7/23/2020

Bay Area United Against War Newsletter, July 23, 2020



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Timeless words of wisdom from Friedrich Engels:



This legacy belongs to all of us:

“Let us not, however, flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human victories over nature. For each such victory nature takes its revenge on us. Each victory, it is true, the first place brings about the results we expected, but in the second and third places it has quite different, unforeseen effects which only too often cancel the first. The people who, in Mesopotamia, Greece, Asia Minor and elsewhere, destroyed the forest to obtain cultivable land, never dreamed that by removing along with the forests the collecting centres and reservoirs of moisture they were laying the basis for the present forlorn state of those countries. . . Thus at every step we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing outside nature–but that we, with flesh, blood and brain, belong to nature, and exist in its midst, and that all our mastery of it consists in the fact that we have the advantage over all other creatures of being able to learn its laws and apply them correctly.” The Part played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man 1876. —Friedrich Engels



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Subject: PLEASE TAKE ACTION NOW!


Do you see what’s happening in Portland? That could be Oakland next!

A provision in the proposed police commission ballot measure would give the police chief ABSOLUTE POWER to disregard all policies on use of force and crowd control in ‘exigent circumstances!’

Please sign and share with others! This is going down on Tuesday at the City Council meeting!

http://chng.it/9m6jTGMTQg


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Transit Workers Need COVID Protection; Help Keep Them Safe and Build Union Power!

By August 1st 

ATU members and supporters at Transit Equity Day, 2020

Transit Workers Need COVID Protection; Help Keep Them Safe and Build Union Power!

Sign this letter to our regional Metropolitan Transportation Commission:  https://bit.ly/ridesafecalif
One click--you don’t need to compose anything original. Do it now!
By Aug 1stSign this state-wide Ride Safe petition to be delivered by ATU to transit authorities throughout the state:  https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/california-ride-safe-campaign/
Transit operators are getting sick and essential workers who depend on transit are at grave risk.
The Amalgamated Transit Union has reached out for our help; sign both the petition and the letter above!
We know a Green New Deal calls for Free, Accessible, Expanded and Emissions-free Public Transit. But right now, public transit operators need us join their fight for COVID health and safety protection.
This ATU demand for protection of majority Black workers and majority Black and Brown riders sits right at the intersection of Labor, Racial, and Environmental Justice—where working class power is building right now.
Sign both of the petition and the letter right now!
•             Letter to our regional Metropolitan Transportation Commission: https://bit.ly/ridesafecalif 
•            State-wide Ride Safe petition: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/california-ride-safe-campaign/



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Oust Duterte: Stop The Killings in the Philippines

SAVE THE DATE
People's State of the Nation Address!

Justice 4 Brandon Lee Fundraiser Closer to $10k Goal for $10k Match!

SFCHRP continues to support the fundraising efforts for Brandon Lee, an environmental and indigenous rights advocate who was shot by an agent of the Philippine government for his work in the Cordillera region. Brandon is recovering in San Francisco and is also looking for accessible ADA housing for his family of three.

We have raised nearly $3,000 in the last couple of weeks, getting us closer to the $10k needed to secure a $10k matching donation from an anonymous donor. Please share this fundraising tool, Love4Brandon, which includes artwork and skills donated by talented friends and supporters of Brandon. We are also still accepting donations through Venmo @sfchrp.

If you are interested in joining the Justice 4 Brandon Lee Coalition, please click here. To learn more about Brandon's story, go to www.ichrpus.org/savebrandonlee.


Copyright © 2020 SFCHRP, All rights reserved.
You are receiving this email because you opted in via our website.

Our mailing address is:
SFCHRP
1332 15th Ave
San FranciscoCA  94122-2008

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For Immediate Release                                                            



Press Contact: Herb Mintz

(415) 759-9679



Photos and Interviews: Steve Zeltzer

(415) 867-0628





LaborFest is committed to providing unique and relevant labor theme events while practicing proper social distancing to prevent the spread of the virus.  Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there will be no printed program booklet and all LaborFest 2020 program events will be available online only at https://laborfest.net/.  Events will be available through YouTube or Facebook using a web address provided in the program schedule.  Events are subject to change or cancellation due to COVID-19 related issues.  Check our website at https://laborfest.net/ prior to each event.



LaborFest is the premier labor cultural arts and film festival in the United States.  LaborFest recognizes the role of working people in the building of America and making it work even in this time of COVID-19.  The festival is self-funded with contributions from unions and other organizations that support and celebrate the contributions of working people.



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Urgent Action: Garifuna leader and 3 community members kidnapped and disappeared in Honduras

Share This 
On the morning of Saturday, July 18, Garifuna leader Snider Centeno and other three members of the Triunfo de la Cruz community where kidnapped and disappeared by a group of men wearing bullet proof vests with the initials of the Honduran National Police (DPI in Spanish). The DPI is the Investigative Police Directorate and when it was formed years ago, was trained by the United States. As of this Monday Morning, there is still no word on the whereabouts of Mr. Centeno, Milton Joel Marínez, Suami Aparicio Mejía and El Pri (nickname).
Snider was the president of the elected community council in Triunfo de la Cruz and his community received a favorable sentence from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in 2015. However, the Honduran state has still not respected it. The kidnapping and disappearance of Snider and the 3 other men is another attack against the Garifuna community and their struggle to protect their ancestral lands and the rights of afro-indigenous and indigenous people to live.
National and international pressure forced the Honduran Ministry of Human Rights to put out a statement urging authorities to investigate and act. Your support can make the difference!
For more information and updated on what is happening in Honduras, please follow the Honduras Solidarity Network

Contact Us

Alliance for Global Justice
225 E 26th St Ste 1

Tucson, Arizona 85713-2925
202-540-8336
afgj@afgj.org
Follow Us 
Having trouble viewing this email? View it in your web browser


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"While you're worried about 'bad apples', We're wary of the roots. because NO healthy tree, naturally bears Strange 

Fruit."



—Unknown source




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Subject: Shut Down Fort Hood! Justice for Vanessa Guillén. Sign the petition!



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Marvin Gaye - What's Going On (Official Video 2019)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5TmORitlKk



Because once is not enough. Because sometimes music is my only solace. Because sometimes it hurts too much too care but to be human is to hurt. Because I feel lucky to have grown up with great music. Because that music was harmonic and melodious. Because that music had soul. Because I grew up with Blues and Motown and Jazz. Because I grew up with Black friends and we played ball everyday and we had fun and we were winners. Because they taught me about music and soul and acceptance. Because they didn't hate me for being white. Because I was brought up with Irish Catholics who taught me that fighting and arguing for justice kept depression in its place. Because they taught me that if you never quit fighting you haven't lost so never quit fighting for justice. Because I was in a union and learned that solidarity is the original religion. Because without solidarity you are alone. And alone is hell and because I have never been in hell. Because I am part of the human race. Because the human race is the only race on earth. Because I am grateful for Marvin Gaye, and John Coltrane, and Sam Cooke and because you know what I am talking about. Because we are going to win and we are going to have fun. Because that's the truth. Because no lie can defeat truth. Because you are there to hear me. Because I know I am not alone.  —Gregg Shotwell

https://www.greggshotwell.com



(Gregg Shotwell is a retired autoworker, writer and poet.)


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"When I liberate myself, I liberate others. If you don't speak out, ain't nobody going to speak out for you."

Fannie Lou Hamer 

Dear Community, 

Do you know what wakes me up every day? Believing that we will win. We always knew that we were on the right side of history—but this summer between unveiling the racist outcomes of COVID-19, the global uprisings and the nationwide 650+ Juneneenth actions, we have momentum like we’ve never had before, and the majority of the country is with us. We know that the next step in our pathway to liberation is to make a strong political move at the ballot box—and we need you to lead the effort to entice, excite, educate, and ignite our people, from the babies to the grannies. Black August belongs to the Electoral Justice Project; it is our turn to set the national Black Political Agenda, and we want you to join us!

In a crisis, we have found resilience and the opportunity to make history. This is the genius of our Blackness—even amid a devastating pandemic that exposed racism and anti-Blackness as the real pre-existing conditions harming our communities, we are rising up and taking action to build power and demand that our rights and dignity be upheld and respected.

This summer, we will continue the legacy of Black Political Power-building and the righteous anger and momentum in the streets to shape a movement that will extend to the November elections and beyond. 

We invite you to join the Movement for Black Lives on Friday, August 28, at for the Black National Convention—a primetime event in celebration of Black Culture, Black Political Power-building, and a public policy agenda that will set forth an affirmative vision for Black Lives.


We are drawing from a legacy of struggle for Black Liberation. In 1964, Black communities across Mississippi and the South united in the face of systemic racism and voter suppression. That summer, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the landmark Civil Rights Act, which after decades of violence and segregation, was won through sheer will. Then, on March 10, 1972, 4,000 Black people from every political affiliation attended the National Black Political Convention in Gary, Indiana, to yield power for Black people. While the historic event generated a new Black Political Agenda and quadrupled the number of Black elected officials by the end of the 1970s, it was not without its divisions and tensions—ranging from questions about the efficacy of Reverend Jesse Jackson’s assertion of a “Liberation Party” to the isolation of then–Presidential Candidate Shirley Chishom.

Despite the varied outcomes, the National Black Political Convention was an influential moment in Black History. Forty-eight years later, we are meeting yet another opportunity for radical change. This Black August, join us as we unveil one of the boldest political platforms our country has ever seen, partnering to ignite millions across the country. www.blacknovember.org

You feel that? We’re going to win. 

With Black Love, 

Jessica Byrd and the Black National Convention Planning Teamp


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CODEPINK.ORG


Tell Blackrock: stop investing in Tasers that police have used to kill thousands of Americans!

BlackRock loves to make a killing on killing: Over a thousand Americans have been killed by Tasers — 32 percent of them are Black Americans. Tasers are made by the colossal law enforcement supplier Axon Enterprise, based in Arizona.
One of their top shareholders happens to be Blackrock. Recently Blackrock has been trying to be sympathetic to the atrocities of murders waged on Black Americans and communities of color. If we ramp up massive pressure and blow the whistle on their deadly stocks, we can highlight that divesting from Tasers and the war in our streets will be a step in the right direction in building a fair and just society.
This issue is important to having peace in our streets. But this will only work if people participate. Send an email to Blackrock to divest from the Taser manufacturer Axon Enterprise which is responsible for the killing of thousands of Americans, and CODEPINK will pull out all the stops to make sure Blackrock execs hear our call:

Tell Blackrock: stop investing in Tasers!

Blackrock could do this. They recently announced that they were divesting from fossil fuels — signaling a shift in their policies. If CEO Larry Fink cares about “diversity, fairness, and justice” and building a “stronger, more equal, and safer society” — he should divest from Tasers.
Plus, compared to Blackrock’s other holdings, Taser stocks aren’t even that significant!

But if Blackrock does this, it could be the first domino we need to get other investment companies on board too. Send an email to BlackRock and share this widely! 

Tell Blackrock: stop investing in Tasers!

If there’s one thing our community stands for, it’s peace and social justice. And one way we can help achieve that is by cutting off the flow of cash into the manufacturing of Tasers. So, let’s come together to make that happen, and help prevent more innocent Americans from being killed with these senseless tools.

With hope,
Nancy, Carley, Jodie, Paki, Cody, Kelsey, and Yousef

Donate Now!

This email was sent to giobon@comcast.net. To unsubscribe,  click here
To update your email subscription, contact info@codepink.org.
© 2020 CODEPINK.ORG | Created with NationBuilder
    
 

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Rayshard Brooks, 27 years old, was shot to death while running away from police in Atlanta Friday, June 12, 2020.

SAY HIS NAME!


https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/14/us/videos-rayshard-brooks-shooting-atlanta-police.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage


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Kimberly Jones

If you haven't seen this, you're missing something spectacular:

On Saturday May 30th filmmaker and photographer David Jones of David Jones Media felt compelled to go out and serve the community in some way. He decided to use his art to try and explain the events that were currently impacting our lives. On day two, Sunday the 31st, he activated his dear friend author Kimberly Jones to tag along and conduct interviews. During a moment of downtime he captured these powerful words from her and felt the world couldn’t wait for the full length documentary, they needed to hear them now.


Kimberly Jones on YouTube 


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Awesome! I always wonder about what protests accomplish. Here’s a list:

So what has protesting accomplished?

👉🏾Within 10 days of sustained protests:
Minneapolis bans use of choke holds.

👉🏾Charges are upgraded against Officer Chauvin, and his accomplices are arrested and charged.

👉🏾Dallas adopts a "duty to intervene" rule that requires officers to stop other cops who are engaging in inappropriate use of force.

👉🏾New Jersey’s attorney general said the state will update its use-of-force guidelines for the first time in two decades.

👉🏾In Maryland, a bipartisan work group of state lawmakers announced a police reform work group.

👉🏾Los Angeles City Council introduces motion to reduce LAPD’s $1.8 billion operating budget.

👉🏾MBTA in Boston agrees to stop using public buses to transport police officers to protests.

👉🏾Police brutality captured on cameras leads to near-immediate suspensions and firings of officers in several cities (i.e., Buffalo, Ft. Lauderdale).

👉🏾Monuments celebrating confederates are removed in cities in Virginia, Alabama, and other states.

👉🏾Street in front of the White House is renamed "Black Lives Matter Plaza.”
Military forces begin to withdraw from D.C.

Then, there's all the other stuff that's hard to measure:

💓The really difficult public and private conversations that are happening about race and privilege.

💓The realizations some white people are coming to about racism and the role of policing in this country.

💓The self-reflection.

💓The internal battles exploding within organizations over issues that have been simmering or ignored for a long time. Some organizations will end as a result, others will be forever changed or replaced with something stronger and fairer.

Globally:

🌎 Protests against racial inequality sparked by the police killing of George Floyd are taking place all over the world.

🌎 Rallies and memorials have been held in cities across Europe, as well as in Mexico, Canada, Brazil, Australia, and New Zealand.

🌎 As the US contends with its second week of protests, issues of racism, police brutality, and oppression have been brought to light across the globe.

🌎 People all over the world understand that their own fights for human rights, for equality and fairness, will become so much more difficult to win if we are going to lose America as the place where 'I have a dream' is a real and universal political program," Wolfgang Ischinger, a former German ambassador to the US, told the New Yorker.

🌎 In France, protesters marched holding signs that said "I can't breathe" to signify both the words of Floyd, and the last words of Adama Traoré, a 24-year-old black man who was subdued by police officers and gasped the sentence before he died outside Paris in 2016.

🌎 Cities across Europe have come together after the death of George Floyd:

✊🏽 In Amsterdam, an estimated 10,000 people filled the Dam square on Monday, holding signs and shouting popular chants like "Black lives matter," and "No justice, no peace."

✊🏽 In Germany, people gathered in multiple locations throughout Berlin to demand justice for Floyd and fight against police brutality.

✊🏾 A mural dedicated to Floyd was also spray-painted on a stretch of wall in Berlin that once divided the German capital during the Cold War.

✊🏿 In Ireland, protesters held a peaceful demonstration outside of Belfast City Hall, and others gathered outside of the US embassy in Dublin.

✊🏿In Italy, protesters gathered and marched with signs that said "Stop killing black people," "Say his name," and "We will not be silent."

✊🏾 In Spain, people gathered to march and hold up signs throughout Barcelona and Madrid.

✊🏾 In Athens, Greece, protesters took to the streets to collectively hold up a sign that read "I can't breathe."

✊🏾 In Brussels, protesters were seen sitting in a peaceful demonstration in front of an opera house in the center of the city.

✊🏾In Denmark, protesters were heard chanting "No justice, no peace!" throughout the streets of Copenhagen, while others gathered outside the US embassy.

✊🏾 In Canada, protesters were also grieving for Regis Korchinski-Paquet, a 29-year-old black woman who died on Wednesday after falling from her balcony during a police investigation at her building.

✊🏾 And in New Zealand, roughly 2,000 people marched to the US embassy in Auckland, chanting and carrying signs demanding justice.

💐 Memorials have been built for Floyd around the world, too. In Mexico City, portraits of him were hung outside the US embassy with roses, candles, and signs.

💐 In Poland, candles and flowers were laid out next to photos of Floyd outside the US consulate.

💐 And in Syria, two artists created a mural depicting Floyd in the northwestern town of Binnish, "on a wall destroyed by military planes."

Before the assassination of George Floyd some of you were able to say whatever the hell you wanted and the world didn't say anything to you...

THERE HAS BEEN A SHIFT, AN AWAKENING...MANY OF YOU ARE BEING EXPOSED FOR WHO YOU REALLY ARE. #readthatagain

Don't wake up tomorrow on the wrong side of this issue. Its not to late to SAY,

"Maybe I need to look at this from a different perspective."

"Maybe I don't know what its like to be black in America..."

"Maybe, just maybe, I have been taught wrong."

There is still so much work to be done. It's been a really dark, raw week. This could still end badly. But all we can do is keep doing the work.

Keep protesting.

WE ARE NOT TRYING TO START A RACE WAR; WE ARE PROTESTING TO END IT,
PEACEFULLY.

How beautiful is that?

ALL LIVES CANNOT MATTER UNTIL YOU INCLUDE BLACK LIVES.

YOU CANNOT SAY 'ALL LIVES MATTER' WHEN YOU DO NOTHING TO STOP SYSTEMIC RACISM & POLICE BRUTALITY.

YOU CANNOT SAY 'ALL LIVES MATTER' WHEN BLACK PEOPLE ARE DYING AND ALL YOU COMPLAIN ABOUT IS THE LOOTING.

YOU CANNOT SAY 'ALL LIVES MATTER' WHEN YOU ALLOW CHILDREN TO BE CAGED, VETERANS TO GO HOMELESS, AND POOR FAMILIES TO GO HUNGRY & LOSE THEIR HEALTH INSURANCE.

DO ALL LIVES MATTER? YES. BUT RIGHT NOW, ONLY BLACK LIVES ARE BEING TARGETED, JAILED, AND KILLED EN MASSE- SO THAT'S WHO WE'RE FOCUSING ON.

🖤🖤🖤BLACK LIVES MATTER🖤🖤🖤

IF YOU CAN'T SEE THIS, YOU ARE THE PROBLEM.

*I do not know the original author*

Copy & paste widely!


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BLACK LIVES MATTER


Ultimately, the majority of human suffering is caused by a system that places the value of material wealth over the value of
human life. To end the suffering, we must end the profit motive—the very foundation of capitalism itself.
—BAUAW
(Bay Area United Against War Newsletter)


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George Floyd's Last Words
"It's my face man
I didn't do nothing serious man
please
please
please I can't breathe
please man
please somebody
please man
I can't breathe
I can't breathe
please
(inaudible)
man can't breathe, my face
just get up
I can't breathe
please (inaudible)
I can't breathe sh*t
I will
I can't move
mama
mama
I can't
my knee
my nuts
I'm through
I'm through
I'm claustrophobic
my stomach hurt
my neck hurts
everything hurts
some water or something
please
please
I can't breathe officer
don't kill me
they gon' kill me man
come on man
I cannot breathe
I cannot breathe
they gon' kill me
they gon' kill me
I can't breathe
I can't breathe
please sir
please
please
please I can't breathe"

Then his eyes shut and the pleas stop. George Floyd was pronounced dead shortly after.



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Credit...

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Trump Comic Satire—A Proposal
          By Shakaboona

PRES. TRUMP HIDES IN WHITE HOUSE BUNKER IN FEAR OF PROTESTORS
Hello everyone, it's Shakaboona here, on May 29, 2020, Friday, it was reported by NPR and other news agencies that when protestors marched on the White House, the Secret Service (SS) rushed Pres. Trump to a protective bunker in the basement of the White House for his safety. When I heard that news I instantly visualized 3 scenes - (Scene 1) a pic of Pres. Saddam Hussein hiding in an underground cave in fear of the U.S. Army, (Scene 2) a pic of Pres. Donald Trump hiding in an underground bunker shaking in fear beneath a desk from U.S. Protestors as Secret Service guards (with 2 Lightning bolts on their collars) in hyper security around him with big guns drawn out, and (Scene 3) a pic of Pres. Trump later stood in front of the church across from the White House with a Bible in hand & chest puffed out & threatened to activate the U.S. Army against American citizen protestors.
 ~ I think this would be an underground iconic image of the power of the People & the cowardice/fear of Pres. Trump, not to mention that I think such a creative comic satire of Trump would demolish his self image (haha). I ask for anyone's help to turn my above visual satire of Trump into an actual comic satire strip & for us to distribute the finished comic satire strip worldwide, esp. to the news media. Maybe we can get Trump to see it and watch him blow a gasket (lol).
 ~ Please everyone, stay safe out there, b/c Trump is pushing this country to the verge of Civil War. Be prepared in every way imaginable. Peace. - Ur Brother, Shakaboona

Write to Shakaboona:
Smart Communications/PA DOC
Kerry Shakaboona Marshall #BE7826
SCI Rockview
P.O. Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733

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SEPTEMBER 3 and 4 - NEW SENTENCING
DATES FOR KINGS BAY PLOWSHARES 7

The remaining six Kings Bay Plowshares 7 defendants were granted a continuance for sentencing by Judge Lisa Godbey Wood of the Southern District Federal court of Georgia in Brunswick from the end of July until September 3rd and 4th. Due to spikes in COVID-19 cases in GA and ensuing travel restrictions the anti-nuclear activists had asked the court to further postpone sentencing toaccommodate their right to be sentenced in person in open court, not by video, witnessed safely by family, supporters and the press.
The new sentencing dates and times are September 3rd: Carmen Trotta at 9 am, Fr. Steve Kelly at 1 pm, Clare Grady at 4 pm. On September 4 will be Mark Colville at 9 am, Patrick O'Neill at 1 pm, Martha Hennessy (granddaughter of Dorothy Day who co-founded the Catholic Worker movement) at 4 pm. It is possible that there will be further delays depending on the course of the virus over the next month. We will try to keep you updated as we find out more as that time approaches.
The defendants had asked for home confinement during this time of COVID-19, as entering prison, especially for those over 60 years of age with health issues, could be a death sentence. Their request was opposed by the prosecution and the probation department which argued the charges involved a threat to human life (their own) by entering a restricted zone on the base where lethal force is authorized. This would raise the level of the offense and make them ineligible for home confinement. Judge Wood upheld this interpretation in the first sentencing of Elizabeth McAlister on June 8. At 80 years-old, the eldest of the KBP7 defendants and widow of Phil Berrigan, she was sentenced by video conferencing while at her home in Connecticut. Liz had served over 17 months before trial. The judge agreed with the US attorney's request for a sentence of time served plus 3 years supervised probation and restitution at $25 monthly (of $33,000 owed by all 7 jointly).

We are still urging people to write to Judge Wood not so much to ask for leniency but for justice and not a death sentence. Details are on the website: https://kingsbayplowshares7.org/2020/05/letters-to-judge-wood/

For the momentous 75th Anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki there will be numerous events happening physically and virtually around the world. We urge you to participate as you can to say no to nuclear weapons. The world is lurching towards a new nuclear arms race and treaties to limit them are being discarded. Trillions will be spent on new submarines and new weapons while the coronavirus is ravaging people throughout the world with limited resources available to stop it. Nevertheless there are some signs of hope. The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons has been ratified by 40 of the 50 nations needed for it to go into effect. Pope Francis has condemned even the possession of nuclear weapons for deterrence as no longer justifiable although the U. S. Church has quite a way to go to catch up.

U.S. vigils and actions are listed on The Nuclear Resister website. http://www.nukeresister.org/future-actions/ Groups normally planning civil resistance on Aug. 6-9 are adjusting plans, with some canceled. Some civil resistance actions, with risk of arrest, are still happening.

The defendants will be participating in local events.
Clare Grady will walk with Buddhist Nun, Jun San, in Ithaca, NY on August 1 at 12 noon. Beginning with a circle next to the pavilion just north of the Children’s Garden it will follow the Water Trail loop going north and back for first 3 miles and possibly on up West Hill, totaling approximately 6 miles.

Patrick O'Neill will participate in a remembrance and repentance service on Zoom at 7:30-8:30 am ET on August 6. Details will be on the KBP7 website.

There will be a vigil at the Kings Bay base on the morning of August 6, 10am-1pm. And a Zoom event that evening, #Blacklivesmatter and the Bomb, 7-8:40pm, with Professor Vincent Intondi. Details for both at:https://www.nonukesyall.org
International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons Events https://www.icanw.org/events

Physicians for Social Responsibility Calendar https://www.psr.org/calendar/tag_ids~111/

                                                          



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View this email in your browser
To: Comrades, Friends, and Supporters of Kevin Rashid Johnson
From: Shupavu wa Kirima
Re: Organized Dial-In on Behalf of Comrade Rashid for Monday, 07.20.2020
Date: 07.18.2020



Dear Comrades, Friends, and Supporters,

I want to thank each of you who have united around the call to support Rashid as he faces retaliatory abuse at the hands of prison officials and staff at Pendleton Correctional Facility where he is being detained in Pendleton, IN. I learned of Rashid’s situation early Thursday morning and since that time individuals and organizations from around the country have shown their support by sharing the call on social media and by phoning and emailing the prison themselves expressing concern and outrage.

On Monday, we plan to step up our protest by having folks from around the country carry out an organized dial-in to key officials located at the Indiana Department of Corrections and Virginia Department of Corrections.  These calls will happen in two waves, morning and afternoon.  The first wave of calls will happen between 9 am - 11:30 am EST with the second wave of calls taking place in the afternoon from 2 pm - 4:30 pm EST.  By synchronizing these waves of calls we intend to let the prison officials know that we are organized and we mean business.  This action will also serve to turn up the pressure on this situation and hopefully, expedite the satisfaction of our demands which are as follows:

  • We demand that the retaliatory and punitive measures against Kevin Rashid Johnson and his neighbor, Mark Patterson, end.  This includes the repeated cell searches, destruction of property, denial of phone calls to the outside, and seizure of commissary items.

  • We demand that Rashid’s tablet be replaced at no cost to him. This is only right since it was, in fact, the guards who purposefully broke the tablet in retaliation for Rashid exercising his rights to free speech and political expression. 

  • We demand that Rashid be allowed his right to legal counsel by speaking with his attorney, Dustin McDaniel of the Abolitionist Law Center.  This right has been refused since Rashid’s time at Pendleton even after providing proof of Mr. McDaniel’s credentials proving that he is Rashid’s attorney.  Rashid has not been allowed to add Mr. McDaniel to his phone call or visitation list.

The evening before the dial-in (Sunday, 07.19.2020) we will hold a brief meeting at 7 pm EST to go over the planned action for Monday in further detail.  This meeting will be held via conference call and should take no more than 15 - 20 minutes.

If you can unite to make calls at any time during Monday’s dial-in or have any other questions or concerns, please reply to this email or contact me using the information listed below.  I will reply with the meeting agenda and call details.  Again, I thank everyone for their support and I want to extend a special thanks to the following organizations that have expressed solidarity during this time:

The People’s Revolutionary Party of Long Beach, Third World People’s Alliance, Afrofuturist Abolitionists of the Americas, AnarkataFuturists of the Americas, Roanoke People’s Power Network, Quaker Insurrection, Black is Back-Health for the Revolution, Lucy Parsons Center, Upsetting the Upset, FTP-Baltimore, FTP-Boston, FTP-Twin Cities, FTP-Philly, FTP-San Diego, FTP-Chicago, and FTP-St. Louis 

Shupavu wa Kirima
(816)596-7697

All Power to the People!
Dare to Struggle, Dare to Win!
The following individuals should be contacted in regard to Kevin Rashid Johnson (#264847) and his neighbor, Mark Patterson's (#988302) current situation.  Please feel free to share widely among your contacts and across social media platforms.

John Adam Ferguson, Chief Legal Officer
(317)460-6307, mobile
(317)233-8861, office

Charlene A. Burkett, Ombudsman
(317)234-3190

Joseph Walters, Deputy Director VADOC
(Proxy for Harold W. Clarke, Director of Dept. of Corrections)
(804)887-7982

James Parks, Interstate Compact Administrator
(804)887-7991
Dushan Zatecky, Warden
(765)778-2107
Facebook
Website

Our mailing address is:
Kevin Rashid Johnson
D.O.C. #264847
Pendleton Correctional Facility 4490 W. Reformatory Rd
PendletonIN  46064

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Still photo from Stanley Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove"released January 29, 1964

Enough is Enough: Global Nuclear Weapons 


Spending 2020

  In its report "Enough is Enough: Global Nuclear Weapons Spending 2020" the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons has produced the first estimate in nearly a decade of global nuclear weapon spending, taking into account costs to maintain and build new nuclear weapons. ICAN estimates that the nine nuclear-armed countries spent $72.9 billion on their 13,000-plus nuclear weapons in 2019, equaling $138,699 every minute of 2019 on nuclear weapons, and a $7.1 billion increase from 2018.
These estimates (rounded to one decimal point) include nuclear warhead and nuclear-capable delivery systems operating costs and development where these expenditures are publicly available and are based on a reasonable percentage of total military spending on nuclear weapons when more detailed budget data is not available. ICAN urges all nuclear-armed states to be transparent about nuclear weapons expenditures to allow for more accurate reporting on global nuclear expenditures and better government accountability.
ICAN, May 2020
https://www.icanw.org/global_nuclear_weapons_spending_2020

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Shooting and looting started: 400 years ago

Shooting, looting, scalping, lynching,
Raping, torturing their way across
the continent—400 years ago—
Colonial settler thugs launched this
endless crimson tide rolling down on
Today…
Colonial settler thugs launched this
endless crimson tide leaving in-
visible yellow crime
scene tape crisscrossing Tallahassee
to Seattle; San Diego to Bangor… 
Shooting Seneca, Seminole, Creek,
Choctaw, Mohawk, Cayuga, Blackfeet,
Shooting Sioux, Shawnee, Chickasaw,
Chippewa before
Looting Lakota land; Looting Ohlone
Land—
Looting Ashanti, Fulani, Huasa, Wolof,
Yoruba, Ibo, Kongo, Mongo, Hutu, Zulu…
Labor.
Colonial settler thugs launched this
endless crimson tide—hot lead storms—
Shooting, looting Mexico for half of New
Mexico; a quarter of Colorado; some of
Wyoming and most of Arizona; Looting
Mexico for Utah, Nevada and California
So, next time Orange Mobutu, Boss Tweet,
is dirty like Duterte—howling for shooting;
Next time demented minions raise rifles to
shoot; Remind them that
Real looters wear Brooks Brothers suits;
Or gold braid and junk medals ‘cross their
chests. Real looters—with Capitalist Hill
Accomplices—
Steal trillions
Not FOX-boxes, silly sneakers, cheap clothes…
© 2020. Raymond Nat Turner, The Town Crier. All Rights Reserved.       



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We Need Your Support: Unite to Send Deputy Chairman Kwame Shakur to Minneapolis!

In light of recent protests following the May 24, 2020, state-sanctioned lynching of George Floyd, a black man, and resident of Minneapolis, MN we recognize the protests happening there as an organic demonstration of resistance to imperialist oppression by the people and understand the importance of having the New Afrikan Black Panther Party on the ground in order to give proper leadership and direction to this important struggle. Because of this, we believe that it is necessary to get our Deputy Chairman, Kwame Shakur from Indiana, where he resides, to Minneapolis, MN.  We are calling on all of our friends and supporters to materially assist us in accomplishing this task!  Kwame will need resources that will enable him to travel to Minneapolis, MN, remain for as long as need be, and return to his home in IN.  You can donate to this cause through PayPal at PayPal.me/drayonmiller or through CashApp at $PantherLove2005.

Kwame has been actively organizing and leading mass demonstrations in Indianapolis IN in response to prisoner abuse and police killings there. His involvement and development of wide community support can be seen in the many live recordings made on the ground, which can be seen on his Facebook page (see link below) and podcasts on YouTube. We want to take this revolutionary guidance to Minneapolis and develop new forces to build and advance the work of the mass struggle there. We want boots on the ground! All power to the people!
DONATE
Facebook
Website
Copyright © *2020* *Kevin Rashid Johnson*, All rights reserved.


Our mailing address is:

Kevin Rashid Johnson
D.O.C. #264847, G-20-2C
Pendleton Correctional Facility 4490 W. Reformatory Rd

PendletonIN  46064




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Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin 



conviction integrity unit—confession and all





Petition update - Please sign at the link above!
May 23, 2020 —  

We have submitted our application to the @FultonCountyDA #ConvictionIntegrityUnit demanding a retrial for Imam Jamil Al-Amin FKA H. Rap Brown. 

We must now show the establishment that we care more about justice than they do about corruption and injustice. 

The proof of misdeeds is clear, the proof of innocence is clear, a retrial or release are the only acceptable options. 

We make the news so let our voices once again be heard loudly and in unison…we demand a retrial…we demand justice!   #FreeImamJamil

Questions and comments may be sent to info@freedomarchives.org

To unsubscribe contact: http://freedomarchives.org/mailman/options/ppnews_freedomarchives.org



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Veterans Join Call for a Global Ceasefire, The Lasting Effects of War Book Discussion, Sir, No Sir Viewing, VFP's Online Convention, Workshop Proposals, Convention FAQ, No More COVID-19 Money For the Pentagon, Repeal the AUMF, Community Conversation on Hybrid Warfare, St Louis VFP Delivers VA Lunch, In the News and Calendar




Veterans Join Call for a Global Ceasefire 


Veterans For Peace, as a United Nations Department of Global Communication affiliated NGO, is most gratified to see UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres make his plea for a worldwide ceasefire during this global pandemic. 

The first line of the Preamble of the UN's Charter says that they originated to save “succeeding generations from the scourge of war”. But sadly, because the UN was created by the victors of WW2 who remain the powers of the world, and because the UN depends for funding on those same militarily and economically dominant nation-states, primarily the U.S., much more often than not the UN is very quiet on war. 

Please join Veterans For Peace in appealing to U.S. Ambassador to the UN Kelly Craft to support the Secretary General's call for a GLOBAL CEASEFIRE! 


For more information about events go to:

https://www.veteransforpeace.org/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=fa5082af-9325-47a7-901c-710e85091ee1




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Courage to Resist
COURAGE TO RESIST ~ SUPPORT THE TROOPS WHO REFUSE TO FIGHT!
www.couragetoresist.org ~ 510.488.3559 ~ facebook.com/couragetoresist

484 Lake Park Ave # 41
OaklandCA 94610-2730
United States
Unsubscribe from couragetoresist.org 

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From Business Insider 2018

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"The biggest block from having society in harmony with the universe is the belief in a lie that says it’s not realistic or humanly possible." 

"If Obama taught me anything it’s that it don’t matter who you vote for in this system. There’s nothing a politician can do that the next one can’t undo. You can’t vote away the ills of society people have to put our differences aside ban together and fight for the greater good, not vote for the lesser evil."

—Johnny Gould (Follow @tandino415 on Instagram)

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When faced with the opportunity to do good, I really think it’s the instinct of humanity to do so. It’s in our genetic memory from our earliest ancestors. It’s the altered perception of the reality of what being human truly is that’s been indoctrinated in to every generation for the last 2000 years or more that makes us believe that we are born sinners. I can’t get behind that one. We all struggle with certain things, but I really think that all the “sinful” behavior is learned and wisdom and goodwill is innate at birth.  —Johnny Gould (Follow @tandino415 on Instagram)


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Support Major Tillery, Friend of Mumia, Innocent, Framed, Now Ill




Major Tillery (with hat) and family


Dear Friends of the Labor Action Committee to Free Mumia,

Major Tillery, a prisoner at SCI Chester and a friend of Mumia, may have caught the coronavirus. Major is currently under lockdown at SCI Chester, where a coronavirus outbreak is currently taking place. Along with the other prisoners at SCI Chester, he urgently needs your help.

Major was framed by the Pennsylvania District Attorney and police for a murder which took place in 1976. He has maintained his innocence throughout the 37 years he has been incarcerated, of which approximately 20 were spent in solitary confinement. The U.N. Special Rapporteur on torture has said that 15 days of solitary confinement constitutes torture.

When Mumia had Hepatitis C and was left to die by the prison administration at SCI Mahanoy, Major Tillery was the prisoner who confronted the prison superintendent and demanded that they treat Mumia. (see https://www.justiceformajortillery.org/messing-with-major.html). Although Mumia received medical treatment, the prison retaliated against Major for standing up to the prison administration. He was transferred to another facility, his cell was searched and turned inside out repeatedly, and he lost his job in the prison as a Peer Facilitator.

SCI Chester, where Major is currently incarcerated, has been closed to visitors since mid-March. Fourteen guards and one prisoner are currently reported to be infected with the coronavirus. Because the prison has not tested all the inmates, there is no way to know how many more inmates have coronavirus. Major has had a fever, chills and a sore throat for several nights. Although Major has demanded testing for himself and all prisoners, the prison administration has not complied.

For the past ten days, there has been no cleaning of the cell block. It has been weeks since prisoners have been allowed into the yard to exercise. The food trays are simply being left on the floor. There have been no walk-throughs by prison administrators. The prisoners are not allowed to have showers; they are not allowed to have phone calls; and they are not permitted any computer access. 

This coronavirus outbreak at SCI Chester is the same situation which is playing out in California prisons right now, about which the Labor Action Committee to Free Mumia, along with other groups, organized a car caravan protest at San Quentin last week. Prisons are enclosed indoor spaces and are already an epicenter of the coronavirus, like meatpacking plants and cruise ships. If large numbers of prisoners are not released, the coronavirus will infect the prisons, as well as surrounding communities, and many prisoners will die. Failing to release large numbers of prisoners at this point is the same as executing them. We call for "No Execution by COVID-19"!

Major is close to 70 years old, and has a compromised liver and immune system, as well as heart problems. He desperately needs your help. 

Please write and call Acting Superintendent Kenneth Eason at:

Kenneth Eason, Acting Superintendent
SCI Chester
500 E. 4th St.
Chester, PA 19013

Telephone: (610) 490-5412

Email: keason@pa.gov (Prison Superintendent). maquinn@pa.gov (Superintendent's Assistant)
Please also call the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections at:Department of Corrections
1920 Technology Parkway
Mechanicsburg, PA 17050

Telephone: (717) 737-4531
This telephone number is for SCI Camp Hill, which is the current number for DOC.
Reference Major's inmate number: AM 9786

Email: ra-contactdoc@pa.gov
Demand that the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections immediately:

1) Provide testing for all inmates and staff at SCI Chester;
2) Disinfect all cells and common areas at SCI Chester, including sinks, toilets, eating areas and showers;
3) Provide PPE (personal protective equipment) for all inmates at SCI Chester;
4) Provide access to showers for all prisoners at SCI Chester, as a basic hygiene measure;
5) Provide yard access to all prisoners at SCI Chester;
6) Provide phone and internet access to all prisoners at SCI Chester;
7) Immediately release prisoners from SCI Chester, including Major Tillery, who already suffers from a compromised immune system, in order to save their lives from execution by COVID-19.

It has been reported that prisoners are now receiving shower access. However, please insist that prisoners be given shower access and that all common areas are disinfected.


In solidarity,

The Labor Action Committee to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal




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Kiah Morris

May 7 at 6:44 AM

So, in MY lifetime....

Black people are so tired. 😓

We can’t go jogging (#AhmaudArbery).

We can’t relax in the comfort of our own homes (#BothemJean and #AtatianaJefferson).

We can't ask for help after being in a car crash (#JonathanFerrell and #RenishaMcBride).

We can't have a cellphone (#StephonClark).

We can't leave a party to get to safety (#JordanEdwards).

We can't play loud music (#JordanDavis).

We can’t sell CD's (#AltonSterling).

We can’t sleep (#AiyanaJones)

We can’t walk from the corner store (#MikeBrown).

We can’t play cops and robbers (#TamirRice).

We can’t go to church (#Charleston9).

We can’t walk home with Skittles (#TrayvonMartin).

We can’t hold a hair brush while leaving our own bachelor party (#SeanBell).

We can’t party on New Years (#OscarGrant).

We can’t get a normal traffic ticket (#SandraBland).

We can’t lawfully carry a weapon (#PhilandoCastile).

We can't break down on a public road with car problems (#CoreyJones).

We can’t shop at Walmart (#JohnCrawford)p^p.

We can’t have a disabled vehicle (#TerrenceCrutcher).

We can’t read a book in our own car (#KeithScott).

We can’t be a 10yr old walking with our grandfather (#CliffordGlover).

We can’t decorate for a party (#ClaudeReese).

We can’t ask a cop a question (#RandyEvans).

We can’t cash our check in peace (#YvonneSmallwood).

We can’t take out our wallet (#AmadouDiallo).

We can’t run (#WalterScott).

We can’t breathe (#EricGarner).

We can’t live (#FreddieGray).

We’re tired.

Tired of making hashtags.

Tired of trying to convince you that our #BlackLivesMatter too.

Tired of dying.

Tired.

Tired.

Tired.

So very tired.

(I don’t know who created this. I just know there are so many more names to be added and names we may never hear of.)

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1) Black Children Are More Likely to Die After Surgery Than White Peers, Study Shows
A large study, published in the journal Pediatrics, suggests that disparities exist in surgery outcomes, even among healthy children.
By Jenny Gross, July 20, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/20/health/black-children-surgery-deaths.html?action=click&module=Latest&pgtype=Homepage
An operating room at a hospital in New Haven, Conn., in 2018. Credit...Christopher Capozziello for The New York Times


Black children are more than three times as likely to die within a month of surgery as white children, according to a study published in the journal Pediatrics on Monday.

Disparities in surgical outcomes between Black and white patients have been well established, with researchers attributing some of the difference to higher rates of chronic conditions among Black people. But this study, which looked at data on 172,549 children, highlights the racial disparities in health outcomes even when comparing healthy children.

Researchers found that Black children were 3.4 times as likely to die within a month after surgery and were 1.2 times as likely to develop postoperative complications. The authors performed a retrospective study based on data on children who underwent surgery from 2012 through 2017.

Olubukola Nafiu, the lead author of the study and a pediatric anesthesiologist at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, said the authors were not surprised to find that healthy children, across the board, had extremely low rates of mortality and rates of complications after surgery. But what surprised them was the magnitude of the difference in mortality and complication rates by race.

“The hypothesis we had when we started was that if you studied a relatively healthy cohort of patients, there shouldn’t be any difference in outcomes,” Dr. Nafiu said.

The authors, in their paper, acknowledged limitations of the study: They did not explore the site of care where patients received their treatments or the insurance status of patients, which can be used as a proxy for socioeconomic status. This meant they could not account for differences in the quality of care that patients received or the economic backgrounds of the patients.

Another limitation was that because mortality and postoperative complications are so uncommon among healthy children, it is possible that most of the cases came from a few hospitals, Dr. Nafiu said.

But while Black people are more likely to receive care in low-performing hospitals, that may not be the main factor driving the gap this study found, Dr. Nafiu said. The hospitals examined in the study were all part of the National Surgical Quality Improvement Program, a voluntary program, meaning they had the resources to be part of the program and the belief that quality improvement is important.

Adil Haider, dean of the medical college at Aga Khan University, who was not involved with the study, said that it told a key piece of the story about racial disparities in surgical outcomes, but that there were still many questions about what drives disparities.

“The real take home is that we just need to start reporting data within hospitals and when we aggregate hospitals — by race and by insurance status — so that we know that, at a given hospital, people from different backgrounds are all receiving the same outcomes,” said Dr. Haider, the former director of the Center for Surgery and Public Health, a joint initiative of Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Many studies have shown that people of color receive less and often worse care than white Americans because of reasons including lower rates of health coverage and racial stereotyping.

But one study, published in June by JAMA, suggested some signs of improvement. That research paper, which looked at more than 20,000 extremely preterm infants, suggested that racial disparities in mortality rates had shrunk from 2002 to 2016. The results were significant because the racial disparities around maternal mortality, premature birth and infant mortality have been persistent.

Dr. Nia Heard-Garris, a pediatrician researcher at the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, who was not involved with the study, said the research was significant because it relied on a large, national sample.


“We’re not talking about one small health system, within one small city, or even one big city — we’re talking about trends nationally,” said Dr. Heard-Garris, who heads the American Academy of Pediatrics’s Section on Minority Healthy, Equity and Inclusion. “As a mom of a Black son who at some point will need surgery, it’s very scary.”

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2) Soledad 3 a.m. raid on 200+ Black prisoners
Soledad guards in riot gear at 3 a.m. July 20 snatched 200+ Black prisoners from their bunks, brutalized them, crammed them into the kitchen for hours, zip-tied, unmasked
By Tasha Williams, July 20, 2020
https://sfbayview.com/2020/07/soledad-3-a-m-raid-on-200-black-prisoners/
Soledad prison at night.


In the pre-dawn hours of Monday, July 20, white and Hispanic guards at the Correctional Training Facility at Soledad State Prison in California violently ripped hundreds of Black prisoners from their bunks, regardless of good behavior and lack of gang affiliation. The men were slammed around by wannabe commandos in full riot gear, then zip-tied and led in the dark to the chow hall. The men were barefoot, wearing only what they’d fallen asleep in. They weren’t even allowed to grab their masks.

Reports from the prison indicate upwards of 200 men were assaulted then forced to sit shoulder to shoulder with other unmasked inmates in the kitchen as a tower sniper was called just in case one or some of the cuffed men needed to be executed on the spot. The men were made to sit there for hours without even being told what was happening. 

My husband was one of those inmates. He was violently tossed off his top bunk – woke up as he was in the air – and slammed his head into the cinderblock wall. His head still hurts nearly 24 hours later. His hands were bound so tightly that they turned blue. I know what you’re thinking: “But what did HE do?” That’s the thing. He, just like countless other Black men in his building, had done nothing to deserve the treatment they received Monday at 3 a.m.

Gavin Newsom . . . allows California prisons to be run like internment camps with rations unsuitable for a child and abusive untrained, unskilled officers.

My husband eventually saw a piece of paperwork with his picture on it and something about his father being affiliated with the Black Panthers nearly 40 years ago. My husband is affiliated with no organization and was given permission by CDCR to correspond with his father, who is incarcerated at another facility. That hasn’t stopped them from raiding his cell multiple times over the years and targeting him as gang affiliated. 

See, my husband reads books by Black revolutionaries and even has his own revolutionary works. The guards have told him flat-out that if he sagged his pants and had less books that he’d be ignored like the rest. So, see, my husband is a threat to Soledad State Prison not because of his crime, but because of his education.

Little did the men know, but as they were sitting in wait, their cells were being ransacked. Guards took every book, piece of mail, note and phone book that they could find. My husband had hundreds of dollars worth of books alone. Will they ever receive these things back? Did the former high school jock failures who stole their belongings bother to separate and label each inmate’s things? Doubtful. That would take actual work, which is something no one with a badge wants to do. The men returned to their empty cells in pain, cold and dirty. 


After hearing from her husband Monday, one woman wrote on Facebook:

I received a call from my husband Monday morning letting me know what had happened and to get a hold of anyone who would listen about what’s happening in Soledad. Not only was what the guards did a violation of California state law by forcing inmates in such small quarters with so many other men, but it is a violation of the inmates’ constitutional right to life by refusing them their masks. Many men were still unable to call their loved ones Monday night, as their phone books were confiscated “pending an investigation.” 

Now it’s time for us. You and me. To stand up to Warden Craig Koenig (craig.koenig@cdcr.ca.gov) and demand answers for this inhumane treatment of non-hostile prisoners.



Importantly, why were no Black guards present and why were only Black inmates assaulted?

We want Gavin Newsom to issue a statement as well as to why he allows California prisons to be run like internment camps with rations unsuitable for a child and abusive untrained, unskilled officers. Please reach out to these people and demand the targeting of Black inmates ends today.

Call or email now: Black Lives Matter! Stop the targeting of Black prisoners!

Warden Craig Koenig: 831-678-3951, craig.koenig@cdcr.ca.gov
Corrections Secretary Ralph Diaz: 916-324-7308, Ralph.Diaz@cdcr.ca.gov 
Gov. Gavin Newsom, 916-445-2841, governor@governor.ca.gov or https://govapps.gov.ca.gov/gov40mail/

Tasha Williams, an activist dedicated to bringing her husband home, can be reached at tashachildress@gmail.com.

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3) ‘Occupy City Hall’ Encampment Taken Down in Pre-Dawn Raid by N.Y.P.D.
Officers in riot gear cleared the makeshift camp in City Hall Park, which began as a protest against police abuses but then turned into a gathering of homeless people.
By Alan Feuer and Juliana Kim, July 22, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/22/nyregion/occupy-city-hall-protest-nypd.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
The scene at City Hall Park in early July, where protesters set up an encampment in Manhattan. Credit...Byron Smith for The New York Times

Police officers in riot gear cleared out the “Occupy City Hall” encampment in City Hall Park near dawn on Wednesday, shutting down a monthlong demonstration against police brutality that recently had attracted numerous homeless people.

A phalanx of officers in helmets started closing in on dozens of protesters and homeless people shortly before 4 a.m., moving in lock-step behind a wall of plastic shields, according to protesters and videos posted on social media.

Seven people were arrested after sporadic clashes erupted between officers and residents of the camp, officials said.

As the police moved through the camp, officers took down a series of tarps and makeshift tents that demonstrators and several homeless people had been living in and tossed them into city garbage trucks.

By 8 a.m., city cleaning crews had arrived to scrub graffiti from the walls of several buildings in the area.

A similar raid was launched almost a decade ago to dismantle the Occupy Wall Street camp in Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan.

In November 2011, dozens of officers marched into the park at 1 a.m., rousting protesters who had been there since September and removing their tents, tarps and belongings.

On Wednesday, Yessenia Benitez, 29, of Harlem, said she saw about 100 officers converge on City Hall Park well before sunrise, announcing to protesters that they were breaking the law and ordering them to leave at once.

Most people dispersed, she said, but a small group watched the police operation from Foley Square, a few blocks to the north.

A few protesters said the police had told them that they would be able to return to the park to retrieve their belongings. But when they went back everything — their water, clothing and personal effects — had been tossed into sanitation trucks, they said.

The occupation began on June 23 when about 100 people set up camp on a small patch of grass to the east of City Hall with the mission of bringing pressure on the City Council to cut the New York Police Department’s funding at an upcoming vote before the July 1 budget deadline.

Within a week, the small squatters’ colony grew into a ramshackle community with food service, a hand-sanitizing station and even a library where campers could go to hear lectures on mass incarceration and the school-to-prison pipeline.

Hundreds slept in the park each night, festooning benches and fences with signs decrying racism and police brutality. The plaza’s sidewalks became a kind of horizontal gallery of protest art.

The project reached its peak on June 30 when thousands crowded into the plaza after dark to watch the Council vote on a giant video screen. While the Council ultimately decided to shift nearly $1 billion away from the police, many of the protesters expressed disappointment, wanting deeper cuts. Most went home within days.

Those that remained quickly assumed a new responsibility: caring for the dozens of homeless people who had flocked to the site — which protesters started calling Abolition Park — for its free meals, open-air camping and communal sensibility.

While organizers said they felt a duty to tend to some of the city’s most vulnerable residents, problems soon arose. Fights broke out. Passers-by were harassed.

Some local residents, even those who said they supported the project’s politics, started to complain that the once-peaceful compound had turned into a shantytown marred by violence and disorder.

The camp, just feet from City Hall, presented a thorny political problem for Mayor Bill de Blasio. He has been routinely criticized by the demonstrators and his Black supporters since the larger, citywide protests, prompted by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, started in late May.

This week, Mr. de Blasio said in response to questions by reporters that he would let police officials decide when to shut down the encampment.

Neither the police nor officials at City Hall immediately responded to questions about why officers had chosen to act on Wednesday morning.

The decision to close the encampment came only days after President Trump sent teams of heavily-armed federal agents to Portland to protect federal property and to subdue protests there that have turned violent on occasion.

Mr. Trump has also threatened to send agents to New York and other cities.

Though the occupation at City Hall was over, some protesters said it was not a fatal blow to their cause.

“It’s a reminder that the fight isn’t over, and you know what, I’m glad that they reminded us now,” said Gabe Quinones, 22, who worked at the camp as a volunteer “de-escalator,” settling disputes and soothing frayed tempers. “We’ll go somewhere else with everything that we learned here and continue our work.”



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4) No, My Toddler Doesn’t Need to Learn to Code
Sales in educational toys are booming, but often there isn’t much weight to their claims of teaching kids science and math.
By Chavie Lieber, July 21, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/21/parenting/stem-toys-kids.html?action=click&module=Editors%20Picks&pgtype=Homepage

Credit...By Nick Little



Botley is a small plastic robot that makes a big claim. According to toymaker Learning Resources, Botley can teach children as young as 5 how to program computer codes. In fact, “he’ll have kids coding in minutes,” the company promises on Amazon.


Using a remote control, children can “program” a path for the robot to navigate, like moving forward or turning around. In a way, kids create an algorithm, which is a building block for computer commands.

Can Botley, which retails for about $60, teach your kid how to execute step-by-step instructions? Sure. Will Botley turn your toddler into a mini Mark Zuckerberg by the time they march into first grade? Probably not.

Botley’s not alone in tapping into parental desires to get their children on the fast track to cognitive success. The market for STEM toys — or toys that promote science, technology, engineering and math — was projected to grow at a solid clip even before schools across the world began closing. The coronavirus has supercharged this trend.

Between March 15 and July 4, the sale of science-themed toys has skyrocketed 66 percent compared to the same time last year, according to market research firm NPD Group, with parents frantically ordering chemistry sets and robotics toys to occupy their kids at home. KiwiCo, a STEM toy subscription box that delivers monthly “Kiwi Crates,” has seen a 150 percent increase in year-over-year sales from March to June.

But when it comes to STEM learning, the line between marketing and reality gets a little blurry. Many toy manufacturers make bold claims, assuring parents STEM toys will teach their kids about engineering, chemistry, robotics and so on, and the industry has ballooned in recent years, but there is little evidence to support the hype. (A spokesperson for Learning Resources confirmed the company has never performed clinical trials to prove whether Botley can teach children how to code.)

“A lot of the toys we review come with all sorts of unscrupulous claims that are not backed by science,” said Amanda Gummer, a child development psychologist and founder of the Good Play Guide, a UK-based research organization which provides advice on play and development. “Everyone wants their kid to be a genius, and that’s part of the problem,” she said.

Whether it’s Fisher-Price’s musical octopus that helps children learn “adding, subtracting and patterning skills,” hand2mind’s slime kits for kids to “learn the science behind polymer chemistry,” or Learning Resources’ robot that teaches your kid to code, STEM toys can’t always deliver on the promises of their marketing copy. Parents hoping they will somehow supplement in-school learning should be skeptical.

“The brutal honest answer is that you don’t know if it works,” Dr. Gummer said. “A lot of it is P.R.”

Dr. Gummer recommends that parents look at STEM as a category and not an accreditation — the way parents buying arts and crafts supplies would expect them to expose kids to painting or coloring without the guarantee they’ll soon have pieces in MoMA.

“A STEM toy does not mean it will teach a child something more than a regular toy, it just means that it is engaging a child in those areas,” Dr. Gummer said.

STEM learning is hard to pin down.

Educational toys are as old as toys themselves, but the term STEM dates back to the early aughts, when research reports found that the technical skills of U.S. students were inferior to those of their international counterparts. Education advocates pushed the U.S. to take a more aggressive approach to STEM categories in school, like hiring more teachers fluent in the subjects.

National anxiety about American students losing out on jobs to international candidates eventually trickled down to the toy industry, and companies have rushed to slap STEM stickers onto their products. The STEM toy industry was valued at $3.6 billion last year, according to Technavio, a market research firm. But the industry isn’t regulated by an organization like the Food and Drug Administration, which requires companies to prove the efficacy of their products, and it’s not clear how accurate many companies’ claims are.

Ken Seiter, an executive who helps develop marketing and messaging guidelines for the Toy Association, the primary trade group for the U.S. toy industry, said he realized the market had a problem when he was walking through the aisles of an annual toy fair a few years ago. STEM toys were everywhere, “but any time I would ask what qualified them as such, I got 500 different definitions,” he said.

Last year, the association released a white paper that listed 14 guidelines for STEM toys, saying they should be “open-ended” or involve “tactile sensory experiences.” However, the recommendations are not mandatory, nor is there accountability for companies that use the STEM label in their marketing without following the guidelines. The Toy Association recommends various products, but does not offer any market data or scientific evidence to support their educational value.

In fact, few researchers have studied the impact of STEM toys long enough to give weight to their claims, and those who have say the science is murky. “We’ve been studying toys for 10 years, and the one thing we’ve found that’s consistent is that every child is different. And so I’d be skeptical of any product that makes big claims,” said Julia DeLapp, the director of the Center for Early Childhood Education at Eastern Connecticut State University.

Still, big claims are not hard to find, like Learning Resources’ car tracks that teach “key science concepts of gravity, inertia, friction, push/pull, and more”; Thames & Kosmos’ DNA kits for kids 10 and up to “learn about dominant and recessive genes, the makeup of cells, chromosomes and more”; and LeapFrog’s plastic garden toys that can allegedly teach a 9-month-old about “early science concepts” and “the plant life cycle.” (Fisher-Price and LeapFrog declined to comment for this story. Hand2Mind did not respond for comment. A spokesperson for Thames & Kosmos confirmed the company does not conduct trials or experiments with its toys.)

As great as this sounds, these companies don’t provide any evidence that babies will, say, crawl away with any horticultural knowledge after playing with their toys.

For real STEM toys, get back to basics.

Childhood experts say that although there’s much to be wary of, plenty of STEM toys are beneficial — so long as parents tailor their expectations.

DeLapp believes that for toddlers and preschoolers, the simplest toys are the most effective. For math, it’s toys that help children add and subtract, and for science it’s as simple as cause and effect. She recommends Tinkertoys, MagnaTile, Lego, Lincoln Logs and Plus Plus. For science, she points to a good old magnifying glass, allowing children to inspect insects and grass.

“Simple, building toys are STEM toys, because they teach the foundations; like shapes, why a building topples over when the biggest piece goes on top,” said DeLapp. “Some of the oldest toys are still around for a reason.”

Sandra Oh Lin, the founder of KiwiCo, which sends educational toys to kids once a month, said that her company tries to demystify STEM. A recent Kiwi Crate, for example, had children ages 3 to 4 dripping water through colorful tissue paper and onto a white tote bag, showing how bleeding dyes merged to make different colors.

“STEM has a tendency to use big words and concepts, but we want to make it as accessible as possible,” said Lin.

Some experts say kids gain more from toys when they play with them on their own rather than with adults. Tzvi Hametz, who runs the Makerspace room at a Los Angeles private school called the Gindi Maimonides Academy, has seen many toys claiming to boost kids’ skills in math, science and tech. However, most, he said, require an adult’s help.

“STEM toys should be able to be done by children alone,” Hametz said. “My 3-year-old cannot use that coding toy on his own.”

Hametz still believes there’s value in exposing young children to STEM through toys, so long as parents understand that children might just be playing with the toys, as opposed to learning from them.

“STEM toys do not and will not teach your kids coding and the like, but they will hopefully allow kids to play and discover interests,” he said.

Experts say STEM toys should get children thinking, which doesn’t require expensive or flashy tech. Activities as simple as planting seeds can be just as effective in teaching children about math and science.

“You want toys that get children interested in the world around them, that get them to ask questions about how things work and why,” said DeLapp.

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5) Minneapolis Police Experience Surge of Departures in Aftermath of George Floyd Protests
The retention and recruitment problems that many police departments have experienced in recent years are especially pronounced after four Minneapolis officers were charged with Mr. Floyd’s death.
By John Eligon, July 21, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/21/us/minneapolis-police-george-floyd-protests.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=US%20News
“It’s almost like a nuclear bomb hit the city, and the people who didn’t perish are standing around,” Officer Rich Walker Sr., a 16-year Minneapolis police veteran and union official, said of the mood within the department. Credit...Andrea Ellen Reed for The New York Times

MINNEAPOLIS — Nearly two months after four of its officers were charged with killing George Floyd, the Minneapolis Police Department is reeling, with police officers leaving the job in large numbers, crime surging and politicians planning a top-to-bottom overhaul of the force.

Veteran officers say that morale within the department is lower than they have ever experienced. Some officers are scaling back their policing efforts, concerned that any contentious interactions on the street could land them in trouble. And many others are calling it quits altogether.

“It’s almost like a nuclear bomb hit the city, and the people who didn’t perish are standing around,” Officer Rich Walker Sr., a 16-year Minneapolis police veteran and union official, said of the mood within the department. “I’m still surprised that we’ve got cops showing up to work, to be honest.”

Many American police departments have faced challenges in retention and recruitment in recent years amid growing criticism of police abuses. But the woes in Minneapolis and elsewhere have only grown since May, when Mr. Floyd was killed after the police detained him.

Nearly 200 officers have applied to leave the Minneapolis Police Department because of what they describe as post-traumatic stress, said Ronald F. Meuser Jr., a lawyer representing the officers. The prospect that a department of about 850 could lose about 20 percent of its force in the coming months has prompted major concern.

Already, about 65 officers have left the department this year, surpassing the typical attrition rate of 45 a year, Chief Medaria Arradondo told the City Council during a meeting last week. Dozens of other officers have taken temporary leave since Mr. Floyd’s death, complicating the staffing picture.

Minneapolis’s police force has long had a troubled relationship with the community. Excessive force complaints have become commonplace, especially by Black residents, who account for about 20 percent of the city’s population but are more likely to be pulled over, arrested and have force used against them than white residents.

Cmdr. Scott Gerlicher, head of the Special Operations and Intelligence Division, wrote in an email to supervisors this month that, “Due to significant staffing losses of late,” the department was “looking at all options” for responding to calls, including shift, schedule and organizational changes.

The email, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times, also said the department would not “be going back to business as usual.” The guiding principle going forward, Commander Gerlicher wrote, would be to “do no harm,” and he highlighted potential reforms, including, “Looking for reasonable and safe alternatives to police services in some areas.”

“Front line supervisors play the most critical role in making meaningful changes,” he wrote. “Don’t take this lightly.”

With fewer officers to patrol, some of those on the streets find themselves stretched thin and working longer hours. Complaints about the lack of support from politicians, community members and even department commanders are part of the daily conversation in precincts and squad cars.

For years, police departments nationwide have faced a work force crisis, according to a report published last year by the Police Executive Research Forum. In a survey of more than 400 departments nationwide, the forum found that 63 percent of them saw a slight or significant decrease in the number of applicants over the previous five years, 41 percent had growing staff shortages and nearly half reported that officer tenures were decreasing.

The current climate differs from six years ago — when the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., sparked national unrest — in that the demands are not just to reform police departments, but to get rid of them, said Chuck Wexler, the executive director of the forum.

Many activists see an overdue reckoning for an institution that they say has long gotten away with brutalizing people of color with impunity.

“Policing as an institution has largely been untouchable, despite the many, many, many failings that are cultural,” said Jeremiah Ellison, a Minneapolis City Council member who supports defunding the police. “Here we are in a moment where people all over the country are saying, ‘No, no, no, no, no, we are interested in real accountability.’”

nstead of embracing change, Mr. Ellison added, the police are saying, “You’re picking on us, you don’t know how hard our job is and we’re going home.”

Several officers in Minneapolis said they felt like they all were being stereotyped because of Derek Chauvin, the white former officer who knelt on Mr. Floyd’s neck for more than eight minutes before Mr. Floyd died.

“If anything has the propensity to have a violent interaction, we already know we’re judged before they even hear the facts,” said Officer Walker, whose stop of a motorist 11 years ago led to a lawsuit that the city settled for $235,000 after several responding officers punched and kicked the driver in an episode captured on video.

To Sasha Cotton, the director of the Office of Violence Prevention in Minneapolis, there is a cruel irony to officers saying they feel stereotyped. Her office regularly works with Black men and boys to try to keep them out of violence.

“Our officers are experiencing what so often our young men and boys, who we service through the program, say they feel,” she said. “They feel like they are being judged based on the behavior of some of their peers.”

Minneapolis officers say that much of their frustration is rooted in an uncertainty over what comes next. A majority of City Council members have pledged to defund the Police Department, and they are currently in the process of trying to replace the agency with a new public safety department.

Many officers say they feel like city leaders and some residents have turned their backs on them, making them less inclined to go “above and beyond what they need to do,” said Officer Walker, the union official.

“Cops have not been to the work level of before, but it’s not a slowdown,” he added. “They’re just not being as proactive because they know they’re not supported in case something bad happens.”

Officers said they were also concerned about their job security.

Sgt. Anna Hedberg, a 14-year Minneapolis police veteran and board member of the Minneapolis Police Federation, the union representing officers, said a colleague recently told her he had another job opportunity. He has been on the force for six years, but it takes 10 years to be fully vested in his pension, so he was unsure whether he should leave.

“I told him to leave because he’s not happy,” Sergeant Hedberg said.

The tensions between the city and its Police Department come as crime is on the rise. There have been 16 homicides since June 1, more than twice as many as during the same period last year. Violent crime is up by 20 percent compared with the same stretch a year ago. Experts say there are many reasons for the spike, not just police staffing levels.

Alondra Cano, a City Council member who supports defunding the police, said that any change to the department would take time and that officers would not lose their jobs overnight. It would be better for everyone — officers included — if they worked together toward a transition, she said.

“I would prefer that people don’t resort to those extreme decisions of quitting or collecting a paycheck but not responding to calls,” she said.

For one senior officer on leave because of PTSD symptoms, the problems started when he could not sleep after long nights of work during the unrest following Mr. Floyd’s death. Eventually he got headaches, he said, and lost his appetite and desire to do anything.

“We were stepchildren. We were abandoned,” said the officer, who asked that his name be withheld because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

He saw a therapist, who told him he should take time off. He is torn about whether he will return.

“I’m coming back to chaos,” he said. “I’m coming back to no leadership. I’m coming back to an administration that doesn’t care about the officers. I’m coming back to a City Council that doesn’t want us here. I’m coming back to a family, or a community, that doesn’t want me here. Why do I want to come back to that?”

Many officers are on edge in part because they believe that Chief Arradondo and other senior department leaders have not provided clear direction to the rank and file, Sergeant Hedberg said.

“They’re waking up the next day: ‘Is it going to be the day I get transferred? Is it the day my unit’s going to be dissolved?’” she said. “People are concerned about it.”

John Elder, a spokesman for the department, said in an email: “We have not heard those complaints; in fact I have received compliments from staff about the support from the front office.”

While many officers express anxiety about the future, Officer Charles Adams III said he supported the efforts of Chief Arradondo, the first Black officer to lead the force.

Although Officer Adams has felt unsupported by the community and demoralized at times — especially after he was removed from his job as a school resource officer when the school district ended its contract with the Police Department — he said thoughts of leaving the force never crossed his mind.

“Now is not the time for us to run away,” said Officer Adams, a 19-year veteran and native of the city’s predominantly Black North Side.

“I’m a Black face. I can be out there,” he added. “I wear blue, but let’s talk: ‘What do you want to see done? How can I help you?’ I think it’s my opportunity to give people what they’ve been asking for.”

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6) End of $600 Unemployment Bonus Could Push Millions Past the Brink
A weekly supplement has helped the jobless to pay their bills and cushioned the economy. As it expires, Congress will determine what comes next.
By Ben Casselman, July 21, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/21/business/economy/coronavirus-unemployment-benefits.html

Rebekka Dunlap


When millions of Americans began losing their jobs in March, the federal government stepped in with a life preserver: $600 a week in extra unemployment benefits to allow workers to pay rent and buy groceries, and to cushion the economy.

With economic conditions again deteriorating, that life preserver will disappear within days if Congress doesn’t act to extend it. That could prompt a wave of evictions and inflict more financial harm on millions of Americans while further damaging the economy.

Even the threat of a lapse in benefits could prove harmful, economists warn, by forcing households to make precautionary spending cuts.

The benefits program, Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation, expires at the end of July. But because of a quirk in the calendar, workers in most states won’t qualify for the payments after this week. Most will be left with regular unemployment benefits, which total only a few hundred dollars a week in many states.

That means that more than 20 million Americans could soon see their weekly income fall by half or more at a time when the unemployment rate remains higher than in any period since World War II.

Economists warn that it isn’t just individual recipients who will suffer if the benefits are cut. The federal payments are injecting billions of dollars into the economy each week, money that flows to landlords, grocery stores, retailers and countless other businesses. Ernie Tedeschi, a former Treasury Department official and an economist at Evercore ISI Research, has estimated that if the payments ceased, the U.S. gross domestic product would be 2 percent smaller at the end of 2020 and there would be 1.7 million fewer jobs nationwide.

“These unemployment benefit checks are really doing a large job in propping up spending by these unemployed households,” said Joseph Vavra, a University of Chicago economist who has been studying the impact of the benefits. If they expire, he said, “there’s a good chance that what is now an unemployment problem becomes a foreclosure crisis and eviction crisis.”

Congress returned from recess this week to consider a new relief package, which could include at least a partial extension of the extra unemployment benefits. Senate Republicans and the White House are considering a roughly $1 trillion package that would retain the program but scale it back. Democrats are pressing to continue paying the full $600 a week.

But Congress seems unlikely to act before benefits lapse. And because of the antiquated computer systems in many state unemployment offices, which do the processing, it could take weeks to restart payments. That means that millions are likely to see their income drop at least temporarily.

For people depending on the checks, that uncertainty is frustrating.

“I have no idea why Congress would wait until a few days before the checks are going to run out,” said Jacob Perlman, a benefits recipient in Chicago. “This should have been done a month ago.”

Mr. Perlman, 26, earned $12 an hour as a housekeeper at a fitness club, making him one of the millions of Americans earning more on unemployment than they had on the job. But he is eager to return to work.

“The jobs simply are not there right now,” he said.

Mr. Perlman’s regular benefits from the state of Illinois total $159 a week, barely enough to cover his $500 share of the monthly rent, let alone food or other expenses. So he is already trying to save as much as possible.

Decisions like Mr. Perlman’s to curtail spending even before the benefits expire, multiplied across millions of households, are a sort of uncertainty tax on the broader economy, damping the stimulative effect of the payments.

“There are people who are on the precipice of financial disaster here,” said David Wilcox, a former Federal Reserve official who is an economist at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “We may think that the odds are that Congress will come to a reasonable conclusion. But for a person who is on the precipice of financial disaster, it’s very low comfort to be told, ‘You know, I think there’s a 70 percent chance that this is going to work out fine.’”

The risk is particularly acute for Black and Latino workers, who have been disproportionately affected by job losses and are less likely to have savings or other assets to fall back on. A recent working paper from researchers at the University of Chicago and the JPMorgan Chase Institute found that Black and Latino households cut spending by far more than white households when their income drops.

“When 30 percent of your population has no wealth, this has real implications,” said William E. Spriggs, a Howard University professor and the chief economist for the A.F.L.-C.I.O. “There isn’t a piggy bank. This is it. So when you cut their benefits, their drop in consumption is going to be huge.”

The extra unemployment payments were part of a multitrillion-dollar federal response to the pandemic’s economic devastation. Congress expanded eligibility for unemployment benefits and food stamps, sent $1,200 checks to most households and offered forgivable loans to millions of small businesses.

Together, those programs did much to offset the damage: Average personal income rose in April, the worst month of the crisis to date, and consumer spending rebounded quickly once federal dollars started flowing into the economy. Mortgage delinquencies, credit card defaults and other signs of financial stress rose by less than many forecasters initially feared.

When Congress created the various programs, it still seemed possible that the pandemic would have begun to ebb by summer and that the economy would no longer need as much federal help.

Instead, after falling steadily in May and early June, virus cases are rising in much of the country, and states are reimposing business restrictions. Real-time measures suggest that the economic recovery that began in May has begun to lose momentum, and some economists expect the unemployment rate to start climbing again.

The threat of an economic stall has led some Republicans in Washington to embrace more aggressive federal action than they were considering a few weeks ago. Larry Kudlow, a top economic adviser to President Trump and a critic of the $600 payments, said this week that there was “no way” Republicans would allow the benefits to expire entirely. But the congressional outcome remains unclear.

Some economists, particularly on the right, say there are good reasons to wind down the payments as the economy improves. But even economists who have been critical of the extra benefits say it would be a mistake to cut them off entirely.

“That’s a lot of income to just withdraw from the economy really suddenly,” said Michael R. Strain, an economist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. “Right now there’s no question that the positive economic effects of those payments are outweighing the negative economic effects.”

Mr. Strain and many other economists would like to see the benefits linked to economic conditions, ideally at the state level. That would allow payments to shrink as local economies improve, while eliminating the uncertainty that comes with setting a fixed end date and then waiting to see if Congress extends it.

Progressive economists also favor linking benefits to economic conditions. But they dismiss concerns about discouraging work when there are millions more unemployed workers than available jobs. And they argue that cutting benefits now would set off economic ripples that would lead to more job losses.

“When they can’t pay their rent, now it’s the landlord whose business is hurting,” said Sharon Parrott, a senior vice president at the progressive Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “Those are all dollars that are not circulating through the economy.”

Cutting off benefits could also increase the spread of the virus by forcing people to take jobs in which they might be exposed to it or expose others.

“When that $600 goes away, people who live week to week, paycheck to paycheck, they’re suddenly going to be unable to pay basic expenses and will be desperate for work,” said Michele Evermore, a senior policy analyst for the National Employment Law Project.

For now, people like Mr. Perlman, who lost his job at a fitness club, are left to wonder what comes next.

“I just want security,” he said. “That’s what I want. I’m not looking to profit off this. If there was a job out there, I would take it.”


Emily Cochrane contributed reporting.

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7) The Latest in School Segregation: Private Pandemic ‘Pods’
If they become the norm, less privileged kids will suffer.
By Clara Totenberg Green, July 22, 2020
Ms. Green is a social and emotional learning specialist in Atlanta Public Schools.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/22/opinion/pandemic-pods-schools.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

Social distancing in the playground of a school in London in June. Credit...Dan Kitwood/Getty Images


As school districts across the nation announce that their buildings will remain closed in the fall, parents are quickly organizing “learning pods” or “pandemic pods” — small groupings of children who gather every day and learn in a shared space, often participating in the online instruction provided by their schools. Pods are supervised either by a hired private teacher or other adult, or with parents taking turns.

At face value, learning pods seem a necessary solution to the current crisis. But in practice, they will exacerbate inequities, racial segregation and the opportunity gap within schools. Children whose parents have the means to participate in learning pods will most likely return to school academically ahead, while many low-income children will struggle at home without computers or reliable internet for online learning.

As a social emotional learning specialist, I know how important connection, community and socialization are for children and adults. I also know that parents are being crushed under the weight of having to simultaneously parent, work, and teach their children. Nowhere is the anxiety, fear and devastation that is gripping our country more evident than in our education system. The appeal of learning pods is immense. For parents who need to work and can’t supervise their children’s learning, joining a pod may feel like the only way they can educate their kids and keep their jobs.

Based on what I’ve seen online, the learning pod movement appears to be led by families with means, a large portion of whom are white. Paradoxically, at a time when the Black Lives Matter movement has prompted a national reckoning with white supremacy, white parents are again ignoring racial and class inequality when it comes to educating their children. As a result, they are actively replicating the systems that many of them say they want to dismantle.

Take the school where I work, a racially and economically diverse public elementary school in the heart of Atlanta. It’s a gentrifying school within a gentrifying neighborhood. The building is bordered by half-a-million-dollar homes on one side, and low-income apartments on the other, where a large portion of our Black students live.

But while our school is diverse, it is not integrated. As is the case across the country, white families largely socialize with one another, white children are disproportionately represented in gifted and talented programming, and white parents dominate parent committees.

This segregation will only intensify if learning pods become the norm. When people choose members of their pod, they will choose people they know and trust. In a country where 75 percent of white people report that the network of people with whom they discuss important matters is “entirely white, with no minority presence,” it is not a leap to predict that learning pods will mirror the deeply racially segregated lives of most Americans.

Parents are also more likely to join pods with families who have similarly low exposure to the coronavirus. This seemingly rational impulse will, in practice, exclude many Black and Latinx families, who are disproportionately infected by the virus. In New York City, a staggering 75 percent of all the city’s essential workers are people of color. In Georgia, Black people make up a third of the population, but, as of the end of June, they accounted for about half of all COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths in the state.

Will privileged families that have limited exposure to the virus willingly opt into learning pods with children of essential workers? And if learning pod parents have to pay to hire someone or be among the parents able to supervise on a rotating duty, is this even an option for low-income families working essential jobs?

To compound the problem, I’ve heard from my colleagues that some parents are already pressuring school leaders to create class rosters that would enable the children in learning pods to have the same teacher, making the online instruction easier to manage for these families. The implications of this when we return to the classroom could be disastrous. Schools painstakingly design class rosters to create a diverse learning environment where the academic and social-emotional needs of every child are met. Altering class rosters for the convenience of privileged families will in effect displace Black and brown children from their classrooms.

Learning pods undermine the very reason some districts are going online in the first place. Like any environment in which people gather, they’ll potentially contribute to the spread of the virus in the communities in which they exist, and that could contribute to delays in the safe reopening of schools. And if schools remain closed, the children who suffer the most harm will be the ones who rely on schools for free and reduced meals, internet access and a place to go while their parents work essential jobs. These are the very same children who will most likely be excluded from learning pods.

Many will read this article and ask what they’re supposed to do instead. I don’t have the answer. Parents are in an unimaginably hard position. Raising children without the in-person schooling so many families rely on can be a nightmare on the most personal level.

Whatever parents ultimately decide, they must understand that every choice they make in their child’s education, even the seemingly benign, has the potential to perpetuate racial inequities rooted in white supremacy. The history of public schooling in this country is one in which white parents have repeatedly abandoned public schools, or resisted integration efforts at every turn. As a result, schools are more segregated today than during the late 1960s.

We can either take this moment to continue that pattern by retreating into the comfort of our own advantages, or we can act to dismantle racist educational policies, fight for equitable distribution of school funding and build authentic community with one another. Now is the time to reimagine our beliefs, our lives and what we’re willing to do to create a future that works for all children.


Clara Totenberg Green is a social emotional learning specialist in Atlanta Public Schools.


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8) How to Give Children Joy, Even During a Pandemic
The coronavirus forces parents to weigh their kids’ safety against the need for freedom — a tension Black parents have been contending with for generations.
By Esau McCaulley, July 23, 2020
Contributing Opinion Writer
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/23/opinion/coronavirus-parenting-joy.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
Sabrena Khadija

I drove my oldest son, a middle schooler, to his baseball game a few miles down the road. There was a slight breeze, a perfect setting for summer activity.

On the field, it looked like a standard summer of boys learning the nuances of the sport, some further along the road to adult coordination than others. What stood out were the masks on all their faces: a visual reminder that we are in the summer of Covid-19. Joy and sadness, normalcy and profound change competed among the young athletes for our attention.

During the game we parents stood at least six feet away from one another. We discussed the opening of school in the fall, the politicization of wearing masks in public, and how quickly life had changed. We talked about how the last time we saw one another it was at the tryouts for the team in early March, before the world shut down. They asked me how I planned to teach my college students with all the changes, and I answered that I did not know.

As we talked, I wondered, as I have many times during the pandemic, how much to tell my children. Does a 9-year-old or a 12-year-old need to know how many have died?

This mixture of safety and peril and difficult decisions about a child’s freedom to play: It is familiar to me. Covid-19 has given all parents a small taste of what it is like to be a Black parent.

Having our bodies as potential threats because of the coronavirus has introduced all of America to what it is like to be perceived as a problem merely by our presence. The major difference is that some of us do carry an unknown virus, while blackness is simply one manifestation of God’s creativity. Nonetheless, the perceived danger has given others insight into what it is like for Black bodies, even children’s bodies, to be a source of fear.

Pandemic parenting involves a similarly challenging calculus that those of us who raise Black and brown children have faced for centuries. How do we balance the need to protect from danger with the desire to let them be young and free?

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once recounted the story of not knowing what to say when his 6-year-old daughter asked to go to a local theme park called Funtown. He did not want to tell her that she could not go because Black people were forbidden. He said that explaining segregation to his daughter was more daunting than the speeches he gave all over the country.

People often mention “the talk” as if the only conversation Black parents have to have with their children is about the complex interaction with the police. That is hard, but not the only thing. At some point we have to tell them about Funtown: the limits society wants to place on them and the struggle to tear those limits down.

My son is in the midst of the transition from early middle schooler to emerging teenager. In the strange moral reasoning of the United States, this will mean a move from cute to dangerous. His Black body and his increasing size could, in certain circumstances, be weaponized against him. Citizens and officers merely have to utter the words “I feared for my life” and his Black life could be in peril.

When do I warn him about wandering around our largely white neighborhood in the evening? How long do I let him remain a child? Am I negligent if in my attempts to give him a “normal” childhood I leave him unprepared for the challenges he faces?

I was initially hesitant to have my son return to the baseball diamond, even though it is a sport well suited for distancing. I reluctantly agreed. My son’s coach said that some teams would follow the safety rules and others would not, but that he would do the best he could to keep them safe.

At that first game, our team dutifully wore their masks. The other team did not. Had politics sneaked on to the baseball field? Were some families and teams simply not as worried as us? I did the math again. Should I interrupt the game or remove my son? We already barely had enough players to field a full squad. I decided to let him play, to be a child.

There are no easy answers as to how to parent Black children in America inside or outside a pandemic. It is not my job to tell someone how to do it.

My wife and I have drifted to a bias toward joy. We tell our children about some major events; other burdens we carry ourselves. Our children know much of the history of this country, but the focus is on Black triumph over suffering, not the suffering itself. I immerse them in the soul, hip-hop and gospel music that has lifted many a weary soul even when they would rather listen to Kidz Bop.

I have told them of Moses and the Israelites, of Mary Jesus’ mother and her dramatic yes to God. They know about Sojourner and her railroad and Martin and his dream of Mother Pollard and her rested feet. I remind them that God has looked upon their Black skin, hair and bodies and called it good.

I am making deposit after deposit of Black joy and faith in the hope that it will be with them when the inevitable struggle comes. I do so because that is what my mother did for me.

My oldest has a favorite saint, the North African church father Athanasius. He was called Athanasius Contra Mundum — against the world, a name he received for standing against seemingly insurmountable foes, even at great cost, because of his convictions. My son loves the defiance. Given that being Black in America can sometimes feel against the world, that is a great trait to admire.

My son’s team failed to emerge victorious in that first game back on the field. A socially distanced wave from across the diamond replaced the customary handshakes. Some two weeks later, it seems that we avoided infection.

I’m glad baseball is back in our lives. Even with masks covering the kids’ faces and parents shouting encouragements from afar, it is still baseball in the summer. There are still kids in the outfield more interested in the cloud formations than a pop fly. The clean double play remains the stuff of legend.

We parents had a brief moment of shared victory. We had given our children the gift that is often only available to the young: the chance for uncomplicated joy. We who looked on wondered what was next.

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9) Federal Officers Hit Portland Mayor With Tear Gas
Mayor Ted Wheeler denounced federal officers for an “egregious overreaction.” Some protesters mocked him, recalling the city police’s use of tear gas on demonstrators.
By Mike Baker, July 23, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/23/us/portland-protest-tear-gas-mayor.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

Federal officers tear gassed Mayor Ted Wheeler as they sprayed into a crowd of protesters he joined outside the federal courthouse in Portland, Ore. Mike Baker/The New York Times


PORTLAND, Ore. — The mayor of Portland, Ted Wheeler, was left coughing and wincing in the middle of his own city Wednesday night after federal officers deployed tear gas into a crowd of protesters that Mr. Wheeler had joined outside the federal courthouse.

Mr. Wheeler, who scrambled to put on goggles while denouncing what he called the “urban warfare” tactic of the federal agents, said he was outraged by the use of tear gas and that it was only making protesters more angry.

“I’m not going to lie — it stings; it’s hard to breathe,” Mr. Wheeler said. “And I can tell you with 100 percent honesty, I saw nothing which provoked this response.”

He called it an “egregious overreaction” on the part of the federal officers, and not a de-escalation strategy.

“It’s got to stop now,” he declared.

But the Democratic mayor, 57, has also long been the target of Portland protesters infuriated by the city police’s own use of tear gas, which was persistent until a federal judge ordered the city to use it only when there was a safety issue. As Mr. Wheeler went through the crowds on Wednesday, some threw objects in his direction, and others called for his resignation, chanting, “Tear Gas Teddy.”

After a large wave of tear gas sent Mr. Wheeler away from the scene, some protesters mocked him, asking how it felt. Mr. Wheeler said that joining the protesters at the front of the line was just one way he was going to try to rid the city of the federal tactical teams.

“A lot of these people hate my guts,” Mr. Wheeler said in an interview, looking around at the crowd. But he said they were unified in wanting federal officers gone.

The mayor has called for federal agents to leave the city after they arrived to subdue the city’s long-running unrest. Dressed in camouflage and tactical gear and unleashing tear gas, federal officers have clashed violently with protesters and pulled some people into unmarked vans in what Gov. Kate Brown called “a blatant abuse of power.”

Some protesters called the mayor’s arrival at the protest scene a photo op. Sean Smith, who has been at the protests for weeks, said Mr. Wheeler, who also serves as police commissioner, needs to take more action to control his Police Department and align with protesters.

“He should probably be out here every night,” Mr. Smith said.

By early Thursday morning, with protesters still outside both the federal courthouse and the county justice center across the street, federal officers continued deploying tear gas and the Portland Police Bureau repeatedly warned that city officers might also use it.

The demonstrations, fueled by a wide array of grievances, including against police brutality, have rocked Portland for 55 consecutive nights, persisting even as other protests have waned in many other parts of the country since the killing of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis.

The city has become a target of President Trump, who has embraced a law-and-order message in his re-election campaign. While federal officers were deployed to Portland to purportedly quell unrest and protect federal property, their arrival has only galvanized the movement, with the numbers of protesters each night swelling into the thousands.

On Wednesday night and into Thursday morning, protesters gathered around a temporary fence that federal officers had erected during the day. They shot fireworks at the building, and some breached the fence. Federal officers, wearing camouflage and tactical gear, emerged to fire tear gas and less-lethal munitions, and to arrest those who breached the fence.

While the Trump administration has labeled the protesters “violent anarchists,” Mr. Wheeler decided to go into the crowd on Wednesday night for what he deemed a “listening session,” and even after people were following and cursing him, he ended up spending three hours there.

At times he was jeered, such as when he told the crowd that he would not promise to abolish the Police Department. Other times, he drew cheers, such as when he demanded that the federal government “stop occupying our city.”

“If they launch the tear gas against you, they are launching the tear gas against me,” Mr. Wheeler said.

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10) Derek Chauvin Charged With Multiple Tax-Related Felonies in Minnesota
The former Minneapolis police officer and his wife were charged with filing fraudulent tax returns from 2014 through 2019.
By Will Wright,  July 22, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/22/us/derek-chauvin-tax-fraud.html?action=click&module=Latest&pgtype=Homepage

Derek Chauvin, a former police officer, is accused of killing George Floyd. Credit...Hennepin County Sheriff, via Associated Press


Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer accused of killing George Floyd, was charged with multiple tax-related felonies, prosecutors announced on Wednesday.

Mr. Chauvin and his wife, Kellie Chauvin, failed to file income tax returns and pay Minnesota income taxes, and underreported and underpaid income taxes, according to Washington County prosecutors. The investigation into six years of tax filings, prosecutors said, also showed that the Chauvins did not pay the proper amount of sales tax on a vehicle.

The charges against Mr. Chauvin and Ms. Chauvin, who filed for divorce days after Mr. Floyd’s death on May 25, come after an investigation by the Minnesota Department of Revenue and the Oakdale Police Department.

“Whether you are a prosecutor or police officer, or you are doctor or a realtor, no one is above the law,” the county’s chief prosecutor, Pete Orput, said in a statement.

Mr. Chauvin, 44, was previously charged with second-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter after he held his knee on Mr. Floyd’s neck for more than eight minutes during an arrest. The deadly encounter with Mr. Floyd, which bystanders captured on video, led to weeks of nationwide protests demanding police reform.

During his 19-year tenure as a police officer, Mr. Chauvin was the subject of at least 16 misconduct complaints. He was fired along with three other officers charged with aiding and abetting in Mr. Floyd’s death, and is awaiting trial in a Minnesota state prison.

A defense lawyer representing Mr. Chauvin could not immediately be reached for comment about the tax evasion charges. It was unclear whether Ms. Chauvin had a lawyer in the case.

A tax investigation into the Chauvins began last month, according to the prosecutors, who say that the Chauvins filed fraudulent tax returns from 2014 through 2019, and that they failed to timely file state income tax returns from 2016 through 2019.

The complaint claims that Mr. and Ms. Chauvin were aware of their failed tax obligations because revenue officials had reached out to them multiple times last year about a missing 2016 tax return.

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11) Large DNA Study Traces Violent History of American Slavery
Scientists from the consumer genetics company 23andMe have published the largest DNA study to date of people with African ancestry in the Americas.
By Christine Kenneally, July 23, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/23/science/23andme-african-ancestry.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Science
An 1823 cross-section diagram of a ship used to carry enslaved people. Credit...incamerastock/Alamy


More than one and a half centuries after the trans-Atlantic slave trade ended, a new study shows how the brutal treatment of enslaved people has shaped the DNA of their descendants.

The report, which included more than 50,000 people, 30,000 of them with African ancestry, agrees with the historical record about where people were taken from in Africa, and where they were enslaved in the Americas. But it also found some surprises.

For example, the DNA of participants from the United States showed a significant amount of Nigerian ancestry — an unexpected finding, as the historical record does not show evidence of enslaved people taken directly to the United States from Nigeria.

At first, historians working with the researchers “couldn’t believe the amount of Nigerian ancestry in the U.S.,” said Steven Micheletti, a population geneticist at 23andMe who led the study.

After consulting another historian, the researchers learned that enslaved people were sent from Nigeria to the British Caribbean, and then were further traded into the United States, which could explain the genetic findings, he said.

The study illuminates one of the darkest chapters of world history, in which 12.5 million people were forcibly taken from their homelands in tens of thousands of European ships. It also shows that the historical and genetic records together tell a more layered and intimate story than either could alone.

The study, which was published on Thursday in the American Journal of Human Genetics, represents “real progress in how we think that genetics contributes to telling a story about the past,” said Alondra Nelson, a professor of social science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., who was not involved in the study.

Although the work is commendable for making use of both historical and genetic data, Dr. Nelson said, it was also “a missed opportunity to take the full step and really collaborate with historians.” The history of the different ethnic groups in Africa, for example, and how they related to modern and historical geographic boundaries, could have been explored in greater depth, she said.

The study began as a dream project of Joanna Mountain, senior director of research at 23andMe, even before the company had any customers. Over 10 years she and her team built a genetic database. Primarily the participants were 23andMe customers whose grandparents were born in one of the geographic regions of trans-Atlantic slavery. All participants consented to have their DNA used in the research.

In the new study, Dr. Micheletti’s team compared this genetic database with a historical one, Slave Voyages, which contains an enormous amount of information about slavery, such as ports of embarkation and disembarkation, and numbers of enslaved men, women and children.

The researchers also consulted with some historians to identify gaps in their data, Dr. Mountain said. Historians told them, for example, that they needed representation from critical regions, like Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The team worked with academics connected to West African institutions to find that data.

The size of the project’s dataset is “extraordinary,” said David Reich, a professor of genetics at Harvard who was not part of the project.

Because it drew participants from a direct-to-consumer database of millions of people, the study was able to “ask and answer questions about the past and about how people are related to each other” that could not be asked by academics like himself, he said. At best, academic projects are able to study hundreds or a few thousand people, and generally that data does not also include the genealogical information that the 23andMe research participants provided.

The findings show remarkable alignment with the historical record. Historians have estimated, for example, that 5.7 million people were taken from West Central Africa to the Americas. And the genetic record shows a very strong connection between people in West Central Africa and all people with African ancestry in the Americas.

Historians have also noted that the people who were taken to Latin America from Africa disembarked from West Central Africa, but many were taken originally from other regions like Senegambia and the Bight of Benin. And the new genetic evidence supports this, showing that the descendants of enslaved people in Latin America generally carry genetic connections with two or three of these regions in Africa.

Historical evidence shows that enslaved people in the United States and the British Caribbean, by contrast, were taken from a larger number of regions of Africa. Their descendants today show a genetic connection to people in six regions in Africa, the study found.

The historical record shows that of the 10.7 million enslaved people who disembarked in the Americas (after nearly 2 million others died on the journey), 60 percent were men. But the genetic record shows that it was mostly enslaved women who contributed to the present-day gene pool.

The asymmetry in the experience of enslaved men and women — and indeed, many groups of men and women in centuries past — is well understood. Enslaved men often died before they had a chance to have children. Enslaved women were often raped and forced to have children.

The 23andMe project found this general pattern, but also uncovered a startling difference in the experience of men and women between regions in the Americas.

The scientists calculated that enslaved women in the United States contributed 1.5 times more to the modern-day gene pool of people of African descent than enslaved men. In the Latin Caribbean, they contributed 13 times more. In Northern South America, they contributed 17 times more.

What’s more, in the United States, European men contributed three times more to the modern-day gene pool of people of African descent than European women did. In the British Caribbean, they contributed 25 times more.

This genetic evidence, the scientists say, may be explained by local practices. In the United States, segregation between enslaved people and the European population may have made it more likely that the child of an enslaved mother would have an enslaved father. But in other regions where enslaved men were less likely to reproduce, dangerous practices like rice farming — in which harsh conditions and muddy fields made it easier to drown, and malaria was common — may have killed many of them before they could have children.

In some regions in Latin America, the government enacted programs that brought men from Europe to father children with enslaved women in order to intentionally diminish the African gene pool.


The study illustrates how much physical and sexual violence were part of slavery — and how they are still built into our society, Dr. Nelson said. It confirms the “mistreatment, discrimination, sexual abuse, and violence that has persisted for generations,” she said, and that many people are protesting today.


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12) There Is a ‘Great Silent Majority.’ But It Stands Against Trump.
And the minority he represents.
By Jamelle Bouie, July 24, 2020
Opinion Columnist
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/24/opinion/trump-silent-majority.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
The Kenton neighborhood in North Portland. Credit...Leah Nash for The New York Times

President Trump believes he represents the “silent majority” of the country against a dangerous, radical minority. He says as much on Twitter, frequently yelling “SILENT MAJORITY” at his followers. Accordingly, his campaign for re-election has tried to appeal to this “majority” with displays tailored to its perceived interests.

Because Trump believes that this silent majority is protective of Confederate statues and other monuments, he marked Independence Day with a speech on July 3 denouncing “angry mobs” for “defacing our most sacred memorials” and “unleashing a wave of violent crime in our cities.” Because he also believes that this silent majority fears integration and diversity, he has issued constant warnings to the “suburban housewives of America” that Joe Biden, the former vice president who is his opponent in the election, will destroy their neighborhoods with affordable housing. “People have worked all their lives to get into a community, and now they’re going to watch it go to hell,” he said last week. And because he believes that this silent majority is hostile to protests against police brutality, he has deployed federal law enforcement officers to Portland and other cities to suppress “anarchists” and generate “law-and-order” images for his campaign.

Unfortunately for Trump, there’s quite a bit of distance between his perception and our reality. Most Americans support efforts to remove Confederate statues and monuments; most Americans welcome racial and ethnic diversity and few believe their communities should be less diverse; and most Americans are supportive of the Black Lives Matter movement and protests against police brutality — 67 percent, according to the Pew Research Center.

There is a silent majority in this country, and it is arrayed against a radical, extremist minority. But it stands against Trump, not the other away around. He and his allies are and always have been in the minority, acting in ways that frighten and disturb the broad middle of the electorate. And as long as Trump cannot see this — as long as he holds to his belief in a secret, silent pro-Trump majority — he and his campaign will continue to act in ways that diminish his chance of any legitimate victory in the 2020 presidential election.

It’s worth unpacking the phrase “silent majority.” It dates back to a speech given in late 1969 by Richard Nixon defending the Vietnam War at a moment when antiwar sentiment was on the rise. “As president of the United States,” Nixon said, “I would be untrue to my oath of office if I allowed the policy of this nation to be dictated by the minority who holds that point of view and who try to impose it on the nation by mounting demonstrations on the street.” He continued: “And so tonight, to you, the great silent majority, my fellow Americans, I ask for your support.”

Nixon’s basic view of American politics was that the country was divided between a disruptive, countercultural left (enabled by feckless, liberal elites) and a broad middle of Americans who craved order and stability. Less than a month before that speech, he convened a secret group he called the “Middle America Committee,” tasked with reaching a “large and politically powerful white middle class” that is “deeply troubled, primarily over the erosion of what they consider to be their values.” These Americans, in the view of the committee, felt that they had “lost control of a complicated and impersonal society which oppresses them with high taxes, spiraling inflation and enforced integration.”

Nixon identified with that middle — he spoke directly to its fears and anxieties about race, crime and rapid cultural change, as well as its resentments toward those groups (like the Black Power or women’s liberation movement) that might try to overturn the existing social order.

And he could do this, in part, because the “the great silent majority” within Middle America shared a similar position in the social and economic landscape of the country. They were nearly all white (of varying ethnic origins); some were college-educated but the vast majority were not; they had left the cities for the suburbs, part of the “white flight” that transformed the built environment of the country.

The silent majority of 1969 was a singular grouping of Americans. The silent majority of 2020 is not. It is diverse, made up of many millions of Black, Hispanic and Asian-Americans as well as whites. It is still largely working and middle-class, and it still lives in the suburbs, but those suburbs are also more diverse and heterogeneous. This “silent majority” isn’t as worried about crime and disorder — violent crime is still near a 30-year-low — but it is concerned with economic security and the rising cost of housing, health care and education. Faced with protests against police brutality, this “silent majority” wants reform and sees racism as a serious problem for the country. And in the midst of a deadly pandemic, it wants the federal government to take control and manage the crisis as best as it can, rather than try to wish it away.

What the silent majority doesn’t want are spectacles like the crackdown in Lafayette Square or the current operation in Portland. What it doesn’t want are endless displays of cruelty for its own sake. Although this silent majority has no uniform view of how to handle issues like immigration, it stands against the hostile rhetoric and draconian policies of the present administration.

To Trump and his allies, the country is filled with “shy” supporters just waiting for the right time to reveal themselves; they think they can rally this public to their side with a violent demonstration of “law and order.” They think they can run the Nixon playbook again, not realizing that to the broad middle of the country, they are the ones who represent the politics of division, disruption and disorder.

Or maybe they do realize it. Earlier this week, Trump issued a memorandum directing Wilbur Ross, the Commerce Secretary, who oversees the Census Bureau, to exclude unauthorized immigrants from the final report for the purposes of apportionment in the House of Representatives. Like last year’s blocked attempt to add a citizenship question to the census, this would reduce representation for states and localities with heavy immigrant populations — legal or otherwise — shifting power to more rural, more white, more Republican areas of the country.

This is not the move of a president who believes his party holds a majority of the country. It is the move of a president who knows he is in the minority, who knows his coalition cannot win a fair fight for future political power.

The silent majority of the country is against Trump, his allies and his would-be successors. He is trying to build a world where that doesn’t actually matter.

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13) Meet the New C.D.C. Director: Walmart
Why are big corporations requiring masks when many states still do not?
"“While such efforts by Walmart and other big payers help to restrain health care costs, the larger problem is that we’ve been abdicating health care policy to profit-seeking corporations.”
By Bill Saporito, July 24, 2020
Mr. Saporito is a contributor to the editorial board.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/24/opinion/walmart-coronavirus-masks.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
Walmart is among the retailers that now require the wearing of masks in their stores. Credit...Eduardo Munoz/Reuters

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention opened branch offices in Bentonville, Ark., and Seattle this month. Not officially. But with the president trying to distance himself from responsibility for the coronavirus crisis, and Southern governors amplifying the damage with their flawed reopening strategies, the nation’s retailers have become the first line of defense against the pandemic.

From the headquarters of Walmart (which includes Sam’s Club) and Starbucks came the directive that all customers must wear masks. The conservative Southeasterner and liberal Northwesterner were followed by other national retailers, including Kohl’s, CVS, Walgreens, Publix and Target. Wearing a mask is a “simple step everyone can take for their safety and the safety of others in our facilities,” said Dacona Smith and Lance de la Rosa, the chief operating officers of Walmart U.S. and Sam’s Club, on the corporate website.

So simple that you’d think even a president or a governor could do it, yet Mr. Trump could only muster a halfhearted tweet on Monday conceding that “many people say that it is Patriotic to wear a face mask.” Many people not named Donald Trump. People with names like Robert Redfield, director of the C.D.C., who noted that mask wearing isn’t so much patriotic as prudent. “The data is clearly there, that masking works,” he said. Without the visible backing of the president, though, Dr. Redfield lacks the authority of, say, a guy who sells caramel brûlée lattes. Even after finally, grudgingly, coming around to the idea that masks work, Mr. Trump was spotted in public without one.

For Starbucks, that caffeinated brand of corporate progressivism founded by Howard Schultz, the face mask rule seems in keeping with the corporate culture. Mr. Schultz, moreso than Seattle’s other big retail boss, Jeff Bezos, has a social conscience. Starbucks offered health care to full-time and even part-time employees long before other big chains did. The company has also learned from its experience with the pandemic in China.

Walmart’s conscience is evolving. Last year its C.E.O., Doug McMillon, took a stand against the N.R.A. and gun violence in asking customers in open-carry states to stop openly bringing firearms into his stores, which have been the sites of several mass shootings. The Walmart founder Sam Walton was an avid bird hunter, and hunting and fishing are important departments in the stores. So you can still buy a shotgun at Walmart, but you have to wear a mask to do it.

The mask rule may create some tension in the deep-red burgs in Arkansas or Texas where Walmart can be the biggest game in town. But mandatory masks could turn out to be a competitive issue, too, as consumers seek safety. Winn-Dixie, a Southern supermarket chain, had resisted masks, but changed its mind this week. Putting customers at risk for political reasons is one thing; putting your business at risk is another.

Walmart, like other large corporations, is wading deeper into health care and health care policy. With more than a million employees, it probably buys more health care than many cities. For serious procedures such as heart surgery, for instance, the company has made deals with “Centers of Excellence” such as Cleveland Clinic where employees can get better outcomes at a lower cost over many local practitioners. Other companies have underwritten medical tourism to Mexico or Europe (pre-pandemic) for the same reason.

The company has also opened Walmart Health centers, which offer customers discount doctoring and dentistry, including $30 checkups and mental health counseling at $1 per minute. True to its operating philosophy, Walmart said it has cut the cost of basic health care delivery by some 40 percent compared with conventional practices.

Walmart is also moving directly into selling health insurance to the public. And why not? It sees a huge market opportunity in the fat profit margins and diffident service of the current players. And because we’ll all be dead before the Republican Party delivers the affordable health care insurance it has promised will replace Obamacare.

While such efforts by Walmart and other big payers help to restrain health care costs, the larger problem is that we’ve been abdicating health care policy to profit-seeking corporations. This isn’t a great idea, even if it’s well meaning in the beginning. There’s a long tradition of corporate medicine, from 19th- and 20th-century social welfare model companies such as H.J. Heinz and Hershey to Henry Ford’s later attempt to control every aspect his workers’ lives. In company towns, coal and steel companies supported clinics to repair the damage being done to employees in the mills and mines. It was only in the years after World War II that corporations formally assumed health care as part of collecting bargaining agreements, setting the pattern for the country.

Rather than use policy to help corporations get a better handle on Covid-19 safety, the Trump administration is instead focused on absolving them of liability if they don’t act to keep employees and customers safe. Perversely, when the airline industry begged the Federal Aviation Administration to impose a mandatory mask rule for passengers, it got shot down. The F.A.A.’s intransigence is now threatening thousands of airline jobs, if not the carriers themselves, because consumers don’t have enough confidence that flying is safe.

If there are no customers, indemnity from liability is not of much use. It is this vacuum of responsibility that is compelling the businesses that are expert at selling coffee, underwear and groceries to manage the pandemic across their swath of the economy. That they are doing a better job than the Trump administration is beyond pathetic.

Bill Saporito is a contributor to the editorial board.


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14) Gold vs. Salmon: An Alaska Mine Project Just Got a Boost
The Trump Administration, rejecting concerns over the risks to Alaska’s fishery, cleared the way on Friday for the Pebble Mine.
By Henry Fountain, Photographs by Acacia Johnson, July 24, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/24/climate/pebble-mine-alaska-environment.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
A work camp on the tundra near the site of the proposed Pebble Mine in Southwest Alaska.

A brown bear catching salmon in Katmai National Park and Preserve, 30 miles from Bristol Bay.

Hundreds of thousands of sockeye salmon head upstream in the park to spawn.

Diamond Point, where a port would be built to ship metals from the mine, 80 miles away.

A brown bear and her three spring cubs in the salt marsh of Chinitna Bay.

From the air it looks like just another tract of Alaska’s endless, roadless tundra, pockmarked with lakes and ponds, with a scattering of some of the state’s craggy mountains.

But this swath of land, home to foraging bears and spawning salmon about 200 miles southwest of Anchorage, has been a battleground for years.

The fight is over what lies just below the surface: one of the richest deposits of copper, gold and other valuable metals in the world. It sets two of the state’s most important industries, mining and fishing, against each other.

A mining company plans to dig a pit, more than a mile square and a third of a mile deep, over two decades to obtain the metals, estimated to be worth at least $300 billion.

Supporters say the project, known as the Pebble Mine, would be an economic boost for a remote region that has missed out on the North Slope oil boom and other resource-extraction development in the state over the past half century. It would employ nearly 1,000 people, and the Canada-based company, Northern Dynasty Minerals, would pay for infrastructure improvements in some Native Alaskan villages and provide cash dividends totaling at least $3 million to people in the area.

But opposition has long been widespread, both in the region and statewide, with concerns about environmental damage and the potential for harming another critical resource: salmon. The fish is the main traditional subsistence food for many of the Native Alaskans in the region and the basis of both a thriving sport-fishing industry and, in nearby Bristol Bay, one of the largest commercial wild salmon fisheries in the world.

The mine will be located in two watersheds that feed fish-spawning rivers. Opponents say tailings left from the mining operation pose risks if heavy metals or other contaminants from them leach into groundwater or if dams holding back the tailings fail in an earthquake.

Tom Collier, the chief executive of Pebble Partnership, the Northern Dynasty subsidiary developing the project, said the mine was designed to minimize those and other risks.

The deposit was discovered in the late 1980s, and planning for a mine began in earnest about 15 years ago. It drew opposition from leaders in both parties from the start, as battle lines between mining and fishing were established. But the project was aided by the pro-mining stance of the governor at the time, Sarah Palin.

Under President Barack Obama, the project was blocked in 2014 by the Environmental Protection Agency, largely over concerns about the risks to salmon.

But the Pebble Mine gained new momentum under President Trump’s more industry-friendly policies. While at first continuing its criticism of the project, the Environmental Protection Agency eventually reversed the Obama-era decision blocking it.

On Friday, the Army Corps of Engineers issued a final environmental impact statement, or E.I.S., for the project. Under normal operations, the Corps wrote, the project would not result in “long-term changes in the health of the commercial fisheries in Bristol Bay.”

In addition to the open-pit mine, the plan would include large dammed ponds for the tailings, some of them toxic, that result from mining and concentrating the metals, 80 miles of road and pipeline to carry the concentrate to a new port on Cook Inlet, and a 165-mile natural gas pipeline for a generating plant to power the operation.

In an interview this week, Mr. Collier described the release of the final impact statement as “the most significant day in the 15-odd-year history of the Pebble project.”

“It’s really for the first time that a federal agency has conducted a rigorous scientific review of the specific project Pebble wants to build,” he said. The conclusion that the mine was not going to damage the salmon fishery would be “unequivocal,” he added.

But in public comments on a draft of the environmental impact statement last year, opponents suggested that the review was not so rigorous. They pointed to numerous hazardous risks, including the potential for a tailings dam failure that could contaminate waterways used by spawning fish and harm the Bristol Bay fishery, which employs about 15,000 people.

Alaska is the most seismically active state in the nation, and critics said the Corps of Engineers had not taken sufficient account of the risk of earthquakes or volcanic activity, and that its analysis of the dam designs was inadequate. Some of the dams would be hundreds of feet high

Tailing dam failures can unleash a sudden flood of contaminated slurry with disastrous effects. A 2019 failure at an iron mine in Brazil, for example, killed more than 250 people. Given the Pebble Mine’s remote location, the risk to people might be low, but the heavy metals and other contaminants could make nearby rivers toxic to fish.

This year, after the Corps sent a preliminary version of the final impact statement to federal and state agencies and other groups, the critiques continued, according to documents obtained by opponents of the project. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service scientists, for example, wrote that the version failed to acknowledge that habitat destruction from development of the mine “would erode the portfolio of habitat diversity and associated life history diversity that stabilize annual salmon returns to the Bristol Bay region.”

At a news briefing this week, David Hobbie, chief of the Corps’ Alaska district regulatory division, said, “We’ve done our best to address all the comments we’ve received.”

In a month or perhaps longer, the Corps will make a final decision on whether to allow the project to proceed. Approval is expected.

That will almost certainly not be the end of the story, however.

Even after the Corps’ latest review, “the E.I.S. is so lacking and thoroughly inadequate, I anticipate legal challenges,” said Brian Litmans, legal director of Trustees for Alaska, a nonprofit public interest law firm.

The project will require more permits, mostly from the state, which could take three years to obtain. And should President Trump lose re-election, a Democratic administration could move to block the project once again.

In Alaska, statewide public opinion polls have consistently shown more opposition than support, and locally the anti-mine feelings are even stronger. “Opposition is overwhelming throughout the bay,” Mr. Litmans said.

Opponents are focusing on an 11th-hour change to one aspect of the project. In May, the Corps announced it had changed its determination of what is called the “least environmentally damaging practicable alternative” for the transportation route between the mine and Cook Inlet.

The company and the Corps had both favored a route that included a ferry crossing of Iliamna Lake, one of the largest in the United States. But after hearing concerns about the potential impact on winter travel and seal hunting on the lake, the Corps now says a land-only route, along the northern edge of the lake, is the preferred one, although it could destroy several thousand acres of wetlands.

The Bristol Bay Native Corporation, one of 13 regional corporations established in the 1970s in the settlement of Native claims to Alaska’s lands, owns subsurface rights on land that the route would cross.

“We believe the subsurface will be impacted” by construction of a road and pipelines, said Daniel Cheyette, the corporation’s vice president for land and resources. “We’ve not given Pebble permission to utilize those or impact those.”

As to whether the corporation might negotiate on the issue, Mr. Cheyette said that while he could not speak for his board of directors, “I believe that is nonnegotiable.”

“We’ve been fighting this for a long time and will continue to fight it,” he said.

Other Native Alaskan groups, including the village corporation of Pedro Bay on Iliamna Lake, also plan to withhold access to their lands.

But not all Native Alaskan groups are opposed to the project.

A consortium of five village corporations in the area expects to become a transportation contractor for the mine. And the village corporation for Iliamna, about 20 miles from the mine site, has already negotiated with the developer to allow access to 68,000 acres of land it owns.

“We don’t see Pebble damaging the area like everybody claims,” said Lisa Reimers, a board member of the corporation, Iliamna Natives Ltd. “Pebble has to do it right because there are so many people watching them.”

Ms. Reimers was raised in Iliamna, in a house that had no running water or electricity until she was 12. Her parents, she said, “wanted the best for their family and for their grandkids today.”

“They didn’t see Iliamna surviving without a project like Pebble.”

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15) How One of America’s Whitest Cities Became the Center of B.L.M. Protests
In a state with a dark and brutal racist history, the Black Lives Matter protests in Portland, Ore., have been overwhelmingly attended by white demonstrators.
By Thomas Fuller, July 24, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/24/us/portland-oregon-protests-white-race.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

Protesters gathered to listen to Black Lives Matter activists in Portland, Ore., on Thursday. Credit...Octavio Jones for The New York Times

PORTLAND, Ore. — Seyi Fasoranti, a chemist who moved to Oregon from the East Coast six months ago, has watched the Black Lives Matter protests in Portland with fascination. A sea of white faces in one of the whitest major American cities has cried out for racial justice every night for nearly two months.

“It’s something I joke about with my friends,” Mr. Fasoranti, who is Black, said over the din of protest chants this week. “There are more Black Lives Matter signs in Portland than Black people.”

Loud advocacy has been a hallmark of Portland life for decades, but unlike past protests over environmental policies or foreign wars, racism is a more complicated topic in Oregon, one that is intertwined with demographics and the state’s legacy of some of the most brutal anti-Black laws in the nation.

During 56 straight nights of protests here, throngs of largely white protesters have raised their fists in the air and chanted, “This is not a riot, it’s a revolution.” They have thrown water bottles at the federal courthouse, tried to pry off the plywood that protects the entrance and engaged in running battles with police officers through clouds of tear gas. In recent nights, the number of protesters has swollen into the thousands.

Damany Igwé, 43, a bath products salesman who is Black and has taken part in dozens of the protests, says white crowds have shielded him from the police, all the while yelling “Black power!”

“I feel the most protected that I ever have in my city,” Mr. Igwé said during a Wednesday night protest that lasted well into Thursday morning. “White people can’t understand what we’ve been through completely, but they are trying to empathize. That’s a beginning.”

Oregon’s relative homogeneity — the state is three-quarters white compared with neighboring California, where white people make up 37 percent of the population — was not accidental. The state was founded on principles of white supremacy. A 19th-century lash law called for whipping any Black person found in the state. In the early part of the 20th century Oregon’s Legislature was dominated by members of the Ku Klux Klan.

Today the average income level for Black families in Portland is nearly half that of white residents and police shootings of Black residents are disproportionate to their 6 percent share of the population. Three years ago, two good Samaritans were fatally stabbed while trying to stop a man from shouting slurs at two African-American women on a commuter train, one of whom was wearing Muslim dress.

“Really there are two Portlands that exist,” said Walidah Imarisha, a scholar of Black history in Oregon. “There’s white Portland and Portland of color.”

The differences, she said, cover almost every aspect of life. “There’s massive racial disparities around wealth, health care, schools and criminal legal systems that white Portlanders just don’t understand.”

Yet on the streets this week in Portland there was optimism among Black protest leaders who generally spoke admiringly of the large white crowds, which were reinvigorated last week after clashes with federal riot police officers who are protecting a U.S. courthouse and other buildings.

Xavier Warner, a Black protest organizer, called the predominance of white protesters “a beautiful thing” that speaks to the progressive ethos in the city.

Teal Lindseth, another Black organizer, said she saw the irony in predominantly white Portland having among the longest continuous protests stemming from the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25. But she said she was thankful for the strength in numbers. “They hurt us less when there are more people,” she said.

The role of white protesters has some detractors in the Black community.

In an op-ed published Thursday in The Washington Post, the Rev. E.D. Mondainé, the president of the Portland branch of the N.A.A.C.P., called the protests a “spectacle” that distracted attention from the Black Lives Matter movement.

“Are they really furthering the cause of justice, or is this another example of white co-optation?” he wrote.

But in a measure of the divided opinion on this question, Mr. Mondainé’s predecessor at the N.A.A.C.P., Jo Ann Hardesty, a city commissioner, rejected his criticism.

“There’s a lot of new, aware folks who have joined into the battle for Black lives,” she said during a news conference on Thursday.

Ms. Hardesty, who took office in 2019 as the first African-American woman on the Portland City Council, said the protests were serving the dual purposes of fighting racial injustice and rejecting the presence of federal agents sent to the city by the Trump administration.

Both protest goals were important, she said. “And one is not any more important than the other.”

Joe Lowndes, an expert on right-wing politics and race at the University of Oregon, said the protests reflected an intertwining of interests in recent years between racial justice advocates and the largely white anti-fascist movement. Both are deeply distrustful of the police and want police powers and budgets curtailed. The presence of far-right groups in Oregon, emboldened during the Trump administration, has also brought anti-racists and anti-fascists into closer alignment, he said.

Speeches and chants at the protests have touched on the legacy of slavery and the stripping of lands from Native Americans. From a historical perspective, the sight of hundreds of white protesters chanting one of that movement’s most popular refrains — “Stolen lands and stolen people” — can be jarring.

As the destination of the Lewis and Clark expeditions, Oregon once symbolized the conquest of the American West and the subjugation of Native peoples.

Some white protesters said it was this white supremacist legacy that helped spur them into the streets.

“Bringing that history to light is definitely a motivating factor,” said Liza Lopetrone, a veterinary nurse who joined the Wall of Moms protest this week that consisted mostly of white women locking arms in the face of the federal troops. “Oregon has an extremely racist history. I’m not from here but I take responsibility for it now.”

Another woman at the protest, Julie Liggins, had a more immediate connection to prejudice and racism in Portland. She is white and her husband of three decades, Reginald, is Black.

During the years he drove his car to work, Mr. Liggins said, he was pulled over by Portland police multiple times without cause. He said he switched to riding the bus. But two years ago when Mr. Liggins, who is 60, ran to catch a bus, the police pulled it over after misidentifying him for a robbery suspect in his 20s.

Mr. Liggins said he was encouraged by the protests even if he wished the reckoning over race in America had occurred earlier. And he loves his life in Portland.

“You can literally go days without seeing people that look like you,” he said. “But I find Portland to be a very progressive city despite its racist past. I can honestly say that as an interracial couple we haven’t had any problems here.”

Mr. Fasoranti, the chemist, says he has been impressed with the awareness of racial issues in Portland and described the current round of protests as something that “feels genuine.”

He says he feels welcome in the city and was intrigued soon after he arrived when a white motorist pulled over to the sidewalk and asked if he needed a ride. He has been invited to conversations about gentrification and the displacement of Black residents.

“There are less of these conversations in New York or New Jersey, where I used to live,” he said.

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16) Feds Sending Tactical Team to Seattle, Expanding Presence Beyond Portland
After outrage over the presence of federal agents in Portland, Ore., the Trump administration is sending a team to Seattle. Officials say they will be on standby.
By Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Adam Goldman and Mike Baker,  July 23, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/23/us/seattle-protests-feds.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=US%20News
Mayor Jenny Durkan of Seattle last week. She said on Thursday that she did not want federal agents deployed to the city. Credit...Ted S. Warren/Associated Press

The Trump administration, which has pledged to use the full force of the government to protect federal property, expanded that effort on Thursday by sending a team of tactical border officers to stand by for duty in Seattle.

The Special Response Team being deployed is similar to the tactical teams currently operating in Portland, Ore., where local officials have vehemently objected to their efforts to subdue street protests. Seattle officials have also said they do not want federal agents sent to target protesters.

Agents from the Special Response Team, operated under U.S. Customs and Border Protection, are typically deployed for intense law enforcement operations, similar to the agency’s BORTAC group that has operated in Portland.

“The C.B.P. team will be on standby in the area, should they be required,” the Federal Protective Service said in a statement about the Seattle effort.

A spokesman for the agency, who requested anonymity to speak about the operation, said the border officers were sent to back up the Federal Protective Service officers charged with protecting federal buildings, and would only be used if protests expected this weekend escalate out of control.

The deployment to Seattle came on the same day that the inspector general of the Justice Department announced an investigation into tactics used by the federal agents in Portland and in front of Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C., in early June.

The inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security, Joseph V. Cuffari, is also conducting an inquiry into the tactics of the agents in Portland. Mr. Cuffari said in a letter to Democrats that he expected to examine the authority used to deploy agents to the city after President Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to increase security at monuments, statues and federal property.

The order prompted the Homeland Security Department to form teams that were briefly deployed to multiple cities to guard federal property, including Seattle, for the July 4 weekend. The tactical teams in Portland have remained at a federal courthouse as tension with protesters there has heightened.

Representative Bennie G. Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi who chairs the House Committee on Homeland Security, said on Thursday that he would hold a hearing next week to examine the D.H.S. response to the protests.

“The administration’s actions are not only violent and clearly politically motivated, they are anathema to the rights guaranteed by the Constitution and a threat to every value for which our Republic stands,” Mr. Thompson said.

Seattle’s mayor, Jenny Durkan, said in an interview that she spoke earlier Thursday with Chad F. Wolf, the acting secretary of homeland security. She said he had assured her that the administration had no plans to deploy a surge of agents to Seattle and would not do so without communicating with the city. She had not been alerted to plans to position the tactical team, but said that the department may be distinguishing between an active deployment and agents who are on standby.

Ms. Durkan said she made it clear that the city did not need the help of federal agents.

“Any deployment here would, in my view, undermine public safety,” Ms. Durkan said.

Protests in the Seattle area have quieted somewhat since police this month cleared the so-called Capitol Hill Organized Protest zone, where demonstrators had laid claim to several city blocks. But there have been signs that demonstrations may be ramping back up, including on Thursday, when the police said a group of protesters broke windows and lit fires in the Capitol Hill neighborhood.

Alexei Woltornist, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement that the expected presence in Seattle would be smaller than that in Portland.

“There is no large-scale deployment of personnel to Seattle at this time. As threats warrant, any large-scale use of law enforcement assets will involve close coordination with local law enforcement,” Mr. Woltornist said. “There are no other cities across the country that have the same threats and lack of local law enforcement support as we are experiencing in Portland.”

The Federal Protective Service said it routinely requested assistance from other law enforcement agencies when there are threats to federal properties.

Teams of federal agents from several agencies have been operating in Portland for much of July, drawing outrage from city officials, including Mayor Ted Wheeler. The mayor, who was hit with tear gas from the federal officers on Wednesday night, said the presence of the agents had only inflamed tensions in a city that was working to calm them.

The number of protesters in Portland has swollen in recent days into the thousands, drawing out people who had not joined the protests earlier but who were appalled that federal forces would be operating in the city with such aggressive tactics. Some in the demonstrations have targeted federal agents with lasers and frozen water bottles, and others set fire to a police union building.

The agents have repeatedly fired tear gas and various kinds of crowd-control munitions, leaving at least one protester bloodied. Videos have shown federal agents seizing protesters and guiding them into unmarked vans.


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