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      in US Politics

      California launches first-in-nation taskforce to study reparations for Black Americans

      by

      A first-in-the-country taskforce to study and recommend reparations for African Americans held its inaugural meeting in California on Tuesday, launching a two-year process to address the harms of slavery and systemic racism.The meeting of the first state reparations committee in the US coincided with a visit by Joe Biden to Oklahoma, during which the president marked the centenary of the Tulsa race massacre and commemorated the hundreds of Black Americans who were killed by a white mob in a flourishing district known as the “Black Wall Street”. It also comes just over a year after the murder of George Floyd by a white police officer in Minnesota.A federal slavery reparations bill passed out of the House Judiciary Committee in April, but it faces an uphill battle to becoming law. The bill was first introduced in Congress in 1989 and refers to the failed government effort to provide 40 acres (16 hectares) of land to newly freed slaves as the civil war wound down.California’s secretary of state, Shirley Weber, who as a state assemblywoman authored the state legislation creating the taskforce, noted the solemnity of the occasion as well as the opportunity to right a historic wrong that continues today, in the form of large racial disparities in wealth, health and education. African Americans make up just 6% of California’s population yet were 30% of an estimated 250,000 people experiencing homelessness who sought help in 2020.“Your task is to determine the depth of the harm, and the ways in which we are to repair that harm,” said Weber, whose sharecropper parents were forced to leave the south.The state’s governor, Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who signed the bill into law last year, issued a formal apology to Native American tribal leaders in 2019. He also announced the creation of a council to examine the state’s role in campaigns to exterminate and exploit indigenous people in the state.Critics have said that California was not a slaveholding state and should not have to study reparations, or pay for it. But Weber said the state is an economic powerhouse that can point the way for a federal government that has been unable to address the issue. It would not replace any reparations agreed to by the federal government.In 1988, Ronald Reagan signed legislation providing $20,000 in redress and a formal apology to every surviving Japanese American incarcerated during the second world war.Members of the taskforce pointed out that Black Americans have heard all their lives that they need to improve themselves, yet the truth is that they’ve been held back by outright racism and discriminatory laws that prevented them from getting conventional bank loans and buying homes.Slavery may not have flourished in California as it did in southern states, they said, but African Americans were still treated harshly. Their neighborhoods in San Francisco and Los Angeles were razed in the name of development.The nine taskforce members, appointed by Newsom and leaders of the legislature, include the descendants of slaves who are now prominent lawyers, academics and politicians.Steven Bradford, a taskforce member and state senator, said he would like to model a reparations program on the GI bill, allowing for free college and assistance with home-buying.“We have lost more than we have ever taken from this country,” Bradford said. “We have given more than has ever been given to us.” More

    • 213 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘This was not a riot, this was a massacre’: Biden honors victims of 1921 violence – live

      by

      Key events

      Show

      5.01pm EDT
      17:01

      Today so far

      4.40pm EDT
      16:40

      ‘This was not a riot, this was a massacre,’ Biden says in Tulsa

      4.29pm EDT
      16:29

      Biden tells Tulsa race massacre survivors: ‘Now your story will be known in full view’

      4.23pm EDT
      16:23

      Biden delivers remarks in Tulsa to commemorate race massacre anniversary

      2.38pm EDT
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      Biden arrives in Tulsa to meet with race massacre survivors and deliver remarks

      2.04pm EDT
      14:04

      Biden issues proclamation to mark LGBTQ+ Pride Month

      1.41pm EDT
      13:41

      “Tragic and devastating” – WH spox

      Live feed

      Show

      5.22pm EDT
      17:22

      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:

      5.01pm EDT
      17:01

      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.

      Updated
      at 5.09pm EDT

      4.55pm EDT
      16:55

      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.

      4.40pm EDT
      16:40

      ‘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
      at 4.47pm EDT

      4.29pm EDT
      16:29

      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

      4.23pm EDT
      16:23

      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
      16:03

      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

      3.35pm EDT
      15:35

      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.”

      3.30pm EDT
      15:30

      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
      15:13

      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

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Revealed: majority of people charged in Capitol attack aren’t in jail

      by

      At least 70% of people charged in the Capitol riot have been released as they wait for trial, according to a Guardian analysis.That high pretrial release rate stands in stark contrast with the usual detention rates in the federal system, where only 25% of defendants nationwide are typically released before their trial.Eric Munchel, known as “Zip Tie Guy”, who was allegedly photographed wearing tactical gear and carrying wrist restraints in the Senate chamber, was released in late March, along with his mother, after an appeals court questioned whether he posed any danger outside the specific context of 6 January.Richard Barnett, the Arkansas man photographed with his foot on Nancy Pelosi’s desk, was released in late April, nearly two months after screaming during a court hearing that “it’s not fair” that he was still in custody when “everybody else who did things much worse are already home”.Multiple alleged members of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, two groups facing the most serious conspiracy charges related to their alleged plans for violence, have been released before trial, though some prominent leaders in these groups remain in custody.The disparity in pretrial detention rates highlights what legal experts said was a broader development in the 6 January cases: the likelihood that a substantial swathe of the alleged rioters may not serve any prison time at all, even if they are convicted or plead guilty.Many Capitol defendants are being released ahead of trial because they are facing relatively low-level charges, experts said, though other factors, including racial bias, may also play a role.“I’m both surprised and not surprised. Most of these people are white,” said Erica Zunkel, associate director of the Federal Criminal Justice Clinic at the University of Chicago Law School. “The majority of people in the federal system are people of color.”The US attorney’s office for the District of Columbia, which is prosecuting the cases, said in a statement that the alleged Capitol rioters were facing very different kinds of charges than most people in the federal system.“Comparing the per cent of January 6 defendants detained with the overall federal average is comparing apples and oranges,” a spokesperson for the office said. “The majority of federal defendants are charged with immigration or drug crimes, both of which are typically accompanied by detention. The January 6 defendants are charged with a variety of obstruction, assault, and trespassing charges. The comparison makes no sense.”Zunkel, a former federal defense attorney, argued that it was absolutely fair to ask why prosecutors and judges were making different detention decisions for drug and immigration cases than for the people charged with participating in the 6 January attack, who are more than 90% white.More than 96% of the people charged with federal immigration crimes are Hispanic, and more than 70% of those charged with federal drug crimes are Hispanic and Black, Zunkel said, citing federal sentencing data.“We have a problem with our system, something has gone wildly wrong, if we have a 75% detention rate nationwide, and we have a subset where we have a more than 70% release rate,” she said.Zunkel and a colleague, Judith P Miller, both former federal defense attorneys, said that the level of skepticism and care federal judges were bringing to the decision of whether Capitol defendants were truly dangerous enough to keep incarcerated was not at all the norm.The problem, they said, was not that judges were making the wrong call in releasing Capitol defendants, but that judges were not making similar calls for the majority of people in the federal system.“For my Black and brown clients, it feels like they have to meet such an impossibly high threshold to be released,” Miller, a University of Chicago law professor, said. “The kind of sensitivity the courts have shown to the capitol defendants’ claims for relief – I wish some of that sensitivity would be shown more broadly.”The US attorney’s office for the District of Columbia declined to confirm how many Capitol defendants were currently in pretrial detention, noting that the number “has the potential to fluctuate frequently based on ongoing detention decisions”.By mid-May, at least 440 people had been arrested on charges related to the 6 January Capitol breach, according to the justice department, including at least 125 charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement.Of 398 defendants listed on the justice department’s Capitol breach case site as of 10 May, at least 330 were listed on the site, or in federal court records, as released from custody. At least 56 of those defendants remained in detention.The precise number and percentage of Capitol defendants who are released versus in detention changes often, as new alleged rioters are arrested, others secure release, and a few risk re-arrest for violating the conditions of their release. The number and status of cases on the justice department’s Capitol breach website also lags behind court filings.But the broader trend in the cases is clear: the overwhelming majority of Capitol defendants are not being detained ahead of trial.Based on their likelihood of flight risk or danger to their communities, some of the Capitol defendants have been required to meet more intensive release conditions, including GPS monitoring, curfews or home detention, and limitations on their access to the Internet or social media, according to court records.Many of the Capitol defendants are facing only relatively low-level federal charges, such as entering a restricted building or disorderly conduct within a restricted building. A Washington Post analysis of court documents in mid-May concluded that 44% of the Capitol defendants faced only misdemeanor charges.Some of the federal judges hearing the Capitol cases have expressed concern that certain defendants may have already spent more time in custody than they are likely to face as a punishment for their crimes.“For those who end up only charged with misdemeanors, it’s likely that they won’t serve any substantial time, or potentially no time at all,” said Mary McCord, an expert on extremism who served for nearly 20 years as a prosecutor in the US attorney’s office in Washington DC. “It’s quite possible if they were to plead guilty, they would be sentenced to whatever time was served, or 30 days.”There is a tension between the dramatic collective effect of the 6 January mob, which halted the official certification of Biden’s election as president and threatened the legitimacy of American democracy, legal experts said, and what federal prosecutors can prove that individual people did.“The irony is that we have so many laws – so many things are illegal – it’s somewhat surprising that they’re not able to find charges that are more serious,” Zunkel said.Some more serious potential charges, like conspiracy or seditious conspiracy, would require evidence of prior agreement to commit a crime that appears to be lacking for many participants in the chaotic Capitol mob, said Daniel Richman, a Columbia University law professor and former federal prosecutor.“When you look at each individual, what they did might amount to destruction of property or illegal entry, and that’s in all likelihood what they’ll be charged with, but the larger dimension of their participation in a massive attack falls by the wayside,” Richman said.Part of the current dynamic of the Capitol cases, Richman cautioned, was seeing the very normal limitations of the criminal justice system come up against the heightened expectations of a public who watched the shocking violence of 6 January unfold in real time.“Criminal prosecutions never end in these glorious accountability moments where everyone is satisfied that right was done,” Richman said.For many Capitol defendants facing these lower-level charges, justice department prosecutors did not even attempt to keep them detained ahead of trial, and they were quickly released on standard conditions.Federal prosecutors did fight for months to keep other defendants in custody, with federal judges eventually overruling them, particularly after the pivotal appeals court ruling questioning the detention of Munchel, the alleged “Zip Tie Guy”, and his mother, who both gave interviews talking about their willingness to engage in violence to further their beliefs but were not accused of any specific acts of violence or vandalism as they roamed the Capitol, wrist restraints in hand.“My guess is the judges who decided to release some of these folks on bond were thinking: on January 6, there were an ideal storm of conditions for these people to commit a crime, and now there aren’t those ideal conditions any more, so they’re not likely to do it again,” said Wanda Bertram, a communications strategist at the Prison Policy Initiative, a non-profit that focuses on the harms of mass incarceration.But the same logic could be applied to low-level crimes: “investing in people’s communities” to “create different conditions” that would make it unlikely for them to repeat the same behavior, Bertram said.“The treatment of the people who are involved in the Capitol riot should show us what is possible and what is logical in terms of how to treat people in the future.”Former prosecutors defended the justice department’s work in the Capitol cases, and said that the continuing effort to identify and arrest a large proportion of the hundreds of people who stormed the Capitol was a massive, demanding endeavor, and showed how much the government wanted to ensure that there were real consequences for participating in the attack.“They’ve been aggressive, and continue to be, in trying to find everybody who was at that riot,” said Laurie Levenson, a professor at Loyola Law School. “For the attorney general, numbers matter. It really matters that hundreds of people are held responsible. That’s the message to people: you don’t want to game the system.”“I think they pretty much want on everyone’s records that they were responsible for these actions,” Levenson added. “It means something that these people are going to walk away with even a federal misdemeanor record. That has an impact on their employment, on their life, on their situation in their community. Even if they just get probation, they’re going to have to watch their step.” More

    • 163 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      George Floyd’s family urges Biden to pass a policing reform bill – live

      by

      Key events

      Show

      5.00pm EDT
      17:00

      Today so far

      4.42pm EDT
      16:42

      Senate confirms Kristen Clarke to lead DOJ civil rights division in historic first

      4.06pm EDT
      16:06

      ‘We have to act’ on policing reform, Biden says after meeting with Floyd family

      3.46pm EDT
      15:46

      Floyd family encourages passage of policing reform bill after Biden meeting

      3.19pm EDT
      15:19

      Biden to travel to Tulsa to mark 100th anniversary of race massacre

      2.38pm EDT
      14:38

      Biden and Harris meet with Floyd family to commemorate anniversary

      2.12pm EDT
      14:12

      Crew disappointed after DoJ bars Trump-Russia memo

      Live feed

      Show

      5.29pm EDT
      17:29

      Capitol riot defendants argue that jail conditions are ‘psychologically damaging’
      Defense lawyers representing alleged Capitol rioters who have been jailed before trial are now arguing that conditions at a DC jail are “damaging”, and that the defendants should be transferred or released, NBC News’ Scott MacFarlane reports.

      Scott MacFarlane
      (@MacFarlaneNews)
      Defense lawyer in Jan 6 case tells judge the conditions at DC jail for Insurrection defendants are “psychologically damaging”22 hours of lockdown, only two hours of rec time.. no movement on weekends for inmates, according to defense attorneyMore motions for release coming pic.twitter.com/S40a2VCNnI

      May 25, 2021

      The defendants making these arguments include Dominic Pezzola, a member of the Proud Boys, whose lawyer said conditions at the jail are “unheard of”, MacFarlane reports.

      Scott MacFarlane
      (@MacFarlaneNews)
      Lots of Jan 6 defendants are trying to get released out of DC jail (or transferred elsewhere) this weekRyan Samsel is accused of knocking unconscious an officer at barricade Jan 6Samsel says *he* was beaten in DC jail in March & remains injured. He wants to be sent to PA pic.twitter.com/MI7YMqnflS

      May 25, 2021

      Scott MacFarlane
      (@MacFarlaneNews)
      NEW: Attorney says accused Proud Boy Domenic Pezzola will seek release from jail (again) before trial in Jan 6 case. Lawyer says Pezzola is “psychologically damaged” because conditions at jail are “unheard of”And adds…. trial won’t happen “anytime soon” pic.twitter.com/X9JkxWODde

      May 25, 2021

      Updated
      at 5.46pm EDT

      5.14pm EDT
      17:14

      A somber image of George Floyd’s daughter at the White House
      This is Lois Beckett, picking up our live US politics coverage from Los Angeles.
      Associated Press photographer Evan Vucci shared this image of Gianna Floyd, George Floyd’s seven-year-old daughter, visiting the White House earlier today.

      Evan Vucci
      (@evanvucci)
      A Marine holds the door as Gianna Floyd, the daughter of George Floyd, walks into the White House. pic.twitter.com/tbsavLTzcx

      May 25, 2021

      After a meeting with Joe Biden, members of the Floyd family spoke publicly, and Gianna led a chant of “Say his name, George Floyd!”

      Updated
      at 5.44pm EDT

      5.00pm EDT
      17:00

      Today so far

      That’s it from me today. My west coast colleague, Lois Beckett, will take over the blog for the next few hours.
      Here’s where the day stands so far:

      George Floyd’s family encouraged Congress to pass a policing reform bill after meeting with Joe Biden at the White House. The family’s meeting with the president came on the one-year anniversary of the death of Floyd, who was murdered by a white police officer in Minneapolis. “If you can make federal laws to protect the [national] bird, which is the bald eagle, you can make federal laws to protect people of color,” Floyd’s brother, Philonise Floyd, told reporters after the meeting.
      Biden expressed hope that lawmakers will soon reach a bipartisan compromise on the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. “To deliver real change, we must have accountability when law enforcement officers violate their oaths,” the president said in a statement after his meeting with Floyd’s family. “We have to act.”
      Biden will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin next month in Geneva, Switzerland, the White House confirmed. The 16 June summit will mark Biden’s first in-person meeting with the Russian president since taking office.
      As of today, 50% of American adults are fully vaccinated against coronavirus, the White House said. Biden has previously said he wants to get 70% of American adults at least partially vaccinated by 4 July, and the White House said it is on track to meet that goal.
      House minority leader Kevin McCarthy condemned extremist congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene for comparing coronavirus restrictions to the Holocaust. “Marjorie is wrong, and her intentional decision to compare the horrors of the Holocaust with wearing masks is appalling,” McCarthy said. Greene’s comments had sparked widespread outrage among members of both parties, who noted it was incredibly offensive to compare health precautions recommended by experts to the slaughter of 6 million Jewish people.

      Lois will have more coming up, so stay tuned.

      Updated
      at 5.08pm EDT

      4.42pm EDT
      16:42

      Senate confirms Kristen Clarke to lead DOJ civil rights division in historic first

      The Guardian’s Sam Levine reports:
      The senate voted Tuesday afternoon to confirm Kristen Clarke to lead the civil rights division at the Justice Department, making her the Black woman to be confirmed to the role.
      The vote was 51-48, with Susan Collins, the Republican senator from Maine, voting with Democrats to support Clarke’s nomination.
      Clarke, a career civil rights lawyer who is widely respected for her work on voting rights, politicing, and anti-discrimination, will lead the division of the department responsible for enforcing some of America’s most powerful anti-discrimination laws.

      Senate Cloakroom
      (@SenateCloakroom)
      Confirmed, 51-48: Executive Calendar #124 Kristen M. Clarke to be an Assistant Attorney General. @TheJusticeDept

      May 25, 2021

      At the department, she’ll join Vanita Gupta, another longtime civil rights lawyer, who was confirmed to be the associate attorney general, the number three position at the department, earlier this year. The appointment of both women, widely praised by civil rights groups, signals the importance of civil rights enforcement to the Biden administration.
      As the head of the civil rights division, Clarke will be responsible for enforcing the nation’s voting laws. She will take over at a moment when Republicans across the country have launched a brazen effort to restrict access to the ballot. The Trump administration was largely silent on voting rights enforcement and many are closely watching to see whether the Justice Department will aggressively challenge the new laws.
      Clarke’s confirmation is also a major political win for the Biden White House. Republicans and Fox News host Tucker Carlson spent months attacking Clarke for an op-ed she wrote in college and tried to paint her as someone who would come to the role with an anti-police bias.
      Clarke and Democrats strongly pushed back on those accusations, saying the op-ed, written decades ago when she was an undergraduate, was distorted and that she did not support defunding the police.

      4.23pm EDT
      16:23

      Kamala Harris released her own statement after she and Joe Biden met with the family of George Floyd this afternoon, and she said Congress must act “swiftly” to address policing reform.
      “One year ago, a cellphone video revealed to the country what Black Americans have known to be true for generations. The verdict finding Derek Chauvin guilty of murder provided some measure of justice. But one verdict does not address the persistent issue of police misconduct and use of excessive force,” the vice-president said.
      “We need to do more. After Mr Floyd was murdered, Senator Cory Booker, representative Karen Bass, and I introduced the Justice in Policing Act to hold law enforcement accountable and build trust between law enforcement and the communities it serves. Congress must move swiftly and act with a sense of urgency. Passing legislation will not bring back those lives lost, but it will represent much needed progress.”
      Bass and Booker continue to engage in negotiations with Republican Senator Tim Scott over the bill, and the trio said yesterday that they “remain optimistic” about the chances of reaching a final deal.
      “We must address racial injustice wherever it exists,” Harris concluded. “That is the work ahead.”

      Updated
      at 4.41pm EDT

      4.06pm EDT
      16:06

      ‘We have to act’ on policing reform, Biden says after meeting with Floyd family

      Joe Biden has released a statement to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the murder of George Floyd, urging Congress to pass the policing reform bill named in his honor.
      The president noted he met with some of Floyd’s family members in the Oval Office this afternoon, and he applauded their strength over the past year.
      “Although it has been one year since their beloved brother and father was murdered, for the family – for any family experiencing a profound loss – the first year can still feel like they got the news a few seconds ago,” Biden said. “And they’ve had to relive that pain and grief each and every time those horrific 9 minutes and 29 seconds have been replayed.”
      Biden emphasized that the conviction of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin cannot be the end of the discussion when it comes to policing reform.
      “Last month’s conviction of the police officer who murdered George was another important step forward toward justice. But our progress can’t stop there,” Biden said.
      “To deliver real change, we must have accountability when law enforcement officers violate their oaths, and we need to build lasting trust between the vast majority of the men and women who wear the badge honorably and the communities they are sworn to serve and protect. We can and must have both accountability and trust and in our justice system.”
      The president expressed hope that lawmakers will soon reach a bipartisan compromise on the policing bill and send it to his desk.
      “We have to act. We face an inflection point,” Biden said. “The battle for the soul of America has been a constant push and pull between the American ideal that we’re all created equal and the harsh reality that racism has long torn us apart. At our best, the American ideal wins out. It must again.”

      3.50pm EDT
      15:50

      George Floyd’s young daughter, Gianna, led a chant of “Say his name, George Floyd!” after she and her family met with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to commemorate the anniversary of her father’s death.

      CBS News
      (@CBSNews)
      George Floyd’s daughter Gianna leads a chant with his family members outside the White House: “Say his name — George Floyd.” https://t.co/Nj065CIsxp pic.twitter.com/1h5QmJ7oZN

      May 25, 2021

      3.46pm EDT
      15:46

      Floyd family encourages passage of policing reform bill after Biden meeting

      Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ meeting with the family of George Floyd to commemorate the anniversary of his murder concluded after about an hour.
      Once the meeting wrapped up, Floyd’s family members and their attorney, civil rights lawyer Benjamin Crump, walked out to speak to White House reporters.

      CBS News
      (@CBSNews)
      After private meeting with Pres. Biden, George Floyd’s brother Philonise calls on Congress to pass George Floyd Justice In Policing Act: “If you can make federal laws to protect the [national] bird, which is the bald eagle, you can make federal laws to protect people of color.” pic.twitter.com/yTYRaHyAug

      May 25, 2021

      Crump said the meeting was “very personal” because Biden has gotten to know the Floyd family well over the past year, and the president offered his assurances that he was ready to sign the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act “any day”.
      “He said that he doesn’t want to sign a bill that doesn’t have substance and meaning, so he is going to be patient to make sure it’s the right bill, not a rushed bill,” Crump said.
      Philonise Floyd, one of Floyd’s brothers who participated in the meeting with the president, said it was absolutely imperative that Congress pass the bill.
      “If you can make federal laws to protect the [national] bird, which is the bald eagle, you can make federal laws to protect people of color,” Floyd said.

      Updated
      at 3.46pm EDT

      3.33pm EDT
      15:33

      David Smith

      Amid frustration over lack of police reform, Joe Biden hosted George Floyd’s brother Philonise, seven-year-old daughter Gianna and other family members at a private meeting on Tuesday.
      The sombre anniversary was an opportunity for the president, whose own family has been haunted by grief, to demonstrate an empathy many found lacking in his predecessor, Donald Trump.
      Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, told reporters: “I think a lot of the meeting will be him listening to them and hearing from them on what they want the path forward to look like.
      “He really wanted it to be a private meeting because he has a personal relationship and he wanted to hear how they’re doing, give them an update on his efforts to sign a bill into law and ensure there is long-overdue accountability.”

      3.19pm EDT
      15:19

      Biden to travel to Tulsa to mark 100th anniversary of race massacre

      Joe Biden will travel to Tulsa, Oklahoma, next week to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the city’s race massacre, the White House has just announced.
      The announcement comes a week after three survivors of the massacre testified before the House of Representatives about the need for reparations for those who survived the attack and their descendants.

      The Guardian’s David Smith reported last week:

      For nearly a century she was denied a voice by a culture of silence. Finally, at the age of 107, Viola Fletcher got a national stage on Wednesday to bear witness to America’s deep history of racial violence.
      Fletcher is the oldest living survivor of a massacre that took place in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on 31 May and 1 June 1921 when a white mob attacked the city’s ‘Black Wall Street’, killing an estimated 300 African Americans while robbing and burning more than 1,200 businesses, homes and churches.
      She was just seven years old at the time.
      For decades the atrocity was actively covered up and wished away. But Fletcher and her 100-year-old brother are seeking reparations and, ahead of the massacre’s centenary, appeared before a House of Representatives judiciary subcommittee considering legal remedies. …
      ‘I am here seeking justice,’ Fletcher said. ‘I am here asking my country to acknowledge what happened in Tulsa in 1921.’

      2.57pm EDT
      14:57

      The Guardian’s Sam Levine reports:
      One of the companies involved in the unprecedented review of 2.1 million ballots in Arizona has ended its involvement in the effort, the Arizona Republic reported Tuesday.
      The company, Pennsylvania-based Wake TSI, was only contracted to work on the review through 14 May, and chose not to extend its contract, a spokesman for the review told the Republic. Their decision to stop comes as the effort, executed at the behest of Republicans in the state senate, has come under national scrutiny for shoddy practices and bias.

      Sam Levine
      (@srl)
      This is hugely significant. Cyber Ninjas has gotten a lot of attention around the audit, but Wake TSI was the company on the floor running the counting. https://t.co/8at3mzTESX

      May 25, 2021

      Wake TSI was involved in overseeing the portion of the audit that dealt with a hand recount of the presidential vote and US senate race in Maricopa county (Republicans are also examining voting technology and the paper ballots were cast on). The firm overseeing the entire audit, called Cyber Ninjas, had previously pointed to Wake TSI’s involvement in a prior audit in Pennsylvania to assuage concern about Cyber Ninjas’ own lack of experience in election audits.
      New details have come to light in recent days about Wake TSI’s involvement in Pennsylvania. On Monday, the Arizona Mirror reported that the firm had been hired by a non-profit linked to Sidney Powell, a Trump ally and one of the most prominent figures to spread lies about the results of the 2020 election last year.
      StratTech solutions, an Arizona-based IT firm, will take over for Wake TSI and continue to count ballots in accordance with the procedures the company had already set up, according to the Republic. It’s unclear what experience StratTech has in elections, if any.

      2.38pm EDT
      14:38

      Biden and Harris meet with Floyd family to commemorate anniversary

      Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are now meeting with the family of George Floyd to commemorate the one-year anniversary of his murder in Minneapolis.
      The White House told the press pool about 20 minutes ago that the meeting, scheduled to begin at 1:30 pm ET, had now started.
      Biden’s staff has said he intends for the meeting to be a private gathering, but members of the Floyd family may speak to reporters after it concludes.
      After their meeting with the president, Floyd’s family members are scheduled to meet with Democratic Senator Cory Booker and Republican Senator Tim Scott, who are working on the policing reform bill named in Floyd’s honor.
      The blog will have more details on the meeting as they become available, so stay tuned.

      2.31pm EDT
      14:31

      Martin Pengelly

      The White House expects to get Republicans’ counteroffer on a $2tn infrastructure proposal later this week, press secretary Jen Psaki said earlier.
      Senate Republicans are due to meet to determine their next steps on infrastructure talks and could deliver their proposal on Thursday, Senator Shelley Capito of West Virginia said.
      Republicans have said that they won’t back Joe Biden’s plan to pay for much-needed infrastructure repair and investment by altering the 2017 tax bill, passed under Donald Trump and when Republicans controlled Congress, to increase taxes on the wealthy and companies. They are expected to offer a pared-down proposal.
      “We are waiting to hear back from Republicans on how they would propose to pay for it” if they won’t raise taxes, Psaki said.

      Updated
      at 2.34pm EDT

      2.12pm EDT
      14:12

      Crew disappointed after DoJ bars Trump-Russia memo

      Martin Pengelly

      Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the group attempting to gain access to a Department of Justice memo about Donald Trump, possible obstruction of justice and the Russia investigation, has said it is “deeply disappointed” by a DoJ decision not to release the memo in full despite being ordered to do so by a federal judge. More

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      in US Politics

      The fight to whitewash US history: ‘A drop of poison is all you need’

      by

      On 25 May 2020, a man died after a “medical incident during police interaction” in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The man was suspected of forgery and “believed to be in his 40s”. He “physically resisted officers” and, after being handcuffed, “appeared to be suffering medical distress”. He was taken to the hospital “where he died a short time later”.It is not difficult to imagine a version of reality where this, the first police account of George Floyd’s brutal death beneath the knee of an implacable police officer, remained the official narrative of what took place in Minneapolis one year ago. That version of reality unfolds every day. Police lies are accepted and endorsed by the press; press accounts are accepted and believed by the public.That something else happened – that it is now possible for a news organization to say without caveat or qualification that Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd – required herculean effort and extraordinary bravery on the part of millions of people.The laborious project of establishing truth in the face of official lies is one that Americans embraced during the racial reckoning of the summer of 2020, whether it was individuals speaking out about their experiences of racism at work, or institutions acknowledging their own complicity in racial injustice. For a time, it seemed that America was finally ready to tell a more honest, nuanced story of itself, one that acknowledged the blood at the root.But alongside this reassessment, another American tradition re-emerged: a reactionary movement bent on reasserting a whitewashed American myth. These reactionary forces have taken aim at efforts to tell an honest version of American history and speak openly about racism by proposing laws in statehouses across the country that would ban the teaching of “critical race theory”, the New York Times’s 1619 Project, and, euphemistically, “divisive concepts”.The movement is characterized by a childish insistence that children should be taught a false version of the founding of the United States that better resembles a mythic virgin birth than the bloody, painful reality. It would shred the constitution’s first amendment in order to defend the honor of those who drafted its three-fifths clause.“When you start re-examining the founding myth in light of evidence that’s been discovered in the last 20 years by historians, then that starts to make people doubt the founding myth,” said Christopher S Parker, a professor of political science at the University of Washington who studies reactionary movements. “There’s no room for racism in this myth. Anything that threatens to interrogate the myth is seen as a threat.”Legislation seeking to limit how teachers talk about race has been considered by at least 15 states, according to an analysis by Education Week.In Idaho, Governor Brad Little signed into law a measure banning public schools from teaching critical race theory, 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”. The state’s lieutenant governor, Janice McGeachin, also established a taskforce to “examine indoctrination in Idaho education and to protect our young people from the scourge of critical race theory, socialism, communism, and Marxism”.In Tennessee, the legislature has approved a bill that would bar public schools from using instructional materials that promote certain concepts, including the idea that, “This state or the United States is fundamentally or irredeemably racist or sexist.”The Texas house of representatives has passed a flurry of legislation related to teaching history, including a bill that would ban any course that would “require an understanding of the 1619 Project” and a bill that would establish an “1836 Project” (a reference to the date of the founding of the Republic of Texas) to “promote patriotic education”.Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, in April came out in opposition to a small federal grant program (just $5.25m out of the department of education’s $73.5bn budget) supporting American history and civics education projects that, among other criteria, “incorporate racially, ethnically, culturally, and linguistically diverse perspectives”.“Families did not ask for this divisive nonsense,” McConnell wrote in a letter to the secretary of education, Miguel Cardona. “Voters did not vote for it. Americans never decided our children should be taught that our country is inherently evil.”Unsurprisingly, McConnell left out a few pertinent adjectives.“Whose children are we talking about?” asked LaGarrett King, a professor at the University of Missouri School of Education who has developed a new framework for teaching Black history. “Black parents talk to their kids about racism. Asian American parents talk to their kids about racism. Just say that you don’t want white kids to learn about racism.”“If we understand the systemic nature of racism, then that will help us really understand our society, and hopefully improve it,” King added. “Laws like this – it’s simply that people do not want to improve society. History is about power, and these people want to continue in a system that they have enjoyed.”While diversity training and the 1619 Project have been major targets, critical race theory has more recently become the watchword of the moral panic. Developed by Black legal scholars at Harvard in the 1980s, critical race theory is a mode of thinking that examines the ways in which racism was embedded into American law.Black parents talk to their kids about racism. Asian American parents talk to their parents about racism. Just say that you don’t want white kids to learn about racism.“Its effectiveness created a backlash,” said Keffrelyn D Brown, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin’s College of Education who argues that critical race theory does have a place in classrooms. Brown said that she believes students should learn about racism in school, but that teachers need tools and frameworks to make those discussions productive.“If we are teaching this, we need to think about racism as just as robust a content area as if we were talking about discrete mathematics or the life cycle,” Brown said. “I find that critical race theory provides a really elegant and clear way for students to understand racism from an informed perspective.”But in the hands of the American right, critical race theory has morphed into an existential threat. In early January, just five days after rightwing rioters had stormed the US Capitol, the Heritage Foundation, a rightwing thinktank with close ties to the Trump administration, hosted a panel discussion about the threat of “the new intolerance” and its “grip on America”.“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,” said Angela Sailor, a VP of the Heritage Foundation’s Feulner Institute and the moderator of the event.“The rigid persistence with which believers apply this theory has made critical race theory a constant daily presence in the lives of hundreds of millions of people,” she added, in an assessment that will probably come as a surprise to hundreds of millions of people.The Heritage Foundation has been one of the top campaigners against critical race theory, alongside the Manhattan Institute, another conservative thinktank known for promoting the “broken windows” theory of policing.Bridging the two groups is Christopher Rufo, a documentary film-maker who has become the leading spokesperson against critical race theory on television and on Twitter. As a visiting fellow at Heritage, he produced a report arguing that critical race theory makes inequality worse, and in April the Manhattan Institute appointed him the director of a new “Initiative on Critical Race Theory”. (Rufo is also affiliated with another rightwing thinktank, the Discovery Institute, which is best known for its repeated attempts to smuggle Christian theology into US public schools under the guise of the pseudoscientific “intelligent design”.)A host of new organizations has also sprung up to spread the fear of critical race theory far and wide. The Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism (Fair) launched recently with an advisory board composed of anti-“woke” media figures and academics. The group is so far encouraging opposition to the grant program McConnell opposed and has highlighted a legal challenge to a debt relief program for Black farmers as a “profile in courage”.Those who take the Fair “pledge” can also join a message board where members discuss their activism against critical race theory in schools and access resources such as the guide, How to Talk to a Critical Theorist, which begins, “In many ways, Critical Theorists (or specifically Critical Race Theorists) are just like anyone.”Parents Defending Education, another new organization, encourages parents to “expose” what’s happening in their schools and offers step-by-step instructions for parents to set up “Woke at X” Instagram accounts to document excessive “wokeness” at their children’s schools.A new website, What Are They Learning, was set up by the Daily Caller reporter Luke Rosiak to serve as a “woke-e-leaks” for parents to report incidents of teachers mentioning racism in school. “In deep-red, 78% white Indiana, state department of education tells teachers to Talk about Race in the Classroom, cites Ibram X Kendi,” reads one such report. (The actual document submitted is, in fact, titled Talking about Race in the Classroom and appears to be a copy of a webinar offering teachers advice on discussing last year’s Black Lives Matter protests with their students.)Such initiatives and others – the Educational Liberty Alliance, Critical Race Training in Education, No Left Turn in Education – have received enthusiastic support from the rightwing media, with the New York Post, Daily Caller, Federalist and Fox News serving up a steady stream of outrage fodder about the threat of critical race theory. Since 5 June, Fox News has mentioned “critical race theory” by name in 150 broadcasts, the Atlantic found.For some of these groups, critical race theory is just one of many “liberal” ideas they don’t want their children to learn. No Left Turn in Education also complains about comprehensive sex education and includes a link on its website to an article suggesting that teaching children about the climate crisis is a form of indoctrination.It’s not enough to be balanced; it’s not adequate to say that we balance out criticism of the past with praise of the past. The idea is that a drop of poison is all you need to ruin the wellFor others, it seems possible that attacking critical race theory is just a smokescreen for a bog standard conservative agenda. (Toward the end of the Heritage Foundation’s January panel, the group’s director of its center for education policy told viewers that the “most important” way to fight critical race theory was to support “school choice”, a longstanding policy goal of the right.)Whatever their motives, today’s reactionaries are picking up the mantle of generations of Americans who have fought to ensure that white children are taught a version of America’s past that is more hagiographic than historic. The echoes are so strong that Adam Laats, a Binghamton University professor who studies the history of education in the US, remarked, “It’s confusing which decade we’re in.”In the 1920s and 1930s, reactionaries objected to textbooks that gave credence to the progressive historian Charles Beard’s argument that the founders’ motives were not strictly principled, but instead were influenced by economic self-interest, according to Seth Cotlar, a history professor at Willamette University.In 1923, an Oregon state government controlled by members of the resurgent Ku Klux Klan enacted a law that banned the use of any textbook in schools that “speaks slightingly of the founders of the republic, or of the men who preserved the union, or which belittles or undervalues their work”. And in the 1930s, conservatives waged what Laats called a “frenzied campaign” against the textbooks of Harold Rugg, another progressive historian, that actually resulted in a book burning in Bradner, Ohio.For those supporting the resurgent Klan, “To speak ill of a founder was akin to a kind of sacrilege,” said Cotlar.Another battle over textbooks flared in the 1990s when Lynne Cheney launched a high-profile campaign against an effort to introduce new standards for teaching US history, which she found insufficiently “celebratory” and lacking “a tone of affirmation”. Harriet Tubman, the KKK, and McCarthyism all received too much attention, Cheney complained, and George Washington and Robert E Lee not enough.The decades change; the fixation on maintaining a false idea of historic figures as pure founts of virtue remains. Today, the single contention in the 1619 Project that has drawn the most vociferous outrage is author Nikole Hannah-Jones’s assertion that “one of the primary reasons” colonists fought for independence was to preserve the institution of slavery. Hannah-Jones was denied tenure by the University of North Carolina’s board of trustees, which overruled the dean, faculty and university, reportedly due to political pressure from conservative critics of the 1619 Project.“Underlying this is the never-solved dilemma about what history class is supposed to do,” said Laats. “For some people it’s supposed to be a pep talk before the game, a well of pure inspiration for young people, and I think that is why the danger seems so intense to conservatives.“It’s not enough to be balanced; it’s not adequate to say that we balance out criticism of the past with praise of the past. The idea is that a drop of poison is all you need to ruin the well.”Still, the fact that reactionaries are looking to legislate against certain ideas may be a sign of just how weak their own position is.Laats suspects that the right is using “critical race theory” as a euphemism. “You can’t go to a school board and say you want to ban the idea that Black Lives Matter.“They’ve given up on arguing in favor of indoctrination and instead say that critical race theory is the actual indoctrination,” he said of the conservative movement. “They’ve given up on arguing in favor of racism to say that critical race theory is the real racism. This campaign against the teaching of critical race theory is scary, and it’s a sign of great strength, but it’s strength in favor of an idea that’s already lost.”Or at least, so we hope.Last week I called Paweł Machcewicz, a Polish historian who has been at the center of a battle in his own country between those who want to tell the truth about the past, and those who want to weaponize history for political purposes. Machcewicz was one of the historians who uncovered evidence of Polish complicity in Nazi war crimes, and as the founding director of the Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk, he attempted to provide an accurate account of Poland’s experience in the war. The far-right ruling party, Law and Justice, deemed the museum insufficiently patriotic and fired him. The next year, the government passed legislation to outlaw accusing Poland of complicity in Nazi war crimes.“Democracy turned out to be very fragile,” Machcewicz said. “I knew history was important for Law and Justice, but it became a sort of obsession. I never thought that as a founding director of a museum of the second world war, I would become a public enemy.”“You never know what price you have to pay for independent history,” he added. “I don’t think it will ever go as far in the US as Poland, but some years ago, I also felt quite secure in my country.” More

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      in US Politics

      Val Demings likely to run for Senate against Marco Rubio – report

      by

      Marco Rubio avoided a Senate challenge from Ivanka Trump but he seems certain to face one from Val Demings, a Democratic Florida congresswoman who was the first Black female police chief of Orlando and who was considered as a potential vice-president to Joe Biden.An unnamed senior adviser told Politico Demings, 64, was “98.6%” certain to run against Rubio in the midterm elections next year.“If I had to point to one” reason why Demings had decided to run, the adviser was quoted as saying, “I think it’s the Covid bill and the way Republicans voted against it for no good reason.“That really helped push her over the edge. She also had this huge fight with [Ohio Republican representative] Jim Jordan and it brought that into focus. This fight is in Washington and it’s the right fight for her to continue.”Biden’s $1.9tn coronavirus rescue bill passed Congress in March without a single Republican vote. In April she made headlines by raising her voice when Jordan, a provocateur and hard-right Trump supporter, interrupted her during a House judiciary committee hearing on an anti-hate crimes bill.“I have the floor, Mr Jordan,” Demings shouted. “What? Did I strike a nerve?“Law enforcement officers deserve better than to be utilised as pawns, and you and your colleagues should be ashamed of yourselves.”Demings was a member of Orlando police for 27 years and chief from 2007 to 2011. She was elected to Congress in 2016. Her husband, Jerry Demings, is a former sheriff and current mayor of Orlando county.Police brutality and institutional racism have become a national flashpoint in light of the killings of numerous African American men.Demings is a political moderate but Quentin James of the the Collective Pac, a Florida group working on Black voter registration, told Politico her police background and political views would not necessarily handicap her.Young and progressive Floridians “aren’t really anti-police”, he said. “They’re against police brutality.”Rubio is a two-term senator who ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016. He was brutally beaten in that race by Donald Trump, then swiftly aligned himself with his persecutor when he won the White House.The prospect of a primary challenge from Ivanka Trump, the former president’s oldest daughter, was briefly the talk of Washington but she has said she will not run.The Senate is split 50-50 and controlled by Democrats through Kamala Harris’s casting vote as vice-president. Demings’s all-but-confirmed decision to run sets up an intriguing contest in a state where the large Latino population has increasingly broken for Republicans. Rubio is the son of Cuban migrants.Demings’s move also leaves the field open for challengers to Ron DeSantis, the Trump-supporting governor seen by some as a possible presidential candidate in 2024. In 2018 Democrats ran a progressive, Andrew Gillum, a former mayor of Tallahassee.Discussing Demings’s likely Senate campaign, James told Politico: “We came very close with Gillum. But now we’re back with a really great candidate.” More

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      Tim Scott says ‘America is not a racist country’ – the data says otherwise | Mona Chalabi

      by

      His choice of words was categorical. When Tim Scott, the only Black Republican in the Senate, responded to Joe Biden’s speech to Congress last week, he said: “America is not a racist country.”But racial disparities exist in the US healthcare system, its criminal justice system, its educational system and its economic system. Those gaps are wide. They are persistent. And, in some cases, racial disparities have grown over time rather than narrowed.Dataset after dataset, from non-partisan thinktanks to government sources, consistently show these racial disparities. And, unless one believes inherent, biological differences exist between racial groups in the US that would explain their differing success in the country (a belief that would, by the way, be racist), the only possible explanation for all this is structural racism.These differences exist from the moment that a child is born in the US. One in every seven Black babies has a low birth weight compared with one in every 15 white babies, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data from 2019.And the gaps remain. Black, Hispanic and Native American children are more likely to live in poverty than their white, Asian, Hawaiian or Pacific Islander counterparts, as census data from 2020 reveals.By the time that graduation rolls around, just 74% of Native American or Alaska Native children will complete their public high school education, compared with 79% of Black children and 89% of white children. These statistics come from the US Department of Education, 2017-2018.In adulthood too, racial discrimination affects just about every aspect of a person’s life. The 2018 American Community Survey (conducted by the Census Bureau) reveals that people of color are most likely to work in low-paid frontline jobs.And tragically, though not surprisingly, these are the jobs that often have the greatest exposure to the risks of Covid-19. Black people in the US are almost 1.9 times more likely to die from the disease than their white counterparts. For Hispanic or Latino people, the risk is 2.3 times higher, and for Native Americans it’s 2.4 times higher than white people.Crucially, these statistics can not be treated in isolation. Health is affected by poverty. Poverty affects educational outcomes. Education affects economic security and so it goes on.Research has shown that Black babies are more likely to be born at a low birth weight because of the physical demands of the low-paid work that many of their mothers are doing. That low-paid work can make it harder to get health insurance too. While just 5% of white people in the US don’t have health insurance, that share doubles for Black people (10%) and doubles again for Hispanic people (20%), according to the census. And of course, a lack of access to healthcare puts an individual at greater risk of dying from Covid-19.To say that the US is not a racist country is to make a statement that exists outside of reality. It is a fantasy to which many people, especially white Americans, would like to cling. More

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      in US Politics

      Ruby Bridges: the six-year-old who defied a mob and desegregated her school

      by

      This year, Ruby Bridges saw some newly discovered video footage of her six-year-old self and was terrified for her. The footage was from 14 November 1960, a day that shaped the course of Bridges’ life and – it is no exaggeration to say – American history. Not that she was aware of it at the time. On that day she became the first Black child to attend an all-white primary school in Louisiana.Looking at images of Bridges’ first day at William Frantz elementary school in New Orleans, she is a study in vulnerability: a tiny girl in her smart new uniform, with white socks and white ribbons in her hair, flanked by four huge federal agents in suits. Awaiting her at the school gates was a phalanx of rabidly hostile protesters, mostly white parents and children, plus photographers and reporters. They yelled names and racial slurs, chanted, and waved placards. One sign read: “All I want for Christmas is a clean white school.” One woman held up a miniature coffin with a black doll in it. It has become one of the defining images of the civil rights movement, popularised even further by Norman Rockwell’s recreation of it in his 1964 painting The Problem We All Live With.The confrontation was expected. Three months before Bridges was born, the US supreme court had issued its landmark Brown v Board of Education ruling, outlawing segregation in schools nationwide. Six years later, though, states in the south were stubbornly refusing to act upon it. When nine African American children enrolled at the Little Rock school in Arkansas in 1957, it had caused an uproar. President Eisenhower had to call in federal troops to escort the children through a national guard blockade ordered by the governor. Three years later it was Louisiana’s turn. Bridges was one of six Black children to pass a test to gain access to formerly all-white schools. But two of the children dropped out and three went, on the same day, to a different school. So Bridges was all on her own.Many have read resolve or defiance into Bridges’ demeanour that day, but the explanation is far simpler. “I was really not aware that I was going into a white school,” she says. “My parents never explained it to me. I stumbled into crowds of people, and living here in New Orleans, being accustomed to Mardi Gras, the huge celebration that takes place in the city every year, I really thought that’s what it was that day. There was no need for me to be afraid of that.”Watching the footage of that day 60 years later, Bridges’ reaction was very different. “It was just mind-blowing, horrifying,” she says. “I had feelings that I’d never had before … And I thought to myself: ‘I cannot even fathom me now, today, as a parent and grandparent, sending my child into an environment like that.’”Bridges, 66, can understand her own parents’ actions, though. They grew up as sharecroppers (poor tenant farmers) in rural Mississippi in the pre-civil rights era before moving to New Orleans in 1958. “They were not allowed to go to school every day,” she says. “Neither one of them had a formal education. If it was time for them to get the crops in, or to work, school was a luxury; that was something they couldn’t do. So they really wanted opportunities for their children that they were not allowed to have.”Bridges’ parents paid a high price for their decision. Her mother, who had been the chief advocate for her attending the white school, lost her job as a domestic worker. Her father, a Korean war veteran who worked as a service-station attendant, also lost his job on account of the Bridges’ newfound notoriety. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which had played a big part in Bridges’ case, advised him not to go out and look for work, for his own safety. “That in itself caused a lot of tension,” she says, “because I’m the oldest of eight, and at that point he was no longer able to provide for his family. So they were solely dependent on donations and people that would help them.” The local corner store refused to serve them. Even her sharecropper grandparents were made to move from their farm in Mississippi. Her parents eventually separated. “I remember writing a letter to Santa Claus and asking him to give my father’s job back, and that he didn’t have a job because I was going to the school. So I guess somehow I did feel some blame for it.”Life at her new school was no easier for Bridges. For the first year, she needed federal protection every day since protesters were always at the school gates, including the woman with the doll in a coffin. “That I used to have nightmares about,” she says. “I would dream that the coffin was flying around my bedroom at night.” Bridges had to bring her own lunch every day for fear of being poisoned. The white parents all withdrew their children from the school, and the staff refused to teach Bridges, except for one teacher: Barbara Henry, who had come from Boston. For the first year, Henry taught Bridges alone, just the two of them in the classroom. “We knew we had to be there for each other,” says Bridges.Bridges had another ally outside the school: Robert Coles, a white child psychiatrist who had witnessed the scenes outside the school, and volunteered to support her and her family, visiting the home on a weekly basis. Coles went on to establish a career studying the effects of desegregation on schoolchildren. It later emerged that it was one of his relatives who had sent Bridges her smart school clothes, which her family could never have afforded.Things changed gradually. Over the course of that first year, a few white parents let their children back into the school. At first they were kept separate from Bridges. “The principal, who was part of the opposition, would take the kids and she would hide them, so that they would never come in contact with me.” Towards the end of the first year, however, on Henry’s insistence, Bridges was finally allowed to be part of a small class with other six-year-olds. “A little boy then said to me: ‘My mom said not to play with you because you’re a nigger,’” Bridges recalls. “And the minute he said that, it was like everything came together. All the little pieces that I’d been collecting in my mind all fit, and I then understood: the reason why there’s no kids here is because of me, and the colour of my skin. That’s why I can’t go to recess. And it’s not Mardi Gras. It all sort of came together: a very rude awakening. I often say today that really was my first introduction to racism.”It was also an insight into the origins of racism, she later realised. “The way that I was brought up, if my parents had said: ‘Don’t play with him – he’s white, he’s Asian, he’s Hispanic, he’s Indian, he’s whatever – I would not have played with him.” The little boy wasn’t being knowingly racist towards her; he was simply explaining why he couldn’t play with her. “Which leads me to my point that racism is learned behaviour. We pass it on to our kids, and it continues from one generation to the next. That moment proved that to me.”By the time Bridges returned to the school for the second year, the furore had pretty much died down. There were no protests, she was in a normal-sized class with other children, predominantly white but with a few more African Americans. The overall situation had improved, although Bridges was upset that Henry had left the school (they have remained lifelong friends). Thanks to Henry’s teaching, Bridges spoke with a strong Boston accent, for which she was criticised by her teacher – one of those who had refused to teach her the year before. Every year, though, more and more Black students came to the school. By the time she moved on, high schools had been desegregated for nearly a decade, although Black and white pupils still did not mix. The south’s racist legacy was still close to the surface: her high school was named after a former Confederate general, Francis T Nicholls. Its sports teams were named the Rebels, and had a Confederate flag on their badge, which the Black students fought to change. (The school was renamed Frederick Douglass high school in the 1990s, and its teams are now the Bobcats.)Bridges says she did not have much of a career plan when she finished school. “I was really more focused on how to get out of Louisiana. I knew that there was something more than what I was exposed to right there in my community.” She first applied for jobs as a flight attendant, then became a travel agent for American Express for 15 years, during which time she got to travel the world.By her mid-30s, Bridges had satisfied her wanderlust and was married (to Malcolm Hall, in 1984) with four sons. But she felt restless. “I was asking myself: ‘What am I doing? Am I doing something really meaningful?’ I really wanted to know what my purpose was in life.” In 1993, Bridges’ brother was shot dead on a New Orleans street. For a time she cared for his four daughters, who also attended William Frantz elementary school. Then in 1995, Coles, now a Harvard professor, published his children’s book The Story of Ruby Bridges, which brought her back into the public eye. People in New Orleans had never really talked about her story, Bridges explains, in the same way that, for years, people in Dallas didn’t talk about the Kennedy assassination. “You have to understand, we didn’t have Black History Month during that time. It wasn’t like I could pick up a textbook and open it up and read about myself.” Bridges helped promote Coles’ book, talking in schools across the US. It became a bestseller. A few years later, Disney made a biopic of Bridges, on which she acted as a consultant. “I think everybody started to realise that me, Ruby Bridges, was actually the same little girl as in the Norman Rockwell painting.”The proceeds from the book helped Bridges set up her foundation. Bringing her nieces back to William Frantz, she noticed the lack of after-school arts programmes, so set up her own. She continued touring schools across the country telling her story and promoting cultural understanding. (She recently had a new book published, This Is Your Time, retelling her story for today’s young people.) Then, in 2005, Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans and the school was badly damaged. There were plans to tear it down. “I felt like if anybody was to save the school, it would be me,” she says. Bridges successfully campaigned to have the school put on the National Register of Historic Places, which freed funds to restore and expand it. “So now it has been reopened. Kids are back in the seats. And I’m really proud of the fact that I had something to do with that.” A statue of Bridges stands in the courtyard.It was not until much later in life that Bridges became aware of Rockwell’s painting of her. It is not a faithful recreation of the scene (if anything it is closer to John Steinbeck’s eyewitness account in his 1962 book Travels With Charley in Search of America) but in contrast to Rockwell’s earlier cheery Americana, it captures the anger and drama: the N-word and “KKK” are scrawled across the wall behind Bridges, along with a splattered tomato.When Barack Obama became president, Bridges suggested the painting be hung in the White House to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the event. Obama agreed, and invited Bridges and her family to its unveiling. He gave her a big hug. “It was a very powerful moment,” she says. “As we embraced, I saw people in the room tearing up and realised that it wasn’t just about he and I meeting; it was about those moments in time that came together. And all of those sacrifices in between he and I. He then turned to me and said: ‘You know, it’s fair to say that if it had not been for this moment, for you all, I might not be here today.’ That in itself is just a stark reminder of how all of us are standing on someone else’s shoulders. Someone else that opened the door and paved the way. And so we have to understand that we cannot give up the fight, whether we see the fruits of our labour or not. You have a responsibility to open the door to keep this moving forward.”Ironically, and dishearteningly for Bridges, today William Frantz’s pupils are 100% Black. The white population had already begun moving out in the mid-60s, she explains, partly because of damage done by Hurricane Betsy, in 1965, but also in response to the changing demographics of the district. Today it is one of the poorest in the city, with relatively high crime rates. It is not just New Orleans: “white flight” has effectively resulted in a form of re-segregation in schools across the US.Bridges sees this as the next battle: “Just as those people felt like it was unfair, and worked so hard during the civil rights movement to have those laws changed, we have to do that all over again. And we have to, first and foremost, see the importance of it. Because we’re faced with such division in our country, but where does that start? It starts very young. So I believe that it’s important, just like Dr King did, that our kids have an opportunity to learn about one another: to grow together, play together, learn together. The most time that kids spend away from home is in school, so our schools have to be integrated. And I know that there are arguments on both sides about that, but we’re never going to become the United States of America unless we, the people, are united.”This Is Your Time by Ruby Bridges is published by One. 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