US Politics

From homeless to city hall: the Hmong American mayor making history in OaklandSheng Thao says her experiences will help her lead the city through its severe housing crisis At the steps of city hall, surrounded by supporters and a gaggle of press, Oakland’s new mayor-elect Sheng Thao exhaled.“It’s been a long journey,” she began. “We’ve been through a lot to get to this moment right here.”Just 15 years ago, Thao was living in her car with her infant son. She had just escaped an abusive relationship and had nowhere to go. This week Thao, 37, became the first Hmong American woman to lead a major US city, the youngest Oakland mayor in 75 years and the first renter to hold the position.“There have been so many people in this beautiful city that have held our hands and lifted us up,” she said on Wednesday, in her first press conference since her history-making victory.The daughter of of refugees who fled Laos during a genocide, Thao was born and raised in Stockton, California, the seventh of 10 children. She left home at 17, and in her early 20s fled an abusive partner while pregnant with her son Ben. She spent months sleeping in her car or on stranger’s couches before she was able to secure a shelter.Now, as she steps into the role of mayor, Thao said her experiences with poverty and homelessness will help her lead the city through its own severe housing and homelessness crisis, and increasing gun violence. Over the past five years, Oakland saw a steeper rise in homelessness than any other city in the Bay Area.While many other Democratic midterm candidates across the state and country have responded to voters’ worries about homelessness and community violence with harsh, tough-on-crime rhetoric, Thao has promised policies that will treat unhoused people with dignity and investment in public health and violence prevention programs.Thao’s victory is a sign that voters “don’t want to vilify and punish poor people”, said Aimee Allison, founder of She the People, a national network elevating the political power of women of color.Allison, who lives in Oakland, said she has known Thao since she was an intern for Oakland vice-mayor Rebeecca Kaplan. Thao eventually became Kaplan’s chief of staff, before successfully running for city council herself. “Her values are clear,” said Allison. “It makes her very popular amongst lots of different people, because they feel seen and heard with her.”And Thao has built a long reputation of community involvement and action. At UC Berkeley, she organized the Bear Pantry – named after the university’s mascot – which collected food donations from local restaurants and grocers to help feed students in need. While working for Kaplan, she created a food delivery program for seniors and homebound residents. And amid the pandemic, she helped establish a mutual aid collective to distribute masks, hand sanitizer and public health information to underserved communities.“Sheng is a down to earth candidate who actually knows what it’s like for people who are marginalized in this city,” said Pamela Drake, a local activist who advised Thao’s campaign. “She’s not as progressive as I am,” Drake said. “I won’t always agree with her. But I do think what she’ll do is listen. And she won’t just ignore the people that are really in need.”Thao has hopes to see at least 30,000 new housing units built over the next eight years, provide safe RV parking sites for those who live in their vehicles and trash and sanitation services for encampments. Ultimately, Thao said, she wants the city to offer “adequate housing and shelter to all 3,300 unhoused residents in Oakland” over two four-year terms. She has also suggested stronger protections for renters, including rent controls, to keep people from ending up unhoused in the first place.The proposals had earned her the support of social justice group Oakland Rising, as well as a coalition of unhoused Oaklanders and homelessness advocates.To address public safety issues, Thao said she would like to fill vacancies in Oakland’s police force, which has been under federal oversight for nearly two decades following a corruption scandal. But she said she would also like to see more investment in education and violence prevention programs.In a ranked-choice election, she narrowly secured a victory by just 682 votes over the more moderate Democratic frontrunner Loren Taylor after nearly two weeks of ballot counting. Thao’s victory is considered something of an upset; while she had the backing of the local Democratic party, labor unions and progressive figures including California congressman Ro Khanna, her opponent Taylor was endorsed by key figures in Bay Area politics including Oakland’s outgoing mayor Libby Schaaf and San Francisco mayor London Breed.She is one of several newly elected progressive officials in Oakland, which will have a progressive majority in city council starting next year. And progressive civil rights attorney Pamela Price became the first Black district attorney of Alameda county, with encompasses Oakland.“We finally have the opportunity for progressive policies and changes to actually happen for the city,” Allison said.TopicsOaklandCaliforniaUS politicsUS midterm elections 2022DemocratsfeaturesReuse this content More

Lauren Boebert accused of hypocrisy over prayers for LGBTQ+ club shootingFar-right Republican congresswoman has record of anti-LGBTQ+ statements that advocates call ‘dangerous’ LGBTQ+ advocates in the US have criticized the far-right Colorado Republican congresswoman Lauren Boebert as a hypocrite in light of her past anti-LGBTQ+ statements after she offered prayers to the victims of the recent Club Q mass shooting in Colorado Springs.The news out of Colorado Springs is absolutely awful.This morning the victims & their families are in my prayers.This lawless violence needs to end and end quickly.— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) November 20, 2022
The shooting at the LGBTQ+ club that left five dead took place on the eve of the Transgender Day of Remembrance. ACLU-Colorado’s senior policy strategist and trans activist Anaya Robinson called Boebert’s condolences “disingenuous”, and blamed incendiary comments about the community for such tragedies.Robinson said: “Certain language and statements are the things that are perpetuating this violence and this hate. Change course … dehumanizing individuals and communities because of who they are and who they love – it makes it accessible to harm them.”Colorado Springs shooting: ‘heroic’ patrons praised for subduing gunmanRead moreAccording to a study by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law, “Transgender people are over four times more likely than cisgender people to experience violent victimization, including rape, sexual assault, and aggravated or simple assault.”Boebert has been outspoken about her stance against same-sex marriage, which the US supreme court ruled a constitutional right in the landmark 2015 case, Obergefell v Hodges.On her official government website, Boebert says that she opposes “efforts to redefine marriage as anything other than the union of one man and one woman”.Boebert has also taken aim at drag shows, which have become a focus of bigoted far-right conspiracy theories and a target for violence and protests. On Twitter, she once wrote: “ Take your children to CHURCH, not drag bars.”Take your children to CHURCH, not drag bars.— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) June 6, 2022
Boebert, who has been in office since 2021 and was narrowly re-elected in the 2022 midterm elections, also has a history of pushing anti-LGTBQ+ policies in legislation.In 2021, Boebert introduced a bill to block funding for research into gender-affirming treatments for transgender youth. Boebert called the research “evil” and spread conspiracy-based misinformation about the National Institute of Health (NIH), which she called the “National Institute of Horrors”.On social media, Boebert aims to shock – equating gender-affirming treatment and surgeries to “child-grooming”.The Assistant Secretary for Health is out here trying to “empower” children to become transgender.The word is “groom”, Richard, not empower.You’re grooming them, not empowering them. https://t.co/sBPiaNu0Lj— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) July 18, 2022
It’s a comparison advocates from Glaad, the world’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer media advocacy organization, have called “dangerous”.Sarah Kate Ellis, president and CEO of Glaad, told the Guardian: “Boebert’s vile anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and her glorification of guns and violence is a toxic combination – researchers who study extremism say it’s like a hot pan on a burner with popcorn kernels ready to pop – anyone listening can be encouraged to pop.“Boebert led on creating a culture of anti-LGBTQ hate in Colorado and beyond. The lies Boebert spews about LGBTQ people are absolutely despicable. Instead of offering her thoughts and prayers, how about Boebert instead stops her barrage of anti-LGBTQ hate and works to enact stronger gun safety reforms? We need politicians who will represent us all and keep us safe, not politicians who put our lives in danger just to bolster their careers.”In its official statement on the Club Q shooting, Glaad wrote: “Our hearts are broken for the victims of the horrific tragedy in Colorado Springs, and their loved ones. This unspeakable attack has robbed countless people of their friends and family and an entire community’s sense of safety.“You can draw a straight line from the false and vile rhetoric about LGBTQ people spread by extremists and amplified across social media, to the nearly 300 anti-LGBTQ bills introduced this year, to the dozens of attacks on our community like this one.”TopicsRepublicansUS politicsLGBTQ+ rightsnewsReuse this content More

Interview‘The US can still become a fascist country’: Frances Fox Piven’s midterms postmortemEd Pilkington The 90-year-old sociologist on ‘vengeance politics’, cruelty and climate change as she looks back on half a century of activismFrances Fox Piven has a warning for America. Don’t get too relaxed, there could be worse to come.“I don’t think this fight over elemental democracy is over, by any means,” she said. “The United States was well on the road to becoming a fascist country – and it still can become a fascist country.”The revered sociologist and battle-tested activist – an inspirational figure to those on the left, a bogeywoman for the hard right – is sharing with the Guardian her postmortem of the 2022 midterm elections and Donald Trump’s announcement of a 2024 presidential run. While many observers have breathed a sigh of relief over the rout of extreme election deniers endorsed by Trump, and his seemingly deflated campaign launch, Piven has a more sombre analysis.‘We dodged a mortar round’: George Packer on America in crisisRead moreAll the main elements are now in place, she said, for America to take a turn to the dark side. “There is the crazy mob, Maga; an elite that is oblivious to what is required for political stability; and a grab-it-and-run mentality that is very strong, very dangerous. I was very frightened about what would happen in the election, and it could still happen.”That Piven is cautioning against a false sense of security in the wake of the midterms would not surprise her many students and admirers. The co-author, with her late husband Richard Cloward, of the progressive bible, Poor People’s Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail, has for decades sounded the alarm.She has raised red flags over the vulnerabilities of the country’s democracy, the inequalities baked into its electoral and judicial systems, and how poor Americans, especially those of colour, are forced to resort to defiance and disruption to get their voices heard. Now, with the Republicans having taken the House of Representatives, she foresees ugly times ahead.“There’s going to be a lot of vengeance politics, a lot of efforts to get back at Joe Biden, idiot stuff. And that will rile up a lot of people. The Maga mob is not a majority of the American population by any stretch of the imagination, but the fascist mob don’t have to be the majority to set in motion the kinds of policies that crush democracy.”To say that Piven has come to such a perspective through years of experience as a sociologist and anti-poverty warrior would be an understatement. She recently celebrated her 90th birthday, and her earliest political memories go back to the 1930s.Her first is from 1939. It was prompted by the Russo-Finnish war which, though thousands of miles away, spilled out on to the streets of her neighbourhood. She was brought up in the New York borough of Queens by Jewish immigrant parents from Uzliany, in what is now Belarus.“I was seven, so perfectly equipped to have a position on this issue,” she recalls. “Tutored by my father, I took the side of the Russians and fought with all the kids on the block.”Her next vivid recollection relates to the death of Franklin Roosevelt in April 1945. “When FDR died, the whole street was bereft, almost sobbing. And these were people who didn’t talk much about politics, immigrants whose perspective was very narrow, getting by for another day, another week.”Piven said she thought a lot about that communal mourning for FDR in the aftermath of the midterms with all their discord and rancour. “The thing about FDR was much bigger than partisan politics, anywhere,” she said.That shared grief over FDR’s death seems worlds apart from the acrimony of today’s politics – all the more so after Trump’s declaration that he is running for the White House again. She talked about the former president’s “performative politics”, and the way it incorporates what she called “the human capacity for cruelty”.Asked to point to an example of such cruelty, Piven referenced the attack last month on Paul Pelosi, husband of the Democratic speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. “This crazy man broke into the Pelosi home and attacked an 82-year-old man with a hammer, broke his skull. And there were actually politicians speaking to a mass audience and laughing at it.“As thinking people, we don’t pay enough attention to the human lust for cruelty. We are at a point in American politics where those aspects of our nature are being brought to the fore; Trump has been doing that for a very long time, and we have to stop it or else it will continue to grow.”What distinguishes Piven is not only her razor-sharp dissection of how American society fails its poor citizens, but also her determination to do something about it through activism. With Cloward, who died in 2001, she spearheaded rent strikes in New York’s Lower East Side through a group known as Mobilization for Youth, which she joined in 1962 and which became a prototype for Lyndon Johnson’s war on poverty.More recently she helped to spawn in 2014 the progressive training program for movement organizers, Momentum. That in turn has seeded powerful grassroots networks such as the climate crisis disrupters the Sunrise Movement.The lengths to which she has been prepared to go in her own activism is captured in a photograph from 1967. It shows Piven scaling up the side of the maths building at Columbia University in order to join student protesters occupying the premises.“I was a fairly new assistant professor in the school of social work,” she explained. “An issue was bubbling among students and younger faculty about Columbia’s immoral, noxious policies with regard to the Vietnam war and participation in research for the defense department.”So up she clambered to join the occupation. No matter that in a couple of weeks she was due to face a crucial faculty vote on whether or not she would be granted tenure.The photo was published by Life Magazine and shortly after that, her troublemaking notwithstanding, she did get tenure. Being Frances Piven, however, she promptly quit the Ivy League university and transferred to Boston University, and from there to the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where she remains a distinguished professor emerita.That leaning towards agitation – what she calls the power of “dissensus” as opposed to “consensus” – still burns strongly in her. In her academic writings, as in her on-the-ground organizing, she sees movement politics and seeking change through the ballot box as essential partners.“I don’t think any large-scale progress has ever been made in the United States without the kind of trouble and disruption that a movement can cause by encouraging large numbers of people to refuse to cooperate,” she said. “But movements need the protection of electoral allies – they need legislative chaperoning.”She sees that dual model applying to today’s struggle to confront global heating. “The action on the climate crisis has to defeat the fossil fuel industry which in turn is closely connected to many politicians. You have got to break that, and the only way I think in American history that kind of power has been overcome is by just shutting things down.”Ousted Republican reflects on Trump, democracy and America: ‘The place has lost its mind’ Read moreHer championing of such acts of defiance have made her a popular hate figure for the far right. Security guards were posted outside her university office after the demagogue broadcaster Glenn Beck published a photoshopped image of her with her hair on fire on the front page of his website TheBlaze.“Beck blamed everything on Richard and me,” she recalled. “Are you kidding! I wish I could claim that credit.”It’s been a long, rich life of political thought and action. I ask her to stand back a little, take in the big sweep. How does America look today perceived through the lens of her years?“It’s a very strange time in history,” she said. “It’s not only the strangeness of our politics, it’s global warming, the seas are rising. I just had yet another booster shot. It’s very weird – I do not make predictions.”It sounded like her answer was completed. But after a pause she started up again.“I do think that the only way to live is to live in politics. To me, it’s an almost life-transforming experience – to be part of the local struggle. Even a dangerous struggle. You make friends that never go away. You see people in their nobility, and you find your own nobility as well. I would not trade my life for anything.”TopicsUS politicsDonald TrumpSociologyNew YorkfeaturesReuse this content More

Ticketmaster’s Taylor Swift chaos triggers US Senate antitrust hearingSeveral politicians voice concerns about dominance of ticket sales company after botched release for singer’s tour A US Senate antitrust panel will go ahead with a hearing on the lack of competition in the country’s ticketing industry after Ticketmaster’s problems last week managing the sale of Taylor Swift tickets.Tickemaster’s parent company, Live Nation, has blamed presale problems for Swift’s Eras tour – the pop superstar’s first US tour in five years – on “unprecedented demand” and an effort to keep out bots run by ticket scalpers.After registered fans struggled with glitches for hours to get tickets in the presale, and tickets quickly began appearing for resale for as much as US$22,700 (£19,100, A$33,500), Ticketmaster cancelled sales to the general public. It later claimed the demand for Swift tickets “could have filled 900 stadiums”.Swifties know: the Ticketmaster fiasco shows America has a monopoly problem | Arwa MahdawiRead moreSwift has said it was “excruciating” for her to watch fans struggling to secure tickets and that she had been assured Ticketmaster could handle the demand.The chaos attracted the attention of US politicians, many of whom have voiced concerns about how dominant Ticketmaster has become after it merged with the entertainment company Live Nation in 2010.Tennessee’s attorney general, Jonathan Skrmetti, has said he will launch a consumer protection investigation into the company after his office was bombarded with complaints from Swift fans.The congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has also criticised the merger. “Daily reminder that Ticketmaster is a monopoly, its merger with Live Nation should never have been approved, and they need to be reined in,” she tweeted. “Break them up.”On Tuesday the senator Amy Klobuchar, who will chair the panel, and the senator Mike Lee, the top Republican on the committee, announced the Senate hearing would go ahead. They have yet to provide a date or a list of witnesses.“The high fees, site disruptions and cancellations that customers experienced shows how Ticketmaster’s dominant market position means the company does not face any pressure to continually innovate and improve,” Klobuchar said. “We will hold a hearing on how consolidation in the live entertainment and ticketing industry harms customers and artists alike.”Ticketmaster denied any anti-competitive practices and said it remained under a consent decree with the Department of Justice after the 2010 merger, adding there was no “evidence of systemic violations of the consent decree”.“Ticketmaster has a significant share of the primary ticketing services market because of the large gap that exists between the quality of the Ticketmaster system and the next best primary ticketing system,” the company said.Klobuchar was one of three lawmakers who argued in a letter on Monday that Ticketmaster and Live Nation should be broken up by the Department of Justice if any misconduct was found in an ongoing investigation.The department has proven in recent years to be much more willing to file antitrust lawsuits against giant companies – including the ongoing December 2020 lawsuit against Google – and to fight mergers. Reuters contributed to this reportTopicsTaylor SwiftUS SenatePop and rockMusic industryUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

Teachers’ union head accuses Pompeo of stoking hate with ‘filth’ commentsRepublican ex-secretary of state called Randi Weingarten ‘most dangerous person in the world’ and said teachers taught ‘filth’ Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), has denounced the former secretary of state Mike Pompeo for calling her “the most dangerous person in the world” and asserting that the nation’s schoolteachers teach “filth”.Who’s next? Republicans who might go up against Trump in 2024Read moreSpeaking to the Guardian Weingarten said Pompeo’s remarks were not just demagogic, but also dangerous, warning that they could incite violence. She said Pompeo, who also served as Donald Trump’s CIA director, attacked her because she is “Jewish, gay, teacher and union” and was clearly stoking rightwing hate as he considers a presidential run.“This is initially directed to the Republican donor class so he can tap into the boatloads of money that billionaires have given to wage this culture war,” Weingarten said, adding that Pompeo – widely expected to run for president in 2024 – was “trying to garner money from that donor base that gave $50m for anti-trans ads, during the recent election”.“Separate and apart from that,” she continued, “it’s also an attempt to pull away the Maga Republican base from Trump and [the Florida governor, Ron] DeSantis, to show he’s an even more extremist Maga than they are.”In an interview with Semafor this week, Pompeo said: “I get asked, ‘Who’s the most dangerous person in the world? Is it Chairman Kim, is it Xi Jinping?’ The most dangerous person in the world is Randi Weingarten. It’s not a close call. If you ask, ‘Who’s the most likely to take this republic down?’ It would be the teachers’ unions, and the filth that they’re teaching our kids, and the fact that they don’t know math and reading or writing.”Weingarten, who has been president of the AFT since 2008, told the Guardian she thought Pompeo was attacking her because she is “Jewish, gay, teacher and union”.“It’s all of the above,” Weingarten said. “It’s an anti-public school strategy. The antisemitic tropes are there. The anti-gay tropes are there. It’s anti-union. It’s anti-teacher. It’s all of the above. But the effect is it really hurts what teachers are trying to do to help kids every single day.”Weingarten was especially upset about Pompeo’s assertion that the nation’s educators were teaching “filth” to children. She saw that as a dangerous smear that built on QAnon conspiracy assertions that teachers were grooming children. Her union, the AFT, has more than 1.5 million members and is the second largest teachers’ union, behind the National Education Association.“I’m really concerned about his use of the word ‘filth’ to talk about what teachers do,” Weingarten said. “It’s not just the new code for groomers and all the other lies they tell about what teachers are doing at school. But it is intended to worry and divide parents. It is intended to create danger and chaos. How do you call teaching The Diary of Anne Frank or teaching about Ruby Bridges or helping kids be who they are or helping ease their anxieties or teaching math, or science or social studies or English, how dare he call that filth?“For him to call what teaches do filth is pathetic,” Weingarten continued. “It’s politically expedient for him, but it’s dangerous to teachers across the country. He’s a guy who clearly knows better.“Words really matter. There’s a lot of people who are starting to talk about stochastic terrorism and what the effect of that is,” she said. (Stochastic terrorism is the public demonization of a person or group that incites an individual’s violent act against the demonized group.) “I am really worried with every passing day about this extremist rhetoric. It has a real chance of turning into violence. Look at what just happened in Colorado Springs. Look at what happened in the Buffalo grocery store in a primarily black neighborhood.”After Pompeo’s attack, Weingarten has received plenty of public support.The MSNBC anchor Chris Hayes said Pompeo’s comments were “truly deranged”. Congressman Jamaal Bowman, a New York Democrat, said Pompeo’s remarks were “outrageous, dangerous and asinine”. He added, “Radical Republicans hate education, because it cripples their lies and fearmongering.” Representative Pramila Jayapal, a Washington Democrat, said, “@rweingarten is a national treasure, representing the voices of millions of educators who are essential for the wellbeing of our families.”Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, said Pompeo’s statement that Weingarten is the most dangerous person in the world shows that Pompeo “is the most clueless person in the world”. “This is just a stunt by a politician desperate to get attention for a long-shot presidential run,” Saunders said. “While Pompeo continues to bluster, Randi will keep working for safe, vibrant schools that enrich our children and strengthen our communities.”Weingarten said that Pompeo resorted to such extreme rhetoric because he realizes that his potential candidacy can only work if he attracts some billionaire donors who will give to him rather than Trump or DeSantis. “The donor class that he’s looking for are the ones that are anti-public schools, anti-teachers, anti-teachers’ union,” Weingarten said. “They’re using fear and divisiveness in the culture wars to drive a wedge, a wedge between teachers and parents. The fact that he [Pompeo] would do this shows just how demagogic people like him are in their pursuit of power.”TopicsMike PompeoUS unionsUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

If you fish in your pocket or purse for a U.S. quarter today, there’s a chance you’ll see Wilma Mankiller’s face. She was the Cherokee Nation’s first female principal chief, and she inspired generations of Cherokees and young Native people like me.

In 2022, Mankiller was one of the first women honored by appearing on a series of quarters, along with renowned poet and activist Maya Angelou and physicist and astronaut Sally Ride. Mankiller’s quarter, issued in the summer of 2022, marks the first time that a Native American woman has been featured on a U.S. coin since Sacagawea appeared on the golden dollar in 2000.

As a historian of Native American history, I credit my professional career to Mankiller, whom I heard speak at Salem Women’s College when I was an undergraduate student there. I had never seen a non-Native audience listen so intently to a woman who looked like my father’s ancestors and grew up in rural Oklahoma, as he did. Like many young Cherokee people, I was raised outside the boundaries of the Cherokee Nation.

Following her lecture, I tore through her autobiography, “Mankiller: A Chief and Her People.” In her book and through her life’s work, Mankiller introduced a generation of people not just to Cherokee history but also to a model of Native women’s leadership, leading by listening to the voices from her community and supporting the programs they sought.

Early life

Mankiller’s life resembled many Native people’s lives in the 20th century before she assumed the role of principal chief of the Cherokee Nation in 1985.

She was born in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, at an Indian hospital in 1945. She grew up on land secured by Cherokee people over three generations of shifting U.S. federal Indian policies, each with devastating results: the Treaty of New Echota in 1835, the Treaty of 1866 and the Curtis Act in 1898.

Mankiller’s family relocated to San Francisco in the 1950s after Congress passed the termination and relocation policy, seeking to break up and relocate Native American tribes to assimilate them. In San Francisco she met Indigenous people from diverse communities.

Mankiller’s duties as chief included attending the Arkansas Riverbed Authority meetings to discuss multiple Native communities’ access to water.
Tom Gilbert/Tulsa World via AP Images

She came of age in San Francisco during the Red Power Movement, which was marked by Indigenous people’s activism across the country and aimed to draw attention to broken treaty promises, widespread dispossession and police brutality. She and her siblings supported the occupation of Alcatraz, a takeover by Native activists that lasted 18 months.

She married young, had children and willed herself through a college education. She divorced and returned home to Oklahoma in 1976 as a single parent with two daughters. Mankiller’s family history, like that of so many Native Americans in this country, cannot be told or understood without understanding changes in federal Indian policy, which often dictated where Native people lived and the economic opportunities available to them.

What she means to Cherokee people

Mankiller’s life was similar to those of many families who remained in Oklahoma on allotments or within Cherokee communities after Oklahoma became a state in 1907. Until the age of 11, she grew up in Adair County, which was about 46% Cherokee in the 2020 census.

When she returned to Oklahoma from California in the late 1970s to work for the Cherokee Nation, she prioritized and supported a community-driven project that brought running water to the Bell community. Bell, a rural community in Adair County, is still home to large pockets of Cherokee people. This effort was later dramatized in the 2013 film “The Cherokee Word for Water.” Mankiller’s commitment to improving the lives of Cherokee people was central to her work, even before she became chief.

Her rise to the position of principal chief in 1985 coincided with a moment when the efforts of civil rights activists, Black nationalists, Red Power and women’s rights activists of the previous decades were bearing fruit. She represented and modeled what people like Gloria Steinem, with whom Mankiller formed an enduring friendship, hoped to see more people achieve in the larger U.S.

President Clinton awards Wilma Mankiller the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Paul J. Richards/AFP via Getty Images

Mankiller’s impact extended beyond Cherokee people. In a nod to her accomplishments, President Bill Clinton awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998. Mankiller understood that she represented how far women leaders had come and the hope we might still arrive where we need to be.

I still remember learning of her death from pancreatic cancer in April 2010 when I was a graduate student in history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, not far from Salem College where she first inspired me. I, like many others I imagine, wept for her, enormously proud of all she had achieved.

The Cherokee value of gadugi

Mankiller’s transition to chief wasn’t easy. People initially questioned a woman’s ability to lead the tribe. If there was any doubt of Mankiller’s capabilities as a leader when she took over as chief in 1985, in her second election to office six years later, she received almost 83% of the vote.

She gained support by exemplifying gadugi – a Cherokee word that means working together collectively for the benefit of the whole community. She drew upon her culture, history and tribal identity as a leader, and she raised her daughters Gina and Felicia Olaya to do the same. Though neither held office, both have worked for and supported the Cherokee Nation throughout their lives.

During her time as chief, Mankiller provided a foundation for the continued growth of the Cherokee Nation. Enrollment in Cherokee Nation doubled under her leadership. She championed education and secured a US$9 million vocational center. A 1991 Parade Magazine profile described her leadership style as quiet but strong.

At her mother’s memorial, Gina, who died in October 2022, said that her mother taught her family “how to laugh, how to dance, to appreciate Motown music, to be a humble servant to our people, to love one another unequivocally and to cherish each and every moment we spent together as a family.”

Mankiller articulated what generations of Cherokee people knew – that Indigenous people are capable of generating the solutions to the problems they face. As chief, she focused on issues that benefited some of the most vulnerable Cherokee people, such as rural development, housing, employment and education. Mankiller listened to community members to determine the way forward. I believe her legacy, now enshrined on a quarter, will continue to inspire new generations of people seeking to make a difference in the world. More

Biden administration ‘dragged feet’ on Mohammed bin Salman immunity rulingLegal experts raise questions about run-up to granting immunity in civil case involving murder of journalist When the Biden administration filed a legal brief last week calling for the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, to be granted sovereign immunity in a civil case involving the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, it said it was strictly a legal determination that did not reflect its views on the “heinous” killing.“In every case, we simply follow the law. And that’s what we did,” Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, later said.But a close examination of the Biden administration’s actions, including interviews with legal experts and people who closely followed the matter, suggest the controversial decision was anything but straightforward.Beginning last summer, the administration’s decision to delay action and seek months of legal extensions before submitting its views on the matter before a US judge offered Saudi Arabia an unprecedented opportunity to protect Prince Mohammed through a legal manoeuvre that put him above the law and out of the reach of the US legal system. Once this had happened, the Biden administration in effect said its hands were tied.“If you look at the sequence of events, it is hard not to see this was a battle between Biden and Mohammed bin Salman playing out,” said one close observer, who asked not to be named so they could speak candidly. “I would hate to imagine that there was bartering over our judicial system and that integrity was up for grabs.”The US government was first invited to get involved in the civil case against Prince Mohammed on 1 July by the US district court judge John Bates. At the centre of the request was a lawsuit filed in 2020 against the crown prince and his associates by Hatice Cengiz, Khashoggi’s fiancee, which accused Prince Mohammed and his associates of conspiring with premeditation to kidnap, torture and murder Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018.Bates’s request was straightforward. He gave the administration 30 days – until 1 August – to submit a “statement of interest” and weigh in on whether the heir to the Saudi throne ought to be granted sovereign immunity in the case, or tell the court that it did not wish to make a statement. He also wanted the administration to weigh in on how the court might reconcile protections that are given to foreign leaders and those who are using a US law that allows victims of torture or extrajudicial killings to hold perpetrators accountable.At that time, Prince Mohammed was – clearly – not a sovereign. In Saudi Arabia, that distinction belonged at the time solely to his father, King Salman.Harold Koh, a former legal adviser to the state department during the Obama administration who is now a professor of international law at Yale Law School, said the US had competing interests at the time. On the one hand, the US asserts reciprocal principles of immunity so that its own head of state will be offered protection from legal courts. But that had to be weighed against Biden’s statements about human rights being at the centre of his administration’s foreign policy and “autocrats understanding that the president means what he says”.“All things considered, silence would have been the better way to balance those competing national interests,” Koh said, adding that there would have been “ample precedent” for the state department to stay silent.On 15 July, Joe Biden met Prince Mohammed in Jeddah, a meeting that started with a fist bump and was meant to “reset” his relationship with a leader he once called a pariah. It would later emerge that the meeting was also the start of a campaign by the administration to try to persuade the Saudis not to cut oil production before the US midterm elections.Back in Washington, just a few days later on 18 July, the US asked Judge Bates for an extension, saying it needed time to consult multiple entities within the administration with respect to “complex issues of international and domestic law”. The court agreed, giving the US until 3 October to respond.Weeks later, on 23 September, Brett McGurk, a Middle East policy coordinator for the US National Security Council (NSC), and Amos Hochstein, a US senior adviser for energy security, visited Jeddah again, ostensibly to discuss energy policies.Days later, on 27 September, the Saudi royal court announced that Prince Mohammed had been named prime minister, a role that had been and usually is held by the Saudi king. Observers noted that the apparent promotion did not confer any major new duties or powers to Mohammed bin Salman. Human rights defenders saw it as a ploy to influence the US recommendation on sovereign immunity, which was due about a week later.The US government, citing “changed circumstances”, requested a second extension to prepare its response and was granted one, until 17 November. A few days after it missed its 3 October deadline, Opec+ announced it was cutting oil production by 2m barrels a day, in what was seen by Democrats as an attempt by the kingdom to interfere with the US election and side with Russia over US interests.Biden promised that Saudi Arabia would face “consequences” for the decision, but has not articulated any specific actions he planned to take against the kingdom. On 17 November, just hours before a midnight deadline, the administration filed a notice that it believed Prince Mohammed, as prime minister, deserved to be treated as a sovereign as a standard matter of international law.An NSC spokesperson told the Guardian that the US president was briefed on the immunity decision, which was based on “well-established principles of common law”.When the Guardian asked the spokesperson if any US official ever suggested to Saudi Arabia that Prince Mohammed could be appointed prime minister before the matter was public, the spokesperson said: “This was an independent decision made by Saudi Arabia.”People familiar with the matter say legal questions about Prince Mohammed’s status were hotly debated inside the state department, where views about the best course of action differed.In debates within the administration, senior officials such as McGurk who have sought to promote the rehabilitation of the Saudi-US relationship have edged out policy objectives focused on human rights.“This administration made the decision it did because Mohammed bin Salman is prime minister. But they dragged their feet so much … This was clearly a policy decision in that they waited and stalled,” said one person who has advocated for human rights to have more prominence in decisions around policy.Leaders like Prince Mohammed were “legitimately worried” when Biden first came into office and vowed to make the Saudi heir accountable for human rights violations.“And when they got into office, the execution was not there,” the person said. Even when Biden made the decision to release a declassified intelligence report that found Prince Mohammed had likely ordered the murder, there were no sanctions against him.The person added: “That set the stage and indicated the rhetoric was not matched by substance.”TopicsMohammed bin SalmanSaudi ArabiaBiden administrationUS foreign policyUS politicsMiddle East and north AfricanewsReuse this content More

Analysis‘The success is inspirational’: the Fight for $15 movement 10 years onSteven GreenhouseFederal lawmakers failed to increase the minimum wage, but US workers made other gains, and they are setting their sights on new goals Ten years ago next week, 200 fast-food workers walked out at 20 New York City restaurants, demanding $15 an hour in pay. At the time, many observers scoffed at $15 as an absurd, pie-in-the-sky demand. As the movement’s anniversary approaches, the Fight for $15 movement has proven the naysayers wrong.‘$15 an hour is not enough’: US domestic workers rally on eve of midterms Read moreTopicsMinimum wageUS unionsUS politicsMcDonald’sStarbucksnewsReuse this content More