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      White supremacists declare war on democracy and walk away unscathed | Carol Anderson

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      OpinionRaceWhite supremacists declare war on democracy and walk away unscathedCarol AndersonThe United States has a terrible habit of letting white supremacy get away with repeated attempts to murder American democracy Wed 10 Nov 2021 06.14 ESTLast modified on Wed 10 Nov 2021 06.16 ESTAmerican democracy’s most dangerous adversary is white supremacy. Throughout this nation’s history, white supremacy has undermined, twisted and attacked the viability of the United States. What makes white supremacy so lethal, however, is not just its presence but also the refusal to hold its adherents fully accountable for the damage they have done and continue to do to the nation. The insurrection on 6 January and the weak response are only the latest example.During the war for independence, after the British captured Savannah, the king’s forces set out to capture a wholly unprepared South Carolina. John Laurens, an aide-de-camp of George Washington, pleaded with the South Carolina government to arm the enslaved because the state didn’t have enough available white men to fight the 8,000-strong British force barreling toward Charleston. This was a crisis born of South Carolina’s decision to divert most of the state’s white men from the Continental Army to fight the Redcoats and, instead, enlist them in the militia to control the enslaved population, whom they defined as the primary threat.The response to Laurens’ plan was, therefore, “horror” and “alarm”. Umbrage even. The state’s political leaders were so appalled that they questioned whether “this union was worth fighting for at all”. The United States of America was not nearly as important as maintaining slavery. They, therefore, toyed with the idea of surrendering to the British, making a separate peace. For that flat-out refusal to fight with every resource at its command, and clear willingness to sacrifice the United States simply to maintain slavery, South Carolina suffered no consequences. It wasn’t ostracized. It wasn’t penalized. Instead, the state’s leaders were fully embraced as Founding Fathers and welcomed into the new nation’s halls of power.Several years later, at the 1787 constitutional convention, the south once again put white supremacy above the viability of the United States. In tough negotiations, South Carolina, North Carolina and Georgia’s representatives were willing to hold the nation hostage and risk its destruction unless protection of slavery and the empowering of enslavers was embedded in the constitution. The negotiators acknowledged exactly what was going on and even, sometimes, how reprehensible it was. When, for example, the delegates bowed down to the south’s demands for 20 additional years of the Atlantic slave trade, James Madison admitted that without that concession, “the southern states would not have entered into the union of America”. And, therefore, as “great as the evil is” he added “the dismemberment of the Union would be worse”.The same refrain played after the infamous three-fifths clause passed under the southern threat to walk away and, thus, scuttle the constitution and the United States. Massachusetts delegate Rufus King called the nefarious formula to determine representation in Congress one of the constitution’s “greatest blemishes” while lamenting that it “was a necessary sacrifice to the establishment of the Constitution”.The enslavers’ extortionist threats – white supremacy as the price for the nation to come into being – should have created a massive backlash. But it didn’t. There was no retribution, only compliance and acquiescence. The demonstrated lack of accountability for threatening the viability of the United States served only to embolden the slaveholders, who bullied, harangued and pummeled other congressional leaders, including the brutal 1856 beating of Senator Charles Sumner by southerner Preston Brooks on the Senate floor, to get their way.When the bullying and beatings no longer worked, and the nation dared elect a president opposed to slavery spreading any further, the slaveholders launched a military attack against the United States. They wanted, according to Alexander H Stephens, vice-president of the Confederate States of America, the “disintegration” of the Union. He said that the United States had to be destroyed because, unlike the US, the Confederacy’s “cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition”.To wage its war for white supremacy, the Confederates killed and wounded more than 646,000 American soldiers. In addition to the loss of life, fending off the CSA’s devastating military assault cost the United States billions of dollars. The CSA also tried to badger and entice the British and French to ally with the Confederacy and attack the United States.For doing so much to destroy this nation, after the CSA’s defeat, the consequences were disproportionately minimal. President Andrew Johnson granted many of the Confederacy’s leaders amnesty and allowed them to resume positions of power in the government. The entrée into American society for the traitors was also paved by the way the US supreme court dismantled many of the protections put in place by Congress for post-civil war Black citizenship – the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments, as well as laws banning racial segregation and white domestic terrorism – and allowed the bureaucratic and lynching violence of Jim Crow to eviscerate the “self-evident” principles of equality. And to ensure that a narrative of white supremacy’s innocence permeated the nation’s textbooks, the Confederacy’s treachery became the “war of Northern aggression” and the south’s “Lost Cause” became nothing less than noble. The forgiveness tour continued as the states, not just in the south, allowed the erection of statues in the public square honoring those who committed treason.The 6 January invasion of the US Capitol, provoked by the lie that cities with sizable minority populations, such as Atlanta, Milwaukee and Philadelphia, “stole” the 2020 election is, at its core, white supremacists’ anger that African Americans, Hispanics, Asian Americans and Native Americans not only voted but did so decisively against Donald Trump. The invaders constructed gallows, stormed the US Capitol, wanted to hang Vice-President Mike Pence, who would not hand the election to Trump, and hunted for the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. They beat police officers, yelled “nigger” at others, carried the Confederate flag through the halls of the building and decided that those defending the Capitol were the actual “traitors” who needed to be killed.This horrific attack on American democracy should have resulted in a full-throttled response. But, once again, white supremacy is able to walk away virtually unscathed. US senators and representatives who were at the rally inciting the invaders were not expelled from Congress. Similarly, in shades of the post- civil war Confederacy, several politicians who attended the incendiary event at the Ellipse were recently re-elected to office. And those who stormed the Capitol are getting charged with misdemeanors, being allowed to go on vacations out of the country, and, despite the attempt to stage a coup and overturn the results of a presidential election, getting feather-light sentences.It also took months to establish a congressional committee to investigate 6 January, but it’s already clear that its subpoenas, as Steve Bannon and Jeffrey Clark so brazenly demonstrated, can be violated and mocked at will with no consequences. And, like the Lost Cause, its adherents have tried to rewrite this assault on America as “a normal tourist visit” or simply “law-abiding, patriotic, mom and pop, young adults pushing baby carriages”.In other words, this nation has a really bad habit of letting white supremacy get away with repeated attempts to murder American democracy. It’s time to break that habit. If we don’t, they just might succeed next time.
      Carol Anderson is the Charles Howard Candler professor of African American studies at Emory University and the author of White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide and One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression is Destroying Our Democracy. She is a contributor to the Guardian
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      ‘We’re redefining what leadership looks like’: Asian Americans show rapid rise in US politics

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      US politics‘We’re redefining what leadership looks like’: Asian Americans show rapid rise in US politicsWins this week mark significant step for community that’s been under-represented and borne the brunt of pandemic-driven racism Maya YangTue 9 Nov 2021 05.00 ESTLast modified on Tue 9 Nov 2021 05.02 ESTAfter a series of historic wins across the US last week, Asian Americans will now serve as mayors and city council members in large cities including Boston, Seattle, Cincinnati and New York, signalling the rapid rise in Asian American political power.The victories mark a significant step forward for a diverse community that has seen historically low representation in political offices and in the last two years has borne the brunt of a rising tide of pandemic-driven anti-Asian sentiments.On Tuesday night, voters chose Boston city councilor Michelle Wu to serve in the city’s top political office. The 36-year-old Taiwanese American who was Boston’s first Asian American city councilor will serve as the city’s first mayor of color.“Growing up, I never ever thought that I would or could or should be involved in politics. I didn’t see anyone who looked like me in spaces of power. We are redefining what leadership looks like,” Wu told reporters.In Cincinnati, Aftab Pureval made history by defeating former Democratic Congressman David Mann, making the 39-year-old the first Asian American to hold the city’s mayoral post.The son of a Tibetan mother and Indian father, Pureval addressed a crowd saying: “Cincinnati is a place where no matter what you look like, where you’re from, or how much money you have, if you come here and work hard you can achieve your dreams.”Meanwhile in Seattle, Bruce Harrell, 69, who is of mixed heritage, is projected to become the city’s first Asian American mayor and second Black mayor. In New York City, five Asian Americans were elected to the city council, the most the council has ever had. The record-breaking group includes the first Korean Americans, first South Asian Americans and first Muslim woman to be elected to the council.Traditionally, Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) mayors have been elected in places with significant Asian demographics, such as California and Hawaii. However, the recent rise in anti-Asian racism seems to have prompted a significant portion of Asian Americans to become more involved in politics. More than 9,000 anti-Asian incidents have been reported in the US since the pandemic began.“What’s different about mayoral elections is that this is a citywide office. To win at that level requires forming a broad coalition of support that’s certainly going to cross racial boundaries,” said Sara Sadhwani, an assistant professor of politics at Pomona College specializing in American and ethnic politics.Sadwhani cited the spike in anti-AAPI hate as a key factor for increased political participation, saying, “The discrimination that AAPIs faced throughout the last two years during the pandemic has galvanized them politically and we’re seeing that in terms of the people who are choosing to run for office, as well as voters on the ground. When Asian Americans feel socially excluded or discriminated against, it typically does lead to greater political activism.”The AAPI population is ethnically, linguistically and culturally diverse, but is under-represented in elected offices. AAPIs make up 6.1% of the national population. Yet, they consist of just 0.9% of elected leaders in the country, according to the Reflective Democracy Campaign.As one of the fastest growing demographics in the country, AAPIs also suffer from severe invisibility in the criminal justice sector. Southeast Asian Americans are at least three times more likely to be deported due to past criminal convictions than other immigrants.Of the 2,539 prosecutors that were elected across the country in 2020, only six were of AAPI heritage, or 0.24%. AAPIs also make up only 0.07% of county sheriffs.In March, after a 21-year old white man killed six Asian women and two others in the Atlanta area, many Asian American communities sought greater political recognition while vowing to stand against hate.Raymond Partolan, the national field director of APIAVote, a nonpartisan organization dedicated to promoting civic engagement across AAPI communities, spoke of the intensity he witnessed at rallies after the deadly shooting.“I’ve been working in the community organizing space for around the last ten years or so and I’ve never seen so much interest among AAPIs to involve themselves in the decision-making processes that happen at every level of government, and it’s truly inspiring,” said Partolan.The AAPI Victory Fund, a Super Pac that mobilizes AAPI voters and candidates, endorsed Wu and Pureval. Varun Nikore, the organization’s president, attributes their victories to a ripple effect that emerged through local community building efforts.“Getting to know your communities at that micro-local level ensures more long-term successes because you are forced to discuss kitchen table issues. This provides a roadmap for our community going forward,” Nikore said.Yet despite the celebratory attitudes towards the historic wins, some remain apprehensive towards their potential “tokenization”, fearing that traditional stereotypes may pigeonhole the incoming leaders.“I think by having the focus of [Wu] being hailed as the first female mayor of Boston, she’s being held to a greater standard than any other white man. People would be looking for her to fail rather than trying to see where she can succeed,” said Yasmin Padamsee Forbes, executive director of the Commonwealth of Massachussett’s Asian American Commission.As a result, Forbes urges people to look at what leaders like Wu and Pureval can bring to their cities and evaluate them according to how much they achieve, along with their platforms.“Whenever we have elected officials that share our racial background, it’s important for us to hold them accountable,” said Partolan, who echoed Forbes’ sentiments. “People don’t get a free pass in public office just because they share our racial background. We have to ensure that we elect people that share our values and that once they are in public office, we encourage them to move policies that are beneficial for everyone.”Nevertheless, this week’s victories still prove to be a major step forward in inclusive representation across the country.“We need thousands of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders to run for local office so that we have the future pipeline for a statewide office and then federal office in this country,” said Nikore.TopicsUS politicsRaceBostonSeattleNew YorknewsReuse this content More

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      It’s not all about the culture war – Democrats helped shaft the working class | Robert Reich

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      OpinionUS politicsIt’s not all about the culture war – Democrats helped shaft the working classRobert ReichResults in Virginia and New Jersey do not make Republican dog-whistle politics the future. The left must do more to help Sun 7 Nov 2021 01.00 EDTLast modified on Sun 7 Nov 2021 01.03 EDTAfter Tuesday’s Democratic loss in the Virginia gubernatorial election and near-loss in New Jersey, I’m hearing a narrative about Democrats’ failure with white working-class voters that is fundamentally wrong.Is this a presidency-defining week for Biden? Politics Weekly Extra – podcastRead moreIn Thursday’s New York Times, David Leonhardt pointed out that the non-college voters who are abandoning the Democratic party “tend to be more religious, more outwardly patriotic and more culturally conservative than college graduates”. He then quotes a fellow Times columnist, the pollster Nate Cohn, who says “college graduates have instilled increasingly liberal cultural norms while gaining the power to nudge the Democratic party to the left. Partly as a result, large portions of the party’s traditional working-class base have defected to the Republicans”.Leonhardt adds that these defections have increased over the past decade and suggests Democratic candidates start listening to working-class voters’ concerns about “crime and political correctness”, their “mixed feelings about immigration and abortion laws”, and their beliefs “in God and in a strong America”.This narrative worries me in two ways. First, if “cultural” messages top economic ones, what’s to stop Democrats from playing the same cultural card Republicans have used for years to inflame the white working class: racism? Make no mistake: Glenn Youngkin focused his campaign in Virginia on critical race theory, which isn’t even taught in Virginia’s schools but comes out of the same disgraceful Republican dog-whistle tradition.The other problem with this “culture over economics” narrative is it overlooks the fact that after Ronald Reagan, the Democratic party turned its back on the working class.During the first terms of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, Democrats controlled both houses of Congress. They scored some important victories, such as the Affordable Care Act and an expanded earned income tax credit.But both Clinton and Obama allowed the power of the working class to erode. Both ardently pushed for free trade agreements without providing the millions of blue-collar workers who thereby lost their jobs any means of getting new ones that paid at least as well.They stood by as corporations hammered trade unions, the backbone of the working class. Both refused to reform labor laws to impose meaningful penalties on companies that violated them or enable workers to form unions with simple up-or-down votes. Union membership sank from 22% of all workers when Clinton was elected to fewer than 11% today, denying the working class the bargaining leverage it needs to get a better deal.The Obama administration protected Wall Street from the consequences of its gambling addiction through a giant taxpayer-funded bailout but let millions of underwater homeowners drown.Both Clinton and Obama allowed antitrust to ossify – allowing major industries to become more concentrated and hence more economically and politically powerful.Finally, they turned their backs on campaign finance reform. In 2008, Obama was the first presidential nominee since Richard Nixon to reject public financing in his primary and general-election campaigns. He never followed up on his re-election campaign promise to pursue a constitutional amendment overturning Citizens United v FEC, the 2010 supreme court opinion that opened the floodgates to big money in politics.What happens when you combine freer trade, shrinking unions, Wall Street bailouts, growing corporate power and the abandonment of campaign finance reform? You shift political and economic power to the wealthy and you shaft the working class.Adjusted for inflation, American workers today are earning almost as little as they did 30 years ago, when the American economy was a third its present size.Biden’s agenda for working people – including lower prescription drug prices, paid family leave, stronger unions and free community college – has followed the same sad trajectory, due to the power of big money. Big Pharma has blocked prescription drug reform. A handful of Democratic senators backed by big money have refused to support paid family leave. Big money has killed labor law reform.Resilience: the one word progressives need in the face of Trump, Covid and more | Robert ReichRead moreDemocrats could win back the white working class by putting together a large coalition of the working class and poor, of whites, Blacks and Latinos, of everyone who has been shafted by the huge shift in wealth and power to the top. This would give Democrats the political clout to reallocate power in the economy – rather than merely enact palliatives that paper over the increasing concentration of power at the top.But to do this Democrats would have to end their financial dependence on big corporations, Wall Street and the wealthy. And they would have to reject the convenient story that American workers care more about cultural issues than about getting a better deal in an economy that’s been delivering them a worsening deal for decades.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com
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      How did Republicans turn critical race theory into a winning electoral issue?

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      US politicsHow did Republicans turn critical race theory into a winning electoral issue?Glenn Youngkin won the race to be Virginia’s governor having exploited concerns over teaching about race in schools David Smith in Washington@smithinamericaWed 3 Nov 2021 14.28 EDTLast modified on Wed 3 Nov 2021 15.34 EDTWhat is critical race theory?Developed by the former Harvard Law professor Derrick Bell and other scholars in the 1970s and 80s, critical race theory, or CRT, examines the ways in which racism was embedded into American law and other modern institutions, maintaining the dominance of white people.CRT argues that racism is not a matter of individual bigotry but a systemic issue that creates an uneven playing field for people of colour.Body blow for Biden as voters in Virginia and New Jersey desert DemocratsRead moreKimberlé Williams Crenshaw, a law professor widely credited with coining the term, told the New York Times: “It is a way of seeing, attending to, accounting for, tracing and analyzing the ways that race is produced, the ways that racial inequality is facilitated, and the ways that our history has created these inequalities that now can be almost effortlessly reproduced unless we attend to the existence of these inequalities.”A year or so ago few people had heard of it, yet Republicans have whipped up a moral panic that CRT is being rammed down the throats of schoolchildren. They caricature it as teaching Black children to internalise victimhood and white children to self-identify as oppressors.Is it taught in schools?No, it is not a part of the secondary school curriculum. The National School Boards Association and other education leaders are adamant that CRT is not being taught in K-12 schools, which teach students from five to 18 years old.But Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News and other rightwing media have turned it into a catch-all buzzword for any teaching in schools about race and American history. They loosely apply it to concepts such as equity and anti-bias training for teachers.Patti Hidalgo Menders, president of the Loudoun County Republican Women’s Club in Virginia, told the Guardian last week: “They may not call it critical race theory, but they’re calling it equity, diversity, inclusion. They use culturally responsive training for their teachers. It is fundamentally CRT.“It’s dividing our children into victims and oppressors and what’s a child supposed to do with that?”Efforts to weaponise CRT were reinforced by former president Donald Trump and a rightwing ecosystem including influential thinktanks. Last year Christopher Rufo, a conservative scholar now at the Manhattan Institute, told the Fox News host Tucker Carlson that CRT was a form of “cult indoctrination”.In January the Heritage Foundation hosted a panel discussion where the moderator, Angela Sailor, warned: “Critical race theory is the complete rejection of the best ideas of the American founding. This is some dangerous, dangerous philosophical poisoning in the blood stream.”What role did CRT play in Virginia’s election?Winning Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin’s signature issue was education. He hammered government schools on “culture war” issues such as race and transgender rights and falsely claimed that his Democratic opponent, Terry McAuliffe, called his friend, President Joe Biden, and asked the FBI to silence conservative parents.Youngkin said he would ban the teaching of CRT in Virginia classrooms. At a campaign event in Glen Allen last month, the candidate said to applause: “What we won’t do is teach our children to view everything through the lens of race. On day one, I will ban critical race theory.”McAuliffe was forced on to the defensive and had to engage with the issue. He accused Republicans of using the Trump playbook of division and deceit, a message that did not cut through in the same way.Why did the issue resonate with voters?This can be seen as a rightwing backlash to last year’s Black Lives Matter protests and conversations about structural racism that followed the police murder of George Floyd, an African American man in Minneapolis. It also can be seen as a response to America’s changing demographics, specifically the increase in the minority population.It also comes after lengthy school closures during the pandemic infuriated many parents. School board meetings in Virginia and elsewhere have turned ugly, even violent, and protest signs calling for bans on masks and CRT are sometimes almost interchangeable.This week conservatives targeted school board elections nationwide over masking rules and teaching racial justice issues. In Virginia, 14% of voters listed education as a top issue, and about seven of 10 of those voted for Youngkin.McAuliffe did not help himself when, during a debate, he said, “I don’t believe parents should be telling schools what they should teach” – a line that was constantly replayed in Youngkin attacks ads.Youngkin also highlighted a high school bathroom sexual assault case in affluent Loudoun county, in northern Virginia, to argue against allowing transgender students into their chosen restrooms.Is it just Virginia?No. Officials in Republican-controlled states across America are proposing numerous laws to ban teachers from emphasizing the role of systemic racism. Legislation aiming to curb how teachers talk about race has been considered by at least 15 states, according to research by Education Week.Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, has described CRT as “state-sanctioned racism”.Brad Little, the governor of Idaho, signed into law a measure banning public schools from teaching CRT, which it claimed will “exacerbate and inflame divisions on the basis of sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, national origin, or other criteria in ways contrary to the unity of the nation and the wellbeing of the state of Idaho and its citizens”.Red states are also targeting the 1619 Project, a series by the New York Times which contends that modern American history began with the arrival of enslaved people four centuries ago and examines that legacy.Republicans are expected to use the Youngkin formula to woo suburban voters in next year’s midterm elections for Congress.TopicsUS politicsRepublicansRaceDemocratsVirginiaexplainersReuse this content More

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      Virginia votes as poll expert says ‘white backlash’ could power Republican win

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      VirginiaVirginia votes as poll expert says ‘white backlash’ could power Republican winGlenn Youngkin and Democrat Terry McAuliffe make final pitch for governor as polls show unexpectedly close race Lauren Gambino in Washington, Martin Pengelly in New York and agenciesTue 2 Nov 2021 17.03 EDTFirst published on Tue 2 Nov 2021 08.01 EDTVirginians on Tuesday headed to the polls to elect a new governor, in a closely contested race between the Democrat Terry McAuliffe and Republican Glenn Youngkin widely seen as a referendum on Joe Biden’s presidency.Why this governor’s race is shaping up as a referendum on the Biden presidencyRead moreThey did so as a leading Virginia polling expert warned that Youngkin may be riding a wave of “white backlash” all the way to the governor’s mansion, having successfully focused on controversy over the place of race in education.In the final hours of the campaign, the candidates offered starkly different closing arguments, making their cases to voters whose odd-year gubernatorial elections have long reflected the national political mood a year into any new administration.Saddled by Biden’s sagging poll numbers and intra-party wrangling that has gridlocked the president’s domestic spending agenda, McAuliffe has attempted to tether his opponent to Donald Trump, a polarizing figure in voter-rich northern suburbs.Youngkin has mostly avoided the subject of Trump while embracing many of his tactics, a strategy many Republican strategists believe could be a model for the midterm elections next year.Polls showed an unexpectedly close race in a state that has trended Democratic since the election of Barack Obama in 2008. A loss in Virginia, which Biden won by nearly 10 points in 2020, would be deeply alarming for a party already bracing for a difficult challenge next year.Hours before polls closed in the commonwealth, Biden expressed confidence that Democrats would win the gubernatorial race in Virginia, and hold the governor’s mansion in New Jersey, where the incumbent, Phil Murphy, is seeking re-election in the Garden state.“We’re gonna win,” Biden said, leaning into the microphone for emphasis, during a press conference in Glasgow, Scotland. He acknowledged that the contest in Virginia was “tight”, saying the outcome would reflect “who shows up, who turns out”.But he waved off attempts to read the race as a barometer of his presidency, insisting that McAuliffe’s fortunes in the state were not tied to his poll numbers or his domestic agenda.“Even if we had passed my agenda, I wouldn’t claim we won because Biden’s agenda passed,” he told reporters.The president predicted that Americans would know the result by the time Air Force One touches down in Washington at roughly 1am local time, though some analysts have warned that it could take longer.Changes to Virginia law mean mail-in and early ballots will be tabulated more quickly than in 2020. As such, Democrats may appear to be ahead early in the night, before the localities more favorable to Republicans start counting election day ballots.On Monday, the last day of dueling events, McAuliffe continued to hammer Youngkin over his connections to Trump, warning darkly that a Republican win in Virginia could help pave the way for a Trump comeback in 2024. But then he went further.“Guess how Glenn Youngkin is finishing his campaign?” the former governor, 64, told a crowd in Fairfax. “He is doing an event with Donald Trump here in Virginia.”That was a lie. Trump was not in Virginia, though he did boost the Republican candidate with a tele-rally. Youngkin did not participate.Youngkin, 54, a former private equity executive and political newcomer, closed his campaign with a final attempt to harness parents’ anger over school closures, mask mandates and what their children are learning, and turn it into an election night upset.Asked why education had become a central factor in Youngkin’s stronger-than-expected showing, Larry Sabato of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia said: “One of the candidates decided it was his ticket to the governor’s mansion and he may well be right.”Speaking to MSNBC, Sabato pointed to the core of Youngkin’s appeal on education: a promise to ban critical race theory in schools. Critical race theory, or CRT, is an academic discipline that examines the ways in which racism operates in US laws and society. It is not taught in Virginia schools, regardless of Youngkin’s promise to ban it.“The operative word is not critical,” Sabato said. “And it’s not theory. It’s race. What a shock, huh? Race. That is what matters. And that’s why it’s sticks.“There’s a lot of, we can call it white backlash, white resistance, whatever you want to call it. It has to do with race. And so we live in a post-factual era … It doesn’t matter that [CRT] isn’t taught in Virginia schools. It’s this generalised attitude that whites are being put upon and we’ve got to do something about it. We being white voters.”Cultural issues have dominated the race, Youngkin also promising to give parents more control over how public schools handle gender and Covid-19, McAuliffe vowing to protect voting rights and abortion access.McAuliffe, a Clinton ally who was governor of Virginia from 2014 to 2018 – the state does not allow consecutive terms – has seen his lead evaporate. Polls have shown Youngkin succeeding by appealing to independents turned off by Trump without alienating his ardent supporters.Youngkin campaigned as an advocate for parents who want more say in their children’s education, capitalising on anger among conservatives who believe schools are overreaching in the name of diversity. Speaking in Richmond on Monday, he promised he would usher in “a Virginia where our government stops telling us what to do all the time”.McAuliffe also handed Youngkin a political gift when he said in a debate in September: “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”He has attacked Youngkin for hesitating to say whether Biden won the presidency legitimately. Youngkin acknowledged Biden’s victory but also called for an audit of Virginia voting machines, prompting Democrats to accuse him of validating Trump’s baseless election conspiracy theories.Democrats strive to fire Black voter turnout in Virginia governor’s raceRead moreBoth Biden and Barack Obama campaigned for McAuliffe. Trump has not visited the state. In his tele-rally on Monday, the former president told voters Youngkin would protect suburbs and did not repeat his lies about voter fraud.McAuliffe responded on Twitter, saying Trump was “pulling out all the stops to win this race because he knows Glenn will advance his Maga agenda here in Virginia. Tomorrow, Virginia will choose a better way.”In their final word on the campaign, Sabato’s team at UVA moved their prediction from “leans Democratic” to “leans Republican”.“Our sense is that the race has been moving toward Youngkin,” Kyle Kondik and J Miles Coleman wrote, “in large part because of the political environment. McAuliffe’s Trump-centric campaign also just doesn’t seem as potent in a non-federal race with the former president no longer in the White House.”TopicsVirginiaUS politicsDemocratsRepublicansRacenewsReuse this content More

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      Minneapolis votes on whether to replace police department

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      MinnesotaMinneapolis votes on whether to replace police department Future of policing is on the ballot in the city where Floyd’s death in May 2020 launched a nationwide reckoning on racial justice Associated Press in MinneapolisTue 2 Nov 2021 08.51 EDTVoters in Minneapolis will decide on Tuesday whether to replace their police department with a new Department of Public Safety, more than a year after the murder of George Floyd, a Black man, by a white police officer launched a national movement to defund or abolish police. ‘I had a big gasp’: George Floyd jurors speak on the trial, the video and the verdictRead moreThe Democratic mayor, Jacob Frey, is also in a tough fight for a second term, facing opponents who attacked him in the wake of Floyd’s death.Frey opposed the policing amendment. Two of his leading challengers in a field of 17, Sheila Nezhad and Kate Knuth, strongly supported the proposal. Voters will also decide whether to replace an unusual “weak mayor, strong council” system with a more conventional distribution of executive and legislative powers.While results on the ballot questions were expected on Tuesday night, the mayoral race uses ranked-choice voting. If no candidate reaches 50% in the first round, the winner will be determined after a tally of second- and potentially third-choice votes. The future of policing in the city where Floyd’s death in May 2020 launched a nationwide reckoning on racial justice overshadowed everything else on the ballot. The debate brought national attention as well as out-of-state money seeking to influence a contest that could shape changes in policing elsewhere. The proposed amendment to the city charter would remove language that mandates Minneapolis have a police department with a minimum number of officers based on population. It would be replaced by a new Department of Public Safety that would take a “comprehensive public health approach to the delivery of functions” that “could include” police officers “if necessary, to fulfill its responsibilities for public safety”. Supporters of the change argued that an overhaul is necessary to stop police violence, to re-imagine what public safety can be and to devote more funding to approaches that don’t rely on sending armed officers to deal with people in crisis. But opponents said the ballot proposal contained no plan for how the department would operate and expressed fear it might make communities affected by gun violence more vulnerable. The details, and who would lead the new agency, would be determined by the mayor and the council. Two prominent progressives – Ilhan Omar, who represents the Minneapolis area, and state attorney general Keith Ellison – supported the policing amendment. But some leading mainstream liberals, including Governor Tim Walz and Senators Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith, opposed it, fearing backlash could lead to Democratic losses across the US in 2022. Opponents included several Black leaders, some top voices in the police accountability movement. Minister JaNae Bates, a spokeswoman for the pro-amendment campaign, told reporters that even if the proposal fails, it has changed the conversation. “No matter what happens,” Bates said, “the city is going to have to move forward and really wrestle with what we cannot un-know: that the Minneapolis police department has been able to operate with impunity and has done quite a bit of harm and the city has to take some serious steps to rectify that.”TopicsMinnesotaGeorge FloydUS politicsUS policingRacenewsReuse this content More

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      Republican contender in Virginia avoids Trump’s campaign event

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      VirginiaRepublican contender in Virginia avoids Trump’s campaign event
      Glenn Youngkin to give Trump’s ‘tele rally’ a wide berth
      Opinion: Republican racial culture war reaches new heights
      Martin Pengelly@MartinPengellyMon 1 Nov 2021 14.36 EDTFirst published on Mon 1 Nov 2021 10.39 EDTDonald Trump was to host a Virginia campaign event on Monday for Glenn Youngkin, the Republican candidate for governor in a race headed down to the wire. But Youngkin was not planning to participate, as he attempted to balance appeals to the former president’s supporters with a semblance of independence.Why this governor’s race is shaping up as a referendum on the Biden presidencyRead moreTrump hoped a phone-in “tele rally” would hoist Youngkin past his Democratic opponent, the former governor Terry McAuliffe.The contest is seen by many as a referendum on the Biden presidency and a bellwether for midterm elections next year. On the day before polling day, the realclearpolitics.com polling average had Youngkin ahead by less than two points. Fivethirtyeight.com put the Republican up by one.McAuliffe had scheduled rallies in Roanoke, Virginia Beach and Richmond and in northern Virginia. Youngkin was to rally in Roanoke, Richmond, Virginia Beach and Loudon county.In Richmond, Youngkin addressed “an energetic crowd of what his campaign said was around 800 people” at a small airport, the Associated Press reported.“This is a moment for Virginians to push back on this left, liberal progressive agenda and take our commonwealth back,” he said.McAuliffe, who has called himself a “pro-business pro-progressive”, is a close ally of Bill and Hillary Clinton and has campaigned with President Joe Biden, Vice-President Kamala Harris, former president Barack Obama and other high-profile Democrats. Nonetheless he has struggled to generate enthusiasm in a state Biden won by 10 points.Youngkin, a businessman, has not appeared with Trump. On Saturday, he told reporters: “I’m not going to be engaged in the tele-town hall. The teams are talking, I’m sure.”Youngkin has however comfortably dealt in Trump-esque attack lines, most prominently and potentially fruitfully focusing on how race is taught in schools. In return McAuliffe has sought to tie Youngkin firmly to Trump, not a tough task in the debate over education.Youngkin has repeatedly raised the subject of critical race theory, an academic discipline turned into a bogeyman by Republicans nationwide. CRT examines the ways in which racism operates in US laws and society. It is not taught in Virginia public schools. Regardless, Youngkin has treated it as a genuine threat, stoking anger on the right, and has promised to ban it.Speaking to NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, McAuliffe said Youngkin had gone too far. Citing a meeting with a voter in Hampton, he said the former school board member told him “our school boards were fine. Soon as Glenn Youngkin got nominated, all of a sudden, these people started showing up, creating such a ruckus, calling such obscene things”.“This was an African American woman,” McAuliffe said. “I can’t repeat on air what they’ve said about her. This was last night, up here in northern Virginia … we just lost a school board member … She said, ‘I was getting death threats. But when they said they were going to rape my children, I can’t take it anymore.’“That’s what Glenn Youngkin has done here in Virginia. He’s created hatred and division just like Donald Trump, and that’s why Donald Trump, his final campaign is going to be for Glenn Youngkin here in Virginia.“We don’t want Trump. We don’t want Youngkin. We don’t want the hatred and division.”In a statement on Monday, Trump freely demonstrated his willingness to exploit hatred and division.Lincoln Project members pose as white supremacists at Virginia GOP eventRead moreTaking barely veiled shots at the Lincoln Project – anti-Trump Republicans who have campaigned against him in Virginia, sometimes controversially, and who Trump referred to only as “perverts” – the former president said his enemies were “trying to create an impression that Glenn Youngkin and I are at odds and don’t like each other.“Importantly, this is not true. We get along very well together and strongly believe in many of the same policies, especially when it comes to the important subject of education.”Trump reiterated the need for Republicans to vote. He also sought to thread the needle between his insistence on mass voter fraud against him and the need for high Republican turnout – a trick he failed to pull off in Georgia in January, when Democrats won two Senate runoffs.If enough of his supporters voted, Trump said, they would overcome the fact that he was “not a believer in the integrity of Virginia’s elections”.TopicsVirginiaUS politicsRepublicansDemocratsRaceUS educationnewsReuse this content More

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      The people Kyle Rittenhouse shot can’t be called ‘victims’, a judge says. Surprised? | Akin Olla

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      OpinionRaceThe people Kyle Rittenhouse shot can’t be called ‘victims’, a judge says. Surprised?Akin OllaThough he crossed state lines with a semi-automatic rifle and shot three people, Rittenhouse has been treated with an alarming degree of grace Sun 31 Oct 2021 06.25 EDTLast modified on Sun 31 Oct 2021 06.26 EDTIn the midst of the unrest following a police officer’s shooting of Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black man, in Kenosha, Wisconsin, last year, Kyle Rittenhouse, a 17-year-old boy from Illinois, shot and killed two anti-police brutality protesters and wounded a third. This week the presiding judge in Rittenhouse’s trial has decided that the men that Rittenhouse shot cannot be called “victims” during the trial.Despite purposefully crossing state lines armed with a semi-automatic rifle, Rittenhouse has been treated, before and after the act, with an alarming degree of grace. Rittenhouse’s case is about a lot more than just one armed vigilante seeking to protect the status quo at the expense of human lives: it is about an entire system that pushed him to violence.In August 2020, Rittenhouse and other white men answered a call to action by a former Kenosha city alderman for the formation of a militia to “take up arms” to defend Kenosha “from the evil thugs”. During the evening of the shooting, the presence of this militia was supported by local police officers who offered them water and affirmations, saying, “We appreciate you guys, we really do.”According to the militia member Ryan Balch, a police officer told him that officers would be pushing protesters back towards the armed men, claiming that police believed the militia would “deal with” the protesters. After Rittenhouse shot the three men, witnesses shouted for his arrest but nearby officers appeared to let him disappear into the night and return to his home state of Illinois.After the shooting, Rittenhouse was celebrated by conservative figures like Tucker Carlson and Ann Coulter and, of course, President Donald Trump. A rally was held in his honor and hundreds of thousands of dollars were raised in support of his legal defense. At least one police officer donated to the fundraising effort, commenting, “God bless. Thank you for your courage … You’ve done nothing wrong.”Erin Decker, the Kenosha county Republican party chair, suggested that Rittenhouse was innocent and that “about 80% [of people in the area] support what Kyle did”. The Department of Homeland Security prepared talking points sympathetic to the shooter, prepping officials to say that he arrived in Kenosha to defend small business owners. As his case begins, it is clear that he will continue to receive support from many of those embedded in American institutions.Kenosha county circuit judge Bruce Schroeder, who is presiding over the controversial case, had already made some questionable decisions while setting the parameters of the trial. Schroeder has ruled that the men shot by Rittenhouse cannot be described as “victims’’ in court because the phrase is too “loaded” and may sway the opinions of the jury. Schroeder also advised against Rittenhouse’s legal team referring to the men he killed as “looters” and “arsonists” but did not forbid them from doing so – a double standard that props up rightwing talking points about protesters during last year’s summer uprisings against police brutality.Gaige Grosskreutz, the survivor of the attack, has not been charged with any crimes related to the protests, and the vast majority of 2020’s protesters engaged in peaceful action. Though those killed by Rittenhouse were white, the victim-blaming rings of the comments that often follow the murder of Black Americans at the hands of police and vigilantes. In 2014, more money was raised in support of the police officer who killed 18-year-old Michael Brown than was raised for Brown’s memorial service.The judge has given Rittenhouse’s defense more room to maneuver, while blocking some damning evidence against Rittenhouse from entering the case. This evidence includes a video of him expressing a desire to shoot people that he thought were looters and photos of him posing with members of the far-right organization the Proud Boys – who used Rittenhouse’s name to promote a rally in Portland.While Judge Schroeder may see his decisions as justified, he is still feeding into a larger pattern that surrounds Rittenhouse and the criminal justice system at large. The reality is that Rittenhouse was, compared with a Black man, less likely to be arrested for his crime, more likely to be bailed, less likely to be convicted and less likely to receive a prison sentence. It isn’t hard to imagine that a Black man in his position wouldn’t even be alive today – much like Philando Castile, who was shot by a police officer for simply disclosing that he had a firearm in his possession during a traffic stop.Rittenhouse may have pulled the trigger, but there is a larger system at play, a system that sent him to Kenosha and will probably send him back home after the trial.
      Akin Olla is a contributing opinion writer at the Guardian
      TopicsRaceOpinionWisconsinJacob BlakeUS politicscommentReuse this content More