to have in his pocket a police badge. He also had a bill of sale in his pocket, explaining his possession of the stolen car, and he claimed that he had been issued an honorary police badge by Mayor John Jackson, a statement which Jackson verified. Despite this, al-Amin was charged with speeding, auto theft and impersonating a police officer.

On March 16, 2000, in Fulton County, Georgia, Sheriff's deputies Ricky Kinchen and Aldranon English went to al-Amin's home to execute an arrest warrant for failing to appear in court over the charges. After determining that the home was unoccupied, the deputies drove away and were shortly passed by a black Mercedes headed for the house. Kinchen (the more senior deputy) noted the suspect vehicle, turned the patrol car around, and drove up to the Mercedes, stopping nose to nose. English approached the Mercedes and told the single occupant to show his hands. The occupant opened fire with a .223 rifle. English ran between the two cars while returning fire from his handgun, and was hit four times. Kinchen was shot with the rifle and a 9 mm handgun.

The next day, Kinchen died of his wounds at Grady Memorial Hospital. English survived his wounds. He identified al-Amin as the shooter from six photos he was shown while recovering in the hospital[citation needed] Another source said English identified him shortly before going into surgery for his wounds.

After the shootout, al-Amin fled Atlanta, going to White Hall, Alabama. He was tracked down by U.S. Marshals who started with a blood trail at the shooting site, and arrested by law enforcement officers after a four-day manhunt. Al-Amin was wearing body armor at the time of his arrest. He showed no wounds. Officers found a 9 mm handgun near his arrest site. Firearms identification testing showed that this was used to shoot Kinchen and English, but al-Amin's fingerprints were not found on the weapon. Later, al-Amin's black Mercedes was found with bullet holes in it.

His lawyers argued he was innocent of the shooting. Defense attorneys noted that al-Amin's fingerprints were not found on the murder weapon, and he was not wounded in the shooting, as one of the deputies said the shooter was. A trail of blood found at the scene was tested and did not belong to al-Amin or either of the deputies. A test by the state concluded that it was animal blood, but these results have been disputed because there was no clear chain of custody to verify the sample and testing process. Deputy English had said that the killer's eyes were gray, but al-Amin's are brown.

At al-Amin's trial, prosecutors noted that he had never provided an alibi for his whereabouts at the time of the shootout, nor any explanation for fleeing the state afterward. He also did not explain why the weapons used in the shootout were found near him during his arrest.

On March 9, 2002, nearly two years after the shootings, al-Amin was convicted of 13 criminal charges, including Kinchen's murder and aggravated assault in shooting English. Four days later, he was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole (LWOP).He was sent to Georgia State Prison, the state's maximum-security facility near Reidsville, Georgia.

Otis Jackson, a man incarcerated for unrelated charges, claimed that he committed the Fulton County shootings, and confessed this two years before al-Amin was convicted of the same crime. The court did not consider Jackson's statement as evidence. Jackson's statements corroborated details from 911 calls following the shooting, including a bleeding man seen limping from the scene: Jackson said he knocked on doors to solicit a ride while suffering from wounds sustained in the firefight with deputies Kinchen and English. Jackson recanted his statement two days after making it, but later confessed again in a sworn affidavit, stating that he had only recanted after prison guards threatened him for being a "cop killer". Prosecutors refuted Jackson's testimony, claiming he couldn't have shot the deputies as he was wearing an ankle tag for house confinement that would have showed his location. Al-Amin's lawyers allege that the tag was faulty.

Al-Amin appealed his conviction on the basis of a racial conspiracy against him, despite both Fulton County deputies being black. In May 2004, the Supreme Court of Georgia unanimously ruled to uphold al-Amin's conviction.

In August 2007, al-Amin was transferred to federal custody, as Georgia officials decided he was too high-profile for the Georgia prison system to handle. He was first held in a holdover facility in the USP Atlanta; two weeks later he was moved to a federal transfer facility in Oklahoma, pending assignment to a federal penitentiary.

On October 21, 2007, al-Amin was transferred to ADX Florence, a supermax prison in Florence, Colorado. He has been under an unofficial gag order, prevented from having any interviews with writers, journalists or biographers.

On July 18, 2014, having been diagnosed with multiple myeloma, al-Amin was transferred to Butner Federal Medical Center in North Carolina. As of March 2018, he is incarcerated at the United States Penitentiary, Tucson.

Al-Amin sought retrial through the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. Investigative journalist, Hamzah Raza, has written more about Otis Jackson's confession to the deputy shootings in 2000, and said that this evidence should have been considered by the court. It had the potential of exonerating al-Amin. However, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected his appeal on July 31, 2019.

In April 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from al-Amin. His family and supporters continue to petition for a new trial.

[thehopefuljournalist]

unrelated- what's your favorite news story recently?

Hello, thank you so much for asking!! I've had a hard time because this week was actually full of news stories and I'm working on releasing them all to you guys!

But let me tell you about my favourite one from today :)

As an activist, working within my own country and out especially in climate-related themes, I believe in people-power, fully. I know, of course, that some people have more power and influence than others, but there's no denying that there's strength in numbers.

This recent, huge, protest in New York is such a hopeful turn, I think. I love seeing that I'm not the only one worried, that I'm not alone in my fighting. With numbers, we have a bigger chance of winning over our world leaders, and by doing that, to protect ourselves and our futures.

Well, this is my favourite news story from the past two days.

This past Sunday, 75K climate activists took to New York's streets in a “march to end fossil fuels”

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez criticized the US continuing to approve fossil fuel projects, something which the Biden administration did earlier this year with the controversial Willow project in Alaska.

“We are all here for one reason: to end fossil fuels around the planet,” Ocasio-Cortez told a rally at the finish of the march, which ended close to the UN headquarters where world leaders will gather this week. “And the way we create urgency is to have people around the world in the streets.”

“The United States continues to be approving a record number of fossil fuel leases and we must send a message, right here today,” adding that despite record profits the support for the fossil fuel industry was “starting to buckle and crack”.

“This is an incredible moment,” said Jean Su of the Center for Biological Diversity, who helped organize the mobilization. “Tens of thousands of people are marching in the streets of New York because they want climate action,"

“This also shows the tremendous grit and fight of the people, especially youth and communities living at the frontlines of fossil fuel violence, to fight back and demand change for the future they have every right to lead,” she said.

The march came during Climate Week, as world leaders gather for this week’s UN general assembly, and a UN climate ambition summit on Wednesday.

On Friday, the national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said Biden was not currently scheduled to take part in Wednesday’s UN climate summit. Biden has been praised by climate activists for last year passing a historic $369bn climate law but criticized for allowing oil drilling projects and the expansion of gas facilities in the Gulf of Mexico.

A decision for Biden to stay away from the UN climate ambition summit is “unacceptable”, said Su of the Center for Biological Diversity. “The time is now for Biden to lead on the world stage, and show he means it when he calls climate change the existential threat to humanity.”

During the march, the Rev Lennox Yearwood, head of the Hip Hop Caucus, likened today’s climate movement to the US fight for racial justice. 

Youth climate activist Vanessa Nakate, from Uganda, said: “When we say that we want climate justice, we’re not just talking about transitioning to solar panels. We are talking about leaving no one behind when you’re talking about addressing the injustices that come with the climate crisis."

Article published September 17, 2023 - The Gaurdian

Another article, interviewing a young climate activist

[hoodreader]

the lynching/murder of Khaliifah Williams (Rest in Power & Peace ✊🏾🕊️)

transit, mundane, & political astrology ramble from a pro-Black + afro pessimist leaning astrology student. i’m still learning so take that into consideration when reading.

trigger warning: state sanctioned violence

it is with insurmountable sadness that i write this post regarding the recent lynching of Khaliifah Williams, a wrongly convinced Black man who was sentenced to death by the state of missouri/mike parson. after countless of calls, protests, marches, blockades, pleas from the victim’s family and the williams family, Khaliifah was murdered by this system.

i see his face and i see all of us. all of us black people!!! i see oldhead uncles, barber shops, corner stores. i see something so familiar. do not let this mourning be for nothing. arm urself with knowledge, community, and bravery.

i know i can’t physically hold a moment of silence with text, but please allow thirty seconds of quiet before clicking ‘Keep Reading,’ to simply honor the memory of another soul lost to this system.

read his poetry here: “Perspectives and Emotions” by Khaliifah Williams, aka, Marcellus Williams.

On September 24, 2024 at 6:10 pm in Bonne Terre, Missouri, Khaliifah Williams was lynched by this system / Mike Parson.

1H in Pisces containing Saturn in Pisces Rx

a water sign shows emotional sensitivity. in a mutable modality, it shows that there is change coming. i feel Khaliifah is represented by Saturn in this chart, as saturn in the mundane chart represents the oppressed, isolated, imprisoned, dead, and poor or enslaved. i also personally ascribe race (and racial oppression) to saturn as well.

if u have any understanding of the USA prison system, it is derived from the abolishment of chattel slavery in the united states. when it was illegalized to own slaves on plantations, it was then only allowed within prisons, and so, black people became disproportionately imprisoned. thus… slavery persists. source.

communally, saturn in the mundane chart rules sadness, sorrow, depression, and disappointment in the public. as u can see, saturn is in a tight conjunction to the ascendant. the moment of his lynching was a moment of disappointment and misery to the people, as it became (once again) grimly bleak what the state of this nation is. i wonder if it functions as “the last straw.”

jupiter is the chart ruler here. and it’s actually quite interesting… while saturn is the signifier for the proliteriate, the poor, the enslaved, the imprisoned, and the marginalized… jupiter is the signifier of the bourgeoisie, the wealthy, judicial leaders, justice, and judgment. but not only that, it represents hopes and aspirations.

the ascendant being in a jovial sign shows hope & aspiration. but saturn Rx in pisces shows hope is misplaced. it shattered the delusion that the united states - of all governments - and the crooked people running this nation would suddenly gain a conscience. but the united states is devoid of that. mike parson is devoid of that.

saturn in pisces Rx and the recent partial lunar eclipse in pisces tells u to let go of ur delusions, especially with saturn telling u to let go of delusions regarding structure and hierarchy. yes, this is a sad moment, but the sign pisces is the last mutable (transitionary) sign in the zodiac cycle. there is an impending change.

we need to invest hope in ourselves instead of those who oppress us. when has an oppressor EVER given their victims the keys to free themselves?

“Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them.”

— Assata Shakur

5H Cancer Moon conjunct Cancer Mars

the moon represents the common people, and with the moon conjunction mars (strong moon, weak mars), it can definitely be read as some form of defensiveness happening among the people. which i don’t blame. we need to defend ourselves. i interpret this as the response being heavily emotional, and the people feeling like they need to protect themselves and their sense of “homeliness.” in this case, the fifth house represents what is valued by the people, and here, it’s valued to protect itself.

8H Libra Sun

the sun represents rulers and leaders. i feel like the president is represented here, as we are nearing a presidential election. but also general leaders (of law). it’s weakened times three — in fall, in the eighth house (bad house), and it’s conjunct the south node (a malefic). it’s also harsh aspecting the moon (benefic, ruling over the people). the sun is not in a confident configuration, and i feel like that’s reflected in the people’s (moon) lack of confidence in the country’s ridership. there’s a lot of uncertainty. and this didn’t help.

the eighth house represents death, lack of control, fear, anxiety, psychological illness. with a weakened sun here, i wonder if someone judicial or presidential is going to die in response to this, or have declining health… delays in getting in office. or if there’s going to be a dramatic deconstruction of how the president/law is viewed due to radical change in belief of the general public. the south node (the headless body of the dragon) represents destruction in the mundane chart, and being in conjunction to the sun shows a destruction to the ruler/head. in libra, i wonder if the deconstruction relates to the USA’s part in imperialism/genocide/colonialism in sudan, the DR congo, haiti, palestine, and more. libra is the foreign affairs, venus rules giving/receiving, and the eighth house rules economic foreign affairs to the states. but i’m truthfully struggling to interpret this.

10H in Sagittarius, 10H lord Jupiter in Gemini

the tenth house is those in power or authority; the ‘rulers.’ in sagittarius, it shows that the authoritative figure is a judicial person (and thus, i think this what mike parson represented by). fire signs represent action - some possibly violent - and mutable modality again represents change.

i notice sagittarius is significant in the mundane charts of cultural events. for example, the death of george floyd had a sagittarius ascendant. and the january 6, 2021 chart also had a sagittarius ascendant. i wonder if there’s going to be another incited cultural action in response to this - or maybe that could be represented by all of the protests that had already happened in response to his sentence. it’s something that mobilizes the people.

i feel like because jupiter is in gemini — which is detriment for jupiter — it can be read as this lacking direction. the sagittarius sign is the archer, so it’s right on target. but gemini is scattered, & while the people may mobilize (sag energy, sag rules masses/gatherings & worldly affairs such as protests), they can lose sight of the objective thru being distracted. which is quite literally what happened with the 2020 Floyd/Taylor/etc. protests. and it’s interesting because there’s quite a few thematic overlaps between the chart of George Floyd’s death and the chart of Khallifah Williams’ death. i may or may not make a post on it. depends on my mood.

moving on though. since jupiter is read for optimism, a weakened jupiter in the invisible house supports the idea that this will be a time of confusion, distraction, anxiety, and pessimism. it’s expected that people feel hopeless in response to this.

11H in Capricorn, 12H in Aquarius, Lord in the 1H

there is awareness of how we bypass, deny, repress, or ignore reality. the twelfth house is how we are responsible for how we undo ourselves. i’m thinkinggg it may be readable as us thinking we were at the end/close to a resolution, but we are actually just beginning. same for the eleventh house lord in the first.

eleventh house is our alliances, our community, our communal goals & aspirations in the mundane chart. and i think it shows our (meaning anti-colonial radicals, i guess lmao) goal is to dissolve this system due to its violence. pluto is present in this house, retrograded and at the anaretic degree. pluto brings destruction and so does the anaretic degree. in capricorn, the destruction is to institutions, customs, hierarchies. it’s the tower card. the lord placed in the first house may signify that the power to manifest hope in placed in the hands of the people, not the government.

regarding the twelfth house, maybe it’s saying that naïveté and misplaced hope is how we undo ourselves. deluding urself into thinking voting, peaceful protests, or petitions will challenge hundreds of years of colonialism in this country. especially because of the 2020 protests. mfkas really thought that was revolutionary and it’s like no… it was cute and all i guess but that wasn’t revolution.

revolution can’t be planned or organized, and the eleventh/twelfth lord = saturn in pisces Rx shows that. i’m not saying that tomorrow mfkas gon go outside and start burning shit to the ground (although i wish they would). but hopefully… this death won’t be another forgotten name. i know he won’t be the last to get murdered to this system, but i hope we see this for what it is: it’s genocide, it is modern day lynching, it’s anti-black, & there is no justice in this justice system.

like i said, i don’t really post mundane or political astrology. but i’m trying to speak from my heart about something very sensitive to me. if there are any more seasoned mundane astrologers who can provide feedback, that would be helpful & even more helpful if they are also black.

the shit that happens in this world is so fucked up. we supposed to be using these tools (spirituality, divination, etc) to aid us because the colonialism we experienced was also spiritual warfare. like i said, as a black person this shit hit mad close to home so when i see another one of my people getting murdered to this system, i know it can be any of us. & that’s because the black body & black soul is disposable to this anti black world. so yea… #HellNaw #FuckMikeParson #FuckAmerica #FuckIsntreal #FuckEmAll

black power, HoodReader

[fleetwood-mac-andcheese]

I saw a kid on TikTok who said, "If you weren't marching in 2020, you're not a real activist, and you don't belong in this movement." I want to address my issues with that. I am addressing those issues here so as not to call them out because as I said, this is a kid, probably only 17

Do you remember what was happening in 2020? There was a pandemic. Many people who wanted to be out in the streets marching could not because they were immunocompromised or high-risk

When did you start marching? Based on this quote, it seems like the answer was 2020. Why not 2018? 2016? 2014? 2008? 1963? People join the movement at different times for different reasons

This mentality is incredibly short-sighted. You shouldn't gatekeep the fight for racial justice and social equity. If it takes someone a little longer to find their place in the movement, that's ok. They're here now; let them fight alongside us

[probablyasocialecologist]

Thousands have hit the streets in NYC, Los Angeles, Washington DC, and dozens of other cities. A DC protest organized by Jewish activist groups drew thousands, and hundreds were later arrested, including two dozen Rabbis. An estimated 25,000 people showed up to a rally in Chicago. These events show no signs of stopping, with many more planned across the coming days. These actions have gone beyond marches, with protesters showing up at the offices and homes of politicians demanding a ceasefire. Six activists were arrested at a pro-Palestine rally outside the Boston office of Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). A large crowd demonstrated outside the Brooklyn home of Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY). Jewish protesters showed up outside the Brentwood house of VP Kamala Harris. IfNotNow members have held sit-ins at the DC offices of Schumer, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), and Rep. Katherine Clark (D-MA). Former staffers for Warren, Sanders, and Senator John Fetterman have publicly urged the lawmakers to back a ceasefire. On October 25, tens of thousands of students across more than 100 North American campuses united in a walkout to demand an immediate ceasefire, an end to unconditional support for Israel, and university divestment from the corporations funding the occupation of Palestine. On the night of October 27 Jewish activists shut down Grand Central Station, leading to the arrest of over 300 people. “This is bigger than we’ve ever seen,” US Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR) Executive Director Ahmad Abuznaid told Mondoweiss. “This is the result of decades of work that we’ve put into this movement, and I think some of it is connected to the [George Floyd protests of 2020]. There was so much racial, social justice, anti-war building in that moment.

[...]

“The man broke my heart,” Palestinian-American comedian Maysoon Zayid told Politico on October 23, “I never in my life thought the empathizer-in-chief would sound the way he did. The Palestinians were given no humanity. Joe Biden should spend every breath he has condemning Israel’s genocide with the same zeal he condemned Hamas’ massacre of civilians, that same zeal. And we get nothing. 1,000 children are dead, and we get nothing.” “It’s really crazy to me that the Democratic party destroyed 20-years of worth of good will with Muslims and Arabs in just 2 weeks, losing an entire generation that was raised in the progressive coalition, possibly forever,” tweeted author and activist Eman Abdelhadi. “The rapidity of it, the finality–it’s astonishing.” “While Republican disregard for Muslim and Arab lives is clearly on display, some Muslim and Arab Americans also feel like the Democratic Party largely takes their vote for granted, though Democrats’ policies never reflect as much,” writes Dana El Kurd in The Nation. “One Arab American friend expressed to me that, at least under Republican administrations, ‘Arabs could find allies’ in their opposition.”

[berniesrevolution]

IN THESE TIMES

DES MOINES, Iowa — Wearing bright yellow Crocs, carrying a backpack and holding a clipboard stacked with papers, Ahmed Musa listens intently to a student. You would be forgiven for thinking Mr. Musa was a student himself; it is ​“staff dress like a student” day during spirit week at Theodore Roosevelt High School, and Mr. Musa looks the part.

Then again, Mr. Musa, 24, was a Roosevelt student not too long ago. He graduated in 2017.

He is talking with senior Jackie in a second floor hallway. She is animated, her purple and white braids falling across her baby blue N95 mask as she explains a problem. She is the president of the K-Club and there was an incident among members. The K-Club, she says, is about all things K-pop, from Korean music to food to movies to fashion. Mr. Musa laughs — he thought it was the ​“Kulture Club.”

Jackie goes on to give a broad overview of the situation: Racist and homophobic memes were posted in the group’s online chat of several dozen members. Tempers flared and arguments spilled over from social media into the classroom. Then a shouting match erupted during a club meeting. Fortunately, it didn’t come to blows. Members contacted the club’s teacher-advisor who contacted the school’s ​“restorative practices” team.

As a restoration facilitator, Mr. Musa’s job is to listen to problems and help students find solutions. Talking with Jackie that morning was the first step (a ​“prerestorative conference”) toward a formal ​“restorative circle.” Restorative circles are a group activity meant to help repair harm and restore relationships.

Jackie was one of several students I spoke with during two week-long visits to Roosevelt this year — once in the spring and once in the fall — to witness the school’s implementation of its new restorative practices program. Vanessa, a freshman struggling with the transition from remote learning during Covid, and Yonathan, a sophomore caught with drugs and weapons at school, were also among them. (Students involved in the RP program are referred to by first name to protect their privacy.)

Before the pandemic, armed officers known as ​“school resource officers,” or SROs, from the Des Moines Police Department would patrol the school hallways. But during the summer of racial justice marches and protests after the police murder of George Floyd, students, parents and community members spoke out against SROs at Des Moines School Board meetings. In the end, the police contract with the schools was terminated. After scrambling to make remote schooling work during the long, mournful slog of the pandemic, Des Moines Public Schools (DMPS) were left to find a way to reimagine school safety — and fast.

The district moved quickly to implement restorative practices, an increasingly popular educational model for school safety, violence prevention and mediation.

The 2021 – 2022 school year was a huge opportunity with the highest of stakes: DMPS could become one of the only districts in the nation to succeed in concurrently removing SROs and implementing restorative practices, or the district and its students could be thrown into crisis.

Restorative practices (RP) derive from ​“restorative justice,” which is used to bring together, in mutual agreement for mediation, the victim and the perpetrator of an offense. The goal is typically restitution for harm caused while helping the perpetrator restore community ties.

In education, ​“practices” is often swapped in for ​“justice” because it involves children who aren’t in criminal proceedings. Formal conflict resolution, after a dispute or rule-breaking, does play a role, but RP is also proactive, explains Anne Gregory, a Rutgers professor and one of the nation’s leading RP experts.

One core proactive practice is ​“check and connect.” This might be as simple as having teachers and staff say hi to each student as they enter the school, or asking a student between classes how their day is going. When there’s an issue, students can then sit down with a trusted adult to build ​“their own insight into themselves and what’s driving their behavior,” Gregory says.

Gregory emphasizes that relationship building is a two-way street. These micro-interactions of ​“check and connect” also change how teachers see students. They undermine ​“overgeneralization [and] negative stereotyping” and create space for understanding, Gregory says. When a student has ​“attendance problems,” for example, the right mindset involves ​“thinking about and understanding what’s going on for the family of that student that morning in getting out the door” — which is a ​“very different approach,” Gregory adds, from ​“sending a police officer to your house the fourth time you’re truant.”

(Continue Reading)

[mariacallous]

Since entering Georgia politics in 2020, state Rep. Michelle Au has been called every name in the book: Chinese spy, foreign plant, “agent of the Chinese Communist Party.”

Au recalled this experience in March as she pushed back against a bill to ban “agents“ of China and other “foreign adversaries“ from purchasing farmland in the state, as well as property near military installations. The bill’s mostly Republican backers argued that it would defend against national security threats; Au and other critics warned that the measure would fuel xenophobia.

“It stokes this suspicion and this sensibility that many of us face in our everyday lives—even before this type of bill was being passed—that Asian Americans and Chinese Americans in particular are perpetually foreign,” said Au, a 46-year-old anesthesiologist and a Democrat in Georgia’s House of Representatives. “We are cast under a light of suspicion that other immigrants are not.”

The bill, which was signed into law in April, reflects how concerns about China’s influence loom large in Georgia, a swing state that proved key in the 2020 U.S. presidential election and that both former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are desperate to win on Nov. 5. It’s not just land ownership that has raised national security concerns in the state. Georgia Tech, a top public university, recently severed a long-standing partnership with a Chinese university.

At the same time, Chinese American communities are intimately familiar with how rocky U.S.-China relations and inflammatory rhetoric can stoke hostility against Asian Americans, which surged nationwide in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, during Trump’s presidency. In Georgia, fears about hate crimes intensified after a gunman stormed three spas in Atlanta in 2021 and killed eight people, six of whom were Asian women.

“While attention may have moved from [the 2021 shootings], the fear that Asian Americans, Chinese Americans [feel] is still very much there,” said Marvin Lim, another Democratic state representative in Georgia. He added that these communities have long grappled with the question of where they fit in.

Georgia’s Chinese American community, which today consists of more than 80,000 people, accounts for just a slice of the state’s electorate. But it offers a window into how geopolitical pressures weigh on Chinese American voters ahead of an election partly defined by a U.S. hawkishness toward Beijing.

“Asian American voters in Georgia are the fastest-growing voting demographic and voting bloc,” said Murtaza Khwaja, the executive director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta, a legal advocacy group. It’s, he said, “an electorate that wants to see themselves represented and see candidates emerge from those communities.”

Georgia’s Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) population has grown by more than 50 percent since 2010, with many people settling in the Atlanta-area counties of Forsyth and Gwinnett. In 2020, they made their electoral power clear. Voter turnout among the group surged by a staggering 84 percent compared to the 2016 election—an increase that helped Biden win the battleground state and the Democrats take the Senate.

Those trends were also visible nationally, as Asian Americans—a group long overlooked by both politicians and pollsters—increased their turnout by 40 percent, with most of those ballots cast for Biden. The bloc could be even more decisive this time around. Between January and June, Asian Americans logged the sharpest increase in voter registration of any racial group in the United States, compared to the same period in 2020.

“As the fastest-growing racial group in the country and also the fastest-growing electorate in this country, we are stating very clearly that elected officials can no longer take us for granted,” said Cynthia Choi, the co-founder of Stop AAPI Hate, a U.S.-based coalition. “We deserve to have our rights protected. We deserve to feel that we can establish roots in this country. We deserve to have protections and to feel safe.”

This political evolution is underway as competition with China has become one of the rare areas of bipartisan agreement in Washington. Trump spent his four years in the White House waging a trade war with China and using inflammatory language that deepened concerns about xenophobia against Chinese and Asian Americans. After taking office in 2021, President Joe Biden expanded on many of Trump’s policies with his own campaign of tariffs and tough restrictions; Harris is expected to take a similarly hawkish approach.

Chinese Americans’ voting preferences remain somewhat hazy, in part because the community is not monolithic, with deep political divisions across generations, professions, proximity to immigration, gender, and education level. Like other Asian American demographic groups, many Chinese Americans also do not have long familial traditions of voting for Republicans or Democrats, resulting in weaker party affiliation.

The AAPI community has “a lot of new American voters. We have a lot of naturalized citizens, people who maybe haven’t voted in the past,” said Au. “If you’re thinking about just the math of it, these are voters who are up for grabs.”

There are some overarching trends. Nationally, the majority of Chinese American voters lean Democratic, according to the Pew Research Center. They also largely favor Harris over Trump; A 2024 voter survey by AAPI Data found that 65 percent of Chinese American respondents backed Harris, compared to 24 percent who preferred Trump. Forty-five percent of respondents believed that Harris would do a better job dealing with China—more than double the percent that supported Trump’s approach.

The outlook is more complicated along individual issue areas. Take economic policy, which remains a top concern for Georgia’s Chinese Americans, according to Khwaja. “Many in the Chinese American community here in Georgia are small-business owners or physicians who own their practice or of the like,” he said. “The economy is an incredibly important issue for them.”

Yet Chinese American voters overall are divided on which party does a better job when it comes to economic policy. According to one survey by AAPI Data, one-third of Chinese American respondents believed Republicans had a better approach to jobs and the economy, which only slightly edged out the 31 percent who favored the Democrats and the 29 percent who felt there was no difference between the parties. One-third of Chinese American respondents also favored Republicans’ record on inflation, compared to the 26 percent who preferred that of the Democrats.

It’s also difficult to tell how U.S.-China relations will sway the vote among the demographic. Among Asian Americans, Chinese Americans are the only group in which the majority does not view their ancestral homeland favorably, according to Pew, underscoring how some voters may prefer a tough-on-China approach in this year’s election.

Fei-Ling Wang, a professor of international affairs at Georgia Tech, said that some Chinese Americans in Georgia may favor Trump because his rhetoric makes him seem tougher on Beijing than Harris—even if that’s not necessarily true in practice. “Many Chinese Americans, in my opinion, they sort of read the rhetoric more than [the] substance,” he said.

On the other hand, some voters may worry about what that kind of tough talk means for them. Nearly two-thirds of Chinese Americans believe that the current U.S.-China relationship negatively affects how they are treated, according to a recent study by the nonprofit Committee of 100 and NORC at the University of Chicago. More than 80 percent of respondents expressed concern about how both presidential candidates’ rhetoric toward China could fuel discrimination in the United States.

“The majority of domestic xenophobia and anti-Asian sentiment is driven by American foreign policy,” Khwaja said. “I think even those that would be supportive of legislation or … rhetoric critical of the Chinese government, there’s a reservation and caution of the form that it’s taken and how they themselves and their families would be targeted.”

These issues could prove pivotal on Nov. 5 in the battleground of Georgia, where polls are pointing to a thin margin between Harris and Trump; as of Oct. 16, polling averages showed Trump in the lead by around one point. Four years after Asian Americans in Georgia showed up at the polls in record numbers, those same voters may now be gearing up for another round.

“I was told as a first-time candidate, ‘Don’t bother talking to Asian voters because Asian people don’t vote,’” Au said. “I think we’re realizing that that is wrong, and people are now actively like, ‘Oh, we were sleeping on the Asian Americans. We’ve got to get them to vote for us.’”

[portraitsofsaints]

Saint Katharine Drexel

1858 -1955

Feast Day: March 3

Patronage: Philanthropists, racial justice

One of the 12 American Saints, St. Katharine Drexel was an American heiress, philanthropist, religious sister, educator, and foundress. Taking religious vows in 1891, she is known for her selfless service of the oppressed. Donating her life and considerable fortune to the betterment and education of others with an avid interest in Native American and African-American peoples. “The patient and humble endurance of the cross - whatever nature it may be - is the highest work we have to do.” ~ St. Katharine Drexel

Prints, plaques & holy cards available for purchase here: (website)

[ericdeggans]

Why hoping Lily Gladstone won an Oscar does not equal valuing race over talent.

Social media is never a great place to have discussions about race and culture. The real issues at hand are way too nuanced and detailed for outrage factories like X/Twitter and Instagram to handle.

Still, I was disappointed to see so many people – perhaps willfully – missing the point online when discussion rose after the Oscars about Lily Gladstone failing to win best actress honors.

No doubt, a win for Gladstone – who would have been the first Native American woman to earn a major acting Oscar – also would have felt like a serious triumph for champions touting the power of diversity in film.

Feeling the love big time today, especially from Indian Country. Kittō”kuniikaakomimmō”po’waw - seriously, I love you all ❤️ (Better believe when I was leaving the Dolby Theater and walked passed the big Oscar statue I gave that golden booty a little Coup tap - Count: one 😉)

— Lily Gladstone (@lily_gladstone) March 12, 2024

Those of us who clock these things regularly knew that Emma Stone’s turn in Poor Things was most likely to spoil that scenario. Stone offered a showy-yet-accomplished performance as a singular character in an ambitious, creatively weird production. A much-loved past winner delivering a career-best effort, she was just the kind of nominee that Oscar loves to reward. And, as Vulture pointed out, modern Oscar voters seem to enjoy turning against expectations in big moments like this.

But when I expressed those feelings online – that Stone was marvelous and more than earned the award, but the Oscar academy really missed a chance to make history by overlooking Gladstone’s more subtle, quietly powerful turn in a better movie – the knives came out.

The gist of most negative reactions was the implication that I and others lamenting her loss were insisting that ethnicity should trump talent. As if the only or most important reason that an indigenous woman could be nominated for such a lofty award, is by people trying to bring social justice to the Oscars. (I guess Gladstone’s wins as best actress at the Golden Globes and Screen Actors Guild awards, among others, were also nods to diversity?)

As if it couldn’t be possible that perhaps -- just perhaps -- some racial cultural preferences were mixed up in Oscar voters’ attraction to the story of a beautiful, young white woman who has loads of sex while learning to define herself in a male dominated world.

What really disappointed me, however, was reading an analysis which reached all the way back to the 2017 Oscars to imply that one reason Barry Jenkins’ masterpiece Moonlight won best picture honors over La La Land was the pressure to bring social justice to the Oscars.

Talk about missing the point by a mile. What I’m driving at, when I advocate for contenders like Gladstone, Barry Jenkins and Jeffrey Wright, isn’t a finger on the scale to make up for past exclusion.

It’s a plea for Oscar voters to see these performances the way I and so many other people actually see them.

I still remember watching last year’s version of The Color Purple in a screening alongside lots of folks from Black fraternity and sorority organizations. And when the moment arrived where Danielle Brooks’ character intoned about her husband, “I loves Harpo — God knows I do — but I’ll kill him dead before I let him or anybody beat me,” it felt like the whole theater said those words with her. That’s how iconic those lines -- first spoken on film by Oprah Winfrey in the 1985 production – have become for Black America.

That same feeling came after I first saw Cord Jefferson’s brilliant American Fiction, centered on a frustrated, floundering Black writer who creates a stereotypical parody of a Black novel as a dark joke, only to see it become a best seller. I felt as if Jefferson had pulled the same bait-and-switch with his movie that his lead character managed onscreen – using the outrageous premise to draw us all into a more subtle and deliberately powerful story of a Black man struggling to connect with his family after huge losses.

I needed three attempts to get through watching all of Gladstone’s work in Killers of the Flower Moon. Not because the movie was so long I had to “get my mail forwarded to the theater,” like Oscars host Jimmy Kimmel joked. But because it was so hard for me to watch a film centered on the historic exploitation and murder of Native American people by white men.

It sounds like a simple idea, but it’s worth repeating: evocative moments in films will speak differently to different people.

Sometimes, when I’m pushing for a win in an awards category, or championing a particular project, it’s not because I’m putting a finger on the scale for the sake of equality. It’s because I’m more invested in that story than some others because of who I am. And I’m challenging some people, who might not see their cultural preferences as preferences, to consider exactly why they love one thing over another.

In many ways, it is sad to see great artists pitted against each other in these contests. Comparing the delightful, dangerous absurdity of Poor Things to the gritty, punishing tone in Killers of the Flower Moon feels like a fool’s errand, anyway.

But with so much that comes from an Oscar win – including proof that inclusion brings success, accolades and a great argument for more equity – it is important to understand why some people value some performances.

And part of living in a diverse society means valuing the wide range of opinions and reactions, not shrugging off those that don’t fit your worldview.