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Joe Biden has announced a national “month of action” to try to get at least 70% of Americans vaccinated against coronavirus before the Fourth of July holiday.
The president said the vaccines would allow the public to enjoy “a summer of freedom” where they could safely gather with loved ones without fear of the virus
Biden promises ‘summer of freedom’ as he urges more Americans to get vaccinated – live More
At the end of April, days before the latest conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians surged into the headlines, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken held a meeting in Washington with two Israelis: the head of Mossad, Israel’s spy agency, and the Israeli ambassador to the United States. The Israelis were seeking to prevent the US from returning to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the nuclear deal with Iran from which Donald Trump had unilaterally withdrawn in 2018.
In an Increasingly Paranoid World, Do Allies Actually Exist?
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On April 29, Reuters reported that Blinken’s meeting with the two officials “followed talks … between US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and his Israeli counterpart in which the Israeli delegation stressed their ‘freedom to operate’ against Iran as they see fit.”
Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:
Freedom to operate:
Impunity
Contextual Note
Israel believes in its “freedom to operate” as adamantly as some Americans do in their constitutional right to bear arms. It is difficult to understand Israel’s notion essentially of freedom to aggress in any other sense than that of seeing itself as above the law of nations. In one sense, the Israelis are right. There is no international law on the books that enforces compliance. In an era of rising populist nationalism, many leaders are tempted to claim the freedom to operate as a natural right. Only the military and economic might of the US threatens to hold some of them back. Assured of Washington’s support of any of its aggressive actions, Israel believes it has exceptional freedom to operate.
The Israeli government made it clear in January that it would actively counter any attempt by the new Biden administration to return to the JCPOA. “Reiterating Israel’s position that it does not consider itself bound by the diplomacy, Intelligence Minister Eli Cohen said, ‘A bad deal will send the region spiralling into war,’” Reuters reported. Is this a bluff or a sinister threat? Or both? No one should feel surprised, given Israel’s aptitude to flex its muscles whenever it feels threatened and every US administration’s habit of regularly inclining to Israel’s will.
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Every observer of the ongoing drama in the Middle East should be wondering whether it makes any sense at all to be asking such questions. The spiraling war in the Middle East Cohen evokes would not resemble in scale or catastrophic consequences the kind of skirmish that last month’s 11-day conflict over the Israel-Gaza border turned out to be. Iran is a large and powerful oil-producing nation that does not yet possess nuclear weapons but has extensive resources. It has significant potential allies in Asia, including China, though it would be utterly unlikely that in the event of a shooting war between Israel and Iran, China would allow itself to be drawn into a military conflict.
Israel, of course, has the advantage of being a nuclear power, though no one acknowledges that in official circles. That non-acknowledgment has conveniently spared Israel the duty of taking a position on non-proliferation. As its government refuses, in Cohen’s telling, to be “bound by the diplomacy” while at the same time expecting the United States to support even its most aggressive initiatives taken in the name of self-defense, Israel’s threat of a spiraling war should offer a lot of people cause for concern.
Most observers believe that everything will depend on the role the US may or may not accept to play if there is an eventual conflict. In its first few months, the Biden administration has, perhaps artfully, disguised its deeper inclinations. At the same time, it has given some people the impression of being rudderless. That has added to the overwhelming uncertainty that makes prognostication about future events in the region a particularly delicate exercise. But given the stakes — according to Israel, a possible third world war — it may be time to address the underlying problems.
Israel appears to be invoking the logic of MAD (mutually assured destruction) that reigned during the Cold War. But what was true of the US and the Soviet Union is difficult to imagine applying to a state the size of Israel.
Despite Israel’s belief in its “freedom to operate,” the idea that it could unilaterally start a war with Iran simply because it didn’t like the deal the US agreed to is on its face absurd. It would be tantamount to declaring war on the US simply because the Americans failed to respect Israel’s wishes. This degree of geopolitical absurdity illustrates the specific kind of diplomatic hyperreality Israel has successfully cultivated, thanks in large part to the pattern of accommodation exhibited by every recent US administration.
Al Jazeera published its own version of the Reuters’ piece from April, reprinting most of its substance before adding some remarks of its own. After expanding its commentary on the various threats and hypotheses, including Cohen’s vision of “spiralling into war,” it adds this troubling conclusion: “The source declined to say how Blinken and his aides responded.” As with so many of President Joe Biden’s real intentions, on both domestic and foreign policy, and his capacity to deliver on promises and commitment, the pundits for the moment are condemned to wait and see.
Historical Note
Despite the current vacuum of power in Israel itself, likely to be provisionally resolved by a new coalition government, all of the nation’s current and future leaders — including the military — are opposed to the idea of the US revitalizing the JCPOA. But does Israel still have the clout to influence US policy? Donald Trump solidified the belief among the Israelis that the US is capable of betraying its own interests to please Israel. It played the same game reasonably successfully with Barack Obama, who consistently vowed to defend Israel’s interests. But it couldn’t prevent Obama from promoting and signing the JCPOA in 2015.
Just before leaving office, Obama broke with another tradition by abstaining from using the US veto on a United Nations Security Council resolution demanding a halt to Israeli’s construction of settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. To counterbalance the effect of the affront, two months earlier, the lame duck president signed off on a historic and astonishingly generous promise of military aid for Israel to the tune of $38 billion over 10 years.
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Daniel Sonnenfeld, writing for The Media Line, an American website specialized in coverage of the Middle East, offers his update on the state of negotiations around a revitalized JCPOA. “While all the signatories have expressed their desire to see the deal revived, American allies in the Middle East have voiced concerns about this intention. Most notable is Israel, which opposed the deal strongly when it was first signed in 2015,” he writes. This sentence is remarkable for the carefully crafted reference Sonnenfeld makes to a group of Arab countries led by Saudi Arabia. Calling them “American allies” avoids evoking either the stigma associated with the autocratic Arab regimes, the most prominent of which has dramatically exercised its “freedom to operate” by murdering and dismembering a Washington Post journalist.
By the end of his article, Sonnenfeld resigns himself to concluding that, despite Israel’s objections, the US will return to the JCPOA. He cites Dr. Raz Zimmt, an Iran expert at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies, who affirms that “Israel has ‘no chance’ at changing the US approach to the deal.” Unlike the Israeli officials threatening to throw the region and into a catastrophic war, Sonnenfeld sees no prospect of the Israelis carrying out such a move or even challenging the Biden administration’s decisions on the matter. Instead, citing Zimmt again, he describes a future diplomatic ballet in which Israel will simply “focus on ‘formulating agreements with the Americans about what comes next.’”
Since the end of the 11-day conflict in May, things have dramatically changed for both the Israelis and Palestinians. As The New York Times reports, the latter now feel they “are part of the global conversation on rights, justice, freedom, and Israel cannot close it down or censor it.” Even The Times has taken a solid interest in their plight. Israel is struggling to close the chapter on Benjamin Netanyahu’s seemingly perennial premiership. Joe Biden has an open field in front of him to clarify some of the complex issues in the Middle East. The world is waiting to see how he handles it.
*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
Joe Biden has used the centenary of the Tulsa race massacre as a rallying cry for America to be honest about its history, insisting that great nations “come to terms with their dark sides”.On Tuesday Biden became the first sitting US president to visit the site where, on 31 May and 1 June 1921, a white mob murdered up to 300 African Americans and burned and looted homes and businesses, razing a prosperous community known as “Black Wall Street”.In an emotional speech punctuated by intense applause, Biden pleaded for America to confront its past and admit that a thread of hatred runs from Tulsa through more recent displays of white supremacy in Charlottesville, Virginia, and at the US Capitol in Washington on 6 January.He also drew a connection to a Republican assault on the voting rights of people of colour and announced that Kamala Harris, the first woman of colour to serve as vice-president, would lead the White House effort to resist it.Biden began by speaking directly to the last three survivors of the massacre, centenarians Viola “Mother” Fletcher, Hughes “Uncle Red” Van Ellis and Lessie “Mother Randle” Benningfield Randle, who received a standing ovation from an audience of around 200 made up of survivors and their families, community leaders, and elected officials.“You are the three known remaining survivors of a story seen in the mirror dimly but no longer,” said Biden, a comparatively youthful 78. “Now, your story will be known in full view.”Knowledge of this violent attempt to suppress Black success in Greenwood, Tulsa, fell victim to a decades-long conspiracy of silence. The atrocity was not taught in schools, even in Tulsa, until the mid-2000s and was expunged from police records. Those who threatened to break to the taboo faced disapproval or death threats. Even many Black residents preferred not to burden their children with the story.Biden said: “For much too long the history of what took place here was told in silence, cloaked in darkness. But just because history is silent it doesn’t mean that it did not take place and, while darkness can hide much, it erases nothing. Some injustices are so heinous, so horrific, so grievous, they can’t be buried, no matter how hard people try. So it is here: only with truth can come healing and justice and repair.”The argument was a striking contrast from his predecessor, Donald Trump, who promoted a heroic vision of American history. On the massacre’s 99th anniversary, Trump had posed with a Bible outside a historic church after security forces teargassed protesters outside the White House. He headed to Tulsa later that month for a campaign rally that breached coronavirus safety guidelines.After studying an exhibition on this lost “boom town” at the Greenwood Cultural Center, Biden’s message appeared to be the opposite of “Make America great again” – an acknowledgment that America’s history includes slavery and segregation, and that only looking that fully in the face can allow it to move forward.Challenging the language used to describe the one of the worst chapters in the country’s history of racial violence, the president followed a moment of silence with a pointed statement: “My fellow Americans, this was not a riot. This was a massacre.” The hush gave way to prolonged applause inside the room.He went on: “Among the worst in our history. But not the only one and for too long, forgotten by our history. As soon as it happened, there was a clear effort to erase it from our memory, our collective memory…“We can’t just choose to learn what we want to know and not what we should know,” he continued. “We should know the good, the bad, everything. That’s what great nations do. They come to terms with their dark sides. And we’re a great nation.”[embedded content]The president noted that, while Greenwood’s Black community recovered, it was marginalised again by housing “red lining” and urban renewal projects including highways – a pattern seen in many American cities.He promised that his administration would address racism at its roots, expanding federal contracting with small, disadvantaged businesses, investing tens of billions of dollars in communities like Greenwood and pursuing new efforts to combat housing discrimination.Notably, Biden also used the platform to condemn efforts in recent months by Republican state legislators to impose voting restrictions – likely to have a disproportionate impact on people of colour – as a “truly unprecedented assault on our democracy”.Biden said he had asked Harris to lead his administration’s efforts to protect voting rights. “With her leadership and your support, we’re going to overcome again, but it’s going to take a hell of a lot of work,” he said.Harris released a statement that noted almost 400 bills have been introduced at the state level since the last presidential election to make it more difficult for some people to vote. “The work ahead of us is to make voting accessible to all American voters, and to make sure every vote is counted through a free, fair, and transparent process,” she said. “This is the work of democracy.”Biden has made numerous policy speeches as president but the convergence of history, racial justice and the audience on Tuesday seemed to strike a particular chord in him. It was the neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville in 2017 that moved him to end political retirement and run for president again.“What happened in Greenwood was an act of hate and domestic terrorism with the through-line that exists today still,” he said, prompting a cry of assent from the audience. “Just close your eyes and remember what you saw in Charlottesville four years ago on television.”Biden added that Fletcher, 107, said the 6 January insurrection, when a mob of Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol, “broke her heart” and “reminded her of what happened here in Greenwood a hundred years ago”. He noted that hate crimes continue to target Asian Americans and Jewish Americans.“Hate’s never defeated. It only hides. It hides. And given just a little bit of oxygen by its leaders, it comes out from under the rock like it’s happening again, as if it never went away. So folks, we must not give hate a safe harbour.” More
Key events
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‘This was not a riot, this was a massacre,’ Biden says in Tulsa
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Biden tells Tulsa race massacre survivors: ‘Now your story will be known in full view’
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Biden delivers remarks in Tulsa to commemorate race massacre anniversary
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Biden arrives in Tulsa to meet with race massacre survivors and deliver remarks
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Biden issues proclamation to mark LGBTQ+ Pride Month
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“Tragic and devastating” – WH spox
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The Biden administration has suspended oil and gas leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge that were issued in the final days of Donald Trump’s presidency.
Just two weeks before Biden was inaugurated, the Trump administration had actioned the right to drill in the expansive, delicate tundra that is home to migrating waterfowl, denning polar bears and herds of Porcupine caribou. The move drew fierce opposition from Alaska Native activists and environmental groups – who lobbied Biden to quickly claw back the 1.5m acre of the refuge that has been opened up to fossil fuel production.
Here’s more background on the Trump administration’s move:
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Today so far
Joe Biden’s speech in Tulsa has now concluded, and that’s it from me today. My west coast colleague, Maanvi Singh, will take over the blog for the next few hours.
Here’s where the day stands so far:
Biden delivered remarks in Tulsa to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the city’s race massacre. The president emphasized the importance of acknowledging the lives and livelihoods lost in the massacre, which resulted in the death of at least 300 African Americans and the destruction of 35 blocks of Black real estate. “For much too long, the history of what took place here was told in silence, cloaked in darkness,” Biden said. “My fellow Americans, this was not a riot, this was a massacre.”
Biden met with the three living survivors of the massacre before delivering his speech. All three survivors – Viola “Mother” Fletcher, Hughes “Uncle Red” Van Ellis and Lessie “Mother Randle” Benningfield Randle – are over 100 years old. Biden acknowledged them in his remarks, saying, “Now your story will be known in full view.”
Ahead of the trip, the Biden administration announced a series of initiatives aimed at narrowing the country’s racial wealth gap. The administration pledged to take action to address racial housing discrimination and use its purchasing power to direct an additional $100bn to small disadvantaged business owners.
Biden will meet tomorrow with Republican Senator Shelley Moore Capito to discuss a potential compromise on infrastructure. The meeting comes a week after Republicans outlined their latest offer, which called for spending $928bn on infrastructure over the next eight years, far less than what Biden has proposed.
Biden issued a proclamation to mark the start of LGBTQ+ Pride Month. “This Pride Month, we recognize the valuable contributions of LGBTQ+ individuals across America, and we reaffirm our commitment to standing in solidarity with LGBTQ+ Americans in their ongoing struggle against discrimination and injustice,” the president said in his proclamation.
Maanvi will have more coming up, so stay tuned.
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Joe Biden has just announced that he will tap Kamala Harris to lead the administration’s efforts to strengthen national voting rights.
Biden described the recent Republican efforts in dozens of states to limit access to the ballot box as “un-American”.
The president pledged he would “fight like heck with every tool at my disposal” to pass the For the People Act, Democrats’ expansive election reform bill, and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act.
Biden also appeared to criticize two moderate Senate Democrats, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, referencing “two members of the Senate who vote more with my Republican friends”. Manchin has said he opposes the For the People Act.
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‘This was not a riot, this was a massacre,’ Biden says in Tulsa
Joe Biden underscored the importance of recognizing the devastating impact that the Tulsa race massacre had on Black lives and livelihoods.
At least 300 African Americans were killed in the 1921 massacre, and about 35 blocks of Black real estate in the Greenwood neighborhood were destroyed.
“For much too long, the history of what took place here was told in silence, cloaked in darkness,” Biden said. “But just because history is silent it doesn’t mean that it did not take place. While darkness can hide much, it erases nothing.”
The president added, “My fellow Americans, this was not a riot, this was a massacre.”
Updated
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Biden tells Tulsa race massacre survivors: ‘Now your story will be known in full view’
Joe Biden noted that he is the first US president to ever visit Tulsa to commemorate the anniversary of the 1921 race massacre that killed at least three hundred African Americans.
“The events we speak of today took place 100 years ago – and yet I’m the first president in 100 years ever to come to Tulsa,” Biden said, emphasizing the need to “acknowledge the truth of what took place here”.
CBS News
(@CBSNews)
President Biden addresses three survivors of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre: “You are the three known remaining survivors of a story seen in the mirror dimly. But no longer. Now, your story will be known in full view.” https://t.co/0kXzNfudf0 pic.twitter.com/ESpeEFGbel
June 1, 2021
The president specifically acknowledged the three living massacre survivors with whom he met today – Viola “Mother” Fletcher, Hughes “Uncle Red” Van Ellis and Lessie “Mother Randle” Benningfield Randle.
“You are the three known remaining survivors of a story seen in the mirror dimly – but no longer,” Biden said. “Now your story will be known in full view.”
Updated
at 4.49pm EDT
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Biden delivers remarks in Tulsa to commemorate race massacre anniversary
Joe Biden is now delivering remarks on the 100th anniversary of the 1921 race massacre in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Before launching into his prepared remarks, the president walked into the audience to speak to two young girls sitting toward the front of the crowd.
Returning to the mic, Biden explained, “I just had to make sure the two girls got ice cream when this is over.”
ABC News
(@ABC)
Ahead of remarks in Tulsa, Pres. Biden leaves the stage to talk to two young girls in the audience: “I just had to make sure the two girls got ice cream when this is over.” https://t.co/8tsvN79IHC pic.twitter.com/TmCPLPRMf5
June 1, 2021
4.03pm EDT
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Joe Biden will soon deliver remarks at the Greenwood Cultural Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the city’s race massacre.
According to a White House pool report, there are about 200 people in attendance for Biden’s speech, including civil rights leaders Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.
The speech comes immediately after Biden met with the three living survivors of the massacre – Viola “Mother” Fletcher, Hughes “Uncle Red” Van Ellis and Lessie “Mother Randle” Benningfield Randle – all of whom are over 100 years old.
Updated
at 4.08pm EDT
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Joe Biden is now meeting with the three living survivors of the Tulsa race massacre, according to the latest White House pool report.
Those survivors are Viola “Mother” Fletcher, Hughes “Uncle Red” Van Ellis and Lessie “Mother Randle” Benningfield Randle. They are all between the ages of 101 and 107.
The three survivors testified two weeks ago at a House subcommittee hearing on the need to financially compensate massacre survivors and their descendants.
“I will never forget the violence of the white mob when we left our home,” Fletcher told House members. “I still see Black men being shot, Black bodies lying in the street. I still smell smoke and see fire. I still see Black businesses being burned. I still hear airplanes flying overhead. I hear the screams. I have lived through the massacre every day.”
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Ed Pilkington
It is one of the extraordinary elements of the 1921 catastrophe that survivors are still alive. Three individuals are active today who as children experienced the horror of white sadism perpetrated on that day.
The oldest of the trio, Mother Viola Fletcher, just turned 107. At a recent event in Tulsa, she walked unassisted to the podium and recalled what happened to her as a seven-year-old girl.
“I still remember all the shooting and running,” she said. “People being killed. Crawling and seeing smoke. Seeing airplanes flying, and a messenger going through the neighbourhood telling all the Black people to leave town.”
Then Fletcher stopped speaking. Even after 100 years, the memories of that day still have the power to overwhelm her.
3.13pm EDT
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Joe Biden is now touring an exhibit on the 1921 race massacre at the Greenwood Cultural Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Karine Jean-Pierre
(@KJP46)
.@POTUS touring the Tulsa Race Massacre Exhibit at Greenwood Cultural Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma. pic.twitter.com/bKlD5XlJRQ
June 1, 2021
The president will soon deliver remarks at the center to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the massacre, which killed at least 300 African Americans. More
Joe Biden is “finishing the job” begun by Barack Obama, the former president told the New York Times in an interview released on Tuesday.“I think that what we’re seeing now, is Joe and the administration are essentially finishing the job,” Obama said. “And I think it’ll be an interesting test.“Ninety per cent of the folks who were there in my administration, they are continuing and building on the policies we talked about, whether it’s the Affordable Care Act or our climate change agenda and the Paris [climate deal], and figuring out how do we improve the ladders to mobility through things like community colleges.”Obama also considered why in 2016, after his eight years in power, so many voters plumped for a hard-right successor in Donald Trump.“It’s hard to just underscore how much the bank bailouts just angered everyone, including me,” Obama said, of the remedy for the 2008 financial crisis he helped lead.“And then you have this long, slow recovery. Although the economy recovers technically quickly, it’s another five years before we’re really back to people feeling like, ‘OK, the economy is moving and working for me.’“… Let’s say a Democrat, a Joe Biden, or Hillary Clinton had immediately succeeded me, and the economy suddenly has 3% unemployment, I think we would have consolidated the sense that, ‘Oh, actually these policies that Obama put in place worked.’“The fact that Trump interrupts essentially the continuation of our policies, but still benefits from the economic stability and growth that we had initiated, means people aren’t sure. Well, gosh, unemployment’s 3.5% under Donald Trump.”Obama also mused about Biden’s much-discussed ability to reach voters, particularly in post-industrial midwestern states, who voted Obama then switched to Trump.“By virtue of biography and generationally,” Obama said, his vice-president, who is 78 and was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, “can still reach some of those folks”.“People knew I was left on issues like race, or gender equality, and LGBTQ issues and so forth,” Obama said. “But I think maybe the reason I was successful campaigning in downstate Illinois, or Iowa, or places like that is they never felt as if I was condemning them for not having gotten to the politically correct answer quick enough, or that somehow they were morally suspect because they had grown up with and believed more traditional values.”In fact Obama famously stirred controversy in 2008 when he said such voters “get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations”.The New York Times interviewer Ezra Klein did not raise those remarks.Obama continued: “I could go to the fish fry, or the [Veterans of Foreign Wars] hall, or all these other venues, and just talk to people. And they didn’t have any preconceptions about what I believed. They could just take me at face value.”The former president noted the drastic effects on such states of the collapse of local newspapers and the proliferation of misinformation via rightwing and social media.“If I went into those same places now,” Obama said, “or if any Democrat who’s campaigning goes in those places now, almost all news is from either Fox News, Sinclair news stations, talk radio, or some Facebook page. And trying to penetrate that is really difficult.“It’s not that the people in these communities have changed. It’s that if that’s what you are being fed, day in and day out, then you’re going to come to every conversation with a certain set of predispositions that are really hard to break through. And that is one of the biggest challenges I think we face.”According to recent polling, 53% of Republicans – and 25% of Americans – accept Trump’s lie that his defeat by Biden was the result of electoral fraud, while 15% of Americans believe the QAnon conspiracy theory, which holds that a cabal of child-murdering cannibals controls the US government.“If you have a conversation with folks,” Obama said, “you can usually assuage those fears. But they have to be able to hear you. You have to be able to get into the room. And I still could do that back in 2007, 2008. I think Joe, by virtue of biography and generationally, I think he can still reach some of those folks. But it starts getting harder, particularly for newcomers who are coming up.”Obama also said a successful Biden administration “will have an impact” on a deeply polarised political landscape in which Republican states are restricting voting among communities of color and making it easier to overturn results, while Republicans in Congress block a bipartisan commission to investigate the attack on the US Capitol by Trump’s supporters.“Does [success for Biden] override that sort of identity politics that has come to dominate Twitter, and the media, and that has seeped into how people think about politics?” Obama asked. “Probably not completely. But at the margins, if you’re changing 5% of the electorate, that makes a difference.” More
In a speech marking 100 years since the Tulsa race massacre, Joe Biden called on Americans to think upon “the deep roots of racial terror” in the United States and to destroy systemic racism in their society.In hard-hitting words as part of a declaration of a day of remembrance for the hundreds of Black victims of the 1921 mass killing in Oklahoma, Biden used unusually strong language to describe America’s history of racial strife.“On this solemn centennial of the Tulsa Race Massacre, I call on the American people to reflect on the deep roots of racial terror in our nation and recommit to the work of rooting out systemic racism across our country,” Biden said in a statement.Between 31 May and 1 June, white mobs attacked the historical Greenwood district of Tulsa, Oklahoma, an area so prosperous and successful it was known as the “Black Wall Street”. They killed an estimated 300 residents, displaced many more and burnt many blocks of the city to the ground.Though it was one of the worst acts of racial violence in US history, its anniversary has seemingly gone little marked by much of America, until anti-racism protests in the wake of the death of George Floyd triggered a reckoning over racism in America.In the statement Biden said that the federal government had played in keeping white and Black Americans unequal in the decades after the massacre by policies that had segregated the races and favored whites.“The federal government must reckon with and acknowledge the role that it has played in stripping wealth and opportunity from Black communities,” he said, while pledging to invest in Black communities and businesses with government programs, including a massive planned infrastructure package as the US builds back from the coronavirus pandemic.“We honor the legacy of the Greenwood community, and of Black Wall Street, by reaffirming our commitment to advance racial justice through the whole of our government, and working to root out systemic racism from our laws, our policies, and our hearts,” he said.Events related to the massacre commemoration ahead of the 100 year anniversary have already begun.Hundreds gathered on Monday for an interfaith service dedicating a prayer wall outside historic Vernon African Methodist Episcopal Church in Tulsa’s Greenwood neighborhood on the centennial of the first day of one of the deadliest racist massacres in the nation.National civil rights leaders, including the Revs Jesse Jackson and William Barber, joined multiple local faith leaders offering prayers and remarks outside the church that was largely destroyed during the massacre.Barber, a civil and economic rights activist, said he was “humbled even to stand on this holy ground”.“You can kill the people but you cannot kill the voice of the blood.”Although the church was nearly destroyed in the massacre, parishioners continued to meet in the basement, and it was rebuilt several years later, becoming a symbol of the resilience of Tulsa’s Black community. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2018.As the ceremony came to an end, participants put their hands on the prayer wall along the side of the sanctuary while a soloist sung Lift Every Voice and Sing. Traffic hummed on a nearby interstate that cuts through the Greenwood district, which was rebuilt after the massacre but slowly deteriorated 50 years later after homes were taken by eminent domain as part of urban renewal in the 1970s..The commemoration is slated to include a visit by Biden on Tuesday and the unveiling of the $20m Greenwood Rising museum. More
Joe Biden warned in a speech commemorating the US’s war dead on Memorial Day that American democracy was ‘in peril’ and called for empathy among his fellow citizens.
Speaking at Arlington National Cemetery, the president, joined by the first lady, Jill Biden, the vice-president, Kamala Harris, and her husband, paid tribute to America’s war dead
Biden warns US democracy ‘in peril’ as he commemorates America’s war dead More
Joe Biden warned in a speech commemorating America’s war dead on Memorial Day that US democracy was “in peril” and called for empathy among his fellow citizens.Speaking at Arlington National Cemetery, the US president, joined by first lady Jill Biden, Vice-President Kamala Harris and her husband, paid tribute to America’s war dead whom he described as making the ultimate sacrifice in the pursuit of democracy.But he added that US democracy was itself in danger. “The mission falls to each of us, each and every day. Democracy itself is in peril, here at home and around the world,” he said, adding: “What we do now, how we honor the memory of the fallen, will determine whether democracy will long endure.”Biden’s speech played out against a tumultuous time in American politics, which have been shaken by four years of erratic and norm-shattering rule by Donald Trump which culminated in the 6 January attack on the Capitol in Washington DC by a Trump-supporting mob seeking to disrupt the formalization of Biden’s electoral win.It also comes at a time of civic unrest sparked by largely rightwing protests against shutdowns caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the spread of conspiracy theories around election fairness stoked by Trump and the far right and widespread demonstrations against racism and police brutality.Biden centered his speech on the ideals of a democracy that thrives when citizens can vote, when there is a free press and when there are equal rights for all.“This nation was built on an idea,” Biden said in his address. “We were built on an idea, the idea of liberty and opportunity for all. We’ve never fully realized that aspiration of our founders, but every generation has opened the door a little wider.”Since he beat Trump to the White House last year Trump and many other Republicans have sought to baselessly portray the election as having been somehow fraudulent. They have launched scores of court cases and even a so-called “audit” of the results in in Arizona’s largest county.Republican state legislatures have also passed local voting laws aimed at restricting voting access that civil rights advocates say are aimed at communities of color. On Sunday night Texas Republicans failed to push through one of the most restrictive voting measures in the US after Democrats walked out of the state House at the last minute. But other measures have passed in states like Georgia and Florida.While politicians from both sides of the US political spectrum routinely speak of a “battle for the soul of America” to describe their mission to voters, Biden’s holiday address came as Trump’s former national security adviser Lt Gen Michael Flynn also said over the weekend that a Myanmar-like coup “should happen” in the US.Appearing before a conference of the QAnon conspiracy movement in Dallas, Flynn was asked by an attendee if what was happening in Myanmar – in which the military overthrew a democratically elected government – could be repeated at home.“There’s no reason,” Flynn told a cheering audience. “I mean, it should happen – that’s right.”Since Myanmar’s military seized power in February, and detained the country’s democratically elected leaders, at least 800 civilians have died and thousands have been arrested.Flynn was fired by Trump in 2017 after it was revealed that he had lied to Vice-President Mike Pence over contacts with Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak.He later pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI, then withdraw his plea and the justice department dropped charges against him. Trump later pardoned the general. In January, Twitter banned Flynn from its platform in a purge of accounts promoting QAnon theories. More
